Blackwolf's Redemption

A black void had opened before her. She’d felt herself falling into it, spinning inside it…

And then, nothing. A nothing so cold, intense and empty she’d felt as if her bones might become petrified, as if the emptiness would swallow her.

But it hadn’t, because she was here, with a man she’d never seen before crouched beside her. A savage with a hard face, eyes as cold and black as obsidian, and a mouth as thin as the slash of a rapier.

Sienna tried to swallow. Impossible. Terror had leeched the moisture from her mouth. The man watched the motion of her throat, then lifted his eyes to her face again.

“Are you hurt?”

Was she? Carefully, she flexed her fingers, her toes, her back.

“I don’t—”

“Do you ache anywhere?”

Why would he care? Still, her response was automatic. “My head.”

One hand left her shoulder, rose to her head. She jerked away, or would have jerked away, but his other hand came up to cup her jaw and hold her head still while his fingers explored her scalp. His touch was light, almost gentle, a sharp contrast to his face, his body, his voice—but she knew it didn’t mean a thing. She had studied indigenous cultures in which the warriors treated their captives relatively gently until the moment of—

“Aah.”

Sienna hissed in pain. The man grunted.

“You’ve got a lump behind your ear.” His hands shifted, began a slow trip down her throat, along her shoulders.

“Don’t,” she said, but he paid no attention as he worked his way to her toes. His touch was efficient, not intimate, but that didn’t keep it from adding to her terror.

“How many fingers?”

She blinked. “What?”

“How many fingers do you see?”

She looked at his upraised hand. “Three.”

“And now?”

“Four. Who are you?”

Carefully, she rose on her elbows, felt the coldness of stone beneath her bare arms.

He leaned closer. She flinched back. He gave an impatient growl, caught hold of her shoulders and leaned toward her.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking your pupils.”

It was unnerving. Those black eyes boring into hers.

“My pupils are fine.”

“Turn your head. Again. Slowly. Good. I’m going to roll you over.”

“You are not going to—”

But he did. His hands danced over her, his touch still impersonal. When he was finished, he turned her on her back, slid an arm under her shoulders and sat her up.

The world spun. There was a kind of buzzing sensation in her head, as if a swarm of tiny bees had found their way inside and set up housekeeping.

Sienna moaned.

The man’s arm tightened around her. It was a strong, hard arm, deeply tanned by the sun, muscled and toned by work. She wanted to jerk away from him, but she didn’t have the strength and even if she had, she knew he wouldn’t have permitted it.

At last, the earth stopped spinning. She took a deep, shaky breath.

“I’m—I’m okay.”

He let go of her. She swayed a little, and he cursed and wrapped his arm around her again.

“Put your head down.”

“It isn’t nec—”

“Put it down.”

She complied. What choice was there when he was glaring at her? The last thing she wanted to do was anger a madman. He was angry enough already. At what? At her? Was anger a sign of psychosis? If only she’d paid more attention to those psych courses…

“Take another couple of deep breaths. That’s it.” He held her a moment longer. Then he let go and put a few inches of distance between them. “Your name?”

It wasn’t a question, it was a demand.

Should she tell him her name or shouldn’t she? She’d once read that violent criminals generally didn’t want to know anything about their victims, which was exactly why some shrinks thought you might save your life by making your kidnapper, your rapist, see you as an individual.

Your rapist, Sienna thought, and swallowed a wild rush of hysterical laughter. It sounded so mundane. Your hair stylist. Your bus driver.

Your rapist.

“Answer me. What’s your name?”

She took a breath. “I’m Sienna Cummings. Who are you?”

“How did you get here?”

Where? She didn’t realize she’d said the words aloud until his eyes narrowed to inky slits.

“Pleading amnesia won’t work. Neither will avoiding my questions. How did you get here?”

She looked at him. “Where is here?” she said, in such a small voice that Jesse was tempted to believe her.

But she’d told him her name. Yeah, but that didn’t mean anything. He’d dealt with enough wounded men to know that there was such a thing as selective memory loss. She might know her name but not anything else.

Or, he thought coldly, she might be lying through that soft-looking, rosy mouth.

“Here,” he said grimly, “is my property.”

