Bri blinked in surprise when she spotted the two horses grazing on the spring grass covering the mesa of caprock above them. “There’s a stroke of luck,” she said. “We can change into dry clothing.”
Hud flashed a scampish grin. “Damn, I already pictured you lounging naked in the cave while your clothes dried out.”
A warm blush rose up her neck to stain her cheeks. Exhausted though she was, the suggestive remark had the power to incite her secret fantasy of an unhindered view of Hud’s muscular physique. She had seen enough of him to arouse her feminine curiosity. But the prospect of being naked with him…
Stop that! she scolded herself.
Bri concentrated on listening to Hud call to Rambler. The midnight-colored gelding lifted his broad head and waited for Hud to approach. The sorrel kept his distance for a few moments, but he eventually followed Rambler when Hud led his horse back to Bri.
“Busy yourself with removing my bedroll and saddlebags,” Hud instructed quietly. “I’ll unsaddle Rambler and maybe your skittish mount will wander close enough for me to grab his reins.”
Bri cooed softly to Rambler while she retrieved Hud’s gear. When the sorrel finally ventured close enough Hud placed his foot on the trailing reins. He glanced between her and the horse and grinned rakishly.
She smirked as she ambled over to wrap her hand around the sorrel’s bridle and give him a comforting pat on the neck. “If you were considering letting my horse run off again so I’d be without a change of clothing, it wouldn’t have mattered. I would have commandeered your clothing and you would have been tramping around naked.”
Hud shrugged lackadaisically. “It was an intriguing thought nonetheless.” He removed his rifle from the sling to inspect it carefully. “Although our pistols are waterlogged the rifle should be all right.”
“My pocket watch!” Bri yelped, startling the sorrel. She soothed the horse with one hand and dug into her pocket with the other. Her shoulders slumped in disappointment when she realized Benji’s watch had stopped working. “Oh, damn.”
The playful expression faded from Hud’s rugged features. “I’ll see what I can find to eat for supper,” he commented while she brushed her thumb sentimentally over the pocket watch. “There should be some displaced game after the flood.”
Bri tucked the watch in her pocket and glanced this way and that. “Where is this cave you boasted about?”
Hud wrapped Rambler’s reins around a scrub bush then gestured for her to follow him. After she tethered the sorrel gelding, she grabbed her gear then followed Hud down the narrow footpath that wrapped around the side of the bluff. She gaped in amazement when he ducked into a cave about the size of her hotel room in The Flat. To her astonishment, provisions had been stacked neatly in one corner.
“Speck and I used the cave last winter when a blue norther blew in and left us stranded for two days. We decided to leave behind dry firewood, a tinderbox and a quilt for any other Rangers who found themselves stranded while on patrol.”
“Very considerate of you,” she praised. “I can’t wait to snuggle up to a warm fire and shed these wet clothes.”
Hub ambled over to grab a few logs. “I’ll start the—”
“I’ll take care of it,” she volunteered, anxious to have the privacy to strip from her wet clothes. She shooed him on his way. “Find food, great white hunter.”
Her teasing smile faded when Hud strode over to brush her damp hair from her face. He inspected the bruise on her cheek. For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her and she would have let him. It had become a daily ritual, after all. Instead, he brushed his thumb lightly over the bruise.
Bri gave way to impulse, flung her arms around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. “Thanks for saving my life.”
“Glad to help.” He pressed a kiss to the tip of her nose before he backed away.
She noted that he wasn’t as playful and responsive as he had been before she became distressed about her waterlogged pocket watch. She couldn’t fathom why it bothered him so much that she wanted to preserve the keepsake.
When he exited, Bri stacked wood near the mouth of the cavern to prevent smoke from forming a choking cloud inside. She was still recovering from a near drowning and she refused to inhale unnecessary smoke. In a few minutes, she had a small fire crackling. The welcome warmth made her smile in relief. Now if only she could find a place to wash away the mud that clung to her, she could sprawl on her pallet and recuperate.
Venturing onto the ledge that overlooked the craggy canyon, she surveyed the receding floodwaters. She smiled appreciatively when she noticed a hollowed out basin twenty feet below her. The rainwater had pooled and the sediment had settled to the bottom. It looked reasonably clear so she hiked downhill to peel off her grimy clothes.
After a quick bath, she washed her hair then rinsed out her clothes. She muttered at herself when she realized she had been in such a hurry to bathe that she had forgotten to bring clean clothes with her. She clamped the wet garments to her torso and climbed uphill to the cave.
