Free Captive by Heather Graham Page B

blaze. Framed by the startling shade of auburn, her face seemed like ivory, perfect in every way, flesh soft as silk and pale. Then again, her coloring dominated in eyes so green they dazzled like a gem, so deep they rivaled the shades of the forest after summer rains. Her lips were poetically rose, her features arranged with classical perfection. She stood tall, and slim and lithe, and still, against the taut velvet green bodice of her evening dress. The full rise of her breasts was unbearably evocative, and he found himself instantly thinking,
I want that woman.
Not a woman.
That
woman. And he hadn’t thought of Naomi or the war, or even of the world, as long moments ticked by, fading into history. He simply wanted her. She was beyond beauty. Passion and pride seemed to shimmerlike an aura of heat around her. He wanted to reach out and touch the fire of her hair, and see if it burned. He wanted to stroke the perfect alabastar of her cheek, and discover if it was as soft as silk. Most of all, he wanted to wrench her from the stairway, strip her of velvet and satin and lace, and find out if the passion and heat were real, and if they could obliterate the pain and the anger and the hatred and chaos that his world had become….
    Moments of anguish, moments of hunger!
    Until at last sanity returned. She was intrigued by him; she returned his stare as boldly. Another pretty little white girl fascinated by a red man. Yet there was a strange honesty about this one. She didn’t flinch, she didn’t flirt. She was swift to retort, she seemed to possess both intelligence and courage.
    He had buried Naomi and with her, he thought, set to rest his youth, his soul, his ability to love. He could not completely forget the hungers of the flesh—that could only come, he surmised, with his own death, and he had not pretended to himself that he didn’t want a woman upon occasion. But in all worlds, red, white, and black, there were women to fulfill those hungers, and he had met a number of them. But he didn’t want another Indian wife, and the last thing he could have possibly wanted was a white temptress playing with fire for her own amusement. She was an exotic beauty. She tempted beyond human strength. Yet like so many such vivid creations, she could probably be quite deadly—to him.
    Yet when he’d tried to walk away, he’d come back. He’d seen her in another man’s arms, and an entirely irrational fury had arisen within him. And though it disturbed him now, he realized that he had been determined to show her that a red man could dance with every bit as much skill and grace as a white man. He could play the role,
when
he chose.
    Then he had heard her name …
    And his hands shook; his fingers trembled. Rage, like a living evil, had been awakened within him. He had seen her vivid but delicate beauty, and he had thoughtof the children killed with their heads bashed in to save bullets. He’d wanted to shake her, hurt her, and tell her that she was the child of a monster.
    It was his brother’s house. And “savage” was not a race, it was a state of mind, a way of action. And still, he had to get away. To the night breeze. To the soft sound of the river. The whisper of the trees. The song of the night birds, and the call of the cricket.
    “James!”
    He heard his name called with enthusiasm and turned to see a man in a handsome dress-regulation army uniform coming toward him. The fellow was tall, with sandy hair, a slim build, and amber eyes. He was a soldier—the kind James had shot at during battle.
    So much for “no military,” as Tara had promised him. Still, he felt no dismay. He was friends with a number of the soldiers, and this one was a good man. His name was John Harrington, and he had often served as a liaison when James had done the same for some of the war chiefs, and for some Seminoles weary of starving and fighting who had chosen to go west. He was a lieutenant who had served now nearly two years, a man who