The Savage

His fingers clenched around the reins once more as he looked at Lance. “I’ll be obliged to you…if you can bring Amelia home.” His voice was low, unsteady.

Lance nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

With a last glance at his sister, Reed flicked the reins and urged the horses forward. The buckboard made a wide circle and rolled away with a rattle of wheels, heading back toward the Weston ranch.

Summer waited until her brother was out of sight before wiping away the tears on her cheeks. Turning to Lance, she handed him the pouch of money. “You’d better keep it.”

It startled him a bit that she would trust him with so large a sum, just as it had stunned him when she’d told her brother they were married for good. He hadn’t expected her to stretch the truth that way. In fact, he’d prepared himself for just the opposite. They hadn’t consummated their marriage last night, and if Summer meant to renege on their bargain, this was the time. His heart only just now had stopped pounding. Did she really mean to accept him as her husband?

When she would have returned to the office, Lance stayed her with a hand on her arm. “This is a lot of money. You’re not afraid I might ride off with it?”

She gave him a puzzled glance, as if uncertain whether he was jesting or goading her. She swallowed once hard, as if it were impossible for her to speak just then with the tears clogging her throat. Shaking her head, she moved past him, going inside the cabin.

Lance stood there a minute, trying to get control of himself. The relief he’d felt clearing the hurdle of her brother was fierce, but not as strong as the guilt he felt when he looked at Summer, at the shadows under her eyes, at her lips slightly bruised with passion, at the tearstains on her pale cheeks. Damn, he felt like a heel. Even if he hadn’t forced her last night, he’d taken advantage of her weakness, added to her troubles by making her marry him. Last night he’d marked her as his, and he wanted like hell to do it again.

The memory of what he’d done to her wouldn’t go away. He kept remembering how it felt to have her silky-skinned body pinned beneath him, her slender legs open wide to him, her hard-nippled breasts pushing against his bare chest. He kept thinking about what it would have felt like if he hadn’t stopped. To have her go wild for him. To have her clawing at his back and arching her hips against him as he rode her. To have her moaning with need for him.

Dammit to hell, Summer belonged to him. She was his wife now. He’d had every right to take her. Trouble was, she looked worn-out, as if she was only holding back the tears by sheer force of will. As if she might break if he touched her. God, he wanted to touch her.

He’d given her pleasure last night, he knew that. He’d discovered the hidden fire in her, kindled a passion in her body that she’d never felt before.

And the thought of doing it again made his mouth go dry. He was conscious of a fierce urge to follow Summer inside the office and lay her down on his bed and thrust himself so deep inside her, he became part of her, to devour her mouth and fit himself to her body, to totally claim his ownership. But she didn’t need some horny bastard rutting on her, husband or no.

Lance clenched his teeth, trying to stifle his primal urges. Last night had shown him without a doubt just how damned vulnerable he was to her. And the way his body felt just now, he was likely to attack her if he so much as touched her. His stiff sex hurt, squeezed by the pressure of his denim pants. He wanted her bad; as hard as he tried, he couldn’t stop wanting.

But he had more control than that, more pride. He wasn’t going to let Summer lead him around by his groin. He would have to spend the next several days cooped up in a stage with her at the mercy of his own lust, so he’d damned well better learn to live with it.

Unless he wanted to prove himself the primitive brute she’

d always believed him to be.

The stage arrived a half hour late, well within the four-hour leeway the stagecoach company warned its passengers to prepare for. Until then, Summer and Lance said little to each other, both trying to ignore the other and the tension raging between them.

The lad whom Lance had hired to look after the livery while he was gone, Nate Jenkins, made short work of changing the team for fresh horses, eager to prove his worth. Meanwhile, the passengers, four in all, and the two burly drivers stepped down to use the facilities and to gulp down the fresh coffee waiting in the office.

While they were inside, Lance stowed Summer’s bag in the boot along with his own gear, and told her to wait till the stage was ready to pull out before boarding. “The trip will be long enough as it is. You’ll be glad of every chance you get to stretch your legs.”

When she nodded, he turned to help Nate finish harnessing the horses.

Summer watched, grateful that Lance was going well-armed. He had packed two Henry carbines—a new type of short-barreled repeating rifle. The guns could each fire sixteen rounds without reloading. He’d also strapped on a six-shooter—a Colt Navy .36 revolver—at his thigh, and she knew Lance always carried a knife. He’d scared her witless with it yesterday—God, was it only yesterday that she had asked him to help her?—and brandished it at her brother five years ago. The small single-shot derringer she carried in her reticule hardly compared to Lance’s arsenal, but still it made her feel safer. Her father had taught her to shoot when she was small—in Texas even the youngest child knew how to defend against Indian raids—but when the war started, he’d made her start carrying protection whenever she left the house.

Less than ten minutes later, the drivers and passengers filed out of the stage office. Lance handed his and Summer’s tickets to the large, red-bearded man in charge.

“Two passages?” The driver raised his shaggy eyebrows. “You riding with us, Lance?”

“Yeah, Shep. We’ll be going as far as Fort Belknap.”

The well-dressed blond lady in the group—the only other woman besides Summer—paused in the act of being assisted inside the stagecoach and turned to stare at Lance. “Surely you don’t expect us to travel all the way to north Texas with him?”

From the nervous look on her face, it wasn’t just snobbery that caused her outburst, but fear. Summer could partly understand the woman’s trepidation; there was something restless and dangerous about Lance, even when he was at ease. His hard, hawkish gaze warned people away, and just now the smoldering anger was back in his eyes, the quiet hostility. His look was enough to give any gently-bred female palpitations. Even so, that woman had no right to treat him with such sneering disdain, Summer thought indignantly.

Another of the passengers—an elegantly dressed man, perhaps the lady’s husband—glanced pointedly at Lance, a sneer on his face. “I assure you, we’re not traveling anywhere with any murdering savages.”

Casually, almost lazily, Lance reached down and drew his Navy Colt from the holster at his hip, causing the woman to gasp, and Summer herself to catch her breath.

His bronzed brow furrowed, Lance inspected the action of the revolver’s chamber, studying it intently. “I haven’t murdered anyone recently, as I recall. As for savage…” His mouth twisted in a cool smile. “I reckon that’s what I am, all right.” His black gaze lifted to the man, piercing and deadly.

The red-haired driver’s chuckle sliced into the tension. With an accusing look, the woman lifted a shaking hand to her heart. “I refuse to ride in a coach with someone like that.”