But it didn't matter what Hunter wanted. Not when Cass was so exhausted and needed his help.
He shoved to his feet and went about building up the fire, exchanging his own wet clothes for a dry shirt and buckskin breechclout, and preparing a meal. He didn't wake Cass until everything was ready.
She sat up sloe-eyed and disoriented. "Oh, Hunter," she murmured, glancing around. "I didn't mean to just—"
"And how long has it been since you slept?" he asked, handing her a plate of venison stew. "Or ate enough to keep a bird alive?"
"I haven't felt much like eating."
"Eat tonight, get a good night's rest, and we'll look for Meggie in the morning," he advised her, trying to make it sound as simple as that.
Above them thunder rumbled across the sky, and the walls of the tent billowed in the wind.
"Will we be able to keep to the trail after such a storm?" Cass asked him.
"Ben McGarrity claims I'm the best tracker west of Omaha."
"Oh, are you, now?" she asked, venturing a smile.
Cassie's smiles were so rare that Hunter paused a moment to watch her. "I am," he assured her. "Now tell me what happened at the fort."
"Only once you've told me how you ended up killing Jessup."
Hunter scowled but explained his suspicions about the sutler. He told her about finding the extra set of books, how Jessup had come after him, and what he'd done to defend himself.
"I shouldn't have blundered into the trading post the way I did," he chided himself. "I should have been more careful."
"Still, I think you had it right," Cass said, setting aside her plate. "Jessup had to be the one who sent word about the rifles."
"But I didn't get the proof we need to clear your name." What was worse, he'd killed a white man. Nothing he'd done or been before mattered now that Jessup's blood was on his hands.
"Major McGarrity might listen if he knew what you'd found," Cass offered. "Ben's a fair man, and it might make a difference once he knows you killed Jessup in self-defense."
Hunter wished what Cass said was true. "But I didn't get the ledgers. And if Grenville and Lloyd are swearing I killed Jessup in cold blood, what chance is there that anyone will believe me? "
He shoved to his feet and stood over her. "I am what I am, Cass—half-Arikara. Half-savage and not to be trusted. No one will believe a word I say when it comes to this, not even Ben."
He paced to the far side of the fire. "Now, tell me what happened this afternoon."
Cass wound her fingers together in her lap. "What happened with Meggie, you mean?"
"What happened with you?"
High, mottled color flared in Cassie's cheeks. She lifted her head. "This afternoon my husband divorced me."
Hunter's gut tightened. There was so much he didn't understand about Cass and Drew. He didn't know whether Cass loved the captain in spite of everything. He couldn't seem to comprehend what loyalties had bound them together or what had forced them apart. What he did know was that Reynolds had the power to hurt her, and Hunter resented that beyond all else.
"I know how much you wanted to make your marriage work," he told her evenly.
She acknowledged his words with a delicate dip of her chin, a subtle compression of those pale, pale lips. "Drew said he'd been wrong to entrust his daughter to me." She repeated the words like some vile litany. "He said he'd been wrong to marry me, no matter what we'd been to each other once."
Anger flared in Hunter like burning pitch. The bastard didn't have a right to blame Cass because their marriage failed, to make her feel as if the destruction of the life they'd tried to make together lay with her.
Months before, Hunter had convinced himself that Drew Reynolds would be better for Cass than he could be. He'd told himself that the captain could offer her more, protect her better, love her in a way Hunter could never aspire to. He knew now how much of a fool he'd been not to take his courage in his hands and court her, give Cass a choice.
Cass swallowed hard before she went on. "Drew threw me out of the cabin. He brought out the trunk where I kept my things and heaved it off the porch. He said he didn't want me as his wife anymore."
Goddamn Drew Reynolds for making Cass feel small and worthless again.
Hunter came to his knees beside Cass and took her hands. They were cold in his, and he willed her his warmth. She was shaking, and he willed her his strength.
