"I hope I'm not going to regret this," he breathed, rolling over her. Here, he decided, directly under his furiously aroused body, was someone's spoiled darling intent on tasting exotic forbidden fruit, and after having given her three chances to leave, damned if he wasn't willing to grant her her spoiled wish. Casting aside any responsibility or conscience due largely to a sexual appetite tantalized one step too far by the tantalizing Miss Braddock, Jon Hazard Black decided there were things in life that must run their course, and he set about to do what he did exceedingly well.
Her breathless young eagerness was his for the taking. He thrust forward, neither brutal nor gentle, but determined. She screamed, breathless and startled. And it was over. Hazard's lips soothed her cry with tender kisses; he murmured comfortingly in the soft cadence of his people's language, staying immobile while the love words washed over her. After the consoling pause, he began moving gently inside her, pampering, coddling, progressing slow inches at a time, withdrawing carefully, beginning again, until she welcomed him, genially. And no longer wanted to relinquish him. The virginal Miss Braddock was emitting soft moans and small sighs of pleasure now, encouraging his progress with intuitive understanding and tenacious hands. "It doesn't hurt now?" Hazard murmured near her ear.
"Is it always this good?" she replied in a sighing whisper, her lips brushing his in a lazy incitement.
His question answered, he withdrew enough to indulge her sense of "goodness" again, and then again, and… again, until very soon her appetite shifted voluptuously. There was no further timidity or shyness or uncertainty, she clung to him now, melted around him, undulated her slender hips to lure him more deeply. Obliging her, he drove in slowly, surely. Eagerly matching his rhythm, arching high in passion to meet him, pre-daceous suddenly in her wanting, within minutes she was shattering him into bits. In her startling desire, she was erotic, wild, unrestrained as a forest fire. Their mating was unladylike, ungentlemanly; it was breathless, fierce, tumbling, falling, hurtling, unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. When he touched her and she touched him, it was as if the world fell away and only reckless, insatiable desire remained. And at the last, when he sensed the intense abandon peaking, when he felt her first small convulsion begin, he poured in to meet her with tremendous, pulsing spasms.
Seconds later, resting his weight on his elbows, bathed in perspiration, panting, he regained enough breath to speak. "B-icu bia [a song of a woman]," he whispered, lightly kissing her flushed cheeks. Although he was empty, his arousal, burning fitfully, hadn't lost its need for her. Inactive, but rigid still, it rested inside her tight virginal passage. Blaze stirred a little and reached up a hand to touch his face. Without speaking, her eyes dreamy, she traced a delicate finger down his firm cheek and sighed contentedly. Then her hands slid down his back, pulling him deeper and the face she lifted to him wore a luxurious half-smile. "I want more," she impudently demanded, grown confident in her own powers.
"Don't you know," he replied with his own half-smile, "most men aren't as resilient as women?"
"I can feel you, though. You're not most men, are you?" The throaty contralto purred like a lioness. "I want you now."
"It doesn't always react to commands, Miss Brad-dock. You've got a lot to learn."
Limpid eyes calmly appraised him. "Teach me," she whispered, and lifted her mouth to his. It was a hungry, aggressive, intrusive kiss, and in the course of the next hour, they consummated their volatile passion like young animals, sometimes with insatiable fury, sometimes with sweet tenderness, always, for Hazard, with the piquant, critical attentions of the connoisseur. The glowing, spirited woman in his arms crested each time with great wild-ness and abandon until at last she was content.
HAZARD lay half on his side on the narrow bed, holding Blaze close. His mouth brushed against the tousled mass of flame-red curls. "You're a damned serious negotiator," he teased lightly. "If Buhl Mining is utilizing this bargaining method with any frequency, no wonder everyone's selling."
She dreamily murmured into the curve of his shoulder. "I was only going to talk to you."
"Your dialogue is utterly charming, Miss Braddock."
"Blaze," she offered, totally enchanted by the feel and taste and scent of him. "And you're to blame, Mr. Black. Has anyone ever mentioned how skilled you are at seduction?"
He modestly didn't reply.
Lifting her face, she looked from under sleepy cat-eye lashes into his amused dark eyes. "Well… have they?" she softly demanded.
"Yes," he said, smiling indulgently at her artless question.
"Oh," she responded in a small, startled voice, realizing suddenly, as she met Hazard's amused glance, that she'd been naive. Chagrined at her gaucherie, she quickly changed the subject. "Do you have another name or should I continue calling you Mr. Black?"
"I've quite a few other names, but most people call me Hazard. It's simple."
"And appropriate?" she said carefully.
"Not really," said Hazard at length, equally carefully, "since I go out of my way to avoid trouble." But he knew very well he was regarded by most as a kind of human ultimatum.
"You killed three men lately."
So she had heard. Brave of her to come up here in spite of the stories. "They all drew on me first," he said pleasantly.
"Would you have killed Yancy this morning if he'd threatened you?"
"Not unless he'd raised his rifle and sighted in on me."
"Some of the men were afraid you'd kill me."
He laughed. A warm, resonant sound. "Hell, no, not when more interesting options are available. Besides," he said charmingly, "you're no threat—only a distinct pleasure."
"You will consider selling though, won't you Hazard? They'll give you a good price. Whatever you want, I'm sure. You can take the money and live well for a long time." Blaze hadn't intended any of this to happen; the past hours were a fantastic, inexplicable deluge of passion and feeling which had simply overwhelmed her. Hazard seemed like a reasonable man; her offer was more than reasonable. Generous, in fact. She was sure he'd accept. At the moment, basking in some blissful paradise of contentment and well-being, she wasn't thinking beyond that.
