"Go to bed, Kristin."

She inhaled sharply, furiously. "You let me make a complete fool of myself and then you — Damn you!"

Kristin slammed her fists against his shoulders, catching him off guard. He staggered, and she found the doorknob. Throwing the door open, she tore across the hall. She threw herself onto her own bed, tears hovering behind her lashes, fury rising in her throat.

The door crashed open behind her, and she spun around. He had followed her across the hall without even bothering to dress.

"Get out of here!" she snapped, enraged.

He ignored her and strode calmly toward the bed. Kristin shot up, determined to fight. It was all to no avail. His long stride quickly brought him to her. She came to her knees hastily, but he joined her on the bed, grabbing her hands and pressing her down.

"I should scream!" she told him. "Samson would come and —"

"Then scream."

She held her breath. He pressed her down on the bed and straddled her.

"Why won't you leave me alone?"

"You wanted to make a deal," he said harshly.

"What?"

"You said you wanted to make a deal. All right. Let's talk. I'm willing to negotiate."

                                       PART   2

                                             The Lover

CHAPTER FOUR

Kristin was glad the room was steeped in darkness. His features were shadowed, his body was shadowed, and she prayed that her own emotions were hidden by the night. She wanted to hate him. She could not. She wanted to think, to reason, and she could think of nothing but the hard male body so hot and intimate against her own.

He had come here, naked, to accept her proposition, it seemed. And yet he was angry again, angrier even than before. Hard and bitter and angry.

Moonlight cast a sudden soft glow over the room. She saw his features, and they were harsh, taut, almost cruel, as if he were fighting some inner pain.

"Negotiate?" she whispered.

"First, Miss Kristin, if you're going to play a game of chance, make sure you're playing with a full deck."

"I don't know what —"

"Exactly. That's why I'm going to explain things to you. I'll meet any man in a fair fight, but I won't go out and commit murder, not for you, not for myself, not for anyone. Do you understand?"

She nodded. She didn't understand him at all, but she was suddenly too afraid to do anything else. She had lost her mind. The war and the bloodshed had made her insane. She, Kristin McCahy, raised to live up to the highest standards of Southern womanhood, was lying on her bed with a naked stranger.

And she wasn't screaming.

"No involvement, Miss Kristin." The mock drawl was back in his voice, making her wonder again where he hailed from. She was filled with awareness of him. His muscled chest was plastered with crisp dark hair. She thought of how quickly he had drawn his Colts and his rifle, and she shivered. He carried with him an aura of danger that drew her to him despite her best intentions.

His sex pulsed against her belly, and she fought wildly to keep her eyes glued to his. It was all she could do to remember that she had intended to seduce him, to leave him gasping and longing and aching, his tongue hanging out for her.

He would never long for her that way, she realized now. Nor would he be denied. He had mocked her, but now he was determined to have her, and she felt sure he must despise her more with each passing second.

She steeled herself and whispered harshly, "No involvement. You needn't worry. I need a gunslinger. I could never love one."

A slight smile curved his lip. "This deal is made on my terms, lady. No involvement, no questions. And I won't murder Zeke. I'll go after him when I can. I'll do my damnedest to keep you and Shannon safe and your place together. But I've got other commitments, too, Kristin. And I can't forget them."

She didn't say anything. She didn't know what to say or do, didn't know where to go from here. This was so easy for him. He was so casual. He didn't even seem to know he was naked.

He touched her cheek, brushing it with his fingertips. "Why?" he said suddenly.

She shook her head, uncomprehending. "Why what?"

"This is all Zeke wanted."

"I hate Zeke. I hate him more than you could ever imagine. He killed my father. I'd rather bed a bison than that bastard."

"I see. And I'm a step above a bison?"

"A step below."

"I can still leave."

Panic filled her. She wanted to reach out and keep him from disappearing, but her pride wouldn't let her. Then she realized that he was smiling again, that he was amused. He leaned down low and spoke to her softly. His breath caressed her flesh, and the soft hair of his beard teased her chin. "There's one more point to this bargain, Miss McCahy."

Her heart was suddenly pounding mercilessly, her body aching, her nerves screaming.

"What's that, Slater?"

"I like my women hungry. No, ma'am, maybe that's not enough. I like them starving."

Words and whispers could do so much. As much as his slow, lazy, taunting smile. Fever ran through her, rife and rampant. She wanted to strike him because she felt so lost, and in spite of herself, she was afraid. She wasn't afraid he would hurt her. She might have gone insane, but she believed with all her heart that he would never hurt her. And she wondered, too, if this madness hadn't been spawned by the very way he made her feel, alive as she had never been before, haunted and shaken and… hungry, hungry for some sweet sensation that teased her mind and heart when he was near.

And yet she lay stiff and unyielding, numbed by the fear that swept through her, the fear that she would be unable to please him, the fear that she didn't have what it would take to hold him. Women… He had used the plural of the word. He liked his women hungry…

No, starving.

She didn't know him, and she didn't want involvement any more than he did, and yet this very intimacy was involvement. Even as she lay there, unable to move, she felt a painful stirring of jealousy. She had sacrificed so very much pride and dignity and morality for this man, and he was herding her together with every other female he had ever known.

He touched her chin. Then he brushed her lips with his, with the soft sweep of his mustache.

