Mustang Annie (11 page)

Chapter 13

C
orrigan didn't return to camp for several hours, and when he did, Annie almost wished he'd stayed away. His mellow disposition might fool the rest of his men, but it didn't fool her. Beneath the calm a storm still raged, compelling her to keep her peace and her distance. Corrigan might not rattle Henry and Emilio, but he rattled her. He seemed to bring out emotions in her that she'd forgotten even existed: an almost reckless defiance, a compulsion to prove herself indestructible, a need to belong . . .

That realization shook her the most, for she'd been on her own for a long time now, by her own choice.

They headed out after a meal of roasted rabbit and spent the rest of the day following one of the many narrow trails carved into the canyon walls. Since Henry had spent as much—if not more—time as she in the canyon of the hard wood, he'd been elected to lead their party down the slanting path. Dogie followed, then Emilio, with Annie and Brett bringing up the rear. She much preferred that Emilio follow her, for then she wouldn't have to endure the searing gaze burning holes into the back of her head.

Annie grit her teeth and squirmed in the saddle and hoped they found the horses soon. She didn't know how much longer she could tolerate living in this state of raw nerves.

A sudden shift of gravel and slide of hooves yanked her attention back to the trail. “Easy, girl,” she soothed, bringing Chance onto firmer footing.

A few minutes later, she noticed a hitch in the mare's gait. Annie pulled her to a stop and swung out of the saddle, heeding the drop-off to her left.

“Damn it,” Annie cursed under her breath at the stone lodged in Chance's hoof. After flicking away the nugget with the blade of her pocketknife, Annie released the hoof, brushed her hands off and scanned their surroundings grimly. Heat shimmered off the glittering sandstone sheets imbedded between layers of clay and limestone. The men had probably reached the bottom of the trail by now, and with them, Dogie with the extra horses. Heck of a place to wind up on foot. Her only other option—

“Care for a ride?”

—didn't bear consideration. “No, thanks.” She wound the reins around her wrist and tugged. Chance balked for a second before obediently following Annie along the narrow path, favoring her tender front leg.

“Don't be stubborn, Annie. Fortune is perfectly capable of carrying two.”

“In this heat, he doesn't need the extra weight.”

“Fine. If you walk, I walk.”

She watched him dismount and gather the gray's reins in one gloved hand. “Don't humor me, Corrigan.”

“Humor you? If I ride and you walk, I'm being callous. If I ride with you, I'm a lecher. If I walk beside you, I'm humoring you. Hell, I can't win.”

“It took you long enough to figure it out. Now that you have, you might as well just throw your cards on the table.”

Annie regretted the flippant remark as soon as she saw the uncompromising glitter in Corrigan's eyes.

“As you wish.”

Two solid strides brought him around Chance's front. A single swift motion had Annie caught up against him. His mouth swooped down, capturing her surprised gasp.

Annie went stiff in his arms, too stunned to react. Her mind shut down, her nerves strung tight. A voice at the back of her mind chided her for gambling with a gambler.

Then, sensations awakened. His lips warm as wine on hers; his arms solid and secure around her back; his scent, hot and potent in her nostrils.

Giddy pleasure made her head swim and her limbs turn to liquid. She felt herself weaken. She parted her lips, and her knees folded when his tongue swept across hers. Her arms slid up his sides to clutch the muscles of his back. He groaned against her mouth.

The kiss was demanding yet gentle, ravenous yet savoring.

This was what she'd been aching for since she'd begun this journey: his strength, his heat, his passion. She'd been weak and cold and lifeless for so long. . . .

She couldn't hold back a cry of regret when his mouth left hers. Regret turned to bliss when he dropped kisses on her cheek, her chin, on the sensitive flesh beneath her jaw. She arched her neck, giving him clearer access.

Long-denied need rose, overwhelming her with its power. Wanting him closer, she tangled her fingers in his soft hair, lifted his head, and sought his mouth. Hungry lips closed over hers in a torrid kiss that drove away all but an awareness of the man pressing tight against her, chest against breasts, midriff to belly, loins against womb.

