Wild Desire

Pure Blossom clung to him, tears of joy spreading down her cheeks. She had never thought that any man would desire her, much less love her so intensely. She would not allow herself to think about how her father felt about Adam, nor her brother. Adam was hers. No one would be allowed to take him from her.

The sound of voices and the laughter of children outside Pure Blossom’s hogan drew Adam’s lovemaking to a quick halt. He looked frantically toward the door, then into Pure Blossom’s eyes.

“It’s morning,” he said, his voice edged with fright. “Does anyone ever come to your hogan in the morning? My horse.... Pure Blossom, what if someone finds it?”

Pure Blossom placed her hands on his cheeks. “No one comes to Pure Blossom’s hogan very often,” she reassured. “Everyone knows that I work best this time of day. And no one disturbs me when I weave my beautiful blankets. As to your horse—do you not reme

mber how well hidden it is? No one will ever find it.”

“Pure Blossom, it’s daylight,” Adam said, again glancing toward the door. “How in the hell am I going to get out of your hogan without being seen?”

She turned his face around so that their eyes could meet again. “My sweet white man, you do not leave the hogan while it is daylight,” she said, giggling. “Stay. Spend the day with me. We can make love, eat, talk, and make love again. Tonight, when the dark shadows fall around our little world, I will go with you to your horse.”

Adam’s heart pounded as he looked into her beautiful, innocent eyes and her delicate features. What she suggested was very tempting.

He hesitated a moment longer, then laughed loosely. “All right,” he said, framing her face between his hands, bringing her lips to his. “I will stay. How could anyone want to leave, ever?”

He was not worried about Stephanie. She would think that he was with Damon, or in Gallup. She was used to his shenanigans. But he knew that she would never suspect that this time the woman he was bedding was Navaho.

He laughed softly against Pure Blossom’s lips, then kissed her hard and long, as once again he moved himself within her. Their moans intermingled. Their hands discovered each other’s sensitive, secret spots.

When Pure Blossom’s hair had fallen aside and he had seen the lump growing at the base of her neck, even that had not repelled him. To Adam, everything about Pure Blossom was perfect. Magnificently perfect.

He loved her. With all of his heart, he loved her.

Sage had been awakened at dawn with the news that several horses had been stolen from the corral. He was sitting tall and straight on his strawberry roan as he sought out tracks in the mixture of dirt and sand beneath his horse’s hooves. This search had carried him not all that far from the village until tall bluffs began shadowing him.

His eyes flashed angrily when he soon lost the tracks. They had seemed to disappear into the wind. He drew a tight rein and gazed up at the bluff above him and then at the sloping trail that led upward. If he went up there, perhaps he could see the horse thieves in the distance as they herded the horses along with them.

There were no signs as to when the horses had been stolen. If it had been just before daylight, the thieves would not have gotten so far that he would not be able to see them across the straight stretch of land in the far distance.

He turned to his braves. “Stay,” he ordered. “I will go and take a look from the bluff.”

Holding his reins steady, he urged his steed up the winding trail. When it leveled off to the first ledge, he shielded his eyes with a hand and stared across the land, grumbling to himself when he saw nothing.

“I shall go higher,” he whispered to himself.

He wheeled his horse around and went in a slow, cautious trot up the other trail until once again it leveled off to another straight stretch of rock and sparse grass. He started to ride to the edge of the bluff, but drew a tight rein and stopped his horse, puzzled over having found a horse that had been left there, tethered and partially hidden.

Dismounting, he went over to the horse and patted its rump, then ran his hands down its withers as he studied it. “There is something familiar about this animal,” he said to himself.

He threw open the saddlebags. Reaching inside, he found a small journal. He didn’t get any farther than the first page, where Adam’s signature loomed up at him like some ghastly apparition.

He grew cold and numb as he then studied the horse more carefully. His jaw tightened and his eyes lit with fire, and angrily thrusting the journal back inside the saddlebag, he stamped to the edge of the bluff and looked at the hogans of his village in the distance.

“There can only be one reason he has hidden his horse this close to my village,” he growled out. “It would not be to spy, for I would have seen him. Pure Blossom. He is with Pure Blossom.”

He had seen the instant attraction between his daughter and Adam. He had not thought to warn his daughter about him, for he had thought that she had seen for herself the sort of man he was.

And taking a man to her hogan was not a normal thing for his daughter to do. As far as Sage knew, she was still a virgin.

But Sage had seen a charm about Adam that might fool Pure Blossom into believing that he truly cared. She was so vulnerable. She had not experienced being in love before her.

He looked heavenward and said a soft, desperate prayer to the Great Unseen Power. “Let me be wrong,” he whispered.

Hate racing through his veins, he grabbed Adam’s horse’s reins and took it with him from the bluffs. Without giving any of his braves an explanation, he rode off hard toward his village, Adam’s steed trailing behind him on a rope. He did not stop until he was at Pure Blossom’s hogan.

“Pure Blossom!” he shouted, not having yet dismounted. He feared going into the hogan. He feared he would tear Adam’s heart out if he found him making love to his precious daughter. “Daughter, come out here and face your father.”