Sweet Savage Heart (33 page)

After a barn dance and a few drinks one night, Beth
had sneaked into his room and had practiced her numerous skills on him; and she hadn’t been a virgin. For a week, he had allowed her to share his bed, but he soon realized he was making a foolish mistake. He quickly became tired of her grasping ways and sorry attitudes, and finally he refused to see her again. He was willing to risk getting fired if keeping the job meant keeping the boss’s daughter happy as well.

For weeks, Beth was furious, then suddenly she mellowed. He discovered that she was using other men to make him jealous. Beth should have known it wouldn’t work, he reflected now, because he had had no feelings for her, not good ones anyway. As he continued to watch her use her wiles, sensual skills, wealth, beauty, and position, he discovered the real Beth, and he lost all respect for her. When she allowed him to find her with a man, his indifference turned to disgust. Despite what Pretty Rabbit had done to him nearly two years earlier, he had not expected Elizabeth Lowry to have such a vengeful and utterly evil streak.

One night an Indian girl who worked in the Lowry home came to him and revealed the details of Beth’s scheme to entrap him. It seemed that Beth had told her father he had seduced her and she had become pregnant, though she had neglected to mention that she had also slept with many other men before and since her week with him. She was demanding that her father force Travis to marry her immediately. The Indian girl told him that Beth’s accusation was a lie; she knew that Beth had twice experienced her monthly flow since he had stopped seeing her. The girl then warned him to flee St. Louis. But, like a fool, he did the same thing he had done once before, after his father’s exposure; he remained to prove his innocence and courage, vowing he would not run like a guilty coward.

Beth’s father would not listen to him and threatened to
hang him if he did not marry his daughter. Enraged, he shouted out the names of countless men who had enjoyed Beth’s charms, especially those who had taken her since him. He then challenged Beth’s father to question those men or to prove his guilt, and he vowed to seek the help of the authorities in his defense. That had been another mistake. Lowry immediately ordered his daughter to pack her belongings and announced he was sending her back East to a school for girls that sounded like a prison.

As for him, Lowry hired two gunslingers to torture him and kill him, not only to prevent the Lowry name from being smeared but because Lowry wanted revenge for having his child’s evil exposed to him so blatantly.

Travis vividly recalled how the ruffians had lured him into a trap with a faked note from the Indian girl who worked for Lowry, a note pleading for Travis’s help. He had gone to her aid and instead had been thoroughly beaten by the two ruffians, who had then left him to die in the wilderness after stealing nearly all of his possessions. As for the Indian girl, her help in warning him about Beth’s scheme had gotten her raped and murdered right before his eyes as he was losing consciousness.

But Nathan Crandall had come along, found him, and adopted him, so to speak. It had taken him months to heal, and when he had gone looking for the Lowrys, he had learned they had been robbed and slain by bandits. He had never found the two bastards who had nearly beaten him to death, but he believed that one day they would cross his path again.

Nathan had been having trouble with rustlers and renegades and had begged him to return to the ranch after his search, so he had returned and stayed to help the man who had saved his life. Time had passed, his ability to feel had slowly increased, and he had never left Nathan Crandall’s side again. From the day Nathan had found him to this one, whenever he had needed a woman, he
had paid for one in town.

Travis’s thoughts turned to Clarissa Caldwell. Just like Beth, that little vixen had pursued him for years. But he had learned his lesson, and he had never done more than tease her with lips and hands when it had suited his purpose to taunt her or to pull information from her. Besides, he did not want to give Harrison Caldwell anything he could use to harm Nathan, or do anything that might be used to force him to leave the ranch and the man who was his best friend. He knew how much like Beth Clarissa was, and he was not about to be ensnared by the same trick twice. Just like Rana had said, he never made the same mistake two times…

Rana… Rana was nothing like those vindictive bitches who had schemed against him and had made him so cynical. He remembered how she had felt in his arms and how she had wanted him as fiercely as he had wanted her. He recalled how Black Hawk had tried to attack her, and he suddenly realized that she might turn to another man eventually if he kept pushing her away. Her expression of moments ago flashed before his mind’s eye and his heart lurched wildly with desire and panic.
By damn, you’re mine, Rana Michaels,
he vowed and rushed off to see what was keeping her so long.