“Bri? Where are you?”
Hud’s concerned voice echoed around the stone walls and Bri flattened herself against the rock when Hud looked over the ledge.
“I found a place to bathe and wash my clothes,” she called up to him. “Go away. I’m not dressed.”
“Damn, another fantasy shot to hell,” he said before he disappeared from sight.
Bri scampered up the trail but she stumbled to a halt when she entered the cave to see Hud cleaning the prairie chicken he’d snared. He didn’t glance up—gentleman that he was—when she inched past him and backed modestly toward her satchels and saddlebags.
Then she wondered if she should be insulted that he hadn’t peeked, not even once. Although he teased her occasionally about his supposed fantasy, he hadn’t tried to seduce her. In addition, the mention of Benji was enough to make him back away emotionally.
Come to think of it, she was usually the one who instigated kissing. The thought made her frown pensively.
“Hud, can I ask you something?”
“Sure. What is it?”
“If I was someone else besides who I am, would you be the least bit interested in me?”
She watched his hands stall as he prepared the meat for cooking, but he didn’t glance over his shoulder at her.
“Someone besides my commander’s daughter and the love of Benji’s life, you mean?”
“Yes.” She didn’t correct Hud’s erroneous assumption that she and Benji were more than the closest of friends and confidants. She simply stepped into a pair of dry breeches then shrugged on her shirt while he kept his back to her.
“Now that I know you, I’m surprised to hear you fishing for a compliment,” he teased. “You aren’t the shallow socialite I mistook you for before we met.”
The comment pleased her enormously. “You aren’t the mean-spirited Ranger who introduced himself to me at the first of the week, either. I’m finding several qualities I admire and respect about you.”
He chuckled as he went back to his chore. “You’re just feeling generous because I plucked you from a flash flood and revived you.”
She noticed that he hadn’t answered her direct question, which implied that he felt more responsibility than affection for her. The realization disappointed her.
“You’re right. I’m not myself at the moment,” she said. “I’m not usually the sappy, sentimental sort. I spent too many years standing up to my mother’s constant pressure and defying her attempts to mold me in her image.”
Bri hunkered down beside Hud to take the knife from his hand. “Your turn to bathe and change, Captain Stone, I’ll get the meat on to cook while you’re gone.”
He rose agilely to his feet. “Are you going to spy on me while I’m bathing, like you usually do?”
She grinned impishly at him. “Why break a perfectly enjoyable habit, I always say.”
He doubled at the waist, his bronzed face level with hers. “Careful, Bri, we are playing with fire.”
She stared into his amber eyes, lost to the flames reflecting from the campfire. “We are? Since you dodged my question, I assume the answer is no. You aren’t interested.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
He expelled an audible sigh. “We’re alone in the middle of nowhere,” he reminded her solemnly. “You are a beautiful woman, no doubt about that. My willpower will only stretch so far. Which is why I’ve been taking shortcuts through canyon country in an all-fired rush to reach camp so I can turn you over to your father in the same condition I found you.”
She wondered if that was as close to an out-and-out compliment as she would receive from Hudson Stone. Impulsively, she reached up to limn his high cheekbones and trace the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. “Tell me the truth, for once. Do you like me in the least? Or is it only that I’m female and convenient that poses a slight temptation for you?”
She wanted to whack him in the knees when he smiled enigmatically and he rose to full stature. Then he pivoted on his heels and walked off without answering her question.
“Don’t forget to take dry clothes with you,” she reminded him. “Unless you want to walk back to the cave naked.”
He reversed direction to rummage through his saddlebags. He didn’t say a word until he stepped outside the cave. “I like you, Gabrielle Price,” he admitted in what sounded like a begrudging tone. “If you weren’t the commander’s daughter and you weren’t tied to a memory, things might be different.”
A warm flood of pleasure cascaded over Bri and she grinned as she returned to her chore. Apparently, if she wanted Hud to overstep the boundaries he had established for himself, she would have to be the one to seduce him.
He was too blasted honorable.
Who would’ve thought she’d see that as a fault in a man?
For the first time in her life, Bri longed to cast aside her inhibitions and experiment with passion. If she had learned nothing else from Benji it was to live in the moment and to be satisfied with every scrap of good fortune. She didn’t hold with her mother’s philosophy of focusing on appearance and pedigrees and surrounding herself with prestige symbols. She wanted to live an adventure and face challenge.
