Chapter 4
He was anxious to get back. His eyes, missing nothing, had memorized the landmarks. He knew he had only a few miles left to go. Three at most. He pushed the accelerator to the floorboard.
Thankfully, the car responded. It was back in prime working condition. Switching out the hoses hadn't been a problem. The difficulty had been running all the way back to the car with heavy tools in his pockets and carrying a gallon jug of water to replace what had leaked out. He was accustomed to running distance. Even in midsummer heat that wasn't a challenge. But carrying the unevenly distributed extra poundage had been.
Greywolf was grateful for the opportunity to think as the car ate up the remaining miles. The hot wind whipped against his cheeks and through his hair. He preferred driving with the windows down; disdaining artificial air conditioning when he could glory in the elements of the desert. Only because of the woman had he left the car windows rolled up in the first place.
The woman.
His conscience pricked him to think of her locked up in that hot, filthy rest room. But what else could he have done? Left her to phone the nearest sheriff's office? Taken her with him? She would never have been able to walk back to the car, and even if she had, she would have added hours to the time it had taken him. Hours he couldn't afford.
How soon before they caught up with him? How soon? Would he make it there in time? He had to.
He had known what the prison escape would cost him, but he was willing to pay any price. He only regretted that it had cost others as well. He hadn't enjoyed knocking unconscious the trustee who had considered him a friend. He hadn't enjoyed frightening the woman either. She represented everything he despised: Anglos in general and affluent Anglos in particular. Still, he wished he hadn't been forced to involve her.
Forced to?
With an aggravated motion, he switched on the radio and turned it up full volume, telling himself he wanted to catch any forthcoming news bulletins. Actually, he hoped the blaring music would block out thoughts of her.
Why had he saddled himself with this responsibility? Why hadn't he just clipped her on the chin and left her house as quickly and quietly as he had come? By the time she regained consciousness and alerted the police, he would have had time to elude them again.
Instead, stupidly, he had stayed and heckled the Anglo woman. He had needed a shower, yes, but that was a luxury he could have done without. He had needed sleep, yes, but he could have found a place less comfortable than her bed with its scented sheets and fluffy pillows.
Even granting himself that much luxury, why hadn't he left before dawn the moment he had awakened? Sure, she would have notified the authorities when she woke up, but that could have been hours later. By then his trail would have been cold.
Instead of doing what he knew he should, he had lain there gazing at her blond beauty. She was too easy to look at, and he had never entertained the thought of resisting the temptation. Eyes starved for the sight of a woman had feasted on her. He had breathed deeply of her scent, treating his nostrils, too long deprived, to the perfume of a woman's body.
Rather than sneaking out as he knew he should, he had foolishly decided that he would take her with him. It was never his intention to harm her.
All right, so why did you threaten her with a knife?
Safety precaution.
Did you have to make her strip?
That was unnecessary, I admit. But I just wanted to look at her.
Like hell.
It's true. I wouldn't have forced her. Besides she's an Anglo. I don't even like Anglo women. I sure don't desire them.
You desire this one.
I've been in prison for God's sake! Any woman would be desirable!
You wouldn't like to make love to her?
No.
You're a damn liar.
Well I didn't and I won't.
He would maintain rigid control over his lust if it killed him. He just wanted the woman near him. That's all. To keep that taunting voice of his conscience at bay, he thought of all the reasons he didn't like his blond hostage.
She was rich and spoiled, no doubt. She had about her that Do-Not-Touch look that Indian boys like him had come to recognize on Anglo coeds. That was one of the first things he had learned when he left the reservation to attend college. Girls like Aislinn Andrews might flirt with you, but they sure as hell didn't want to make it with you. Or if they did let it go that far, it was for kicks, for the novelty of it, to brag to their sorority sisters that they'd had an Indian. "No!" "Yes!" "Just how savage was it?" The next day they acted like they didn't know you and the social barriers were up again.
This Anglo woman had spunk, though; he'd give her that. She could have been a real pain in the ass, whining and crying all the time, but she hadn't been. She'd kept a stiff upper lip no matter what he put her through.
His grim face relaxed into a facsimile of a smile when he recalled the way she had handled the highway patrolman. Why had she done it?
He owed her for that, he supposed.
And after last night, he was no longer sure he could keep to his resolve not to touch her. The hours spent in the Tumbleweed had been pure heaven and pure hell. There had been times, far too many for his peace of mind, when he had wanted the kisses to be real, when he had wanted to part her lips with his tongue and taste her, when he had wanted to open her clothes and touch her.
