Captive (2 page)

He gave out a cry. A furious cry of deep masculine pain, and to her relief and fleeting pleasure, his hand eased its death grip from her hair as he doubled over with pain.

She tried to rise from the place where she had fallen against a cypress. Tried to run. But the Indian was
screaming again, reaching for her. Her arm was caught, and she was thrown back to the ground. The brave’s knife, already deep, dark red with the life’s blood of so many of the men who had fallen around her, was rising above her breast.

Then that powerful voice of command that had stilled the action of the massacre before rang out again. Even as she blinked and gasped for air, Teela saw that the muscled warrior was wrenched from atop her. She didn’t dare wonder why. She rolled over, struggled to her knees and to her feet, and started to run again. She wouldn’t die without fighting, without trying.

Fingers tangled into the length of her hair. She cried out in agony as she was determinedly dragged back. She struggled fiercely, catching hold of her hair yet not managing to free it from the firm grasp of that large bronzed hand. Even as she tried to kick and flail again, she found herself spun around, plucked up by the waist, and tossed back to the ground. She thought, fighting hysteria, that she was back where she started.

No. This was worse. Much worse.

For this man now straddled her, capturing her wrists, pinning them to the ground high above her head with the use of just one of his wickedly long-fingered hands. She was blinded by the blanket of sun-torched auburn hair that fell in a tangled sheath over her face. Twisting brought the merciless pressure of his thighs closer about her hips. Each gasp for breath, every effort to scream, all but caused her to choke and strangle upon her own hair.

Then it was swept from her face. She felt those fingers stroking her cheeks, sweeping away the wild and tangled strands. She opened her mouth to scream, and yet the sound never left her throat, and for shattering moments, still moments, moments in which she could feel or hear nothing but the pounding of her own heart, she stared into the eyes that seemed to pierce into her and through her, pinning her to the ground with every bit as much strength as the arms and legs that held her so fiercely….

They were blue eyes. Shockingly, vibrantly blue. A blue that could burn cobalt with anger, lighten like a summer’s sky with laughter. A blue that had haunted, compelled, fascinated, and drawn her before, perhaps for the very bronze of the face they shone from within.

Running Bear.

They had a name for him here in the dark green shadows and dangerous rivers of grass in the swamplands. They had a name for him among his people.

One that fitted him, one that had become his on the day he had left childhood behind within his tribe and taken the black drink. It was a fitting name for one who would be both fleet and graceful and powerful as well. She knew about him because she had made a point of knowing about him; her fascination had been complete. Today he was half naked, clad in doeskin breeches, silver necklaces, hide boots, and nothing more. The fantastic, ripple-muscled strength of his chest and shoulders was plainly visible. He wasn’t heavy; she was certain that he would have shared his portion of food with any man, woman, or child of his people in need, but despite that, the raw force used in his expeditions through the land had apparently kept him honed like a razor, and enemy or not, white man, red man, he was an extraordinary example of the male physique. His hair was ebony but rich, and with a wave that betrayed his white heritage, the same as the majestic blue of his eyes. His face combined his races; it was an exceptionally strong face with high, broad cheekbones, a stubbornly squared chin, long, narrow nose, wide, full, sensual lips, high forehead, arched ebony brows, and those eyes.

She closed her own against them, her heart racing. She knew those eyes, knew them too well, had felt their blue fire before.

He was Running Bear now.

But he had been James McKenzie that first night she met him. So savage here with his bared flesh and simple silver adornment. She’d seen him first in a white frilled shirt, black breeches, crimson waistcoat, and black boots.
She’d seen him in the white man’s world, seen the elegance of his movement across the dance floor, heard the eloquence of his arguments when he’d spoken. Feminine hearts had fluttered excitedly, for that aspect of danger had somehow remained about him. There was a vitality, a tension, a heat, that seemed barely contained within him. Yet his appearance had been that of a civilized gentleman. Indeed, she had met him as one.

