Comanche Woman (57 page)

Sloan flinched when he raised his hand, afraid he would strike her. But she stood her ground, waiting. She was Rip Stewart’s daughter. It would not be the first time she had been struck in anger. She was no coward; she would not run from him.

His fist unfurled like a tight bud that finally flowers, and his callused fingertips smoothed over her freckled cheekbone in a caress as surprisingly soft as a cactus blossom. “Do you hate me so much, Cebellina?”

“I don’t hate you at all.”

“Then why do you resist me?”

“I can never love you, Cruz. A true marriage between us would only cause unhappiness for us both.”

“I will be the judge of what will make me happy.”

“Will you also judge what will please me?”

“Only tell me what I can do to please you, and it shall be done. What do you want, Cebellina?”

“I
don’t
want or need a husband.”

His mouth tightened, and a flush rose across his cheekbones. “Nevertheless, when Alejandro hangs, you will fulfill our bargain and become my wife.”

“I’m going home to Three Oaks, Cruz.”

“Go. But know this. When my brother’s murder is avenged at last, I will come for you.”

Don’t miss the thrilling story of the
youngest Creed sister, Cricket, a sharp-shooting
temptress who swears to love no man . . .
until she met the one who stole her heart.

Here’s an excerpt of Cricket’s story,
which is told in the first book of the Sisters
of the Lone Star series.

FRONTIER WOMAN

S
HE BROKE FROM THE TREES AT THE EDGE OF A SMALL OVAL POND
almost hidden by the thick brushy undergrowth. She arrived in time to see Rogue, her favorite of the three wolves she’d raised from pups, cracked upon the head by a large branch swung as a club. The wolves hadn’t cornered the stag Bay had wounded—they’d caught a man. And he was trying to kill her wolves! In an instant Cricket was off her stallion and standing spread-legged at the edge of the pond.

“You clabberheaded idiot! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The cacophony ceased, but a heavy tension lay in the air as though a thunderbolt had struck. The man in the pond stared at her, his eyes wide with disbelief. Then the young wolves abandoned him for the new arrival, their excited yowls drowned out by their splashing swim to Cricket’s side.

The stranger surged through the water after them with the shouted warning, “Watch out for those wolves!”

“Those wolves are my pets, you beanheaded jackass!”

The man froze in midstride, still wary, but clearly perplexed.

“Those vicious beasts are pets?”

“I raised them myself from pups, and they’re not vicious.”

“Then perhaps you should have taught them better manners,” the stranger snapped, eyeing the bloody gashes the wolves’ sharp teeth had torn on his forearms.

“My wolves wouldn’t have attacked unless—”

Cricket shut her mouth and squinted her eyes to avoid the barrage of flying water that assailed her from shaking pelts. By the time the wolves were done, a rainbow of crystal dewflecks spattered her golden skin, the soft deerskin shirt that was belted at her slender waist, and the fringed leggings that hugged her lithe figure and disappeared into knee-high moccasins. Cricket leaned down to soothe the hurts of her beasts.

“Poor Ruffian. Oh, Rogue, look at all this blood!” Cricket knelt to check Rogue’s wound. “It’s not deep, boy. You’ll be all right.” Cricket smoothed the wolf’s wet fur one last time. She swiped the beast’s blood from her hand onto her buckskins as she rose to turn her magnificent fury back upon the object of her wrath.

Hip deep in the middle of the shallow pond, lowered club still held in readiness by powerful hands, stood the most proudly handsome man Cricket had ever seen. Water streamed down his face from his wet curls, dripped off his angled cheekbones and jutting chin, and shimmered like a mountain waterfall down his glistening body. His heart-shaped nostrils flared to bring air to the broad, still-heaving chest.

Cricket felt breathless, felt her pulse racing, but told herself it was concern for her wolves that had her so upset. Of course this rugged-looking stranger had nothing at all to do with her pounding heart. She knew better than to let herself think of any man that way. She clenched her trembling fingers into fists and stuck them on her hips.

The man’s nakedness had kept her eyes riveted to his body. Her stallion’s trumpeting neigh broke the spell and sent her attention to the source of the pinto’s interest. Hidden in a brush corral near the pond, five of Rip’s mares, which had been stolen a week past, circled in anticipation of the stallion’s command.

Cricket’s gray eyes narrowed as she brought them back to bear on the stranger. She searched the edges of the pond for the pile of clothing he’d doffed, and finally found it on the far side of the water. A smug smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. Well, well. Her wolves had certainly caught this horse thief with his pants down.

“Who are you and how’d you get here?” she demanded. She flushed as the stranger’s topaz eyes boldly assessed her tall, well-curved form.

“I might ask you the same thing,” he drawled. “You’re a long way from anywhere, little girl.”

“I’m plenty big enough to take care of you.”

“I’m sure you are. Would you like to join me, or shall I join you?”

The stranger’s brazen invitation caught Cricket by surprise, and her belly tightened in pleasure. As though sensing her reaction, the naked man took a step forward.

“You stay right where you are.”

The stranger smiled, his eyes revealing his amusement at her response to his blatant virility.

Cricket frowned as she realized the stranger represented a greater—and very different—threat than she’d first thought. She’d long ago made it plain to the gentlemen from the cotton plantations surrounding Three Oaks that Creighton Stewart wasn’t about to give them the only thing they wanted from her. This stranger was about to learn the same lesson—the hard way, if necessary.

“I asked you a question, you wet-goose lackwit, and I expect an answer. Who are you and how’d you get here?”

