Savage Thunder

Chapter Twenty-eight

Colt felt wonderful. He hurt like hell, but inside he was in control again, his emotions spent, his anger leashed, manageable. He could probably even con-front the duchess now and get it over with, or so he thought until he saw her standing there watching him.

Back came the irritation, first because she had managed to approach him without his hearing her. He could blame that on the slight ringing in his ears from one of Grahame's punches. He shook his head, but the ringing persisted. He glanced around then to see if anyone else whom he didn't know about had fol-lowed him, but she was the only one there. And that was why his irritation increased. She just never learned, this woman. He'd avoided her, he'd warned her off. How much clearer could he get? But it was no more than he could expect with her stubborn streak, so it shouldn't irritate him. It still did.

"What're you looking at?"

Jocelyn let out a sigh, hearing Colt's surly tone. To think she had actually been concerned when he had stumbled out of camp. Sir Parker had been rendered unconscious, and Vanessa, who was seeing to him, had assured her he would be all right. But Colt still had been on his feet at the end of the fight and had left before anyone could attend to his cuts and abrasions.

He had doused his head in the water hole they had camped next to, and had just finished drying his face with his bandanna when he'd noticed her. Whoever had last toted water from the hole that evening had left a torch behind, stuck in the ground. From that light, she could see the swelling of his left cheek, the cut over his eye still trickling blood down his temple. His clothes were filthy, his pants ripped at the knees. His other injuries were likely hidden, since Sir Parker had concentrated most of his blows to the body. There would be many, however, for the fight had lasted a good fifteen minutes.

"You look terrible. Does it hurt?"

"Does a dog piss?"

Her back stiffened. "I'd appreciate a civil answer, thank you."

"Then go talk to someone else. Here you take your chances."

"I could have sworn you would have had your nasty temper worked off after your exercise this evening."

"Me too," he sneered. "Just goes to show how wrong a dumb Indian can be."

"Don't do that," Jocelyn said angrily.

"What?"

"Belittle yourself like that. You may not be edu-cated in the normal way, Colt Thunder, but you aren't stupid, and we both know it."

"That's debatable, honey. I'm here, aren't I?"

She drew in her breath sharply. "Meaning what? That you shouldn't be?"

"Damned right!"

"Then leave! No one's stopping you."

"Aren't you?" In two long strides he reached her and gripped her arms to shake her. "Aren't you?" he repeated in a furious hiss.

"If I am. I'm glad," she said, already regret-ting that she had offered him an out in the heat of the moment, but relieved that he hadn't jumped on it. "You are needed, after all."

Colt turned away from her, defeated by a single word. Every time she said it, it did crazy things to him inside. Mostly it inflamed his lust, even though he knew full well her use of the word wasn't meant to be provocative. Christ, how he wished it were.

"It takes integrity and honor to keep faith with something you find so disagreeable," she said quietly behind him.

"What is this?" he demanded sharply, glancing over his shoulder with a black scowl. "Soothe the savage beast with a bone of flattery?"

Jocelyn gritted her teeth. "No," she said, wanting to shout it, but afraid now that if she let her temper loose, it would be the excuse he needed to quit. "I'm trying to tell you I'm sorry you don't like the job.

but not sorry enough to release you from it."

He turned around slowly. "To hell with the job," he said almost conversationally. "That's not the prob-lem and you know it. You're the problem, you and that unexpected little bonus you bestowed on me without warning."

Jocelyn tried to look away at that point, sensing what was coming. Colt brought her gaze back to his with a hard grip on her chin.

"Don't mistake me, Duchess. I'm honored." The sudden sarcasm in his tone said otherwise. "But why don't you clear up the mystery, anyway? Why me?"

She knew exactly what he was asking, but denied it. "I don't know what you mean."

That answer got her another hard shake and a shouted "Why me?"

"I–I wanted you. It's that simple."

"Wrong. A virgin can want every man who comes sniffing, but she won't do anything about it without a ring on her finger, or love clouding her judgment. Now, since neither of those reasons applies to you, let's hear the real one."

It unnerved her that he was so sure those reasons didn't apply to her. How could he know that, or that her attraction to him wasn't the only thing that had motivated her?

"Not that I can see why it matters, but I wasn't just any virgin, I was a widowed virgin. Therefore, I didn't have to wait for love or a ring, as you so put it, if I desired a man. Who is there to tell me that I can't do as I please or have what I want?"

He stared at her for a long moment, running that through his mind, before he finally shook his head. "That was a widow's philosophy, sure enough, but just as you weren't just any virgin, you weren't just any widow. The whys of your special circumstances don't interest me. You were still a virgin, and virgins don't give it away without a damn good reason. I haven't heard yours yet."

"I have answered you!" she cried. "I don't know what more you expect—"

"The truth!"

"Why won't you believe me?"

"Because I see it in your eyes, woman."

She paled. "What?"

"That you're hiding something. And now it's in your face. I pieced it together that night, that you had to have some ulterior motive for accepting me in your bed."

"But I did want you," she insisted. "It had to be you, don't you see?"

"No, I don't see. But I will, if I have to shake it out of you."