No. He had been neither civil nor a gentleman that night, either. He had taken on the guise, and he had played the white men’s games, and that had been all. And the blue fires had blazed in his eyes because he had raged with bitterness already, for though white guns had not taken his family, a fever caught within the swamps where they had ventured to escape the white settlers had done so with equal precision.

He had hated her that night. Hated her for her father. Yet even then, to his own great horror she was certain, he had …

Wanted her. And no matter how he had infuriated her, she had felt that wretched fascination. Almost beyond her own power, something that compelled her to walk to him when she should have been running away. He wasn’t of her world. Even as she longed to cry out that she wasn’t part of the things her father did, she wanted to hate him for the very way he assumed that she was, despise him for the very contempt he seemed to feel, and cast so ruthlessly her way. But even then—

“Look at me,” he commanded her, and laughter seemed to bubble up within her again, for she was surrounded by savages, some of them half dressed and glistening bronze in the sun, others clad in doeskin breeches and colorful cotton shirts, feathers and ornaments. All of them armed with knives and axes and guns.

And still, his English was so perfect, his voice so cultured.
Look at me
. He might as well have commanded that she pass the tea.

Her eyes flew open and she met his again, and she
wondered if his coming would mean that she should live, or just die more slowly.

Even he couldn’t change the fact of whose stepchild she was, or all that her father had done.

She gritted her teeth hard, fighting the trembling that had seized her. She wouldn’t cower before him! His bitterness had always been great; he had never loved, perhaps he had not even liked, her. He had even hated her, and perhaps himself sometimes, because she had been white. And still, a strange wild fire had burned between them, and she knew that he had been entangled in it as well, and at times even, perhaps, she had drawn his admiration. She had never cowered before him, not yet. She had never betrayed her fear, and she suddenly vowed to herself that she would not do so now.

“So you are a part of a war party. Kill me, then, and have done with it!” she challenged him. “Slaughter me, slice me to ribbons, as your people have done with these men.”

“It was a fair fight,” he warned her, eyes narrowing.

“It was an ambush.”

“The captain leading your party ordered the direct annihilation of two entire tribes, Miss Warren, men, women, and children. Babes still within their mothers’ wombs. Yet to you these soldiers should have been shown mercy?”

“I know there is none within you!” she cried. She hesitated. She knew that he spoke the truth about their captain. She knew it; she had seen him in action. What good did it do now to admit that white men and red were merciless, brutal, and cruel? “There is no mercy to be found in this wretched hell, I am well aware, so do whatever you will! End it!”

He arched a brow, then leaned down closer to her. “End it? But we savages do so enjoy torturing a fiesty victim!”

Her blood seemed very cold. Ice within her. Yet where his body touched hers, it seemed she was still afire. She closed her eyes again, listening as the warriors
rummaged through the soldiers’ belongings. They sought food, she knew, above all else. It had been a military tactic to attempt starving the Indians into submission.

“What were you doing with these men?” he demanded.

Her eyes opened again upon that set of blue ones that so determinedly pinned her to the ground as the pillage went on around them. It didn’t matter. She didn’t want to look. He had power among his people. Enough to stop another from carrying out her murder But no chief could stop hungry men from seeking food or whatever other spoils of war they might now seize.

Thank God the darkness was coming to cast its cover over the men who had perished. Over the Indians who searched the corpses so desperately for any small morsel of sustenance.

She couldn’t even blame them. She’d been ill when she’d first heard her stepfather describe with relish his exploits against the Indians. The Americans who complained of brutal tactics didn’t realize that they dealt with “subhuman” people he believed. The Indian question really needed to be settled permanently. Wretched little Indians grew to be wretched big ones, and they were much more easily dispatched when they were small.

Not all the soldiers were monsters. She’d met many good ones. Fine men, courageous men, kind men. Men who longed to leave the Indians in peace, to learn to live together.

But under the circumstances they would all pay for Colonel Warren’s military prowess, as he described his maneuvers.

“What were you doing with the men?” James repeated angrily.

Her eyes went directly to his. “Leaving,” she told him.

