Forbidden Caress

by Colleen French

  "It is hard," he told her in his own tongue. "It is hard because our children will not run across the same grass my grandfather ran on. They will not fish and drink from the same streams. But life is not always just as we want it. Our land changes, so we must change." He rubbed his cheek against hers, inhaling deeply. She smelled of the campfire, a clean, woodsy scent. She smelled like one of them.

  "I think it will be better for you and I to go, though, don't you?" She ducked through the doorflap of his wigwam. "Away from the white men, I mean."

  Tipaakke dropped the leather flap closed. The wigwam had been swept and dusted, the woven floor mats and blankets aired out. Someone had even taken the time to spread crumbled herbs on the floor, filling the air with a spicy fresh scent.

  "Yes," Tipaakke whispered as he took her in his arms. The light of a three-quarters moon shone through the whole in the wigwam roof, casting dim, dancing shadows over them. "It will be better for us. We will go to the Ohio to live with our Shawnee cousins. There we will be safe, safe from their prying eyes. Once we cross the river we will set foot on land no white man has ever stood on. Among our cousins, our children will be able to grow up without fear of their village being burned and their parents being killed."

  Katelyn tightened her arms around Tipaakke's neck. "When do we leave; I am ready to go." She stared at him through a veil of dark lashes.

  "Now? You are ready to go now, tonight?" He tipped back his head to fill the wigwam with laughter. "Are you going alone? The rest of the tribe is not ready; they have just begun to pack for our journey. Besides, don't you think you'd better wait on this? He ran his hand over her stomach, smoothing her leather jerkin.

  "Well," she teased. "Maybe a day or two." 'Threading her fingers through his heavenly black hair, she guided his mouth to hers.

  "We should go to bed now, my heart," he murmured against her lips. "Tomorrow will be your wedding day."

  Katelyn pressed her body close to his, running a finger down Tipaakke's bare thigh. "It is time to go to bed, my brave warrior . . . but not to sleep."

  Epilogue

  Ohio Country

  1721

  Katelyn raced through the flower-strewn meadow, clutching the cradleboard to her chest. Laughing, she ducked behind a grandfather pine to see Tipaakke coming across the field after her.

  "Come back here," Fox shouted, as he leaped comically in the air, jolting his daughter he held balanced on his shoulders. "Come back here, Wolf-woman."

  The little red-haired girl burst into giggles, beating her father on the head to make him move faster. "Catch her, Father!" she told him. "Run faster or she's going to win again!"

  Rounding the tree, Katelyn broke into a run again, heading for the great river bank. "I'm the winner!" she shouted, jumping up and down. "Mama and little Kukuus win!"

  Tipaakke swung Rain-Dropping-Softly to the ground, letting her run to her mother. The little girl hit her mother going full force and collapsed at her feet in another fit of giggles. "I think I will play on your side next time, Mama and let little brother race with Father. He's so turtle slow!" She looked up at her mother with big black eyes, tugging at a fiery braid with her teeth.

  "Slow? Slow am I?" Tipaakke tweaked her nose before reaching for the cradleboard Katelyn held out to him. "Next time you will run on your own, my little shiny stone."

  Rain-Dropping-Softly tugged at her mother's short doeskin skirt. "May I go and skip stones, may I Mama?"

  "You may, but no swimming without your father. The current runs too swiftly." She pulled the braid from her daughter's mouth and gave her a pat on the bottom. "Go with you." Turning back to Tipaakke, tears welled in Katelyn's eyes as she watched her husband smooth his young son's cheek with a finger. The Heavenly Father had been good to them, two healthy children in three years. But then children here on the Ohio were much healthier than those living nearer to the white men.

  Tipaakke hung his sleeping son's cradleboard on the branch of a tree and reached his arms out for Katelyn. "Hurry, my wife. We have a moment alone."

  She laughed, throwing herself into his arms, her full, bare breasts pressed against his chest. She had come to accept the Delaware custom of wearing only a skirt in the hot summer months, and was quite comfortable like this now. "Shhhhh . . . " She put a finger to her lips. "Your son will hear you and he will be awake wanting to eat again." Their lips mingled beneath the great pines, and Katelyn's pulse quickened at the feel of Tipaakke's hand on her breast. "You are worse than your son," she chided playfully. "Release me. I am a respectable Lenni Lenape woman now. I do not roll in the pine needles with strutting braves." Her tongue darted out to lick her moist lips.

  "Not even if the brave is one of the chiefs of her tribe?" He touched her tongue with his fingertip and she bit down on it gently.

  "A chief, you say?" She raised a dark eyebrow quizzically. "Perhaps with a chief." This time their lips met more fiercely, and Katelyn strained against his body, pressing her hips to his in an ancient love dance.

  Casting an eye in the direction of their playing daughter, Tipaakke eased Katelyn to the ground, cradled in his arms. He laced his fingers through her fox-colored hair and brushed a butterfly kiss over her lips. "Are you happy, my heart?" His voice sang of love, of contentment.

  She looked up to see her son's cradleboard swinging over their heads. "I am happy, my heart," she answered in Algonquian.

  "No regrets?"

