Katherine O’Neal (19 page)

She slumped back against him.

“Giving up so soon? Just when I was beginning
to enjoy myself.”

She felt like a mouse being toyed with by a
cat who knew he was stronger, smarter, and fleeter of foot. How
best to defeat a cat? With his curiosity. Make him wonder. Throw
him off-guard. Make
him
do the work.

She recalled his hot words as he’d slammed
her up against his office wall and taken her from behind. The way
his anger had turned to tenderness against his will. The melding of
their bodies that was like a mating of souls. It was beyond
lovemaking. It was as if they’d heard the same chord of music, the
one no one else could hear. She knew she could use that to her
advantage. His protests notwithstanding, there wasn’t a man alive
who could escape her charms, once she’d set her sights on him. She
just had to take it slowly, one carefully planned step at a time.
She’d seek out his weak spots and play to them.

Slowly, she dropped her head back against his
shoulder in a gesture of resignation.

“Oh, you’re good,” he murmured. “But I feel
it’s only fair to warn you: I’m more clever than I look. Play with
me, and you’ll get burned. Is that clear?”

She nodded.

“Good girl. Now, I’m going to take my hand
away. If you scream, no one will pay the slightest bit of
attention. They’ll think you’re a whore taking it rough. But
I’ll
know. And I’ll be close to you. So close, you’ll think
I’m under your skin.”

When he removed his hand from her mouth, one
cautious fraction at a time, she licked dry lips and made her first
move. “Too late,” she told him in a purposely husky voice. “You got
under my skin a long time ago.”

Still behind her, he brought a large hand to
her face, cupped her cheek, and ran it down the length of her
throat. “Careful, sweetheart,” he warned. “I might believe
you.”

He heaved her up into the saddle and mounted
behind her. Wrapping his arm like a vise across her chest, he
pulled her back into him so closely, she could feel the buttons of
his coat cutting into her back. A shudder of apprehension swept
through her as he took up the reins and kicked the horse through
the back roads of town and off across the prairie.

They rode hard, putting distance between them
and Dodge as the twilight darkened to night. Still they rode, the
thundering of the horse’s hooves the only sound out on the starlit
prairie. She settled back, plotting her next move, watching the
stars, keeping track of their direction so she could make her way
back. There was no hope of rescue. As usual, she could depend on no
one. If she was going to escape, she’d have to do it on her
own.

Still, while she coolly ticked off possible
ploys in her head, she couldn’t help the erratic thump of her heart
against his enslaving arm. She felt strangely alone with him,
riding through the endless prairie, with the stars and the moon as
their only witness. She’d never been in such peril.

If only her heart weren’t so at war with her
head. If only being held in his arms didn’t feel like destiny come
to call. If only it didn’t make her want to forget the danger, her
anger, her tenuous position, and simply enjoy the feel of him one
last time.

This realization shocked her more than
anything that had passed before it. What had happened to her since
meeting Blackwood? Was she so stupid, so despicably
female
,
that she’d ignore everything else, just for the feel of his arms
about her? She didn’t want to love him. Couldn’t afford to.
Certainly didn’t trust him. But her body, fitting so snugly against
his, betrayed the angry thoughts in her head. Her body rejoiced at
the contact.

An hour or so later, in the silence and
emptiness of the desolate plains, they spotted a tree spreading its
branches in silhouette by a trickling silver creek. Saranda thought
it was an oak, but it didn’t matter. One way or another, that tree
spelled trouble. She didn’t know if he intended to hang her, or
just shoot her and leave her to rot beneath its branches. But in a
prairie full of nothing but tall grasses, snakes, and insects, that
tree offered a blatant invitation for their journey to end.

He reined up, as she knew he would.
Dismounting, he pulled her down after him. Grabbing the cuffs and
pulling her along with him, he tied the reins to a low-hanging
branch. He put her back to the tree and said, “Don’t move,” as he
began unbuckling his belt.

She backed against the trunk, feeling the
bark bite into her, snagging her clothes. She could smell the sap
of the tree, feel the gentle breeze as it rustled faintly through
the leaves. His belt buckle flashed in the moonlight as he pulled
it loose. Her mouth went dry. She tried to swallow and
couldn’t.

