Each Time We Love (21 page)

Savanna's breath came out in a furious hiss. "Don't delude
yourself! I'd
never
want you!"

"Shall we see about that?" Adam inquired silkily the second
before his knowing mouth came down on hers. There was nothing seductive
about his kiss—he was angry, for a lot of different reasons, and he
didn't give a damn whether she wanted his kiss or not. He was driven to
have the taste of her on his tongue, to feel her in his arms again, and
he was determined to prove to her that she needed his touch just as
desperately as he wanted hers.

He might have succeeded in his quest if Savanna hadn't been
quite so blazingly furious and hadn't been fiercely promising herself
not
to let his practiced lovemaking blind her to reality again. For just a
second, the same wild excitement that his touch always aroused swept
through her and her lips parted helplessly under the hungry pressure of
his, but then she remembered who he was and who she was and she grabbed
handfuls of his dark hair, yanking as hard as she could and viciously
biting his marauding tongue.

There was a muffled curse from Adam and then Savanna found
herself being tossed to the ground. "Jesus Christ!" he burst out, half
enraged, half astonished. "What the hell got into you?"

Ignoring her smarting bottom, Savanna said sweetly, "I
told
you that I didn't want you!"

The blue eyes narrowed and something about the set of that
very masculine jaw sent a thrill of fear through Savanna. Cursing her
unruly tongue, she was on her feet in an instant, running blindly
through the pine woods. So caught up in a primitive need to escape the
retaliation she had glimpsed in those hard blue eyes, she simply ran,
heedless of the direction, of the vines and branches that slapped and
clawed at her, deaf to the sound of the thundering hooves of Adam's
horse galloping close behind her.

It was only when Adam's arm suddenly snaked around her waist
and she was lifted effortlessly from the ground and thrown across the
front of his saddle that sanity returned and she realized how hopeless
had been her instinctive urge to escape. It dawned on her with the
force of a blow that there
was
no escape, that
she was totally at the mercy of this man—and unfortunately, this man
had no reason to treat her kindly!

Temporarily swamped by a feeling of helplessness, Savanna only
struggled halfheartedly as Adam swiftly guided his horse back to where
they had originally stopped. The saddle horn was digging into her
belly, and with her head dangling down one side of the horse and her
legs down the other, she wasn't in much of a position to put up a fight
anyway.

Adam hadn't said a word, and when he pulled his horse to a
stop, she waited tensely for the angry tirade she was certain he would
unleash upon her— that or something even more terrifying. To her
astonishment, he simply dumped her ungracefully on the ground and,
dismounting himself, said dryly, "Rape isn't something that I find
particularly stimulating, so calm your maidenly fears."

Warily she eyed him as he moved around securing the horses and
rummaging about in the saddlebags. Just as if the previous minutes had
never been, he threw a packet at her and nodded in a direction behind
her.
"That's
why I stopped. Clear water is
extremely rare around here, and I don't know about you, but I prefer to
bathe in water that I can at least see through."

Savanna turned and a sigh of pure bliss came from her as she
stared at the small, tear-shaped pond that lay before her. Unusual for
this area of Texas, where the streams and rivers were normally muddy
with silt, the pool was nearly crystal clear, except for some patches
of duckweed and bladderwort that grew along the far side where a few
trees had fallen into the water and the occasional fish and turtle
could be seen lazily swimming in its turquoise depths. A series of tiny
waterfalls splashed over rocks and cascaded into it at the narrow end,
and crowding near, in wildly irregular patches, was all manner of
junglelike vegetation—tupelo trees, palmettos, ferns and pitcher plants.

Savanna rose to her feet and, Adam and all the turmoil that he
represented forgotten, walked as if she were mesmerized straight into
the cooling embrace of the water. She didn't stop until it reached her
hips. Oblivious of anything but the prospect of being clean again, she
glanced over her shoulder and said imperiously, "The soap. Give it to
me."

Adam laughed and reached down for the packet he had thrown at
her earlier. Holding the precious bar of soap, he walked to the edge,
and when Savanna scrambled toward him, he quickly raised it out of her
reach.

