Night Flower — Shirl Henke

There were those in Texas who declared no man with a knife or a gun could defeat Lee Velasquez, a loner as lean and deadly as a panther and feared to be a bloodthirsty scalper and renegade pistolero. There were others who whispered no man, drunk or sober, could resist Melanie Fleming, the scandal-born daughter of a New Orleans placee, the petite yet fiery crusader for the blazing banners of abolition and women's rights, a sensuous hoyden with big, gold-coin eyes and a long, silky wealth of ebony hair.

While she fought for justice, he rode alone, outside the law. They were enemies: He hated her Indian and African blood; she despised his arrogant Spanish pride. But in his arms her stubborn resistance would melt in a heedless torrent of flame-hot kisses -- and be swept away in a single, unsparing act of rapturous surrender...