"Hungry, sweetheart." She sensed his smile, hovering above her in the dark. "This is as exciting as bedding a large chunk of ice."

She struck out at him blindly, but he caught her arms and lowered his weight onto her. She clenched her teeth as his laughing eyes drew near.

"Excuse me, Mr. Slater. My experience is limited. You wouldn't let me run out and screw a ranch hand, remember?"

"Kristin, damn you —"

"No, damn you!" she retorted, painfully close to tears. This couldn't be it. This couldn't be the night, the magic night she had wondered about in her dreams. No, it couldn't be, she thought bitterly. In her dreams this night had come after she had been married. And Adam had been in her dreams. And there had been nothing ugly or awkward about it. There hadn't even been any nude bodies, except beneath the sheets, and even then she had been cloaked all in white and he had whispered about how much he loved her and how beautiful she was and it had been wondrously pure and innocent…

She hadn't known these feelings then. And she hadn't known she could sell herself to a man who didn't even really want her.

"Please!" she cried suddenly, trying to escape his touch. Tears were beginning to sting her eyes, and she didn't want him to see them. She couldn't bear any more humiliation. "Just leave me alone. I — I can't be what you want, I can't —"

"Kristin!"

She went still when she heard the pained tenderness in his voice. He touched her cheek gently. Then he lay beside her and swept her into his arms.

She was stunned to realize that he was trembling, too, that his body was racked by heat and fever. He murmured her name again and again, and his lips brushed over her brow, as light as air. "Don't you see? I don't want to need you like this. I don't want to want you!"

There was passion in his voice, dark and disturbing. There was bitterness in it, too, pained and fervent, and as he continued to touch her, his emotions seemed to burn and sear her along with his touch. His hands were tender, then demanding, then gentle again.

"I don't want to want you," he murmured, "but God help me, I do."

Then he kissed her, and there was nothing left to worry about, for she was suddenly riding swiftly across the dark heavens and there was no time to think, no time for reason. She could only hold tight.

It all seemed to come together, everything she had felt since she had first set eyes on the man. Hungry… his mouth was hungry, and he was devouring her. His lips molded and shaped hers, and his tongue seemed to plunge to the very depths of her being, licking her deep, deep inside, taunting her, arousing her still more.

His hands roamed her body with abandon, abandon and a kind of recklessness. He caressed her tenderly, even delicately, then touched her with a force that told her that he wanted to brand her, wanted to leave his mark on her.

She never knew where the awe and the trembling and fear ceased and something entirely different began. She didn't even know when she lost the elegant nightgown brought west in her mother's trousseau, for his touch was so sweeping, so swift, so heady. She knew only that her breast was suddenly bare and his mouth was upon it. He cupped the soft mound of flesh with his hand, his lips hard around the nipple, drawing, suckling, raking the peak with his teeth as he demanded more and more.

She nearly screamed. She had never imagined such intimacy, and she never dreamed that there could be anything like the sensation that gripped her now with burning fingers, drawing a line of raw excitement down her spine and into her loins. She clutched his shoulders, barely aware that her nails were digging into him, that she was clutching him as if he were a lifeline in a storm-swept sea.

And still the tempest raged. His lips found her throat, and he raked his palm down the length of her, kneading her thigh and her buttocks. He moved swiftly, and she tried to follow, but she could not, for she was breathless, gasping in shock and amazement at each new sensation. He began anew. He touched her, held her, all over again. His lips trailed a line down the valley between her breasts to her navel, and the soft, bristling hair of his mustache and beard taunted her naked flesh mercilessly. She felt his knee force her thighs apart, and she knew that she was close to the point of no return, to being changed forever, and even then she could not keep pace with the winds that buffeted her.

And then he stopped. His palms on either side of her head, he caressed her with that curious tenderness he possessed and lowered his head to hers, whispering into her mouth.

"Hungry?"

She didn't want to face it. It was too new, too startling. She lowered her head and nodded, but it wasn't enough, not for him.

"Kristin?"

"Please…"

"Tell me."

"Oh, God!" she cried, trying to twist away from him. His palms held her fast, and her eyes were forced to meet his. Her lips were moist and her hair was a mass of gold between them, startlingly pale against the darkness of his chest.

He smiled at her, watching her as he drew his hand down to the pulse at her throat, then over her breast, down, down, to draw a circle on her abdomen and then plunge lower. He kept his eyes on her as he stroked her upper thigh. Then, suddenly, he swept his touch intimately inside her, moving with a sure, languorous rhythm.

She cried out again and tried to burrow against him, but he held her away from him. He watched her eyes, watched the rise and fall of her breasts, watched her gasp for air.

He caught her lips with his own, caught them and kissed them, and then he whispered against them again.

"Yes. You are… hungry."

Was this it? Was this the hunger he demanded, this burning sensation that filled her and engulfed her? She was grateful for the darkness, for the night, for with the moon behind a cloud, she could believe that all her sins were hidden, all that she had bartered, all that she had given so freely. She couldn't believe how she lay there with him, and yet she would not have changed it for the world. A soft cry escaped her, and she threw her arms around his neck, hiding against his chest at last. Something surged within her, and she gasped and murmured against his chest, barely aware that her hips were pulsing to his rhythm, that he hadn't ceased taunting her, that his strokes were growing more enticing.