  Katelyn reached up to brush a shoulder length lock of black hair off his shoulder, enchanted by the heavenly black eyes that stared down at her. "Only that we did not meet long ago," she whispered.

  About the Author

  Colleen French has been selling and publishing books under various pseudonyms for more than twenty-five years and sold her first novel at the age of 23. With over 150 titles and millions of books in print, she's written mysteries, suspense, historical romances and contemporary romances worldwide, and has been published in languages such as French, German, Bulgarian, Dutch and Chinese, among others. While she's written in many genres, her roots and her first love will always be in romance. Writing seems to be in her genes. She's the daughter of best-selling author Judith E. French and grew up listening to the sound of her mother's typewriter late at night. When not writing, Colleen likes to read a good book on the beach. She can be reached at colleenfrenchnovels@gmail.com or on Facebook.

  Please turn the page for

  an exciting sneak preview of

  Judith E. French's

  historical romance

  Rachel's Choice

  Prologue

  Pea Patch Island, Delaware

  April 23, 1864

  “You’re a dead man, Chancellor!”

  A musket ball whined over Chance’s head, and he dropped to his knees in the wet sand and buried his face in his best friend’s chest.

  “Put me down,” Travis whispered hoarsely. “It’s no use. I’m done for.”

  Chance could hear the baying of the dogs above the guards’ shouting. Another few minutes and the starless night and the waist-high tangle of brush and driftwood wouldn’t hide them from the bullets or the cold steel of a guard’s bayonet. Travis was hurt bad; he’d taken a hit to the side and another through his thigh. Chance could hear the grate of bone against bone as he cradled him in his arms.

  “Leave me!” Travis rasped.

  Chance’s mouth tasted of ashes; he could feel the strength draining out of Travis’s body. “Can’t do it, buddy. I owe you one. Remember? It’s my turn to play hero.”

  “This is . . . different.” A shuddering groan escaped Travis’s throat. “No need . . . for both of us to die.”

  Fear twisted in Chance’s gut. He couldn’t see the Delaware River through the swirling fog, but he could smell the salt wind and hear the slap of waves against the beach.

  He wanted to live.

  Death had come for him at the Second Manassas and later in the reeking mud of a farm lane at Fredericksburg. He’d been afraid of dying before
; hell, any soldier who said he wasn’t scared was either a liar or a madman. But in three years of war, he’d never felt the brush of the dark angel’s wings as he did at that instant.

  Another musket boomed, lighting tha night with a flash of fire.

  “Over here!” a man shouted. “Footprints. They ran through here!”

  A lantern bobbed, and Chance caught a glimpse of a barrel-chested man in a blue Union cap. The hounds sprinted closer by the second. The lead dog’s bellow rang out through the clinging mist.

  “Leave me, damn it!” Travis insisted. “You can still make it.”

  Tears streamed down Chance’s face. “What do I tell Mary?”

  “Tell her to name the baby after you.”

  “No! It’s both or neither of us.” Chance staggered to his feet with Travis still in his arms and dashed toward the water’s edge. Travis had lost two stone of weight since they were captured at Gettysburg, but he was still almost more than Chance could carry.

  “There!” a Yankee screamed.

  A volley of musket fire exploded behind Chance. Something slammed into him with the force of a sledgehammer. There was no pain, but he suddenly found himself sprawled on the sand, losing his hold on his wounded friend.

  “Travis! Travis!” Chance’s voice croaked like an old man’s, and he felt curiously weak as he tried to rise.

  Hot on their scent, the dog pack spilled across the narrow beach. Chance could scarcely make out the guards’ curses for the frenzied barking of the animals.

  Chance had trouble telling up from down. Spinning stars whirled in his head, and his legs felt heavy, his muscles too weak to carry him.

  “Don’t let him get away! Four days’ pass for any man vat blows his head off!”

  That guttural Pennsylvania Dutch accent pierced Chance’s stupor. Sergeant Daniel Coblentz.

  The venom in Coblentz’s words did what Chance’s will couldn’t. Rising on hands and knees, Chance began to crawl toward the smell of water.

  Another bullet struck the sand beside him, driving needles of grit into his face and arms. And then an incoming wave washed over his hands.

  “Stop him!”

  “Swim, damn you!” Travis yelled. “Swim for—”

  A dull thud cut off his friend’s shouts, and then Chance was on his feet and plunging knee-deep into the bay. “I’ll come back for you, Travis!” he swore. “I promise you—I’ll come back!”

  When the water reached his waist, Chance took a deep breath and dived under. The frigid tide enveloped him, blunting the force of the spinning musket ball that tore a furrow of fire along his hip.

  Chance swam until his lungs screamed for air, then surfaced long enough to gulp a breath and hear the clamor of his pursuers from a patrol boat a dozen yards away.

  “Rebel bastard. Hope he freezes to death.”

  “ . . . not goin’ anywhere. He left a trail of blood on the beach.”

  “Futterin’ waste of our time. Current don’t get him, the sharks will.”

  A searchlight skimmed the tops of the choppy waves. As the beam neared Chance’s head, he let himself sink into the black water until his fingers touched the bottom before he began to swim again.

  He was past hope, but if the river took him, it didn’t matter anymore. He would die a free man.