“Blackwolf Canyon?” She shook her head. “You don’t own this place.”

“Trust me, lady. I damned well do. Every tree, every rock, every speck of dirt is mine.”

“You don’t own it,” she repeated stubbornly.

Jesse almost laughed. She was damned sure of herself. Did she think she could plead ignorance and get away with what she’d planned?

He could categorize her easily enough. She was either a hippie who hadn’t accepted the fact that the sixties were gone, or she was a thief.

There was a big market for relics from the long-gone past. “Sacred artifacts of Native Americans,” the fat, easily frightened guy he’d caught on his land last year, despite the No Trespassing signs posted around his ten thousand acres, had called them, though real Native Americans simply referred to themselves as Indians.

As for the sacred part…

Complete, unadulterated crap.

Yeah, there were those of his people who were suckers for that kind of nonsense. He’d come close, as a boy, but Vietnam had sure as hell changed that. The stones, the glyphs, the pottery shards were nothing but stuff leftover from another time. The ledge didn’t have any kind of woo-woo magical validity whatsoever.

But that didn’t mean he’d let thieves and leftover flower children intrude upon it.

This place was his. He owned it, at least he’d own it until he signed the sale papers.

A quick appraisal told him this woman was no leftover flower child drawn to a romanticized version of the Old West. She wore no beads, no flowered gown, nor was her hair flowing. Instead her hair was pulled back from her face in a nononsense ponytail. She wore a plain cotton T-shirt and jeans that looked as if they’d seen a lot of use. She was a thief, plain and simple, and that she’d sneaked onto his property angered him almost as much as that he had not spotted her all the time he’d sat on his horse and stared at the mountain.

Yes, it had been dark as hell then, but so what? As a boy, as a soldier, he’d been trained to observe. To see things others didn’t. And yet, she’d gotten past him.

Jesse’s eyes narrowed. His skills were getting rusty. That would have to change. For now, though, he had to concentrate on how to get her off this ledge. Whatever she was, he didn’t want her death on his conscience.

More to the point, he thought coldly, a corpse would bring not just the sheriff but a passel of reporters. More publicity was the last thing he wanted.

He shot a look to where the ledge jutted out over the floor of the canyon. The problem was getting her down without both of them ending up doing it the fast way. At the least, a fall would result in shattered bones. He needed rope, but he didn’t have any, and riding forty minutes back to the house, leaving her here to the tender mercy of the sun and maybe the first curious check of the menu by an inquisitive buzzard, wasn’t such a hot idea.

Rope, he thought. Not necessarily a lot of it, just enough to link her to him…

Quickly, he rose to his feet.

“Okay,” he said brusquely. “Take off your belt.”

Her face went white. “What?”

“Your belt.” He was already unbuckling his. “Take it off.”

“Don’t do this.” Her voice broke. “Please. Whoever you are, don’t—”

His head came up. His eyes met hers and, hell, it all came together. The look on her face. The terror in her voice. She thought he was going to rape her. Why? Because he looked like what she undoubtedly thought of as a savage? Well, yeah. Maybe. He was shirtless. He wore his hair long. There was an eagle talon half wrapped in rawhide hanging around his neck, a gift from his father.

To keep you safe, his father had said softly, the night before he had left for ‘Nam.

The stripes on his cheeks were the only thing that had no reasonable explanation. Okay. Maybe they did. He’d come here to say goodbye to his land, his mountain, as a warrior. He’d spent less than a minute choosing between his army ODs and the paint of his people. He didn’t believe in either, not anymore, but the link to those who’d preceded him could not be as easily discarded as a uniform, so he’d stripped off his shirt, striped his face, pulled his hair back with a strip of deerskin…

Jesse blew out a breath of exasperated comprehension.

The woman was a trespasser. She probably knew exactly where she was and that it was private land, but he couldn’t fault her for leaping to the wrong conclusion at being told to take off her belt by a man who sure as hell didn’t look like anything she was accustomed to.

“I need the belts to make a rope,” he said.

“A rope?”

“To get us off this cliff.”