God, she had felt good lying against him this morning, her breath lightly fanning his chest, her breasts so soft and sweet, her thighs…
Damn! he thought, I've got to let her go.
When he got to the gas station, he would fill up the car, check with her to see that she was all right, then leave a note telling the owners where she could be found. When the police were notified, she would be able to tell them where he had been, but not where he was going. Or rather, not specifically where. They already knew his approximate destination and would be searching anyway. It was only a matter of time.
He only hoped he would accomplish what he had to do before that time ran out. Sighting the town, he sped forward. Now that the decision to leave the woman behind had been made, Greywolf was eager to see it done and be on his way. He would have to take her car, of course, but for a woman like her, cars were probably easy to come by.
He pulled up to the gas pump and got out to put the nozzle into the tank. While it was filling, he added more water to the radiator. Keeping a careful eye on the time, he even washed the windshield and checked the tires. To avoid another sticky situation like the roadblock, he wanted to be well away when the owners of the service station returned.
Finally he went around the corner of the building to the rest room. Reaching over the salvaged steel girder he had pulled in front of the door, he knocked loudly. When there was no response, he called her name.
"Answer me. I know you're in there, Aislinn. This is childish."
He waited, pressing his ear to the door. After several seconds of intent listening, he knew that the room beyond the door was empty.
Apprehension squeezed his vitals like a cold fist. Before he could account for his actions, he shoved the girder out of the way and pulled the door open. He rushed inside, almost hoping that this was a ruse and that she was planning to launch some sort of amateur attack on him.
But he was met with nothing but an empty heat and a revolting stench. He rapidly deduced the meaning of the overturned barrel beneath the open window. When he did, his apprehension turned to black rage.
The little hellcat had gotten out!
Spinning on his heel, he went tearing out the rest room door and around the corner of the building. He dashed into the main room where they had been before, but there was no trace of Aislinn and no evidence that either she or anyone else had been there.
The broken glass of the window still lay undisturbed on the floor. The twenty-dollar bill was still tucked beneath the ashtray. He checked, but the dust on the telephone's receiver hadn't been smudged.
Puzzled, Greywolf crammed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. Where could she have gone? And how? Had someone picked her up? He gnawed the inside of his cheek as he paced. Wouldn't she have telephoned someone right away? Wouldn't the authorities have made this their temporary command post while they questioned her and searched for him? It didn't make any sense.
He retraced his steps back to the rest room.
* * *
"Easy, easy, drink slowly or you'll choke."
Aislinn's parched throat thirstily welcomed the trickle of cola being poured into her mouth. She angled herself up, but moaned when a pain went rocketing through her head.
"Lie back," the gentle voice said. "That's enough for now anyway."
Her eyes flickered open. Greywolf was bending over her. His face was dark and inscrutable. Then she realized that the sun must have gone down because everything was dark. Moving her eyes caused her head to throb, but she let them wander far enough afield to determine that she was lying in the back seat of her car. The windows were all opened to let in the desert breeze. Greywolf was hunkered down beside her, wedged between the seats, his hip propped on the seat beside hers.
"Where—"
"About thirty miles from the service station. I've got bandages."
"Bandages?"
"You were moaning in your sleep," he said tersely, as though that explained everything.
Garnering all her strength, she reached up and gripped a handful of his shirt. "Talk to me, damn you. I'm sick of your Indian stoicism. Where am I and why do I need bandages? Did you finally use that knife on me?"
The rebellion had cost her every ounce of reserve energy, and she collapsed back onto the seat. But she didn't release Greywolf from her hostile stare. It was like looking into mirrors, but she kept staring into his eyes until he answered.
"Don't you remember climbing out the window and falling?" he asked.
Her eyes slid closed then. Now she remembered. The fear, the despair, and the hatred for the man who had caused it. Everything came rushing back to her in a tide of bad memories.
"I brought some aspirin for your headache."
She opened her eyes. He was shaking the tablets out of the bottle into the palm of his hand. "Where did you get them?"
"From the store. Can you take them with Coke?"
She nodded. He passed her the aspirins and when she had laid them on her tongue, he slid his arm beneath her shoulders and supported her while she drank from the bottle he pressed to her lips.
When she was finished, he eased her back down. "The sun blistered your lips." As he informed her of that, he opened a tiny jar of lip salve and gouged into it with the tip of his index finger. He touched it to her lip, smoothing the cool salve over the dried, sunburned skin.
The touch of his finger on her mouth elicited sensations in her middle, sensations she was ashamed of since they strongly resembled curls of arousal. His finger slid from one corner of her lower lip to the other, quickly and businesslike at first, then more slowly. When he traced the shape of her upper lip with his fingertip, she could barely hold still. Her body was restless with an ache that had nothing to do with the injuries she had sustained.
