The Savage

“Then you better take off your clothes.”

There was a pause the length of a heartbeat. Then, obediently, she reached up and fumbled with the strings to her bonnet. When she had set it on the table, she stood there awkwardly.

Lance spoke again. “All your clothes, princess.”

Her heart started pounding erratically as she realized what he was demanding; he didn’t intend to give her any privacy at all. Summer turned to stare at him. He had gone quite still, as if waiting for her answer.

“This is what you agreed to when you married me,” he reminded her sharply.

“I know…It’s just that…shouldn’t…we put out the light?”

“No. I want to see you.” At her shocked hesitation, his mouth twisted. “You might as well get over your modesty now, princess. I’m going to know your body well enough in a little while, in any case. And you’re going to know mine.”

The thought of learning about his body made her pulse suddenly skip several more beats. Tense with nerves, Summer walked the three steps to the bed and fished in her bag for a nightdress. When she pulled it out, Lance cut into her whirling thoughts.

“You won’t be needing that. I want you naked when you’re in bed with me.” When she froze, he added defensively, “I’m not like your polite starched gentlemen, sleeping in a nightshirt and hiding beneath the covers to rut in secret. I wasn’t raised that way.”

No, Summer thought wildly. He was raised a savage. His ancestors were cold-blooded killers who raped and murdered white women like her.

“No,” she retorted, resentment flaring at her fear, at Lance’s high-handedness, his insensitivity. “I wouldn’t expect someone of your background to behave like a gentleman.”

She regretted her outburst instantly. She saw his grim mouth harden, saw his narrowed eyes spark with fury, and chastised herself for a fool. Taunting him about his heritage would hardly endear her to him, or encourage him to treat her with gentleness and concern for her inexperience.

Shivering, she let the nightdress drop from her shaking fingers. This was nothing like what she had expected for her wedding night. This tense skirmish of wills with a cold, hard stranger, unvarnished by tenderness or love. But she’d made a bargain with Lance: marriage in exchange for his help and protection. It was the same bargain women had made with men for centuries, and she would find the strength to keep her end of it. She had no other choice. If she ch

anged her mind, then Lance might change his. No, if he insisted on making her undress in front of him, then she would do it. The cost to her pride, her modesty, was nothing when stacked up against Amelia’s life.

She risked another glance at him. He was watching her, his features taut, his muscles coiled with the vital, dangerous energy that was so much a part of him, his smoldering eyes so dark, so intense, so…hungry that it frightened her.

She couldn’t think with him looking at her that way, not when she could feel this fear dancing inside her stomach, not when she was fighting against an unnamed emotion that she didn’t want to call excitement.

Not daring to look at him, she shrugged out of her jacket bodice and began to unfasten the buttons of her lawn blouse. It felt so wanton to be taking her clothes off in front of him. Her body felt flushed and hot, her nipples puckered and tight beneath her chemise. She kept her back to him as she drew off the blouse and folded it neatly in the carpetbag. Then she reached for the buttons of her full skirts.

Lance watched her undress, hardly daring to breathe. The anger, the want, the need, were like a fist inside him, twisting his innards. He was so hard, he could pound fence posts. So swollen, he thought he might explode if he touched her. If he didn’t touch her.

Forcing himself to look away, he finished the mundane task of fixing coffee, adding the grounds to the water and setting the pot on the stove to boil. That gibe of hers about him not being a gentlemen had cut him to the quick. He’d hoped to make her forget his Comanche blood, his bastard birth. He’d wanted to make her forget that he wasn’t good enough for her—

Realizing where his thoughts were headed, Lance muttered an expletive even as the old resentment came surging back. He couldn’t change who he was. It was stupid to feel the old gnawing inferiority. Summer was his wife now. He had the right to take her if he wanted to.

More than the right. It was a necessity. He had to consummate their marriage; tonight, on their wedding night. And not just because her damned brother would be breathing down their necks as soon as he learned what they’d done, although that alone was a good enough reason. No, it was because of Summer herself. She’d be less likely to renege on their bargain if she was fully his wife. If she lost her virginity to him, if he branded her as his, then she couldn’t back out of her vows so easily—like she was obviously thinking about doing right this minute.

Slanting a glance at her, Lance let himself look his fill as she stood there in crinoline petticoat and camisole, her throat and shoulders and arms bare. Seeing her so nervous was unpleasantly satisfying to his soul: the proud, pampered Belle of Williamson County brought to her knees by the savage half-breed.

She was looking at him, her green eyes wide, wary, her lips slightly parted. She looked afraid. He didn’t want her afraid of him.

Then again, Lance consoled himself, maybe he was being too hard on himself. Maybe that was Summer’s game—making him feel sorry for her, playing on his sympathy so he wouldn’t carry through tonight with making her his woman. He knew better than anybody how good she was with games. Which was what he had to remember, he told himself fiercely. He would be damned if he’d fall for her wiles again. He wouldn’t give her reason to really be scared of him. He would show her more mercy than his mother had received at the hands of all the white men she’d known.

“You gonna take all night, princess?” He voiced the taunt with a slow, calculated Texas drawl and watched Summer’s chin snap back up to an imperious angle. It made him feel a little better, seeing the defiance in her eyes. It appeased his own fear a smidgen.

Summer was his now. His woman. She belonged to him. There was no way in hell he would let her go. He would bind her to him the only way he knew how, by making her share the most intimate act that could happen between a man and a woman, by making her take him into her body. He would try to make it easy for her, though.

Without watching her remove her petticoat, Lance pulled off his vest and hung it on a wall peg, then his chambray shirt, baring his torso. He felt Summer’s gaze touch him: his hairless chest, his bronzed skin, his lean frame corded with ropes of muscle developed during countless hours of physical, backbreaking labor taming wild mustangs. Lance felt himself tighten, his skin grow hot. He wanted her to look at him, wanted her to become familiar with his body so she would lose her fear of him.

As she took off the camisole, he sauntered over to the bed, trying to ignore the way Summer flinched when he squeezed past her, trying not to curse when she backed away a few steps.

Sitting on the edge of the mattress, he tugged his boots off, one by one, and then leaned back, propping his shoulders against the wall.

Maybe he should try to get her to talk, so she wouldn’t think so hard about being afraid of him.