She blinked. “To get us off this…”

He squatted beside her, grabbed her shoulders, forced her to turn her head and see the canyon. “Take a look, lady. We’re on the side of a mountain. As if you didn’t already know—”

“Oh God!” The words were a whisper, but they became louder and louder as she repeated them. “Oh God,” she said, “oh God, oh God…”

She began to tremble. Tremble? The understatement of the year. She was shaking like an aspen leaf in a windstorm. Jesse shook her. Hard.

“Stop it!”

“I’m on the mountain. Blackwolf Mountain. In Blackwolf Canyon.” She made a sound that might have been a laugh. “And this—this is the sacred stone!”

“Surprise, surprise,” he said coldly.

She swung toward him, eyes wide, face still devoid of color.

“I was in the canyon. In it, do you understand? I was looking up at the mountain. At this ledge. At these stones and the sun and then—and then there was lightning and then I was here and no, it’s impossible, impossible, impossible…”

If it was an act, it was a good one. Damn it, was she going into shock? No color. Sentences that made no sense.

He caught her wrist.

“Take it easy.”

She laughed. It was the kind of laugh he’d heard wounded men make on the battlefield just before they gave it all up and went into shocked insanity. A knot formed in his belly. No. He was not going to let this woman go there. He had enough blood on his hands to last a lifetime.

“Take it easy,” he said again. Her teeth were chattering, and he had nothing to warm her with except himself. On a low, angry curse, he wrapped his arms around her. “Calm down.”

“D-did you h-hear what I said? I wa-was down there. At the bottom of this—this pile of rock. And then I wasn’t. I wasn’t d-down there, I was—I was here. And you—and you—”

“Come here,” he growled, and he drew her hard against him. She struggled; he ignored it. After a few seconds, she gave a little sob; he felt the warmth of her breath against his naked flesh, the hot kiss of her tears. She felt delicate, almost fragile in his arms.

How on earth could she have had the strength to get up here?

It didn’t make sense.

Yes, she’d ignored his No Trespassing signs. She’d come here to steal artifacts. He was certain of that. But how had she climbed to this ledge? He knew how much muscle power it took, and he knew, too, that she didn’t have it.

Not that her body was soft. Well, yes, it was. Soft, as only a woman could be soft. But she was fit. Toned. Her arms. Her belly, pressed to his.

Her breasts.

Rounded. Full. Ripe. And maybe he was the savage she thought him to be, after all, if he was in danger of turning hard while he held a woman he didn’t know, and had every reason to dislike, in his arms.

Tonight, once he was off this damned mountain, Jesse thought grimly, he’d turn himself back into a man of the 1970s instead of the 1870s. He’d drive into town, hit the bar at Bozeman’s best hotel and find himself a woman, a sweet-smelling, sexy East Coast tourist.

It was time to work off the past months of foolish celibacy. And if there was one thing that had never changed about him, it was that he’d never had trouble finding a beautiful woman to warm his bed.

After a couple of hours of that, he wouldn’t get turned on holding a thief in his arms.

At least his thief had stopped shaking. She was making little hiccupping sounds. Carefully, he put her from him.

“Are you all right now?”

She nodded. Her hair had come loose. He’d thought it was brown, but it wasn’t. It was gold. Beige. Brown. And what in hell did the color of her hair matter? Quickly, he got to his feet.

“Good,” he said briskly. “Because you’re going to have to listen closely. And cooperate, if we’re going to get down safely.”

She looked up at him. “What happened to me?”

Her voice was soft, still shocked. He couldn’t afford that; she’d be too much a liability unless she got a grip on reality.

“Lightning.”

She nodded. “I remember. It was green. How could lightning be green?”

It was an excellent question. Lightning, especially here, came in lots of colors. Red. White. A kind of electric blue. But green?

“Save the questions for later,” he said brusquely. “Right now, what matters is getting off this ledge.”

She swallowed. Ran the tip of her tongue over her dry lips.

“I’m, uh, I’m not much for heights.”

That explained why she hadn’t tried to look into the canyon again. It sure as hell didn’t explain how she’d gotten herself up here—and then a thought came to him.

“Do you have an accomplice?”

She stared up at him. “A what?”

