Laura instinctively hugged her breasts with one arm and angled her other downward to cover the apex of her thighs with a spread hand. Deke shook his head. "Arms down," he whispered.

Laura's skin already burned everywhere his gaze touched, but she forced her arms to her sides, gulping for breath as he perused her from head to toe with unhurried nonchalance. After looking his fill from that angle, he stepped slowly around her, his shadow play dancing upon the walls, eclipsing hers. When he completed the circle, he came to stand before her again, his expression thoughtful.

At last he brought his gaze to hers and smiled. "I stand corrected, Boston. You're worth every cent of a hundred and seventy dollars, plus my services as a tracker in trade. The main trouble with you has been tryin' to collect."

She gave a startled laugh. "You, sirrah, are absolutely unconscionable."

He crooked a finger at her. "Come here and pay up."

The dress at her feet forgotten, Laura started forward and tripped on the puddle of leather. With the same quick reflexes he had displayed the first time she saw him, Deke lunged forward and caught her from falling with arms that felt as hard and hot against her bare skin as molten steel. Laura dragged in a quick breath at the shock, then exhaled into his mouth, for he wasted no time in claiming her lips with his.

At that first silken contact of mouths and tongues, Laura forgot more than just her dress on the floor. Being in Deke's arms made her forget everything but the sensations he evoked within her. He was firelight and shadows, heat and shivers, ecstasy and madness, a man who loved as he did all else, elementally and with a straightforwardness that might indeed have shocked her if she hadn't come to know him so well.

Deke held her clasped so closely to him, though, there wasn't room for a flea to slip between them, let alone shame. Laura surrendered to him as a sapling did the wind, bending to his force and the all-over caress of him on her flesh. He was raw and unpolished. He touched his mouth to places she never dreamed a man might want to kiss or nibble, even the dimples at the small of her back and the sensitive skin on the underside of her toes. Laura began to feel that her entire body was atingle. Then she was on fire, and he was the bellows that stoked the blaze.

Only when Laura felt him hook her knees over his shoulders did she blink back to momentary reality. She felt the silken heat of his mouth high on the inside of her thigh and jerked with a start. Shoving up on her elbows, she cried, "Deke?"

His mouth slid higher, and he nipped lightly with his teeth. She squeaked, flopped onto her back, and made wild grabs for his hair, shocked to her marrow and fully intending to shove him away.

"Don't!" she cried.

"Why not?" he rasped.

While Laura's benumbed brain tried to sort through the multitude of reasons so she might voice just one, his mouth found her. With one drag of his tongue, all of those inarguable reasons why he shouldn't do this fled her mind. With a sharp pull, he drew the sensitive flange of her between his teeth, then laved the captured flesh.

Sensations, firelight, losing herself in the rugged aura of this man. Laura rode the wave of fire he created within her to its crest, hovered there for a maddening instant, then cried out as he forced her over into a dizzying spiral of amber as searing as the flames that licked the night nearby.

Divested of his buckskins, he rose over her before her senses righted, a broad canopy of rippling bronzed flesh, his dark hair painting her sensitized breasts with silken brush strokes. Laura felt the hardness of him nudging for entry and realized her knees were still draped over his shoulders. Sudden fear lanced her, and she gasped as he pushed forward, half expecting pain. She fastened frightened eyes on his, then saw the love and concern in his gaze.

"Easy," he whispered in a tight voice. "Stay relaxed, Laura. If it starts to hurt, I'll stop."

But it didn't hurt. He had readied his way, and her body embraced the masculine length of him with wet heat. His face went taut. The expression in his eyes changed, their color awash with the sparks of passion and glazed with need. The tendons along his neck and shoulders stood out in sharp relief, their edges squared-looking and rigid. Laura ran light fingertips along his braced arms, tracing the bulge of veins, feeling each surge of his pulse. For this moment, she surveyed him with lucid apartness, as a woman does when lust momentarily transforms her beloved mate from gentle lover to a male in the clutches of primal urgency.

