His hot mouth covered her breast, sucking her nipple until it was sensitive and tender before he moved to the other one. Suddenly she wished that she was carrying his child in her belly, that her breasts were swollen with milk for his eager mouth to share with a small son.
Her hand went down to stroke his maleness and came away-wet with his virile seed. He took her hand in his. “Taste it,” he commanded, and bent her fingers to touch her own lips. “That’s what makes a man a man. I want to smear you with it, mark you as mine, feel you kiss me there.”
For a moment, she wavered, shocked at the idea. It was the ultimate female surrender to male dominance. She slid down in the blanket so that her mouth covered his throbbing hardness. His seed was hot to her mouth and it excited her to hold his throbbing staff between her lips, and run her tongue along it.
Before she could stop him, he had gathered her up in his arms, moving her so that his mouth was on her private, most tender place. She stiffened and almost protested, but his tongue was probing between her thighs and it felt too good to stop him.
“Don’t, Luci,” he commanded softly. “You’re mine! Surrender yourself to me.”
With a shudder, she let her thighs fall apart, felt the heat of his mouth kissing her there, his tongue running down the tiny ridge of flesh before he slipped it deep inside her. “No,” she moaned, “you shouldn’t . . .”
“Surrender, Luci,” he commanded, and his breath was hot against the ridge of flesh as his hands spread her thighs. “By the time I get through, you’ll want me too much for it to hurt.”
She didn’t care anymore if he hurt her if he would only stop this hungry throbbing of her own body. She thought then he would take her but he only kept stabbing relentlessly with his tongue until she couldn’t stop herself from opening her thighs like a night-blooming flower spreading its petals, wanting the kiss of the moth’s wings as it takes the flower’s nectar.
Shudders began to sweep over her, shudders she couldn’t control. “Johnny. . . .”
“Easy, Luci, let it happen, don’t fight. It’s all right. Let it happen . . . .”
She could do nothing else as his tongue probed her and the shudders began to build deep in her soul. For a moment, she was terrified of what was happening to her, and tried to fight it. But Johnny’s hands and mouth were everywhere and there was no escaping from the black unconsciousness that swept her out of control.
When her eyes flickered open again, she was sobbing in his arms and he kissed her hair. “Johnny, I–I don’t understand . . .”
“I’m not finished with you,” he whispered, and now his fingers probed between her thighs, stroking and teasing.
The feeling began to build in her again like a wave that begins far out at sea and rises bigger and bigger until it crashes against the shoreline. “Johnny, no, I–”
Then she couldn’t say anything more because his fingers had started a throbbing in her that seemed to be cresting like a wild wave and she didn’t want it to end. She wrapped her slim thighs around his hand so he couldn’t take it away while his free one stroked and teased her taut nipples. The darkness came again, sweeping her up in shuddering ripples and he could do anything to her as long as he didn’t take his hand away.
This time, when her eyes opened in the moonlight, he held her against him tightly, his lips caressing her hair. His body felt as tense as a steel spring and she felt his maleness hard as stone against her. “Johnny . . . you want me?”
“You know I do, but you don’t owe me.”
She felt wet and warm but still she craved more. “Let me do it,” she whispered.
He rolled over on his back and she saw how very big and hard he was. It would be like a man’s fist shoving up into her to the elbow and she was afraid. “I–I’m ready.”
But he only lay on his . back, looking up at her as she paused there on her knees beside him. “I’m not going to force myself on you, Star Eyes. I don’t want you to have regrets; to ever say that you were raped by a Pawnee.”
“I’m not going to say that; not ever.” She put one knee on each side of his body, and looked down at his maleness. He was big, all right, and she was a virgin. “Will it hurt?”
“I can’t tell you it won’t.” There was tension in his voice as if it was all he could do to keep from grabbing her, rolling her over, and ramming deep inside her. “You don’t owe me, Star Eyes.”
