Steal Me Away (2 page)

Her calico dress and shift stuck to her back, the sun
scorching her skin, when Bull Elk finally shouted to his braves and slowed the
party to a halt.

How long had they ridden? Had she fainted? She couldn’t say.
She was no frail bird and had never had the vapors. But stopping was not what
she wanted. Inhaling the strong odor of sweating horseflesh, she flexed her
shoulders and groaned in agony. Her ribs aching and battered, she tried to
clear her mind. Her head pounded. No wonder. She hung over the chief’s mustang
like a dead woman. She felt like one too. As the roan pranced to a stop,
jostling her, she inhaled sharply. She could not move without pain. Praying she
hadn’t broken any ribs slung upside down over Bull Elk’s leather saddle, she
set her jaw and gathered all her courage for whatever the chieftain had planned
for her.

Could she walk? She wiggled her toes but her legs were full
of pins and needles. She cringed. If she couldn’t walk, she certainly couldn’t
run. Whatever her condition, how far would she get? And where was she? Who
would she run to? Trying to flee these ten mounted braves was foolhardy.
Whatever they intended for her, she must try to communicate with Bull Elk and
persuade him to take her home. Or at the very least, to let her go free.

In one glide, he slid from his saddle as he called to one of
his men. She shivered in terror as he reached under her arms and lifted her by
the shoulders. Her eyes met his and she swore he smiled at her. Her jaw dropped
in surprise. Behind her, another brave eased her legs and feet over the horse’s
back. Too weary to even cry, Fancy gasped at the strength of the chief’s arms
as he caught her up in his embrace. Warm and solid, his body was honed for
pillaging cattle and horses, not protecting the Anglo woman he had stolen. She
would be wise to remember that.

Walking with her up to the top of a hill to the shade of a
few live oaks, he sat down upon a huge flat rock, set her on his lap and
cradled her in his arms. The intimacy astonished her, but she dared not
challenge his right to these tiny endearments lest she turn him against her.
His men followed closely, talking to him as they climbed the hill that
commanded a view of a large flat valley. The chief spoke with his men while he
grasped her jaw, turning her face this way and that as he inspected her. She
was stunned when he tenderly brushed dirt from her cheeks, then took fistfuls
of her long curls and rubbed the strands between his fingers. He spoke in his
own language, threading his fingers through her hair. His men responded to him,
one making a long speech, which Bull Elk listened to with his gaze on her.

She did not understand anything, but was too frightened to
address him in English. Her father and the MacRae brothers had told her that
the Indians had odd customs, and knowing the Anglo or the Tejano language was a
sign of capitulation to the white men’s ways. She concluded Bull Elk did not
wish to show his men that he was capable of speaking her language. So Fancy
would bide her time, waiting for an opportunity to talk privately with him. As
fresh terrors trickled down her spine, Bull Elk soothed her by putting his big
hands around her ribs. As his thumbs also brushed the lower swell of her
breasts, she tried to ignore the frisson of delight his touch aroused. But his
lips curved in a small secretive smile. She marveled at his perception. He
nodded, pushed her hair back over her shoulders, then ran a hand down one of
her arms, squeezing here and there to test if she had broken any bones.

Fancy stared at him, suppressing the trembling that burned
her innards.
Don’t show him fear. Do that and die.

She’d heard stories of one young woman from Boerne who had
been abducted as a child. A decade later, she had escaped and one of her
lessons had been that to scream or cry or plead with the Comanche only
confirmed cowardice. Fancy would rather die than yell or beg for a crumb of
decency. Instead, she bit her lower lip, enduring Bull Elk’s open-handed
inspection of her arms and hands. But when he pushed up her skirt to her knees
and massaged them, she flinched. He clamped her to him, grunting his
disapproval of her shying away. Her nipples hardened like diamonds. Her pussy
wept with desire. Her mind reeled, torn between longing and alarm. He continued
to assess the condition of her limbs while she ground her teeth, silent,
embarrassed and shamelessly aroused.

