A Wolf In The Desert

“You promised you wouldn’t fight me.”

“I’m not Cochise.” She pulled away from him then and was surprised that he let her go. Crossing her arms at her breasts in a belligerent attitude she glared up at him. “I didn’t promise I would fight no more forever.”

His look moved over her in grudging admiration for her defiance, her courage against impossible odds. “No, you didn’t, did you?” Something akin to a smile ghosted over his lips and vanished. “It was Chief Joseph.”

“So?” Patience shrugged her indifference, neither understanding nor caring to understand the cryptic remark.

“You were quoting Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. The correct phrase is ‘From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.’”

“That’s just lovely.” Her drawl was saccharine. “I doubt there were six bikers and one Indian threatening him with every conceivable indignity.”

“No,” Indian answered thoughtfully, “there were no bikers.”

“Lucky man.”

“An intelligent man, who knew when to fight and when to stop.”

Her head moved abruptly side to side, rejecting the subtle overture. “I’ll stop fighting when one of us stops breathing.”

He sighed heavily, threads of frustrated tension frayed as he struggled against the urge to break his word and throttle her. If there was ever even a ghost of a smile it was forgotten and buried. His face was somber, a startlingly tantalizing mask of stark lines and planes. “The only good Indian is a dead Indian? Is that it?”

Patience should have heeded the savage undertone in his words, but she was too lost in her own hostility to hear. “Considering that you’re the only Indian I know, yes, that’s precisely it.”

He moved, then, like a striking snake. Quicker than the eye could focus, or the mind comprehend, he swept her into his arms. One hand locked around her waist, the other cradled her head in uncompromising control. Her head was yanked back, her face lifted to his. If the moon had been a strobe, the disgust he felt couldn’t have been clearer. “Considering your reckless mouth and your ungoverned temper, I’m surprised you survived this life long enough to lose yourself in the desert. Since you have, and since it’s my misfortune to be stuck with you, we have to do what we must and make the best we can of a bad situation.”

“Your misfortune?” She struggled against his embrace, but he was far too strong for her. “Yours!”

“Yes, mine. There are things you don’t understand. Things you can never know.” The words rumbled deep in his throat, a whispered growl rather than spoken. His hand tensed in her hair as she fought to turn away from a quiet anger more frightening than savage rage.

Suddenly he was silent, as motionless as the saguaro. As inscrutable. His posture did not change, nor his manner, his relentless black gaze never strayed from her face. Yet he seemed to be waiting. Waiting and wary, listening to sounds only he could hear. He held her, his body coiled and ready, yet his thoughts seemed drawn to some distant place.

His head lifted, barely a fraction. So little even Patience couldn’t have seen it if she hadn’t been staring at him from less than a foot away. Slowly, as if the smallest shifting of an eye could be detected by some secret cabal, he lifted his covert gaze to the terrain at her back. For a second that could have been forever, he studied the desert grasses, the mesquite, the creosote, the paloverde, and no one but she would have witnessed.

A strange word, harsh and nearly silent, tore from his lips. A word she didn’t understand, in a language she’d never heard. Yet she recognized regret in it, and anger unlike before.

“Indian?” She was bewildered and confused, and the unbearable fear that never truly left her for all her bravado, added another weight. “What is it?”

“Be quiet, woman.” His voice was unnaturally harsh and loud, unlike the low melodious tone he’d spoken in before, even in anger. “I tire of your prattle.”

He bent nearer, so near she couldn’t see him clearly, yet his breathy undertone meant for her ears alone barely reached her. “I won’t ask your forgiveness for stooping to clichés, but it isn’t just your cookie that crumbled tonight, and not just you who wishes you were anywhere but here. Believe me when I say I’m not going to like this any better than you will.”

She realized too late what he intended. Too late to do more than cry out. “No-oo!”

He ignored her protest, silencing it with his kiss. His mouth closed over hers, quickly, expertly, catching her lips parted in a startled gasp. He held her closer, clasping her body forcefully to his. In startling contrast his lips moved softly over hers, seducing her into stunned submission. As he swept her with him to a dark place of utter helplessness, her muted cries died in her throat. Her wounded hands ceased their fruitless resistance to lie woodenly against his chest, as wooden as she, as she steeled herself to endure his intimate conquest.