Brett drew back and set her on her feet, his breaths rapid and heavy against her cheek. “There. My cards are on the table—now there's no guessing my hand.”

For long moments she could only stare dumbly at him, her lips burning, her body aching. A hawk screeched over the treetops; the rushing waters of the nearby creek lapped against sunbeams playing on its surface; a squirrel spiraled up the trunk of a hickory tree. Though Annie was dimly cognizant of her surroundings, the moment seemed to narrow down to her and Corrigan and a powerful desire that kept her trapped to the spot.

As they stared at one another, the air took a subtle shift, becoming charged with an invisible promise that penetrated clear to the bone.

“I could ride you like you've never been ridden before.”

“You don't know what you're missing.”

“I know what they want and I know how to give it.”

Images tangled themselves in her mind, a confusing swirl of resentment and desire, of strength and weakness, of pain and pleasure. And above it all, a fearful realization.

If he hadn't set her away, she'd have demanded he take her right there in the dirt as if she were a two-bit whore.

She doubled up her fist and let it fly, giving him a full-knuckled whollop to the jaw that would have knocked a lesser man out of his britches.

Brett only winced, and pressed two fingers to the corner of his mouth. “What's the matter, Annie—stakes too high?”

Annie spun on her heel, grabbed Chance's reins, and marched the rest of the way down the trail. She hoped he never realized just how high.

 

The night's campsite was set beneath a flattopped plateau, surrounded by huckleberry trees and grape vines.

Annie was as tightly silent now as she'd been since he'd kissed her and Brett wondered if he'd taken this game too far.

Yes, Annie had a way of provoking him beyond control. Yes, he'd wanted to see her feel something besides that damned indifference. But not that way.

Just thinking about the way he'd behaved caused him shame. Annie was married. No matter how many times he told himself that if her husband wanted her, he'd be with her now, it didn't change the fact that she was off limits.

Long after everyone else had fallen asleep, Brett lay awake, watching the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders. Even the snores of his men couldn't drown out the soft sound of her breathing, and her sweet fragrance rose above those of horse and sweat and earth to taunt him.

“You awake, Annie?”

“No.”

He flinched at the sharp reply. “I don't suppose it would do any good if I told you I was sorry.”

“Not as sorry as you will be if you ever do something like that again.”

“I give you my word. I won't ever touch you unless I'm invited.”

“That'll be a cold day in hell.”

All right, so maybe the kiss hadn't been his usual passionate, provocative effort. When he'd kissed Annie, he'd . . . well, he'd just . . .
felt.
She'd felt something, too—he knew she had.

Hadn't she?

Suddenly, he felt twenty again. Unsure, inexperienced, too damn eager. The question slipped out before he could stop it. “Was it so loathsome, Annie?”

Before he could coax an answer from her, the pounding of hooves and a jubilant cry shattered the night.

“Horses!”

Brett sprang up from the bedroll, his pistol ready, just as Flap Jack charged into camp. He pulled on the reins, bringing his lathered horse to a skidding halt.

Gasping for breath he announced, “Herd spotted . . . six miles south . . . small stream off the Prairie Dog Town Fork.”

The rest of the men scrambled to their feet and crowded around Flap Jack.

“Are my fillies with them?” Brett asked.

He nodded vigorously. “Lookin' a bit ragged and lean, but healthy enough.”

Brett bounded into immediate action, shoving his feet into his boots and buckling on his gun belt. “Flap Jack, change horses. The rest of you boys mount up—we're gonna catch us some fillies.”

 

They spotted the herd just before sundown the next day, right where Flap Jack said they would be. Horses—two hundred or more in every color combination possible—grazed languidly on grasses and wild rye. Duns, sorrels, greys, pintos, paints, bays, buckskins, blacks. . . .

Annie gazed in awe, reminded of the first time the sight had filled her eyes. She'd been ten when her mother died, and Granddaddy began leaving the farm shortly after that for work. She hadn't understood at the time why she couldn't go with him, but he remained firm that she stay at the farm. Annie hadn't ever disobeyed her granddad before, yet, weeks would sometimes pass before he returned, and the days got so lonely. . . .

