by Thea Devine
Because I hate him, she thought fiercely in response; because he has to put us in this position in both instances and he's enjoying every last moment of making my father crawl to him. And reducing me to a piece of property he either owns or doesn't own.
Her father was looking at her strangely now, as if all she were thinking was reflected in her face. But in fact,
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her expression had gone totally impassive as she made these wrathful conjectures; her father could no more tell what she was thinking than could Deuce. And all Deuce was doing was lounging back in his chair, just watching her with those cold, slaty gray eyes and grimly set mouth. Ryland had to press his daughter; he could see very plainly that her acquiescence was the only thing that would bail him out and resuscitate his failing business and his good name. Deuce would not have had a thing to do with him otherwise. He wanted Kalida, and the rest of it—the syndicate, the cattle, his rangeland — was irrelevant.
"Kalida!" he said imperatively, leaning forward a little, trying to get a fix on what she was thinking. There was nothing. She didn't know what to tell him. The degree of animosity she felt toward Deuce and how much, or if, she could temper it were her only guiding factors. He wished she did not hate him so much; he wished that Deuce were a little less of a overlord in these parts. Of course an independent nature like Kalida's would chafe against that kind of overbearing arrogance. He perfectly understood it. He just wanted her to agree to Deuce's terms anyway. She had to.
But Kalida knew all that. "I have to think about it, Papa." It was the best she could do.
Ryland nodded, but his hands clenched in order to contain his impatience. Kalida must not see how desperate he was —even if she intuited it. He must play the part well. She must come to the right decision without feeling that she was being blackmailed. She must, damn it, and he knew many women who would have married for less. By God, it was a good bargain, and he swore he would have her committed if she rejected it. So he forced himself to say calmly, "That's only fair. I'll excuse myself then and get cleaned up." And he had to force himself to slide back his chair, stand up calmly, and walk out of that
room without looking back, leaving Kalida alone with Deuce.
Another long, heavy silence followed. Prestina came in and cleared away the dishes without a word, not even commenting on the amount of food left over, and withdrew only after thoroughly rubbing down the plain pine harvest table.
Kalida sat liRe a statue watching Prestina, while seated beside her, Deuce observed her; she felt as if she were cornered even though he hadn't said a word.
She slanted a covert glance at him. The hard lines of his face were harshly drawn now, and he waited with a patience she never would have dreamed he possessed. A wave of heat emanated from him, but his flinty speculative gaze was unswerving. He expected her to speak, and he would do nothing to help her.
But then, why should he? she wondered. What did she want him to do? He had done enough already, she thought acrimoniously, and he hadn't even acknowledged that! But if she said the word to her father about what had happened this morning, she was sure he would be delighted.
He would wonder what all her fussing had been about. And he would see no obstruction whatsoever to either Deuce's plans or his own.
She had to face the facts: Neither she nor her father had any leverage at all over Deuce Cavender. She herself was the only bargaining chip they had. And she couldn't comprehend why he was so adamant about that. She knew he didn't care whether her father went under or not. He was using their bad luck to get at her. And the only conclusion she could reach was that she must give her father his chance to recoup, whatever it took.
She gathered her resolve together almost as if she were girding her body to ward off a physical blow and twisted herself to face him. "Deuce," she began, but one look at
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his mocking expression stopped her instantly. "Take me upstairs, please," she finished imperiously and somewhat warily. She did not like that look one bit. It said he had plotted out all her thoughts almost before she did, and he already knew her answer because she had been trapped from the very moment he and her father had made their first agreement.
"Yes, ma'am," he said meekly. But his eyes! Cold stone as he hoisted himself up, pushed her chair backward, and bent to slide his large hands under her arms.
Like plucking some exotic bouquet, he thought grimly, and with one mightly flex of his muscles, he heaved her body headfirst over his shoulder as she shrieked, "Damn you, you lousy varmint! What the hell do you think you're doing?" even as she felt his huge hands clasping her legs and one of them moving slowly up the silky folds of her gown to her buttocks.
"Just steadying you," Deuce said calmly, cupping her bottom with one hand and holding her ankles firmly with the other. He began to move, and she pounded his back. "Put me down, damn it; I will not be toted around like a sack of flour. Deuce, put me down!" God, she hated him; she hated him and his hot searing hands that made her feel totally naked and helpless. She just wanted down so that she wouldn't have to think about his hands, or not moving her legs, or the rock solid sense of him beneath her, or the way she must trust him to haul her around like that. No, no! She had to think. She could not go on like this either. Her voice was grittily ragged as she hissed again, "Put me down, Deuce."
His body shifted and she found herself sitting primly on the edge of the scrubbed table. "Don't you look good enough to eat," he said sourly. "I hope you don't intend to stay here all afternoon to offer some variety to the luncheon menu." His tone of voice said she had better not, and she took it so seriously that she felt like attack-
ing him at that very moment. "I could kill you," she spat viciously. "Do it," he challenged, his voice burning hard. "Do it; use your legs; come after me, Kalida. End the game." He watched her eyes narrow and then disappear under her half-closed lids. "I dare you, Kalida."
