Candice bit her lip. “Did you tell them the truth?”
He understood perfectly. “Relax, dear, everyone believes you are still my wife.”
“What do you want?”
“Revenge,” he said, removing his Stetson. “And you.”
“What are you going to do?” Her heart thudded loudly, painfully.
“You’ve made it easy,” he said. “Telling everyone you are my wife.”
His hand touched her jaw, slid down her neck to her shoulder. Candice was frozen. He fondled her bosom. She pushed him away, leaping off the other side of the bed. “I’ll scream,” she said. She meant it. She would scream, as if bloody murder were being committed.
Kincaid smiled. “I had forgotten just how enticing you are, Candice. Do you know you make my blood race?”
Candice pressed harder against the wall. Why was he there? What did he mean—revenge? And what, in God’s name, could she do? And what about the rest of Tucson? He was supposedly her husband.…
Kincaid had removed his jacket casually. “It’s very convenient that you told everyone we were married, my dear. I think you are stuck in lies of your own making.”
“What are you going to do?”
Kincaid sat casually on the bed, pulling off his brocade vest.
“You can’t tell them,” she whispered, frightened. “Pa would kill me if he knew we didn’t get married. And the talk … he’ll kill you!”
Kincaid grinned. “You mean he’dtryto kill me. Do you think any of your family has a chance going up against me?”
Candice was horrified. If they ever found out, they would go after Kincaid, and being fair men, they would give him a chance to defend himself. Kincaid would kill them all, one by one. She knew it.
“I still want you, Candice,” he said simply. “More now than before.”
She was sick.
“After all, it’s my husbandly right.”
Candice stiffened against the headboard. She was locked in this charade. She could not admit to the truth. She had no choice.
“I don’t think you will scream, my dear. In fact, I think you will act the charming, doting wife until we leave here.”
Her mind raced. “Leave?” And even as she said the word, she knew she couldn’t stay behind if he left, not if everyone thought they were married.
Kincaid stood and walked over to her. He slipped his hand in her hair. “I went to an inordinate amount of trouble to get you away from your family so you could be my mistress.” He stared, his dark gaze black and ugly. “Why do you think I went to so much trouble, Candice? Because I wanted you. I still want you, and you will be mine until I’m through with you. Do you understand?”
She understood.
The blow came so quickly, she never saw it, only felt it, as his hand struck her face, sending her head reeling against the headboard of the bed.
“Put it this way. I won’t even wait for that hot-headed brother of yours to learn the truth from you and call me out. I will kill him in cold blood if you so much as act like anything but an adoring wife.” He began to remove his shirt.
She nodded dumbly.
“Don’t worry,” Kincaid said conversationally, throwing his shirt over a chair. His chest was lean and hard, packed with muscle. “The charade as my adoring—adoring—wife need last only until we reach El Paso. We will leave first thing tomorrow. But my threat holds. You will obey me until I send you away, at which time you may do as you please.”
Candice tried to get her mind to work. Once he tired of her she would be free to go home. She could say he had been killed. Again.
He sat on the bed and reached for her. He was powerful, she thought numbly, as he pulled her close, and she wondered, inanely, if he was as powerful as Jack.
“I may not have wanted to marry you, Candice,” he said, his face inches from hers, “but you’re an incredibly exciting woman.” He laughed huskily, his face coming closer. “The fact that you hate me seems to whet my appetite,” he said, kissing her.