Deke was beautiful. Beautiful yet frightening. Laura felt a sense of feminine power that was heady. So much strength beneath her fingertips. So much need pressed deep within her. She moved her hips slightly and watched the muscles in his face snap taut over bone, his lips drawing back over gleaming white teeth. Playing with fire... But she gloried in the burn. At her encouragement, he thrust forward, no longer gentle, and the fiery shaft of him ignited all it claimed. Her lashes fell low, and she arched to meet and welcome the invasion.

Deke... She clutched his strong arms and let him carry her upward on another wave of sensation that was far more glorious than anything she ever imagined. Deke... She melded with his wildness, became one with him in a rush to completion. Then she lay in the safe fold of his arms, too spent to move or think, not caring if the world ended as long as he held her, stroked her hair, and filled her with the pounding of his heartbeat.

When awareness completely returned, Laura studiously avoided lifting her gaze to his face, embarrassed now when she thought of all the things that had passed between them. As if he understood that, Deke pressed kisses to her forehead, drew the furs over her nakedness and his, then spoke softly to her of other, ordinary things. Whether or not Jonathan would sleep through the night. That it sounded as if it might be sprinkling rain outside. Inconsequential murmurs that soothed Laura and allowed her some distance, which she needed more than she could say.

When at last he ran out of things to mention, Deke fell silent for a long while. Then she felt his mouth curve in a smile against her hair. "You're stuck with me now, Boston. I can take you home without worryin' about losin' you."

"That will never be a worry," she whispered softly. "When will we go?"

Just the thought filled Laura with sadness. She didn't want to lose all her new friends. Friends were a commodity that had been sorely lacking in her life until now.

"Tomorrow?" he suggested.

"So soon?" Laura asked shrilly. "We can't possibly be ready so fast."

"What's to get ready? We'll be leavin' the weddin' gifts until another trip. I don't want anything cumbersome loadin' us down, not on this haul."

"Then we'll come back?"

He kissed her hair. "Would you like to?"

"Oh, yes."

He sighed as though that answer pleased him beyond measure. "I was kinda fearful you might not like it here."

"I love it here, and I'm going to miss Star and Sugar Girl."

"Well, then." He sighed again and hugged her close. "Ah, Laura, I love you."

"You finally got around to saying it?"

He chuckled. "I've thought it a hundred times. But it's best to keep the ladies wantin', you know."

She slugged him playfully in the ribs, they tussled a moment, then grew pensive again. "Deke?"

"Hm?"

"The comancheros. Will they be a worry when we leave here?"

"I already asked Black Stone if he would arrange for an escort when we got around to leavin'." He rolled up onto an elbow to look down at her in the shifting amber light. "They'll stay with us until we get close to Denver."

Laura was relieved to hear that. "And you really want to leave tomorrow?"

"I got cattle to worry about. I been gone a long time already. My cows is what puts food on the table." He caught her chin on the edge of his hand. "We'll come back this winter and stay a month or so."

She brightened. "Oh, I'd like that."

He bent his head, letting his mouth barely graze hers. "Laura?"

She breathed in the taste of him and smiled. "What, Mr. Sheridan?"

"You feelin' achy from overuse?"

"Not yet."

He growled low in his throat and lightly bit her lip. "I better relick my calf then."

Laura nipped him back and slipped her arms around his neck. "Yes, I think you'd better," was her murmured reply.

Good-byes had never come easily to Laura, and those she had to say the next morning came doubly hard. She wept when Star held her son close for a final embrace before slipping him snugly into his cradleboard. She sobbed when she felt wetness on Sugar Girl's cheek when they hugged in farewell. Her whole body trembled when she looked into Medicine Woman's craggy face for the last time and then went to her horse. What if? Those two words preceded a hundred thoughts in her mind, making her ache. What if Medicine Woman didn't live until winter? She was so frail now and bent with age. What if Black Stone's band was attacked by whites? What if some of the familiar faces she had come to hold so dear were no longer here when they returned next winter?

