“I must warn you, Miss
Randall, about the land
you’ll be living on.”
“There are all kinds of frightening things out there,” Jared said. “Savage Indians, wild animals. Ever seen a snake up close…or a wildcat?”
At the mention of animals she shivered slightly, just as he had anticipated, but her analytical response took him by surprise.
“It’s quite obvious you were sent to dissuade me from continuing my journey. Apparently my sister Lilith objects to having me stay with her, but whether I’m welcome or not, Mr. Bryant, there’s no way I can return home, so I’ll have to face whatever comes.”
“And what of those two days you’ll be traveling alone with me on the prairie? Are you sure I wouldn’t take advantage of you?”
“I’m not the type that interests you, Mr. Bryant. You run more to strange women who come knocking on your door at night.”
“I never really had the chance to find out what type you are,” he said drawing her into his arms with an iron grip on her shoulders, capturing her half-open protesting lips and thrusting a searching tongue between them. Crushed to his hard chest, Mariah felt faint, struggling against the sensations he aroused, helpless against his invading kisses and his hand that rose teasingly to press the soft swell of her breast.
He had planned this strategy to assure that she would not travel with him, but Jared Bryant would discover to his dismay that neither beast nor man could stop Mariah Randall!
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WARNER BOOKS
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WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 1978 by Donna Comeaux Zide
All rights reserved
ISBN 0-446-82702-9
Cover art by Elaine Duillo
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First Printing: June, 1978
10 987654321
Table of Contents
Savage In Silk PROLOGUE: Montana Territory—1834
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Dedicated with love
to my husband Lou,
for his patience and support,
with special thanks to
my mother-in-law, Frieda Zide,
and Helen Kennedy.
PROLOGUE
Montana Territory—1834
The early August morning dawned clear and hot, the sun lending its first rays to brighten the ranchhouse kitchen. Sunbeams had barely begun to peek through the back porch window, when fifteen-year-old Lil Draper stumbled into the room, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The heavy mass of silver-blonde hair that was her pride was bound into a reasonably neat bun at the back of her neck, but a few stray wisps escaped to tease the back of her ears.
She moved about mechanically, filling the coffee pot, breaking eggs into a bowl, as she struggled to keep her anger in check. Ma knew how she hated getting up early and still she’d run off to the trading post! Worse yet, she’d dragged dear, reliable Maddy, their housekeeper, with her. “To help me fetch supplies, darling,” Susannah had drawled in her usual affected manner. After fifteen years of frontier life, she hadn’t abandoned her pretentious citified lady’s airs. Lil stationed herself at the sink, peeling potatoes for the morning meal, while silently analyzing her mother’s shallow character. Why, I’ve actually seen Pa flinch when she uses that refined, sugary tone, she thought. In fact, she had a secret form of address for her mother. She answered respectfully enough with “yes, Ma,” but she’d be thinking “yes, your Ladyship.”
“Darn,” she wailed. She had carelessly sliced her finger! It was all Ma’s fault, she thought spitefully. If she weren’t so darn hard to live with, I’d have been concentrating on what I was doing. Well, she was almost finished anyway. Rinsing away the tiny drop of blood that welled from the cut, she quickly peeled the last two potatoes and set the beef steaks to frying.
Managing nicely, despite her dislike for kitchen work, Lil found she had enough time for a quick cup of coffee before the hands came shuffling in to demand breakfast. In her mind, Lil compared her mother’s never-ending petulance with her father’s blunt honesty. Pa always called the shots as he saw them, but if something made him unhappy, he kept his misery bottled inside. Not so with Ma. She hated living here and had never let Mike Draper forget he was responsible for her unhappiness. She never ceased reminding him that Montana was far removed from “civilization.”
Lil was like her father, physically as well as emotionally. She had his bright blue eyes and fair appearance and the same adventurous spirit that had urged him away from overcivilized, overcrowded Philadelphia to the wild, untamed beauty of Montana. He’d fallen in love with its towering, snow-frosted mountain ranges and clear, rushing rivers. Pa had even named their spread the Bitterroot, after the sturdy, heatherlike wildflower that so profusely covered the territory. He’d explained to her that he liked the sound of Bitterroot; that it seemed to symbolize the harsh beauty of life here, where the few settlers who’d stayed were as hardy as the wildflower, clinging tenaciously to the land. The rare Indian attacks were only a dim memory to Lil, but her father had told her of narrow escapes from death and showed her the scar that marked the spot where a Blackfoot arrow had struck him.
Lil had never ceased to admire her father for sticking it out when others had turned tail and run. Susannah, on the other hand, had none of Mike Draper’s indomitable spirit. For fifteen long years, she’d wanted nothing more than to return to her girlhood home in St. Louis and she had her daughter’s wholehearted, if silent, support. They’d all be happier if she left, and Lil couldn’t understand Pa’s stubborn reluctance to let her go.
The aroma of burning steak suddenly roused Lil from her musings, and she rushed about to finish her chores. The sound of heavy boots tramping up the porch steps and low, masculine laughter drifted through the open window. The hands were coming
in.