“Is there anyone with you?” There had to be. Jesse moved to the edge of their stony platform and peered down, scanning the canyon floor as he’d once scanned for the ‘Cong. Nobody. Nothing. Only Cloud, swishing his plume of a tail and munching on the leaves of a shrub.

“Yes,” the woman said slowly. “Of course!” She stood up, keeping her eyes on the mountain, but she wobbled a little. Instinctively, Jesse moved quickly to her and gathered her against him. “Jack. Jack and the others.”

“They abandoned you.”

“No. They’re at the foot of the mountain.”

“They’re gone,” Jesse said harshly. “They let you risk your life for nothing. There’s nothing here to steal. The guardian stones, the sacred stone itself, are too big. And there’s nothing else.” His mouth twisted. “Your people made off with whatever was up here fifty years ago.”

“My people?” She glared up at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

What, indeed? She was white. So what? He was, too. Half white, anyway, and what did it matter? He’d never given a damn about anyone’s color. It was just that there was something about this woman that was disturbing.

“Okay,” he said gruffly. “Here’s the plan.” An overstatement, but she didn’t have to know that. “I’m going to link our belts together. I’ll fasten one end around your wrist, the other around me. I’ll go down first and you’ll watch every move I make. You got that? Every single move, because one misstep and…Damn it, what now?”

Sienna Cummings was shaking her head. “I’m not climbing down this mountain.”

“What will you do, then?” Jesse’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Wish yourself down?”

The look she gave him was hot with defiance.

“I’m going to wake up.”

Jesse raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I’m dreaming. This is a dream. It has to be. I am definitely not standing on a ledge halfway up a mountain, talking to a man who—who looks as if he stepped out of Central Casting for a movie starring John Wayne.” A curl of golden brown hair blew over her lip; she shoved it behind her ear and her chin rose a little higher. “John Wayne is dead, and I am dreaming. End of story.”

Jesse almost laughed. She was a tough piece of work. Whatever else she was, he had to admire her for that.

“I’ve got news for you, baby. John Wayne’s alive. And this is no dream.”

“Wrong on both counts,” she said. If her chin went up any higher, she’d tumble over backward. “John Wayne is history. And I am sound asleep in my tent. There’s not a way in the world you can make me think otherwise.” Her eyes—more violet than ever—narrowed. “This is not real.”

“You’re wasting valuable time. The sun’s beating straight down. The descent’s going to be tough enough without factoring in the heat.”

“No,” she said, though now there was a faint quaver in her voice, “I told you, this isn’t real.”

“It damned well is,” Jesse snarled, and he proved it by pulling her into his arms, bending his head and covering her mouth with his.

CHAPTER THREE

SIENNA gasped as the stranger’s arms closed around her.

“Don’t,” she said, or tried to say, but he was too quick, too strong, too determined. She tried to twist her face away but that didn’t work, either. All he had to do was slide one hand into her hair, cup the back of her head and bring his mouth down on hers.

There was no way to call this a kiss. It was a hard imprint of his flesh on hers, a ruthless demonstration of sheer masculine power.

He wanted to show her that she was helpless against him.

But she wasn’t.

Her work took her to places that were often desolate and dangerous. She’d studied martial arts, and her instructor’s advice—look for an opening or create one—had saved her on a dig in the jungles of Peru, as well as on the streets of Manhattan. It would save her now. All she had to do was force herself to relax. Her assailant would follow suit by easing his hold on her. Then she’d bring up her knee and jam it, hard, into his crotch.

Wrong. Nothing about him relaxed.

If anything, as soon as she stopped struggling, he drew her even closer.

Her palms spread helplessly over sun-heated skin stretched taut over hard-muscled flesh. He tilted her head back, giving him greater access to her mouth. Sienna whimpered and tried to bite him. It was another misjudgment. As soon as her lips parted, his tongue swept into her mouth.

And everything changed.

What had been cold calculation turned hot and wild. She felt the press of his erection against her belly; the taste of him on her lips became dark and exciting. She heard herself make a little sound, almost a purr. No, she thought desperately, but even as she thought it, she was leaning into him, rising to him…

With a suddenness that left her reeling, he caught her by the shoulders and put her from him. She knew her cheeks were flushed, but when she looked at him, his face was expressionless. That frightened her even more than the way he’d kissed her.. .and the way she’d reacted.