Murmuring to her, his tone told her he was interested only
in her health. Calling to one of his braves, he motioned for him to give him a
gourd-shaped skin from his belt. Bull Elk lifted the pouch to her lips as he
gazed at her mouth and encouraged her to drink. Whatever was in there, she was
parched and she wasn’t going to be picky about what he offered. Swallowing
eagerly, she choked on the cool water. He stroked her back while his men
sounded grave with concern. She lay weak as a newborn puppy in the circle of
his arms as a few in his party began to point at her and laugh.

She examined the nine braves more closely. All wore
breechcloths, soft leather knee-length boots and braids. Like their chief, they
wore no shirts. And like him, they were muscular, lean and broad chested.
Without the black eye paint of Bull Elk, his men wore the red stripe across
their noses and cheekbones. The decoration aged them beyond their twenty or
thirty years. One strolled forward to pick at her calico skirt and rub the
material between his fingers. Another reached for her hand and turned it palm
up to run his fingertip over her calluses. She shrank from him as he earned a
reprimand from Bull Elk. Another man stepped forward, leered at her and ran a
hand along his loincloth. Beneath it, his cock jutted upward.

At the hideous possibility that he and all the others might
rape her, Fancy curled her fingers into a fist and leaned back into the shelter
of her captor’s body.

Bull Elk grabbed the warrior by his braid, yanked him close
and yelled at him. His vicious rebuke worked, the brave’s sneer fading to
shame. With a snarl, Bull Elk cast him away as if he were poison. He was not
kind to his other companions either. In a few clipped words, he barked at them,
dispersing the band down the hillside. When the last man mounted his mustang,
Bull Elk lifted her chin once more and caressed her cheek and lips with his
thumb. Scared stiff, she endured his caress. All the while, he spoke to her in
a pointed dialogue that she could not mistake. He was her master and her
rescuer.

She nodded. Her master, never. Her rescuer, only for now.

She closed her eyes, the heat of the day and the fright of
her capture combining to make her dizzy. Whatever his next move, Fancy could
not trusthim to keep her safe from harm. Not from his party of braves.
And not from him. For decades here in Texas, the Comanche had attacked ranches
taking cattle and women, then selling them to traders out west. The
comancheros
who bought the prized
crillo
longhorns from the Comanche raiding parties
also bought the women and sold them to bordellos in the Old Spanish
territories. But those Anglo or Tejano women whom the Comanche did not sell or
kill, they kept as wives to replace those whom they had lost to childbirth or
to cholera or smallpox epidemics. But Fancy had heard of no recent plagues
among the tribes. Why would Bull Elk take her from her home?

“
Patuwa kum
,” she said, hoping he would speak a lot
of English with her now that his men stood down the hill out of earshot. For a
few years now he had been the negotiator for his Antelope tribe, praised by
Texas Ranger Wyatt MacRae and his brother Cole for his civility. She put her
hand to his chest and appealed to his heart. “I want to go home.” She pointed
back over the hills from which they had come. “I miss my family.”

He took her hand and placed her fingers to his lips.

Delighted and appalled, she stiffened. What craziness was
this from a savage?

“No,” he said in a guttural voice that reminded her of
thunder over the plains. “I take you.”

“But I belong there.” She swept her arm out toward the
valley below, hoping her tone told him what his instinct must already know.

He looked sad, but shook his head. “Now you are here with
me.”

His English bore an accent but she could easily understand
him. It should not have surprised her. How else could he have communicated with
the men at the powwows? She examined him closely. He had a broad face, high
sharp cheekbones and loose, clean black hair that fell straight to his massive
shoulders. Over his left ear hung one dark braid, adorned with red tail hawk
feathers, a complement to one silver bar earring that pierced his left lobe. He
possessed large eyes the color of rich dark chocolate, made menacing by the
black paint. His nose was long and straight. His mouth wide and his lips
generous yet firm. His skin was a perfect unblemished bronze, tanned by the sun
and weathered by the wind. In height and weight, he was twice her size.
Formidable and ferocious—and damnably appealing.

