Trilby (16 page)

“As patient as I need to be,” he said, and his eyes punctuated the words, making Trilby even more self-conscious than she had been. She flushed as he stared at her.

Richard watched the byplay and was determined to throw a stick into the spokes for the manly Mr. Vance. He didn’t want Trilby falling hard for that rustic rancher. He meant to make certain nothing came of the man’s regard.

“Richard, you look very pensive,” Julie murmured.

“Do I? I wonder why.” He looked down at her and smiled. She almost purred. He was going to do something about her outrageous flirting one day, he promised himself, and see if she could make good on all those commitments her eyes were making.

T
HEY STARTED OFF
early the next morning, a small caravan going down the dusty road. Trilby sat uneasily in
the saddle, so nervous that her horse almost bolted as the others became smaller and smaller in the distance.

“Here, this won’t do, little one,” Thorn said gently. He dismounted, reached up, and plucked Trilby from the saddle. He carried her to his own horse while she clung to him, oblivious to the faint curiosity in the eyes of his men as they rode past.

“What—what are you doing?” she faltered.

“I’m going to take you up in front of me. Don’t fidget. You’ll upset Randy.”

“Who’s Randy?”

“My horse.” He eased her up into the saddle and quickly mounted behind her. His lean arms came around to take the reins, and she felt the immense power of his whipcord body behind her as he guided the big bay gelding onto the trail that led to the mountains. His arm contracted around her waist to hold her securely. “All right?” he asked in her ear.

She felt her heart beating and wondered if he could. “Yes,” she whispered.

His mouth eased just under her ear and against her neck where the pulse beat wildly. “You smell of flowers, Trilby,” he breathed. “Sweet and fragrant.”

Her body trembled in his embrace as she struggled with incredibly powerful longings. “Thorn,” was all she could manage.

His lean hand opened and pressed deeply into her stomach, pulling her back against him in an intimacy she should have railed against. But all she could do was moan and shiver a little at the feel of his body.

“My God!” he ground out. He sucked in his breath, maddened by the submission. “What a time to give in to me, Trilby!”

“I’m not…giving in,” she managed huskily. But her eyes were closed and she was throbbing all over.

He spurred his mount and dashed up to the rest of the party, a man driven by desires he could neither satisfy nor indulge.

Julie and Richard were trotting side by side, talking all the way. Sissy was riding, very sedately, next to Ben.

“Naki didn’t come with you?” Trilby asked when she trusted her voice again.

“He’s already at the camp, scouting around. You do know that he’s infatuated with Sissy?”

“And she with him,” she agreed. “But it’s all right. Sissy is a good girl.”

“Sure she is. But Naki is a man. All man. And he isn’t more than human. He wants her. Make sure you keep her with you as much as possible. I don’t know if either of them realizes it yet, but there’s a very powerful physical chemistry growing there. Alone in the woods, nothing would stop them.”

“They’re adults,” she said slowly.

“So are we,” he whispered, and pulled her closer to him. “And do you want to pretend that you aren’t hot and cold all over with my body this close to yours?”

She swallowed, her eyes closing as he drew her back against him yet again. “You…mustn’t,” she choked.

“I must,” he said through his teeth. “God, Trilby, I’m in agony, can’t you tell?”

“It isn’t…me,” she said, wounded. “You think I’m something I’m not. You—you still don’t believe that I haven’t been a loose woman.”

“That has nothing to do with what I feel,” he denied. “Trilby, I know you aren’t what I first suspected. I’ve told you that a dozen times!”

“But you treat me that way!”

“I treat you as if I want you,” he said, his breath hot and unsteady. “I do. It’s not because I think of you as a loose woman. It’s because I want you with every part of me. I dream about being with you, completely with you. You’re in my very blood, Trilby.”

The arm holding her was faintly unsteady, and she was frightened of the emotion it betrayed. She wanted to kiss him so much that it was almost painful, but she couldn’t—didn’t dare—give in to it. It was sinful to want this sort of thing outside marriage. “It’s wrong to feel like this,” she said tautly. “It’s bad, Thorn.”

“It is not,” he replied, his voice as strained as her own. “I’ve tried to tell you ever since the fiesta that it’s not wrong. What we feel for each other is rare. Why can’t you accept it?”

“I…love Richard,” she whispered.

“Richard is a habit,” he said coldly. “One you’re about to lose your taste for, once you discover that he belongs to his cousin.”

“He doesn’t!”

“Open your eyes and see. They’re inseparable. He’d die if she asked him to. Perhaps he doesn’t realize it yet, but she has him in her dainty little hands.”

He was right. She knew that he was, but Richard was her only protection against what she was feeling for Thorn.

