Heart of Thunder

by Johanna Lindsey

  She couldn’t fight his power. What was the point? Somehow, he always managed to make her respond to him. He always managed to win. She let reason take over. After all, he was her husband. They were married. Her husband…husband.

  She repeated this over and over in her head until Hank entered her and she moaned. She locked her legs over his hips, and met his thrusts wildly.

  “Mi marido,” she was saying aloud, barely aware of it.

  And then she clasped his head and bit his ear, not hard, but enough to make him aware of her. “You wanted me to remember,” she whispered before she thrust her tongue into that ear and felt him tremble in reaction. “You, too, will remember, querido!”

  She kissed him with abandoned passion, and his increased wildly. He was a virile beast, and she loved it. She joined him in climax and descended with him, savoring everything.

  But Hank was not finished. He took her again, as savagely as he had before, and as tenderly. She joined him, her nails caressing this time. Her hands were just as gentle as his, because at last she wanted to give pleasure as well as receive it. And she did.

  It was not a time for wonder. Wonder would come later. Now Samantha only felt, felt and responded to Hank’s tenderness.

  He was an amazing man, this handsome bandido—her husband. She slept with that thought, languorous, sated, with Hank half on her, half at her side, his head resting on her breast.

  “It is time we moved on, Sam.” Hank woke her with a gentle shake.

  He was dressed, and he turned away to gather her clothes. She gave silent thanks that his eyes were not on her, for she blushed, remembering, and she didn’t want him to see her embarrassment. Why, he was acting as if nothing unusual had happened. Could he really think nothing of it?

  She felt so different. She hadn’t realized Hank could be such a tender man. It shed new light on him and made her uncomfortable about her old animosity. That was dangerous, extremely so. She had to forget their union, forget about that marvelous joining. He obviously had.

  “I will take you to your father now,” he finally spoke.

  He handed her the clothes she had ridden in, which had been washed by some kind soul. The lace skirt and blouse, her wedding clothes, were gone. She wouldn’t ask about them.

  She swung her legs over the bed, turning her back to him. “So, you marry me, and now you give me back to my father?”

  “At least you will never be a solterona, eh?” He chuckled.

  “An old maid!” she cried indignantly, and glared over her shoulder at him. “No chance!”

  “You think your Ramón would have married you when he saw you grow big with another’s bastard? There are not many men who will take soiled goods.”

  “You’re despicable!” Her eyes flashed green fire at him. “And you’re assuming something that will—not—happen! I didn’t need you to save my reputation. And I certainly won’t thank you for it.”

  Hank smiled, his gray eyes dancing. That face, those eyes, the way he looked at her…She backed down. Lord, what was he doing to her?

  “You still haven’t told me why you really married me,” Samantha said in a much calmer tone. “And I won’t believe this nonsense about saving me from scandal. Why, Hank?”

  “You really cannot guess?”

  “Would I be asking if I could?”

  She was dressed by then and turned to him in time to see him shrug. “Perhaps it will be clear to you one day.”

  “Why don’t you make it clear now? There was no purpose. You can’t control me. You hand me over to my father and I divorce you. So? What have you accomplished? None of this will help your cousin keep my land.”

  “You do not want to know, Samina,” he replied mysteriously. “Truly, it would ruin your day.”

  “You have already ruined my day!” she screamed at his retreating back.

  He was gone, leaving her in a rage. “God, what a teasing, aggravating bastard he is!” she told the walls.

  The others were waiting outside the cantina in the bright morning sun. Many people were gathered there to bid Hank good-bye. They called him Don Enrique. Had she heard that name before? It sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it just then. All those people, so happy for him, had surprised her.

  Samantha stood by stiffly until Hank offered her his hand and helped her to mount El Rey. The people waved her good-bye. They knew her to be Hank’s wife—his lawful wife. Lord, she couldn’t stand much more of this, and the smiling faces made her feel worse than she had in some time.

