Comanche Heart (25 page)

“You know, I always wished a lady would teach me to dance.” It wasn’t a lie. The only women Swift had ever danced with hadn’t been ladies. “Do you know how, Amy?”

“I know some, but not nearly enough to teach you.”

“Can you teach me the some you do know?”

She glanced at the hall. “Everyone would stare at us.”

“Not here.” He pushed to his feet. “Come on. It’s fun.”

Looking more than a little hesitant, she took his hand and let him pull her up, away from the tree’s shadows and into the direct moonlight. He swept the shawl from her shoulders and tossed it next to the basket.

With a frown puckering the skin between her fair eyebrows, she peered down at his feet. “I hope I don’t show you backward. Or, worse yet, step in a hole and fall flat.” She moved sideways, gnawing her lip. “Can you even see me?”

“I can see you fine. Can you see me?”

“Not good enough to read your large print if you were a newspaper, let’s put it that way.”

Swift swallowed a chuckle. He’d danced in practically every saloon in Texas, and whatever step Amy was trying to execute, he’d never seen its like. She heaved a sigh.

“I’m not very good to be teaching anyone, I’m afraid.” She dipped in a graceful slide to her left. Swift followed suit, and she giggled. “I think that’s the lady’s part.”

The music stopped. She stood before him, arms out from her sides, waiting. Then the lilting strains of a waltz began. Swift stepped forward and settled a palm on her waist, reaching for her hand. She went rigid at the close way he held her.

“Relax, Amy. Just move with me.”

When he swept her in a circle, she glanced worriedly over her shoulder at the dark ground.

“I can see fine. Put your hand on my shoulder.”

She did, tipping her head back to look at his face. “Swift, you dance beautifully! Where did you learn?”

“You’re like air in my arms,” he whispered, pulling her closer. “Close your eyes, Amy. Let the music take you with it.”

Her lashes fluttered closed, and a rapturous expression crept across her small features. Swift imagined her lying beneath him with a look like that on her face, and he missed a step. Amy, in her inexperience, didn’t note his error. His throat tightened. In so many ways she was still a child. He wanted to keep her there in his arms forever.

The waltz ended, but Swift kept dancing. Amy was all the music he needed. Another waltz began.

“It feels like flying,” she whispered, her eyes still closed. “Oh, Swift, it’s wonderful!”

He wanted to kiss her. So badly that he ached. He wanted to carry her off into the shadows and slide the silk dress down her arms, to feel the warmth of her skin, to hear her say how wonderful
he
made her feel. He wanted to change her nightmares into dreams, to make her yesterdays dim memories, to build her a life full of love and laughter. He wanted to feel her belly swollen with his child, to see that child’s dark head pressed to her breast, to see the love he knew she’d feel shining in her eyes. He wanted that, more than anything. So far, no one had followed him to Oregon. It didn’t look as if anyone would. He had done the impossible and escaped his past. Now he had to help Amy escape hers, so they could build a future together.

But for this little while, the night was Amy’s. To dance, because she never had. To giggle, because she did so seldom. His gift to her, in lieu of all else, because she wasn’t ready for more. And if she was never ready for more, Swift knew he’d take what she could give, even if it was only a smile, because a morsel of Amy was worth a thousand other women giving their all.

He loved her. He had loved the skinny little girl of fifteen years ago, he loved the beautiful woman she was today, and he would love the wrinkled old woman she would become, simply because the essence of Amy went far beyond the physical. Amy, his sunshine. The one perfect joy that had ever touched his life, lost to him for so long. Now that he had found her again, he couldn’t imagine life without her.

Chapter 12

AMY DIDN’T THINK ANYTHING COULD SPOIL the evening. Dancing. Really and truly dancing. It didn’t matter that they swirled beneath an oak tree, alone. She didn’t need onlookers to make it official. A man held her in his arms, and she was wearing a beautiful silk dress, gliding to a waltz. It surpassed her wildest dreams. She wanted to dance and dance and dance, until the moon drifted from sight and dawn streaked the sky.

Looking up at Swift’s dark face, she decided he was the handsomest man in the whole world. To think that he had bought
her
basket. And for the unheard-of price of a hundred dollars. Delicious, that was how she felt. Beautiful. The night was magic, Swift was magic, everything was magic.

