“The lady has it in for you.” Gus snorted, his best imitation of a laugh.
Anthony turned to her. “Rachel, what do you think of a tangent of a thirty-degree angle in repose, and then mathematically expressed by mass equaling force times distance?” he asked, raising the stakes on her ruse.
She edged toward the raised part of the log, and shook her fist at him. “Only a buffoon would ask me that. Based on Archimedes principal where the force applied at the end points of the lever is proportional to the ration of the length of the lever measured between the fulcrum and application point of the force applied to that end.”
Three-Tooth scratched his lice. “What’s she talking about?”
She hiked her skirts to her knees. Anthony swallowed, forced himself to think. The highwaymen’s mouths dropped open, engaged with her lovely legs.
Right where Anthony wanted them.
Three things happened simultaneously. Rachel jumped on the high part of the log. Her full weight and inertia pitched the opposite end with enough force to throw back the highwaymen. Guns sailed into the air. A pistol fired, the ball colliding with the tree-tops, showering a spray of splinters and twigs. Anthony sprang over the debris, hit the gaping Three-Tooth in the mouth. His teeth went flying. The runt of the litter crumpled into the leaf mold. Three-Tooth would have to be renamed. One-Tooth was more appropriate.
Gus came at him, eyes wild, launching a right. Anthony ducked, the buzz swept over his head. Gus’s momentum carried him in a curve, his kidney exposed for the taking. Easy enough, a question of force, the product of mass times velocity squared. Anthony hit a short right, a colossal blow, a blow that would have cracked a stable beam. Gus stumbled and bent viciously backward from the force of the punch, the breath whooshing out of him. No doubt, the shock hitting the back of his lungs like a million tiny needles, heated red-hot in a fire. He tottered, and his right leg went stiff.
He didn’t fall like a normal person. No, a normal person would have been ready to be buried six feet under. Instead, he trembled like aspen leaves in the wind, then, grinning the hulk of a man righted himself and lunged. Apparently, rum numbed his pain, and emboldened his attack. Anthony smashed his fist into Gus’s jaw, but his foot slipped in the mud. Not like boxing in the barn with a solid floor beneath his feet. As he straightened, Gus slammed a punch to Anthony’s chest, the force enough to knock a horse into paralysis. He gasped and whooped, his lungs collapsing. Gus swung another right and left, but Anthony raised his fists batting off the jabs. He ducked and danced to the side, and then advanced, unleashing the full force of his blows. Two, four, six jabs. His adversary breathed hard his gloating grin faded, blood poured from his mouth.
“I thought you said you could fight,” Anthony taunted.
Gus roared after Anthony head on, landing savage thrust after thrust of his fists. Anthony recovered with a swift, sudden spin borne of instinct. Gus backhanded Anthony across the forehead. Breathing hard, drifting in a fog, Anthony kept punching…survival…he hammered Gus again and again…and the guy was still standing.
He who has the higher ground is the victor.Sun Tzu, an ancient Chinese warlord advised his military leaders to take the higher ground and let the enemy attack from the vulnerability of a lower position. Must force Gus to the ground.
Dizzy and losing his balance, Anthony spun, smashed his heel into the kneecap of Gus’s good leg, felt the bone crack through his boot. Like Bonneville, the Goliath went down, too…but then, his big hands clawing at the earth, Gus raised up crawling toward Anthony…one last attempt. Anthony tried to shake the cobwebs from his head, rubbed the dirt from his eyes and clenched his fists, but Gus was almost upon him. And then…the giant slumped face forward into the mud.
Anthony wiped the blood from his mouth…and did a double take. Like an Amazon goddess, Rachel stood poised over Gus, a rock in her hand, ready to strike again.
“Enough of you two playing games.”
Anthony cleared his head and stood, tipped his toe against the big man’s body. Unconscious.“Games?I’m lucky I’m not fodder for the worms.” The dog yipped at his feet and Anthony bent down to pat the beast’s head.
He angled his head to the rock she dropped. “So primitive.” Anthony remarked drily. “Too bad you didn’t have your bow and arrow.”
“I have been reduced to rocks. And if you say, ‘how typical for a Colonial,’ I’ll hit you with a rock.”
“We need to tie them up. Can you spare your petticoat?”
“Turn around,” she ordered him.
With reluctance, he let go and presented his back, remembering long perfect legs. “Where has the sudden modesty come from? I seem to recall you hiking your skirts up”
“That was a distraction and you know it was. And if you ever tell anyone, I’ll”
“Hit me with a rock. I’ll shall tremble in my boots from the thought.”
“You can turn around now.”
After tearing her petticoat in strips, she instructed him on impressive sailor’s knots, foolproof in securing their assailants.
She stopped a few steps away from him, gazing at him in fear and confusion, as if she wanted to come the rest of the way, but couldn’t. He took the last few steps, enclosed her in his arms, trying to ignore the incredible feel of her crushed against him. He wanted to kiss her but she was trembling so violently that he was afraid to knowing her history. Instead, he just held her with her face cradled against his chest and slowly stroked her long, lustrous hair. Rivulets of sweat and blood poured down his temple and his jaw hurt like hell, but all felt right with the world.
“You saved my life again. You make me feel protected.”
In that moment, he found a thousand things that he loved about her.
Very slowly and gently, Anthony lifted her chin and kissed her. He kissed her long andlingering, with all the aching tenderness in his heart, and she laid her trembling fingers against his cheek and began to kiss him back.
Her soft lips parted with only the slightest urging from his probing tongue into her mouth, and then she gave him hers. He teased her, tormented her, offered himself to her by thrusting deep with his tongue, then retreating and thrusting again and again, until Rachel was clinging to him, her mouth moving back and forth over his in passionate surrender to the wild, erotic kiss.
