Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “Ours.” He looked at her then, and she wished to God he hadn’t. His eyes…there was nothing in his eyes. Nothing. “Yours and mine,” he said. “You can’t possible want to stay married to a man like me, Jessie. You deserve better.”

  Anger came then, strong and hot. Anger at Blake, at Lucien Renard, at Geronimo. Even at herself, for not making Blake understand sooner how very much she loved him. She welcomed the anger, even as she vowed to make Blake understand, once and for all, that he was her life.

  “What are you saying?” she demanded. “That because you’re half Apache, you’re not good enough for me? How dare you insult me and my family in such a way. Who do you think you’re talking to? This is me, Blake. The one with the half-breed brother and sister. Oh, no. You want out of this marriage, you’re going to have to come up with a better excuse than that.”

  Blake shook his head, his brow furrowing. “You don’t understand, Jessie. I’m not the man you thought I was. Hell, I’m not the man I thought I was.”

  “Why? Because one man you hated turned out not to be your father, while another you hated, did? What difference does it make?”

  “What difference? Are you out of your mind? Haven’t you realized yet that the child you carry has no right to the name Renard, as I don’t? That he isn’t going to be Spanish or Cajun, but Apache, as I am? And not just any Apache, mind you, girl. Oh, no, I wasn’t sired by just any old Apache, but by the most blood-thirsty, murdering, thieving rapist of the lot! Good God, when I think of it—”

  “Don’t!” she cried. “Don’t you dare say anything more about Apaches and half-breeds. It doesn’t matter, I tell you. You’re still the same man I met, the same man I fell in love with. And I do love you, Blake, I do. I only wish I’d been able to make you see that sooner.”

  “Love me? Hell, you don’t even know who I am. I don’t know who I am.”

  “You’re the man I love. You’re Blake Renard.”

  “Goddammit, Jessie, there’s no such person as Blake Renard!”

  “There is, and he’s you, you blind, stubborn…” She spun away from him, nearly biting off the end of her tongue to keep from calling him more names. He didn’t need that now. He was apparently calling himself enough names to last a lifetime.

  At her sudden movement, her apron flared. A dull whop sounded as it hit the chair at the head of the table. Muttering to herself, she reached into her apron pocket and pulled out her derringer. She slapped it down on the table.

  “What the hell? Why are you carrying a damn gun?”

  Jessie shot him a glare. “It’s for that sorry son of a bitch you’ve called ’father’ all your life. If he shows his face here again, I plan to make him very, very sorry,” she vowed between clenched teeth.

  Blake stared at the tiny two-shot pistol, his vision blurring. “My God, what have I done to you?” He shook his head and arched his neck to stare unseeing at the ceiling. “I remember the first time I saw you. I thought, what a shame to waste such beauty on a low-life half-breed. I guess the joke’s on both of us, huh? I thought I was so much better for you. Shit. Now I’ve even got you toting a gun, for God’s sake.”

  Jessie pursed her lips and crossed her arms. “Don’t give yourself so much credit. I’ve always carried a gun when I was alone. I had one in my handbag the day we met. If you’ll remember, I even used it on that train robber, the one who shot you.”

  Blake’s eyes widened. “You did not.”

  “I did. Took out a chunk of his left earlobe, too. Why do you think I kept blaming myself for getting you shot? If I hadn’t fired—”

  “He would have killed me. We’re not having that discussion again.”

  “Fine. Are you hungry? I saved some biscuits and bacon, and I can scramble some eggs. The coffee’s still—”

  “It won’t go away, Jessie, just because you choose to ignore it.”

  Jessie clenched her jaw. “What won’t go away?”

  “The truth. Who I am. What I am.”