Jocelyn stiffened, anger rescuing her from the tur-moil his suspicions caused. "You've done quite enough of that, thank you. Now you will release me."

"I don't think so," he said softly and drew her closer instead.

Intimidation had gotten him nowhere. And he rec-ognized that stubborn streak of hers when he saw it.

He could throttle her and she wouldn't tell him another thing. But he had to know — one way or the other.

"What the devil are you doing?" she demanded when she felt his lips on her neck.

"All that talk of wanting and you have to ask?"

"But—"

"But what, Duchess?" His lips moved toward her ear while his arms tightened around her until there was no space left between their bodies. "That had to be a powerful need you had to make you give up your virginity to satisfy it. Something that powerful doesn't just go away… or does it?"

"No… it doesn't," she heard herself saying, to her surprise and his.

But it was true, obviously, since she had felt it the moment he put his arms around her, and it was grow-ing stronger by the moment. He smelled of earth and sweat and man, and she wanted him again, just like before, regardless that she had no reason to indulge the desire this time other than for the sheer pleasure she now knew it would bring her.

His lips had left her skin when she answered him, and his wet hair was dripping on her shoulder and neck, making her shiver. Or was it his breath, which she could still feel warming the sensitive area around her ear?

"Why'd you get rid of it?"

She pressed closer at the sound of his voice. "What? Oh, please, no more questions," she groaned.

"Kiss me."

He did, but teasingly, nibbling at her lips, drawing back when she strained to meld their mourns together.

He kept it up until she was ready to do anything to bring his mouth crushing down on hers.

"Colt!"

"Why'd you get rid of it?"

Despite the maelstrom of her emotions, it seemed easier to answer. "It was a hindrance."

"Why?" his voice persisted, a husky whisper, while his hands moved all over her.

"It prevented me from. from remarrying if I found someone. who would suit."

"Why?"

"The duke's affliction mustn't be known."

"But it didn't matter if I learned of it?"

"You didn't know him. were never likely to meet anyone who did."

She was suddenly shoved back, his warmth gone, leaving her so frustrated she could have screamed—

until she heard him swear. "Son of a bitch! I had to be right, didn't I? Just this once I couldn't be wrong?"

"About what?" she asked, reaching for him, but he knocked her hand aside.

"You used me!"

Jocelyn blinked, jolted out of her confusion, enough to realize what he'd done to her. He'd used her pas-sion against her — just as she had done to him that night. She noted the irony, even supposed she de-served it. But there was a glaring difference in their tactics that caused the outrage now taking over her languor, blinding her to his own. She hadn't withdrawn the moment she got what she wanted, as he just did. She hadn't left him in need.

"So this is what your foul temper has been about these past days?" she demanded furiously. "You feel insulted because I wanted you?"

"Used, woman," he corrected coldly. "Any man would have served for what you wanted. "

"And you didn't use me? I wasn't there that night, beneath you, filled with your flesh?"

He wanted to hit her for that, for making him burn to get inside her again with the vivid image her words created in his mind, even more than he already burned from holding her. And she wasn't finished.

"Is that what you're trying to tell me, Thunder? That you found no pleasure in my bed?"

"Shut up, damn you!"

"Then what exactly do you resent? That I chose you to be my first lover? Or that I took advantage of your moment of weakness?" And then she went for blood. "That's what's really bothering you, isn't it? I know you didn't want me. You made that abundantly clear every time I got near you. But I managed to seduce you into losing control anyway, and you can't stand that, can you?"

He drew back his hand, but when she didn't flinch from it, he clenched his fist and lowered it. "Answer me one question, Duchess. When did you decide to use me, before or after you forced this damn job down my throat?" When she didn't answer him immediately, he sneered, "Just as I thought. When a man buys a whore, he makes sure he gets his money's worth. Did you?"

She was furious enough to reply, "Of course. You are, after all, a prime specimen of manhood, quite the most handsome I’ve ever encountered." There was enough sarcasm in her tone to make him doubt there was any truth in her words. And then she added just for spite, "But it was a trifling sum, if you must know. So you needn't worry that you cost me dearly. You didn't. Besides, you have so many other uses, I really did make a splendid bargain, didn't I?"

His answer was to snarl, "I suspected you were a spoiled bitch!"

"And I knew you were an arrogant bastard. So what does that prove? How blind lust can be?"

It was the last taunt Colt could stand without giving in to his urges, and at the moment his greatest urge was to cut out that razor-sharp tongue of hers. The only other thing he could do was leave, which he did.

She misunderstood, however, and shouted after him, "Don't mistake me, Thunder! I have no inten-tion of releasing you from my service until you've finished the job you agreed to. Do you hear me? Don't you dare quit on me!"

He stopped, but only after putting enough distance between them. With the brightly lit camp behind him, she could only see his silhouette, which was just as well, since his expression was now murderous.

"I don't quit, but I give you fair warning, woman. For the last time, stay the hell away from me."

"With pleasure!" she retorted, but his long strides had already increased the distance between them, so she wasn't sure he'd heard her.

She watched until he disappeared behind one of the wagons, then turned about to stare blindly at the far-off mountains. For her ears only she mumbled, "Hateful beast," and then promptly burst into tears.