She came up on her knees, settled herself on the tip of his manhood, and hesitated. Then very slowly, she slid down on him until he throbbed against the silk of her virginity. She was about to give that precious jewel to an enemy. A beloved enemy.
Very slowly she slid down on him, biting her lip to hold back her cry as he broke through her virginity. “Now, Johnny, I-help me . . . I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!”
With a strangled cry, he grasped her small waist in his two big hands, and forced her all the way down on his throbbing rod. He held her there, bucking under her, ramming up into her, lifting her up off the ground from the sheer strength of his sinewy muscles, fueled by his need of her.
It was pain and it was pleasure. It was fear and it was ecstasy. His hammer-hard dagger pushed up under her ribs, impaling her while he held her with his strong hands so that she could not move off him. She felt every inch of him deep inside, throbbing in her very depths with the rich seed he had to give. She was powerless to do anything with her small body impaled on his burning sword. Then he cried out and began to convulse within her.
She felt the throbbing, the swell of his rod as it began to surge and spill its hot liquid fire within her velvet depths. Then her own body seemed to catch fire and respond, clasping his throbbing member tightly as if afraid he might leave before her womb had squeezed from this stallion what it hungered for.
With a strangled cry, she pitched forward into his arms as he exploded beneath her and her body convulsed, too. They locked and meshed and strained together in the age-old mystery of mating while time stood suspended in the moonlight.
Then he rolled her over and rode her savagely, pushing her ankles up over his shoulders so that he could put all his power behind his drive as he tilted her small hips up for his thrust.
It felt as if his hot fist were being forced up to the elbow deep between her defenseless thighs. She couldn’t cry out because his tongue was in her mouth and her body wanted him too badly to whimper as he rode her in a frenzy. A molten steel bar rammed up under her ribs, setting fire to her insides, making her convulse under him again and again while he strained to give her every drop of seed within him.
Finally they both lay locked together and sated, skin shining with a slight sheen of perspiration. He moved off her and she saw the scarlet stain of her virginity on his manhood. It occurred to her now that she had ruined her chances of getting a respectable husband. No Cheyenne brave would want a wanton woman who had lain with an enemy.
“Beloved enemy,” she whispered, and pulled him against her again, seeking the shelter of his arms.
He kissed her face. “Now where do we go from here?”
Where indeed? Now that the rush of passion was over and dawn was new and pale lavender on the eastern horizon, she felt a sense of loss and despair. He was right. Nothing could come of this. How could she love a man who hunted down her people for the bluecoats? They could not live among her people or his.
“Regrets, Star Eyes?” He stroked her face, looking sadly at her as if he saw deep into her soul.
She had been grateful to him for saving her life and she had paid him. That’s all it was-she had paid him with what he wanted most. She couldn’t love an enemy. She didn’t look him in the face as she disengaged herself from his body and he stood up. Her scarlet blood smeared him. A woman can give that most precious gift but once and she had given it to a killer of her people.
The romantic night had fled and daylight with its hard reality was slowly dawning. Now she had regrets. But when she closed her eyes and remembered his embrace, the taste of h
is mouth, the feel of him throbbing deep within her, she would have done it again.
When she didn’t answer, he sighed heavily and turned away to pick up his clothes. Then he disappeared down to the creek to clean up.
Luci took a deep breath and smelled the scent of his male seed all over her body. She was no better than a bitch in heat, wanting to couple with a stud in the moonlight. She didn’t look at him when he returned.
She had nothing to wear but his shirt. Mercy! Why did she always seem to end up in his damned shirt? She picked it up, clasped it against her bare body to hide herself, then went down to the creek and washed off. After a moment’s hesitation, she slipped the butter-soft shirt oven her head. She always forgot how big he was until she wore his shirts. The sleeves came down over her fingertips. The leather was warm and soft as it slid down her breasts, down her naked skin. It reminded her again of how he had felt spread out on top of her, covering her, dominating her.
They ate a bit of smoked jerky in the silent dawn. Then he mounted and held out his hand. “Luci, I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for.” She avoided his eyes. “I owed you and I paid, that’s all.”