  Chapter 32

  IT was a short but grueling ride to El Paso. Whereas Hank had dragged the pace before they were married, he now drove them mercilessly, as if he couldn’t wait to get to the border and get her off his hands.

  He never gave Samantha a chance to talk to him. As they rode, he flatly refused to answer the questions she threw over her shoulder at him, and when they camped, she had no further desire to speak to him.

  He didn’t demand his rights, not until the last night, when they were camped a mile from the Rio Grande and El Paso rivers, where Hank assumed her father would be waiting.

  That night, once again, Hank was tender. And Samantha, knowing this would be their last time, very nearly matched his tenderness.

  When she woke the next morning, he was gone. The other three men were still with her, lazing about the camp as if they wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Samantha was bewildered. Hank hadn’t even said good-bye.

  When Lorenzo brought her coffee and some dry food, she asked him to sit, smiling, hoping to draw him out. “Where has he gone so early?”

  “To El Paso.”

  “Alone? Is Antonio there? Is he supposed to meet his cousin?”

  “Antonio?”

  Samantha sighed. “You don’t even know Antonio? Lord, don’t you know why I was kidnapped?”

  “I follow orders for which I get paid. I do not ask questions.”

  Samantha’s anger surfaced, but she didn’t want to antagonize Lorenzo. “What did Hank tell you when he left? Did he leave a message for me?”

  “Sí, he said to tell you to watch for him in six or seven months.”

  She frowned. “What does that mean?”

  Lorenzo shrugged. “He said you would understand.”

  After a moment, she did, and blushed. In six or seven months, if she were pregnant, she would be very obviously so. Even on leaving he had to taunt her!

  “Then he’s not coming back here?” she asked. “I mean, if he left that kind of message, he doesn’t intend to see me again soon.”

  “No.”

  “But when do I get taken to my father? How will you know if everything has been arranged?”

  “We are to wait here, Sam. Your father will come for you here.”

  “When?”

  He shrugged again. “Perhaps today—or tomorrow. Be patient, little one. You will soon be with your father again.”

  As he rode toward El Paso, Hank worried. Would he be able to meet Kingsley as if by accident? It had to appear accidental. He would say he had come to El Paso to visit a cousin. He would be completely surprised when he happened to run into Kingsley.

  Dios, it was such a gamble. If only he hadn’t had to change his plans halfway through all this. Meeting Kingsley a second time after the kidnapping was dangerous. The man might begin to suspect, or at the very least wonder about Hank’s involvement. He had meant to wait longer, to take the chance that Kingsley might sell to someone else before Hank got there, rather than appear too soon after the last message was delivered. But here he was. His plans had been changed—because of Samantha.

  There had been too many ifs where she was involved. She was too damned clever. Even now he couldn’t be completely sure that marrying her had covered all possibilities.

  As her husband, Hank had full control of everything that belonged to her. Divorce would not change that. Samantha could dissolve the marriage, but she could not get back what had legally become his the moment they we
d—the Hacienda de las Flores for one thing.

  But Hank still wanted the deed in his hands, paid for and entirely legal. In effect, he would be paying for what he already had control of. He didn’t want the land for nothing, though. That had never been his intention. He insisted on paying for it.

  But that raised another consideration. His offer was based on Pat’s promises, and if they didn’t pan out, he would be unable to buy the land. With Samantha as his wife, though, he no longer had to worry too much about that, he reminded himself.

  So why wasn’t he counting his blessings? Why was there that underlying regret, an insane desire to turn around and take Samantha back to the mountains, to make up to her for all the hurt, to forget about her father and his land, to make Samantha love him, somehow?

  Dios mío, he was crazy to even think such things. She was making him crazy!

  Chapter 33

  SAMANTHA would have been climbing the walls if there had been any to climb. Four days had passed and no one had come. The May heat was sweltering. The water, fetched during quick trips to the river, was warm and rusty tasting. The food supply was dwindling, and the men were feeling her impatience as well as their own.