"I stayed near the house," Cass went on, "to say goodbye to Meggie. I knew she wouldn't understand what had happened between her father and me. I didn't want her to think I was leaving her because I didn't love her or that this was her fault."
"Why would Meggie think that?"
"Because she's the one who set him off. She got into Drew's paints. She drew a tattoo on her cheek that was just like mine."
Hunter held his peace by dint of will.
"I waited hours before I realized she was gone, hours before I went after her..."
Cass began to cry.
Hunter gathered her up in his arms. Cass curled her fingers into his clothes and dragged him closer. She shivered and twisted against him, her tears hot against his throat.
"Oh, Hunter, you've got to help me get Meggie back. I don't want her to be afraid all the time," Cass whispered, as if even now she must keep the truth about her captivity a secret. "I don't want her to have to fight so hard to survive. I don't want her to be different, always separate, always alone."
"We'll find her, Cass. I promise."
She shivered again. He felt that tremor pass from her flesh into his at the places where their bodies touched. He felt the fear for Meggie pass from her heart to his.
"Just hold me," she whispered, sounding raw and desperate and so very much afraid. "Don't let me go."
Hunter couldn't have refused her if he had wanted to.
The wooden bed frame creaked and sighed as he eased them both down into the nest of blankets and skins. Cass settled into the crook of his shoulder, seeming calmer, satisfied.
"We're safe here," he whispered. With the tepee tucked out of sight in the grassy vee between two out-croppings of crumbled stones, no one could find them. Nothing could touch them, not even the storm still raging around them.
Yet even while he assured Cass she was safe, Hunter's blood had begun to burn. He was too aware of her pressed close against his side, of her hand lying lax at the base of his throat. Sensation rippled through him, faint shimmers of heat dancing along his skin. He was possessed of a feverish restlessness that made him want to claim her mouth and move against her.
Hunter summoned honor to keep the wanting at bay, but he no longer believed that Cassandra was Drew Reynolds's wife. The way the captain had disavowed her today at the fort nullified the bond between them—at least in Hunter's eyes. In the eyes of the Arikara and the Cheyenne.
He turned his face into her tumbled hair and tried to will the wanting from his blood. But she smelled of clean, cool rain, of wide, bright fields of wildflowers. She felt wondrously right in his arms, all delicate and womanly, all willing and warm.
He raised one hand to touch her cheek, and she turned her face to his. He pressed a petal-soft kiss onto her mouth and heard the rasp of her indrawn breath. He deepened the kiss, the slow, soft friction devastatingly tender and blissfully sweet. He brushed the contours of her lips with the tip of his tongue and stroked the smooth inner surface. He tasted of her honeyed warmth and lingered over her.
It was an innocent enough exchange, yet when he raised his head, Cass seemed as dazzled by the kisses as Hunter felt.
He wanted to tell her right then that he loved her, to promise to cherish and keep her all the rest of her days, to give her a place to belong. But it was far too soon to offer so much.
They had to get Meggie back. Cass needed time to lament what she'd lost with Drew. Only when that was over could he tell her what he felt for her.
Still, he couldn't seem to stop touching her, stroking her, tangling his fingers in her hair. He nuzz
led from her temple to the turn of her jaw, nibbled down her neck and along the ridge of her collarbone. He paused in the hollow at the base of her throat.
The creamy expanse of her upper chest lay bared to him. He pressed tiny, down-soft kisses along her breastbone and into the dusky valley below. He breathed the warmth of her, the elusive essence of her femininity. He swirled his tongue against her skin, branding her with his heat.
Cass gasped and rose against him.
Tempting as she was, Hunter refused to take her while she was confused and exhausted and vulnerable. He refused to take her when what she needed was a guardian who was sane and strong, someone who was man enough to simply hold and soothe her.
Meaning to ease her away, he braced one hand against her hip. But instead of the blanket or the fabric of his shirt, smooth, bare flesh came under his palm.
Hunter sucked in his breath as if he'd been burned. Instead of pulling back, he closed his fingers over the jut of her hipbone, the firm, cool silk of her skin.
