"I could abduct her. You couldn't do anything then."
"It's not the season."
"It will be again."
Hazard smiled faintly. "Not for me."
"So it's true, then. I hear you carry water for her and cook for her like a woman." Spirit Eagle's young face held disdain.
"I do what I please," Hazard replied quietly, fathomless reserves of self-confidence lending assurance to every syllable. "You're young and have much ahead of you. I suggest you find another woman. But if some misplaced sense of honor or pride presses you, I just want you to know," he continued, cool-eyed and exact, "if you try to come for her, you'll have to get by me first."
"She's going to make you weak."
"You're welcome to try and find out. Anytime," he offered, waited calmly, then receiving no answer walked away.
RISING Wolf, standing guard outside Hazard's lodge, felt a hand on his shoulder as Hazard's voice, low, level, and friendly, said, "Thank you. I'll talk to you in the morning."
Rising Wolf looked at his friend and knew what he was feeling. "It's not all her fault," he softly pointed out.
Hazard sighed. "I know."
"Don't be too hard on her. Our ways are new. She didn't understand."
Hazard deferentially listened to his best friend's advice and smiled a little. "I've never struck a woman in my life," he quietly answered. "Take that worried look off your face."
"In that case," Rising Wolf said, smiling that light-hearted smile that reminded Hazard of a thousand boyhood memories, "pleasant dreams." But Rising Wolf had never seen Hazard run for any woman. Never. And he doubted whether Hazard's woman would go unscathed after the smoldering kiss he'd seen her give Spirit Eagle.
Upright and hostile, she was standing waiting for him when he walked in.
Regardless of what Hazard had said to Rising Wolf he was, by then, extremely short-tempered, for the image of Blaze kissing Spirit Eagle fed a fierce jealousy that burnt away his habitual self-control. He felt like shaking her until she promised never to kiss any man again. Ever. Territorial rights were crowding his rationality and pressing his sense of possession past the point of moderation.
"Did you think of Raven Wing when you kissed her little sister?" Blaze vindictively asked, ever on the offensive.
The words detonated on impact, explosive as the enraged woman, poised like a lethal weapon in the center of the lodge. Hazard stopped as if someone had slapped him, the name—rarely spoken since her death— charged with a life of its own. Hazard looked at Blaze, his back stiff with displeasure, he opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again in a grim line. He walked past her to the far side of the lodge and pulled his fringed shirt over his head, his muscles flexing across his back.
"What do you want, damn you?" she cried, outraged at his behavior. And his present silence. "I'd like to know! Why me, Hazard? When any woman out there would gladly change places. I understand you need a hostage, but why all the rest? Why bother with the endear-ments and the love words? They don't mean anything to you, that's obvious. That young girl out there tonight. She could take my place in a minute. If it's a servant you want, to cook and clean, you know I can't do that. And if it's an unpaid courtesan you want, surely the line must be long for that position!"
He turned and stared at her in disbelief. Only two days ago, he'd told her that in his eyes and that of his clan, she was his wife. Although unplanned, it wasn't a casual decision, lightly made. And now he'd found her in another man's arms. "Courtesans at least know—" he testily began, but Blaze wasn't listening, only pouring out her fury, only intent on exorcising the frustration of the past hour, a frustration based on unparalleled forfeiture of her independence, going back to Hazard's first kiss weeks ago. Tonight was only the ultimate effecting balance that toppled, not the underlying cause.
"Or maybe…" she sarcastically went on, disregarding his utterance. She was pacing wildly in the small space between the doorway and the fire, her eyes flashing like storm signals. "… Maybe / should be paying you. After all, you're the one with the notorious reputation and expertise. She stopped in midturn, spun around, and archly declared, "How much do I owe you by now? Do you charge by the hour or by the week?"
He walked away rather than hit her and dropped down on the fur robes piled into a bed. Her angry words continued rolling over him in an undisguised litany of rage while he shakily counted to fifty—ten wasn't enough. He would have been on his feet after ten, letting her feel the extent of his reaction to her bitter sarcasm.
The episode with Spirit Eagle was still in the forefront of his mind: Blaze in his arms; the ungovernable urge to kill overwhelming him; the necessity to curb the impulse. But the situation was only defused, not resolved; still infinitely complex, aggravated by Blaze's continuing presence, potentially dangerous, and at base—he grimly thought—unsolvable. Damn the noise levels. Why did the yellow eyes always feel they had to shout to be heard? Would she ever stop? He reached down to untie his moccasins, slipped them off, and lay back on the bed.
Blaze was standing over him in two short seconds. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she tersely demanded.
"Going," said Hazard with simple truth, "to sleep." He didn't trust himself at the moment to do anything else.
"Aren't you going to answer my question?" she furiously asked.
There was a moment's complete silence. "No," said Hazard, repressing his own fury with visible effort.
But Blaze wasn't, currently, sensitive to delicate nuance. "I want an answer!" she screamed, standing above him stridently, unfamiliar with not having her way, unfamiliar with not carving her own path through the universe—magnificent, flushed, intensely proud. But not as dangerous as Hazard.
