Rue Allyn by One Night's Desire

fires. Although by the time camp was set, Kiera was too tired to do more than force down a few sips of hardtack soup. She slept between the two fires wrapped in her buffalo robe, leaving the blankets for Ev.
    • • •
    Long into the night, Ev sat, sipping coffee and watching the woman he was supposed to arrest for murder, arson, and horse thieving. She was a strange one. Beautiful, yes, but she didn’t trade on that beauty. Though the memory of her naked glory caused him no little discomfort. City raised, she chose to live in the most isolated country he could think of, with a few Shoshone as her most frequent human contacts. Practical to a fault. Nothing she had done from the moment she first walked into the Brown’s Camp Mercantile had been frivolous or wasteful, or even self-indulgent. Doing what she had to do to get free when captured. Traveling when she was ill, because the alternative was pretty much to lie down and die at the cost of an innocent man’s life, or go to trial without the proof she needed, which amounted to the same thing.
    The Shoshone called her Dabai’Waipi — Sun Woman. Did the name signify her hair, which he knew from photographs to be a blinding white-blonde, or from the photographs she took? She must be passionate about her photography. Why else give up ruby earrings just to get photographic chemicals? What kind of woman gave her passion to inanimate things like pictures instead of a husband and babies? He couldn’t figure her out.
    However, he was pretty sure she wasn’t the criminal she was accused of being. Crime, if you thought about it, had too many negative consequences to be a practical course of action.
    Eventually he gave up contemplating Kiera Alden, stoked the fires for the last time and lay down with his head near hers so he could hear if she called out or needed help in the night.
    • • •
    “Please don’t.”
    Kat’s whispered plea was so quiet that Ev almost didn’t hear it. He sat up rapidly checking the campsite for intruders. Then she begged again louder.
    “No, please. I promise. I’ll do anything you want.”
    He swiveled to look at her and was held agog by the sight.
    She sat in her shirtsleeves. Sweat gleamed her face. She held the buffalo robe at arm’s length, bunched material clutched in each hand.
    “This is wrong. You can’t be so cruel.” Her voice continued to rise. “Please don’t ask me to sell myself. I’m not a whore.”
    Releasing her hold on the robe, she let it fall to the ground then began to wrestle the covering as if fighting for her life.
    At the thud of her fists against the robe covered earth, Ev leapt from his bedroll. Coming up on Kat from behind, he knelt and secured her in a bear hug. He didn’t want to hurt her, but feared that she would harm herself. She was scorching hot to the touch. Fever-born delirium possessed her, and she shifted from fighting the buffalo robe to fighting Ev, twisting and turning to get better aim at him.
    This was not good. He had to snap her out of it.
    “Kat! I’m not asking you to whore.”
    Her hands stilled against his chest, and she blinked at him. “Really? Oh Herbert, I knew you wouldn’t want me to do that. You really do love me.”
    Who in Hades is Herbert?
    That was Ev’s last thought before Kat plastered her lips to his, filling his head with sweet surprise and his body with sweeter agonies.
    Momentum brought him to the ground, and her legs tangled with his.
    Her mouth was soft. Her breasts pressed warm against his chest. He pulled her closer and gave himself to madness.
    She twined her arms around his neck then ran her tongue along the seam of his lips.
    He opened, licked, tasted, groaned. She was sweet like honeysuckle, delicate like silk, like heaven, everything he wanted.
    Her fingers stroked his shoulders, his arms, his chest. Cool air and hot woman struck his skin. She’d unbuttoned his shirt.
    His blood boiled with longing. His body hardened. He wanted, needed, to be inside