Lil smoothed the stray wisps that escaped her coiled hair. When the door opened, she was putting the finishing touches to the table. Mounds of tempting fried potatoes, scrambled eggs and large cuts of steak were piled high on heavy china plates. She smiled a welcome and the ranch hands respectfully removed their hats and seemed to quiet their rough language in deference to her. They all gave her the respect due a grown woman, but raising her cheek for her father’s affectionate kiss, Lil was well aware that, in his eyes, she would always be his “little girl.”
She would have time for a light breakfast later, but now she was kept busy pouring cups of strong, steamy coffee and replenishing the food that miraculously seemed to vanish before the onslaught of the famished men. They’d been working for over an hour down at the corral, breaking the wild horses captured in last week’s roundup.
With a satisfied grin, Mike Draper polished off the last of his steak and glanced proudly at his daughter. “Every bit as good as Maddy’s cookin’,” he boasted. The Bitterroot foreman, Sam Parker, nodded his agreement, a toothpick dangling from the side of his mouth. With mock chagrin, Mike added, “Don’t dare tell ’er I said so, young lady. She’d have my hide for such disloyalty!”
Lil giggled at the very idea. Maddy furious with Pa? It was impossible. Pa and Maddy shared an unconcealed relationship that was closer than man and wife. Maddy not only clucked over him when he was sick, but Lil knew for a fact that Maddy warmed his bed at night. Her real name was Madelaina Lopez, but when Maddy had come to them seeking work after her husband’s death, the four-year-old Lil had been unable to pronounce her name. Ever since, she’d been affectionately dubbed Maddy. At first, she’d been just a quiet, efficient housekeeper and cook; but following Susannah’s decision to deny Mike his marital rights, Maddy had assumed all the duties of a wife. Lil regarded the plump, black-eyed woman as her real mother, for it had been Maddy who nursed her through childhood illnesses and scrapes.
Hands immersed in soapy dishwater and only vaguely aware of the mantalk behind her, Lil considered the relationship between Pa and Maddy. Last year, when her body had begun to blossom into lush, feminine curves, Lil’s thoughts had turned with curiosity to the opposite sex. One night, when the steamy weather had made her toss restlessly in her bed, Lil had heard odd, moaning sounds in Pa’s room. Curiosity aroused, she crept quietly down the hall to his door and listened, recognizing Maddy’s voice whispering hoarsely in her native Spanish. Understanding the intent, if not the actual words, she gazed through a chink in the door, startled to see Pa astride Maddy’s plump, fleshy body, laboriously working in the same heated manner in which she’d seen a stallion take a mare.
A strange, new longing had made her stay rooted to the spot, anxious to learn all she could. The lusty encounter had caused a tight knot in her belly and when the two had collapsed in each other’s arms, Lil sped back to her room. In the still darkness, she ran her hands across her bare skin, pretending the caressing fingers that slowly aroused such intense craving belonged to a mysterious lover.
Six months had passed since then, filled with more stealthily viewed love scenes, until Lil, in frustration, had brazenly cornered Tom Fletcher alone in the barn almost three weeks ago. He was her father’s newest hand, a young, gangling farm boy who had arrived from Ohio two months before. At first his reluctance to be caught with the boss’s daughter had made him timid and hesitant, but when Lil had rubbed provocatively against him, he’d buried his caution. Amidst the fragrant straw of the hayloft, Lil had lost her virginity and gained new insight into the passions that had made Maddy twist feverishly beneath Mike’s searching hands. After the initial pain had eased, Lil had taken to sensuality like a fledgling sparrow to flight.
Now, when she heard the sound of scraping chairs behind her, Lil thought of a way to keep Tom behind. He wasn’t the most handsome beau in the world but, on an isolated ranch, he was the best she could manage.
After the others had filed from the room, complimenting her on the meal, Mike hugged her in his huge bearlike embrace and told her how pleased he was with her efforts. Tom dawdled near the door and as Lil and he exchanged a quick, conspiring glance, she made a request of her father. “Pa, you know my good bridle’s broken. Think you could spare Tom a while to fix it? I promise I won’t keep him long!” She stared appealingly at her father’s' craggy, weathered face, knowing he couldn’t resist a chance to indulge her whims.
“Well, baby, if it don’t take too long…You don’t mind, do ’ya, son?” When Tom eagerly agreed that it was no trouble at all, Mike smiled indulgently at Lil. “See you don’t keep ’im long now—we got plenty to do ’fore the sun sets.” Playfully ruffling the blonde hair that was a copy of his own, Mike left the kitchen to join his men at the corral.
Alone with Tom at last, Lil relaxed, drying her hands on a towel. He watched her with the open adulation of a puppy about to receive a treat. His thin, freckled face seemed younger than Lil’s, although he was five years older. Lil struck a purposely seductive pose as she reached up to pull at the pins that fastened her hair. With a calculatedly artless motion, she shook her head and let the silvery waves flow over her shoulders and back down to her waist. Lil was aware that her heavy mane of hair and lush, ripe curves were her most appealing features. Taking predatory advantage of her appeal, she leaned forward, moistening her soft lips with the tip of her tongue. Her prominent nipples strained at the tight bodice, outlined in detail.
