She bit his knee.
To free himself of her teeth he shoved her down to the ground, then pounced hard upon her. She was inhaling and exhaling in a rapid fury, her eyes silver daggers, her fingers clawing at him. He caught her hands, then found himself staringat her, realizing in dismay that he wasn’t just furious, he was aroused. More than aroused. He was in agony.
“Bastard!” she hissed. Yet her fingers unclenched. She was reaching for him still, touching his shoulders, fingers digging into them, but not to draw blood. Tears stung her eyes. She brushed them away. His lips fell upon hers, and she responded wildly, her mouth crushing his in return.
Their lips parted. “I’m going to kill you,” she promised him.
“Only when I finish with you,” he responded.
“You’ll be on your knees to apologize,” she told him. Her hands moved over his throat, his chest, hungrily. Her hands. Oh, God. Fingers running up his thighs. Beneath the breechclout. Stroking, rubbing, caressing…
He caught her hands. Pressed her back hard into the earth. The stars above them danced madly in the heavens. She thrashed, undulated, strained against him. The stars erupted. He climaxed in a wave of passion, need, fury, and confusion, crushing her against him and feeling the same response within her as she jerked with each little after-climax that seized her body, bringing them both back down to the dirt on the forest floor in the cool night by the river.
She stared up at him, her eyes misted. He felt like an ass. A fool. Still angry, and yet…
He heard a rustling behind him. Close.
Damn her! He should have heard it before!
With lightning-quick reflexes, he instinctively leaped to his feet, drawing her dress down the length of her body as he did so. He felt her halfway rising behind him as he swiftly scanned the brush and the night-shadows surrounding them.
She inhaled sharply, looking past his shoulder. He turned to her quickly, just as she began to scream out a warning. It was too late. Even as she cried out, the end of a war club struck him at the back of his head, and he knew no more.
Her scream was abruptly cut short as suffocating fingers clamped over her nose and mouth. Skylar had seen that the brave coming out of the darkness wasn’t alone. The other came from behind her. She struggled insanely, trying to free herself, trying to see Hawk. Darkness and shadows seemed to be closing in around her. Her attackers didn’t seem to care in the least that they might suffocate her. The world was spinning, turning black, stars were dotting the blackness…
No! She couldn’t lose her senses. Hawk!
She twisted. Saw her husband’s body, fallen on the earth. She bit into the fingers pressing so brutally against her mouth. The grip upon her slipped. She let out a long, shrill scream.
Another hand clamped down upon her, more brutal, more punishing. She was vaguely aware of the face atop hers. Dark-eyed, dark-skinned, a scar running atop the forehead. “Another sound, I slit your throat.”
English. He was speaking English. He looked like a Crow. Or did he? Something about him was subtly different. She hadn’t been here long enough to learn the different ways of dress and manner and adornment between the tribes.
The fellow holding her so tightly dragged her to her feet. She threw an elbow back into his ribs with all the force within her. He gasped. For an instant, he released his hold. She flew forward, trying to reach Hawk. She nearly touched him but was drawn back before she could do so, drawn back by a hand around her throat. Yet even as she gasped and choked, seeing stars again, she thought that she saw Hawk’s chest move. She thought that he breathed.
Someone snapped out an order in an Indian language. Not Sioux! she thought. Not Sioux.
She was dragged back, unable to breathe. She saw stars. She heard the man whisper in English again. “A sound, and I take my knife where my arm wraps around your throat. I slice thevein where I see it pulsing now. Watch the blood flow down your breast…”
She was certain they meant to kill her anyway—but they weren’t taking chances on her now. There were a number of men, how many, she wasn’t sure. Four…five…six.
The man’s left hand slipped from her throat as they reached his horse. He kept his right pinned firmly over her mouth. Another man was there to help him get her quickly up on his horse. Within seconds, they were racing away from the camp.
They slowed after twenty minutes of nearly breakneck speed. One of the other men came up by them as they rode. She didn’t understand his words, but she saw his movements and realized the fellow was saying that she needed to be tied. The other disagreed, looking back.
They were in a hurry. A desperate hurry. As well they should be. When someone within the camp realized that Hawk had been attacked, that she…
Oh, God, would anyone come after her? Any of the men who assumed that she had peppered their meals to humiliate her husband? And if Hawk lay dead, did any of it matter? Would she ever be rid of the terrible pain in her heart?
The Sioux warriors would come, she thought. They would come because they were warriors, because they were proud, because they wouldn’t let such an insult go unavenged. They would come because…
They had to!
Oh, God, they had to. This could not happen. Not now. She was desperate to live if Hawk lived. If they had killed Hawk, then…
She didn’t dare think.
She abhorred the smell of the man holding her so cruelly as they rode. She despised the sound of his voice, the look in hiseyes. He meant to kill her, she was convinced. Somehow, she knew these men were…evil.
