A Wolf in the Desert by Bj James Read Free Book Online

you knew these men were watching.”
    Indian shrugged a shoulder, bare beyond the edge of his vest. “I’m a tracker. A good one. My grandfather taught me to see things others don’t see, to hear things they don’t hear, to know things they will never know.
    â€œCuster and Snake came, not as secretly as they thought, seeking an excuse to take you from me. They will if we don’t play this right.” He stroked her hair. Mesmerized, he watched it glide through his fingers, glistening like dark fire in the moonlight.
    Red hair was prized by the bikers. Because of it she was a trophy coveted by too many men. Regretfully his fingers tangled in silk, holding her, keeping her, ignoring her hand at his wrist. “I can’t fight them all.”
    Patience ceased her silent rebuff of his caress. With her hand at his wrist and the steady throb of his pulse beneath her fingertips, she stared up at him. “Take me from you? They would do that?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œBut your laws, your precious biker laws, what happens to them?”
    â€œThey apply, but only if we are believed.”
    â€œYou mean they have to believe that I’m truly your woman.” She caught a ragged breath, her tongue moved nervously over dry lips. “They have to believe that you’re my lover. Rapist, if you must.”
    â€œYes.”
    Patience jerked her hand from his wrist as if contact burned her. In horror she backed away, ignoring the crumbling soil of a tiny wash. Whirling around, she stepped over the groove carved by some long ago rain. Her boots scattered coarse sand as she walked. Mesquite and creosote brushed at her jeans. Thorned ocotillo tugged at the sleeve of her shirt as if it wanted to hold her back. She ignored them.
    But she couldn’t ignore the footsteps that echoed her own. She knew she heard them because Indian wanted her to hear. In a moment of distraction she stumped her toe on the exposed roots of a creosote bush. His hands circling her waist kept her from falling.
    She jerked away, staggered on a few steps, and stopped, searching beyond her. There was nothing. Neither light nor living thing. Not to the east, nor the west. The south or the north.
    â€œThat’s right.” Indian stood a pace behind. “There’s nothing out there. Nothing for miles. You can’t walk out.”
    Patience spun around, and in the moonlight her hair was a veil of gossamer. “I don’t believe you.”
    She wasn’t speaking of the obvious desolation of the desert. Neither pretended she did.
    â€œI can’t give you proof.” He stood stolidly in front of her, making no effort to touch her. “Proof could only come from Custer, or Snake, or one of the others. Then it would be too late.”
    â€œYou could let me go. Just turn around and go back to your bike and leave me to take my chances in the desert.”
    â€œI can’t.”
    â€œAll you have to do is walk away.”
    â€œIt would be certain suicide. You wouldn’t last a day.”
    â€œFor that day I would be free and my own person, not a piece of property.” She’d stood stiffly in front of him, now she made a gesture of entreaty, or anger, or both. She didn’t know herself. “Have you ever been a prisoner, Indian? Made to be a lesser person?”
    â€œI’ve always been free,” he said. “Different degrees of freedom, at different times, but free, nevertheless.”
    â€œThat’s what I’m asking for now, a different degree of freedom. The right to choose where I live and die, and how.”
    â€œI can’t. You wouldn’t have a chance, and you wouldn’t have a choice. You would be hunted down.”
    â€œThen I would have tried, that counts for something.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t think so if Snake got to you first.”
    She gestured toward the road, so far away Beauty looked like a toy and the bikes like pawns of a board