The Prospect: The Malloy Family, Book 10 (29 page)

Different worlds, one heart.

Gray Hawk’s Lady

© 2012 Karen Kay

Blackfoot Warrior, Book 1

When Lady Genevieve Rohan joins her father in the farthest reaches of the American West, she expects to bring a bit of genteel English charm to his dry, academic existence. Instead, she finds her father desperately ill, and it’s up to her to finish his study of the Indian and publish his work—or face the wrath of his creditors.

Her troubles mount when the men hired to capture a member of the Blackfoot tribe don’t bring her a docile maid to study. They present her with a magnificent warrior—proud, outrageously handsome and simmering with fury at the loss of his freedom.

The white woman is beautiful beyond compare, but Gray Hawk can’t think past his plan to exact revenge against this meddling foreigner. It’s ridiculously easy to escape, then turn the tables and take her captive. When anger turns to passion, then to love, he embarks on a new quest. To claim the stubborn, red-headed vixen as his own.

Yet as their hearts strain toward each other, pride conspires to pull them apart…unless they can each find a way for their hearts to become one.

Warning: Contains a raging, simmering love, consumed by its fire and destined to explode at any moment.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Gray Hawk’s Lady:

Genevieve let out her breath and closed her eyes, feeling as though she might swoon at any moment. What was happening to her? Why did she suddenly feel so giddy, so light-headed?

She would have to relight the candle, for her own sanity as well as for the more practical reasons. She would have to talk with this Indian. And that required light, since she would have to communicate to him via the Indian sign language she had been learning.

She began to move her hand toward the table when—

“If white woman had only let me know what she wished, she could have obtained what she required from me without abduction. I might have been willing…then—”

“You speak English?”

“Have I not proven just now that I do?”

“But how is that possible?”

The Indian didn’t reply, only looked away, and Genevieve was immediately presented with his profile: strong, foreign, handsome. She drew in her breath as a shiver raced over her skin, and she wondered, was she frightened, or…?

Her breasts swelled against the chiffon material of the gown that she wore beneath her robe, and Genevieve was reminded that she was hardly dressed to receive a man—even if that man was American Indian.

She gazed up at him, and at once a tremor swept over her, bringing with it with an unusual sensation all over her body, especially there in the junction between her legs.

Genevieve shifted her weight uncomfortably. What was happening to her? Why did she feel this way? What was it about this man that brought on excitement, this feeling of…craving?

Briefly she pondered such questions. None of this made any sense.

This man was hardly what she would call a
man,
someone she could physically crave. He was an American Indian—a savage, a person reported by the best authorities to be more animal than human. Such “people” were beneath her. Weren’t they?

Hadn’t the whole of her education so far taught her this? It was true, wasn’t it?

Or was it?

Her body didn’t seem to think so. Her body responded to the Indian as any other twenty-year-old woman might when in the presence of a handsome, half-naked and virile man. Genevieve felt her stomach twist. She whispered, “You are not hurt, are you?”

The Indian swung his gaze back toward her. “Hurt?” he repeated, his stare, or rather his leer, never leaving her. “And where would I feel this hurt? In my heart, which weeps to learn that the white woman has no honor? Or in my spirit, which promises the white woman revenge? Or do you mean my flesh?” He paused. “It is nothing.”

“You
are
hurt!” So that was the other scent she had smelled earlier…blood.

The Indian lifted his chin, and though he stared at her as if she were small quarry he stalked, he said nothing.

“If you are hurt,” she said, “I will attend to your wounds at once.”

“You will not.” The Indian raised his chin another notch. “I will not have your touch upon me. The white woman’s medicine is tainted. I will have a medicine man, if I require anyone at all.” He paused; then, barely over a whisper, he ordered, “Now.”

Lady Genevieve ignored the order. “There is no one else.” Her voice, too, seemed to be strangely quiet, though authoritative.

He raised his wrists, the rope around them halting the movement halfway up. He stared down into her curious gaze. “Release me and I will find a medicine man.”

“I can’t do that,” she murmured. “Where are you hurt?”

The Indian looked away from her as though he could spare no further conversation with her, while she took a dangerous step forward.

“I could help,” she said, her motion bringing her ever closer. “Please believe me. I intend you no harm. Truly.” She gained yet another step in his direction.

He didn’t say a word. He didn’t move. He might have been as unmovable as stone.

She paced forward, each step as treacherous as if she were crossing a swift stream.

She gazed up at him, studying him while his attention was diverted. So close was she, she could smell the combination of sweat and blood mixed with the musk-sweet scent of sage. She could see the sweat upon his brow. She lowered her inspection of him to his chest, noting the moisture that covered him there, the blood all over his side. Blood?

She surveyed his chest as best she could while standing here in the dim, silvery light. Vaguely she noted the strong chest and upper-arm muscles, the slim, tapering stomach, the gash to his side…gash? She stared at it. She reached out a hand toward it. “How did you get this?”