"God," she breathed, "if I could use my legs I'd kick you in a place you'd feel it forever, Deuce Cavender." "And what do you think you've been doing with your damned words, my girl?" He moved directly in front of her. "Now. Do it. I'm here. I know you're not helpless." He leaned into her, bracing his arms on either side of her legs. Her blazing navy eyes widened and dilated as he forced her backward, so that she had to brace her body with her elbows. "Run, Kalida, run; this is your last chance. Run, or I'll take you right here."
"You're crazy," she whispered wildly, wriggling her body further back onto the table.
One viselike hand clamped down on her leg and pulled her forward again. "I'm not the crazy one, Kalida. You're the one defying me; you're the one who is going to ruin yourself and your father. So you'd better run while you have the chance." Now he watched her through hooded eyes, his face impassive, his mouth in an inflexible line. "Did you think I would carry both you and your father forever?" he finally asked harshly.
"You don't care about him," she accused, utterly numbed by his raw intensity.
"Yes, and you know just what I do care about, Kalida."
"No!" One of her hands shot out to brace itself against his chest.
"Yes." He pushed against her hand and her arm gave, falling back to the table and the support of her weakening body. His heat seared her, his incomprehensible anger beating in waves against her consciousness.
"I don't understand," she whispered as his mouth came
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inexorably closer to hers.
"You understand everything," he rasped against her lips, and he claimed them like a conqueror, ravaging her mouth, moving downward to her neck, the flat of her chest, and the swell of her breasts under the thin, thin protection of silk that could dissolve at a breath.
He paused at the sight of the profile of one taut tip outlined against the center of a blossom, against the white hot radiance of the morning sun pouring into the room. "No," she whimpered, but it was too late as she said it. His hand had cupped her breast under the material, pushing it gently upw
ard to meet the heat of his marauding mouth, and it melted the flimsy silk; it melted her, the succulent pulling of his mouth against that straining nipple, and she only wanted him to continue on and on. She watched as he held her and almost unnotice-ably began, with his other hand, to push aside the waterfall of translucent silk so that he could fully feel the silk of her body. And she was lost. She would never run, not from this —this incredibly voluptuous wet tingling that enveloped her.
Never from this tight point of pleasure that pulled at her senses unbearably and unendingly. His golden mouth moved, first to her right breast to caress its tempting crest, then to her belly, and then slowly slowly downward. She felt herself writhing against him, feeling like a pagan goddess being worshipped as he began with luscious intent to show her all that it meant to be his woman.
His woman; the words reverberated as her senses expanded and whirled. Like the petals of a spring flower, wet from the rain, her desire unfurled, unrolling in a giant spasm of pleasure that sent her spiralling almost to the edge of unconsciousness.
And his movement stopped as she lay panting and breathless, and he allowed himself the moment to inhale her perfume, to caress the long line of her silken thighs.
He gently lifted them downward and sat up, and she raised herself onto her elbows at the same moment. "Don't ever do that again," she hissed, heaving herself upright and hurriedly pulling the edges of the gown together. How could she make him see she wanted no part of him when her body just as graphically contradicted her words?
She saw in his eyes he wanted more of her, and more, and her only thought was to run. To get away from him whose hands and mouth could wreak such havoc on her. Hadn't he said very plainly he didn't care about her father? Why should she sacrifice herself to that? Why? Why should she become in thrall with a man she hated, a man whose sole occupation was to demonstrate forcibly just how much power he wielded and to devil with whom or what got in his way? Oh, no. Oh, no. She ignored her tingling body and his cold gray glare as he perceived that, in spite of her raw and perfect response to him, she wanted none of him still. She felt dizzy with humiliation; no glory in that lush swell of pleasure that overrode her commonsense, only the notion that her decision had been made. Her father would have to fend for himself.
"So," Deuce said harshly, waiting, his patience wearing thin and thinner still at her rigidity and the stiffness of her body. She would yield to nothing, he thought, and he could admire her for that. And hate her for it at the same time; she had no sense at all of what she was preparing to give up. "Run, Kalida," he advised in a hard, threatening voice, leaning into her once again. "Run, because I'm not hardly done with you, and I hope you know what you're playing with and what you're denying, because you're going to lose on all counts. All counts. To me, Kalida. Your father can go broke for all I care, but you, my girl, are not leaving Sweetland. You can spend the rest of your damned life in my bed waiting for me, but that's where you'll spend it, Kalida. That's just about as far as you'll
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get."
She seethed at his words, at his arrogance. At his certainty that she had no choices, none at all, even though she was exactly sure that she would never consent to him, never. And even now he must show her he had the power as his body slanted over hers and forced her backward again. This time she did not hesitate to think; this time she acted. She had to have her legs to defeat him, and defeat him she would. She pulled her legs upward and kneed him in the groin. As he stumbled backward she thrust her feet into his midriff, and he lurched into a nearby chair. There was only a moment's break before he recovered enough to follow her, but by that time she had dashed out of the dining room on a mad run toward the pasture.
She could not get far; she was hampered by the thin stuff of her robe and its glaring visible colors against the new jade grass and the crystal blue sky. And by her bare feet. By her wild hair that streamed out behind her. By the crowd of wranglers who had stopped working to watch her.