When he withdrew his finger, she tentatively touched her lips with her tongue. The ointment tasted slightly of banana and coconut. "Don't lick it off," Greywolf instructed brusquely, staring down at her mouth. "Let the salve work."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. You almost got me caught."
His cruel tone was so vastly different from his tender ministrations that she flinched. She should have known better than to expect tenderness from a man of stone like him. Her eyes flashed up at him angrily. "Well you should be caught, Mr. Greywolf. If there was no reason before, then because of the way you've mistreated me."
"You've never been mistreated in your life, Miss Andrews," he said scornfully. "You can't even begin to grasp the meaning of the word."
"How would you know? You know nothing about me."
"I know enough. You were reared with all the privileges that go with being rich and white."
"I'm not at fault for the way the Indians have been mistreated." She knew that all his anger and bitterness stemmed from that. "Do you indict every Anglo?"
"Yes," he hissed, his teeth bared.
"And what about yourself?" she shot back. "You're not a full-blood Indian. What about the part of you that's Anglo? Is it rotten to the core?"
He retaliated, grabbing her shoulders in his hard hands and pressing her back into the seat. His razor-sharp eyes were as cold as naked steel. "I am Indian," he whispered, emphasizing his words by shaking her slightly. "Don't ever forget that."
Aislinn knew she never would. Not now. The fierceness of his gaze dispelled any hopes that he was softening toward her. He was dangerous. Fully aware of his brute strength as he leaned over her, she shuddered with trepidation.
In the sleeveless shirt, the muscles of his arms looked as hard as granite. Most of the buttons on the soiled shirt were undone and his exposed chest sawed in and out with each angry breath he took. His corded throat was a perfect pedestal for a face that could have been hewn out of native rock.
The silver earring fastened in his lobe winked at her like a menacing eye in the darkness. The silver cross hanging from his neck mocked her because of the benevolence it symbolized. He exuded a scent that was part sun, part sweat, and all male.
Any woman with an ounce of common sense wouldn't dare to provoke such a potentially dangerous animal. Aislinn was smarter than average. She didn't even blink.
During that tense silence, he kept his muscles coiled as though ready to spring. Now, he visibly relaxed them and loosened his hold on her. "I should bandage your arm before it gets infected." He spoke with a notable lack of emotion, as though their heated argument had never taken place.
"My arm?" Only when she tried to move it did she realize that her left arm was hurting almost as badly as her head. She remembered tearing open the skin as she fell out the window.
"Here," he said, noticing her grimace when she tried to raise it, "let me." He levered her up and settled her into a half-reclining position in the corner of the back seat. His hands moved to the front of her blouse. Reflexively her right hand flew up and clutched the material to her body. He didn't move, but continued to stare back at her levelly, then said, "It has to come off, Aislinn."
She looked down and was shocked to see that her sleeve was soaked with blood. "I … I didn't know," she stammered, suppressing a wave of nausea and dizziness.
"I needed to get away from there in a hurry, so I bundled you into the back seat. I put some distance between us and that place, but now your arm has to be seen to."
Seconds ticked by. Minutes? They stared deeply into each other's eyes. His took a detour down to her mouth, glossy now with the emollient. Hers looked at the grim line of his lips and wondered how they could be both stern and sensual. Then Greywolf shook his head impatiently and muttered, "As I said before, you are my insurance policy."
Once again his hands reached toward the front of her blouse, and this time she didn't forestall him. He unbuttoned it quickly, emotionlessly. Embarrassment rose inside Aislinn like a warm, red tide as her bare breasts were revealed to him button by button. But if he noticed them, his face gave nothing away.
Only when he settled his hands on her shoulders and began to peel the cloth back, did his movements become slow and tender, almost caring. He eased the sleeve off her uninjured arm first, then gradually began lowering the other one. She winced when the cloth tugged on places where the blood had dried.
"I'm sorry." Before she could prepare herself, he ripped the remaining sleeve away. "That's the best way. I'm sorry," he repeated.
"It's all right. I know you had to." Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn't let them fall. He seemed momentarily entranced by her eyes, or was he merely watching to see if an Anglo woman would surrender to pain and cry?
Then, abruptly, and with the same kind of detachment he had shown as he unbuttoned her blouse, he angled her forward in order to remove it. For an infinitesimal second, Aislinn leaned against him, her breasts grazing his chest.
Myriad sensations flocked to her mind like fluttering birds. How fragile her nipples felt against the solid wall of muscle. How his chest hair felt both crisp and soft as it tickled her skin. How warm he was.
