Carol Finch (6 page)

“My
what?
” Rafe grilled her as he strode forward to tower over her. “What were you going to say?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s not important. What is important is that I need to stay here so I can claim this property. It’s all I want in life. Is that asking so much?”

Rafe squatted down on his haunches and curled his index finger beneath her quivering chin. Steel-gray eyes bored into her and, even in the darkness, she could feel their intensity on her. “Tell me why it’s so important that you have this property?” he demanded. “Why should I grant you special privileges when this Run for free land is supposed to be a fair race for all other settlers?”

Karissa didn’t know why she wanted to take Rafe into her confidence when she had kept her own counsel for years. She supposed the unnerving experiences of the day had simply broken her spirit and left her with the need to lean on someone until she could gather her composure. She had never begged for anything in her life, but suddenly she found herself blurting out her thoughts like a witless ninny.

“As much as I love this property that calls out to me, I want to claim it for my brother and his new wife,” she gushed as she clutched her dirty carpetbag to her chest. “On the way down from Kansas, Clint was thrown from his horse. He suffered a broken leg and concussion. He barely gets around on the crutch I…found…for him and it will be impossible for him to make the Run. His wife is seven months’ pregnant and she is in no condition to take Clint’s place in the race for land. I’ve looked after my younger brother since we
were kids. Now I want him to have a fresh start, the chance to make a new life.”

To her dismay, she realized tears were dribbling down her cheeks. She managed to reroute them, but she couldn’t seem to clamp down on her tongue as she should have. Rafe didn’t care what a difficult life she’d had. She wasn’t his responsibility. He had a blue-blooded fiancée waiting for him back East. He didn’t care that she had somehow gotten attached to him the past few days.

It was ridiculous, but it didn’t stop her from pouring out her heart to him. She felt the insane need to make him understand there was good reason she had turned out the way she had. She didn’t expect him to
like
her, but she wanted him to understand what motivated her.

“I doubt that you can begin to imagine what it’s like to be uprooted and moved from one lawless cow town to the next while your father drowns his woes in whiskey and gambles away every cent he’s accumulated. I doubt you know what it’s like to be a woman who has to dress as a boy and sweep up in smoke-filled saloons, while calico queens and drunkards paw each other and fling lewd remarks, just so you can acquire enough money to feed yourself and your little brother.”

“Where is your father now?” he asked gently.

“He got caught cheating at poker and the dispute ended badly for him. I couldn’t afford to give him a proper burial.”

“I’m sorry, Rissa.” Rafe tried to pat her consolingly, but she shrugged him off and rambled on before the tears washed away her voice.

“I never had the chance to make friends, only passing acquaintances. Never had a home to call my own or enough money to buy a gown as fine as this one that
you borrowed for me. And now look at it!” To her horror, Karissa wailed like an abandoned baby when she realized the gown had suffered irreparable damage. “And how am I going to earn the money to replace this gown? What little money I made from washing, scrubbing and mending will barely cover food and supplies for my brother and his wife!”

Shamelessly Karissa fell into Rafe’s arms, knowing perfectly well she didn’t belong there, that she wasn’t particularly wanted there, but needing to be held and comforted.

Of course, she would never be able to look this man in the eye after she had reduced herself to blubbering tears, but she had to get through the night—somehow—if she was going to marshal her spirits to face another trying day.

“I—I’m s-sorry,” she whimpered, humiliated. “I— I—”

To her further mortification she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him squarely on the mouth. It was a reckless mistake, a complete lapse of good judgment. She had no idea why she thought she needed to kiss Rafe Hunter so desperately. He didn’t belong to her, would never belong to her and she was only reaffirming his belief that she was nothing more than a trollop.

But suddenly Karissa forgot all the reasons she
shouldn’t
be kissing him, because he was kissing her back and the world tilted on its axis and time ceased to exist.

