"Rest here, before you fall down,” and she did, too tired to even ask where he would be.
When she woke, she was alone. She was reassured by the sound of the horses. She listened, eyes closed, sorting through her most recent memories. Charlie Wolf had put her to bed.
He was near; his horse, Old Mossy, stood next to the buckskin mare and ate leaves from the tree Naomi rested under. She sat, wincing at the ache in her body, stiff from both the hard ground and all the unusual activities that she had recently engaged in.
In the time it took for her to rise from the blanket and look around the camp he'd made, he was beside her.
He handed her linen and a bar of soap. “There's a river down below. Bathe.” Grateful for the chance to soak, she left comment about his uncouth behavior for another time and turned to hurry to the water. “Watch out for snakes,” he advised.
The snakes would have to watch out for her. She intended to get clean. She wallowed in the semi-warm water that moved lazily past. Her hair hung in rough strands that would become snarled balls when dry. She worked ineffectually at one tangle.
She felt his eyes watching her. “I wish my hair was straight like yours.” He held out his hand indicating it was time for her to quit the river. “Just look somewhere besides at me,” she told him, exasperated at his bold stare.
When she emerged from the water, he wrapped the blanket around her, and rubbed the linen across her hair. Then he handed her a tin, and said, “Rub that into your hair, then rinse it out."
She smelled it. It smelled like him, or at least the spicy wood scent she associated with him. “What's in it?” she asked suspiciously.
"Bear grease.” He grunted impatiently. “Now rub it on your hair."
It was odd how right away her hair felt different. It hung in soft wet strands that felt like silk when she rinsed his concoction from her head. “It feels like when I was a child and rinsed my hair in rain water.” She let her hands play down the silken length and looked at him doubtfully. “Bear grease?"
He snorted. “No. My mother makes it for me to use on my hair.” She had noticed how shiny his hair was.
"It's indecent for a man to have hair that hangs down his back and is prettier than a woman's.” The tart words escaped her before she could stop them. Then she fastened on the important part of his sentence, excusing her own rude comment.
"You have a mother?” She was surprised. He didn't look like a man with a mother, let alone one who made him beauty products for his hair.
He capped the tin and stuck it in his pocket. “Did you think I was born in a cave with wolves?"
She ignored his sarcasm, because frankly, she
could
picture him in a cave with wolves, and asked politely, “Does your mother live with the Kiowa tribe?"
"My mother is Rachel McCallister of the MC3 Ranch. She's a white woman, like you."
While she was digesting that information, he did one of his silent maneuvers, moving much closer, leaving Naomi very conscious of his nearness. He stepped even closer; she could feel the heat from his body, as he rubbed a different salve on her cheeks. “Sun ointment—should make it quit burning."
His nearness and gentle application of the medicine flustered her. No one had taken care of her since—well—ever. She'd grown up taking care of others. Now this man leaned over her and squinted as he dabbed another kind of cream on her cheeks. “It does soothe the burn.” She couldn't resist and touched his hand that so gently applied the balm making her feel better.
"You're seducing me, aren't you?” She suspected that Charlie Wolf never made a move that didn't benefit him, but at this moment she didn't care.
"Yes,” he responded. “Your skin is too chapped. I want it soft under my lips when I taste you."
Naomi blinked at him, confused. “It's daylight. We need to travel now that I've rested."
"Its daylight, and we won't be traveling until dusk. Stars will be out tonight, and it will be clear enough to move.” He turned her toward the camp and her bed under the tree. “Meanwhile, you can tender the next installment of your payment to me."
"What?” her voice sharpened, disappointment a twist of pain. The man didn't need to remind her that she'd traded him liberties for his care. The hair and face creams seemed less special, and her momentary pleasure at being tended stopped.
"How many such installments will it take to close this account?” she snapped.
He leaned into her and murmured, before he claimed her mouth, “Depends on the amount of danger I incur in the course of the rescue.” And then his shoulders blotted out the sun, and he laid her to the ground, coming down on top of her on the blanket.
