"Didn't anybody ever tell you a girl shouldn't use such language?"

The muffled sounds from beneath Ty's hand told him that Janna wasn't listening to him. She flailed against his shoulder and chin with the hand he had freed in order to cover her mouth. He lifted that hand and grabbed her wrist again.

"Bastard son of a one-legged whore and a one-eyed, flea-brained-"

Abruptly Ty's hard mouth covered Janna's. Her lips were open, her breath hot, the taste of her as fresh as rain. He shuddered heavily and thrust his tongue deep into her mouth again and again, wanting to devour her.

The fierceness of Ty's mouth and the wild penetration of his tongue shocked Janna into complete stillness. She trembled helplesslyf overpowered by his strength and by her awareness of his body moving over hers, rubbing urgently, as though he were trying to push her into the ground.

Janna couldn't move, couldn't breathe, and still the contact went on and on, his big body crushing hers, showing her how futile it was to fight him. She tried to speak and found she couldn't even do that. Twisting, writhing, she tried to fight him but he was too big, his body was everywhere; she was as helpless as a mouse caught in the talons of a hawk.

Chapter Seventeen

When Ty finally tore his mouth away and stared down at Janna, he was breathing in deep, ragged bursts and her pupils were wide, dark, enormous, magnified by tears.

"Don't you ever run from me again," Ty said, his voice hoarse and his eyes almost black from the dilation of his pupils.

Janna felt the violent shudder that shook his body, felt the quick force of his breaths against the tears on her cheeks, felt the savage power of his clenched muscles. She should have been terrified, yet at some deep, subconscious level she knew that Ty wouldn't truly hurt her. Even so, she trembled, not understanding the feelings that were coursing through her body-and through his.

"You can let me g-go," she said shakily. "I w-won't run."

For the space of several breaths there was only silence and the wild glitter of Ty's eyes. Abruptly he let go of Janna and rolled aside into a sitting position, drawing his legs up to his body as though he were in pain.

"Christ," Ty said through clenched teeth. "I'm sorry, little one. I've never forced myself on a woman in my life."

Janna let out one long, ragged breath and then another. "It's all right."

"Like hell it is," he snarled. He turned his head and looked at her with eyes as hard as stone. "You don't belong out here, Janna Wayland. You're a walking temptation to every man who sees you all alone and unprotected. I'm going to take you to the fort and that's final."

"If you do that, Joe Troon will kill Lucifer, assuming he hasn't already. That could have been the rifle shot we heard."

Ty said something savage beneath his breath, then added, "You don't understand."

"No, it's you who doesn't understand," Janna said quickly. "At the fort or in any town or at one of the ranches, I'm a girl without kin, fit only for washing clothes or dishes or feeding men or…well, you know." Janna shook her head fiercely. "I don't want that. Out here I'm free of their sly looks and pawing hands. The only man out here is you, and you don't think of me that way."

"I don't? What the hell do you think just happened?" Ty demanded, hardly able to believe his ears.

"I made you mad and you got even." Janna shrugged. "So what? I've taken a lot worse from men and survived."

Ty started to ask what Janna meant, then realized that he didn't want to know. He had heard his sister's broken cries when she relived in nightmare the time of her captivity at the hands of white raiders. The thought of Janna being brutalized like that was unendurable. She was so fierce in her desire for freedom, so terrifyingly fragile beneath the heavy clothes that muffled her.

"God," Ty groaned, putting his head in his hands, hating himself. "Janna…little one… I didn't mean to hurt you."

"But you didn't." She looked at him anxiously when he didn't respond. She put her hand on his wrist where the shirt ended and his warm flesh began. "Ty? Honest. You scared me a little and confused me a lot, but you didn't hurt me at all. And I've changed my mind. I'll help you get Lucifer before Joe Troon does."

For a long moment Ty stared at the hand resting on his wrist. The fingers were long and delicate, gently browned by the sun, the nails beautifully formed and pink with health, the skin supple and warm. He wanted to pick up that feminine hand and kiss the hollow of her palm, lick the sensitive skin between her fingers, bite gently at the pad of flesh at the base of her thumb until her breath broke and her hand curled around his touch like a sleeping flower.

"Stop looking at me like that," Janna said, snatching her fingers back. "I know my hand isn't lily-white and soft and stinking of perfume, but it's a good hand all the same. It helped to save your stupid masculine hide, remember?"

Ty opened his mouth to tell Janna that she had misunderstood, that he had been thinking how alluring her hand was rather than the opposite. At the last instant common sense held his tongue in check. She refused to leave the country, and he couldn't leave until he had Lucifer. He needed her help with the stallion and she needed him to guard her back; but he was so woman hungry that he barely trusted himself to keep his hands off her. Keeping her irritated with him would go a long way toward maintaining a safe distance between them. Knowing what her experience with men must have been like, he simply couldn't have lived with himself if Janna thought he were demanding sex in return for safety or anything else he could give her.

"And I've been trying to thank you for saving my hide by saving yours in return," Ty drawled, "but to hell with it. You want to run around here risking your scrawny little self, you go right ahead. Me? I'm just thanking God that He made you so damned unappealing to men. Any other woman and I'd be tempted to find out what was beneath all the rough clothes. But you? You're like a baby quail, all eyes and mouth and frizzled features. With you I'm as safe from the temptations of the flesh as any monk in a monastery."

"Why, you-"

Ty's hand shot out, covering Janna's mouth and cutting off her words.

"You should be down on your knees thanking God that I feel that way," Ty said savagely. "If I ever put my hands on you, it wouldn't be violins and roses. I'm too woman hungry to stop short of taking what I need. And that's all it would be. Taking. No promises, no soft words, no wedding vows, nothing but male hunger and a handy female."

Janna heard every word but only cared about Ty's admission that he was woman hungry. It gave her the weapon she needed. It appeared that her efforts at proving she was a woman had been having some effect.

She smiled rather bitterly and decided that she would make him eat every one of his cutting words about her lack of womanly allure. From that moment on she would redouble her efforts to remind him that she was a woman and he was a hungry man. She would bring him to his knees with desire… and then she would laugh in his face and walk away, leaving him as miserable and unhappy as she was now.

"Now that we understand each other," Janna said tightly, "could we possibly get going so that Joe Troon doesn't kill Lucifer before we can stop him?"

Ty told himself that the hurt and anger he saw in Janna's eyes were better than the bigger hurt that would come if he couldn't keep his hands off her. From what he had heard, at best she had been roughly treated by men; at worst she had been brutalized. If he took advantage of her, he would be no better than Joe Troon.

Ty told himself that, but he wasn't sure he believed it. He would be gentle with Janna even if it killed him…wouldn't he? Surely he would. He wasn't an animal to take what a woman wouldn't freely give him.