It didn’t take long to realize that Rafe Hunter kissed as well as he handled a rifle and sat on a horse. He stole the breath right out of her lungs and ignited a fire in her blood that all the water in the creek couldn’t extinguish. Karissa had never felt so wild, reckless and needy, never
knew desire could leave a woman’s head spinning so furiously that she couldn’t tell which way was up—and couldn’t care less.

Brawny arms crushed her to him and held her fast. His mouth was like liquid fire on hers and she could feel his heart hammering in frantic rhythm with hers. Every unruly emotion that had hounded her throughout the evening fueled this newly discovered sensation of desire and compelled her to kiss him as if there was no tomorrow.

Karissa lost herself in the unprecedented pleasure, lost herself in this man who stood squarely between her and her dream of a home that could support her family and grant them a new start in life. Yet, at the moment, Rafe Hunter’s incredible kisses seemed to be the only thing she needed to survive from one instant to the next.

While Karissa’s thoughts spun out of control, Rafe kissed Karissa the way he had never kissed a woman—without the slightest restraint. As fragile as her emotions were at the moment he shouldn’t have kissed her at all. But
not
kissing her was like telling himself not to breathe.

She tasted spicy—so like her temperament. She felt like every man’s forbidden dream in his arms. She held him as tightly to her as he held her to him—like two drowning castaways floundering on a storm-tossed sea. And even knowing he was breaking his impeccable code of honor he still couldn’t stop himself from caressing the shapely curve of her hips and the swell of her breasts.

Rafe had never felt so reckless, and he was a man who prided himself on logic and self-restraint. More than anything he wanted to peel off that tattered dress and press his lips and fingertips to every luscious inch
of Karissa’s body. He ached to let this obsessive desire run its fiery course and finally allow him to reclaim his sanity.

Yet, a quiet voice whispered they were alone in the middle of nowhere and no one would know if he took his pleasure in Karissa while she overcame her tormenting experiences by losing herself in his eager arms.

No one would know.
But
Rafe
would know and Karissa would most likely expect him to grant her request to remain on her claim if he took what she had offered to him that first night at the fort.

Just a few more heart-stopping kisses and tantalizing caresses, he bargained with himself. Then he would step back into his role of responsibility and respectability and clear his befuddled head.

“My God,” she wheezed when she came up for a breath of air. “I never knew passion could feel like this.”

Those enormous green eyes, so full of hungry wonder, dropped to his lips, and Rafe realized he hadn’t had enough of her yet. She was the worst kind of temptress a man could encounter. She was complex and complicated. She was spirit, strength, temptation and vulnerability rolled into one enticing package.

There was an innocence about her, even when she’d confided that life had dealt her a difficult hand. But she had defied her fate and fought back with every ounce of energy she could muster, just as she had battled the three men who’d tried to reduce her to an object of sexual gratification.

Rafe knew he’d never held more woman in his arms. That knowledge was an aphrodisiac that left him plundering her mouth and filling his hands with her shapely
body. He simply could not get enough of her fast enough to satisfy himself.

He was sorry to say that it wasn’t his own good sense that finally prompted him to remove his wandering hands from her generous curves; it was the sudden hoot of an owl. Guilt and frustration hit him like a fist to the jaw. Damnation, for a man who prided himself on honor, duty and commitment, he was no better than the three men who had pounced on Karissa.

He opened his mouth to apologize, wondering if the astounded look on Karissa’s face mirrored his expression. Probably. It seemed neither of them wanted to acknowledge the powerful attraction that exploded between them like blasting powder.

In the aftermath of their reckless surrender to desire, her gaze dropped like a rock and she clutched her discarded carpetbag to her chest as if it were her only salvation.

“I think you should go now,” she chirped in a voice he could scarcely associate with her. It sounded small, lacking the defiance and confidence he’d come to expect.

Rafe reached over to pull her upright as he surged to his feet. “You’re coming back to the fort with me.” His strangled voice testified to the devastating effect she’d had on him. “I admire your determination to help your brother build a home for his new family, but you are still trespassing and it is still my duty to keep this area free of squatters. Next week you will have the same opportunity as everyone else to claim your land in the Run.”