"I think," he said slowly, "that we need to call a temporary
truce. Enticing though the prospect might be, I don't relish chaining
you to a stump while you bathe and wash your gown, nor do I want to
keep a constant eye on you while discovering if my skin is the same
color it was before I had the misfortune to meet up with you and
Micajah." He sent her a hard look. "Have I your word that for the time
we are here you won't try to escape?"

"I promise," Savanna vowed instantly, not daring to hope that
he was actually going to believe her— especially since she had no
intention of keeping the promise.

Something in her face must have given her away, because Adam
snorted and remarked dryly, "Very well, if that's the way you want it."

His hand shot out and she was dragged unceremoniously up next
to him. The soap was tossed on the ground as Adam smiled down at her,
and there was something in that smile that made Savanna suddenly
very
uneasy. His eyes locked with hers, he drawled, "We could have done this
the easy way, but since you seem to want to do it the hard way, I see
no reason why I shouldn't get a certain amount of pleasure out of it."

Before she divined his intentions, he had deftly undone the
fastenings of her gown and in one swift movement had bared her body to
the waist. Savanna gasped with outrage, but there was an odd excitement
mingling with her outrage as he boldly looked at the naked temptation
before his eyes.

Beneath her gown, her skin was milky-white, only the
apricot-tinted areolas of her breasts and her small nipples breaking
the smooth, silky expanse of pale flesh. She was the loveliest sight
Adam had ever seen, with all that lovely alabaster skin and that bright
red hair tumbling about her shoulders, and he stared at her nakedness
as if he had never seen a woman before, his gaze roaming in stunned
appreciation over her slender shoulders down to the taut, generous
curves of her bosom. The upper part of her gown was bunched at her
narrow waist, which prevented further exploration on his part, but it
didn't matter. His gaze returned instantly to those lovely, lovely
breasts…

A note of awe in his voice, he muttered, "Jesus, sweetheart!
Who would have suspected it!" He tried to drag his eyes away from those
soft, tempting mounds, but he could not and his breathing became ragged
as he imagined precisely what those pouting little nipples would taste
like…

To Savanna's complete embarrassment, as he stared at her, her
nipples suddenly swelled, and the satisfied smirk that instantly curved
his lips had her trembling with rage. There was no use fighting the
firm grip he kept on one of her arms as he looked his fill, and
ignoring the shameful betrayal of her body, in a voice filled with
freezing disdain, she said, "If you're through ogling me like some
ill-mannered, backwoods
cretin
…"

Adam sent her a crooked grin and, shaking his head, murmured,
"If you'll remember, sweetheart, you started this. I gave you a chance,
but you didn't take it. Besides, for the first time since I made your
acquaintance, I'm actually enjoying myself!"

Savanna's eyes flashed dangerously and she lunged at him, but
Adam easily avoided her charge and after a brief tussle had events well
in hand. Grinning down into her furious face while she thrashed against
the strong arms that bound her to him, he said mockingly, "You know,
even with that bad temper of yours, I'm beginning to see why Micajah
put up with you. Beneath that ridiculous excuse for a garment you've
been wearing is a body that men only dream about… and I'm rather eager
to see if the rest of you is as appealing as what I've seen so far."

Despite Savanna's increased struggles, with ruthless
efficiency Adam soon had the offending gown stripped from her body. If
he had thought her a seductive baggage before, the sight of her flat
stomach and long, shapely legs, coupled with the fire-bright curly
triangle at the top of her thighs, made his mouth go dry with a fierce
elemental desire he had never experienced in his life. What had been a
game until this point suddenly became something else; and, aware of the
inferno burning low in his belly and the swollen, rigid weight between
his legs, he shook his head as if to clear away the explicit images of
her parting those long alabaster thighs and of his body slowly merging
with hers…

There was a glazed look on his face that made Savanna struggle
even more violently, and fearing the worst, she warned him
breathlessly, "Don't you dare touch me, you bastard! I'll kill you if
you do!"