She also wanted Hudson Stone in a way she had never wanted any other man. Having come within a hairbreadth of dying in the flash flood this afternoon drove home the point that tomorrow was uncertain and happiness was fleeting.
Frowning pensively, Bri skewered the meat and set it above the fire. Then she stood up to survey the cave. Tonight would be her first and last chance to take her fierce attraction to Hud to the most intimate level. They would arrive in the Ranger camp the next day. Their accommodations were a far cry from the luxurious hotel suites in Austin, but they would have to make do.
Bri decided, then and there, that she wanted to share one night of intimacy with Hud.
Hud sank into the improvised tub Bri had discovered and he scrubbed his arms and chest with soap. He glanced up at the ledge at regular intervals to see if she planned to interrupt his bath again. He was sorry to say that he was disappointed that her red-gold head didn’t appear on the outcropping of rock and that she didn’t flash him that mischievous smile that did funny things to his pulse and made him ache with lust.
He shouldn’t have flirted with her earlier, he scolded himself. But at the time, he’d been trying to lighten the grim mood after she nearly drowned. In addition, he should have kept his trap shut and refused to admit he was attracted to her. But it had been impossible to continue dodging her question when he stared into those mesmerizing indigo eyes surrounded by a fringe of thick lashes. Impossible when he focused on those dewy lips and wanted to kiss her until he’d had his fill of her. Which would be never because every kiss they had shared thus far left him craving more, not less.
The arousing thought made Hud scowl. He was weak and vulnerable where Bri was concerned, he realized. Hand-to-hand combat against Indian raiders and blood-thirsty outlaws he could handle. Battling inclement weather was commonplace in his life. However, resisting a woman who would never be a part of his future, but couldn’t be cast off as a meaningless one-night tryst, was tormenting the living hell out of him.
Plus, Hud wondered if the man Bri eventually took as her lover or husband would be a substitute for Benji, her adolescent sweetheart who had died protecting the expensive gift she presented to him. Hud hated to admit it, but it stung his pride when she became so upset about the damaged watch.
Hud sighed heavily, dunked his head in the water, then climbed from the pool to dress. He was going to march himself up to the cave, eat his supper and crawl into his bedroll—alone. First thing tomorrow, he’d escort Bri to her father. He might escape temptation by the skin of his teeth, but at least he’d escape without shaming Bri or outraging her father.
Resolved to keeping a respectable distance and giving Bri time to recover from her harrowing ordeal, Hud gathered his wet garments and strode uphill. The instant he ducked into the cavern, his jaw dropped open wide enough for a meadowlark to roost and he silently cursed the inviting scene that awaited him. He knew immediately what impossible temptation looked like—and this was it.
The campfire cast dancing shadows and flickering light around the cave. Bri had rolled out both pallets side by side in the back corner. She sat with her arms wrapped around her bent knees. Her curly hair tumbled over her bare shoulders and played hide-and-seek with the peaks of her breasts.
Hud couldn’t draw breath. Seeing this forbidden siren naked hit him like a rockslide. He staggered back a step and bumped his head on the outcropping of rock near the entrance of the cavern.
“If you’re playing mischievous mind games with me, Bri, this isn’t a damn bit amusing,” he grumbled, massaging his temple.
She shook her head. The mass of reddish-gold curls skimmed over the full swells of her breasts. Hud nearly swallowed his tongue. Indeed, the fistful of clothing he carried with him dropped beside his feet before he realized he’d let go.
“I didn’t ask for your escort service, Captain Stone,” she said softly. “But I am asking for lessons in passion. Eaton didn’t inspire me to experiment, but you do.”
He wanted to ask if she had experimented with her beloved Benji, but he was having too much trouble stringing words together. He was all eyes and lusty anticipation, even though the voice of reason was shouting at him to turn around and run for his life before he crossed the line of no return.
While he stood frozen to the spot, battling his most formidable enemy—himself—she cocked her heads lightly. He inwardly groaned when he caught a glimpse of her rosy nipple. Need delivered such a devastating blow that Hud felt like doubling over and howling in exasperated torment.
“Would the offer be more appealing if I paid for services rendered?” she asked.
“You don’t want to do this, Bri,” he said, startled that his voice sounded as if it had rusted.
Too much floodwater. Or too much exposed feminine flesh had choked him up. Hud was pretty sure it was the latter.
“I don’t? As it happens, seducing you is exactly what I want to do. Unfortunately, you aren’t very cooperative.”