She was trying to think of something to say
to forestall his intentions, but the horrid realization that she
didn’t really want him to stop numbed her tongue. He looked up and
paused. In that light, her hair was the color of moonbeams, her
eyes wide and blazing like sapphires. He read her thoughts in them
and lifted a corner of his mouth. The moonlight played against his
teeth, gaudily white against the darkness, flashing like his
buckle.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he told her in a
harsh tone. “I just want you indisposed while I make a fire.”

He pulled the belt free, bent low, and
fastened it tightly around her ankles. She didn’t struggle. Without
knowing it, he’d just aided and abetted her plan.

“Sit down,” he commanded. She did so,
settling herself in grass that rose to her shoulders. She looked
around her, wondering what else might be crawling around in the
surrounding jungle.

“You’re safe,” he assured her. “The only
thing you have to worry about is me.”

He walked in a widening circle, bending
occasionally, picking up an assortment of sticks, cow chips, and
dead grasses. Carefully, easing her skirt up an inch at a time to
avoid being spotted, she reached into her petticoat and retracted a
small file. He looked at her, and she stilled. To distract him, she
called, “I don’t suppose you brought a last meal of sorts.”

“I don’t suppose I did.”

He returned to his scavenging, and she
inserted the file into the lock. She only bothered to open one of
the cuffs. She’d have time enough to free the other wrist
later.

As he bent to start the fire, she stretched
her arms down and worked the belt loose by degrees. He struck a
match, but the breeze extinguished it. She removed the belt as he
tried again. By the third match, she was crawling around the horse,
which he’d left conveniently close by. She had to hurry. In a
moment, the fire would catch, and he’d look her way.

She never knew what happened after that. One
moment he was stooped over the fire, the next he was before her,
shoving her back against the trunk of the tree with a force that
knocked the wind from her. He put a hand at her throat to keep her
still, unwrapped the horse’s reins, and shooed him away. The animal
ran a few yards, then stopped to graze. He didn’t watch. He turned
to her, took her hand in his, and wrested the file from her
fingers. Softly, he swore at himself. “I should’ve known.”

His anger gave him an overpowering strength.
Her struggles were like puffs of breath against the mighty oak at
her back. With hardly an effort, he dragged both arms backward
around the tree and fastened the handcuffs at the back. Cold steel
against warm flesh. The tree trunk was wide enough that her arms
were stretched taut, straining in their sockets.

“You’re hurting me,” she told him, but he
didn’t care. He began to pat down her clothes with rough, insistent
hands. Raising her skirts, he discovered the many lockets, baubles,
and tools of her trade, all pinned or tucked away in their
protective pockets so they wouldn’t jingle when she walked. He
yanked at the ties, thrust the petticoat down, and pulled at her
legs so she was forced to step out of it. Impaled against the tree
as she was, she had little choice.

When he’d tossed the petticoats out of reach,
he stepped back and studied her with narrowed eyes. “Now... if I
were a woman,” he mused, “where would I hide my—devices?”

The fire had flared up during this time,
casting an eerie vermilion glow on their features. He looked
devilish in the odd light, the shadows stretching across his face
to add menace to the angular lines. The thick brows seemed to shoot
up his forehead, and his eyes seemed to glow red with lust. His
gaze came to rest on her bosom, invitingly thrust out before her,
riding high beneath the strain of her back-stretched arms.

“You wouldn’t!” she gasped.

“Normally, I’m a man of words,” he replied in
a conversational tone. “But I can always resort to brute force when
pushed.” He gazed at her breasts and clucked an imitation of
regret. “Too bad, Princess. It’s just too tempting to pass up.”

Without the slightest reluctance, he
unfastened the buttons of her short, fitted jacket, then, with both
hands, parted the material as if parting a curtain and revealing
some concealed treasure. Under her jacket, she wore a blouse
especially made for her. With a false buttoned front, it had a
carefully concealed slit underneath so she could get into it in
emergencies. He fingered it, found the slit, and grinned. “Console
yourself with the thought that this pains me as much as it does
you,” he said, lingering over her breasts.

“I hope they burn you.”

“Don’t forget,” he said in an intimate tone,
“they’ve burned me once before.”

