Free A Lady Bought with Rifles by Jeanne Williams Page B

question further. “What’ll happen to the colt?”
    â€œHe’ll hang around with other colts or old stallions past their prime or other lonesome bachelors. In another year he’ll probably be sold or gelded for use on the ranch. Only the best are kept for breeding.”
    The stallion, pacing back triumphantly, snuffed the air as if scenting some totally irresistible odor. He trotted up, arching his neck proudly, to a creamy mare. She tried to evade him in the herd, but he kept after her, nipping her flank and shoulder, driving her to the periphery.
    Isolated at last, she sidled nervously, dodging his attempts to mount. Finally she lashed out with her heels. He still pursued. Rearing around, she bit at him, and not coquettishly.
    The stallion checked. One could almost sense his bewilderment and thwarted lust. After a moment he went after the mare again—differently, brutally, much as he acted toward the rejected yearling, driving her back into the herd.
    â€œShe’s like some women,” Trace said. “Likes to keep a male stirred up but won’t deliver. It’s not safe for a woman to try that game in Mexico.”
    With an almost laughable air of self-righteousness, the stallion trotted back, snuffed where I had seen a mare urinate while the stallion was punishing the recalcitrant mare, and pranced up to a small buckskin.
    He snorted and sniffed her, nostrils swelling, made eager, whinnying grunts as he lipped her flanks and rump. Then he reared, neck arching, fitting his forelegs over her shoulders to hold her in place. She quivered, bracing. His long thick rod drove into her. She squealed, but his weight held her fixed, except for her head, which moved back and forth. Again and again he hunched himself, and at each wrenching lunge, she shuddered.
    That wild energy—that surging, driving power.
    My mouth was dry. Something hot, sweet, melting licked through me, centering low in my belly; I was painfully conscious of my nipples prickling, standing out hard and erect against the soft linen of my chemise. I could not look away as the stallion pumped his force into the mare, his tail flaring high, mane tossing as he sought to exhaust his lust.
    His haunches contracted; he gripped the mare with a convulsive spasm, his head fell weakly by her side before he withdrew so suddenly that he almost touched the ground with his rump before he walked off, swinging his head dazedly from side to side. His organ, hard and gorged minutes before, now swung limp; emptied, dripping.
    The mare had squealed again as he fell off her, and now she stood shivering. She looked after the stallion, who was still running in that peculiar choppy way. He did not glance back at her, I noticed with wry amusement. Then she dropped her head and began to forage.
    For the stallion and his mare it was over. I swallowed, trying to quell the hungry excitement in my loins, and turned to face Trace Winslade watching me.
    Fearing that my eyes would reveal what I felt, I dropped my gaze to his hands. Long and brown, they held the reins with a light certainty that could harden to steel in an instant. I could not check a vision of them gripping my thighs, readying me for his pleasure as the stallion held the mare.
    If he had touched me then, pulled me from my saddle, I could not have resisted him, would not, in the depths of my body, have wanted to. The mating had filled me with awe—and envy. Raw, primeval abandon, the imperative urge that constantly created power and life. When would I feel it? With whom?
    Trace, eyes smoldering as if he guessed my almost uncontrollable longing, swung his horse about. “Sorry.” His tone was muffled. “Didn’t know that was going to happen. But I guess you’d see it eventually, living on Las Coronas.”
    â€œHas—has Reina?”
    His broad shoulders stiffened. He didn’t answer for a few seconds. When he did, his voice was dry. “Yes.”
    We rode on