  By that fourth afternoon, she was sick of the waiting, dirty and sticky, and, though it irked her pride to admit it, she smelled as bad as the men did. She was burned brown by the sun, and if her father were to come now, he probably wouldn’t recognize her. But he didn’t come. Why?

  “Something has gone wrong, Lorenzo,” Samantha accused after pulling him away from the others so they could talk alone. “You said one or two days. Why hasn’t my father come?”

  But Lorenzo knew as little as she did. “Perhaps he was not in El Paso.”

  “Hank would have returned if that were so. Besides, my father has a ranch only a few hours’ ride from town. He would be in one place or the other. Anyone looking for him would have found him by now.”

  “We can only wait.”

  “Without food?” she pointed out. “No, I demand you take me to town. We will see for ourselves what is going on.”

  “I was told to wait.”

  “Forever?” she snapped. “Damn it, you go then. No one will know you. Find out where my father is.”

  When Lorenzo shook his head, Samantha itched to hit him. “Why?” she cried. “What if something has happened to Hank? What if he wasn’t able to let my father know that I’m here? We could be waiting for nothing.” She saw his frown and pressed her point. “It would be a simple matter to find out if my father sold his Mexican land. He was to sell it to Antonio Chavez, Rufino’s cousin. You would only need to ask around. Please, Lorenzo. We can’t just wait.”

  He gave in. They needed food, and he used that excuse with Diego and Inigo.

  While Lorenzo was gone, Samantha was a bundle of nerves, the waiting and the apprehension of bad news closing in on her. Something had gone wrong, she was certain of it.

  If that wasn’t enough, Samantha had to contend with Diego and the leering grins he turned on her at every opportunity. It was the first time she had been left with him in charge of her. The fact that Inigo was there with them did not lessen her nervousness. She still thought of Inigo as a coward. If Diego decided to attack her, he would be no help.

  So her relief couldn’t have been greater when Lorenzo returned, before dark, just as the sun was setting. He seemed tired and troubled, however, and she held her breath, waiting for him to speak.

  He stared at her for several unbearably long moments, as if debating what, exactly to tell her. At last he said simply, “We will go now.”

  “Go? Just like that?” Confusion and anxiety were making her anger rise.

  “Por Dios!” Lorenzo exclaimed, impatient. “Is that not what you wanted to hear?”

  “I want to hear why my father didn’t come for me! What has happened to him?”

  “Nothing—that I know of. He was in town, but he is at his ranch now.”

  Samantha wanted to cry. “Then the land wasn’t sold? I’m still to be kept prisoner?”

  “The land was sold, two days ago. The new deed is recorded in the court house.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I located the clerk. He remembers Señor Kingsley—and the new owner. The sale was also announced publicly. I suppose your father thought one of us would be there, watching him and waiting to hear of the sale.”

  “But Rufino was there,” she reminded him. “Why didn’t he tell my father where to find me? My father did his part. Lorenzo, I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either,” Lorenzo sighed.

  “You didn’t find Rufino?”

  “No,” he replied reluctantly.

  “Then—” Her eyes widened suddenly. “He didn’t sell to someone else, did he? I mean, oh, Lord, Hank would have been furious if someone other than his cousin bought the land. That would explain—”

  “No.” Lorenzo interrupted her speculations. “The clerk I questioned remembers the buyer. It was Antonio Chavez.”

  “I…” She started to voice her confusion again, but suddenly she wasn’t confused anymore. “That son of a bitch! He did this on purpose!”

  “Who?”

  “Hank! Rufino!” she stormed. “He never intended to let my father know where to find me. Don’t you see? He’s done this for spite. He’s probably long gone, with his cousin, laughing because he’s left me and my father waiting.”

  Lorenzo shook his head, frowning. “I cannot believe that of him.”

  “Why not?” she asked furiously. “You don’t know him the way I do!”

