Ashleen knew she should have kicked, screamed, dived across the bar, anything to avoid the arms that flashed out and crushed her to a body tough as storm-battered oak.
One big hand drove through the curls at her nape, forcing her to tip her head back to a dizzying degree. For a heartbeat Ashleen feared she would faint; then in the next moment she wished that she had. For she knew if she lived to be a hundred, she would never forget the way the tall man's mouth closed over hers, all hot desire and wild promise.
Her bones were melting, her pulse racing, her breath catching in short, terrified gasps—a terror not of the man's kiss, but of her own violent reaction to its power.
For the briefest of moments she melted against him, her lips parting in a gasp of surprise. With a groan of raw hunger the man ground his lips against hers.
It was as if he had possessed her in that single kiss more thoroughly than Timothy Kearny had in an entire stolen night of lovemaking. That sudden certainty, mingled with the memory of the trauma that had followed that single indiscretion, rocked Ashleen to her very core.
Panicked, she flattened her palms against the man's chest, shoving with all her might. But if the drink had befuddled his brain, it had done nothing to weaken muscles as unyielding as steel. It was as if he didn't even notice her struggle, so lost was he in the pleasure that made his heartbeat crash erratically against her breasts, his hands seek the bare, fevered skin of her shoulders.
"Baby," the man was murmuring into her mouth as he kissed her. "Damn, you're sweet. You're... the lucky... winner."
With a cry of outrage Ash made one last desperate attempt to break free. She slammed one sharp heel down onto the man's instep and sank her teeth into her tormentor's lower lip.
A yelp of surprised pain erupted from the man as he pushed her away, clapping one big hand to his bleeding mouth. "What the hell—"
She half expected him to strike her, scream at her. She never imagined hurt confusion would tinge his voice as he rubbed at his injured mouth. "What the hell'd you do that for?" he demanded, gray eyes as shocked as if a pampered kitten had just flown, clawing into his face. But whatever stirring of sympathy or regret Ash might have felt vanished at his next words.
"I told you, you won. But lady, if you begged me on your knees now, I wouldn't take you upstairs."
"You despicable clod! You touch me again and... and I'll..." She searched for some threat awful enough to give the man pause, sensed that he was not one to be daunted at the ravings of a mere woman—or, most likely, any man. But she had to think of something.
She fixed upon a scene she had once read in one of the forbidden novels she had hidden beneath under her bed at the convent. "If you accost me again, I'll set my protector upon you, sir, and—and he'll demand pistols at dawn!"
"Pistols at what?" There was a strange sound to the man's voice.
"At dawn." Ash stuck her chin up, infusing her voice with as much confidence as possible. "I suppose a ruffian like you has never heard of the way gentlemen settle questions of honor. My—my protector is a deadly shot with a pistol. He's killed scores of scoundrels like you."
"Oooh," one of the saloon girls trilled, "you'd best watch your back, handsome."
The corner of the man's mouth was twitching, a distressing light burning deep in his eyes. He didn't believe her. Ash could see it in the way he looked at her, as if he was waiting, watching with an unforgivable amusement as she dug herself a hole so deep she would never be able to scramble out.
And to appear the fool before this man after all that had happened since she entered this accursed saloon was more than Ashleen could stand. Her temper snapped, and with it, what little sense of caution she yet possessed.
"You may expect to hear from my protector directly," she said, scooping up her skirts and starting to plunge past him.
But his fingers swept out, catching her arm, stopping her.
"Take your hand off me," Ash said with as much dignity as she could manage.
"Gladly, you bloodthirsty little monster, but first, why don't you tell me who this terrifying protector of yours is? I like to know who's going to shoot me in the back."
"Unlike you, a gentleman like Mr. MacQuade would never shoot a man in the back."
The man looked as if he had swallowed an anvil. Ash took the fiercest of pleasure in the way his eyes bugged out, even the haze of drunkenness seeming to fade. Garret MacQuade must have a reputation to rival Davy Crockett's if even this man blanched in fear.
"M-MacQuade?" he choked out.
"Mr. Garret MacQuade." It was as if, now that she had the man retreating, she couldn't stop from torturing him as he had her. She shoved past his broad shoulder, sweeping out the door.
The moment the night air struck her face she had an urge to bolt and run, but she'd not give the man the satisfaction of knowing how badly he had shaken her.
It was to prove a fatal error.
She'd not even made it to the squat silhouette of the horse trough before he cut her off, perching one hip upon the trough's low edge.
She paused, unable to stop herself.