Laura knew that for every ache inside her, Deke was lashed with a deeper pain. She could see it in his eyes as he helped her mount her horse, see it in his body movements as he swung into the saddle. Even though Black Stone and nearly twenty other warriors rode with them from the village, Laura felt lonely as she never had.

On a rise at the edge of the flats, Deke wheeled his stallion to look back, and Laura saw tears in his eyes. She drew her horse up by his and gazed at the village with him, her heart breaking for him and for herself and for all those they left behind. Lodges and smoke ribboning toward the sky. People in buckskin moving through the weave of a life-style Laura knew was soon to be destroyed. She wanted to raise her fist at the sky and scold God. She wanted to go back to Denver and plead with the people there to leave these alone. Why, oh, why did there have to be so much ignorance in the world? Why was hatred instinctive between those of different skin colors?

"Deke?"

His jaw muscle tightened as he dragged his gaze from the village to look at her.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, glancing over his shoulder to see how much distance the other warriors had gained on them. When his eyes once again met Laura's, he managed an anemic smile. "I'm just feelin' a little sadder about leavin' than usual. That's all."

"Is it ... because of me? Would you have visited with your mother more if I hadn't been here?"

His smile deepened. "Laura, I saw her near every night. It ain't that." He looked down at the village again. "It's just silliness, I reckon. A sad feelin' in my bones. Probably because she's gettin' so old and I know her winters are numbered." He shrugged. "I just got a bad feelin', that's all. It don't mean nothin'."

"A bad feeling? That you might not see Medicine Woman again, you mean?"

He shivered suddenly, as if with cold, only Laura felt no breeze. Her heart twisted at the expression on his face. "No," he said in such a low whisper, she almost couldn't catch the words. "It ain't a bad feelin' just about her. It's for all of 'em. I just have this idea in my head this might be the last time I see some of 'em."

Laura had thought the same herself. "We'll see them again," she said, injecting cheerfulness into her voice. "It's only a few months until winter."

He flexed his shoulders and neck, then reached for his hat where it perched in the vee of his legs atop his saddle horn. With a forward dip of his head, he settled the Stetson over his hair and cocked the brim to just the right angle over his eyes. Laura's gaze touched on the cobalt beads that encircled the crown again and the feather that peeked so jauntily over the tan crown. He was dressed as he had been the first time she saw him, in the sleeveless blue shirt, opened partway down his chest to reveal his medallions, tight denim jeans, and high, fringed moccasins.

His gun belt once again rode comfortably at his hips, the holster tied at the thigh.

Uncivilized and dangerous? Perhaps. But after last night, Laura thought he looked good enough to eat. He flashed her a teasing glance. "You ready to ride, Boston? We got a lot of miles to cover."

"Indeed I am, Mr. Sheridan."

Chapter 26.

*Now that Laura had her baby back, Deke half expected her to balk at the long hours in the saddle and sleeping on the cold ground. But as she had from the first, Laura surprised him, pushing ever forward without complaint, always game to go an extra mile if that was what he asked of her. By the middle of the second day of their trip, Deke was so proud of his wife, he was afraid his seams might bust. City gal or no, she was one hell of a woman, no mistake about that.

She constantly quizzed him as they traveled. Is that west? she would ask, and point a finger. Nine times out of ten, she was dead on. She also asked how to tell her directions when the sun was at high noon, which was a damned good question, so Deke showed her how to lay a rock in a sunny spot and check it from all sides to see which way it threw a shadow. The other warriors drew up and waited, not seeming to mind that Flint Eyes had delayed their progress to instruct his whiskey-haired woman.

"What if the rock throws no shadow?" she queried.

"That ain't likely. Most times when it seems like the sun's dead center in the sky, it's a hair off and'll throw shadow of some kind. If it don't, park your butt and wait a few minutes till it does."

"It seems to me we've covered this ground once before," she retorted with a saucy smile. "What if I'm trying to escape an angry husband?"

Deke gave her a lambent look. "Let him catch up and take your medicine."

"And what might that be?"