For a split second, she thought the offered hand would pull back and strike her, there was such a fury in his face. “That’s all I can expect from a Cheyenne chit, I guess,” he said coldly. “You were good, Small One, good enough to compete with the best of them. Maybe you should get a job at one of those whorehouses in North Platte.”
She felt the blood rush to her face but she wouldn’t let the tears come. “Maybe I will. A whore who’ll bed a dirty Pawnee can’t be tool choosy.”
He caught her hand and jerked her up on the stallion before him. “Don’t push me, Luci. I’ll dump you out here on the prairie and let you fend for yourself.”
Despite the cold fury and hurt in his voice, she didn’t think he was capable of that, but she wasn’t sure. His body felt rigid with anger against hers.
She had given herself willingly to an enemy Pawnee scout in the magic of the moonlight. Now what?
Without a word, he nudged the horse and Katis broke into a slow lope. Neither of them said another word all the way back to Fort McPherson.
Chapter Ten
It was a big mistake to return to Fort McPherson. Luci realized that as she and Johnny rode through the gates on the big stallion.
Johnny helped her dismount before a gathering crowd of settlers and soldiers, their eyes bright with curiosity. She looked down at her bare feet, acutely aware that she wore nothing but Johnny’s long buckskin shirt. She felt her face burn under the frank scrutiny of the gawkers.
But the Pawnee said loudly, “Next time you decide to go berry picking, Miss Luci, you need to take someone else along so you won’t get lost and the major won’t have to send out a search party.”
Winnifred Starrett stood on the edge of the crowd, twirling her pink lace parasol. She made a skeptical, sniffing motion. “Land’s sake! And to think I considered taking that girl to Denver as my maid!”
“We both know that’s not what’s really bothering you!” Luci shot back, and immediately regretted it. Winnifred had been her only chance to escape this hopeless existence.
“Humph!” Winnifred put her nose in the air, snapped the parasol shut, and walked off with such a stiff, fast gait that her hair ribbon and wide sashes blew out behind her.
Johnny actually grinned, but Luci pretended not to notice. She had other things to regret as well. Now in the cold reality of daylight, it seemed incredible to her that she had lost her reason and had given way to passionate abandon under a star-filled sky.
The crowd, easily bored and seeing no excitement in the return of a girl lost while picking berries, drifted off.
She stood there, twisting her work-worn hands together. “I suppose I forgot to thank you for saving my life. Do we tell anyone what really happened?”
“About what?” He stood with feet wide apart, his hand on the hilt of his knife. His dark eyes seemed to be staring straight into her soul.
Her face burned with the memory that she knew crossed his mind, too–of them locked and straining together, both smeared with his virile seed and her virgin blood.
His mouth. She looked at his mouth and remembered the sweet taste of it, the way it had burned into hers, then caressed her body like a fire brand. “About the Pawnee sacrifice.”
He shrugged. “It would only cause trouble and I doubt they’ll ever report it, knowing the army would be upset. I don’t think they’ll ever do it again.”
She averted her eyes, uncomfortable with the way he was looking at her. Yet she saw uneasiness in his expression, too, as if he knew it could never work out. “You’ve lost your bride, killed Charish, and become an outcast among your people. Even the scouts may treat you differently, once they’ve heard–”
“I already was an outcast, Star Eyes.” He played with the reins in his hand. “I’m not white, but I’m not really Pawnee anymore either. I keep hoping maybe someday. . . .”
She waited for him to finish, but he only looked off toward the horizon and the vast frontier beyond. She followed his gaze. All she had ever seen was the prairie around some of the Kansas and Nebraska forts. There was no future for her in these states. She allowed herself the luxury of dreaming of a fresh start somewhere out there in the wilderness.
There would be a cozy ranch house with a fireplace and children snuggled down in their beds. She’d be waiting on the porch for her man to ride in from rounding up stray cattle from their own fine herd. But even as she saw the vision, the man riding into the corral in her dreams rode a big, black horse. When he dismounted and came toward her with his arms outstretched, it was Johnny Ace.
