Angel In The Rain (Western Historical Romance) (2 page)

She twisted and kicked out, landing enough blows to back Jed off a couple of steps.

“Enough of this,” he growled. “Get her down and hold her.”

Her heart faltered a beat. “No!” With the desperation of a trapped animal, she flung herself forward. The man’s grasp at her back slipped a bit. She struggled harder.

Moving in close again, Jed gripped her face in his big hand and applied pressure, trying to still her movements. Instinctively, she opened her mouth and bit.

He howled.

Doggedly, she sank her teeth deeper. The taste of blood sent her stomach into revolt. Though her throat worked convulsively, she ignored the rising nausea and held on.

Still bellowing, Jed grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked his bleeding hand from her clamped jaws. With a growl of rage, he grabbed for her throat and curled cruel talons around her windpipe. A knife, blinding with the sun’s reflected brilliance, flashed in front of her eyes.

He leaned in closer and hissed, “I always give back better than I get.”

Evangeline’s ragged breath caught. She closed her eyes, steeling herself for the worst—the bite of the knife into her flesh. At least this way, death might come quickly. And death seemed preferable to what these animals had in mind.

She waited, the silence of her empty surroundings so complete, she heard her own labored heart pounding in her ears. Just when she thought her lungs would burst, a gunshot shattered the stillness and rolled like thunder across the empty land.

The vise-like pressure at her throat vanished. Blessedly, she released her held breath and sank to the ground as her knees gave out.

The taste of Jed’s blood roiled her stomach. Fighting the urge to vomit, she spat on the sand. She scrubbed a sleeve across her lips and left a rusty smear on the fawn-colored wool.

Evangeline had no illusions about her chances of rescue. They were deep in the badlands—the middle of nowhere. Whoever had fired that shot was probably just a late arrival. Scavengers such as these tended to travel in packs. Once he joined them, she feared all three would pick up where the first two had left off.

Fighting faintness, she lifted her head and drew in deep, fortifying breaths. For the moment, it looked as though her tormentors had forgotten her. Both of them stood, as still as statues, squinting toward the southwest.

Following their direction, Evangeline shaded her eyes against the sun’s glare. In the distance, the silhouette of a lone horseman rode the wavering heat trails. Rimmed in fire from the sun at his back, he might well have ascended from the pits of hell.

The apprehensive looks on the faces of Jed and his weasel partner told her the newcomer was unexpected. A tide of desperate hope surged through her.

The mysterious horseman rode nearer. With each step of his galloping black horse, Evangeline’s heart constricted more.

It was the dark stranger from the relay.

He reined up a short distance away. Everything grew so quiet, she heard saddle leather creak when he shifted. Around his hips, he wore a Peacemaker in a worn holster, secured to his right thigh with slender leather strings.

Above all, his eyes claimed her attention. They were as opaque as twin chunks of coal. Empty, soulless. She’d never seen such dull, lifeless eyes that weren’t set above the deadly fangs of a rattler.

Her dread mounted.

He seemed completely unaffected by the scene he’d stumbled across. Only a knot riding the ridge of his jawline betrayed any emotion.

Slowly, he shook his head. “This is a sorry sight.”

His voice—low, dulcet, and somehow too calm—sent a tingle slithering down Evangeline’s spine. Who was this man?

Still favoring the hand she’d bitten, Jed’s fleshy lips curved in an insolent sneer. “What the hell do you want, Rainman?”

Rainman? It sounded like the moniker of some traveling preacher claiming mystical power over the weather.

“I’ve come for the woman,” the stranger replied with the same unnerving calm. “She’s mine now, so walk away from her.”

“Like hell!” Jed spat. “We found her first. What makes you think you can just waltz in—”

She never saw him move, yet the sun flashed from the nickel-plated barrel of the Colt as it materialized in the stranger’s hand.

Jed’s mouth clapped shut around the words he’d intended to speak.

The stranger thumbed back the hammer; the ominous clicks of a well-oiled cylinder cut through the silence. He arched one dark, insolent brow. “Now that I have your attention, I advise you to walk away—while you still can.”

Jed huffed a noisy breath, then dropped his chin to his chest, as if conceding defeat. Evangeline saw that he still held the wicked Arkansas toothpick in his hand.

The thought had barely registered when the flashing blade rose in a blur of speed. In the same instant, the stranger’s gun exploded.

It happened so fast, she barely had time to flinch.

Jed looked down at the crimson ribbon threading the front of his shirt. His eyes rolled upward in their sockets, and he gave one convulsive twitch. Like a tower of cards, his body buckled and he dropped face-first on the ground.

Still with the smoking gun in his hand, the stranger pinned Jed’s gaunt companion with a lethal glare. “What about you?”

His Adam’s apple lurching, the weasel lifted his hands from his sides in a gesture of surrender and turned toward his horse. As he vaulted into the saddle and kicked the animal into action, he grabbed the reins of Jed’s riderless mount. The horses raced over the vacant landscape with a small sandstorm rolling behind them.

The stranger no longer even watched.

The hammer clicked as he released it and slipped his gun back into the holster. Fresh panic jolted through her when she realized his attention now centered on her.

His dead eyes appeared to snap, like a flash of heat lightning, until they fairly blazed. Her faint hope of salvation withered completely under that searing gaze.

Moving the reins over the horse’s head, he dismounted with fluid grace and started toward her with the slow, lithe gait of a stalking predator.

Evangeline’s erratic pulse leaped. The man exuded danger on every level.

She sprang to her feet. With each step he took, she retreated, keeping a safe distance between them.

She’s mine,
he’d said... but not if she could help it.