Travis found her resting her forehead against a tree while she cried softly, her body still clad in the drying blanket and her other possessions carelessly lying on the ground. He realized how deeply he was confusing and hurting her with his contradictory words and actions. “Please don’t cry, Rana,” he entreated. “I really got us into a terrible mess, didn’t I? Don’t hate me. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Hate you?” she echoed, lifting her head and gazing into his troubled eyes. She leaned against the tree. “That is not true. So much is happening around me and inside me. Why do you fear me and reject me and race from my
side each time we touch with deep feelings?”

Travis looked at her and replied honestly, “It isn’t you I fear, Rana; it’s my loss of control that scares me. When there’s nobody around like Nate or Lone Wolf, I can’t stay clearheaded or restrained. We’re too attracted to each other to be alone. Lordy, woman, you make me think and feel crazy things. No one has ever tempted me or affected me like you do. Staying around you is like tossing a match on a dry haystack and hoping it won’t catch fire. You make me feel weak and reckless. I tried to return to camp to avoid more temptation, but I was worried about you.” His respiration had altered noticeably and he was staring at her with intense longing, though he was afraid to touch her. He desperately wanted to yank her into his arms and kiss her again and again, yet he was frightened by what such contact would lead to. His hands were shaking and he was beginning to feel tense and damp all over from the strain on his self-control and from his burning desire for her. He warned himself to return to camp immediately, but he could not force his legs to obey his conscience’s precautionary message.

Rana understood his dilemma, for she shared his feelings. They both wanted each other, needed each other, and she felt they should surrender to the battle that was raging within them. She knew how close they were to the yielding point and had already decided which path she wanted to take. Their bodies, and even the air surrounding them, were charged with emotion. Surely this was meant to be, she told herself, refusing to stop her hand from reaching up to caress his taut jawline yet knowing what such physical contact would do to both of them. It seemed as if the Great Spirit had entrapped them together, as if He had created this unique moment just for them to discover each other, as if He had lowered some magical flap for privacy to this lover’s tepee of
nature’s construction. Travis’s pull on her was too great and she could not resist it, did not want to resist it. Her instincts told her that as surely as Mother Earth was fated to change her face with each season, they were fated to change their lives and hearts this season. In a tone just above a silky whisper, she told him, “There is no reason for your fear and control. I yield to you by my choice, for I desire you. It is sad and painful to deny such needs. Is it not better to walk a path of truth and happiness? How can I remain near you if I cannot have you? Your rejections cut my heart too deeply. If your feelings match mine, why must we remain apart and in torment? How can this beautiful and powerful thing between us be evil or wrong?”

Her words, expression, tone, and nearness prevented him from retreating or protesting. He was intoxicated and utterly entranced by her. Travis grasped the hands caressing his cheeks and pressed them to his lips. As his gaze remained fused to hers and he absorbed her presence, his lips and tongue played sensuously in her palms. When she moved closer to him, his arms slipped around her body and his lips seared over her right ear. As they drifted down her throat, she trembled and swayed against him, enslaving his senses. His mouth brushed over her bare shoulder and traveled back to the hollow of her neck and up to her ear to nibble there. When Rana’s arm encircled his waist and she arched her body against his, Travis’s hands slipped into her cascading tresses; they cupped her head and lifted it. His eyes held hers for a heart-stopping instant before his lips captured hers in a fiery kiss that ignited their smoldering passions into a roaring blaze of urgency and reality-consuming force.

One kiss blended into another, leaving them breathless and increasing their cravings. As Travis’s hands wandered over her shoulders and back, the drying blanket glided to the ground. The feel of her succulent flesh
against his greedy hands drove him wild with desire. As his fingers moved over her soft curves to caress her buttocks and upward to rove over her tempting breasts, he shuddered with rising need.

Rana shifted sideways to give him more freedom to explore her aching body. He cradled her in the curve of his right arm as his mouth feasted at hers and his left hand closed over a firm breast. When its peak instantly responded and became taut with desire, his mouth was enticed to drift over her chin and down her throat to capture it, leaving behind a tingling trail of kisses. The bud danced joyfully with his lips and tongue until she urged him to share this new bliss with the other brown peak.