They pretended not to notice the brief contact, though his jaw was clenched tighter than ever when he eased her back into the corner of the seat.
The reopened scratch, which ran the entire length of her arm, oozed blood. Greywolf tossed her blouse aside and reached into a paper sack. He took a box of sterilized cotton and a bottle of antiseptic from it. "This is going to burn like hell," he said, uncapping the bottle and pouring some of the liquid onto a wad of cotton. "Ready?" he asked.
She nodded. He lifted her arm and applied the cotton to the wounded skin on the underside. Her knees jack-knifed; she gasped; tears spurted out of her eyes. Quickly he dabbed the entire scratch from wrist to armpit, then went back to press the soaked cotton to the places where the nail had plowed deeper.
"Oh, please," Aislinn moaned, squeezing her eyes shut against the fiery pain.
He hurriedly recapped the antiseptic and set it aside. Lifting her arm again, he began to blow gently on the scratch.
Aislinn opened her eyes and was dismayed to find his dark head bending so low over her. One brown hand was wrapped loosely around her wrist, holding her arm up. The other was splayed open just behind her head bracing him above her.
She watched his cheeks beneath the blade-sharp ridge of his cheekbones. They ballooned in and out as he cooled her skin with his gentle breath. His lips hovered scant inches above her arm. His head moved higher as he worked his way up her arm until his mouth was even with her breast.
His breath touched her there. Warm and balmy and soft. Responsively, her nipples reacted. They beaded to the size of small, perfect, pink pearls.
When he saw what had happened, his head made a jerking motion, as though he was going to raise it. But he paused. Lowered his head. Blew on her again. More gently this time, but directly over the tip of her breasts.
Then he became perfectly still. Raw hunger made his eyes look bleak as his gaze became fixed on her. He swallowed. He strained toward her, but, as though an invisible leash were around his neck, he refrained from touching her.
Aislinn was afraid to move, though she was tempted to. She fell victim to an almost irresistible urge to thread her fingers up through his hair and draw his head down to her. A forbidden and unaccountable tenderness for him overwhelmed her. It was unlike any emotion she had ever experienced before. She longed to grant him the use of her body. She wanted to use his. She should hate him and yet…
Why hadn't he deserted her at the service station? Why had he wasted his precious time getting aspirin and medicine for her scratch? Was there more to this man than met the eye? Did he have a capacity for human kindness after all? Was his austerity only a reaction to the injustices he had suffered?
Her expression conveyed her bafflement and made her appear extremely receptive and vulnerable. When Greywolf looked up into her face, the fire in his eyes went out instantly and he growled a warning. "Don't look at me like that."
She shook her head uncomprehendingly. "Like what?"
"Like you've forgotten that I've been in prison. Do you want to know if I desire you?" he asked harshly. "Well I do." The fingers encircling her arm became a manacle. "Yes, I want you. I want to touch you all over. I want to feel your breasts. I want to take one in my mouth and hold it there for a long, long time. I want to be so deep inside you I can feel your heartbeat. So unless you're ready to take an Indian between your thighs, I suggest you don't give me that come-on look again, Miss Andrews."
Outraged that he could so grossly misinterpret her expression, and furious with herself for giving him the benefit of the doubt only seconds before, she shielded her breasts with her free arm. "Don't flatter yourself," she hissed. "I'd die first."
He laughed shortly. "I'm sure you would. At least you'd want to die before having your pure Anglo body tainted by an Indian. But at least you won't bleed to death. Not if I have anything to do with it," he said bitterly.
She averted her head and didn't deign to look at him while he bound her arm with gauze he had taken from the sack. Once that was done, he gathered together the first-aid supplies and stuffed them back into the paper bag.
Her eyes widened with alarm when he picked up the knife, but he used it only to cut the sleeves from her shirt, much as he must have his own. He wielded the sharp blade viciously, making jagged cuts in the material until the job was done, then tossed the ravaged garment to her.
"Put this back on. We've wasted enough time here." He got out and went around to the driver's seat. In broody silence, Aislinn stared at the back of his head. While the car made the best of the pockmarked highway, she devised a dozen ways to overpower him. Each one was eliminated before she could even think it through. She thought of making a garrote out of one of her sleeves and strangling him from behind. But then where would she be? Out in the middle of nowhere without a map or water. The gasoline in the car wouldn't last forever. Should she succeed in physically besting Greywolf, her chances of surviving in the wilderness were remote.
So she rode in stony silence until exhaustion overcame her and once again she fell asleep.