Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  She’d never thought much about the differences in men’s chests, but Pace’s was the first she recalled on a grown man that was hairless. Nothing but clean bronze skin stretched tight over hard muscles. Around his neck hung a small leather pouch bearing the beaded design of a lightning bolt. His medicine bag. She had no idea what was in it and couldn’t recall having seen it often because he kept it tucked beneath his shirt, but she remembered hearing that he never took it off.

  “Something wrong?”

  Embarrassed at being caught staring, Joanna snatched Pace’s shirt from his fingers and tossed the bedroll over a boulder before grabbing the nearly empty canteen. “Hobble that horse and get to it, then. And don’t come back without fresh meat, mister. I’m starving.”

  Pace threw back his head and laughed. “God, I love a bossy woman.”

  “Then you’ll be worshipping at my feet long before we get home.” She flipped her braid over her shoulder, tossed Pace a saucy look, and started back through the brush to the stream.

  “Hey!” Pace called after her. “I was only kidding about you washing my shirt.”

  “I’ll wash your shirt,” she answered, “because I wasn’t kidding about you not coming back without fresh meat.”

  Pace’s laughter dwindled, and he stood next to the horse, smiling, for a long moment. She hadn’t been kidding about how bossy she could be, either. She’d been raised by Pace’s sister and mother. Under those circumstances, Joanna couldn’t be anything but bossy. And hell, he’d been worshipping at her feet since the day she was born.

  He laughed again, and the laughter dispelled the last of the unwanted heat and tension that had coiled inside him when she’d been leaning up against his back, with her arms wrapped around him.

  Too long without a woman, that’s all.

  That particular justification didn’t hold water, though, no matter how much he wanted it to. Pace had never been a man who couldn’t go without a woman. Most of his energy during the past years had been spent on fighting, either with fists, or words, or on his struggle to rein in the urge to fight.

  Not that he didn’t have the normal urges a man had toward a woman, and not that he wasn’t interested, or that women weren’t interested right back. But after the sharp lesson he’d learned from sweet little Priscilla Ann Carter back in Mobile, and an equally ugly yet different schooling from Eugenia, the colonel’s bitch of a daughter at Fort Sill, Pace tended to ride the long way around women. In his experience, the more “decent” they were, the more vile their games.

  On those occasions when he allowed his mind to turn to women and sex, he stuck to whores whose greed for money allowed them to turn a blind eye to the color of his skin and his mixed parentage. And the results were never very satisfactory.

  When he was younger he used to watch his parents together and swear he would never settle for less than the kind of love they shared. It hadn’t taken him all that long to learn the hard way that a man like him, a half-breed Apache bastard with a reputation for fighting, didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of finding a woman he could respect and love, who would respect and love him in return.

  There were women who wanted things from him, women like Priscilla and Eugenia, but respect and love were not on the list.

  Pace shook his head at himself and unsaddled the horse. Women. A waste of time to think about them. He didn’t know why he’d reacted to Jo the way he had, but the craziness was gone now. All he had to do was get her home to the Triple C. Then he could concentrate on what to do about Matt, how to tear down this damned wall between them that he himself had built so many years ago with his anger and his pain.

  Family. If he wasn’t meant to have a wife and children of his own, he at least wanted things eased at home.

  With another scrap from an old gunnysack, Pace rubbed the horse down. The People understood his need for family without his ever having spoken of it. Close family ties were important to Apaches.

  The whites he knew would die laughing to hear that Pace Fire Seeker Colton had a sentimental bone in his body. They would never believe it, he thought.

  When he finished rubbing down the horse, Pace checked the animals hooves. He had to pick out a couple of small stones, but they had apparently caused no damage.

  “You did all right, ol’ boy.” Pace scratched behind the buckskin’s ears, and the horse leaned into the touch. “Better than all right, hauling two people all over hell and back, and damn near running your tail off today. ‘Course, that part’s nothing new to you, is it? And the little firefly doesn’t weigh much more than my saddlebags. Just the same, juundé, friend, you did good.”