She was dangerously lifeless in his arms, a mannequin without a spark of resistance or even outrage. Indian pulled away. Only a hairbreadth separated their lips, and only his cool stare filled her vision. “What’s the matter? Are you all talk? Is that it, you only talk a good fight? Where is that Irish temper now?” He smiled crookedly down at her, a triumphant look in his eyes, yet edged by something she didn’t understand. “Could it be you wanted my kiss after all?”

“You’re mad!” Patience stared up at him. “Stark, raving mad.”

“Am I?” He pushed her hair aside to brush his lips down the curve of her throat. “I don’t think so.”

“Indian, don’t do this.” She strained away from him, trying to evade him, trying to reason with him. “Please.”

“Please?” He laughed, a low sound that would have seemed oddly forced if she’d been conscious of anything beyond her struggle. “I like that.” He moved his hand from her hair to stroke her cheek. “You know you want me. Admit it, admit that you want me.”

“Want!” In abject fury, Patience came alive. Tearing one arm free from the iron circle of his embrace she delivered a vicious, openhanded slap to his temple. Burrowing her hand in his hair, her fingers closed over the beaded leather thong that held it back, with all her strength she pulled, wishing she could scalp him. Instead the tie broke free and she clutched it in her fist as she pummeled him wherever she could. “Damn you.” She panted in her struggle against his hold. “I’ll show you what I want.”

He dodged a blow that would have blacked an eye or chipped a tooth and he laughed the same strained laugh once more. “That’s it. Fight,” he muttered. “For your sake and mine, fight every step of the way.”

Reining in the little freedom he’d deliberately allowed her, he took her mouth then. His kiss was deep and hard, expertly thorough, and completely without passion.

Her mind was reeling. Her hands hurt and her head. His long, lean frame thrust against her, his hands were in her hair, on her body. The taste of him was on her lips, the scent of him in her lungs. He was everywhere. He was everything.

Danger.

Survival.

Life.

There was no escaping him.

In bitter denial of the truth she opened her mouth, clamped her teeth on his lip and bit him, wreaking what havoc she could, drawing blood at last. His smothered grunt of pain was a symphony to her ears, the taste of his blood was one small victory. Then, incredibly, he laughed as he pulled away.

“Fight, wildcat. Fight as hard and as well as you can.” Bending, he kissed the side of her neck, leaving a trail of blood on the collar of her shirt. “The harder you resist, the more pleasure for both of us when I tame you.”

“Never,” Patience declared, thrashing and straining, trying to distance herself from him. She was so intent on pushing him away she almost fell when he released her. Only his hand at her elbow kept her from falling in the dust.

“Easy,” he muttered as he helped her keep her footing. “The ground is unstable here.”

Patience whirled on him, peeling his hand from her arm as if it were scabrous. “Let me go. Don’t touch me.”

Because they were alone again he let her go. As he watched her walk away a little distance into the desert, he listened to a stealthy retreat. Snake’s step was familiar, and Custer’s slight limp unmistakable.

Taking little pride in his performance, he waited until the sounds faded completely before he went to her. “O’Hara.” He stood at her back, waiting for some sign, some reaction to his brutal burlesque of Jekyll and Hyde. “O’Hara, look at me.”

She didn’t turn. Her back seemed straighter, more rigid.

“This wasn’t what you think.” Indian touched her shoulder, meaning to turn her into his arms to justify, to comfort. “Let me explain.”

She shrugged him off, swayed with the effort, then straightened again, assuming the ramrod posture. Drawing a shuddering breath, with the back of a shaking hand she wiped her mouth viciously. Her hand dropped stiffly to her side as an unnatural stillness enveloped her.

Indian knew she was in pain, the silent, gut-wrenching, tearless pain of humiliating helplessness. Pain he caused her.

Cursing himself and the world, he turned her into his arms. When she fought him, he let her, stoically suffering the claw of broken and unbroken nails, the pummel of poor, sore hands. He knew it wouldn’t be for long. She’d fought him hard and well, as he’d wanted, but she was near the end of her strength. He waited for this last spurt of rebellion to end, speaking softly to her in a nearly wordless murmur as he waited.

When the inertia of mind-destroying fatigue overwhelmed her, when she was still again and quiet, he gathered her nearer. That there was not even token resistance proved how close she’d come to total collapse, how complete the despair that sapped the last of her vitality. Repulsed by circumstances that brought her to this, and for his necessary role in it, Indian tucked her head into his shoulder, stroking her hair, offering what respite he could.

He suspected this was a rare occurrence in any circumstance. An uncommon moment when this spirited woman faltered, in need of restoring peace to her ravaged mind and body.