“But they’re cousins,” she reasoned.

“And surely you know that cousins can marry,” he replied.

“I don’t want to discuss it.”

“That’s right, Trilby, bury your head in the sand. But
what is building between us won’t be denied much longer. I know it. And so do you.”

She did know, but she wouldn’t admit it. She held her body stiffly and didn’t give an inch all the way up into the mountains.

It was cool and dark and tree-studded near the stream where they pitched camp. It was high enough, too, to be defensible if they needed to defend it. Trilby wasn’t supposed to know that. She’d overheard Thorn discussing it with Mosby Torrance, who’d gone along despite Jack Lang’s protests that he was too old.

The tents for the women were pitched near the fire, while the men put theirs up in a ring around the inner circle. It would afford more protection if they got in a tight spot.

“You didn’t want to bring us,” Trilby remarked to Thorn after the cowboys had prepared a wonderfully filling meal of beef stew and biscuits over the open campfire.

Thorn was sprawled on the blanket that covered his saddle, his hat off, his spurs and chaps tossed beside him. But he was still wearing his sidearm.

“Damned right, I didn’t want to come up here with Mexico seething to blow apart just down the road,” he agreed, half listening to the Mexican with the guitar who was serenading the rest of the party. Naki wouldn’t come into the camp at all, and Sissy had noticed and been hurt by it. Not only that, he ignored her completely around the others and acted as if he’d been insulted when she spoke to him once. Since then, her friend had been withdrawn and morose.

“Then why did you agree to bring us here?” Trilby asked.

He turned his head to where she sat perched on a small boulder, watching him. “Because I didn’t like the way you were looking at Bates,” he said bluntly. “He’s a city boy. A fop. You think you want him because he’s the only single man you’ve known. But I’m here now, and I want you.”

She flushed. “I don’t want you, Mr. Vance,” she said.

His dark eyes glittered into hers and there was a faint, mocking smile on his lean face. “The hell you don’t,” he said softly.

She averted her eyes with a shocked, heated gasp and then refused to look at him again. She wandered back to the rest of the group on shaky legs and sat beside a subdued Sissy while the Mexican sang of broken hearts and wistful dreams.

S
ISSY WENT TO
the creek to get water for more coffee, her mind not quite on what she was doing. It was cold at night, this late in November, and there were thick clouds drifting overhead. More than likely it was going to rain. Somehow, it seemed appropriate for that to happen. She felt like a rainy day inside.

As she bent to rinse the dark blue–speckled metal pot in the swift-running water and then fill it, she heard something. It was a musical sound, haunting and lovely in the stillness. The Mexican with the guitar was still playing in the distance, but this was close. Very close.

She got to her feet and listened. The sound came closer. She lifted the pot and moved down the wooded path away from the stream. As she approached a spreading paloverde tree, she made out a tall human form leaning against it.

Naki had a colorful blanket around his shoulders and he was playing, of all things, a flute. He was playing it quite well, too.

She was stung by his earlier behavior and started to march right past him, but he moved into her path.

“Am I supposed to be flattered that, having ignored me completely all day, you’ve decided to play a flute for me tonight?” she asked stiffly.

He smiled faintly. “It is our way not to notice women when others are present. Didn’t you know?”

She held the coffeepot tighter. It was cold against her breasts. “A—a custom?”

“That’s right. Men and women don’t even look at one another in camp. Any display of affection or attention toward the opposite sex is considered bad manners.”

“Oh.”

“You didn’t know.” He nodded. “You have a great deal to learn.” He moved toward her, his steps faintly menacing. He looked very alien in the fading light, tall and powerful and overwhelming. “Apache men stop bathing together when they leave boyhood behind. Even when we go swimming, we always wear a breechclout. Modesty, shyness, these are Apache.”

She looked up as he reached her. “And…the flute?”

“Lovemaking,” he said softly.

She flushed. Her skin seemed to go hot. The hands holding the coffeepot were numb.

He handed her the flute and took the coffeepot away, setting it gently on the ground. He opened one side of his blanket.

“Is that…meaningful?” she asked hesitantly. “That gesture?”

“Very,” he replied.

She stepped under his arm without further prompting, and he enclosed his arm, and the blanket, around her shoulders.

“Now what?” she whispered, thrilling to the warm strength of his body so close. She felt safe and secure and adored.

“Now we can talk, until we’re discovered,” he answered. “Or I can play for you.”

She handed him the flute and smiled.

The music was soft and slow, and she knew that she’d remember it all her life. There should have been stars or at least a full moon, but there was only the cloudy night and the faint mist of rain that began to fall.

She didn’t care if she drowned. She’d been transported to another place, another time. She closed her eyes and laid her cheek on his shoulder.