He tipped his head, questioning her examination of him. If
he were a settler, Anglo or Tejano, she would have pronounced him handsome. Her
stomach quivered. Her breasts swelled. She fought the urge to clamp her thighs
together. This was the same way her body went to mush when she looked at Wyatt
or Cole MacRae. No matter how manly Bull Elk appeared, she could not want him
the way she had yearned for one of the MacRaes to make love to her. Wanting a
savage was
s
candalous. Even admiring his features would be considered
craven. Still, her fingers itched to trace the perfection of his features.
Swallowing back the temptation, she willed her nipples to soften and her loins
to stop throbbing. They wouldn’t. As if he knew her quandary, he pressed her
hand to his heart. There on his smooth glowing skin was the tattoo of an elk
beneath a full moon. Beneath her splayed fingers, his heartbeat quickened.
Beneath her thighs, his cock stiffened.

Could he want her too?
Oh, impossible.
She was not of
his people, but one of the invaders to his land. Still, her pussy gushed with
desire. Her nipples peaked. Her gaze shot to his and held.

Stunned by the lust she saw there, Fancy sucked in a breath.
He kissed her fingertips, a raw compassionate look on his face that said he
wished her to accept him.
But as what?

“
Patuwa kum
!” His friend who had displayed his crude
desire to molest her suddenly stood before them. He spread his legs and folded
his arms. Anger lining his rugged features, he spoke in defiant tones.

Bull Elk sat stoically, hearing the man out. All the while,
he kept his arms firmly around Fancy until the brave finished. Considering him
silently for a long minute, Bull Elk answered him in curt, belligerent words.

His brave argued.

With a sharp rebuke, Bull Elk refused and pointed toward
their mustangs grazing down the hill. Fancy took it as his order to leave them
both and join the others.

The man glared at his chief, then spat on the ground in front
of Bull Elk. Shouting at the chief, he reached out, grabbed Fancy by the wrist
and dragged her to the ground. She struggled, bit his hand, digging her heels
into the dirt and gaining no traction against the Indian’s pull. Ranting, the
brave seized her by the hair. She lost her voice, her mind.
No, no!
He
couldn’t have her. She fought him like a mad woman. But in her next breath, he
sank to his knees. Wide-eyed, he stared at her as his mouth worked mutely in
surprise.

Strong arms hoisted her from the ground. She tried to stand,
yelping in pain. Her right foot gave out from under her, but Bull Elk lifted
her into his embrace. The other eight braves rushed up the stony incline to
witness their friend keel over facedown, a knife buried in his back.

“No, oh no,” she wailed. Now she would die. No Comanche died
for the virtue of an Anglo. They would want her scalp. Her skin. Her life.

Bull Elk placed her down on a broad rock and faced his
raiding party. In stern tones, he ordered them back down the hill. While pain
from her ankle roared up her leg, Fancy watched as the eight did as they were
told. Two men lifted the dead man and trudged toward his horse. There they laid
him facedown over his saddle and lashed him to his mustang. The others mounted
and patiently waited for them.

Whatever his words had been to his men, she thoroughly
understood his last three to her.

He put two fingers beneath her chin and made her look into
his large, mesmerizing eyes as he told her, “You are mine.”

The band rode on into the evening. Bull Elk led them at a
trot, Fancy seated behind him, her arms around his chest, her wrists bound
together with his rope. Every hour or so, they would stop for a few minutes to
water and cool the horses. No one spoke. But Fancy could detect the sorrow for
their dead friend, the brave who rode home, lashed to his horse. At dusk, Bull
Elk called for them to rest beside the bank of a bubbling creek.

Bull Elk dismounted, unwound her ropes, then opened his arms
to Fancy and let her fall into his embrace. He walked a ways away from his men
into the cover of a thicket. There he set her down on a rock covered with moss,
raised her hem and pointed to her swollen leg. Nodding, she knew how bad it was
because it throbbed like the devil. Bull Elk pulled at her boot to no avail.
Taking the knife he had used to stop her attacker, he sliced off the old
leather. She groaned with delight at the release.

He pushed her backward, encouraging her to lie down. With a
hand up, he told her not to move as he disappeared down the hill. She groaned,
so happy to be off the jostling horse. Undulating on the warm surface, she put
both her feet up on the stone.

Bull Elk was back within minutes, tearing huge swathes of
cloth into strips with his bare hands. Dipping them into the rippling waters,
he bathed her swollen foot and then wrapped it firmly in the cloth. The relief
from pain was so wonderful Fancy drifted in a dreamy bliss. When he tried to
lift her, she rebelled.