Crack! The thunderous report of a rifle split the still evening air, reverberating off the wooded hills. Through the pall of sulfurous smoke, a spellbound Sarah watched as the warrior dropped to his knees, still clutching his weapon. As Kingston emerged from the forest, the dying man drew a whistling breath and took up a singsong chant that lasted but a moment before he fell on his face and lay lifeless.
Sarah covered her face with her hands. Then Kingston was there, wrapping her in his strong embrace, holding her tightly against him. Arms locked around her, he stroked her hair. His presence was comforting, but Sarah could not seem to still her trembling. “When he stepped from the forest, I thought it was you—” She broke off with a violent shudder, pressing closer.
His heart hammered in his chest and his breath came quick and shallow. It was obvious that he’d run a considerable distance. “How did you know where to find me?”
An odd look came over his face, the same haunted expression she’d noticed before when he’d spoken of Caroline. “It does not matter. All that matters is that you are unharmed, and that Killbuck will trouble me no more.”
Sarah felt his fury, felt it rise up to enfold him even while he held her close. The moment was broken and they both knew it. How strange it seemed that she felt such regret. Was this distance between them not what she wanted?
Feeling suddenly awkward, she stepped back, watching as Kingston went to his fallen foe. “You knew him?”
“Yes.” Bending down, Kingston took the knife from his belt with one hand, seizing the man’s scalp lock with the other. His blade bit deep and the blood ran.
Sarah turned away, sickened. The shock and the horror of the past few moments swept over her in a tremendous wave. Never had she felt so far away from home, so lost. The lush beauty of the evening had abated, leaving only savagery and death, wariness and fear in its golden wake. Danger lurked everywhere in the darkened landscape, watched in silence from the cover of the underbrush, striding alongside her, pure menace in buckskin.
Overwhelmed by all that occurred, dazed and confused, Sarah gave in to her mounting sickness and went down on her knees, retching helplessly into the weeds.
Somewhere in those miserable moments, Kingston came and knelt beside her, holding her head. “Oh, Kingston. How could you?”
“He was my enemy,” he said simply, almost gently. “You are English, and a woman. I do not expect you to understand.”
Sarah stood, pulling out of his grasp. “You have blood on your hands, your soul.”
“Sarah.”
“You have killed a man, Kingston! You have taken a life!”
He drew himself up as if she had slapped him. “Indeed, Madame. I took a life so that you might live!”
“There must have been another way!”
“What way?” he demanded. “Should I have waited until after he’d fired his weapon into your lovely white breast to ask his intentions? Then, as he was lifting your scalp, I could have inquired if he would like to have mine, too?”
With a sound of disgust, he grasped her arm and, retrieving his rifle and scalping knife, dragged her back to camp where Sarah sat, rubbing her arms and looking pointedly at the trophy that hung at his belt. “How many scalps have your taken? How many men have you killed on this barbaric rampage?”
His expression hardened, and the gold light of anger came into his eyes. “Call it what you like. I call it war, and I assure you, I have not killed enough by half. I will not rest until I have seen the last of them die.”
Sarah’s nape prickled. This was not the Kingston she had come to know since Kathryn Seaton’s death, a man given to small kindnesses, patient and teasing. This was the Kingston Sauvage who was the talk of the settlements, a man whose very name evoked suspicion and fear. Fierce, he looked. Capable of anything, and it was unwise to pursue the subject any further. She should be quiet until his blood had cooled, yet she could not be.
She had come to care for him, and she wanted to help him. Wanted to understand. “Every last one of whom? What did Killbuck do that made you relish taking his life?”
For a long while he stood unmoving and unresponsive. When at last he spoke again, his words were forced. “He conspired with others to steal my life from me.”
“Your life?” Sarah frowned. “I do not understand.”
“Nor do I, and there is the irony of it. I did not ask for any of this. I wanted no part of their damnable war, until they brought it to my doorstep. They gave me no choice in the matter. But I vow upon my beating heart, upon my last drop of blood, that I will make them rue that day!”
