“You think I’ve been out rustling cattle for my brother.” His whisper was knife-edged, but he held himself rigidly, determined to keep the sick disbelief, the numb acceptance, at bay. At least until he could get out of the room. With effort, Lance gathered his control and his saddlebags and started to walk out.
“Where are you going?” Summer was startled into asking.
“Out to steal some more cattle, where else!” His fierce retort rang with fury.
“Lance, you can’t just leave—”
Summer clutched his arm as he passed, trying to prevent him from going—a mistake, she learned at once. With a violent oath, he dropped his saddlebags and turned on her, grabbing her shoulders in a tight grip and pushing her up against the wall adjacent the door.
Shocked, unnerved by his violence, she stared at him in fear, at the hostile eyes that flared darkly above her. He had grown white about the mouth, while the muscles in his jaw knotted, but his words held a blistering force.
“You want me to stay, do you? Why, princess? What do you want from me? This?” His hand roughly covered her left breast, pressing through the layers of cloth and whalebone.
“You said you missed me. Well, I missed you, too. I missed what’s between your legs. I missed having you bucking and moaning beneath me.”
She whimpered, trying to pull away from his hurtful grip.
“What’s wrong, princess? Are you afraid of the savage Injun?”
“Lance…what are you doing?”
His fingers worked the buttons of her gown, ripping the cloth. “If you can’t get over thinking me a savage, I might as well act like one.”
“No…”
“No?” His dark eyes seared her with a blazing look, full of aggression, and yet they betrayed a bleak pain that the harsh fury couldn’t completely hide.
“Lance…don’t…”
“Don’t touch you? Don’t fuck you?” His hand left her bodice and fumbled for her skirts. “Come on, now, princess. You enjoy what I do to you. You like my touch. You like it when I fuck you—”
“Stop it!” She turned her head away, unable to bear his ugliness, his
making what had been beautiful seem base and lewd. “Stop being so crude!”
“Crude? You don’t know what the word means. Crude is the drunken slobs who used to rut on my mother. Crude is listening to their grunts as they forced themselves on her.”
“Is that what you mean to do to me? Force me?” She turned her anguished gaze on him. “This is your answer to everything, isn’t it? Violence. Physical force. Do you mean to rape me?”
His angry expression shattered…wilted abruptly…leaving desperate vulnerability in its wake. He stared at her, his features stricken.
Suddenly he squeezed his eyes closed, realizing what he had almost done. He had assaulted Summer, hurt her, when he would have cut off his hands before he harmed a single hair of her head. When she’d voiced her suspicions to his face, he’d snapped—
God, you savage bastard.
Now that he was still, he felt the faint tremors of her body, the thundering of her heart. He took a slow, deep breath.
Carefully, as if handling fragile crystal, he removed his hands from her body and stepped back, feeling as if he were severing his heart from his chest. A moment before, he’d been all knotted up inside with anger and hurt. Now he only felt empty, a bleakness that was soul-deep.
Summer leaned weakly against the wall, her hand pressed against her throat protectively, her green eyes wary.
Lance cursed himself again. “You want to know what I’ve been doing the past week?” he asked in a voice so low, it was almost inaudible. “I’ve been searching for a ghost band of Comanches, the ones Prewitt claims stole his stock. To see if I could find any tracks. I figured if there really were Comanches in the area, then I’d best get to them first and convince them to leave. But if Prewitt was just making the story up to frame me, I might be able to challenge him with the lack of evidence.” He exhaled a gust of ugly laughter. “Fool notion, huh? Even you thought I was guilty.”
He bent to retrieve the saddlebags he’d dropped and turned to go. At the door, though, he stopped and glanced back over his shoulder.
“Just tell me one thing, Summer.” He waited till she looked directly at him. “Why would you think me fool enough to jeopardize the life I’ve made with you here? The kind of life I’ve always dreamed of living?”
Tears welled in her eyes when she saw the despair in his. “I…I’m sorry. What was I to think with you shutting me out of your life at every turn?”