  His voice sounded so tired, so old. His eyes held the same bitter exhaustion and age. She felt the fight drain out of her. “Oh, Blake.” Ignoring his move to avoid her touch, she leaned against him and put her head on his chest. “I wish…I wish this didn’t hurt you so much. I wish you could believe me when I say none of this changes anything, not for me. I wish you understood how much I love you, how much I want us to raise this child and the ones that follow, raise them with love and pride in who they are. Give us a chance, Blake. Give us a chance.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  From the woods at the base of the hill some hundred yards south, an owl hooted. Jessie lay perfectly still, barely hearing the call over the sound of her own breaking heart.

  She hadn’t been able to get through to Blake. He’d left the house, refusing to eat, and hadn’t returned until long after she’d gone to bed. The only reason she knew he was still inside was that she hadn’t heard the front door open since he’d come in. He was sitting out there in the main room, alone, in the dark, lashing himself, believing he wasn’t the man he’d always thought himself to be.

  Didn’t he understand? Who sired him made no difference, not to her, not to anyone who mattered. Oh, Blake, don’t shut me out.

  She ached to feel his arms around her. She longed to comfort him, to make him understand how much she loved him.

  She would try again. Right now. She couldn’t stand the thought of him out there alone and hurting.

  Blake heard the mattress creak, heard the linens rustle, heard her bare feet on the floor. He braced himself.

  Dear God, if she came to him, how was he going to deny himself the comfort of her arms? He didn’t dare let himself believe they could still make a go of it. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—subject her to the taunts he knew she would suffer once word of his parentage got around. And it would get around. Wade and Lucien would see to that.

  It was one thing for a white man to take an Indian woman for his own. No one thought less of him. But for a white woman to willingly give herself to an Apache—worse yet, a half-breed—was unforgivable. She would be ostracized. Their child would be subjected to cruel taunts and ridicule.

  A deep shudder ran through him. He couldn’t bring such a legacy to her and their child. He couldn’t do that to them. If he left, if he took her back to her family and disappeared, she could make up some story about being widowed. No one ever need know differently.

  But…to leave her. To never see her or touch her or hear her voice…God, it would kill him.

  You’ll just have to get over it, you stupid bastard. Leaving is the only thing left for you to do. For her sake, and the child’s. Just do it!

  “Blake?”

  Her soft quiet voice in the stillness of the night trailed down his spine like cool fingers and brought goose bumps to his arms. “You should be asleep.” Damn. He hadn’t meant to sound so harsh.

  “So should you. Aren’t you coming to bed?”

  At the mere thought of lying down beside her, another shudder took him. “Maybe later.”

  She came toward him. In her white cotton gown with it’s high lace collar, she looked like an elegant ghost drifting across the dark room. Before she even reached him, the scent of roses wrapped itself around him and made his hands shake. Ah, God, Jessie, go back to bed.

  When she knelt at his feet and placed her hand on his knee, he dug his fingers into the horse hide covering the sofa to keep from reaching for her.

  “I love you, Blake.”

  He took it like a slap on the face. “I think you feel sorry for me.”

  “No,” she cried. “I hurt for you, I ache for you, and I’ve cried buckets of tears for you, but I love you. You have to know that.”

  “You’re not thinking straight, Jessie, admit it. You thought you loved me that night in San Antonio, I know that. Otherwise you never would have let me touch you. But after that, things changed. You didn’t trust me. You refused to marry me. Even after my court martial, six months gone with my
child, you didn’t want to marry me.”

  “I was afraid, Blake. Afraid to trust my feelings for you. I knew I loved you, but I thought…I thought that because I hadn’t trusted you that night we broke Pace out…I thought that meant I didn’t love you enough.”

  “Enough for what?”

  “For us to build a life on. I should have trusted you. I shouldn’t have turned away from you. When you asked me to marry you that night on the trail, I should have jumped at the chance with both hands and held on tight.”

  “Why didn’t you?” God, he couldn’t believe he’d asked that.

  “Because I thought…I thought that if I hadn’t loved you enough to trust you about Pace, that I’d end up hurting you again and destroy any chance for us.”

  Blake let out a harsh laugh. “You worried for nothing.”

  “I know that now.” She leaned closer to him. “I know now that I loved you more than I realized.”