She was astonished by how his actions affected her from head to foot; even her tummy quivered in anticipation and delight and her legs grew weak. Her entire body was alive and aflame, as was his. Passion’s fires burned brighter each moment. His mouth returned to hers and they kissed feverishly. They wanted each other instantly, fiercely, but each instinctively knew their joining should not be rushed, even if control was becoming impossible.

Travis’s left hand moved past her abdomen, enticingly stroking her flesh along the way, and boldly entered the auburn forest between her sleek thighs. As it labored skillfully, eagerly, gently, his mouth worked on hers until she was limp and breathless. “Take me, Travis,” she urged hoarsely, “for I burn for you.”

His mouth seared over hers in a blaze of passion and he held her tightly, possessively, against his body. Suddenly an owl screeched loudly overhead, startling him and alerting him to their dangerous surroundings. “We can’t,
micante,
not here, not now,” he told her painfully. “Nate would be furious and hurt if he discovered my betrayal. I promised him and Lone
Wolf I wouldn’t do this, because of our false marriage. Besides, this place isn’t safe with my senses so dulled and my mind so distracted. I want you like I’ve never wanted any woman, but we shouldn’t have to rush our first union, or fear discovery by Nate or some enemy, or feel as if we’re doing something wrong. There’s a lot to be settled between us before we go any further, and we need a special time and place to come together. Lordy, you do steal my wits and control!”

Rana grasped his head between her hands and forced him to meet her compelling gaze. “We can and we must, Travis. You are mine, and I need you, as you need me. I do not care if we are not joined under the white law. You are not seducing me, or taking advantage of me, or betraying Nathan Crandall. You must not think and feel this way. This matter is between White Eagle and Wild Wind—no one else. Do not leave us burning for each other again.”

Travis listened to her arguments and observed her expressions. She was being truthful with him, and with herself. He knew there would be no turning back this time, for it really didn’t matter that this wasn’t the best place to make love for the first time, or even that they would have to rush and remain alert.

He released her to remove his pants and drop them beside her belongings. Then he bent over and spread the drying blanket at the foot of the tree. “I can’t resist you any longer, Rana. Hunger for you is eating me alive inside. Right or wrong, I must have you tonight.”

They sank to the blanket together and, as they lay down, he warned, “I have never desired anything or anyone as I crave you. Once you are mine, no man will take you from me and I will never release you. The burning of flesh is nothing compared to the burning of a heart. If both do not blaze fiercely for me alone, Wild
Wind, do not yield.”

She clasped his face and drew it close to hers. “If yours do not burn for me alone, White Eagle, do not take me, for, in doing so, you pledge your heart, life, and honor to me.” She paused for a moment to look deeply into his eyes. “But if they do burn as fiercely as mine do, you must claim me tonight, for it is torment to be near you and be denied you. Did we both not know this time would come when our eyes and bodies touched in Lone Wolf’s tepee? We can no longer resist what must be between us.

Their eyes locked as each sought the other’s pledge in the glowing moonlight, then both smiled. Travis lay half atop her and, for awhile, they were content to look into each other’s eyes and caress lightly, lovingly. Both knew time could be short, but they savored each moment. They nibbled on each other’s chins, savored each other’s lips, shared warm respiration, and drowned in pools that reflected love and desire. It was a time to move with tenderness, to explore emotions as well as passions, to allow spirits to mingle as well as fiery bodies. It was a time to tame the fears and doubts that had enveloped and restrained them; it was a time to surrender to the wild winds of sweet ecstasy. It was a time for sweet, savage hearts to fuse and become one for all days.

Travis stroked her mischievous curls and teased fingers over her features as if he had been a blind man studying them. “My heart is beating loud and heavily,
micante.
I’ve never felt this way before, wanting a woman with more than my manhood, and it’s frightening. I knew this union would come to pass the moment my eyes touched on your painted image, for I desired you even then. Yet I can hardly believe you’re real, or you’re here in my life, and in my arms tonight. I was afraid to reach out to you, afraid you could never feel this way about me. And I’m not a man used to experiencing or admitting
fear. I’ve always had bad luck with women, so I’ve never liked or trusted many. You’re so different, and that worries me. I need to know you better so I can understand what I’m thinking and feeling. Giving and sharing come hard for me.”