  Pace had let the horse drink before leaving the stream earlier, so he picketed him near the edge of the trees, where the grass was greener and more tender.

  After exchanging his boots for moccasins, he headed downstream from Jo. He could tell himself he’d chosen that direction to give her privacy, but her privacy came second to her safety. He went downstream to check their backtrail.

  When he returned to camp an hour later, his shirt and Joanna’s blouse and stockings were nearly dry where she had left them spread over bushes. The horse was picketed in a fresh spot, firewood lay in a neat pile, the canteen was full, and one Miss Joanna Colton lay sprawled across the blankets in camisole, skirt, and bare feet, dead to the world.

  Those bare feet snagged his attention, and he had trouble looking away. They were so damn small, he didn’t see how they held her up. But then, when she stood, she didn’t quite reach his chin, so he supposed, everything being relative, her feet were probably just about right for her.

  But they were so damn small. And dainty. And blistered, he noticed with a frown. The outside of each big toe bore a blister that had popped.

  Knowing there wasn’t much he could do about it, he forced himself to turn away. They both needed a meal, and he needed sleep. He carried the rabbits back to the stream to skin and clean them.

  The rabbits were almost done on the spits hanging over the small fire and Pace had finished off a cup of coffee when he decided it was time to wake Jo.

  He hated to wake her; she hadn’t had nearly enough sleep. But she needed to eat. Afterwards, she could sleep again for the remaining few hours of daylight.

  He’d seen no signs that they were being followed when he’d checked their back trail earlier, but he wasn’t ready to take chances. He would be perfectly happy if he never saw another soul until he got Jo all the way home. He knew that wasn’t likely, but traveling at night, despite the risks, was still their best bet. Juerta hadn’t earned the name El Carnicero because he was stupid. If he wanted Jo bad enough, he would keep looking. It was Pace’s job to see that the bastard didn’t find her.

  He knelt beside her on the blanket. Heat flushed her face, but she slept soundly. He wondered if she was grouchy when she woke, or if she gave up sleep easily. He figured he was about to find out.

  Before waking her, he couldn’t resist brushing the loose strands of hair from where they streaked in fiery brilliance across the milk-pale skin of her face and neck. At the first touch of his finger against her cheek, she smiled in her sleep.

  Roses, he thought. Her skin was as soft as the petals on his mother’s roses that grew just outside the front door of the ranch house. Silky, dewy, so soft that it drew him again and again like a bee to nectar.

  Asleep, she smiled again and arched into his touch.

  Gently, he brushed the last strand from her face, then moved to her neck. As though his touch against her neck tickled, she smiled wider and shifted her shoulder.

  He pulled one long strand away with the tip of his finger, dragging the hair across her neck.

  Suddenly, Jo reached up to brush his hand away. “Harold, stop that.”

  Pace jerked his hand back.

  Harold?

  Something sharp and cold streaked through Pace, arcing from his chest to his hands, down to his feet. It had the feel of raw, green jealousy.

  Surpr
ise. She just surprised me, that’s all.

  He was definitely not jealous. Just surprised. He would have bet his last bullet that Jo was a virgin. He hadn’t expected her to call out a man’s name when touched in her sleep. He must have heard her wrong.

  He unballed his hands, not having been aware that he’d clenched them, and smoothed the last strand of hair from her neck.

  “Go away, Harold. It’s too early to play.”

  “Who,” Pace demanded tightly, “is Harold?”

  Joanna blinked herself awake to find Pace looming over her like an angry black cloud. She could have sworn she heard thunder rumbling in his chest. “Hi.” She sniffed the air. “Do I smell food?”

  “I asked you a question, girl.”

  Joanna blinked. She hadn’t been wrong. Something had him riled. “What question, old man?”

  His eyes narrowed to dangerous blue slits. “Who the hell is Harold?”