  “But you are his wife.”

  “What has that got to do with it? He didn’t want to marry me any more than I did him. He had to force me to agree to it.”

  “I cannot believe that,” Lorenzo replied stubbornly.

  Samantha lost all patience. “Lorenzo, he’s not the man you seem to think he is. He may have saved your life, but that doesn’t make him honorable. He threatened to kill my father if I didn’t marry him. Do you really think I wanted to? Do you really think marriage made all right everything he did to me? He gets what he wants in whatever way he can. That’s the kind of man he is.”

  “Basta ya!” Lorenzo snapped angrily.

  “It’s not enough! You still don’t believe me, do you? But Hank’s got what he wanted and he’s gone. You can’t deny that. I should have been released two days ago. But I’m still here—you’re still here. He’s left you in the lurch just like me—and without a care!”

  Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed darkly. “Get your things! We go now!”

  “Where?”

  “I will take you to your father,” he replied brusquely.

  “And the others?”

  “They will go their own ways now. It is over.”

  It was over, really over. She was going home to her father. In just a few more hours, she would be with him….

  The water splashing up his nose choked Hank back to awareness. A bucket of it had been thrown in his face. It was not the first time, but he forgot and tried to shake the water out of his eyes. The pain stopped him, shooting through his head like the explosion of a thousand tiny lights. That made him remember—everything.

  One eye was shut tight, the other blurred from the water and stinging as his sweat ran into it. He hated to think what the rest of his face looked like. He could barely open his mouth. Both sides of his jaw were probably puffed out grotesquely from repeated blows. Blood was caked to his lips.

  There were things he could be thankful for, however…so far, at least. His nose had bled but it wasn’t broken. And he still had all his teeth, though they had shredded the inside of his mouth.

  He wasn’t sure about the rest of him. There were two ribs he knew for certain were cracked, but the pain in that area was deceiving. His whole rib cage felt crushed. His whole body felt crushed for that matter—except his hands. There was no longer any feeling in his hands at all, not even in the first two fingers of his right hand, w
hich had been pulled back until the bones snapped.

  How long had he been strung up now, rawhide cutting into his wrists, causing the numbness in his hands? A day? Two? It was night. He could see that much through the blur of his one open eye. Lanterns were burning brightly inside the old barn and it was dark outside the open door. It was left open because of the stink—his stink. He had not been fed, or let loose to relieve himself. But the shame of that was the least of his worries. For Hank could see no way out of this.

  How could things have gone so wrong so suddenly? He had met Hamilton Kingsley, as hoped, the second day in town. He hadn’t seemed to suspect anything at all, and had accepted Hank’s reason for being there. Hank hadn’t even offered to buy the land. He had waited for Kingsley to broach the subject. He had soon enough, and the deal had been settled, the papers signed late that afternoon. Hank had the deed, had it on his person right then, in his coat pocket. The land was his, legally—but a damn lot of good it was doing him just then.

  He had asked himself over and over again if it was worth it, and was slowly deciding that it wasn’t. There was little patience left. His tormentors were getting tired of his continued resistance, and who knew what was next?

  And Kingsley? Was he still here? How that man had fooled him, up until the deed was in his hands. Then he had seen the rancher talking with two of his hired men and felt the first inklings of uncertainty. Shortly after that, those two men had come to his room at the hotel. They had invited him to join Kingsley at his ranch. When he refused, they insisted, at gun point.

  It was early evening. No one had seen him being escorted out of town. He hadn’t even had the chance to have the message delivered to Kingsley, to let him know where he could find Samantha.

  But that wasn’t what Kingsley was interested in. He took it for granted that his daughter was on her way back to him, now that he had done exactly as instructed. No, Kingsley wanted El Carnicero—or the bandit he thought was El Carnicero. He was as hell-bent on revenge as Samantha had ever been, and he was convinced, or had let his men convince him, that Hank could lead them to El Carnicero.