A Promise of Thunder

When we make love again I want you fully awake and aware of everything I do to you.”
    “You—”
    Whatever she was going to say was lost on Grady, for he was already out the door.
    Breakfast was the last thing Storm wanted. Her stomach was churning wildly and she knew if she put anything inside it she would promptly lose it. And her head was pounding with a hundred hammers. She did manage to keep down a cup of tea, but kept her face carefully averted from the huge plate of greasy eggs, steak, and potatoes Grady was shoveling down with such disgusting gusto. Once he had taken the edge off his hunger he began relating the events of the previous night. Storm listened in wide-eyed horror to the tale of how that skunk Nat Turner had very nearly succeeded in tricking her into selling her land.
    Once Grady had finished with all the nasty details, Storm stared at him a full minute before speaking. “How did you know where to find me?”
    “I followed you.”
    “Why didn’t Nat see you?”
    Grady smiled obliquely. “No one sees me if I don’t want him to.”
    “Would I really have signed a bill of sale for my homestead if you hadn’t arrived when you did?”
    “You already had the pen on paper when I burst into the room. I lost precious time when that blasted hotel clerk refused to tell me which room you were in. Seems Turner paid him to keep quiet. He wouldn’t have told me at allif I hadn’t offered him something even more valuable.”
    “More valuable? Did you offer him more money?”
    “I offered him his life,” Grady said with quiet menace. His tone of voice sent a shiver down Storm’s spine.
    “I can’t believe Nat would get me drunk. He told me the punch wasn’t spiked. I was so thirsty from dancing, I must have drunk a gallon of the stuff.”
    “I tried to tell you what the man was like.”
    “You also kept interfering in my life when you had no right.”
    “Where would you be today if I hadn’t interfered?” His intense gaze pinned her to the wall.
    “I—don’t know, and I thank you for last night, but that doesn’t make you my keeper. From now on I’ll know what to expect and be prepared.”
    Grady sent her an oblique look as he scraped back his chair and rose to his feet. “If you’re able to ride, I’ll take you home. We’ll have to ride double, but the extra weight will be no burden for Lightning.”
    Though Storm didn’t relish the idea of being so close to Grady for the ten-mile ride home, she wanted to return to her snug little cabin as quickly as possible. “I’ll manage.”
    A weak sun broke through the clouds as Storm and Grady rode home. Though Grady kept their pace deliberately slow and easy, each jolt made Storm aware of his muscular form pressed in intimate contact with hers. Herhips rested snugly in the cradle of his loins, her back was warmed from contact with his chest, and everywhere they touched felt like a burning brand against her flesh. She stiffened her spine in a futile attempt to hold herself upright, but the position soon became impossible to maintain. In the end she grit her teeth and let herself absorb the comfort his huge body provided.
    Storm even managed to doze in the saddle a time or two, barely aware when Grady eased an arm around her waist and pressed her more snugly against him. But Grady was more than aware of how perfectly she fit his arms and how small and vulnerable she seemed against his hardness. A surge of protectiveness such as he hadn’t felt since Summer Sky’s untimely death gave him an unsettling sensation in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t need another woman in his life, he cautioned himself sternly. He especially didn’t need a white woman whose independence and stubbornness were completely at odds with the qualities he admired in a woman.
    A groan left Grady’s lips as Storm shifted in her sleep, fitting her bottom more snugly against his loins. Was there no end to the torture he must suffer on Storm Kennedy’s account? In his village, when he wanted a woman—usually one of the accommodating widows—he merely made his choice and took her with little fanfare or discussion. But it was different here in the white world, where a man must satisfy himself with prostitutes or take a wife. And Storm was the last woman in theworld he would take to wife. She’d probably make Little Buffalo a terrible mother. Or would she? Conflicting emotions were still waging a battle inside his brain when he reached the outer boundaries of