  Joanna smiled. “Harold? Where did you hear that name?”

  Pace’s mouth drew tighter. “I touched you in your sleep, and you told Harold you didn’t want to play.”

  She burst out laughing.

  “It’s that funny, is it?” Pace demanded. “Who the hell is he?”

  “I’m trying to decide,” she said, still laughing.

  “You’re trying to decide who Harold is?”

  “No, I’m trying to decide which you remind me of more. An irate father or a jealous beau.”

  If possible, his face turned even darker, his narrowed eyes more dangerous. “I’m neither one, not to you, not to anybody, and don’t change the sub—”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  “—ject. You tell me who this Harold character is and why you called his name in your sleep, or so help me, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” she tossed back.

  “Are you going to answer my question?”

  Joanna smiled slowly. “No, I don’t think I am. I like my question better. Why aren’t you somebody’s father or some lucky girl’s beau? Better yet, her husband? Why aren’t you married, with a whole houseful of kids?”

  “We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you and the man whose name you call in your sleep.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake,” she cried in disgust. “Harold is a mouse.”

  “I don’t care what kind of man he is. I want to know why you call his name when a man touches you in your sleep.”

  “With the possible exception of my father, you are the only man who’s ever touched me when I was asleep. I’m telling you, Harold is a mouse. The gray, furry, four-legged kind.”

  Pace turned his head slightly away and eyed her from the corner of one eye. “Four-legged?”

  “He used to visit me in my cell beneath Juerta’s house.”

  “In your…cell.”

  “That’s right. He was the only one I had to talk to for days.”

  Pace looked away and muttered something under his breath that she couldn’t make out. Something about rawhide, roasting, and salt.

  “Now don’t you feel like a horse’s hind end?” she asked him with exaggerated politeness.

  Pace refused to answer. He did feel a little like an ass, all right, for jumping to conclusions, but overriding that was the murderous rage that came over him every time he let himself think of what Jo had gone through, was still going through. Because of Juerta, she’d been reduced to talking to mice for company.

  Cactus spines. Have I planned those yet? Under his fingernails—before I cut off his hands, of course. Pace shook his head. He was starting to repeat himself.

  “Don’t you?”

  He blinked. “Don’t I what?”

  “Feel like the hind end of a horse?”

  “What else was I supposed to think when you call a man’s name in your sleep? Sit up and pull the tail of your camisole out of your skirt so I can change your bandage before we eat.”

  At his mention of food, Jo’s stomach growled. He didn’t have to urge her again, She tugged the tail of her camisole free and undid enough of the bottom buttons to allow her to roll the hem high enough for him to reach the bandage.

  “How does it feel?” Pace asked as he moistened the pad of cloth covering the wound before he tried to pry it from where it stuck to her skin.

  “Cold!” she cried on a sharp intake of breath.

  “I meant the wound, not the water.”

  “Sore.”

  Ask a stupid question, he thought. Of course it was sore. A chunk of her hide had been removed by a bullet. But the wound was healing, and for that, he was grateful. He wasn’t so grateful to be touching her bare skin again, because it instantly reminded him of his earlier disturbing reactions to Jo, and the reminder was enough to make his mouth go dry.

  The second he finished replacing the bandage with a fresh pad of cloth and securing it with the long strip around her ribs, he yanked her camisole back down in place. “There. That ought to do you until tomorrow.”

  They ate in silence, for which Pace was grateful. Afterward, they stretched out side by side on the blanket to sleep until dark. He made sure his rifle and pistol were within easy reach and that there was as much space as possible between him and the girl—the woman—next to him..

  Pace woke at dusk to the sweetest ache he’d ever known. In her sleep, Jo was wrapped around him tighter than skin on a snake. She was using his shoulder for a pillow, and had one arm wrapped around his chest and a knee laying across his thighs. He’d never awakened with a woman before, for the simple reason that he’d never lingered long enough to fall asleep with one. He’d had no idea that waking up this way could reach right down into a man’s heart and twist it.

