“Aren’t you in a hurry?”
“Now,
sí
.”
José pressed the knife until it dug into her skin. Much more and it would break through the protection of her dress and cut. She breathed slowly, hiding the panic inside.
Now.
The start of fear that went through her wasn’t logical at all. She knew all she had to do was survive until help arrived, but still, when faced with the carnal intent of this filthy man, feeling his gaze crawl over her, she shook inside with a fear that went beyond rational to primal. José laughed, a mean, nasty laugh, before sheathing his knife. He didn’t step away, just leaned in, overwhelming her with the reality of the threat as he sheathed his knife. “But we will have tonight.”
Which left her no option but to come up with a plan before tonight. She would not lie down, willingly or unwillingly, with a man who did not understand the concept of hygiene. It was a firm statement—rational, logical, decisive. It was amazing how little it did to make her feel better. José gave her another look.
“You are going to bring me a very good price.”
She’d rather bring him a severe case of indigestion.
He turned and gestured to the men. “Mount up. The day is wasting.”
The men stood in haphazard order, including the man dressed all in black. She met his flat blue gaze. His mouth set in a straight line and then he turned his back on her, grabbing the saddlebag and tossing it over his horse’s flanks with more force than necessary. He acted for all the world as if he was mad at her. As if she’d asked for three men to break into her house and disrupt her evening reading. She could really work up to hating men.
She waited for someone to tell her what to do. The faint hope that they’d forget about her in all the hustle of getting ready to ride persisted against the logic that said they wouldn’t. Still, when the leader turned his horse toward her, she couldn’t prevent a shudder. In her dime novels, this would be the time for the hero to show up on a thundering steed, guns blazing, and bandits expiring under the hail of bullets.
She glanced around. No hero in sight. Just winter-killed brush and brown flatlands that rolled into distant mountains. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. She wasn’t going to cringe, no matter how repugnant the thought of riding with the leader was. No matter how terrified she was inside. This time she wouldn’t lose her pride. It was very hard to live without pride.
Another horse sidled up alongside the leader’s when he was about three feet away. It was the disapproving man in black.
“I’ll take the woman up with me.”
José put his hand on the butt of his revolver. “Your sacrifice is not necessary, Billings.”
Billings glanced at her as he pulled his makings out of his pocket. “I wouldn’t call having my arms around a pretty lady a sacrifice.”
“Then why should I give this pleasure up?”
He opened up the paper. “Because if her people come after her, we’re going to have to split up and they’ll follow whichever horse she’s riding.” He shook some tobacco into the paper. “Doesn’t make sense to lose a leader over a piece of tail.”
A piece of tail? Never in her life had Adelaide been referred to in that way. Never had she heard of any woman referred to that way. It was as shocking as it was disgusting.
The man didn’t even look at her as she gasped and flushed. With efficient movements, he rolled the cigarette and struck a sulphur, lighting the tip. The acrid scent of cheap tobacco stung her nostrils as he snuffed the flame between his spit-moistened fingers. “It’s up to you.”
José looked at her, then back at Billings. He didn’t take his hand off his gun. Tension thickened the air. The big man drew on his smoke. The end glowed a bright red. Adelaide reached into her pocket, automatically searching for her worry stone. It wasn’t there. The glow of the cigarette faded. The tension remained. She rubbed the thick wool of her skirt between her fingers. It wasn’t the same. It did nothing to stabilize her emotions.
The chill of the wind replaced the heat in her cheeks as José nodded and pulled his horse up. “The woman will ride with you.”
Billings kneed his sorrel forward. He held out his hand. She took a step back, every muscle protesting the movement, instinctively shaking her head.
“You can ride sitting in the saddle or across it. Your choice.”
It was a simple truth. She forced herself to accept it. And at least she had control of this, even if the choice was a tiny thing like how she would ride against her will. Control was good. It could be won and maintained in small measures. It should be held on to. She placed one of her bound hands in his. Her feet left the ground so fast she almost didn’t have time to throw her leg over the horse’s back. Her skirt wrapped in an uncomfortable knot around her legs as she struggled to find her balance.
She tugged at the heavy material, yanking it out from under her thighs, trying to cover the scandalous amount of petticoat and calf that showed. In the process, she kicked the horse’s side. It did a little hop to the left. She grabbed the man’s waist. Nothing but hard muscle met her touch. He swore and glanced over his shoulder.
“What in hell are you doing?”
She dug in her nails as the horse hopped again. She wiggled her right leg. The maneuver ended in another kick that generated another protest from the stupid horse. “My skirt is tangled.”
“Well, cut it out. You’re scaring Jehosephat.”
She tried a tug-and-hop maneuver. This time the horse bucked. “Jehosephat needs some manners.”
Controlling the horse with a shift of his weight and tension on the reins, Billings growled, “He’s got plenty of manners. Now settle down.”
The last rumbled out of his chest as more sound than enunciation. Too scary to ignore.
“I can’t.” She pulled at the hopelessly trapped material. “It’s not decent.”
He glanced down at her leg and then back at her over his shoulder, his mouth lifting in a sardonic twist. “Lady, showing a bit of leg is the least of your worries.”
2
IT
WAS
THE LEAST OF HER WORRIES.
Eight hours later, sunburned, thighs chafed, frozen stiff, and tied to a tree while the men made camp, Adelaide had to agree with Billings’s earlier comment. Showing a bit of calf was no longer one of her worries. It had long since fallen off the list. She was far more concerned with freezing to death and being raped. Well, and maybe that someone would make her eat the mess they’d pulled from their dirty sacks and were calling food.
