Chapter 16
Terror filled her, and she continued to struggle as desperately as she could. What was happening? Where were the soldiers? Had they been murdered in their beds? She had heard no shots, and yet…
Perhaps the Indians had slit the throats of the rest of her party as they slept.
The brave carried her, running through the night, and still, she couldn’t budge his hold. She had to do something soon, or else she would black out!
The world spun by her in the shadows of the night. She wriggled and twisted wildly, thumping her legs against his body, hoping to hit him in a way that might cripple him, even if only momentarily.
But even as she desperately writhed in her efforts to cause pain, she twisted enough to see the clearing ahead.
Another Indian waited there, holding the reins of two horses.
Her mouth was suddenly freed from her captor’s hold—because she was deposited facedown over the haunches of one of the horses!
A second later, the brave who had abducted her was mounted on the animal, and they were racing into the foliage in the darkness.
Her mouth was free, and she used that newly gained freedom to good advantage. She screamed like a banshee. Again and again and again…
But perhaps they had come too far away from the camp, and no one could hear her.
Her voice quickly grew hoarse, and her sense of terror and despair increased. She should never have left the fort; Sloan had told her not to leave, and now…
She couldn’t give way to panic. If she did so, she’d have no hope.
She twisted where she lay, clamping her teeth into the brave’s thigh.
She heard a stunned grunt—then a hand descended with force upon her rump. The horse’s gait caused her jaw to slam shut, and her teeth chattered.
The horse over which she lay was suddenly brought to a halt.
She was dizzy; her head was spinning. The brave leaped down.
She tried to struggle up, but before she could do so, powerful hands slipped around her waist, and she was hauled from the animal.
For a moment, she was set down, and though her legs were wobbly, she started to run…
But seconds later she was grabbed and pulled down to the ground. She swore, furious, nearly hysterical. She found herself dragged back to her feet, lifted again…
Carried.
Brought into a tipi.
The light from a small fire in the center of the conical dwelling cast strange arcs of orange light against the shadows that lurked upon the buffalo-skin walls.
She barely saw the light flickering from the fire before she was cast down upon the skins that composed the flooring.
She struggled to her knees, then to her feet.
She turned frantically, looking for the brave.
He stood by the opening. All she could see was the darkness of his hair, falling almost to his shoulders, and the black paint that covered his upper face.
Dressed in nothing but a breechclout, he stood with his arms crossed over his chest.
She was very, very still for a moment, trying desperately not to shake, to find some way out of this terror.
There was no rational way.
Panic filled her again, and she made a wild dash to dive around him and escape into the night.
She had just made it past him when he tackled her. His arms wound around her retreating form, and they plummeted back to the ground together. He straddled her; she fought wildly, trying to gouge his eyes with her nails.
“I’ll kill you, you wretched savage, I’ll kill you!” she swore.
Her wrists were captured and slammed back against the ground.
“I’ll kill you!” she repeated.
The sudden sound of rough, dry laughter from her captor stunned her to silence. The brave was laughing, as if he’d understood her every word…
As if…
Then he spoke; she heard the brave’s voice.
His voice.
Sloan’s voice.
“Oh, I think not, my love. I think not.”
“Sloan!” She gasped out his name, so astonished that at first, she wasn’t even angry.
Then the fury set in.
He had begun to ease back. She attacked him with an energy born from the fear that had shot through her.
Her force sent him falling back, and she continued to slam her fists against his bare chest while he swore softly until he recovered from the sheer speed and violence of her assault, wrapping his arms around her and rolling so that she wound up pinned beneath him again.
“Calm down!” he warned her.
“Calm down!” she shrieked. “Calm down, after what you did? You ought to be—scalped. Skinned alive. How could you do such a horrible thing—”
“Why were you in a place where such a horrible thing could happen to you?” he countered furiously.
She fell silent for a moment, startled.
“There’s no excuse for this, Sloan. You scared me half to death—”
“I told you not to leave the fort.”
“But—I’m not alone.”
“I distinctly told you no excursions!”
“But you were gone—”
“Dammit, Sabrina, I told you not to leave the fort, and I told you with good reason not to leave the fort! And I think I even warned you that you’d be damned sorry if you did.”