“No,” she said aloud, denying the vision with a shake of her head. “Not an enemy, no.”
He looked at her as if he had read her thoughts. “Luci, if you’re with child–”
“Oh, God, I never even thought of that!” She shook her head violently and ran into the trading post.
Johnny stared after her. Well, she had given him her answer. It had been a loco thought anyway. Who ever heard of a Pawnee cowboy? He thought about his dream, about the money tucked away in his things, so carefully saved from his pay, from his skill at poker.
For just a moment, his thoughts had seemed in tune with the girl’s. He had imagined himself riding Katis into the corral at his ranch-their ranch. A woman stood on the porch in the twilight waiting for him, and in his mind, she was a small, slight girl with dark hair and bright blue eyes. Over the corral gate hung a sign with their brand: The Ace High Star. The fat cattle he’d just rounded up carried a brand on their hips, an ace and a star.
What a fool he had been to think she might care for him, that love could bridge such chasms as the bitter hatred between their people. He’d had her virginity, but she wouldn’t give him her love. With a sigh, he remembered the horror in her face when he had tried to tell her that he wanted her, would be ready to marry her anytime, so that she need not worry if she carried a child.
He turned and walked away to the barn to groom Katis and put him away. What had he done? There was no more to regret than the fact that Luci didn’t care about him. He knew the Cheyenne set such value on virginity that they often put chastity belts on their unmarried women. If she returned to her people now, she might not have much of a future unless she was skillful enough to fool some brave. And she was too innocent for that.
He fed his horse and crossed the parade ground to report to Pani Le-shar, his mind busy with thoughts of the night before. Though he felt guilty for what he’d done, he didn’t regret it. He’d had his love in his arms for one unforgettable night. Now that she had regained her senses and spurned him, that memory would have to last a lifetime.
Major North grinned and stood up to shake hands as Johnny entered. “So you tracked her down and brought her back?”
Johnny stood feet wide apart, not looking at the major. “Does it show so much then?”
Frank North cleared his throat slowly as if hesitant to say more, then sat down in his chair behind his desk. “I don’t like to stick my nose in my men’s business, Johnny.”
“Then don’t.” He took out his makin’s and began to roll a cigarette.
“With all the hatred between the two tribes, this can’t work out. I told you about Romeo and Juliet, didn’t I?”
“Don’t preach to me, Pani Le-shar,” Johnny said sharply, lighting the cigarette.
“I wouldn’t take that from just anyone, Johnny.”
“I’m sorry, Major. I didn’t mean anything-she’s got me loco, that’s all.”
“I understand.” He leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and stared at them as if seeing them for the first time. “There’s something more, isn’t there, Johnny? Something you haven’t told me.”
He’d tried not to think about it. It could only complicate things. He rolled the cigarette over and over in his brown fingers. “Her uncle is Ta Ton Ka Haska.”
“Good God!” The major’s chair came down on all fours with a bang. “The bloodiest Dog Soldier of them all and my top scout is mixed up with his niece? If he finally learns his sister is dead, he may try to reclaim Luci.”
Johnny smoked and watched the tip glow. It was bad enough to get mixed up with a Cheyenne girl, but blood kin to Tall Bull. . . . “You think even if we try to make a life together, he might come after her someday?”
“Do you think the chief of the Dog Soldiers would allow his niece to live with a Pawnee scout?”
The. answer was too obvious to bother. The girl on the porch of the ranch house suddenly faded into smoke and he stood in the twilight alone–always alone. “We’ve both known from the first we can’t work it out. She was trying to get back to her people when she stole my horse.”
The major looked at him thoughtfully. “You want to tell me what happened out there?”
What had happened? He’d fallen madly in love with the niece of the bloodiest killer raiding the frontier, saved her life, and spent one night of ecstasy in her arms.
Cheyenne Caress Page 15