didn’t understand. “They won’t be up front about it.”
He dropped his hand from her chin. “Never thought they would be.”
God, he was arrogant. “If you let me go, they’ll leave you alone.”
He picked up a stick and snapped it in two. “If I let you go, you’d have no protection.”
“I could hide.”
“Sweetheart, no matter where you ran, men would find you and you’d be back in bed.”
“I don’t want a man.”
He added small sticks to the tiny fire. “I don’t remember mentioning that you’d be there willingly.”
He fed the fire another stick.
“I won’t be taken again.”
“On that we agree. My wife stays with me.”
He was really stuck on the wife thing. It obviously meant more to him than it did to her.
“I wish you could forget that we married.”
His gaze traveled slowly down her body before taking an equally slow trip back up. She knew she looked like hell, and knew he couldn’t see a thing through the bulky coat, but she still felt like she was standing before him naked, with no secrets and no protection.
“That’s not something I have any interest in forgetting.”
He wanted her sexually. No doubt he relished the fact that she was at his disposal, probably even expected her to just lie back and spread her legs so he could take his pleasure. She glared at him, anger serving as her friend, giving her the strength to say, “I’ll fight you.”
His eyebrow kicked up. “Did you fight them?”
With everything she’d had, which hadn’t amounted to anything in the long run. “Yes.”
His head canted to the side. “Did it do you any good?”
Up until they’d tied her, it had. “No.”
He handed her back the canteen and placed his fingers under the back of her other hand, pushing the food to her mouth. His voice was incredibly gentle when he asked, “Then what makes you think I’m going to be worried about you fighting me?”
Nothing. Nothing at all. She sank her teeth into the meat, gnawing on the realization that what she thought or wanted didn’t matter here any more than it had mattered anywhere else. And with each chew, she was aware of how he watched her. The food coalesced in a hard lump in her mouth. Caine passed her the canteen. She didn’t lift it to her mouth. There was just no way she could swallow anything with his words sashaying through her head. She turned and spat the food into the dirt. His sigh brought her right back around again.
“I can see I’m going to have to change my ways around you if I don’t want you wasting away.”
“You don’t like skinny women?”
“What I like or don’t like is immaterial. I’m married.” He motioned to the food in her hand. “You going to eat that?”
Was he planning on making her? “I couldn’t.”
“Because I made you mad?”
What did he want? A yes? A no? She settled on a shrug.
He took the food from her hand and wrapped it up. It seemed to take him forever to put it away in the saddlebags, though his movements were smooth and efficient. It was just her own sense of time that was off-kilter. A twig snapped in the darkness beyond the small circle of light. Her heart leapt in her throat.
Caine settled back against the boulder, resting his arm across his bent knee, looking so powerful that the rifle propped by his side appeared superfluous.
“Relax.”
“I can’t.”
He sighed and angled his hat down. “What worries you more, them or me?”
Him, definitely him. “You.”
“Why?”
A stark, bold question by a stark, bold man. She licked her lips, debated answering, but there was something about the set of his mouth that made her think he’d force the response. “I know what to expect from them.”
He pulled the saddlebag over to him and fished around in one of the outer pockets. “What makes you think I’m any different?”
She licked her dry lips again, took a sip of water and forced herself to answer. “I don’t know.”
“That would be my point. You don’t know.” He pulled out a package wrapped in brown paper and untied it carefully. “I could be a real sweetheart between the sheets.”
Sweetheart or devil, she didn’t see how it made a difference. She took another sip from the canteen, at a loss as how to answer.
“Give me your hand.”
She instinctively tucked it into her stomach. He shook his head, reaching for it, pulling it forward until it stretched between them, palm up like a sacrifice. She tugged. He didn’t let go. The corner of his mouth twitched as he looked up at her from beneath the brim of his hat. “Trust me, you don’t want to do that.”
She watched as he put the brown paper in her hand. It was light and solid. He closed her fingers around it and let her go.
“I figure that will go down easier than jerky.”
Desi propped the canteen on the rock beside her. She parted the brown paper. Inside lay three heart-shaped confections. A fourth, more oddly shaped piece was smaller than the other three. Dark, rich and shiny, they lay like the perfect temptation in her palm.
Chocolate. Dear God, chocolate. She brought the package up close enough to take a deep breath of the heady aroma. It flowed through her system along with the memories of happier times, when she and her sister romped through the family mansion, running from room to room with reckless abandon. Never appreciating how good they had it, longing for the adventure they didn’t know could turn into a disaster. Chocolate had been an expected daily treat. They’d pitched tantrums when they hadn’t gotten it. In their innocence and bliss they’d never appreciated what a luxury it was to have it at all. She touched the irregular fourth piece with her finger. It had several vertical slices. Like someone had chiseled bits and pieces off it over time.
“My mother always swore by chocolate in times of stress.”
She looked up. It was Caine’s chocolate. He had to have been the one to chip off those tiny pieces. It was obviously something he valued and savored. She wrapped the package up, biting her lips against the pain it caused, and handed it back to him. “I can’t take your chocolate.”
Just as calmly he pushed her hand back toward her.
“Why not? Don’t you like it?”
“I
