part nowadays." She drew her knees up before her and hugged them to her chest with her arms. "I so fear for him, Shane. No good can come from his habitual drinking."
"No, none," Shane agreed, rising to his feet. He was recalling Terrance carelessly firing at him, but he would not worry Melanie about it. She had been through enough tonight. "I will build that fire now."
"Shane, thank you," Melanie said. "Thank you for everything. Had you not come . . ."
Shane looked down at her. "But you knew that I would," he said, reassuringly. "And I did."
Melanie gestured with a hand toward his hair. "Your hair," she said, swallowing hard. "Shane, you cut it. Why? I know how proud you were of your hair or you would have cut it earlier."
"It had to be done for many reasons," Shane said flatly. "To Gray Falcon, many things will be made clear when he awakens and finds my locks of hair." He smiled suddenly. "I only wish I could be there to see his reaction!"
Laughing softly, Shane turned and began a search for dry wood, finding enough for a small fire beneath thick layers of leaves that hugged the trunks of the trees, and beneath outcroppings of rock at the foot of the butte under which the lean-to had been built.
Soon a fire was burning warmly. Melanie moved closer to it, letting the heat envelope her body.
"Remove your clothes," Shane said, slipping first his moccasins off, and then his fringed breeches. He stood naked over Melanie, reaching
for her hand. "You must get your clothes dry before we continue our journey homeward."
Melanie nodded. She rose to her feet and trembled inside as she slipped off first one garment, and then another. She hugged herself as she watched Shane carefully hang her clothes on the ends of the lean-to, so that they hung low over the fire. Then Shane went to his horse and removed two blankets from his saddlebag. When he returned, he placed one of the blankets around her shoulders, and one around his own.
Enjoying the warmth of the blanket, Melanie followed Shane's lead and sat down beside the fire again. The fire cast shadows onto his handsome profile and into his blue eyes, turning them golden. Just looking at him could steal her breath away. Just his touch would melt her insides!
But there was something amiss about him tonight that made her keep her distance. Though he had achieved a major goal, he still did not seem content. She had to believe that it was because of the ritual he had performed with his hair.
Or was it because he was tormented anew by having been in the Chippewa village and not being able to stay, to greet his friends? Would he forever be tormented because of having been sent from the village so unjustly?
"He did not harm you in any way, did he?"
Shane's sudden question, his eyes now on her, fixed and angry, made Melanie flinch. Then her insides mellowed when he placed a hand at her nape and began caressing her there with his fingers.
"No, he didn't harm me," she said, leaning into his hand. "But when he began drinking heavily, I became afraid. I expected him to rape me at any moment."
"I doubt that he would have," Shane said, looking away from her, into the fire. He was recalling his youth, when young girls from other tribes had openly pursued Gray Falcon because he was next in line to be chief and they wanted to share in such a noble life. Gray Falcon could have had them all, but did not. Though plagued by ugly jealousy, he was a man of morals. He had made his choice of woman now, and she apparently had joined with him willingly.
An involuntary shiver raced across Melanie's flesh when she recalled the moments alone in her bedroom with Gray Falcon. It would have been so easy for him then to assault her. He had held her pinioned to the bed for what seemed hours!
But he hadn't.
"No, I don't think he would have, either," she said in a rush. "His main concern was you, Shane. He abducted me only to prove to you that he could."
Letting her blanket flutter down from her shoulders, to drape loosely about her arms, Melanie moved to her knees before Shane. She looked at him, her eyes filled
with questioning. "Shane, where were you all day yesterday?" she asked.
Shane's gaze moved over Melanie. In the soft light of the fire, in the wide innocence of her eyes as she gazed intensely up at him, she looked so vulnerableyet so ravishingly beautiful. Her
hair picked up the flame of the fire in its folds, highlighting it in soft reds as it spilled over her creamy shoulders and down her back. The upper curves of her breasts were bare, tempting his lips to touch them.
Melanie's insides were growing hot with passion as Shane gazed down at her. His eyes branded her. His dark, finely chiseled face was taut with emotion.
Something compelled her to reach her hands to his blanket, to slowly lower it from his shoulders. When it dropped away and settled in a heap on the ground, his muscles stirred down the length of his tanned body as he, in turn, reached and took her blanket away from her.
At this moment she desired no answers from him.
She desired only him.
Drifting toward Shane, Melanie's heart pounded. She knew that what she had gone through today, and all yesterdays, had been worth it, if the end result was this moment alone with Shane. If there were no tomorrow, even that did not matter.