He saw it coming—the stiff-armed lashing palm reaching down to feed the fury, and he caught her slender wrist a foot from his face. With a wrenching twist, he tumbled her to the bed and in primitive lust fueled by rage, jealously, and primordial need for possession, and in one smooth movement, flung his body over hers. His hands on her shoulders were cruelly rough, his temper unconcealed now in his narrowed eyes, his voice too soft. He said, "You want an answer? I'll give you an answer." Brutally he bore down, grinding his lean hips into hers. "No," he whispered, his face grim, answering her question at last. "I'm not looking for a servant. Or a courtesan. Although Spirit Eagle seemed interested. And no, I don't want you to pay me, sweet bitch," he smiled then, an unpleasant leer. "You don't have enough money." Forcing his knees between her thighs, he settled his body familiarly between her legs. "All you understand, spoiled child, is / want." And with smiling violence, he snapped the shell belt clasp at her waist. "All you've ever understood is / want." He tossed aside the shattered shells. "It's time, sweet puss," he quietly went on, roughly pushing her dress up past her waist, "to learn the world doesn't revolve around your wishes. It revolves around mine, and I don't choose to share you with any man who catches your eye."
Blaze pushed against his weight, against the hands forcing her body to accommodate his. "Don't touch me, you damned hypocrite," she stormed, gasping for breath with his dead weight on her. "And don't lecture me on… fidelity!"
"It's not a lecture. It's an order." His voice was awesome in its moderation. "I'm sorry, but in future you'll have to forgo extracurricular lovers. My contract doesn't allow it."
"I see. Hazard's Law!" she hissed. "Only playmates for you!"
"I didn't kiss that woman," his soft voice continued, but his brows met in a black scowl, belying the subdued tone, "because I wanted to. I kissed her because it was expected of me. Just like now, bia," he growled, his hand tracing an ungentle pattern up her inner thigh, "I expect you to play the dutiful wife."
"Damn you, I won't! Not after—all those people watching you—I won't!" She struggled against the prowling hands and failed to stop their progress. She tried to arch away from contact with them but he lay atop her like a vise.
His fingers circled her wrist in a bone-threatening grip. "You will." His voice was like ice. "I'm sure of it. Look at me."
She turned away, deliberately, hot anger boiling inside her.
His hand forced her head back. "You shouldn't have gone off with Spirit Eagle." His eyes were pitiless.
"Were the little sister's lips to your taste?" she spat, her own eyes like hurricane seas.
"You're a long way from home, Boston, and what you don't know about our culture would fill a thousand volumes. Perhaps," he murmured, tight-lipped, "I've been derelict. Lesson one: I won't have you going off with other men."
"He forced me," she panted, the blood pulsing in her white throat, all her struggling useless against his strength.
"Like hell he did," Hazard snapped, his fingers biting into her wrist. "Not from where I was standing."
"I thought we were going to dance," she breathlessly insisted.
His teeth showed for a moment, white against his grim mouth. "Oh, you would have danced all right," he snarled. "The oldest dance in the world."
"That's not fair." She pushed against the relentless weight of him. "I had no intention—"
"Remember, Boston, I know how hot your sweet body can be. Don't tell me you had no intention. Not after the kind of kiss I saw."
"You don't own me, Hazard!" It was a heated, angry cry, at frustrated odds with her circumstances.
"Here I do. Here I very much do, sweet wife," said the passion of an Absarokee chief who had fought like his forebears had, to retain possession of his land and property. "At least as long as I want you," he rudely added, the thought of her mouth on Spirit Eagle's etched on his memory.
"I might leave you first," said Blaze, her voice thin. "Everything's egalitarian here, isn't it?"
"You might run into a little trouble leaving. Unfortunately, theory and practice aren't always synonymous in real life. You're very much mine, Boston. Predispose yourself."
Glowing with a furious incredulity, she stared at the man lying atop her. "And if I don't?" she hostilely countered.
His low, derisive laugh was exquisitely soft. "Then I'll have to adjust my schedule," he said, brutally courteous, "to allow time to persuade you. We'll discuss it again," he murmured drily, "one hour from now."
"You'll have to force me," she spat, flushed and glowering.
His mouth curved into a genuine smile. "Don't be stupid. You're usually"—his mouth widened—"how do I put this delicately… agreeably anxious?" he murmured.
"And you're usually," Blaze hotly returned, her magnificent eyes narrowed, her small body still fighting against Hazard's steely fingers and solid weight, "like a damn rutting bull."
"That's why we get along so well, I'd guess," Hazard said approvingly and laughed quickly. A warm, pleasant sound. "Some like it tame, Boston. And some like it wild. And some say they like it tame but eat you alive when all is said and done. So don't accuse me of obtuseness; you get exactly what you ask for. But we will in future," he growled, "see that the asking is confined to me."
"Maybe and maybe not," Blaze pugnaciously answered.
"Positively and unequivocally," Hazard commanded, his grip near to snapping the bones in her arms.
"You can't tell me what to do," she stubbornly cried.
"You need tutoring in holding your tongue. You're a shade too noisy for my taste."
"And you're too insufferably under control for mine," she retorted, stony-faced and obstinate.
Thoughtfully, his gaze scanned Blaze's stormy face. "You're willful," he murmured, "exasperating as hell, and dangerous to my peace of mind." Then he sighed, a deep and baffling sigh. "What am I going to do with you?"
"Let go of my wrist," she whispered pleadingly, a tiny wan smile toughing the corners of her face. "Peace of mind," she tentatively continued, "is much overrated."