Free Comanche Cowboy (The Durango Family) by Georgina Gentry Page B

the only dry ones. “You got a lot of guts for a woman, Cee Cee,” he said grudgingly, “I mean about your tryin’ to help Tom. Only one other woman ever showed me that kind of courage.”
    In his mind’s eye, he saw Annie’s plain little face, the large gray eyes. Was she pretty? Only when she smiled, he remembered, only when she smiled. God damn you, Joe McBride , he thought in sudden pain and fury. God damn you for marrying Cayenne’s mother and leaving mine to the Comanche !
    “ ’Night,” he said, and turned away.
    “Maverick, don’t go.” He looked back at her hunched in her blankets as she held out a hand to him. “You saved my life. I’m beholden—”
    “I owed you something for what I did to you this afternoon.” He couldn’t look at her, remembering he really hadn’t meant to hurt her.
    “Maverick, look at me,” she commanded in a whisper, and when he did, very slowly she opened her blanket.
    As she did so, he realized in sudden wonder that she was naked under the blankets, naked and warm and holding out her arms to him. His enemy’s child.
    With his emotions stormy as the night, Maverick crossed the ground to her in three giant strides.

Chapter Four
    Cayenne held her arms out to him without even realizing she did so, without thinking of the right or wrong of it. In three strides, he crossed the distance between them and took her in his arms.
    “Maverick, you’re wet!” She flinched from the contact of his soaked clothes against her skin. “Here, let me warm you.
    He sat there obediently, looking down at her as she worked with the buttons of his shirt, unbuckled his belt. Then his bronzed skin was on hers, damp and cool. Maverick acted almost hesitant, not forceful and dominating as before.
    She should hate him for robbing her of her virginity, treating her so roughly. But he had just saved her life. She was grateful, she told herself, that’s why she felt the urge to take him in her arms, pull his shivering body against her own warm one under the blanket there by the small fire. He turned her so that her back lay against his chest and belly, her head on his arm while he buried his face in the tumble of hair on the back of her neck.
    “God, your little body’s hot,” he murmured, snuggling closer against her as they both lay looking into the flickering flames. “I feel like I’m embracing coals! ”
    His lips caressed the nape of her neck, pulled her hair up, kissed her there. I should hate him because of what his tribe did to Papa six months ago. Yet she knew she could not pull away from his Comanche caress.
    His muscular arm went around her waist as he leaned on his other elbow. She sighed and tipped her head forward to give him more expanse of neck to nuzzle. Cayenne was abruptly weary and saddened by the night’s events, and somehow, the feel of his body close to hers communicated that he felt the same.
    “Oh, Maverick, it was so terrible!”
    “I know, baby,” he whispered, and his hand came up from her waist to stroke her breasts. “I know. Don’t think about it. Things like that just happen.”
    Cayenne felt the warmth of his breath on her ear as he whispered and she knew he felt even worse about it than she did. She rolled over to face him, reaching up to touch the jagged scar on his face. “You’re a strange man, Maverick Durango,” she said, stroking his face. “So angry, so full of fury one moment; so tender the next.”
    He tried to laugh it off, catching her hand and kissing the tips of her fingers. “Now you sound like the old Don and Trace.”
    She leaned on her elbow, wrapped in the blankets, and looked up into his face, conscious of the feel of his naked body touching hers. “You think the world of that pair, don’t you?”
    Maverick hesitated, seeming to search for words, looking as if he were afraid to admit how much he might care for another human being, as if it were a weakness. “They’re all I’ve got, the Durangos,” he said finally. “