The mysterious man’s eyes focused on the bow in her hand and the quiver of arrows slung across her back, as though trying to decide whether she knew how to use them. Cricket smirked. Let him take another step toward her and he’d find out quick enough. Her smoky eyes flashed at him in contemptuous challenge.

Instead of answering her question he asked one of his own. “Who are
you
?”

“That’s none of your business.” Cricket glanced pointedly at the five horses the stranger had corraled within the bushy barrier. “But I think you’d better tell me where you got those horses.”

“Ah,
mi brava,
my fierce, wild one. You answer my question, and I’ll answer yours.”

Cricket calmly pulled an arrow from her quiver and slotted it in the bowstring. She pulled the bowstring taut, the arrow aimed at the thief’s heart, and asked again, “Where’d you get those horses?”

The intense, golden eyes that were his best feature in a face full of perfect features, scorned her use of the weapon, even as his jeering laugh filled the air.

Cricket pulled the bowstring tauter. The man’s gaze dropped to her hands, and the laugh caught in his throat.

“Be careful with that thing, Brava,” he cautioned. “I’m not ready to be spitted like a beef at Christmas.”

“Tell me what I want to know.”

The man swore under his breath. But he didn’t identify himself.

Cricket held the shaft firm against the gut bowstring. No tremor showed along the muscles of her wrist, even though she’d held the bow thus for almost a minute. She could stand like this long enough to wait out a deer. She could certainly wait out the man standing so irritatingly closemouthed before her.

The horse thief looked from her to the wolves and back again. He stood his ground, club in hand, and stared coldly at her.

Cricket found her patience with the mysterious stranger less great than she’d supposed. “Listen, you hardheaded lug-loaf,” she warned, “those mares over there were stolen from Rip Stewart a week ago. Unless you give me some reasonable explanation how you got hold of my father’s mares, I don’t have much choice except to see you hanged—that is, if I don’t kill you first myself.”

Cricket felt a swell of satisfaction when the man’s whole body tensed warily. At least he’d taken what she said seriously for a change.

“Ah, Brava,” he said at last. “I guess you’ve caught me red-handed.”

Stunned by the man’s admission, Cricket pondered the situation for a moment. What should she do now? It only took a moment to decide she should take him to Rip. After all, they’d lost the stag, and hadn’t Rip admonished her not to come home empty-handed? Cricket grinned as she ordered, “Come out of that water.”

The stranger took a step, then paused and looked down. The water now barely kept him decent.

Cricket bit her lower lip when she realized why he’d stopped. He probably thought she was going to be embarrassed at the sight of a naked man . . . or fall in a swoon at his feet. Well, she’d never seen a naked man before, but she knew it wasn’t going to have any effect on her. Hadn’t Rip made sure she was different from other girls?

“Come out of that water,” she repeated.

The stranger snorted derisively once before he obeyed.

Cricket felt the pleasurable tightening again in her belly, as inch by inch the man revealed his powerful stalking form. She’d never imagined a body could threaten so much strength, yet be so pleasing to gaze upon. She felt a fullness in her nipples that was totally foreign, and wondered what it was about this man that caused her body to feel at once both unbearably tense and undeniably languid.

She fought to turn away, but couldn’t take her eyes off the stranger’s body. Beads of water glistened on the ropes of muscle in his chest and shoulders. Goose bumps erupted on her arms as her gaze followed a long, thin scar that ran diagonally from under his left nipple across the bronzed expanse of muscle-ridged abdomen to the jutting hipbone on the opposite side. She detected another scar that curved along his sinewy flank, leading her eyes to the bold proof of his masculinity. She stared in awe at the sight that greeted her. When he cleared his throat, she raised her eyes to his mocking grin.

“See anything you like?”

Before her shocked anger at his effrontery had a chance to explode, the bloodied stag Bay had wounded crashed across the clearing from its hiding place in the underbrush. Without the necessity for thought, as a reflex almost, Cricket loosed the arrow from her bow, piercing the animal in the heart. The wolves rushed away from Cricket’s side to the edge of the clearing to savage the fallen stag.

In that split second Cricket was weaponless and her protective wolves were gone from her side. She watched appalled as the tall, intimidating man dropped his makeshift club and surged through the shallow water toward her.

“Stop! Don’t come any closer!”

Cricket could’ve killed the naked man with bow and arrow before he reached the edge of the pond. Likewise her horse was trained to attack a man on foot at her command, and she could call her wolves if all else failed. But she didn’t want to take the chance of injuring him before she’d satisfied her curiosity about who he was, where he’d come from, and why he turned her senses upside-down.

Too late, she realized her hesitation had cost her whatever advantage she’d had. She shrieked in pain as the stranger reached her and wrenched the bow from her hand.

“The game’s over, Brava.”

“Damn you,
horse thief
. Let me go.” She gripped his wrist, pivoted, and flipped him over her shoulder so that he lay stretched out before her on the ground with his head at her feet.

“What the hell?”

The stranger shook his head groggily, trying to catch his breath. The bare flesh of his back and buttocks nestled in a bed of fragrant columbine. His eyes appeared confused and a little bleary.

Cricket stood above him with her fists on her hips. She forced her thoughts away from the feel of his hair-roughened skin where she’d touched him. She hadn’t intended to engage in a wrestling match, but her lightning-quick reactions came instinctively, a result of the hard lessons Rip had taught.

“I warned you, mister. You’d better give up while you still can. You can’t escape. How far do you think a flapdoodle chaw-bacon like you can get, naked and unarmed in this land? You’ll starve or be killed by some wild—”