Except, she hadn’t. She hadn’t! She wasn’t the kind of woman turned on by displays of macho male power. She was a woman of the twenty-first century and behavior like this had gone out decades ago.

Still, for that one, heart-stopping instant…

Sienna forced the thought aside. She looked up at the stranger. Deliberately, slowly, she wiped the back of her hand over her lips and then against her jeans.

“Do that again,” she said in a low voice, “and I’ll kill you.”

“Give me a hard time again,” he said in mocking imitation of her, “I’ll leave you up here and the only life you’ll take will be your own.” His mouth twisted. “Do you get it now? This is reality. You’re not dreaming.”

“Is using force the way you generally make a point?”

Something flickered in his eyes. “Only when there’s no other choice. A man does what he has to do.”

“So does a woman.” Her chin came up. “You might keep that in mind.”

“Hang on to that attitude. It might just help save you.”

From him? From the climb down? Sienna wasn’t foolish enough to ask. This was not a man to push too far, at least not until she was safely back in civilization with Jack and the others. For now, doing what she had to do made sense, and what she had to do was get off this ledge.

“The belt,” he said, holding out his hand.

He’d already stripped his from the loops of his jeans. She hesitated, then undid hers and gave it to him.

He worked quickly, his big hands moving with surprising grace as he joined the two lengths of leather. When he finished, he tugged hard at both ends. The leather held, but so what? Belts weren’t made to support the weight of two people descending a mountain. His improvised rope wasn’t long enough or strong enough or—

Thunder rumbled from somewhere behind the mountain. She looked up. Dark clouds were moving in. The sky looked ominous. Nerves made her sweep the tip of her tongue over her lips…

And she tasted him.

Anger. Power. Determination. And the darker tastes of man and desire.

“Ready?”

She blinked. The man was wrapping one end of the joined belts around his wrist. It was a big wrist but it matched the rest of him. His height. His shoulders. His powerful arms, ridged abdomen, long legs…

“Keep looking at me like that,” he said in a low voice, “you’re asking for trouble.”

A flush rose in Sienna’s face. “What’s your name?”

He looked at her as if she were crazy. Maybe she was, but before she stepped into space, real or imagined, it seemed she should at least know who he was.

“Does it matter?”

She turned, shot a glance at the yawning distance between them and the canyon floor. Then she looked at him.

“Yes,” she said stubbornly. “It does.”

Just when she thought he wasn’t going to answer, he shrugged those big shoulders.

“It’s Jesse.”

Sienna stared at him. “Jesse?”

“Jesse Blackwolf.”

“But—but—”

“You wanted my name. You’ve got it. Now, let’s get moving before that storm hits.”

“But…” she said again, and he grabbed her wrist.

“No more talking. You got that?”

She got it, all right. Besides, what could she say? How could she possibly tell him that he could not, absolutely could not be who he said he was, that Jesse Blackwolf, if he’d turned up, was in his sixties? So she kept quiet as he wrapped a section of the belt around her wrist, secured it, then gave it a tug that seemed to meet with his satisfaction.

“Do everything I do,” he said. “Concentrate on—” He grabbed her by the shoulders, hoisted her to her toes. “Listen to me, if you want to survive. The rules are simple.”

“Rules?” she said, with a nervous laugh.

“Rules. Five of them. Do not look down. Do not look up. Keep your eyes on your hands and feet and on me. Pay attention to what I say. Obey what I say, without question. Understand?”

She didn’t have enough saliva in her mouth to answer. Instead, she nodded her head, but the truth was, the only thing she actually understood was that she’d never been so scared in her life.

He turned his back to her and took a step forward.

“Wait!”

He looked over his shoulder, face taut with impatience.

“What now?”

“How—I mean, what, exactly, am I supposed to do?”

“I just told you.”

“No. I mean—I mean, I’ve seen people climb rocks. Should I search for handholds? Dig my toes into the crevices? Stay in one place until I’ve found the next—”

“Are you deaf, woman? You do what I do. Nothing else. And stop trying to analyze everything. This is a mountain. The ground is forty feet down. There’s a score of places in between where we can break our necks.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”