  Blake pushed himself as far back against the sofa as he could. “How can you say that, after everything that’s happened?”

  “Because I understand now that it wasn’t that I didn’t trust you about Pace. I was just so damn scared that you would leave me, I…I think I wanted to hurt you before you could hurt me.”

  “No.” Blake shook his head. “I think you had it right the first time. You shouldn’t have trusted me. I gave you no reason to, and every reason not to.”

  “You gave me no reason to trust you afterward, either, but I did.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Did you know that when Pace came and told us you’d been arrested, that you were to stand trial for murder, I didn’t even know whom you were accused of murdering, didn’t even care? I only knew you couldn’t have done it. It wasn’t until Daddy and I got to San Antonio that I found out the details. I never questioned your innocence, never doubted it for a second. Because I loved you.”

  Blake leaned his head against the back of the sofa and stared at the dark ceiling. “I wish you didn’t, Jessie. I wish to God you didn’t.”

  “No,” she cried. “Don’t say that! You don’t mean it. You love me, too, Blake, and you need me, every bit as much as I need you.”

  I know I do, Jessie girl, I know I do. “Does it matter, Jessie? Does any of it matter anymore?”

  “It’s the only thing in the world that does matter. That,” she said softly, sliding her hand up his thigh. “And this.”

  Blake nearly reared off the sofa when she pressed her hand between his legs. He’d had no idea a man could get so hard so fast. God, she was trying to kill him.

  “You want me, Blake. Come to bed. Come let us love each other.”

  Jessie, I—”

  “I need you,” she said softly, earnestly. “I need you to fill the emptiness inside me. I need to feel you there. I ache for you.”

  Oh, God. He could no more deny her than he could change the legacy of hate and violence he’d been handed against his will. With a groan, half surrender, half despair, he lifted her in his arms and carried her to their bed. There, he lost himself in her arms, in her kiss, in the love he could no longer deny. Hers, and his. God, he did love her.

  But he swallowed the words. Better not to have them said aloud, only to come back and haunt him. For although he would give her what she asked and take what he needed, although he would merge his flesh with hers in the darkness of their marriage bed, he could not see a future for them, not without destroying her and their child.

  Jessie knew what he was thinking, that this changed nothing. She could feel it in the restraint of his touch, in the way he tried to hold back part of himself, and it nearly killed her. She wouldn’t let him do this. She wouldn’t let him destroy what they had only just begun to build. When he kissed her, she kissed him back with everything in her soul. When he finally merged his flesh with hers, she took all of him, all of him, and forced him to give all he had, all that he was.

  Blake felt his control slipping, felt her pulling it away from him. With her mouth and hands and body, she demanded he surrender himself totally. He tried not to. God, how he tried. But the heat of her flesh, the love in her touch, and his own aching heart would not let him hold back.

  He filled her, and she took him to heights he’d never known. He gave what she demanded—everything. Everything. Hotter, harder, faster, not caring that it was futile. Not even thinking it anymore. Not thinking of anything but the feel of her beneath him, around him, inside him. Only instinct kept his arms braced beside her to keep from crushing her and the baby with his weight. His arms quivered with the effort, yet he gave it no thought. He thought only of the way she moved her hips, the way her hands gripped his biceps, the way she made those little sounds in the back of her throat that drove him right over the edge of sanity.

  And when the end came, when the world shattered into a million brilliant pieces, when he cried out her name again and again, when nothing was left but the two of them and a rainbow of colors, when he was reminded unwillingly that this might very well be the last time they touched, the last love he would ever know, he gave the last that he had, gave what he’d never given before in his life.

  He gave her his tears.

  Blake hadn’t expected to fall asleep, and if he had, he would never have dreamed of waking to find Jessie’s soft hands tormenting him with light, teasing caresses in the predawn light. He was hard before he opened his eyes. And when he opened them, it was to find her watching him with a smile as old and knowing as Eve.