He supported his weight, blanketing her with his body. A few pulls and he removed his shirt, and then his pants, baring his flesh to press against her skin beneath his. His eyes darkened as he languidly fitted his knee between her thighs and pressed her open.
She closed her eyes, refusing to watch the pleasure he took in debauching her. But she could feel. Oh my, she could feel. The silk of his hair trailed across her breasts following his lips in a carnal path across her flesh.
When his tongue touched her navel, and then licked inside, her eyes popped open. He rimmed the sensitive area and sipped and kissed around her belly. When that same tongue traced a lazy path of licks and nips down to the soft curls that covered her core, she clapped her eyes shut again. He wouldn't—he couldn't—he did.
And she let him, like a wanton, she raised her heated flesh, reveling in the pleasure of his mouth and tongue on her silken folds. He arranged her body to his liking, cupping her rump in his hands so that he could lift her into his searching lips.
He nipped the sensitive nub at her apex and then sucked on it, pushing two fingers inside of her as she rose against his mouth seeking pleasure. Naomi moaned at the exquisite sensation.
He lifted his head, and his teeth flashed wickedly in a satisfied smile. His fingers continued pumping in and out of her, following the sway of her body as it clenched around them, sucking them back when he pulled them almost free.
She was gloriously, wantonly, free, she wanted what he had given her before. Her flesh softened around him and her body wept tears of desire that he bent and lapped up leisurely. “Please,” she whimpered.
"Please what?” he teased, rubbing his face against her belly, licking her navel, swooping lower to suck on her clit. And all the while his fingers thrust rhythmically in and out until her hips caught the movement, and she thrust upward each time he tried to withdraw.
"Want something else?” His voice was husky, no longer teasing but aroused, gruff. She opened her eyes in time to see his cock splay open her nether lips and replace his fingers that had been not quite enough.
He filled her. She pushed up with her hips, taking him as quickly as her body would allow, groaning at the incredible slide of pleasure that burned a path to her core.
This
part of him she liked. This part of his company she would miss. She gave herself up to passion and met each thrust with one of her own, each demand from her lover, with a request of her own.
At dusk, they were mounted and on their way. Neither spoke of the powerful coupling that had lasted all afternoon. If they were battling silently, than Naomi felt that she had won this round. He intended to return her to Buffalo Creek. She refused to go.
"I'll follow you as soon as you leave town,” she promised. He'd been angry, their afternoon interlude of mutual satisfaction erased, but she rode beside him when they traveled toward the mountains and away from Buffalo Creek.
The next day, he found a similar spot; this time they lay together, his arms curling protectively around her until she fell asleep. He nudged her awake, hours later.
"It's time we see what you can do to protect yourself,” he explained as he ushered her to a clearing he'd already prepared.
The instruction in self-defense was really an excuse to interrogate her, Naomi decided as she lay on the ground where she'd collapsed.
"What happened to your family?"
"War.” Naomi declared the word flatly, not sure if she spoke of what had been, or the strenuous exercise that Charlie forced on her now. The men in her family had marched off to defend the South's honor and left daughters and sisters to defend their own.
"Your daddy keep slaves?” A tide of suppressed anger escaped.
Her hands clenched, and her breath came in gasps around her words, so enraged that her usual reticence in things personal was forgotten and grievances against the males in the world spilled forth.
"Of course not,” she snapped. “My father was a sharecropper who could barely scrape together the rent for the land he went broke on. He and my brother both joined the Confederate army the day we heard the South had seceded from the Union. Daddy and Beau didn't care about holding slaves or letting them go. They just didn't want to stay at home on a played out farm another moment."
"So you're not a rich girl?” He said
rich girl
as though an insult. But if he had to ask, it was a compliment of the highest order he'd never understand unless he saw the shack she'd come from.
"If you think that, then my sister, Comfort—wherever she is—is vindicated. When she left to get married, she gave me her copy of
Godey's Lady's Book
and told me to memorize it. I did."