So she went searching. For what, she couldn't say. A purpose. Maybe adventure. Quite possibly just someone to talk to.

She'd found the mustangs.

She'd also found Sekoda.

Even at her tender age, she'd been drawn to him. Not a boy, not yet a man, he walked among the herd as if he were one of them, his lean, bronzed body created by sun and grace, his long black hair flowing in the wind. She remembered envying his ability to communicate with the animals, more than fearing his heathen lineage.

She returned often to the canyon over the years. The bond of their friendship became stronger with each visit, until her sixteenth summer, when Sekoda stopped looking at her as a friend and playmate, and started looking at her like a woman.

“See that speckled filly grazing on mesquite bark north of the river fork?” Corrigan asked, breaking into the memory.

He lay beside her on his stomach, close enough that Annie could feel the heat from his body. He was much longer and broader than Koda had been, his hair streaked golden brown instead of solid black, his eyes a silvery green instead of sienna. Yet oddly enough, it felt . . . right . . . sharing this view with him. Almost as if the mustangs were forging her destiny once again.

Annie pushed the disturbing thought to the back of her mind and took the scope he handed her. She sighted down the metal tube. “I see her.”

“That's Liberty Loo. The bay with the blaze down her nose is Sophie's Star.”

Sliding the lens to the left, she focused on the second horse. “What did you do, name them after lovers?”

The remark earned her a sharp glance.

“I don't see the stallion,” Dogie said from his spot on the ridge.

“He's probably circling the herd, defending it from marauders.”

Corrigan reclaimed the scope and searched the outer edges of the canyon. A slow grin told her he'd gotten the stallion in his sights. “Ah, there's my thief.”

Annie lifted her hand to the brim of her hat, extending the shade. Sure enough, on the fringes of the herd paced the patriarch, his hide so black it appeared blue in the sunlight.

Collapsing the magnifier, Corrigan started to rise. “Let's get into position so we can get this show over with.”

Annie raised her hand to halt him. “Not here—it's too wide open. Once the horses catch our scent they'll start running, and we'll be eating their dust three miles behind. Best just to follow them for a bit and find someplace to head them off.”

“There's a split gorge a couple miles north,” Henry suggested. “We could drive them there.”

Annie knew the place well. The canyon walls reached several hundred feet in the air, forming a natural blockade on all but one side.

Corrigan made no secret of his disagreement. “I don't want the whole herd, just my fillies and the stallion.”

“And you'll get them,” she said. “But we do it my way. Horses are flight animals. If we charge down there and start swinging our ropes they'll scatter, and it'll take us days to track them down again. Is that what you want?”

He clenched his jaw and peered back down into the canyon. “All right, we do it your way.”

Annie couldn't contain a smug smile at the disgruntled reply. The man could use a bit of humbling, and if she were the one to make it happen, all the better.

After waving the men together, Annie crouched on the ground with a stick in her hand and drew the plans for capture. “The canyon walls are here and here.” She scratched a V in the dirt. “First thing we need to do is build a gate and get it in place. Once we get the herd close to the pen, Emilio and Flap Jack will drive the horses straight into the pen. Dogie and Henry will take position at the open ends and shut the gates as soon as the last horse is in.”

“What will you and I be doing?”

Annie glanced at the man beside her. Corrigan looked at her from beneath the brim of his hat, his face at an angle. The sun cast his face in shadow, leaving nothing visible but firm lips surrounded by a week's growth of whiskers. For a moment, she could only stare at him with her breath lodged in her throat. The words were so simple, the question so innocent. Yet they took her back to a time when there had been a “you and I,” instead of just her. She licked her dry, dusty lips, then swallowed the lump in her windpipe. “We'll be making sure your thief doesn't escape.”

 

The ground shuddered with the force of pounding hooves against earth. Brett's pulses throbbed with the tempo as they propelled the horses toward the fork. Clouds of dust stung their eyes and clogged their throats.