It didn’t even matter anymore that he’d come by the hundred dollars stealing. Raised as a Comanche, Swift had grown up learning to be a horse thief. The fact that he’d learned the craft so well shouldn’t have surprised her. His promise that he would never steal again enabled Amy to forget that he had.

When a stitch started in her side, she tried to ignore it. This was the one night of her life, and she wanted to make it count. When Swift slowed his steps and swung her up against his chest, she tried to protest but didn’t have the breath.

“You’re tired.”

“Oh, Swift, must we stop? It feels so glorious.”

“We’ll have other nights, Amy.”

He bent his head. Too late, Amy realized that she had melted against him like a dollop of butter on a hot biscuit. The magic feeling fragmented. For several wonderful minutes she had fallen under his spell, as she had so many years ago, forgetting her yesterdays, that she was a woman in a world where men had absolute power. But a person couldn’t stay in a pretend world.

She drew her face back, frightened by the gleam in his eyes and the firmness of his arm around her, arching her toward him so that his arousal was apparent, even through the layers of denim, silk, and muslin. As blind as she was in the dark, moonlight gilded his face, revealing the hardened set to his features, the grim determination of his mouth, the flare of his nostrils. Amy had seen that look on men’s faces before, but never on Swift’s.

His passions had become aroused while dancing with her. And when that happened to a man, the animal in him took over. She could smell the change in him, see the sheen of sweat filming his face, hear the quick, urgent way he breathed. It struck her suddenly that he stood between her and the community hall.

He drew her arm around his neck and released his hold on her hand to settle his own on her waist. Only, of course, with the need coming over him, he didn’t keep his hand on her waist. As his mouth claimed hers, his palm slid up her ribs, his fingers probing, frustrated by the network of whalebone in Loretta’s corset. He homed in on the only softness, her breasts, which swelled above the stays, cupped to midnipple with the wispy cloth of her chemise and covered with only the silk.

Amy jerked. The heat of his hand scorched her. When she gasped, his hot, silken tongue dove into her mouth, striking a rhythm she knew too well, plundering deep, allowing her no quarter. He found the peak of her breast, his thumb and fingers capturing it through the silk. A shock of sensation zigzagged through her. And in its wake came mindless panic.

She tried to jerk her face from his, to twist from his arms. He was rawhide lean and roped with muscle. He held her as easily as he might have a struggling child. His body hunched around her, hardening to steel, his kiss turning more demanding and determined, as if by forcing her he could convince her to like what he was doing. She tried to say his name, to plead with him to stop, but the words went into his mouth, a jumble of whimpers.

The world became a swirl of moonlight and madness. Swift wasn’t Swift anymore; he was just another hurtful man, taking what he wanted. She was no longer Miss Amy, safe in Wolf’s Landing, under a sprawling oak outside the community hall, with music floating on the air. Animal instinct drove her just as it drove Swift, and she fought for survival.

During that heartbeat of time when Amy metamorphosed from woman to trapped animal, Swift whispered her name, gentled his arm around her, and withdrew his hand from her breast. But Amy didn’t register the change. She wrenched her mouth from his and struck out, blind with panic, her one purpose to get away from him. How she accomplished that, she didn’t notice. Swift’s unexpected attack had set her on a stimulus-and-reaction course.

He released her, and she ran.

“Amy!”

His voice, thick with desire, sounded like a stranger’s, and it spurred Amy forward. She didn’t know where she was going, didn’t care, just as long as it was away.

“Amy, honey, come back. Not into the trees. Amy, don’t!”

Amy’s scope shrank to a tunnellike path. There was only the rasp of her breathing, the slamming of her heart, the ragged little cries tearing up her throat. She barely felt her feet slapping the ground. A branch hit her in the face. She staggered. Brush loomed before her, specters blacker than the blackness, to tear at her clothing, grab at her legs.

And then she heard boots thudding behind her, coming hard and fast. Her skin shriveled. She threw herself forward into a faster pace, frantic, beyond thought.
Oh, God—Oh, God—Oh, God.
There was no safe place, no safe person. Swift was like all the others, racing after her, six feet of unleashed power. She wouldn’t be able to fight him or stop him, until he finished tearing into her, shuddered with his own satisfaction, and fell on her, an immovable anchor of sweaty flesh that pinioned her under the terror.
Not again—not again.