She touched his skin above the wound, her fingertips seeking out the warmth of his skin. All at once he shivered, and she had no more than registered the fact when a heated charge tore up her arm.

She pulled her hand back as though to escape, but it was too late. The damage had been done. She was more than aware of him, of his physical, male appeal, and the air fairly crackled with the knowledge.

He swung his attention back toward her, eyeing her as if she were prey rather than a woman of flesh and blood. And though Genevieve knew she should move away from him as far as she could, she couldn’t make her body respond to the command to do so.

Slowly, feeling caught in a trap, she positioned her body closer to his.

“How is it,” he asked, his voice oddly soft, “that the white woman with no honor does not know how I came to be hurt? Was not she the one who commanded this? Was not she the one who wished me into this state? She who wanted to see me again, she who had me practically stripped, she who plans to use me for her own ends?”

“No.”

“White man lies easily. So do his women. Look at me when you deny this so that I might see the truth or lies of your words.”

She sighed, though dutifully she brought her gaze up to meet his. “Truly,” she said after a moment, “I did not know something like this might happen. I only meant to take someone from your tribe for a short while. I would treat them well and return them to the tribe as soon as possible. No injury, no stripping, no degradation. None of that was commanded by me. I’m so very sorry.”

He stared down at her, and Genevieve wondered how it seemed that his head had come so much closer to her own. She looked away.

“Then set me free, white woman of no honor—”

“Do not call me that.” She brought her gaze back to him. “And I cannot let you go. For all that I regret doing this to you, I need you. But I promise you that if you let me attend to you now, there will be no further harm to you.” She was more than aware, as she gazed back up at him, that during her speech his face was no more than a few inches from her.

She should back away. She tried to make herself do it; she couldn’t. His head gradually descended toward her. And her reaction? She leaned in closer.

Then it happened. His head came fully down to hers. She didn’t even have a chance to think before all at once his lips crushed down on hers, and in that moment Genevieve thought her world might surely end.

It was a savage kiss…and yet it wasn’t.

Her stomach twisted in response to him; her limbs refused to move, and she couldn’t think to question why this Indian would be kissing her.

In truth, there were a thousand things she should have done, a hundred things she should have uttered. She neither said nor did any of them. Instead, she stepped in closer toward the Indian, and if anything, he leaned farther down.

The kiss deepened, going from savage to sensual, and Genevieve became unable to think of anything else but those lips on her own, their feel, their warmth, their…arousal. She responded in an odd way, too, as though she had known this man all her life, as though this man were some titled English gent, as though this man belonged to her and she had every right to—

He broke off the kiss, and Lady Genevieve stood still for a moment, not able to move, not able to produce one coherent thought.

She noted that somehow her hands had found their way onto his chest, that somehow she had drawn in even closer to him, that—

“You
see,” the Indian broke into her thoughts, “I was right. This white woman is a woman with no honor.”

She stared at him for several moments. It was a long time before she could speak, and then she only uttered, “Oh!”

She backed up then, but her gaze never left him, and she wondered what she should do. She felt suddenly as though she should return the insult with cutting words of her own or, failing that, at least shove him away. But she did neither.

Glancing down, Lady Genevieve lifted the hem of her dressing gown. Taking one step back, she pivoted away, fleeing the cabin in a fluidity of motion that would have rivaled the swift descent of a hawk, the swish of her dressing gown the only echo of her distress.

But one thought kept coming back to haunt her as she fled down the steamship’s corridor: she had never been more excited in her life.

Not in all of her twenty years so far on this earth had she ever felt more exhilarated, more alive. And she was terribly afraid it all had something to do with the Indian. In truth, she was certain of it.

The Prospect

Beth Williamson

The lie that saves her life could destroy their love.

The Malloy Family, Book 10

Josephine Chastain never thought a case of typhoid would force her Oregon-bound family to leave her behind in Fort John—in the care of the last man she trusts. Others in the wagon train may have accepted Declan Calhoun’s motives for kidnapping her sister Frankie, but not Jo.
 

When she wakes up from the three-week fever, though, she finds some things have changed. Declan is her husband. And their cabin is too small to contain the growing desire between them.

While Jo fights for her life, Declan finds himself falling for the bookish Chastain sister. A woman with a spine of steel and a seemingly bottomless well of smarts. In other words, everything he can never be.

Yet now is not the time to confess the little white lie that has thus far kept her safe. Not when he must figure out how to escape a quarantine that’s turned into extortion. And resist Jo’s determination to seduce him before she learns the truth. Before the unforgiving wilderness between them and safety claims their lives.

Warning: Be ready for a learned but stubborn woman, a man with a dark past who needs redeeming, and an adventure that will light your hair and your panties on fire.

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

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The Prospect

Copyright © 2014 by Beth Williamson

ISBN: 978-1-61922-048-5

Edited by Amy Sherwood

Cover by Kim Killion

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: March 2014