Kid Calhoun Read Free

she came up for air, Wolf was dragging off his moccasins. For a second he stood in his breechclout on the grassy verge. He was a magnificent-looking man.
    Her eyes drifted up his bronzed body, from his sinewy legs to his flat, taut stomach, then across his chest where the muscles rippled. His shoulder-length black hair was parted in the center and held off his face by a rawhide band. Her gaze roamed up his corded neck to his jutting jaw and strong cheekbones, until she finally met his dark, dark eyes.
    Desire
.
    Anabeth had never seen that particular look directed at her before, but she recognized it all the same. It should have elated her. Instead, it frightened her. She turned and swam rapidly toward the opposite edge of the pool.
    She should have known better. Wolf was a hunter. He responded instinctively to her flight by chasing her. She raced to elude him, but he grabbed her ankle. This was a familiar game, but there was something different about Wolf’s hold on her. Anabeth kicked herself free, as she had in the past, but insteadof letting her escape, Wolf caught her again at the waist.
    “Let go!” she cajoled, breathless with excitement, anxious without knowing why. “I want to swim. I—”
    Suddenly, with a shriek of delight, she lunged up out of the water and put the full force of her weight on his shoulders, forcing him underwater. By the time he came up again, spitting, spluttering, eyelashes dripping, she was already levering herself out of the water and onto the wide rock ledge on the opposite side of the pond that eventually rose into a sheer cliff.
    She stretched out on the hot stone, her wet hair conforming to her shape like a shiny, form-fitting cloak. Ordinarily she would have urged Wolf to join her. This time she did not.
    He swam over to the ledge anyway, and levered himself out in a single powerful move. He lay down beside her, close enough to make her feel uncomfortable. She started to edge away, but he put a hand on her hip to keep her still.
    Slowly, deliberately, Wolf’s hand stroked down the naked length of her thigh where her breechclout had fallen away.
    Anabeth shivered at the ticklish touch. She watched Wolf with wary eyes. He had never touched her this way. She felt confused and unsure of what he wanted from her. Surely not to couple. But she did not know how else to explain Wolf’s strange behavior.
    His eyes were heavy-lidded, his lips full, his jaw taut. Every muscle in his body seemed tense. The pulse in his throat beat fast. Anabeth reached out to touch it, and he actually recoiled from her.
    Suddenly he was on his feet pacing back and forth before her. She leaped up to confront him, fists on hips. “What’s the matter with you?” she demanded. “What is it you want from me?”
    “What a man wants from a woman,” he said in a low, guttural voice. “To hold you. To lie with you.”
    Anabeth drew a sharp breath. She had never thought of Wolf as a man, with a man’s desire. Her eyes dropped to the ground. Her bare toes traced a wet pattern on the rock. She looked back up at Wolf with curious eyes. Maybe she would feel something for him if she let him touch her. Maybe all that was needed to awaken her feminine nature was to let him make love to her.
    “All right,” she said at last.
    Wolf stared suspiciously at her, as though he expected her to pull some trick on him, as she had in the pond. At last he stepped close enough to slip an arm around her waist. Slowly, surely, he pulled her into his embrace.
    Anabeth felt Wolf’s shudder as their two bodies aligned. His flesh felt warm against hers. Tentatively, she rested her cheek against his shoulder. His body had a distinct scent, a musky fragrance that she found pleasant because she associated it with the boy who had grown to manhood as her friend.
    Anabeth traced his collarbone and the hollow above it. Her eyes widened with surprise when she felt his body tighten beneath her fingertips.
    Wolf’s hand left her shoulder and