“For where?”

“Charleston.”

He arched a brow again, and she thought that she sensed anger within him. Yes, she’d been running away. She’d had no choice. She’d never be able to make any-one
realize that she despised Warren as deeply as any enemy might.

But damn it, since she’d met James, he’d been telling her to go away!

He was suddenly up, on his feet, having pounced there with the speed and agility of a graceful great cat. Again she thought to run, to escape them all, to hide somehow, to make it into the swamp and to St. Augustine. She twisted with her swift speed to rise, but she didn’t even manage to turn. His hands were on hers, drawing her up, suddenly slamming her close to his own body. Once again his eyes knifed into her, impaling her, and had he held her or not, she could not have moved at that moment.

“Fool!” he charged. “You will not be going anywhere now!”

“You’re the one who has always told me to leave,” she reminded him fiercely. “You’d have thrown me off your precious land were it possible. You told me to go—”

“And you didn’t listen.”

“I was trying—”

“Apparently, you didn’t listen in time,” he snapped, and she became very aware again that she was flush against the heat and force of his body. “Leave my side now and you are dead, Miss Warren, don’t you see that?”

A dizzying sensation overcame her. Dead men lay around her, and she didn’t dare look at them. She didn’t want to recognize them. She was afraid that she would pass out. Tears suddenly sprang to her eyes as she thought of the men. She had hated some of them. But others…

He had a strange perception. Or perhaps he had lost a few white friends here tonight as well. She wondered at the emotional tugs he must feel in his own heart. His only blood brother was white. His nephew was white, his father had been white. And he had tried very hard
to stay out of the fighting, but events had made that impossible.

She heard the anguished cry of a man. Her face must have gone very pale, and her enemy must have had some shred of mercy, though he would deny it. He shouted out a command in his Muskogee language, then started dragging her away by the upper arm. “Don’t look down and don’t look back!” he ordered brusquely.

She tried not to. Tried very hard not to see the carnage. A Seminole brave, a feathered band around his head, his chest bare and painted blue, a breech clout all that covered him, lay in death over an army corporal. They all but embraced. A terrible cold seemed to seep into her. Her teeth chattered. In a moment she would burst into tears. Never, never in front of this man.

He had a horse, a beautiful animal. A bay mare, with her ribs showing only slightly. Teela found herself thrown up on the animal, and he swiftly mounted behind her. In a few minutes’ time, they had left the scene of the ambush behind. She didn’t know where they were going. His people were so much on the run now that such a thing as a village scarcely existed, except very deep and hidden in the swamp. The women could be far more vicious than the men when they chose, so she prayed that he wasn’t taking her to where many of her own gender awaited. Seminole punishment included scratchings with needles, often doled out by the women. Or she could endure ear and nose clippings and other maimings …

She felt ill as they rode and rode, the sights and sounds and memories of the savage assault all weighing down upon her. Had any of the men lived? Did they lie in torment? Did they have a chance of survival?

James was silent, anxious only to ride hard, so it seemed. Lush foliage was thrashed around them. Darkness had fallen, and she couldn’t have begun to tell in the pine-carpeted green darkness in which direction they traveled.

At first she thought that he had merely brought her
to a river to drink. Then she saw that a
hootie
, or shelter, had been thrown up hastily in the copse near the water. Cabbage palms created the roof, and warm blankets carpeted the floor space.

He had come here alone, she thought, and she was grateful. Even when he roughly set her upon the ground, she was grateful. She didn’t want to face any other members of his tribe. She didn’t want to face him. How strange. She had lived long days and nights in fear, longing for just the sight of him.

As Michael Warren’s stepdaughter, she had always been in danger of much more than a swift and certain death.

Set upon the ground, she stiffened her spine. She walked to the water, fighting a new wave of hysteria and a flood of tears.

“So you were leaving Florida,” he said suddenly from behind her. “Going back to graceful drawing rooms, fine company, and the elegance belonging to the life of such a well-bred young lady.”