Angel In The Rain (Western Historical Romance) (14 page)

Fear rode in tandem with her, pulling at her, whispering promises of horrors that sped her heart to near bursting. She couldn’t go back. Rane was here somewhere, lost in the hellish abyss of unending night. She had to find him. Save him from the unholy, burning wind and darkness.

A burst of gunfire and the grand horse faltered. She dug in her heels and goaded him onward, riding blindly toward the new peril. Before her arose a swirling white mist. She hauled back on the horse’s mane and his motion ceased. She waited, trembling and breathless. Moonlight sliced through the blackness, parting the mist. On the ground in front of her, caressed by the light, Rane lay as still as death. A ribbon of blood gleamed like liquid rubies down the center of his chest.

A deafening explosion brought Angel straight up on the bed with her heart lurching. She gasped for breath, unable to draw enough air past the tightness pressing in on her chest. Her mind seized the only explanation. A gunshot!

Throwing back the blanket, she scrambled from the bed.

The oil lamp on the table still glowed softly, but Rane no longer sat on the bench. Near the door, his bedroll leaned against the wall, unopened. His boots lay in front of the hearth, telling her he’d left in a hurry.

She couldn’t shake the nightmare. Her heart pounded harder as she envisioned Rane lying somewhere in the darkness with a bullet in his chest—just like her dream. An achy sob wrenched from her throat. She rushed to the door and swung it open. Heedless of any threat, fearing one of Lundy’s men had finally gotten to him, she ran from the adobe.

Outside, her surroundings mimicked her dreadful dream. A thick blanket of darkness shrouded the land. No moon. No stars winking in the sky. The wind had picked up, wrapping her skirt about her legs. Strands of her long hair lifted eerily and whipped at her face with stinging lashes. Panic pounded harder in her breast.

“Rane!”

The strange wind, thick and oppressive, swallowed the sound of her voice.

In the distance, a low vibration set in and grew in strength until it boomed like cannon fire and shook the ground beneath her bare feet. It was only thunder. Just thunder, she assured herself.

She turned in a complete circle and tried to penetrate the blinding darkness. “
Rane!
”

As though his name conjured it, the heavens opened and the rain poured down in wind-driven sheets, drenching her in the space of two heartbeats.

A brilliant flash illuminated the surrounding landscape. Silvered tree trunks flickered like specters before her eyes. Another flash. She instinctively cringed, her terrified shriek lost in the deafening stuttered crackling that tore across the sky.

She saw Rane, dashing between the trees with his head bent against the slashing downpour. For a moment, the cold, blowing rain and even the deadly bolts of lightning ceased to exist. He was alive.

She lifted the sodden hem of her skirt and rushed to meet him. With a muffled cry on her lips, she threw her arms around his neck and clung to him. Cold rain soaked them both, but it couldn’t douse the warmth and vigor emanating from him.

Too soon, he wrapped his hands around her upper arms and pushed her away. His dark hair was plastered to his scalp and rainwater steadily streamed from the tip of his nose. “What are you doing out here?” His shouted words competed with the storm.

“I thought I heard a shot.”

“Lightning struck a tree. I went to check the horses.”

“Are they all right?”

“Yes, but we need to get inside.”

Grabbing her hand, he pulled her toward the adobe. The flame in the oil lamp guttered when they burst into the room. Rane closed the door and lowered the bar across it to shut out the storm’s fury.

Thick clay walls muted the sounds of thunder and driving rain. If only Angel could as easily shut out the tumult raging in her breast. She stood there, dripping onto the earthen floor. A deep shiver ran through her, but it had nothing to do with the cold, wet clothes on her back.

Rane crossed the room, as barefoot and wet as she. Muttering, he pulled down the toweling she’d used earlier from the strung rope. Without looking at her, he thrust the towel into her hands. “Here. Dry yourself.”

Why didn’t he look at her?

Only ash-covered embers remained in the grate. He gathered several small sticks from the wood basket, then knelt on the hearth and stirred the coals. The dry twigs crackled and burst into flame. He reached for bigger pieces of wood and fed them into the growing blaze.

Angel continued to watch him, unmoving and suddenly unsure. Something had changed between them, at least for her.

Outside, she’d thrown herself into his arms. The sight of him stepping from the darkness, alive, had filled her with such wild joy she’d simply reacted.

Never had she wanted a man to touch her, but Rane’s touch had become like water and air. An elemental need, vital and necessary.

Dear God! I’m afraid I’ll lose him.

How can you lose something you’ve never possessed, challenged her voice of reason.

For fleeting snatches of time during those hours and nights when she’d held him as helpless as a babe against her breast, he’d seemed like hers alone.

Now, those innocent interludes weren’t enough. She wanted and needed more. She needed him with a desperation she’d never known. She wanted his heat and passion. And damn the consequences.

Rane stood and pried open the buttons closing his shirt. Turning his back to her, he peeled the clinging wet garment from his body and hung it on a nail at the end of the mantle.

His movement sent firelight playing over his damp bronze skin. She saw the bullet scar high on his left side in passing now—expected it. Warmth seeped through Angel’s blood. She stepped behind him and lifted the towel in her hands to his back, unable to stop herself any more than she could calm the storm raging outside the door.

At her touch, his muscles flinched and rippled. He stiffened as though she’d scorched him.

“What are you doing, Angel?”

The question probed deeper, implied more than why she stroked his back with the cloth. She had no answer, at least not one she wanted to admit. She asked him a question instead.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” His long hair had separated into sodden ropes lying against the nape of his neck and leaked in steady streams down his back. She moved the towel up, gathered his hair into it and squeezed.

He chuckled, low and dubious. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you’re trying to seduce me.”