She leaned back, bracing herself up on her arms, exposing her creamy breasts to his devouring gaze. He could tell by her expression that it required considerable nerve to offer herself to him. She wasn’t trying to tease and torment him. She was trying to prove to him that she wanted him.
Damn it! He wanted to be noble and sensible and turn her down for her own good, as well as for his own. And sure, he knew this had everything to do with her brush with death and a compelling desire to reaffirm life. But what hot-blooded man would reject a woman with Bri’s beauty, intelligence and irrepressible spirit? She was every man’s fantasy, after all.
She had been his secret fantasy since the night she stole into his room, kissed him senseless and left him craving more.
“Hud?”
Her voice quivered slightly as she gazed at him with growing uncertainty. Hud caved in because disappointing her was unacceptable. He walked toward her, never taking his eyes off her as he peeled off his shirt and then his breeches. He almost smiled when her gaze widened at the sight of him completely naked—and fully aroused.
Hud sank to his knees in front of her. He reached out to trail his forefinger around one pebbled nipple and then the other. He watched her lips part on a shuddering breath, saw her blue-violet eyes smolder with desire. Then he bent his head to flick his tongue against her nipple and suckled her gently.
“Sweet mercy,” she rasped as she arched toward his kisses and caresses.
“Last chance,” he whispered against her silky flesh. “Tell me to stop and I will. In a few more minutes you’ll have to shoot me to get me to walk away from you.”
“I might shoot you if you do,” she murmured as she curled her arm around his neck to hold his head against her breasts. “Now, how much is this lesson in passion going to cost?”
“I don’t work cheap,” he teased as he took her nipple between thumb and forefinger to tug lightly, playfully.
“Wouldn’t expect you to,” she said on a ragged breath. “No strings, Hud. I want it all. I want everything you can teach me. I’m only asking for tonight…”
When she kissed him with the same hungry urgency that gnawed at him, he was ready to agree to any terms. If she wanted the moon in exchange for one night of learning her exquisite body by taste and touch, he’d find a way to get it for her.
Hud told himself repeatedly to take his time with Bri, to relish every wandering caress, each white-hot kiss. He even forgot his concern about becoming a substitute for Benji when desire seized control of his mind and body. All he knew was that he wanted to make a thorough study of her satiny skin and discover what pleasured her most.
He smiled in satisfaction when his lingering touch drew breathless gasps and husky moans from her lips. While she sat with her back against the wall, cushioned by his discarded shirt, he nudged her knees apart and propped himself between her legs. He delighted in watching her flush furiously. He wanted her to watch him touch her intimately, wanted to memorize every changing expression on her enchanting face, wanted to see the flare-up of need flashing in her blue-violet eyes while he pleasured her in every way imaginable.
Fascinated, he drew an invisible line from her lips, down her breastbone to her belly. When his forefinger trailed lower to sketch the soft flesh of her inner thighs, she sagged against the rock wall and closed her eyes on a ragged sigh.
“Look at me, Bri,” he commanded as he rubbed his thumb over the moist bud between her legs.
Hud had never devoted so much time to seducing a woman. He’d eased basic needs…until now, with Bri. He craved all the passion she could offer him for as long as this secret moment lasted in this remote canyon in the middle of nowhere.
When her eyes fluttered open and her chest heaved on a shattered breath, he angled his head to flick his tongue against her softest flesh. He tasted her desire for him and the incredible intimacy between them made him burn with such feverish need that he shuddered uncontrollably.
“Hud,” she gasped. “I—”
Her voice fizzled out when he stroked her with his thumb and eased his finger inside her, arousing her to the limits of her sanity. When he bent his head again, his gaze was still locked with hers as he tasted her. Bri felt immeasurable heat coiling tightly in her body. She ached to have him inside her as sensation upon insatiable sensation assailed her.
She struggled to draw breath as he stroked and suckled her intimately, destroying what little composure she had left. She came unraveled beneath his compelling kisses and caresses and she gasped when buffeted with the kind of erotic pleasure she never realized existed until Hud revealed to her a world of sensual ecstasy. Her responsive body quivered beneath his lips and fingertips and she knew that he knew how hot he made her burn with desire. When he cupped her hips in his hands and lifted her to him, Bri felt the first wave of rapturous spasms rippling through every fiber of her being.