She wanted to do nothing more than close her eyes and go to sleep, but if she did, she might not wake up. Or she might wake up to being attacked. Both options terrified her, so she forced herself to sit upright, and kept herself that way through sheer force of will. For how much longer she could maintain it, she didn’t know, but it was going to be longer than this minute and definitely through the approach of yet another of the bandits.
It was the squint-eyed, dirty boy. He wasn’t really a boy, he just had a youthful face and one eye that wouldn’t open all the way, which gave him an absurd appearance of concentrating when she’d already established through observation that a high mental capacity wasn’t his strong suit.
Let him walk by. Let him walk by.
The hope wouldn’t die, even when his gaze locked with hers and a lecherous smile took up residence on his pimply face. After they’d retrieved her from the Comanche raids, her cousins had made her promise never to give up hope should she be stolen again, but they hadn’t told her how hard it was going to be to hold on to that hope in the face of overwhelming numbers of the enemy, exhaustion, and the threat of death. They hadn’t told her because they hadn’t imagined it could happen. Not with them protecting her. But two years ago she’d managed to finagle her way to town, put down roots in her bakery, and take the first baby steps out of the past because even after all these years she hadn’t given up hope that she could have the life she wanted. No. A body didn’t give up hope. They held on to the possibilities that lurked around the corner. Just as she was doing now.
Squint-eye stopped in front of her and held out a grubby, half-eaten piece of jerky and smiled, revealing rotten teeth. “Want some?”
Keep your head down and keep your strength up.
Her cousin, Cole’s, words this time. He’d taught her a lot of things about fighting and survival. The number one rule was not to become weak, so when her chance for escape came, she could take it. She forced herself to smile. It felt more like a pathetic twist of her lips, but it was all she had. “Thank you.”
Squint-eye held the jerky closer. The rank odor of his body didn’t cover the rancid odor of the meat. It was turning. Her stomach heaved as she thought she saw something moving in the jerky. The smile slipped out of her control, fading away. She forced her mouth open. She had to keep her strength up. The food was yanked away.
“Ask me to touch your breasts and you can have some.”
The shock of his words, their meaning, froze her. No one had ever talked to her that way. She didn’t even know men did talk to women that way. She didn’t like it. She most definitely wasn’t going to cooperate with such childish taunting. “No.”
He waved the meat as if it were a special prize. “You’re going to get mighty hungry if you don’t learn to cooperate.”
“Really?” She cocked her head to the side, meeting his gaze. “And here I thought you needed to deliver me alive to get your payment.”
“Alive don’t mean happy.”
“No, but I imagine well fed means more money, and since your companions look like the greedy type, I imagine I will be fed regularly, which means your threat was not a very well-thought-out one, rendering it rather pathetic when it comes to persuasion.”
The men nearest, having heard the exchange, laughed. Squint-eye’s face turned red. “You think you’re too good for the likes of me?”
She bit back an “absolutely,” a cold, hard surge of pride giving her the control to keep the quaver out of her speech. “I’m merely pointing out that your threat lacks logic.”
His face contorted into an ugly caricature. Before she even gathered his intent, he slapped her, his “Fuck you” joining the ringing in her ears as her head connected with the rough bark of the tree. A distant growl joined the rumble in her head. Lights flashed before her eyes and then the pain hit. She moaned. A shadow came between her and the firelight, rendering everything except the stars streaking across the inside of her lids black. A hand came under her chin, roughly jerking her jaw from side to side. “Damn it, Bob, if you broke her jaw, I’m going to cut your pecker off. A woman that can’t suck ain’t worth shit.”
She didn’t want to know what those words referred to. The right side of her face throbbed a protest as José manipulated her jaw up and down. She tucked squint-eye’s real name away for future reference.
“I didn’t break her damn jaw, just taught her some manners.”
Adelaide opened her eyes and found the men staring at her with varying degrees of inquiry. José’s gaze dropped away from her face as abruptly as he had grabbed it. José’s profile was hard as he said, “Then next time choose a better way.”
“Maybe he needs teaching on how best to discipline a woman,” a voice she didn’t recognize suggested.
José glanced over at Bob, disgust on his face. “You might be right. Pay attention, boy.”
As if it were nothing more than brushing a crumb off his shirt, Jose’s fingers closed on her nipple through her dress. She didn’t have time to absorb the shock of being so intimately touched before agony seared up from her chest, driving a scream from her throat. If she hadn’t been tied to the tree, she would have doubled over. Men laughed as she jerked upright. José merely continued his lesson. “You don’t need to mark a woman, boy, to make your point. Just grab hold of her teats and twist a bit.” Satisfaction edged the cold smile on his lips. “Works every time.”
He let go, but the pain continued. As Adelaide reeled with the residual agony, she heard it again, that deep, unearthly growl that echoed in her mind. José’s head came up. “You all hear that?”
Oh, dear Lord, it wasn’t in her head. There was a wild animal somewhere behind her growling, and she was tied.
“Hear what?” someone asked.
“A growl.”
“Probably wolves drawn by the food,” Billings offered, rolling another smoke. “Winter’s been a hard one.”
José drew his gun. “I fucking hate wolves.”
Adelaide yanked at her hands.
Bob pulled his revolver, too. “I’m not afraid of wolves.”
Her estimation of his mental capacity dropped another notch. Wolf packs killed cattle, sheep, horses, and people when times got very tough. At the end of winter, times were their toughest. He crossed to the small fire and grabbed a stick, the slight swagger in his step telegraphing what he intended to do before he said it. “I’ll check things out.”
“You do that, boy, and when you get your frozen ass back here, you can tell us all about the wolves you didn’t see.”