Her foot found the iron, and Candice grabbed the pommel desperately. His hands closed around her waist, and she felt a vast despair. He set her on the ground and she twisted around, furious with frustration, her fists coming up to bang against his chest. He grabbed her hands and stilled them. Behind him, the stallion shifted uneasily.
“Are you a horse thief, too?”
“I wasn’t stealing your horse!”
He yanked her hard, pulling her up against him, thigh to thigh, chest to breast. “On, I see. You were in the mood for a ride in the park?”
“Let me go!” she choked.
“What kind of woman are you? Last night you were going to bash me over the head with a rock, kill me if you could; today, steal my horse, leave me stranded in the desert. And to think I bothered to save your ungrateful neck.” His pale gaze scorched her.
Candice was shaking, desperate yet strangely angry too. “What am I supposed to do? Wait for … wait for …”
“I’ve told you I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You’re going to give me to your Apache friends,” she flung.
“What?”
“Like that woman, the one who was captured by Comanches.” Her breast heaved.
“I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about,” Jack said.
Calming, she became aware that he still held her wrists in an iron grip, that her back was against the stallion’s barrel, that his thighs pressed hers. A shudder swept her, her heart quickened its beat. As if discerning her thoughts, he released her, stepping back a slight distance. “She was a slave,” Candice said. When he showed no sign of comprehension, she wondered if he was dim-witted. “They used her, all the men. She had four half-breed babies.”
The line of his lips tightened. “I see.”
“I’ll kill myself before I let them touch me,” she whispered, staring into the coldest eyes she had ever seen.
“I wonder if you would, Miss Carter.”
She was taken aback.
“What is this fascination of yours?”
Her eyes went wide.
He reached out, rubbed her chin with his knuckles, and she couldn’t move. “If I weren’t Apache,” he said, “I would find out.”
She made a sound.
His fist opened, the fingers closing over her jaw. “All Indians are not alike. Has that thought ever occurred to your lily-white mind? Apaches are not Comanches. We revere women and children. We adopt them—absorb them into our tribes. And we never rape.”
She stared.
“Not unless invited to, of course,” he added.
She found her voice. “You’re lying. Everyone knows that’s not the truth.”
He stiffened, then relaxed with effort. He turned his back to her. “Make a fire while I clean the game.”
She didn’t know where the courage came from; maybe his words had reassured her. She ran alter him, grabbing his sleeve. “Wait! If you’re not going to make me a slave, then what are you going to do with me?”
He stopped. “The civilized, white thing to do, of course. I’m taking you to the High C—and if you make that fire we can eat and be on our way.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
She rode, he walked.
