Free The Judge and the Gypsy by Sandra Chastain Page B

happening. Not five feet away was an enormous bear, standing upright like a human and swaying back and forth in confusion.
    On the other side of the fire the big, crazy man was trying to taunt the bear into coming after him. He was trying to save her life by drawing the animal’s attack. Around the edge of the lake she saw a cub loping merrily toward the judge. The bear cub’s mother was going to tear Savannah’s crusader apart. There’d been a time she’d almost wanted him dead—but not like this.
    “No!” Savannah tried focusing her concentration on the bear. She’d done it a hundred times at the circus, calming the excited animals when no one else could.
    But this bear was too excited to respond to Savannah’stelepathic message. The cub! Savannah turned her attention to the baby bear. With every ounce of her being Savannah channeled her mental impulses on the cub.
Stop! Go away! Go away!
    Just as the mother bear came down on all fours to give chase to Rasch, the cub squealed and turned, heading around the lake in the opposite direction. While Savannah’s message to the mother met with a wall of resistance, the cub’s cry cut directly through the confusion. The large bear came to a swaying stop, unable to decide whether to take vengeance on the man or see to her baby. Another cry from the cub settled the question, and the mother bear changed course and lumbered after her frightened offspring.
    Following the bear’s example, Rasch turned and jogged back to where Savannah was standing, white-faced and trembling.
    “Are you all right, Gypsy?”
    He gathered Savannah in his arms and held her, his heart pounding in unison with hers.
    “Crusader, you idiot! Who do you think you are, Superman? That bear could have ripped you limb from limb! What did you plan to do, outrun it?”
    “I don’t know,” he admitted. She was upbraiding him just as his mother had decades earlier, when he’d rushed into the street to jerk a smaller child out of the path of a speeding car. His mother had been afraid too. Now Savannah’s arms were holding him, clinging to him desperately. She made no attempt to hide her fear.
    “Suppose you’d been killed? I need you.” She wasn’t making any sense. Fear had loosened her tongue. Not fear for herself, but for Rasch. “Oh, Crusader …”
    This time they initiated the kiss mutually, lips merging, tongues plundering simultaneously, bodies pressing into each other as if fused. Her arms twined around his neck, drawing his head down and holding him as tightly as he was holding her.
    His tongue withdrew momentarily to circle her lips possessively as if branding them his, then reentered her mouth to parry and thrust as his hands found the voluptuous globes of her breasts and fondled them lovingly, masterfully.
    He didn’t speak. He couldn’t. All he knew was that he’d almost lost her before they’d given free rein to the passion that flamed between them. There was no holding back now, no resistance, no reluctance.
    They were inside the tent again, leaving their clothes on the damp grass outside as they explored each other’s bodies with wonderment and yearning.
    With expert hands he stroked her breasts, rolling the nipples between his fingers until she cried out with delicious agony. Leaving a trail of butterfly kisses down her neck and shoulder, he captured one hard bud in his mouth and began to lave tantalizingly with his tongue, while his hand found her womanly wetness and played sweet music there until she thought she’d swoon. She reached for him then, feeling in his swollen manhood all the molten desire that coursed through her, and as he lifted himself above her, lightning sparks seemed to explode wherever heated skin touched heated skin.
    Savannah forgot her plan, forgot to exult in her success as they joined in the ultimate intimacy and became one flesh, one being. They’d escaped death, and that was all that mattered. He’d risked his life forher, and each thrust of