“This has to do with Caroline, doesn’t it, Kingston? And the French renegade, La Bruin?”
For a moment, he maintained his silence. When at last he spoke again, his voice had lost its razor’s edge, had grown soft and full of melancholy. “I was hunting when they arrived at our home, and Caroline, far gone in her pregnancy, was alone. She could not have known who he was or what he wanted, until it was too late. He lured her from the cabin by telling her he was a friend of mine and when she was outside and vulnerable, he threw her down and took her.”
Tears of sympathy were welling up in Sarah’s eyes. “I am sorry,” she said. Kingston seemed not to hear her. The floodgates had creaked open, and the tragic truth came rushing out.
“She fought him, even while he savaged her body, great with our child. And when at last, he had tired of her, he cut her throat and left her to bleed out her life in the cabin dooryard.” A muscle worked violently in his cheek. “I returned that evening as it was gathering dusk to find that our home had been reduced to ashes, my life destroyed.” His voice cracked, but he went on. “Our son had been born while his mother lay dying. So small that he barely filled my two hands—too small, too weak to live.”
“You lost him, too.”
“He died in my arms. Sometime later, I buried them together, the child in his mother’s arms.”
“I am sorry, Kingston,” Sarah said. “I am sorry for your loss, your suffering, but you must not go on like this. It’s is God’s place to mete out justice for La Bruin’s sins, not yours.”
He raised his fathomless black gaze to Sarah’s face. “Killbuck took part in the raid upon my home. He was a killer of defenseless women and children, and he got what he deserved.”
“You do not understand,” she said angrily, but he cut her off.
“I understand that your god’s justice is too slow in coming. Where was your god, Madame, a few moments ago? If not for my skill with a rifle, you would have been killed back there, and your god would not raise a hand to prevent it! Indeed, your god is the same god who sat back and did nothing while La Bruin killed my wife and child! An ineffectual, uncaring god.”
“You must not say such things!” Sarah said, taking his hands in hers, gripping them tightly. “Your heart is wounded, yes. You need time to recover.”
He laughed at that, a dark and chilling sound, filled with hurt. “I have no heart, cherie. I buried it deep with my wife and my son in the secret place in the woods. So, do not attempt to save me from myself. It can’t be done.”
Sarah could not leave him to court his own death. She cared too much. “It can, if only you will let someone help you.”
“Who?” he replied with a snort. “There is no one left to give a damn if I live or die!”
Sarah gripped his hands more tightly. “I care. I care what you do, and what you become. I care that your heart is wounded.”
Sauvage looked at her, long and searingly. His blood lust, his passion, was still running high, and what she was offering was terribly intriguing, the soothing balm for which his soul had long cried out. “Do you?” he asked, softly, gravely.
She nodded and, unable to resist, he reached out to cup her cheek. She closed her eyes, but made no effort to pull away, to retreat. It was all that Kingston needed. “Heal me, then, Sarah. Heal my ravaged heart, if indeed you dare.”
He kissed her with all the pent-up passion, all the
longing that had kept him awake nights listening to the rhythm of her breathing as she slept, silently willing her to waken, to come to him in passion and in want. There was little tenderness in him now. Mercilessly, he crushed her lips against his, opening and conquering her mouth and tongue, stealing her sweetness....
And she allowed it. A single word could have stayed him, a gesture could have kept him at bay. Instead she moaned against his mouth and joined in his savage play, her arms stealing around his neck to hold him ever closer, her hands tangling painfully in his hair.
Pain was nothing to Sauvage. She could have raked him with her sharp little nails and he would have gloried in it. Pain, at least was something with which to fill the throbbing chasm of his being, something to combat the hideous emptiness.
Dead inside. That’s what he’d been until he’d found her at the hunter’s camp, and she had breathed life back into his withering shell and forced him to feel again.
And he did feel, sensation so keen it brought an unaccustomed moisture to his eyes. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted a woman, even Caroline. The longing under which he suffered was intensified tenfold by his abject loneliness. “Sarah,” he said, his fingers swiftly unfastening her buttons, drawing her bodice over her shoulders and down. “Sarah, speak to me. Tell me this is real, and that I will not wake in abject misery.”