Passion quenched, half reclining beside the beautiful woman who had so recently been his, the shadow of chill reality reminded Hazard what had brought her here. "My claim's not for sale," he said. His voice was completely without timbre, his face wiped clean of expression.
There was a moment of complete and cataclysmic surprise.
Then, as if stung, Blaze struggled up on her elbows, her eyes wide with astonishment. "Why not?"
There was a distinct pause while remote black eyes, heavy with cool sarcasm, scanned her from her creamy throat to her small bare feet. "Why should I?" His voice was deceptively mild.
Her dismay had brought her seated upright in the wreckage of the bed. "Well, for money, of course!" she retorted.
"I'm not interested in selling my mine, but I'd be interested in buying you. Do I have to negotiate with Buhl?" he asked, a slight edge to his voice, "or are you a free agent?"
"I'm very much a free agent," Blaze snapped, hot with resentment. "I'm also Colonel Billy's daughter." She said it with a deliberate arrogance, expecting it to make a difference, as it had all her life.
It did. Hazard was profoundly astonished. Everyone in the mining camps had heard of Colonel Billy B. He headed the group buying all the gold claims in Montana. He didn't think Buhl Mining was that desperate. Concealing his surprise, Hazard said in a voice dry as ash, "In that case, I don't think I can afford you."
"Are you in the habit of buying women, Mr. Black?" Blaze contemptuously inquired.
"No, you're the first. Bad luck your hot little body is out of my price range."
With a quick gasping breath, Blaze's arm flew out to strike, but his hand was there long before she reached his face, catching her wrist in a bone-threatening grip. As they breathed quiet anger, each resentful of the other's guile, a rifle shot rang out. Slamming Blaze down, Hazard ordered, "Stay there. Don't move," with soft, frightening venom, thinking what a fool he'd been to trust those bastards. Kicking his way out of the shambles of the bed, in seconds he was on his feet and standing at the side of the window, naked, his holster looped over his shoulder. His body was tense. No one. "Is it a signal?"
Blaze shook her head. "I don't know."
He turned to her, his suspicions palpable. "Don't move," he repeated, "or I may have to kill you." Pulling on his leggings, he picked up his rifle and walked to the door. Dark hair tumbled, eyes blazing brightly, his nostrils were flared in anger. With one hand on the latch, in a voice devoid of emotion, he said, "If you come out of this cabin, I will kill you. I mean it." It was a cold brutal tone he'd never used with a woman before. "Stay in bed and keep your head down." His eyes drilled into her. "If this is part of your performance—" He broke off. Turning abruptly in a movement of extreme violence, Hazard pulled the door open, slipped through it, slammed it shut, and was gone before the frightened look had fully crossed Blaze's face.
It didn't take long for Jon Hazard Black to make his plans known to the men at the bottom of the hill—the men with rifles, the greedy men, thirsty for his land or blood. His phrasing was precise and unequivocal, but spoken in a voice bell-like with anger. He stood there silhouetted against the shot summer sky, dark as the devil, capable, brutally rude, and no one in the group standing at the base of the mountainside was even fleetingly inclined to doubt what he said. "My claim is not for sale. I'm keeping Miss Braddock as a hostage just in case any of you seriously consider taking me on. I'll kill her at the first sign of treachery. Good day, gentlemen."
The words, stentorian and raised to pass down the long distance, reached the cabin as well and each word was etched like flame in Blaze's horrified mind. He was keeping her here? He couldn't, she thought, but knew as instantly, he very well could. How could he, she heatedly considered next, and then, with a spark of annoyance, knew he would find it infinitely easy. She was out of the bed and halfway across the room when he came in. "No! Damn you, you can't!" she irrationally screamed. "You can't keep me here!"
Taking a cotton shirt of his, from a hook near the door, he tossed it at her. "I'm not asking your permission," he quietly said, "and if you could have repressed your female inclination to meddle," he added, cuttingly, "you wouldn't be here right now, ravished, naked, and my hostage. Whatever it is that drives you, Miss Brad-dock, to interfere in a man's world, to interfere, once too often, in my life," said Hazard, his voice brittle with hard-controlled temper, "that fixation is what put you where you are right now. Don't blame me. Blame yourself." Willing his eyes away from her lush nakedness, so striking it made him uncomfortable, he ordered austerely, "Put that shirt on; you're distracting as hell."
Her flesh breathed sweetness and warmth and her magnificent breasts, round and still rosy from lovemaking, lay high and ripe for the taking. Naked, trembling with fury, he found her a heady, irresistible provocation. Lord, she looked good. Fiery, disdainful, haughty, and… too damned inviting. Restraining himself with effort, he cautioned himself against succumbing to her lure, as he had so easily before, when all his lofty principles had been burned away with a touch of her lips. He turned to slide his rifle back on the tack above the door.
"You bastard! You can't keep me hostage!" Blaze cried with white-hot rage, launching into a volley of obscenities, to which Hazard listened, his back uncompromisingly rigid. "… You can't do it," she finished in a breathless frenzy, standing stiff, pale, unyielding, clutching his shirt in one hand, refusing to believe what was happening.
Hazard turned sharply and stood, considering, across the small distance separating them, an ominous glint in his eyes. "Good God, you fool. Can't?" he said and laughed, a short unpleasant sound. "But I just have, Miss Braddock, and if you'd put a lid on your irreducible ego, you'd realize you're not out East now with your Papa and his friends and all their connections. There's no one here but me to enforce can or can't. So you can argue mountains into desert sand over how or what or why, but as long as I'm on the right end of my rifle," said Hazard with simple truth, "I can do anything I want."