“On a plodding old horse that already has one foot in the grave, thanks to the accident that left my brother with a broken leg? I sincerely doubt it,” Karissa mut
tered as she jerked her arm from his grasp and thrust back her shoulders.

She’d spilled her guts to this man, practically threw herself at him to compensate for the churning emotion that was dragging her down after the miserable day she’d had. He’d kissed her, as if the world was coming to an end, touched her in ways she had never allowed another man to touch her. And all he had to say was that she was still his prisoner?

Although she understood that he was a man of honor who took his duty seriously it hurt no less that he couldn’t find it in his rock-solid heart to view her plight as an exception to his confounded rules.

Karissa drew herself up to dignified stature—at least as dignified as she could muster after she’d made a complete fool of herself in Rafe’s arms. “I’m really beginning to hate you, General,” she scowled at him. “I swear, if the day ever comes that you have to break one of your precious, honorable and noble rules it will probably be the death of you.”

She gave an unladylike snort as she pulled herself up into his saddle. For a moment she considered digging her heels into the gelding’s flanks and leaving Rafe afoot. It would take him at least a day to track her down. But he would track her down eventually because he knew exactly where to find her. Furthermore, he would make it his mission and he was relentless when it came to following the rules.

If she pushed him to the limit he would refuse to allow her to make the Run at all. Then her brother wouldn’t have an icicle’s chance in Hades of claiming property for his farm.

There was a hint of a smile in Rafe’s voice when he
swung up behind her. “You had your chance to escape and you didn’t take it. Why?”

She wasn’t about to bolster his confidence by admitting that she considered him a force to be reckoned with. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out myself.” She grabbed the reins and headed for the fort. “Maybe it was your irresistible charm that swayed me,” she added sarcastically.

Behind her—
too
close behind her for her own comfort—she could feel Rafe’s amusement vibrating through every fiber of her body, reminding her of how tightly she had been pressed up against his muscular body moments earlier.

“Compliments from you, Rissa? Now why does that make me suspicious?”

She stiffened her spine to put some distance between them and elevated her chin another notch. “I did not give you permission to use a shortened version of my name, General. It’s
Miss Baxter
to you. And by the way, Harlan Billings informed me that you have a fiancée. If I hadn’t been so upset earlier I would never have allowed you so close. Despite what you probably think, that incident was not a ploy to maneuver you into letting me stay on my claim. I simply wasn’t myself.”

“And now you are?” he asked.

The hint of amusement in his voice annoyed her. “Yes,” she said with a brisk nod. “Cynical of men for good reason and determined to do whatever necessary to help my brother. What happened between us didn’t really happen. I refuse to allow that moment of insanity to cloud my dealings with you. Now that I’m back on solid mental footing, I can view you for what you are—an aggravating obstacle in my path.”

“I see,” he said. “Then I feel compelled to inform
you that if you don’t clean up my quarters, after you maliciously tore it upside down again, that you
will
be sleeping in the stockade with the other prisoners. I granted you a courtesy and you abused my generosity.”

“I’m not the one who wrecked the place,” she shot back.

“Right,” he scoffed. “As if I wasn’t there that first night when you demolished my room for pure sport.”

Karissa twisted in the saddle to confront him face-to-face. “I was not the one who tore your room apart. Furthermore, I did not self-inflict this bruise on my cheek or damage this borrowed dress. That happened
before
I left the fort. It was the reason I left the post in the first place. And if you assign the same guard to me tomorrow, I demand a pistol or dagger to protect myself!”

Rafe’s thick brows jackknifed. “Corporal Billings attacked you in my room?” he asked in disbelief.

Karissa swiveled around and stared straight ahead. “Not according to him, I’m sure. No doubt, he will have concocted his own twisted account of the incident. But since you have made it clear repeatedly that you don’t trust me, I don’t expect you to believe me. In fact, you probably don’t believe that I even have a brother with a broken leg and a sister-in-law with child. Why should you? I’m just a nobody from Kansas who has scratched and clawed to accumulate the bare necessities for staying alive.”