“Alexandra.”

“Yes?” she whispered.

“Take your hair down.”

She fumbled with hairpins until the wealth of her dark hair was tumbling in waves down over her shoulders and back. It fell to her waist.

“Yes,” he said softly, touching it with the hand that held the flute. “Yes, it’s lovely. You never wear it like this?”

“It…wouldn’t be proper,” she said hesitantly.

“Cultural taboos?”

“Perhaps.”

His lean hand smoothed over it. Bravely she lifted her own fingers to his thick hair and touched it, fascinated with its cool cleanness, its length. He bent and brushed his cheek over hers.

“Apaches…don’t kiss, do they?” she whispered.

“Never after marriage. Rarely before.” His mouth eased toward hers. “But I was married to a Mexican woman, and she loved to kiss me. She taught me how.”

The last words went into her mouth. His hard lips had covered hers and his arms folded her completely against his broad chest. She stiffened a little and caught her breath.

He lifted his head. “You haven’t done this before?”

She swallowed. “Well…no, actually,” she confessed. Her big eyes met his. “You see, I’m not pretty, and I’m educated.”

He smiled gently. “Is it offensive to you, to have my mouth on yours?”

Her body tingled. “Oh, no. No.”

His hand found her face and his thumb tilted her small chin. “If I kiss you softly, will it make you less afraid?”

“I’m…not afraid,” she said unsteadily. “Really, I’m not.”

“Apache women are chaste,” he whispered. “Like you…”

She welcomed him this time. His mouth was hard and warm and moist, and she very much liked the way it felt when he increased its slow, deep pressure on her lips. Her hands clutched at his shirt and she made a tiny sound.

His hands tangled in her hair even as her own were burrowing up through his to the strong nape of his neck. Her body began to tremble with a strange, throbbing sort of pleasure. She wanted to get closer to him, but he was already holding her so firmly that she could feel his chest flattening her soft breasts.

He lifted his head quite suddenly. The feel of her body weakened him. His legs were trembling because he wanted her so badly. But this couldn’t happen. He could no sooner dishonor her than he could fly.

He moved her chastely back to his side and pulled that blanket back around them. His breath was unsteady as he began to play the flute again, but in a little bit it calmed. Sissy trembled as she clung to him. It took a long time until her heartbeat calmed.

“What is this called?” she asked finally, indicating the way they were standing.

He gave it an Apache sound. “Courting, you whites call it,” he translated. “It’s very circumspect. Usually.”

“As I said, I haven’t kissed anyone before.”

“Yes. I noticed,” he replied dryly.

“I’ll be better once I learn how,” she replied, her tone faintly wounded and defensive.

“You’re quite good at it already, but in the interest of your continued purity, we have to stop doing it now.”

“Oh!”

He looked down at her. “Have I shocked you? These things aren’t usually discussed. Do you understand what can happen when a man and woman who find each other attractive spend too much time alone?”

“I’m not that stupid,” she said, swallowing.

He sighed wearily. “We find ourselves in an impossible situation, as it is. I don’t want to increase the burden by doing something unconscionable.” He tilted her face up. “Alexandra, no matter what happens, there can never be a child… There must never be one.”

She winced because the thought hurt her, but she nodded bleakly.

“It is not my wish,” he added. “But a child who belongs to both cultures belongs to neither. This mixing of races is not a good thing.”

“Then why did you gather me into your blanket?”

“I meant the mixing that produces children,” he specified. He searched her eyes, trying to see them in the darkness. “I find you unbearably attractive.”

“I feel the same,” she whispered.

He groaned softly and laid his cheek atop her dark hair. “It is hopeless.”

“I know.” But she didn’t move away, and he didn’t let go. She clung to him, safe in his arms, while the mist feathered her skin.

T
HE HEAVY RAIN
came later, after Sissy had reluctantly left Naki and gone to bed. Trilby was almost asleep when the tent where she slept alone suddenly began to leak on the side where she was lying. She and Sissy had been supposed to share a tent, when at the last minute Julie threw a fit and insisted that Sissy share with her. Trilby was left alone, which she began to think was part of Julie’s strategy to unnerve her.

She was soaked. She’d slept in her long split skirt and middy blouse, and she couldn’t face the thought of staying in wet clothes for the rest of the night. She opened her case and took out fresh things, but she had no place to change. The water was pouring in.

Thinking that she might make her way to Sissy and Julie’s tent to change, she blundered out in the dark. A tall shadow loomed up, and she almost shrieked in fear.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” Thorn demanded. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

“I’m soaking wet, that’s why,” Trilby muttered. “I must have accidentally rolled into the side.”

