Apache Caress (6 page)

He shrugged. “I’ve had worse than this; forget it.” She wasn’t about to do that. She needed an excuse to get in that trunk. She slapped the mule with the reins and headed the wagon down the road at a brisk trot. “Do you have a wife waiting for you in Arizona?”

For a moment, there was no answer, and she had almost decided Cholla had not heard the question when he finally shook his head. “With Delzhinne dead . . .” He frowned suddenly. “Don’t ask more. You have caused me to speak the name of the dead, which is taboo among the Apaches. It calls them back from the Spirit World.”

When she glanced back over her shoulder at him in the twilight, his expression mirrored tragedy. His lonely, forbidding face said he was as alone in the world as she was.

Sierra felt uneasy as she pulled into the grove of trees and reined in. She hadn’t thought of him as a human being, she had considered him a dangerous animal.

Merciful heavens, if she began to think of him as a person, she might not be able to concentrate on killing him.

Look out for yourself, Sierra, just like he’s doing. If you can get him to let down his guard so you can get your hands on a weapon, kill him without a flicker of conscience, as if he were a mad dog dangerous. to civilized society.

But how was she to get him to let down his guard? Other women used the lure of their bodies to charm men into obliging. Sierra was no good at the sex thing. Hadn’t Robert told her enough times that she was too cold and inept for any man? At least that was the excuse he’d always used when he’d been delayed in town, which was often.

There had been another woman in Robert’s life. He had taunted her with descriptions of the big-breasted tart, and once Sierra had seen him with her on the street. She had been too timid and unsure to know what to do. Her old-fashioned upbringing had made her try to save the brief marriage, even though there was no love, no tenderness, between them. She had even hunted up Miss Trixie La Femme and begged her to stay away from her husband. The woman had laughed in her face.

By then Robert had gotten himself transferred to Arizona. It was only later that Sierra realized the paper he had bullied her into signing was a mortgage. . . .

Slowly, Sierra climbed down from the wagon seat and shook the wrinkles out of her dress.

The Indian climbed out too, looked around. “Seems safe enough to camp here.”

He reached out, caught her shoulder, stood looking down at her. His big frame was close enough so that her breasts almost touched his chest when she breathed. Alarmed, she took a step backward, but he didn’t let go of her shoulder. The way he looked at her made her heart pound in sudden excitement and apprehension. It left no doubt as to what he was thinking.

Merciful heavens, now that he felt safe from immediate pursuit, he had something else on his mind. Out here in a lonely woods, far from anyone who could stop him, the virile Apache intended to rape her!

Sierra looked up at him, seeing the desire in his dark eyes. She pulled out of his grasp. “I imagine that bandage needs changing. I’ll get some cloth from my trunk–”

“I’ll do it,” he snapped and wearily ran a hand across his forehead, then cursed. “My headband. Where’s my headband?”

They looked at each other, and she remembered the bloody red rag. “Don’t you remember? You took it off last night and threw it on my kitchen table.”

“By Usen, I hope it isn’t found by someone who knows what it is.”

Sierra hoped fervently that it was, but she realized that chances were slim. “I’ll get the cloth–”

“Fix us some food.” He rubbed the back of his neck as if his head hurt. “I’ll get that.”

Sierra started to protest, realized that would make him suspicious. She could only hope he wouldn’t find the scissors. “Suit yourself.” She shrugged and began to build a small fire.

Cholla unhitched the mule and hobbled it near the creek so it could graze, thinking about the girl as he did so. There had to be a reason she seemed so eager to help him. With the hatred he’d seen in those dark eyes, it wasn’t because she was worried about his wound. No, there was something in that trunk Sierra didn’t want him to find. What was it?

He felt her watching him as he climbed up in the wagon, dug around in the trunk. The last rays of daylight reflected off a small frame. Cholla turned the photograph over. A familiar face stared up at him. For a moment, he felt such shock that he could only stare at the handsome, smiling face of the white officer he hated most in this world.
Robert Forester
. This was what Sierra had hidden, not wanting Cholla to find it. Was the dead officer her brother . . . or her husband?

Cholla put the photo back in the trunk, managed to still his shaking hand. He would not let her know he had found it ... not yet. Gathering up some cloth from the trunk, he closed the lid and went back to the fire.

Sierra looked up at him curiously, but he kept his face expressionless. How ironic it was that Fate or Usen had thrown this particular woman into his power. It was too convenient to be coincidence. Someone had planned their meeting so that Cholla might finally get what was due him.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing.” He sat down on a rock and watched her lay out the bread. He had really intended to let her go unharmed as soon as he got safely away from St. Louis. Now he was not sure what he would do with her. Cholla tried to think of some appropriate vengeance. Whatever he had promised Sierra meant nothing to him now that he knew there was some connection between the black-haired girl and his most hated enemy, Lieutenant Robert Forester, the officer who had almost gotten his patrol wiped out in that arroyo. But of course there was more to it than that–much more.