  “You won’t leave me,” she whispered. “You can’t.”

  “Jessie—”

  She put her fingers over his lips. His protest died unspoken as she replaced her fingers with her mouth. She took his breath away. And then she did it again, taking that sweet, hot mouth on a tormenting journey along his jaw, down his neck, across his chest. Her tongue dipped into his navel, making his legs jerk in response.

  She chuckled, a wicked, temptress sort of sound, telling him she knew full well what she was doing to him.

  Then her mouth dipped lower, lower. He reached to stop her…too late. Her open lips caressed his hardness and he couldn’t for the life of him do anything but clench his fist in her long pale hair and hold her mouth against him.

  Again and again she tortured him with her tongue and teeth and lips, over and over, up and down his length, until he felt a bead of moisture escape his tight control. She sipped it away.

  Her name came from his lips as a harsh cry.

  She raised her head, and in the lightening of dawn, her eyes were black with passion. “I’m selfish,” she whispered.

  “You’re killing me.”

  Her hand replaced her mouth and squeezed him. “I can’t let all this hardness go to waste. I need it, Blake, inside me. I need you.”

  He met her gaze and held it. “Then take me, Jess.” He pulled her on top of him until she straddled his hips. God, the sight of her. Devastating. Erotic. Her eyes so dark and gleaming, her breasts heaving as she slid down his length and brought him home. The bulk of their child resting against him.

  Then her head fell back until her hair brushed his thighs, cool and hot at the same time. She braced her hands on his chest and rocked, rocked, pulling everything he had, everything he ever hoped to be, up from the depths of his soul.

  “Say it,” she whispered softly. “Tell me you love me.”

  “Jessie…”

  She raised her hips until he was almost, almost freed from her hot depths. “Say it.”

  Blake clenched his jaw tight. He knew as well as she did that once he said the words, there would be no turning back. He would never be able to leave her. Never.

  She slid down his length again, then back up, slowly, slowly, until he wanted to scream with the pleasure, until he had to grip the sheet beneath him with both hands to keep from grabbing her hips and thrusting full length into her again and again.

  “Say it,” she demanded again, her voice a soft echo in his heart. “Say it, Blake.
Just once. Say it.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “Jessie, don’t.”

  “Say it.”

  He felt the first hot drop of moisture against his chest and thought it was sweat. Until he opened his eyes.

  Tears. God, her tears were burning him.

  “Say it.”

  What her body couldn’t wring from him, her tears did. “I love you. God, Jessie, you know I love you.”

  With a sob, she lowered herself and took him in.

  “I love you,” he said again. “I love you.”

  Jessie couldn’t stop the tears. She wept harder with each thrust of his hips, wept for the joy he gave her, for the pain in his eyes. Wept for them and their child, because the words “I love you” would not hold Blake. He would do what he thought he had to do, what he thought best for her. She wept as she loved him, until the fire exploded inside her, more powerful than ever before. And then she screamed his name.

  When Jessie woke, she was alone in the bed. Panic clutched her throat. He was gone! He’d left her!

  She threw back the covers and had one foot on the floor before the sound she’d been hearing registered. The hollow ring of an ax striking wood.

  She trembled with relief. Thank God, thank God. Blake hadn’t left her. Tears rushed her eyes, too hot, too fast for her to stop. It took her several long moments to bring them under control.

  She splashed cold water on her face and dressed hurriedly. In the kitchen she found coffee already made, sitting on the back of the stove to keep it warm. She poured a cup for Blake and rushed out the door.

  The sight of him, shirtless, his back gleaming with the sweat of chopping wood, stirred a heat in her that should have been impossible considering the night they’d shared.

  Either she made a sound, or he sensed her presence, for he paused in the act of raising the ax and brought the blade slowly down to his side. He stood with his back to her, motionless except for the heaving of his chest, as she approached.

  When she was almost to him, she saw his shoulders tense. The muscles there flexed and hardened. She could see where her fingernails had left marks on his flesh during their wild night.