“I hardly think so,” he said tautly. “Come with me. I seem to have inadvertently become part of the plan. That being the case, I’ll help things along.”

“I don’t understand….” She panted as he dragged her along with him through the rain.

“You will.”

She expected him to stop at Sissy’s tent, but he didn’t. He continued to the outer rim, where Richard’s was pitched, and stopped. There was a lamp on inside it,
with two shadows close together and murmurs becoming louder by the minute.

It was Richard’s tent. There were only three women in camp. Sissy was his sister and Trilby was here with Thorn, which meant that it could only be Julie in there with him.

She was so miserable that she didn’t realize where Thorn was taking her until they were warmly cocooned in his tent.

She stood clutching her dry clothes, slightly damp by now, her big gray eyes wide with what felt like betrayal.

Thorn took off his hat and slicker and tossed them aside. His dark eyes bit into Trilby’s in the darkness of the tent as he lit a match and looked at her face.

“The tragedy queen,” he scoffed. “Now you know, don’t you? I’m certain you were meant to. I saw someone moving around, which is why I got up. Obviously your friend Julie started your tent leaking to bring you outside, so that you’d catch her with Richard. By now, of course,” he added bluntly, “I’m certain she’s back in her own tent laughing her head off.”

She felt her face grow hot with muted anger. “Oh!”

He blew out the match. “Are you shocked that she’s fighting so hard to keep him? Don’t you know how painful it can be to want someone the way she wants your languid beau?”

“I don’t know what you mean—!”

He reached for her, covering her mouth with his even as the words started to escape.

She gasped, but he paid no attention to her struggles. They grew quickly weaker as the powerful arms closed around her, riveting her to the length of him. He was
warm and strong, and the mouth devouring hers was expert. She made a sound.

“You want this as much as I do. Stand still, Trilby. Don’t make noise,” he whispered unsteadily, his mouth teasing hungrily at her soft lips. “Don’t make a sound, or someone might hear us even above the rain.”

He lifted her closer and began to kiss her again. The pleasure he gave her was much too thorough and drugging to leave any room for argument. She went soft in his arms and began to kiss him back. Somewhere in the middle of the endless pressure against her mouth, she felt him ease her to the ground. She didn’t protest. What he was doing to her was much too sweet. She loved the way he was kissing her. He was slow and tender and very thorough, and she ached for more.

Even when she felt his body move over hers, she didn’t make a sound. He was heavy, but the weight of him in some strange way eased the throbbing ache of her body. She shifted a little to bring him against her where she hurt the most and she gasped at the unfamiliar feel of a totally aroused male body.

She hadn’t known that men changed like this, or how it happened. She felt the hardness of his body without really understanding what it meant. But it threatened her and she stiffened a little.

His only reply to that telling gesture was to kiss her again and very slowly ease one of his long, jean-clad legs between hers, imprisoned in the long split skirt. The faint rhythm of it made her feel oddly tense, but it was a warm, sweet, addictive kind of tension that she quickly began to enjoy. She caught her breath and her hands clutched at him, telling him without words that she didn’t want him to stop.

He smiled against her mouth and kissed her again. His mouth was slow now, without any urgency. But it was a terrible kind of tenderness that he was giving her, and his body began to tremble as time stretched by. His hands were gentle on her slender body, not offering to become invasive just yet. But the way he touched her made her want them to.

As his lean fingers played around her rib cage, her body arched up to them in a slow, helpless rhythm. She knew what the touch of them would do to her breasts, and she wanted it. She wanted him to feel the softly mounded flesh, to touch it. She wanted him to peel away her bodice and touch her hot skin, so that it might cool. She wanted him to open his mouth and place it over her nipple….

Even as she thought it, she felt the air on her skin as his warm mouth found its way to the place she wanted it. She shivered and clung to him. The rain beat down on the tent and made a noise that drowned out her helpless cries of passion.

He was whispering something, his voice heated and urgent. She felt his hands on her skin, making the ache go away. His chest was cool against her hot breasts, and it was hairy. The hair tickled, but she didn’t mind because he was kissing her in a new way, deeply and hotly so that she shivered with sensation.

His body was against hers, too, but something was different….

Seconds later, she realized what it was. But by then, it was too late. His hands held her firmly while his bare legs suddenly went between her own and he pushed down. He went inside her body, actually inside it, in a stark invasion of herself that she’d never even imagined!
All her reading hadn’t prepared her for the intimacy of a man’s naked body over her own, for the reality of sexual possession.

She cried out against his hard mouth in shock and amazement, and then in pain, as the rhythm made him groan and whisper ardently against her ear while his body tore away the protective barrier of her maiden-head and possessed her utterly.