“Lance…I have to…at least talk with your brother.”
At first she didn’t think he meant to answer. Then finally he spoke, his voice raw and unsteady. “You go to him, and he’ll think you’re offering to sleep with him.”
“Perhaps…I can persuade him to change his mind.”
Lance’s sharp huff of laughter mocked her.
“I can’t just let Fights Bear withdraw his support. Don’t you see? It could mean my sister’s life.”
“Yeah, I see. You’re willing to do anything at all to protect her.” His tone was bitter.
“Do you blame me?”
He turned his head to look at Summer; the black glitter had returned to his eyes. “You’re my wife. You think I want to share you with another man? Even if he is my half brother?”
“Do you think I want to sleep with another man? Especially an—” She bit off the word Indian, not wishing to insult Lance by denigrating his Comanche relatives. They were his people, after all, and she knew how thin-skinned he was on the subject.
He was still looking at her, his features shuttered. “I guess the vows you took when we got married didn’t mean a damn thing to you.”
Summer had no answer for that. She hadn’t wanted to take those vows, but she’d been forced to for her sister’s sake, just as she might now be forced to barter her body if his brother demanded it.
“Those were vows recognized by a white society,” she replied uneasily, “but we’re here now, where different customs apply. You’re half-Comanche. I would have thought you’d be anxious to uphold your people’s customs.”
Lance muttered an expletive under his breath at her reasonable argument.
“Lance…I’ve come this far,” she said quietly, unsteadily. “I can’t take the risk of hurting my sister’s chances for survival, simply because I don’t have the courage to make sacrifices.” Summer’s voice dropped to a mere whisper that threatened to crack with tears. “You said your mother was a brave woman. Well, I’m trying to be brave, too. And…and if I can…force myself to do something so naturally abhorrent to me, then I don’t see how you have the right to prevent me.”
Lance closed his eyes, struggling with the fierce urge to pull Summer into his arms and hold her possessively. He couldn’t argue with her, that was the hell of it. The only reason she had married him was because of her sister. This wasn’t much different. Summer only wanted to try and save her goddamned sister. What right did he have to stop her? Especially after the way he’d just acted. He was a savage bastard, just like he’d always been called. In his rage, he’d practically raped Summer, taking her like any experienced whore on the hard ground, instead of an innocent virgin.
What right did he have to prevent her? No matter how much it killed him to let her go to his brother, even if he felt like killing to keep her with him, he couldn’t stand in her way.
Lance curled his fingers into fists as sick, impotent rage twisted his gut. He couldn’t protect her. He was forced to stand by while another woman sacrificed in his place. It was a familiar feeling; he’d lived with it for most of his life.
When he didn’t reply, Summer rose unsteadily to her feet. She could feel a throbbing twinge
between her legs and the warm rush of Lance’s seed down her inner thigh, but she wouldn’t let herself dwell on what had happened between them. At least not now.
Fumbling to close her torn blouse, to smooth her rumpled skirt, she looked down at him. “Lance…I…I have to go.”
Turning, she went to the entrance and raised the flap. She cast one brief glance over her shoulder at Lance, then slipped quietly through the exit.
His fists clenched, Lance refused to watch her go, dimly aware of a sweeping sense of desolation, of a sharp, aching aloneness that he’d never felt so forcefully, even in all his years of being an outcast.
Chapter 11
She was shaking when she entered Fights Bear’s tepee just before dusk.
The war chief was alone, having dismissed his other wives when Summer humbly begged an audience with him. She had brought Short Dress with her, not for protection, although that would have been welcome, but because she needed a translator. Even if Fights Bear had spoken Spanish, her own mediocre command of that language would hardly be adequate to support the delicate negotiations she hoped to conduct.
A swift glance at the Comanche warrior’s dark features made Summer wonder if she was making a terrible mistake by thinking to persuade him to reconsider. Fights Bear’s smoldering ebony eyes, so much like Lance’s, held suspicion and anger, as well as his usual arrogance and the contempt he reserved for dealing with whites. He sat with his arms folded over his muscular chest in an attitude of complete disdain.
The thought of having to sleep with this man filled Summer with dread. Despite the resemblance his handsome copper features bore to her husband’s, Fights Bear was a stranger, a warrior from a culture that seemed barbaric and cruel compared to white civilization.
Could she permit him to know her body carnally the way Lance had just done? Could she submit to the most intimate act between a man and woman? Would Fights Bear take her brutally, without compassion, or would he show her even a small measure of the tenderness she had come to expect from Lance? If she failed in her goal, she would have answers to those questions before the night was through.
Summer clenched her fingers together to hide their trembling, finding it difficult to concentrate. Her mind felt numb, distracted, as if a part of her had remained with Lance in their tepee. After his fierce lovemaking, her body felt strange, different, acutely sensitive. Flashes of remembrance kept assaulting her: Lance becoming part of her, moving over her, within her. He had made her fully a woman. He had finally asserted his rights as her husband, insistently, without mercy. He had bonded them together physically, if not emotionally.
The image was seared into her brain; the feel of him thrusting between her legs, filling her, claiming her body, was branded on her mind, her nerves, her skin. And yet she had no time to dwell on what should have been one of the most momentous events of her life.