In silent reply, she grasped his hands and kissed each in turn... then kissed his cheeks, his chin, his lips... and Sauvage began to quiver. “It must be a dream,” she said. “Otherwise, I would not be in your arms. And if it is a dream, then I do not wish to awaken.”
He trailed heated kisses down her throat and claimed her breast, taking her luscious pink nipple into his mouth and feeling it harden. His emotions were raging inside him. They tugged at him, insisting, screaming, demanding of him, until he wanted to throw his head back and howl like a beast.
Was that not what they called him now? He’d caught wind of the whispers, and he’d never gone out of his way to dispel the rumors. Those rumors, combined with his penchant for solitude, had only served to enhance his reputation, to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies.
He wanted his enemies to fear him, but not Sarah. Never, Sarah. He wanted to possess her, to please her, he did not wish to harm her—and so he slowly gained control over the red tide swirling and gathering and dashing itself once more upon his senses, crushing it small beneath an iron will.
Think of Sarah. Think only of Sarah. Tamping down his lust and loneliness, he lowered her slowly, gently, to the ground. Raising her skirts, he lavished her soft white breasts with kisses, his questing fingers seeking and finding the downy curls that capped her womanhood, and the dark jewel hidden within.
Still caught in the throes of passion, Sarah welcomed him, reveling in his possession. Flesh loving hungry flesh. She’d never known such sensation, such depth of desire could exist. Pious and trembling Sarah, pink, white, and brown little mouse, had at a touch miraculously turned to a wanton.
Where was her propriety now?
Her sense of good and right?
Her loyalty?
Gone like a puff of dust before the howling gale. Kingston had been right. Whatever this was between them—infatuation, attraction, physical want—it was too strong to resist, and she could not stand stalwart before it. He kissed her and she crumbled. He begged her to heal him and she fell into his arms, willing to do anything, to give anything, to ease the haunted look in his eyes.
Sarah’s familiar world was ending, and standing amidst the dust and rubble that remained was Kingston. Nothing else existed for her in this moment. Nothing else mattered. Not the great gulf that separated them, not cultural differences, not religious faith, or the lack thereof.
He touched her flesh, fingers splayed, as if he would savor every inch of her body, and that flesh, that body, tingled. Fire scorched her breast as he kissed it, licking clean through to her vulnerable heart. There was no part of her left untouched.
Kingston’s hard hand swept up her thigh, beneath her skirts, and a welter of blistering heat followed in its wake. Sarah sighed and moved against him, fighting to catch her breath. His fingers stroked the ache between her thighs, and she arched her hips, straining to meet his kiss as the flames leapt higher, wave after searing wave of unbearable ecstasy.
“Sarah,” he whispered hoarsely. “Sarah, my angel. Only you can deliver me from this torment.”
“Hello the camp!”
Kingston buried his face in her breasts and she heard him curse virulently through gritted teeth. Reluctantly, he rose to find his rifle, shielding Sarah from view as the visitor stepped from the trees.
Chapter 8
The newcomer dropped his reins as he approached Kingston and, laughing delightedly, threw his arms around the glowering frontiersman, saluting him on either cheek before the other could prevent him. “Sauvage, my friend! My almost brother! How good it is to find you here and looking fit, how fortunate! What has it been since last we met? Two months? Why, no, it must be nearly three! Too long, certainly!” He grinned, all flashing blue eyes, wavy golden hair, and dimples. “Ho! What is this? Are you not happy to see me? Will you not invite me to join you? Where the devil have your fine manners gone to?”
Kingston’s manner was strained. Sarah could feel his tension, a goodly portion of which, she was certain, had to do with the stranger’s untimely intrusion. “What are you doing here? No, do not tell me—doubtless, you are in some sort of trouble, and I do not wish to know the details. Just go away, Angel.”
Angel paused, perplexed. “Go away? Go away! That’s it? That’s how you greet your partner? Your almost brother?”