Desire moved through him like a deep red stain. It invaded every cell, sharpened his senses, and set his pulses thundering. His head went light at the thought of all the wild and wondrous things they could do together. He tried to hold back, tried to think, tried to be sensible. But with his hands on her, with her body gathered close, all he could think about was making love to her.
In the seconds before his skein of reason ran out, Hunter turned to her. "Please, Cass, don't let me make this mistake."
Cass smiled at him, a slow, heartbreaking smile that stole his breath. "Would it still be a mistake," she asked him, "if we made it together?"
And Hunter was lost.
Cass looked up and saw the blue flame flare in those dark, dark eyes. A frisson of anticipation danced through her. She wanted this. She wanted it, and the strength of her wanting astonished her.
In the years since the Kiowa had taken her, she had learned to trade in the only coin a woman had. She had given herself because she would have died if she hadn't submitted. Because it was her duty as a wife. In an attempt to recapture the past and secure her place.
She wanted Hunter for herself. She needed him to help her forget all she'd hoped for and all she'd lost. She yearned for him to make her feel whole and desired and beautiful. She had tasted the promise of fulfillment in his kiss, in the brush of his hands, in the press of his body against her. And she needed the pleasure he could give her.
As if he understood, Hunter whispered her name, caressing it, giving it depths and inflections she'd never known it could have. He moved over her, taking her mouth in a kiss that was desperate and desiring, a kiss that made her feel like a woman, from the surface of her skin to the depths of her soul.
As he began to tease the buttons along the front of her shirt from their holes, Cass allowed awareness to seep into her on levels and in ways that she had never been able to acknowledge before. She had looked into his face and read concern and tenderness and anger in those harsh, familiar features. But she had never let herself see the stark beauty in the sharply delineated brow and cheekbones, in the breadth of his jaw and the curve of his mouth.
She had taken shelter in his arms, relied on his strength, but she had never questioned why he made her feel so safe.
She had watched those broad, brown hands guide a child and wield a war club, but she had never let herself feel the tantalizing friction of his callused palms against her skin. Cass shivered with new awareness, new sensations, new possibilities.
With the slow, ticklish glide of his forefinger he eased the panels of her shirt out of the way. The air was cool against her chest. His gaze was hot as it moved over her.
A flush prickled upward from her diaphragm. Following the wash of color, Hunter skimmed one hand up the rise of her ribs. He cupped the weight of her breast in the curve of his palm.
His skin was dark against the paleness of her flesh, rough against her smoothness. She took unexpected joy in the differences between them.
He circled her nipple with the pad of his thumb. Her body arched as those long, capable fingers rasped against her. She liked the brush of his hands, the way her breasts tingled at his touch, the heaviness that seeped deep down into her loins.
Cass squirmed and pressed her legs together.
Hunter smiled as if he knew very well what she was feeling and slid his big hand down the midline of her body. He cupped her mound in the sweet, penetrating warmth of his palm.
Cass breathed his name. He lowered his mouth to hers and lapped up the sound of her pleasure. He took her with the sinuous thrust of his tongue as his fingers sought the nether core of her. Each stroke sent delight spiraling through her, the heady glide and press of his hand, the nibbling pleasure of his mouth.
She went restless, feverish, and dizzy. Sharp, unexpected voluptuousness swept up her spine. She arched her back and reached for him.
Dressed only in a breechclout and opened shirt, he was wondrously accessible. She spread her palms over the breadth and bulk of his shoulders. He was so much bigger than she, so much stronger, yet she sensed her power over him. She felt his muscles grow taut beneath her touch, saw how his nipples pearled beneath the graze of her fingertips. She felt the thrust of his manhood against her with only his breechclout between them.
She pushed the shirtsleeves down his arms. She skimmed her palms along the smooth, straight arch of his spine. She sought the ties at the sides of his breechclout. The buckskin fell away, and she touched him, stroking him and pleasing him until he began to tremble.
