“You have hungry eyes,” he said, low. He was stiff, tense—and angry.
“What?”
“Are you as hungry as those eyes of yours?”
“I don’t understand.” Candice drew back.
“No? Maybe you don’t.” He stared at her.
“Wait!” She cried. “Where are my clothes?”
For a moment he just looked at her, then he nodded to his right. She followed his glance and saw her things hanging to dry on boulders and two cactus arms. Seeing her lacy pantalets and the sheer chemise made her blush—it was indecent. She didn’t want to look at him again, didn’t want his unsettling attention, but she had to know. She just had to. “Did—did you …?”
Hehadbeen looking at her undergarments, as if reading her mind. Now he gazed blankly at her. Her color rose. “Did you?”
“I have no idea what you’re asking me.”
Her heart picked up its tempo. Everything was bad enough … being stripped naked, forced to remain that way, having her intimate clothes hanging out … his looking at her as if he could see through the blanket she was wearing, then looking at her clothes as if he could see her in them. But not knowing what she was asking? Was this a poor attempt at a joke? “Did you—while I was unconscious—did you—” she choked. “Did you ravish me?”
His expression went black.
She could barely look at him.
And then she had no choice, because he pounced on her, grabbed her bare shoulders, and snarled into her face. “I think you have one hell of a preoccupation with my raping you,”
She blinked. His breath was warm on her face, and her heart was beating thickly.
“Does it excite you, the thought of my raping you while you slept?” He shook her once. “Does it?”
“No,” she whimpered.
He tilted her chin up until it touched his. His beard was rough and scratchy. His lips, up close, were beautiful. “Does the thought of a half-breed taking you, driving his shaft into you, deep, hard”—his hand slid into her hair and anchored itself—“does that excite you?”
“No.”
He abruptly released her and stood. “When are you going to figure it out?” His tone was disgusted. “This breed isn’t going to rape you, and he’s not going to scalp you, and he’s not going to kill you.”
She sat trembling, still feeling his hurtful touch on her bare skin, the tingly warmth of his breath. When she looked up, he was gone.
Stunned, she sat very still, then carefully looked around. He was gone. She choked on a sob—of rear and despair. Then she hugged her arms tightly over her bosom. He had said he wasn’t going to rape or kill or scalp her. That should have been reassuring. It wasn’t.
What ugly things he had said.
Her heart still hadn’t slowed its tempo. If he wasn’t going to use her or kill her, then what did he have in store for her? She froze up thinking about her only other possible fate. Maybe, being a half-breed, he was one of those men who sold white women to the Indians, into slavery. It really didn’t matter that he himself wasn’t going to rape her; what mattered was that if he wasn’t going to kill her, it meant he was going to pass her along—in one way or another. She thought of the woman who had had four half-breed children. She would die before bearing a half-breed, or any bastard, for that matter. She would die before submitting to multiple rape.
A horse snorted.
Candice whirled to see his stallion nosing the dry gama grass, hobbled with twisted rawhide. She couldn’t believe her luck.
She yanked on her clothes frantically, as fast as she could, stumbling over her pant legs. She shrugged on the boots and ran to the black horse, breathless, managing to restrain herself when his head shot up and his ears went back. The whites of his eyes showed. He bared his teeth.
“Shhh, shhh, good boy,” she crooned softly. The stallion seemed to have the same temperament as his owner. Like his owner, he was also big, and although Candice was an expert horsewoman, she felt a shiver of apprehension. She ignored it. She reached her hand out slowly to stroke the thick corded neck. The stallion swung his hindquarters away, moving awkwardly because of the hooble, but then he began to relax.
“Good boy,” she whispered. “Good, good boy.”
She grabbed the red saddle blanket and swung it on, then the forty-pound saddle. The stallion had lost interest in her, fortunately, and was nibbling on the grass as she cinched up the girth. She was panting from her efforts, from the hurrying, from the fear. She threw the reins over his neck, crooning nonsense softly, and bent and untied the hobble. She tossed it aside, threw a nervous glance over her shoulder. Thank God,hewas nowhere to be seen. She lifted one leg to put one foot in the stirrup and swing up.
“Don’t get on that horse,” Jack warned from behind her.