Her words brought Adam back to reality and he smiled grimly,
effortlessly dodging her flailing fists.

"I'm sure you'd try, sweetheart, but I doubt you'd succeed."
Manfully ignoring the nearly irresistible promptings of his body, he
gave her a sharp shove and she stumbled wildly backward, trying to
regain her balance before falling into the water with a large splash.

The water wasn't deep and Savanna came up sputtering, only to
remember at the last moment that she was naked. Instantly she hunkered
down, knees to her chest, her hair hanging in wet rat tails down her
face and back, and glared at her tormentor.

Her garments, what was left of them, swirled at his booted
feet and Adam picked them up and threw the sodden mass at her. "After
you've scrubbed them and I've laid them out to dry, I'll give you the
soap to use on that delectable little hide of yours."

Muttering, she snatched up the clothing, and retreating a safe
distance away from him, she treaded water and stared thoughtfully
around her. It was true that she was naked, but she had her clothes in
her hands and Adam was still on the shore. If she could swim to the
other side and get far enough into the forest before he realized what
she was up to…

Adam's voice startled her, interrupting her thoughts, and she
was even more startled when her gaze swung over to him and she
discovered he had gotten the rifle and was aiming it at her.

"Now, then, sweetheart," he said levelly, "I would put any
idea you may have of escaping out of your head. Try to swim away and
I'll shoot you—not to kill you, let me assure you, but just to slow you
down enough." He smiled, not pleasantly, and added, "I promise that it
will hurt like the devil, too."

With one last, yearning glance at the far shore, Savanna swam
over to the base of the small waterfall, the brown gown floating behind
her. Coldly ignoring him, but keeping as much of herself underwater as
she could, she used a couple of the rocks nearby to pound her garments,
and when everything was as clean as it could be without hot water and
soap, she wrung them out and tossed them onto dry ground.

Looking back at him, she asked caustically, "Satisfied?"

A twisted smile curved Adam's mouth. "Not at the present, but
I expect that before too much longer I will be… gratifyingly so."

Savanna could have bitten her tongue off. Her eyes a dark,
stormy blue-green, she was unwilling to leave herself open to further
suggestive remarks and snapped, "May I have the soap
now?"

Adam placed the small bar near the shore and murmured, "It's
all yours, spitfire." Turning his back on her, he walked over to where
the horses were tied.

She eyed the back of his tall form for several suspicious
seconds, but then, deciding that this was the only privacy he was
likely to give her, she quickly swam to where the soap was and snatched
it up. She had expected a trick, that he would wait until she was half
out of the water and then turn and stare at her nakedness, but he
hadn't, and she was completely baffled as she retreated to deeper
water. She wasted a few moments speculating on his motives and actions,
but the sun-warmed pool and the faint lavender scent of the soap soon
turned her thoughts to more pleasant avenues.

The water felt wonderful—invigorating, almost bath-hot for a
few inches on the surface, but the depths were cool and refreshing, and
the soap…

She nearly purred with delight as she lathered her dirty hair
and rubbed the lavender-scented bar along her skin. For a time, Adam,
Micajah, all her troubles retreated and she simply took pleasure in
washing away the sweat and grime of the past horrible weeks, never
giving a thought to the dangers that might lurk in the pond. Oblivious
of everything, she swam and played like a young otter in the middle of
the pond, where the water was deepest, and even surprised herself by
laughing out loud.

It was Adam's voice shockingly near that brought her painfully
back to reality. "Before the soap is all gone, I'd like to borrow it,"
he said dryly.

She spun around and, to her horror, there he was, not two feet
away from her, his hair wet and his naked shoulders rising above the
turquoise water. Her gaze dropped and she was stunned at the revealing
clarity of the pool waters. It was immediately obvious that he was as
naked as she and that there were great differences between her own
slender body and his more powerful one. His broad chest and flat
stomach were covered with a mat of dark hair that, just below his
waist, arrowed seductively downward. She wanted desperately to look
away, but she simply could not stop her eyes from following the arrow's
path, her gaze widening when she realized that he was fully erect.