Revenge, though he thirsted for it, must be put aside, Cholla thought with a regretful sigh. His immediate concern must be getting out of the area where the Army would be searching. After that, he had plenty of time to decide what to do about the white girl. One thing was certain; everything was changed now that he knew her secret.

Sierra kept her eyes on the frying pan as the big savage returned from the wagon with some cloth in his hand.

She glanced up at him. His expression had changed somehow, but he didn’t have the scissors in his hand. Had he not found them, or was he only playing cat and mouse with her? He sat down on a rock, and though he said nothing, she felt him staring at her.

“We’ll eat first,” she said, licking her dry lips, “then I’ll rebandage that wound.”

“All right.” His gaze seemed cold and hard.

Sierra watched him out of the corner of her eye as she fried bacon. His wide shoulders looked as if they would split Robert’s shirt, and his sinewy thighs strained against the cloth of the pants. The conchos shining in the firelight caught her attention, and she remembered one was missing. Had it been missing when he had first shown up at her farm? Sierra couldn’t remember. For the thousandth time, she wished she had managed to leave some kind of note for Otto Toombs and the sheriff to find, but it would have been a foolhardy risk.

The way he kept looking at her made her shiver as if he’d put his hands all over her naked body. She couldn’t meet his hostile gaze. Hurriedly, Sierra took a couple of tin plates from a box and tore off some hunks of her homemade bread. “This stuff won’t last forever,” she said as she handed him a plate, poured him some coffee.

He put the plate down, wrapped his hands around the cup as if seeking comfort from its warmth. “I’m a good hunter,” he said softly, looking at her. “We won’t go hungry.”

She didn’t like the possessive look he gave her. Sierra remembered with a shiver that he could take her any time he wanted. They seemed a long way from anyone who could stop him. “If you shoot that gun around here, it might bring someone running. There’re probably people close by.”

If he caught the desperation in her tone, he gave no sign. The Apache shrugged and dug into the food. “I’ll make some snares for rabbits, maybe make myself a bow. Roasted rabbit sound good to you?”

“What sounds good to me is being told you’re going to set me free like you promised.” Sierra said it with a spirit that surprised her.

He chuckled. “So the kitten can show its claws and turn into a bobcat after all!”

She wasn’t sure by his tone whether he was pleased or merely amused by her rejoinder. “You can travel faster alone,” she said.

“Except in white areas.” He paused as he ate. “The sight of my face would set a hue and cry after me.”

The tension of the past several days was getting to Sierra. He didn’t intend to free her; he’d only been playing with her. In her desperation, she’d believed him, just as she had tried to believe that Robert really loved her. “If you’d give up, at least you wouldn’t be hunted down and killed like a fox with the hounds after it.”

He gave her a long look, set his plate down. “Life is full of risks,” he said softly. “People who want security–a guaranteed, safe existence–deserve to be stuck in some cage. I’m not willing to trade freedom for three meals a day, and be in a pen for whites to taunt and stare at.”

“You’d at least be alive.”

His mouth curled into a mirthless grin. “You call that living? I’d rather take my chances.”

“But you don’t have a chance–not one! Don’t you understand that?” she screamed at him. “It’s crazy to think you can get all the way back to Arizona! And even if you do, won’t the Army be waiting to grab you there?”

“A slight chance is all the odds I ask,” he said, “and as for the Army, well, Sergeant Mooney is trying to contact Nantan Crook to help the Apaches. Crook is a hard but a fair man. Maybe he will talk to the White Father in Washington. If that doesn’t work, perhaps I can get across the border and lose myself in the Sierra Madres.”

“The Sierra Madres.” She stared into the fire, remembering. “My mother was his love with the West and its mountains; so romantic, such an impossible dream.”

He looked intrigued. “What happened to her?”

Sierra shrugged. “My grandfather was afraid to take chances, so they never went farther west than our little farm. I think the biggest, bravest thing Janos Kovats ever did was come to America. I doubt he would have done that if my mother hadn’t disgraced him. I think facing the people in his village with an unmarried, pregnant daughter was more than he could stand.”

“And your father?”

“Who knows? The subject was never discussed, although I wondered.” She sighed. “I don’t know whether he was a charming Gypsy or a Hungarian nobleman who amused himself by dallying with a pretty peasant girl. The only clue I have is the word ‘Tokay.’ ”

“Was that his name?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a place.”

“You have no brothers or sisters?”