He rolled above her, whispering her name, calling to her, pleading with her, needing her as much as she needed him. She lifted her hips against him, as open and ready as a furrowed field.
He pressed her down into the bed of skins and blankets. She felt the weight of his arousal against her mound. She felt the thrust of his body inside her. She shuddered with the joy of it, with the depth of the connection, with the sense of being home at last.
She saw the same sweet wonder in his eyes.
They lay together, savoring the brush of flesh on flesh, the miracle of being bound together, the sense of endless unity.
Slowly he reached to touch her cheek, tracing the radiating lines of her tattoo. She mewed in protest and tried to turn away. But Hunter held her fast, his fingertips caressing the mark, his eyes holding hers, his lips a mere breath from her own.
"This makes you special," he whispered. "It makes you beautiful. It makes you mine." He lowered his head and claimed the tattoo with his lips.
His words spread through her like a balm, easing the shame, the stigma of being scarred.
Tears of hope and gratitude burned in Cassie's eyes. She had finally found someone who saw her for herself.
With a sob, she drew him to her. She wanted this man with all his tenderness and strength. She needed him, just as she was coming to need the soul-deep communion of his body moving in concert with hers. She raised her hips, and he sank into her. They sought the age-old rhythm that would both bring exquisite joy and bind them irrevocably.
He was there with her in a way no man had ever been before, looking inside her as no man had ever looked, courting her pleasure as if it were more important to him than his own. He stroked into her until she could not breathe, until the blood roared in her ears, until she was shivering with a delight that bordered on frenzy.
Then the world went hazy around her, and there was only Hunter. She lost herself in him, in the intensity of his eyes, in the hard, hot waves of sensation that swamped them both. They flowed together, melting and molten, fierce and fragile, him and her. Each sought pleasure beyond themselves and found sensation so fine and sweet that it bound them and held them and granted them a deep, resounding peace that joined their souls.
Cass curled against him in the aftermath. If there were words for what had just passed between them, she did not know them.
Hunter seemed to feel the fulfillment as deeply as she. He drew her to him as if he never meant to let he
r go. And safe in the circle of his arms, Cassie slept.
Chapter 21
"Do you think she's there?" Cass whispered, peeking over the edge of the low, grassy bluff toward the tepees clustered on the far side of the creek.
Hunter sprawled on his belly beside her, scanning the scene with field glasses. "It's where the trail leads. She's got to be down there somewhere."
Cass let out her breath. With it went a little of the tension, a little of the thick, hot fear. She'd seen for herself how fine a tracker Hunter was. He could learn more from a broken leaf and a clot of dirt than most men could from a signpost. If Hunter said Meggie was in that camp, Cass believed him.
He handed the glasses across to her. "You lived with the Cheyenne. See what you make of it."
Cass put the glasses to her eyes and squinted against the glare of the afternoon sun. The village sprang into focus before her. It was familiar, almost welcoming—the neat formation of buff-colored tepees, the cook fires trailing smoke, people at work and play. Though it was too far away for Cass to identify individuals, she recognized paintings on the sides of several tepees. They represented families she knew, and she could not help wondering if Gray Falcon, her Indian husband, and his new wife were down in the village somewhere.
"I think this must be Standing Pine's band of Cheyenne," she told Hunter. "He sets a high store by his horses and may have broken off from the main encampment during the dry spell to look for better grazing."
She felt Hunter turn and look at her. "Isn't Standing Pine the chief who traded you back to us last winter?"
"And organized the ambush." The knot in Cass's belly pulled taut again. She hadn't known what Standing Pine meant to do, but she'd been caught up in it anyway.
"Do you have any suggestions about how we should go about getting Meggie back?"
"I haven't thought about much but holding her," Cass admitted. "I wish we had more to offer in exchange."
In addition to the horses they were riding, Hunter had brought a skittish sorrel gelding and a dappled mare. If it came to bartering for Meggie, that was all they had.
So Wide the Sky Page 31