He mounted his stallion at a dead run and sent him galloping after her, ignoring the pain between his legs and in his ribs. The bitch, the utter brazen bitch; she couldn't brazen it out, he thought, and good for me: I've got her where I want her now, and she is not going to get far. Not an inch beyond the spring. I'll drown her first. She'll never get away. Never.
Chapter Eight
She was not so far beyond the house, she saw, as she turned and looked behind her. Damn, she would never elude him this way. Kalida cut across the burgeoning spring lawn toward the little orchard. Here, among the trees that were fed by the little spring that sparkled in the distance, she might, just might, be able to hide from him. How was she going to escape him? She pushed away the obvious answer—that she couldn't. That it was barely afternoon and she could not depend on staying hidden until nightfall. That she had nowhere to go, and no way to get there. That she had no clothes save the flimsy silk on her back, with its brilliant colors that probably could be seen a mile away.
She groaned. The traps were everywhere; she would be better off to discard the thing, but she couldn't quite make herself do it. She slid it off and tied the sleeves around her hips as she proceeded further into the grove where the dappled shadows were cool and concealing. He would be looking for glimmers of color, and here her skin was radiant sunlight, her taut tipped breasts as heavy as the ripening fruit.
She did not look behind her as she threaded her way through the neat rows of trees, but she knew as surely as she knew anything that Deuce was following her, that he was perhaps even then skirting the very edge of the
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orchard, stalking her patiently and impatiently by turns, exasperated beyond measure with her deceit and her duplicity, as she was with herself, and waiting. Her breath quickened at the thought of him waiting. Waiting for what? Her capitulation? Ha! Even if he won this bout, he would never have that. Never.
Her body tensed almost in opposition to her thoughts, and she denied its message. She knew her body was weak, and she admitted he could get to her that way. Yes, the body could give in all it wanted; but the mind would remain hers. He would never touch her mind.
She was approaching the edge of the grove now and her heartbeat accelerated. Far in the distance, beyond the spring water that twinkled like sunlit diamonds in the early afternoon light, there was nothing but open pasture dotted with little copses of bushes barely large enough to conceal a mewling lamb let along a grown woman. And a small stand of young trees that shaded one small end of the spring. Not a line shack or a fence broke the rest of the landscape, and Kalida shivered. The futility of her flight was chillingly apparent.
She sank to the ground under the last of the row of apple trees. Everything was reassuringly still, the sun blazing hot, the air fragrant and caressingly warm.
Where was he?
On her hands and knees she crawled horizontally along the line of trees until she came to the edge of the short side of the grove. To the east was the house, sitting like a stately matron on a slight rise above the fields. Deuce was nowhere in sight, although she could see figures, horses, movement. She knew he had followed her. She knew she had hardly disabled him. But where was he?
Her heart pounded violently. All she could think was that she was trapped, trapped, trapped. And then suddenly, two huge hands grabbed her from behind around her silk-shrouded hips and she screamed as she was
dragged backward, on her knees and into the granite wall of Deuce's chest. He toppled her onto her side and then on her back, and straddled her wildly thrashing legs.
He leaned forward, supporting his body with his arms, his eyes devouring the lush curve of her naked breasts before they swept up to meet her icy blue gaze. "It's a miracle," he murmured ironically, "how you so unexpectedly regained! the use of your legs." Her hips bucked under him and he bore down harder on her body. She could feel his thick iron-hard staff digging into her soft flesh, even through the work-rough denims he wore. His arms surrounded her now as he braced his
upper torso on his elbows, and his face was close enough for her to claw, close enough for her to glare into the flinty stone of his unyielding eyes that had no softness for her. Close enough to see every harsh, obdurate line of his face that told her he was adamant and determined. Close enough so that her traitorous body was aroused already by the feel of him on her, by the memory of his arrogant lovemaking.
"No!" She groaned the word out loud almost as if she were denying the feelings to him as well as herself.
He watched her face intently at this reaction. The permutations were almost amusing; he felt a softness toward her now because he knew he truly had her boxed in. But she would not look at him. Her eyes were closed first, as though she were wrestling with some inner voice; and then they were opened and looking far away, never at him. And he did not move. He lay sprawled on her, his arms surrounding her shoulders and head, and he followed the temporizing movements of her head with his eyes until he could stand it no longer; then he spoke, his voice rough with the impatience of waiting. "All your little tricks are useless, Kalida; you've done nothing but delay things and sorely try my temper to boot."
"You know what my answer to that is," she retorted, consciously tensing her fingers so as not to slap him. "My
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God, I never even considered the thought that having a shrew in your home would deter you more effectively than someone who is incapacitated. You're just like every other damned man: You want everything all your own way."
"Yes I do," he said ominously.
"You can't have it," she countered defiantly.
"But I will have you," he contradicted warningly. "And you will agree, not only because it's the only thing you can do, but because you will want to—"
"You have a nerve, telling me what I want to do," she broke in disparagingly, moving her hands just a tad to get them in a place where she could do something to him for his godalmighty abominable arrogance. "That's not nearly what I want to do."