White-hot, clammy heat crawled over her skin. She closed her eyes. What if he laughed at her? Rebuffed her? No, surely he wouldn’t. She remembered the hunger in his kiss that day on the ridge. He’d wanted her then. Of that, she felt certain.

She said nothing, afraid, yet hopeful, that her very silence answered him in spades.

Rane waited, expecting her to tell him he was dreaming, or to go to hell. Instead, she said nothing. Faint, desperate hope sped his heart.

The breath he’d been holding ran out. He turned, slow and careful. He didn’t want to make any sudden movements that might spook her and send her away from him.

Now that he faced her, she continued to dab at his chest with the towel, even though his bared skin had grown quite dry and warm from exposure to the fire.

She, on the other hand, looked like a drowned kitten. The camisole clung to every contour of her upper body—molded to her breasts—and moisture had rendered it all but transparent. He’d avoided looking at her. Why look when he couldn’t touch? The need to touch her was so strong he could no longer deny it.

“Your turn.” He pulled the towel from her hands and draped it around her hair, squeezing the long tresses with the cloth to soak up the wetness, as she’d done for him. She stood before him with her head slightly bowed—and he knew her to be anything but humble—and allowed him to dry her.

He waited, drawing out the towel strokes, conscious of the sound of each breath, while his thoughts tumbled. If he stopped, would she turn and walk away? If he tossed off the cloth and used his hands instead, would she slap his face, or surrender to his touch? Her submissive silence gave no clue.

Though the smell of wood smoke pervaded the room, he caught the essence of wildflowers drifting from her hair. He wanted to bury his nose in the silver-blond mass and breathe her in to his heart’s content.

Still, she wouldn’t look at him. Evidently, she’d found a fascinating spot on his neck, since that’s where her attention seemed focused. Or, perhaps, modesty had gotten the better of her. Impatience gnawed at him. He gave her hair a final brisk swipe, then tossed the towel onto the table behind her.

“Look at me, Angel.”

For a moment, the snap of burning wood was the only sound in the room. Then she pulled in a breath, expanding her chest until her wet camisa was as strained as his self-possession. She tipped up her chin and looked at him.

The misty softness in her eyes sent a ticklish thrill rippling through the pit of his stomach. Longing. An invitation. He knew that look. He’d seen it many times in the eyes of other women, but he never dared to dream he’d see it in hers.

Was this the same woman who just three days ago had held a gun to his gut and threatened to shoot him? Her lips parted, her breath coming a little too hard.

“Angel?”

“Yes, Rane?”

She arched one brow at him quizzically. That, coupled with the way she practically purred his name, snapped his restraint like a brittle twig beneath the hooves of a stampeding longhorn.

“Come here,” he growled.

Reaching out, he slipped his arm around her waist and hauled her against him. He sucked in his stomach and a sharp breath, recoiling from the shock of her cold, wet clothing touching his skin. But he didn’t let her go. No, he couldn’t let her go. Even if her clothes had caught fire, he would have stood there and burned. He looped his other arm around her and anchored her to him.

She leaned back and braced her hands against his chest, a puzzled frown knitted across her forehead. “What’s the matter?”

“Your clothes are wet. And cold. You should take them off.”

“But, I don’t have anything else to wear.”

He plastered on his best wolf’s grin. “Then we’ll just have to think of some other way to keep you warm.”

Before she could reply, he captured her mouth with his, hot with need, fierce with desire. The rumble of her whimper vibrated through him, as though it had come from his own throat. He swallowed the sound and plunged his tongue inside her mouth, swirling through her soft recesses, coaxing her response. Demanding it.

Slow down, an inner voice warned him.

He tried, but his hands traveled in restless strokes over her back, slipped to the sides of her waist, then returned to the space at the base of her spine to meld her closer. Her breasts pressed hard against his chest and he felt her nipples, already spiked to stiff peaks from the wet camisole. Oh, how he itched to rip the damned clothes from her body.

After a moment, she leaned fully into him, slid her hands over his shoulders and locked them together at the back of his neck. He felt her surrender as she joined her tongue with his in long, languorous strokes.

During their time together, he’d often fantasized about making love to her. About driving her slowly crazy, until she squirmed beneath his touch and begged him to take her. Ha! Another chimera shot to hell. He’d barely started kissing her and, already, the buttons on his breeches were ready to rip.

So much for going slow.

Following his lead and guided by instinct, Angel responded to the ravishment of Rane’s kiss, stroke for maddening stroke. On the surface, he was torrid heat and solidly muscled male. Within the depths of his mouth however, she drowned in soft liquid velvet. Molten honey seeped, pooled, tingled in all the places that defined her as a woman.

That this was wrong no longer mattered. She shouldn’t want him, shouldn’t allow him to do this. He was her captor, she his prisoner, as much as if she wore shackles around her wrists and ankles. She wanted him regardless, with a desperation that was both frightening and exhilarating beyond anything she’d ever imagined.

His hands skimmed the sides of her waist and met at the center of her stomach. She shifted, allowing him access. Long fingers molded each rib as he moved upward. Yes, she wanted him to touch her there. She ached for him to touch her there.

Instead of moving over her breasts, he reached between them and pulled loose the limp bow closing her camisole. Still holding her in thrall with that drugging kiss, he loosened the gathered neckline and eased it from her shoulders.

She gasped a soft, surprised sound into his mouth when her bare skin met his. She thought she knew the feel of him, smooth, warm, but nothing had prepared her for the sensation when her damp-cool breasts fused with his solid heat.

His mouth left hers and settled near her ear. “Do you want me, Angel?”

She knew what he was asking. “Yes,” she whispered, breathy and without hesitation.

Shifting his hold, he picked her up and started across the room.

The unexpected lift had her clinging even harder around his neck. “Rane! Your shoulder!”