  He shouldn’t be knowing it now, either. Not with Jo. But damn if she didn’t feel good wrapped around him this way. So good that he couldn’t bring himself to end it and slip from beneath her just yet.

  She stirred against him and a new ache started, this one not nearly so innocent as the one in his chest. This ache was lower, harder, and startled him with its swiftness. He wasn’t used to his body reacting so fast to a woman. He was sure, if given enough time to think about it, that he would decide he didn’t like it. But just then, he liked it entirely too much.

  In that stage halfway between sleep and wakefulness, Joanna felt the steady beat beneath her palm increase in speed until it felt like the pounding of hooves at full gallop. As she began to waken, she realized that what she felt was not the roughness of bare ground vibrating with hoofbeats, but the smooth tautness of bare flesh over firm muscle and a pounding heart. In pure reflex and unadulterated tactile pleasure, she flexed her fingers and rubbed her hand over skin so warm it was almost hot.

  Pace. Before she could open her eyes, she knew she was touching Pace. Touching him, nestling her head against his shoulder, nudging his thigh with her knee, smoothing her hand over his chest again and again because she could not seem to stop. Her own heartbeat suddenly thundered in time with his.

  “Jo?” His voice was hoarse. “Are you awake?”

  Joanna brushed her fingertips across a male nipple and felt it harden beneath her touch. When she opened her eyes, her lashes dragged across his skin. “I’m awake.”

  The pounding heartbeat beneath her hand raced faster. “You wanna cut that out?”

  Joanna didn’t bother asking what he meant, for they both knew. She was stroking him, petting him as though he were a large, beloved cat, and they both knew it. Raising up on one elbow, she met his wary blue eyes and spread her fingers wide across his chest. Feelings rushed through her like a flash flood through a creekbed. They came strong and fast, so fast she couldn’t name them all.

  Yearning was the strongest, but she didn’t understand what she was yearning for.

  The tingling in her veins and the heat throbbing low in her body made her breath come faster. She’d never felt this way before, but she understood without being told that this was what it was to want a man. That the man she found herself wanting and yearning for
was Pace brought the taste of bittersweet tears to the back of her throat.

  Pace, her childhood hero. The man who had taught her to ride, to defend herself, to think for herself. Pace, her stepmother’s brother. Pace, her father’s stepbrother. The man who had never forgiven her father for marrying Serena.

  “Jo.” His eyes darkened. “I think you should stop.”

  “Yes, you’re right, I should stop.” But she ran her hand from his collarbone to his navel and back again, skirting around his medicine pouch, then smoothed her way over his shoulder, marveling in the feel of rock hard muscle beneath taut skin.

  Pace shuddered beneath her touch. He should push her away. He should get up. He should stop her. But it had been so damned long since a woman had touched him the way Jo was touching him, since a woman had looked at him the way Jo was looking at him.

  In the growing shadows of the approaching night, he could feel her eyes on every part of his face, as though she were touching him there. His forehead, eyebrows, cheekbones, nose, jaw, chin. Lips. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “Like how?”

  Pace took a slow, deep breath and forced his arms to remain on the blanket, forced himself not to reach for her. “Like you’re starving and I’m the feast.”

  The smile she gave him was tinged with a sadness that made his chest ache in ways it had never ached before. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, running her palm along his jaw. “I can’t seem to help it.”

  Her answer staggered him, but it shouldn’t have, because he’d just discovered that knowing what he was feeling was inappropriate and down right wrong, knowing that he should push her away and set her straight immediately…none of it seemed to matter, because he couldn’t stop himself from reveling in her touch any more than she could seem to stop touching him.

  He didn’t want to stop her. When she touched him, she touched more than his skin. She touched something deep inside, and for the time, while he watched her study his face, while he felt her hand on his skin, for this one small space in time, he could not feel the emptiness that normally yawned inside him.