“Amy! Watch out! There’s a log—Honey, watch out!”

Something hit her from behind. Amy screamed as she fell, manacled in a horrifying tangle of rock-hard arms and legs. Swift spun with her in midair, so he hit the ground first and cushioned the impact. But Amy scarcely registered that. She grunted and twisted, trying to escape him, and when that availed her nothing, she pressed a frontal attack, going for his face.

He swore and grabbed her wrists. Whipping his body, he came up off the ground, catching her in the backlash to pin her beneath him. She kicked, but her skirts tangled around her. He angled a muscle-roped thigh across hers and dragged her jerking arms above her head.

Breathing fast, his face a dark shimmer of menace above hers, he cried, “It’s all right, Amy. It’s all right.”

But it wasn’t all right. He had her. Black treetops, silhouetted against the sky, loomed and shifted, sentinels to witness her shame. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He anchored her wrists above her head with one hand, which left his other free. She knew what was coming. A scream welled within her, tearing up her throat to be born as a pitiful mewling.

“Forgive me, Amy. I didn’t mean it. Sweetheart, I didn’t mean it.” His hand, which she expected to tear at her clothing, settled with trembling lightness on her hair. “It’s all right. I swear it, Amy. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The words came from a great distance, the same words, over and over, but the hard, heavy body on top of hers spoke much more clearly. She strained until she was drenched in sweat, until her muscles no longer twitched in response to the messages from her brain, until the fear moved back a little, hovering, waiting to reclaim her. She quivered and jerked, sobbing, unable to utter the pleas for mercy that crowded into her head.

“It’s all right,” Swift said again. “I’m sorry, Amy. I lost my head for a minute. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. I won’t hurt you. I swear it. Not now, not ever.”

He moved his hand from her hair to her neck, his warm fingertips curving over her nape, caressing the wispy, damp curls that lay against her clammy skin.

“D-don’t t-touch me. Don’t . . .”

His hand tightened on her nape. “Honey, I won’t hurt you. I swear it. Relax. There’s my girl. Take a deep breath.”

Amy did and burst into tears. Wild, hysterical tears. Swift swore and rolled off of her, carrying her with him in the circle of his arms until she lay atop him. It seemed to Amy his trembling hands were everywhere, on her hair, her back, her arms, caressing, soothing, forcing the brittle tautness from her.

“I’m so sorry,” he said again and again. “Please don’t cry. I’d rather be horsewhipped than hear you cry. I mean it. I’ll go to Hunter’s barn with you. You can lay me open with the strap. I deserve it. But please don’t cry.”

Lying on top of him as she was, Amy could feel his heart slamming. Her cheek was pressed to his shirt. She shuddered and went limp, soothed by the raw sincerity in his voice and the quivering regret she felt in his lean body.

Time passed, measured in her ear by the erratic thumping of his heart. The wind whispered, bending the trees, rustling boughs and parched leaves. Amy closed her eyes, her throat too raw to speak, the energy to weep drained from her. Insanity had surely struck, for it made no sense to flee a man in terror, then lie upon him, relaxed and motionless, once he caught her. But lie here she did, at peace in a way she couldn’t understand and didn’t have the presence of mind to contemplate.

Her feelings for Swift had never made sense, anyway.

After a very long while he threaded his fingers through her loosened braid, toying with it, running the strands over his knuckles. “I meant tonight to be perfect for you.”

His voice vibrated through his chest and into hers, hoarse with emotion. Amy nuzzled her cheek closer to him, soothed somehow by the smell of clean skin and soap and leather.

“I never meant to go after you like that,” he whispered. “Please believe me. It just came over me, and it happened so quick—you didn’t give me a chance to stop before you ran.”

She squeezed her eyelids closed against another rush of tears, “Oh, Swift, I wish with all my heart men weren’t subject to being overcome, especially you.” She gulped and shivered. “It turned you into someone I don’t know. And it frightens me to think that stranger lurks within you now, ready to pounce on me when I least expect it.”