Free Merline Lovelace by Countess In Buckskin

intervals throughout the night to keep the fire ablaze. When he returned to the pile of pine boughs, he saw that the Russian had already taken her place under the blanket.
    She lay like a frozen deer carcass, all stiff limbed and unmoving. She didn’t stir at Josh’s approach, didn’t acknowledge his presence by so much as the blink of an eye. She stared fixedly up at the stars, as though she intended to count every blessed one of them while he took his pleasure on her.
    “You can rest easy, Tatiana,” Josh drawled. “I’m not going to make you pay for your safe passage through the mountains. Not in that way, anyway.”
    She left off counting the stars. Her gaze slid sideways and fixed on Josh. If she was relieved by her reprieve, she didn’t show it.
    “Why do you not?”
    The question flummoxed him. He couldn’t imagine Catherine...or any other female of his acquain-tance... calmly asking a man why he didn’t lift the blankets and have his way with her.
    “Because I don’t choose to do the fandango with a woman who looks like she’d rather have a diamondback for a partner than me.”
    “What is this, this fandango? And this diamonds on the back?”
    “A fandango is a dance.” Carefully Josh positioned his Hawken, powder horn and possibles bag within easy reach of the bed. “A diamondback is a snake. A vicious, deadly kind of snake.”
    Her eyes narrowed as he eased his long frame down onto the springy bed. The branches rustled under his weight. The scent of pine and resin drifted through the pungent odor of buffalo. For several moments she didn’t speak. When she did, her voice was as low and smoky as the campfire.
    “Do you mock me, Josiah Jones?”
    “No. Go to sleep. We have a harder trek tomorrow than today.”
    Tugging a fold of the capote over his body, Josh rolled onto his side. Within moments, he fell into the light half slumber of the woodsman.
    Tatiana stared at the massive shoulders a few inches from her nose, thoroughly disconcerted. She had intended to pay her debt! She was prepared to pay her debt! True, she’d shivered at this man’s approach like the tall grasses of the steppe in a high wind. She’d stared up at the stars as though she could lose all feeling, all sense of despair, in their silvery splendor. But, by all the saints, she was ready!
    Hot, liquid shame rushed through Tatiana as she realized that she’d done as the coarsest woman of the streets and readied herself to receive a man who did not even want her. At this moment, she wasn’t sure whom she hated more...the American whose body blocked the heat from the fire, or the woman she’d become. She lay rigid and dry-eyed, and tried to find surcease in sleep.
    It came before she expected it. Exhausted by the day’s march and her seesawing emotions, her limbs gradually relaxed into a limp, aching state. Tatiana closed her eyes and slipped into that velvety void between wakefulness and slumber. She twitched once, an involuntary spasm that pulled her back to consciousness for a moment. Then she drifted off once more.
    She had no idea whether mere minutes or long hours had passed when a piercing cry ripped through the blanket of sleep. She jerked again, her knees coming up to whack against solid flesh. The American grunted at the impact of her kneecaps in the small of his back. Belatedly Tatiana realized she’d turned on her side and sought warmth from the body next to hers.
    The scream came again, closer this time and terrifying in its savagery. The little packhorse whinnied in fright. Tatiana gasped. The American rolled off the bed, taking the wool covering with him. He snatched up his rifle and had it cocked before the first blast of cold air hit his quaking bed partner. Taut as a bowstring, he peered into the darkness.
    A bleating, blood-chilling cry rose on the thin night air and ended in a deep-throated gurgle. After that, there was only stillness.
    “What is it?” Tatiana whispered when her nerves could no longer