Free Shawnee Bride by Elizabeth Lane Page A

lower. If it didn’t happen now, it would happen soon. That much she knew.
    “That…should take care of your back,” she muttered, slipping out of the awkward position and plunging the buckskin into the water again. Her gaze darted from her hands to the floor, then to the empty doorway. She had never been a shy person, but she could not look at him now. Her eyes would tell him everything. “Lean back.”She pieced the words together like beads from a broken string. “I’ll do your shoulders next. And your arms. And when I’m finished, I’ll change your poultices, unless, of course, you think I’m not able.”
    “Clarissa” His massive hand seized her wrist, yanking her around, forcing her to face him. “You can quit playacting,” he said in a thick voice. “We both know where this rubdown is going. The only question is, how far will we get before you slap my face and go flouncing out of here?”
    “How dare you?” Clarissa would have drawn away in a show of outrage, but his grip on her arm held her prisoner, half-crouching above him, her eyes mere inches from his own. “I was doing you a kindness,” she hissed, “a simple act of Christian charity, and if you choose to interpret that as anything but—”
    He kissed her then, his free hand catching the nape of her neck and twisting her head down toward him. His lips were fierce in their taking, raw and hard; and as his naked need met her own, Clarissa whimpered like a small lost animal. Her flailing fingers tangled in his hair. Her mouth softened like hot tallow, molding to his hardness, opening as if she could drink him into her.
    “You little wanton,” he muttered, his chapped lips rasping hers. “All that show of being a proper lady…this is what you are, Clarissa. This is who you are!”
    He kissed her again, a savage, bruising kiss that blazed through her body, igniting tiny rivers of flame that surged through every part of her. Her free hand fluttered over his chest, brushing the tiny hard beads of his nipples, ranging down over the buckskin wrappings that held him to the willow brace, skimming his navel, then venturing lower, lower still to explore the contours of the solid shaftthat thrust upward, straining the confines of his loincloth. Dear heaven, the size of him…
    She pulled back abruptly, her heart pounding like the hooves of a runaway mare.
    “I won’t hurt you, Clarissa,” he murmured, drawing her back into his arms. “There’s no part of me that would ever hurt you.”
    “I—know.” She twisted away from him, flinging herself backward with a force that almost sent her sprawling. “It’s not that! It’s not that at all!”
    “Then what’s the matter?” His eyes glittered sardonically, turning cold as he leaned back into his willow brace. “Did your prim side win out after all? Or is it that you can’t stomach the idea of being touched by a dirty savage?”
    “Oh—” Clarissa stared at him, rage and frustration exploding inside her. How could she explain her reason for pulling away? How could she tell Wolf Heart that loving him would bind her to this place in a way she had no wish to be bound, making escape impossible? It could not be done.
    “I hope you’re not waiting for an apology,” he said in a flinty voice. “If you are, you’ll be waiting a long, long time. I’m no gentleman, Clarissa. And you, for all your fine airs, are no lady.”
    If he’d aimed his words at inciting her, they had hit their mark.. “You!” She shot his cold anger back at him. “You are the most arrogant, self-righteous, contemptible-”
    She could not finish the sentence. As the tears came, she could only wheel away from him and stumble blindly out the lodge, upsetting the calabash of water and almost colliding with Swan Feather, who was just coming home. The old woman shot her a concerned glance as Clarissaveered out of her path. Clarissa knew that out of respect, if nothing else, she should stop and explain. But her throat was so