“Let me go!” Her wet hair draped over her breasts like swathes of black silk, while her pinned arms crossed to hide the lower, triangular patch of black hair from his sight.
A distant part of his mind noted the fury of her order. Even now, when she had to be frightened of his intentions, she didn’t plead with him or show fear. There was an absent registering of respect for her indomitable spirit.
Other considerations were uppermost in his thoughts at the moment. “Hold still and I’ll take the rope off of you.” Chase issued the terse command while trying to hold her straining, wiggling form in the saddle, with the horse sidestepping nervously beneath its unruly burden.
She looked at him warily, not trusting him altogether. She was shivering too violently to be motionless, but she ceased struggling. As Chase relaxed his tight hold on the reins to loosen the rope, the horse started for shore. He let it go and lifted the noose over her head, tossing the lariat onto the gravel. Immediately, she tried to slide off the horse, but Chase stopped her.
“Put my jacket on,” he ordered, shrugging out of it and draping it around her shoulders. She was practically engulfed in it. Chase saw the long, black lashes come together in silent appreciation for the body warmth it held.
Holding her around the waist, he stepped out of the saddle. Even dripping wet, she weighed no more than a minute. He could feel the violent tremors shuddering through her body, but she didn’t make a sound, remaining rigid in his arms, rejecting his assistance. A broken limb from the dead tree rested on the sunny stretch of the sandbar. Chase set her on the ground next to it and began breaking the dried wood into pieces.
“It’ll only take a couple of minutes to get a fire going,” he said, but received no response.
The sun-sered wood was like tinder, catching with the first match. Chase fanned it with his hat and let it burn good for a minute, then built a teepee of fatter pieces to keep it going. The girl scooted closer to the warmth it sent out, huddling deep inside his jacket, which came all the way down to her thighs. His gaze swept over the moisture beaded on the raised flesh of her bare legs. As he began unbuttoning his shirt, she slanted him another one of those wary green looks.
Using his shirt as a towel, he began drying her legs, starting with her feet and working his way up the calves of her legs to above the knees. He rubbed hard to stimulate the circulation. His roughness brought a barely stifled sound of protest from her. Chase knew he was causing a thousand nerve ends to tingle painfully.
When he was through, he jabbed a long branch upright in the sandy soil beside the fire and draped his damp shirt over it to dry. It was only then that he became aware of the squishing wetness of his socks and boots. He pulled them off and squeezed the water from the woolen socks, laying them on the outer edge of the fire to steam.
Through all of this, Maggie watched him silently. Feeling began to steal back into her body, the shuddering reduced to occasional shivers, thanks to the warmth of the fire and the heavy, man’s jacket around her.
Both her father and her brother, Culley, were smallbuilt men. Neither had the broad, muscular chest and arms that Chase Calder had, or that thick patch of chestnut hair on his breastbone. She studied the play of those flat, ropy muscles as he worked, all hard flesh and bone. He seemed a mountain of a man to her. A trace of awe surfaced and Maggie fought it down the only way she knew how.
“You look ridiculous in that hat with no shirt or boots,” she told him.
“I do, huh?” Taking off his hat, he set it on the ground and ran a hand through the unruly thickness of his umber hair. Then he cast her a wicked glance. “You aren’t exactly well dressed, either, kid.”
“That’s because you took my clothes.” The wetness of her long hair against her skin was becoming uncomfortable. Maggie tried to lift it outside the collar, while keeping the jacket securely around her and her arms inside. “And I’m not a kid,” she added in protest, still struggling with the heaviness of her hair.
“I noticed,” he murmured dryly. Vividly, he remembered what she looked like beneath that jacket and could attest to the fact that she possessed a woman’s body. The memory of it stirred him as he watched the trouble she was having. “I’ll do that,” Chase volunteered and rose to step behind he.
Starting at her cheekbones, his fingers moved down below her ears and tunneled under the heavy weight of her hair, lifting its length from under the jacket and spreading it down the outside of the back. There was a certain sensuality in holding all that hair in his hands. It burned him like a black fire. Chase released it and stepped away to pick up a stick, snapping it in two in an effort to stop the surging rush of his white-hot senses. He crouched beside her to add the broken pieces of wood to the fire.
“How old are you, Maggie?” He used her name unconsciously, riveting his gaze to the dancing flames.
“Sixteen.” She bit her lip at the lie and admitted, “I will be in August.”
Chase turned his head to study her, a smile slanting his mouth. “Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.” There was a harsh quality to his mocking tone that didn’t match the way he was looking at her.
His words caused Maggie to huddle deeper in the jacket, drawing her knees to envelop more of her legs in its hugeness. “Clyde Barnes kissed me once when we were playing in the schoolyard.”
“How old were you then?”
Her chin went a little lower and she avoided his gaze to stare at her toes. “Thirteen.” There was a defensive crispness to her answer.
“Nobody can say you aren’t without experience,” he murmured with drawling roughness.
“I never said I was experienced.” She flashed him a sideways look of injured pride. “Clyde wasn’t even thirteen yet.” The intensity of his gaze was more than she could hold. “I know it’s different when a man kisses you.”
There was a pulsebeat of silence; then his hand was on her neck, turning her head and lifting her chin toward him. “How do you know that?”
The penetrating darkness of his gaze disturbed her in an excitingly curious way that seeme
d to heighten all her senses. She couldn’t answer him, too captured by the wild certainty that he was going to kiss her and she was going to find out for herself if it was true that a man’s kiss was different.
Chapter IV
Slowly bending his head toward her, Chase exerted a slight pressure on her neck to pull her forward. She didn’t try to draw away or resist him. Before his mouth touched her lips, he inhaled the fresh, clean smell of her—like the air after a summer rain. Its simple earthiness filled him. When his mouth settled onto her unparted lips, they remained motionless with innocence. He moved over their softness, seeking a response, and was dissatisfied when he didn’t get it. Her uncertainty about what was expected from her was somehow transmitted to him.