Her breasts weren’t large, but they were full
and firm, supported by a specially outfitted corset. He fingered
them appreciatively, then moved lower as she snarled at him.

“If you wanted to touch me, you could say so
honestly, instead of hiding behind this ridiculous charade—”

“Charade?” His hand came out holding two
other files of different sizes. These he tossed aside. Plunging his
hand back between her breasts, he brought it out time and again,
with a fistful of money, some high-ranking cards, and a pair of
ivory dice. These he shook around the palm of his hand, studying
her reflectively. “Shall we wager your virtue on the outcome of
these dice? I’ll take a wild guess. If I can hit sevens—say, three
times in a row—I win the prize, and you lose whatever tender virtue
you might have left. Oh, let’s be generous, Princess. Ten times.
Would you chance it?” She jerked her chin up defiantly. “I thought
not.” The dice went the way of all her other tools.

“What do you want from me?” she cried in
frustration. If he was going to rape her, why didn’t he just get on
with it? Why did he have to toy with her this way? Her breath was
coming fast and hard, her heart constricting in her throat.

He moved so close that his body pressed
against hers. Taking her face in his hands, he tipped it so he
could look down into her eyes. The light shifted, and he lost that
ghoulish quality. The last detached part of her mind noted that he
was darkly handsome, and that her body was responding wretchedly to
his proximity.

“What do I want from you?” he whispered in
that singularly intimate tone. “I want every last secret of yours
out in the open. I want you bared before me like the day you were
born. Nothing to hide, and nothing hidden that might jump out and
sting me in the dead of night.”

As he spoke, his other hand had been creeping
down her thigh. He took the material of her skirt in his fingers.
To her horror, she felt cool air on her legs as her skirt bunched
up, inch by agonizing inch, into his hand. With a start, she
realized what he was doing.

“No, please,” she gasped. “There’s nothing
there. I’ll swear to you on my father’s grave. You can trust
me.”

“
Trust
you? Surely, you’ve heard the
saying ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’ ”
He gathered the skirt about her hips, used his leg to pin it there,
then moved his hand around the outside of her underclothing, roving
like a bloodhound on the hunt. “I’m nobody’s fool, Princess. Not
the second time.” Discovering nothing from the outside, he found
the waist of her drawers and shoved his hand inside.

He grazed her backside, gliding across the
taut skin, then rounded her thigh and found the crisp, curling hair
in front. More gently now, his firm fingers probed, then parted the
folds and slipped easily inside.

His gaze flew to hers, and their eyes
locked—his astonished, hers bright with humiliation. For the moment
his fingers entered her, she grew wet to his touch.

She caught the flash of arousal in his
eyes.

“I shan’t give myself to you voluntarily,”
she warned. “Never again. You’ll have to keep me tied to this
tree.”

“Is that what it takes to excite you? Being
chained to a tree? Has anyone ever tied you up and taken you like a
stallion masters a mare? And made you love it so much, you begged
for more?”

“That’s just what you’ll have to do. But I
vow to you, I shall fight you every step of the way.”

“You do that,” he said, lowering his head.
“But don’t forget I’m a gamester. The battle’s half the fun.”

When she jerked her head away, avoiding his
mouth, he contented himself with nibbling at her neck. She felt her
knees weaken as a jolt of excitement rocked her head back against
the tree. His hand rounded her backside, squeezing her buttocks as
his fingers continued to probe, long since abandoning the notion of
hidden instruments, bent only on the enflaming of her desire.

She felt torn between that desire and a stark
terror that curled from the pit of her stomach and settled in her
heart. The night of the masked ball, when he’d bound her hands with
ropes, her excitement at her helplessness had been predicated on
the knowledge that she was safe. A single scream would bring
someone running to her rescue. It was like a game she could
control, in part, by her knowledge of the presence of others. But
here, in the dark, lonely emptiness of the Kansas plains, she was
completely at his mercy. As much as her body betrayed her—wanting
him beyond bearing even now—her mind was distinctly aware of her
danger at his hands. The exaltation of his touch warred with the
sight of his face, with memories he was loosing from carefully
erected strongholds of her heart. He was a killer. Out here, miles
away from deliverance, there was no telling what he might do.