Kingston folded his arms before him. “Very well, then, go away, damn you.”
Angel drew himself up. “I am affronted—no, I am hurt. Wounded! To think that after years of camaraderie and working together you would deny me the hospitality of your campfire!”
“Be wounded somewhere else.”
“I know what this is about. You have never forgiven me for trying to make love to Caroline on your wedding night.”
“I am not angry about that,” Kingston corrected. “I realize you are a buffoon, and cannot help yourself.”
“Why then, are you acting this way?”
“Suffice to say, this is not a good time for you to be here.”
There was a pregnant silence, during which Sarah’s struggles to fasten the myriad of hooks closing the front of her gown sounded clearly. “Who is there, lurking behind you?”Angel demanded. “Perdition! Is that a woman? By God, it is. And from what I can see, a very attractive woman, at that.”
“Your powers of observation astound me,” Kingston said. “Now, kindly get you gone.”
“One moment!” Angel countered. “First, drag out your manners and dust them off! It will do you no good to refuse. I shall not budge an inch until you have introduced me to the young lady.”
Sarah had fastened the last of her hooks and twitched her bodice into place by the time Kingston sighed his surrender and cast a questioning look over his broad shoulder. “I was hoping to avoid this, but as you can see, it is no use.” He stepped aside, enough to allow the firelight to shine fully upon Sarah. “Madame, this is Angel. Angel, Madame.” He turned to his friend. “You got what you wanted; now kindly leave us.”
“If I did not know better, I would think you an ignorant savage,” Angel said, striding forward to bow low over Sarah’s hand. “Dear lady, please allow me to take charge of this situation, since it seems to be somewhat beyond my friend’s simple capabilities. He has been alone in the wilderness too long, and has forgotten all that I once taught him. I am Renoir Phillipe Betrand de Angelheart, late of Quebec, Montreal, Fort Detroit, and Onondaga... in that order. And you are?”
“Mrs. Timothy Marsters,” Sarah returned shyly, “but my Christian name is Sarah.”
“Madame to you!” Kingston insisted, taking Angel by the arm and propelling him forcibly toward his mount.
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Sarah struggled to keep pace with him, tugging at his sleeve. “Kingston, please, do not act in haste! It is terribly rude to send him away. It is late, and Monsieur de Angelheart would be forced to set up camp in the darkness. Besides, we have plenty of wood for the fire, and he can have my portion of the venison if need be. Will you not rethink your decision?”
Kingston frowned at her; she read the disappointment in his expression. He wanted rid of Angel for the very same reasons she wanted him to stay: he was talkative, and charming, and he would provide a buffer between the two of them. Fearful of what might occur if they were alone again together, she lay her hand upon his arm and softly begged, “Kingston, please. For my sake.”
“Sarah,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “Do not ask this of me. If you do not come back to my arms this instant, I shall die of wanting you.”
Sarah smiled tremulously. “He is a guest. If we turn him away for the sake of satisfying our own selfish needs and something untoward should happen, I would never forgive myself.”
“Nor would you forgive me,” Kingston replied. He stared down at her, his eyes full of black fire. “Are you sure this is what you want?” Then, at her answering nod, “Very well. It seems I can deny you nothing.” He brushed his thumb across the corner of her mouth. “Would that you shared my weakness.” He faced his friend. “I trust that you will be leaving early?”
“Kingston!” Sarah admonished. And then, to their guest, “Please, sir. See to your mount, then come and sit. You must be weary from your travels.”
“So kind, and so lovely.” Angel cast a triumphant glance at Kingston. “It makes one wonder how so gracious a lady finds herself in such boorish company.”
Kingston snorted and, taking up his well-oiled rag, went to sit by the fire. Angel was unperturbed. “There is no need to look so distressed upon my account,” he said, loudly enough for Kingston to hear. “I am well accustomed to my host’s evil humors, and know from whence they stem. They are a direct result of an unhappy childhood. I, on the other hand, was a blissful babe. That’s why I’m so—”
Lord of the Wolves Page 9