"When we get to the hotel in Denver, I'll show you."

"That is a dose of medicine I shall look forward to," Laura said softly.

Though Deke refrained from telling Laura because he could see no point in worrying her, he and Black Stone spotted the tracks of a large group of riders late that second day, the sign fairly fresh. It worried both men. Comancheros? There had been shod and unshod horses in the group, a bad indication. Had the bastards been holing up all this time, waiting Deke out? He could scarcely believe it. One of the reasons he had tarried with the Cheyenne for so long was to let the trouble die down.

"It can't be comancheros," he said to Black Stone in Cheyenne. "No one, not even a lowlife Mexican with a passion for blondes, could want a woman that badly."

Black Stone glanced toward Laura. "No, not even for hair the color of whiskey." He seemed to ponder the question further, then his brow cleared. "Perhaps you are who they want now, eh?"

"Me?"

"You killed three of Gonzales's men. Vengeance can drive a man to do crazy things."

Making no reply, Deke wheeled his horse and rode back to Laura and the baby. But what Black Stone had said stayed on his mind. Revenge? Deke prayed that wasn't the case, for if it was, he and Laura would be in danger even after they reached his ranch. A group of renegades knew no boundaries. Through Black Stone, Deke had learned that Francisco Gonzales was the comanchero leader and one mean hombre if the stories the Cheyenne had heard about him were true. Until meeting Laura, Deke had never heard Gonzales's name, but he knew the kind, and in his experience, most were the sort who lived by no code whatsoever and gave a new definition to the word cruel. To even think of a man such as Gonzales getting his hands on Laura or the baby made Deke's blood go cold.

Later that day, Deke spoke with Black Stone once again. "What should I do, my brother? If it is comancheros, that could mean they're following us."

Scowling at the question, Black Stone grabbed a handful of his pinto's mane to steer it around a rock.

Deke circled his horse in the opposite direction. When the two animals resumed their former pace abreast of each other, Black Stone said, "You might return with us to the village and stay with us until Gonzales gives up."

Deke considered that. "I've already been gone from my ranch for way over a month, not to mention that I would be putting my wife and child through four days of hard riding for nothing. We're so close to Denver now. It'd be crazy to turn back. Sooner or later, and it's got to be sooner if I expect to have a ranch when I get back, we'll have to make this trip. If I go back with you and wait for a few more days, there's nothing to say the situation will have changed."

Black Stone had clearly thought all the same things, and he nodded. "We will ride with you for as far as we can. As long as we are with you, you will be safe."

"If you're right and Gonzales is out to get revenge, I'll have to watch my back long after this journey is over."

"Yes," Black Stone agreed. "Until the man is dead."

"What if I get Laura safely home, and Gonzales comes to the ranch when I'm not there? Now that I've got a family, I won't take many long trips, but there will be times when I'll have no choice. Even if I leave men behind to watch after Laura, they wouldn't stand a chance against that many fast guns."

"No." Black Stone squinted into the slanting sunlight, then spat to clear his mouth of the dust raised by the many horses in front of them. "It is a problem, Flint Eyes. One for which I see no answer. You can only hope they make a move now while you are among friends."

Deke snorted. "Every comanchero I ever met was a coward. They'll wait and jump me when I'm alone."

"We would ride the entire way to Denver with you if we could."

"I know you would, Black Stone. But right now, with so much trouble brewing, you'd probably get shot for your trouble. I can't ask you to stay with us for much longer. It's too risky."

This time it was Black Stone who rode away without making a reply.

The worry began to mushroom in Deke's mind. He imagined what might happen to Laura if Gonzales got his hands on her, and the pictures that went through his head made him feel sick. So many times he had told Laura she had nothing to fear while she was with him, that he would always protect her. Now he began to see what a foolish promise that had been. This country could be vicious. One man, no matter how fast with a gun, no matter how true to his woman, could be alive one moment and dead the next, with only buzzards to note his passing. If that happened to Deke, Laura would be left to fend for herself and the baby.