Merline Lovelace by A Savage Beauty Page A

want him, that she would dishonor Henri if she allowed this man to mount her.
    Except he made no move to do so.
    His arm lay heavy on her waist. His breath was hot in her ear. But he didn’t slip his hand under her tunic. Didn’t try to find the slit in her leggings. Didn’t rub his fingers against flesh that had grown hot and slick.
    Deciding she would not spend another night lying awake and tight with anticipation, she rolled over until they lay knee to knee.
    “Why do you not lift my skirts?”
    “What?”
    “Why do you not join with me, as a man does with a woman? I felt your spear grow stiff.”
    “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
    The gruff reply confused her until she remembered Spotted Dog, a skilled hunter who’d brought down many buffalo and took his pleasure only with other warriors to avoid draining his powerful medicine.
    “Ahh. Are you one who chooses not to lie with women?”
    “Yes. I mean, no.” His breath puffed out on a chuckle. “It’s just that— Well…”
    When he hesitated, Louise began to wonder if perhaps he was like Henri, after all. So often the Frenchman had waited for her to set the spark to his fire.Stealthy as a coyote on the scent of prey, curiosity crept through her veins. Curiosity, and the stirrings of need. She’d never curled up under the blankets with any man but Henri. Had never felt the desire to taste any man but her husband.
    This one roused strange urges she’d never felt before. He was so near she could feel his breath on her cheek. So warm, his heat drew her like the low, flickering flames in a drafty lodge. Without stopping to think, without weighing the consequences, she leaned forward, put her mouth on his and used her tongue in the way Henri had taught her.
    “Jesus!”
    Daniel jerked his head back, stunned by the fire that slashed into his belly. Even more stunned by the savage urge that ripped into him. He came within a blink of rolling the woman onto her back and returning the thrust of her hot tongue.
    He sucked in a sharp breath, welcoming the blade-edged cold of it, and forced himself to speak calmly. “You’ve got me wrong all the way around, Louise. I don’t choose to lie with other women because I have a wife who waits for me in St. Louis.”
    She curled an arm under her head, tried to see the pale blur of his face.
    “Many men, I think, have wives in one village and lie with women of another. Henri, he has a wife in France. He tells the priest who marries us she is dead, but me, I think he doesn’t speak the truth.”
    “Well, I speak the truth. My wife is very much alive.”
    Alive, but living in shadows.
    The pain that always lay just under Daniel’s breastbone squeezed at his chest. He closed his eyes, struggling to remember Elizabeth’s face before she’d lost her merry smile and retreated into herself.
    A knock of a knee against his yanked his thoughts from the fair-haired bride he’d married ten years ago to the ripe young widow now sharing his blanket.
    With a somewhat less than gentle shove, he rolled her over until they were back-to-front again. Pain, frustration and—damn him!—lust laced his voice as he issued a terse order.
    “Go to sleep.”

5
    F resh snow lay hip-deep by dawn.
    Coiled tight by the hunger that had kept him lying stiff and awake most of the night, Daniel dug out of their cocoon and almost savored the lash of the cold.
    Louise crawled out after him. Shivering, she dragged her buffalo robe over her shoulders. He didn’t know how she could look so young and innocent, yet use her mouth and tongue in ways that would put a Spanish whore to the blush. She’d learned those tricks from Chartier, Daniel guessed. The lecherous, lucky bastard.
    “I’ll take you into the woods,” he said shortly. “Then we’d best get on the move.”
    She nodded, apparently unfazed by the fact that she’d all but set a torch to him last night. With some effort, he banished the memory of her body molded to his and escorted