“I have no one,” Sierra said with a shake of her head. “I miss Mother most of all, although I barely remember her. Zanna was the type of free spirit who caused gossip by swimming naked, going barefoot, and letting her hair blow wild and free as any savage’s.” She looked up at him suddenly, realizing what she had just said. “I didn’t mean . . .”

“I know what you meant,” Cholla said, and he didn’t smile.

“Zanna wanted to go West,” Sierra explained hurriedly, brushing a lock of hair back into her prim bun. “Somehow she thought we would have a whole new start there, but Grandfather was afraid; always afraid to face life, take risks. He said, ‘The nail that stands up will be hammered down’; his European background made him always fearful.”

“Are you your mother’s child or more like your grandfather?”

It was a challenge, the way he said it, and at first she didn’t know the answer. Then she did. That was why she had let herself be swept into marriage when she’d had such doubts about Robert. She had opted for security, knowing her grandfather was old and needed help on the small farm.

The Apache interrupted her thoughts. “It’s late. You want to see what you can do with this shoulder?”

Of course she couldn’t say no, or that she hoped the wound got infected and killed him. But she could try to get her hands on those scissors, even though she wasn’t sure she would have the nerve to stab him. The way he glared at her unnerved her. “Take your shirt off, and I’ll see what I can do.”

As the big savage obeyed, she marveled again at the size and strength of him, the way his muscles rippled under his brown skin as he took off the shirt and handed her the cloth he had taken from the trunk. She would have to touch him to change the bandage. Well, that couldn’t be helped. Sierra unwrapped the old strips of cloth and frowned. “If you were any other man, you’d probably already have a bad infection.”

“I’ve survived worse.”

“No doubt you have.” He reminds me of a stallion, she thought as she got up, dug around in the box of supplies, found the whiskey. “The wound looks a little better than it did yesterday.”

He flinched when she poured alcohol over it, but he made no sound. Robert had been such a whiner over any little thing, from a blister to a splinter in his finger. For the life of her, she couldn’t imagine her husband doing all those brave things and dying a hero. If Cholla had been a scout, they might have known each other, but she was afraid to ask.

Gently, Sierra wiped the wound and then rebandaged it. His skin was warm under her fingers. “I’m sorry I had to hurt you,” she said softly, and was surprised to find she almost meant it.

“If you’re trying to soften me up, thinking I’ll let you go–”

“I only expect you to do what you said you would,” Sierra snapped.

“I expected the same from whites. You see what I got.”

“Does that mean you aren’t going to let me go?”

“Stop badgering me,” he answered and looked away. Something seemed to be smoldering in him–an anger.

His toying with her was more than her frayed nerves could stand. She couldn’t hold back the tears. “What is it you want from me? I’ve done everything you’ve demanded, yet you still hold me prisoner. I must be more trouble to drag along than I’m worth to you! Why do you do it?”

“That’s what I keep asking myself. It would be easier to just kill you and be done with it, but . . .” Suddenly his strong arms came up, pulled her hard against him; and his mouth claimed hers, roughly, possessively.

Frightened, Sierra pulled away. She had never been kissed like that. It called out to something wild and untamed in her own nature, unnerved her. Maybe she was really like her passionate, reckless mother after all, the way this stranger’s kiss affected her, aroused something inside her she had never known was there. They stared into each other’s eyes, only inches apart.

“You’re my prisoner, my captive,” he whispered urgently, “I can do anything I want with you and there’s no one to stop me.”

She looked at him. “You’re bigger than I am; we both know you can force me anytime you decide to.”

For a long moment, the only sound was a cricket in the grass and the crackle of the small fire. She looked at the tortured dark face and saw her abductor almost as a human being, not some dangerous animal who deserved life in a cage. Then she thought of Robert again and hated the Apache for the cruel turn her life had taken.

“It’s late,” she said softly. “Why don’t we get some sleep?” She felt exhausted and confused, remembering the taste of his mouth, the heat of his body against hers. And she was shocked and annoyed that this primitive male had managed to arouse her in a way her own husband had not.

“You’re right.” But he didn’t move. He kept glaring at her. Then he shrugged, got up to go to the wagon, came back with ropes.

“Oh, no,” Sierra jumped up and began to back away. “Please don’t!”

“Sorry, I don’t want to do this. But I can’t take a chance on you slipping away in the night.” He caught her, twisted her hands behind her back. As he reached around her to tie her hands, his hard, naked chest brushed against her breasts, arousing confused feelings all over again.

She looked into his dark eyes as he stood there staring down at her, his face only inches from hers. For a moment, she thought he would kiss her. Her body was pressed against his all the way down their legs, and she felt his manhood gradually go hard against her belly.