Slowly, Rane approached the woman. After the ordeal she’d just endured, he feared she’d collapse. The last thing he needed was a hysterical female on his hands.

Earlier, at the relay station, he’d thought her a striking beauty. He hadn’t expected a vision to step from the stage. If that old driver hadn’t called to her, he might have let her get right by him, uncertain of her identity.

Now, as the wind wildly stirred her pale hair about her face, the wary lowering of her lashes too closely resembled seduction. The mounds of ample, creamy breasts swelled at the top of her corset with each heaving breath.

Maldito!
She was the devil’s own temptation.

When she backed away, her eyes held the frantic look of a cornered animal. He wasn’t surprised when she whirled and bolted.

In five running steps, he reached out and snagged the flapping tail of her jacket. Without slowing, the little minx allowed him to pull it right off her back. He flung the thin scrap of wool to the ground and continued chasing her.

He could hear her breathing, harsh and labored, and his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. He aimed for her skirt, ballooning behind her. It was almost in his grasp when she fell.

He was so close, her sudden plunge sent him tripping down after her. He locked his arms to break his fall, saving her from the full crush of his weight. The jolting impact rattled his teeth.

He blinked against the grit and sputtered as the dust settled over them. She lay facedown on the ground beneath him, and she wasn’t moving. Had he knocked her unconscious?

Rane levered himself off her and lay on his side. Still, she didn’t move.

“
Señorita
Clayton? Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

He laid his hand over the point of her shoulder and rolled her to her back...and she came up fighting.

Hissing like a cornered cat, she lashed at him with fists and legs.

After several attempts, he caught her flailing hands and straddled her hips. Leaning forward, he pinned her wrists against the sand.

She wouldn’t give up. With surprising strength, she lunged straight up and tried to buck him off.

The ride she gave him didn’t dislodge him, but it
did
have a disconcerting effect. The repeated thrust of her pelvis and the sight of all that luscious exposed flesh sent jolts of arousal straight to his groin.

“Stop it!” he commanded.

She didn’t. But she was tiring. He saw the strain on her taut features each time she bore his weight upward.

“
Sangre de Cristo!
If you don’t stop that right now...”

Didn’t the fool woman realize what she was doing? The mere sight of her would stimulate any red-blooded man. Not to mention what she was doing with the lower half of her body.

If she wouldn’t listen to reason...

She thrust, and he parried, meeting her halfway. It was almost his undoing, but the contact got her attention. He saw her startled eyes go even wider. And then she went still beneath him.

Their gazes locked—midnight and blue sky—while awareness crackled between them like static before an August storm.

Her full lips parted, her breath coming even harder now.

His own breath had grown ragged and harsh, but not from the exertion.

A tense moment passed.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Prove it,” she said. “Get off me.”

Chapter Two

The feel of the stranger’s body didn’t repulse Evangeline. She’d seen him kill Jed without twitching a hair. Contact with him should have left her cold—cold as the death he so easily dealt. But she wasn’t repulsed. Far from it. Heat invaded her. He radiated warmth, vitality, and all the places where he touched her tingled with awareness.

He hovered so close his breath fanned her flaming cheeks. His smell enveloped her, leather, dust, sunshine, and a hint of some musky spice. All potently male.

Banked fire from his heavy-lidded, dark eyes bore into her. His thighs pressed each side of her hips. The heat of his body penetrated even her skirts and undergarments.

She drew in a shaky breath and slowly relaxed her fisted fingers, trapped beneath his grip against the sand. Would he go back on his word?

No. He released her and rose so abruptly she flinched. She sat up and stared at him in mute surprise.

The stranger walked toward his horse. For a heart-stopping instant she wondered if he intended to leave her there.

No such luck.

Reaching the horse’s side, he pulled a canteen strap from the horn of his saddle. Without sparing her a glance, he uncapped the top and put it to his lips.

Evangeline swallowed hard, suddenly reminded of the cottony dryness clogging her throat. A curious mixture of hatred and longing seeped from her every pore while she watched him drink his fill.

After a moment, he lowered the canteen and swiped the back of his hand beneath his chin. Under a black Stetson, hair as dusky as a moonless night lay over the collar of his shirt. The stark, cruel beauty of his face hinted of something almost exotic—high, chiseled cheekbones and rich sun-bronzed skin. His stance and the proud tilt of his head were those of a man who stepped aside for no one. She had seen his kind before. The dark, predatory looks. A loner. Obviously of mixed blood. No doubt, he would be regarded as something of a pariah among Texas Anglos.

Could he be reasoned with? Or was she dealing with a man who had nothing to lose?

When he started toward her, she stayed put, though her pounding heart belied her outward calm. He hunkered down before her, so close she again picked up his strangely enticing scent. He offered the canteen.

Without hesitation, she took it. A musty smell drifted from the open cap, but the wetness coating her lips and sliding down her parched throat was a taste of Heaven itself.

After a long drink, she sucked in a gasp and lowered the canteen.

He stared at her with a frown knitting the tanned skin between his inky brows. She licked her lips. An open cut stung when her tongue came into contact.

When he reached to examine her injury, she jerked her head aside, avoiding his touch.

For the space of several heartbeats, his hand hovered there, not quite touching her. Then, slowly, he withdrew it.

“From the way you were fighting me a moment ago, I gather you’re not hurt too badly.”

Holding his gaze steady, she spat on the sand with all the venom she possessed. There! That should show him exactly what she thought of him and his concern.

His eyes narrowed, reminding her of the compelling darkness she’d sensed in him from the first. “Don’t drink too much.” Reproach rang through the mildly spoken words. He pushed to his feet and started to walk away again.