Her breath broke as she clamped her hand around his wrist, anchoring herself against the bombardment of fiery sensations that turned her wrong side out. She dug her nails into his flesh and held on for dear life as he caressed her over and over until she swore she was going to die from the onslaught of overwhelming sensations. His name tumbled from her lips in a hoarse litany as exquisite pleasure pulsated through her. For the very first time in her life she knew what wild, maddening desperation and the blind rush of ardent passion felt like.
“Come here!” she panted urgently. “Hud…Please…Now!”
“You’re sure?” he whispered against her heated flesh.
“Yes,” she groaned mindlessly.
“If you insist…”
Hud couldn’t name another moment in his life when anyone wanted him as frantically as Bri did. He smiled in masculine satisfaction as he rose to his knees and wrapped her slender legs around his hips. He pressed gently against her and became instantly aware that she hadn’t been with another man. Knowing he was her first experiment with passion, he watched for the slightest sign that he hurt or frightened her. But she didn’t recoil; she responded to him with reckless abandon.
When she curled upward to link her hands around his neck and slanted her lips over his, he forgot to proceed slowly. She kissed him until he couldn’t think, only feel himself gliding into her moist heat. And then he was hopelessly and completely lost in rapturous oblivion. A firestorm of sensations blazed through his body, consuming him in the unbelievable passion they had ignited in each other.
He rocked urgently against her, unable to slow his frantic pace. He savored every heart-racing instant of ecstasy he shared with her. He could feel the mind-boggling crescendo building inside him, expanding until he shook with the intensity of it.
When Bri cried out his name, besieged by another climax, Hud drove into her, over and over again. His body throbbed in frantic rhythm with his thundering heart as passion seared him from inside out. He clutched her to him and surrendered to the inexpressible pleasure that sent him plummeting into an abyss of swirling sensations. He wondered if he’d ever find his way back—and didn’t really care if he did.
Hud swore the flash flood, hailstorm and tornado they had endured earlier was no match for the devastation that racked his body and emotions. His strength and energy were zapped. Gasping for breath, he tucked his head against her shoulder and waited for his pulse rate to return to normal.
When he realized he was probably crushing her into the rock floor of the cavern, he propped himself on his forearms and peered down at her. Bri was giving him the strangest look and he couldn’t begin to interpret it. It alarmed him. Had he hurt her? Was she instantly regretting her recklessness?
“You are very thorough, Captain,” she murmured a moment later. “It was worth the price.”
“You get what you pay for, Princess,” he teased huskily.
He tried to gauge her mood, but that quick second of vulnerability he’d noticed a moment earlier vanished and he didn’t understand what it meant. Then she flashed him that mischievous smile she wore so well. He really wanted to know what she was thinking and feeling, yet he didn’t ask.
“I do believe your goose is cooked,” she remarked.
“Prairie chicken,” he corrected—and wondered if it truly was his goose she was referring to.
If so, she was right. He had given entirely too much of himself when instructing Bri through her first intimate encounter with passion. But damn if he didn’t feel supremely pleased that he was the first man she had known, not Benji.
Hud couldn’t say why, but he felt the overwhelming need to seal their erotic tryst with a kiss before he eased away to check on their supper. And so he kissed her with penetrating thoroughness then playfully nipped at her lips before he made himself get up, don his breeches and move away.
The prairie chicken, he noticed, looked singed on the outside, while he felt scorched clear through. Sharing Bri’s passionate embrace left not a single nerve, muscle or emotion untouched and that rattled him to the extreme.
He glanced back at Bri after he removed the meat from the fire. “I’ll be back in a minute, and then we’ll eat.”
He ambled outside to see that it was half past dark. In the wake of the ominous storm, the sky sparkled with stars. Wasting no time, he strode down to the pool for a refreshing dip. Yet, the bath didn’t smother the smoldering flame still burning inside him. He had hoped that what had to be his one and only downfall into forbidden temptation with Bri had been appeased completely. Apparently not. Every time the vision of Bri arching instinctively toward him in the throes of reckless desire flashed across his mind’s eye he became aroused all over again.
Hud stepped from the pool and sighed heavily. He predicted that surrendering to impossible passion was going to haunt him the rest of his days. Of course, if Commander Price found out about this, Hud wouldn’t have all that many days left. He had committed the cardinal sin of betrayal and his commander would be out for his blood.
No doubt about it, he mused as he walked off, his days were definitely numbered. He had traded his unblemished record and his future for one incredible moment of ecstasy with Bri.
Hud smiled to himself and said, “It was worth it.”