She could tell by the way his obsidian eyes narrowed that she had made him angry again, but she didn’t care. If Lance was intent on plain speaking, he deserved to hear a few home truths of his own.
“Besides,” she added more softly, relenting, “I don’t think of you as a savage. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re part Indian.”
“It would matter if I was to come courting you.”
The smile she had started to offer faded at his remark. It was one thing to indulge in a stolen kiss or two with a man she had no business even looking at. It was quite another to contemplate a courtship. “Well, yes…in that case, it would. Papa would never approve—”
“What about you? What would you say?”
She remained silent. What she thought made no difference. Even if the forbidden notion appealed to her, even if she secretly wondered what it would be like to experience passion at Lance’s hands, even if she thought it might be exciting to try and tame a man like him, she would never be allowed the opportunity. It just wasn’t done.
“I won’t always be just a hired hand,” he said into her silence. “Someday I’ll have enough for a stake in some land. But”—his voice grew quiet—”that wouldn’t be enough, would it? A man like me could never aspire to winning the hand of a princess like you.”
She heard the soft acceptance in his voice, the bitterness, the regret, and wanted to deny it. But there was nothing she could say. It was a simple fact of life that young ladies of good family did not marry men of mixed blood, no matter what their connections in the white world, no matter how much either of them wished things might be different. She gazed up at him in mute sympathy.
“I guess a man can always dream,” he murmured, almost as if he’d forgotten she was there.
He laughed then, harshly, humorlessly, and shook his head, as if to deny his wistful reflection. “What do I want with your highfalutin white ways?” he muttered. His tone was cynical, self-mocking, and yet she couldn’t help thinking he just didn’t want her to know how much he really cared about his position in society, about being as outcast. He looked at her again w
ith that damn-your-eyes stare, and yet suddenly somehow she knew, with an elemental feminine instinct, that his mockery was a mask of bravado he’d adopted for the world to see, to cover up his vulnerability.
The silence stretched between them for a score of heartbeats. It was odd, but she could almost sense what Lance was thinking, what he was wishing. His dark face might have been carved from stone for all the emotion he showed, and yet she could feel his pain.
Slowly then, as if sleepwalking, he pushed himself away from the pecan tree and, with the silent stride of the true Indian, moved to stand before her. Reaching out a hand, Lance stopped the lazy motion of the swing. Summer sat silently looking up at him, a question in her eyes.
In response, he reached down and drew her to her feet.
Disquieted by the intensity of his gaze, she placed a slender hand on his chest to ward him off.
“You wanted a birthday kiss,” he said in a low voice.
“Yes, but…you already…I’ve been out here too long as it is. Someone might come looking for me.”
“Losing your nerve, princess?”
She didn’t reply. She couldn’t, for her breath had suddenly caught in her throat.
Lance raised his hand to her bosom, where several mahogany curls rested in teasing disarray. Gently, almost reverently, he brushed them aside, baring her throat to his hand. His fingers lifted, spread along the edge of her jaw.
“If I can’t have the real thing…if all I can do is dream…I want a memory I can build on.”
She could see the desire in his eyes, the longing, and felt the same overwhelming sensation flowing into her. Hesitantly, hungrily, she raised her face to this, offering her lips. She wanted it, his kiss. She wanted to give him a memory to take with him. She wanted a memory of her own to hold.
She felt the erratic beat of his heart beneath her fingertips as his warm lips covered hers, as they began to move with hard insistence. This kiss was not gentle either, but neither was it savage like before. This was hungry and lonely and raw, with a poignant edge of tenderness that had been entirely missing in his first kiss.
A shiver of yearning and pleasure swept through her. This was what she had hoped for from him. This bittersweet bonding that made her feel like a woman, made her feel desired by this hard, forbidden, intensely proud man—
“What the devil?” The sharp exclamation behind her startled Summer so badly that she jumped. Breaking off the kiss, she looked back to see her brother Reed barrel down the porch steps toward her.
She had no time to protest or explain, though, before he reached her, before he grabbed her arm and pulled her from Lance’s embrace with a strength that made her stumble.
From the corner of her eye she saw Lance take an abrupt step in her direction, heard the soft oath he voiced, but Reed shoved himself between them and let his fist fly, connecting squarely with Lance’s jaw and felling him to the ground.
Lance didn’t stay down. With incredible agility he rolled to his feet and balanced in a defensive crouch, his arms slightly raised to allow the greatest freedom of movement. The long knife that had suddenly materialized in his right hand gleamed wickedly in the lamplight.
Summer screamed in fear. She wanted to do something, to intervene between the two hostile men, but she found herself frozen in horror as she watched to see what Lance would do.
Reed stood his ground, his fists balled in protective fury. “How dare you touch my sister!”