Tom’s response to the open invitation was immediate. He reached forward and drew her eagerly into his arms. Unable to believe his good fortune, he trembled at the feel of warm, pliant flesh beneath the thin material of her dress. Lil’s mouth curved into a confident half-smile as she cuddled against him. Tempted by the pouting lips, Tom stifled a low groan and captured them beneath his own, thrusting a searching tongue into the warm mouth. Lil’s arms twined around his neck as she forced his mouth harder against hers. He had begun to throb with building desire and he pulled back, impatiently breaking the embrace. Her blue eyes filled with startled surprise and he hastened to explain. “I gotta have you now, Miss Lil!” Shuffling in embarrassment, he glanced significantly at his groin. Lil’s eyes followed his, noting the evident desire and she smiled with relief.
She was just beginning to realize the sense of power her body could wield over a man. They had only kissed and yet her mouth softly yielding to his had elicited the automatic response. Her impatience matching his, Lil grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hall after her. At her bedroom door, she paused and answered his questioning look. “There’s no one in the house. Ma and Maddy are both gone. There’s more chance of someone seeing us in the barn than here.”
Tom grinned and followed her into the bedroom. Frilly, starched curtains billowed at the open window and a hand-worked rug lay on the polished floor before the narrow, quilt-covered bed. A love-worn china doll was propped up against the fluffy pillows. Lil patted the bed, inviting him to be seated and then moved to stand before a full-length oak-framed mirror.
Many times, she had stood like this before the mirror’s polished surface, admiring her naked reflection or watching, heavy-lidded with desire, as she ran her fingers over the smooth, unblemished skin. Now, as she posed, she glanced sideways through lowered lids to see Tom staring at her in fascination. He had stripped naked and the evidence of his desire bobbed animatedly between his legs.
A sudden, sensual idea made her whirl around and face him. “Tom,” she whispered, her voice husky with excitement as she reached behind her to unfasten the tiny row of buttons securing her dress, “Tom, come here…I want to watch our reflections as you touch me!” The boy stared with unconcealed lust, his tongue flicking out to wet his suddenly dry lips. Lil stood naked now, ivory skin aglow, and she cupped her heavy breasts with soft, white hands, offering them for his inspection.
In a trancelike state, mesmerized by the offering, Tom came to stand behind her. In the mirror he saw his darkly tanned, seemingly disembodied hands
replace hers, squeezing at the prominent, fleshy mounds. Fascinated, he surveyed the length of their bodies, as his dark, calloused fingers coaxed Lil’s jutting nipples into taut peaks. Languorously, she leaned her body weight full against his lean, rawboned frame, a swirling flood of desire sweeping over her, sucking her down into its eddy. The only sound in the room was the heavy, rasping breathing of the two abandoned lovers.
Finally, when his fingers had roamed to the blonde curls at the junction of her thighs and had probed the heated sanctuary, Lil could stand it no longer. Impatiently, she tore from his stroking hands and wheeled to face him, wild-eyed and feverish. Tom answered the tacit plea in her eyes by picking her up and carrying her the short distance to the bed.
The china doll, wide eyes staring, was impatiently shoved aside. Reflected in her fixed, glassy gaze, the tangled limbs merged into one fused unit. Frenzied, Lil lost herself to the intense sensations. Her hair lay about her, a thin veil of tendrils across her face hiding her blazing blue eyes and the unquenchable lust that shone there.
Probing the warm engulfing softness, Tom lost all sense of time and place. He was aware only of his frantic need to satisfy the passion boiling in his blood. Beneath the twisting bodies, the bedsprings creaked rhythmically in a metallic chanson d’amour, and built to a crescendo with Tom’s frantically increased pace.
A sudden feeling of weightlessness seized Lil and she flew like a captive swallow set free, soaring among the clouds in an ecstasy of freedom. All too soon, the sensation eased and she drifted back to reality. Earthbound once more, she felt her heartbeat slow as Tom slumped forward in exhaustion, and their two bodies gleamed damply.
Tom leaned across Lil’s body to place a tender kiss on the pulse at the base of her throat when a sharp, startling report of gunfire from outside stilled his lips against her skin. Tensing, Tom listened again and, as a succession of shots followed, moved quickly to reach for his pants and gunbelt.
Lil stared dazedly as Tom dressed and adjusted his holster. As the wild, wolflike sounds of an Indian war cry drifted through the open window, she shivered with apprehension. Noting her wide, frightened gaze, Tom paused a moment. “No need to worry, Lil. More’n likely just some renegade bucks out for a little sport.” His chest puffed with masculine confidence as he finished tucking his shirt into his pants. “We’ll run ’em off in no time!” He leaned to touch his lips softly to hers and turned toward the door.
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