She bit her lower lip, searching for the words that would explain to him how much worse his actions had been than her own. She shivered suddenly, aware of the pattern of paint on his shoulders and his face.
He had fooled her.
Naturally, she hadn’t had much of a real chance to look at him until now, but he looked all Sioux, and the effect was chilling.
“You’re lucky you weren’t shot!” she hissed to him.
“And you’re damned lucky there weren’t any real ‘hostiles’ in the area. There’s a guard posted because I warned Tom it was necessary, and I walked right through the damned guard.”
“But there are no hostiles here—”
“There are hostiles too damned close.”
“I don’t know how you can say that—”
“I can say it because I spent an hour burying three dead men—and a woman—today.”
She closed her eyes, unnerved by the fury in his dark eyes—and the paint on his face.
“This was still wickedly cruel!” she charged him. “You could have scared me to death.”
“You need to be scared.”
“Maybe you need to be scared.”
“You scare the hell out of me constantly,” he assured her, rising to a sitting position at her side. “And I hope you’ve learned that you need to stay where I damned well tell you to stay!”
A massive shudder ripped through her, a remnant of the pure terror she had been feeling.
She gritted her teeth together hard, rose to her knees, and pounded her fists against his chest and shoulders with a new burst of vehemence.
She did so with every intention of hurting him, and she knew that she achieved her goal by the grunt that escaped him.
“Don’t you ever do anything like this again. Ever!”
He caught her wrists. “Don’t you leave the fort. And don’t hit me again.”
“I can’t help it! I’d like to rip you into tiny pieces.”
“Well, that isn’t going to happen.”
“Don’t be too certain.”
She had to be an idiot to be quite so defiant, but then, he had nearly scared her to death.
Yet she was caught now, held in the tight vise of his fingers.
Despite the paint on his face and his definitely hostile appearance, she was dismayed to realize that her need to pound against him was a need just to touch him as well.
She tried to pull away; he didn’t let her go.
Instead he pulled her closer and closer until her face was just inches from his own.
“Sloan…let me go,” she murmured.
“So you can hit me again?” he inquired.
“So that we can go back. So that the others don’t worry about me. So that you…so that you can get that paint off your face. It’s war paint, and it’s—frightening,” she told him.
“What’s frightening, Sabrina? The paint—or me?”
“You—don’t frighten me,” she whispered.
He smiled suddenly. “Then I shouldn’t frighten you with or without paint,” he told her quietly. She trembled, feeling his closeness, the warmth created between them against the fresh coolness of the night.
Holding her wrists, he drew her still closer. His mouth touched hers, and he pulled her very hard against him, slowly easing her down to the hide-covered ground. His hand cupped her chin as he kissed her, his tongue parting her lips, seeking, searching; his mouth breaking away, then returning.
Her hands were on his naked chest, stroking the sleekness of his flesh, feeling the convulsive ripple of muscle beneath her lightest touch.
He caught her fingers, kissed them lightly.
She looked into his eyes, reached out and touched the line of the paint on his face, then delicately traced the pattern of one of the half moons drawn on his chest, fascinated despite herself.
“How could you?” she murmured again, feeling a renewed stirring of anger.
He captured her hand, drawing it back against his chest. “How could I? Because it’s very much a part of my heritage, and I’ve often seen that the Indian ways are not nearly as savage as the White,” he said.
“We should go back—”
“We’re spending the night here.”
“Here?”
“Don’t you recognize where we are?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “I’m in a tipi with a man in war paint.”
He smiled. “This is where we took shelter on the trail from Hawk’s place.”
“Oh,” she murmured. “Of course.”
She met the darkness of his eyes, and it seemed that rays of heat swept into her. He was right. He was himself, the same man, with or without paint, and she wanted him. She wished that she could reach out. She couldn’t quite do it.
But tonight, it didn’t matter. He watched her for several long moments, then very slowly leaned toward her, almost as if giving her a chance to escape....
“Come here,” he commanded deeply.
“Sloan…”
“Come here.”
She wasn’t sure if she complied or not.