"How old were you then?"
"Eleven when I went to live with the Lancaster family next door. That lasted two years, till they both died, six months apart."
She stood, hands balled into fists, waiting for him to come at her from the left. He feinted right and swooped in on her, taking her by surprise and tossing her to the ground once again; this time, he followed, coming down on top of her.
"Then what?” He was so close his breath ruffled her eyebrow.
"Then,” she said tartly, squirming under the very personal way he pressed his length against her, “I went to work taking care of myself, as I have done ever since."
"Don't think much of men, do you, Miss Parker?"
"Never if I don't have to...” a statement that of course wasn't true. Recently, she couldn't seem to think of anything other than men, specifically the man sprawled on top of her.
"Is that why you picked a school for females?” He held her face between his hands and stared down into her eyes as if he could see truth there.
Naomi stared right back, ignoring the way he pressed his hips against hers. She had worked her way up from a one-room schoolhouse teaching twelve ruffians,to a position of importance teaching deportment to young ladies. Of course, she had chosen to work with only girls. She prided herself on being able to choose; most women couldn't.
"I took a job that would get me to Texas. I'm here to find my sister. That's all."
If her tones were more strident than they should be, she forgave herself. Her many purposes for being in Texas didn't include the man pinning her beneath him, but he filled her senses, stealing her will.
"I have not seen my sister since she left seventeen years ago. I plan to return to Alabama once I've assured myself that she has a good home."
"Why would you want to find someone who went off and left you?” He kept her from getting away and easily deflected her attempts to punch him when he stood and pulled her to her feet also.
"You are a weak, silly woman. You can't even defend yourself.” He whirled her around, forcefully demonstrating that she was at his mercy.
"Leave me alone.” She didn't like to think about the day that Comfort had left, or the years in between, when few letters had changed to no letters. “I don't have to answer your questions.” Her tone was harsh, brooking no dispute. It was the one that she used with students who didn't respond to soft persuasion.
"I say you do. What's got your back up—questions about your sister?” Charlie Wolf prodded her secret fears from her.
"The man she left town with was a bad man if I ever saw one.” Naomi admitted this to Charlie, wishing she was wrong, but knowing she wasn't. “Comfort married him because he was the only one who ever asked."
There had been plenty who took without asking, though. Naomi held that back, not wanting to reveal the sisters’ shared shame. When Comfort had brought home her first meal paid for with her body—she'd prostituted herself for a chicken and two ears of corn—the girls had cried together.
The memory gave her resolve.
"And you, Naomi ... how come you're still unwed?"
She blinked at him, trying to discern his reason for asking. Then she told him the truth. “I guess I was just fortunate. No one ever wanted me."
She didn't know what she'd done to anger him, but his lovemaking that afternoon was rough, forceful, and prolonged, and she was sore by the time he was satisfied and rolled off.
She was angry with him but didn't know why. “Are you going to give me more self-defense lessons?"
She didn't know why she'd ever thought his face unreadable. She didn't need to hear the disdain that dripped from his voice. She could see it in the jut of his chin and arrogant tilt of his head. “You will have to use your brain to get out of trouble, I can't teach you violence unless I can figure how to harness your tongue."
That night, before they started riding again, Deacon McCallister rode into their camp. Not more than two hours later, Sam McCallister joined them.
No one commented on her presence, and the men spoke as if she was not there.
"Jericho and his wild bunch are camped in that box canyon ahead. I couldn't get close enough to hear the gist of the argument, but he and the old man driving the kidnap wagon have been going at it since I been here the last day. Jericho sent half his men out scouring the countryside, but I have no idea for what."
Sam McCallister had the most interesting news. “I wired the families, notifying them of their daughters’ abductions and then lit out before I had to deal with a bunch of bawling mothers.” And then, as an afterthought, “The U.S. Marshal telegraphed his approval for payment. The reward money is waiting in Eclipse. All we have to do is bring in Jericho, just like we planned."