“Let us make camp down by the river away from everyone else,” Strong Wolf said, picking up his buckskin bags and blankets from the ground. “We are newly married. We should have more privacy, do you not think so, my wife?”
“Yes, I think so,” Hannah said, trying to feel lighthearted again, after becoming filled with such doubts.
She lifted several thick pelts from the ground, on which she and Strong Wolf would soon be making love. She hoped that she could soon forget what had only moments ago troubled her. She loved Strong Wolf too much to have such doubts about him!
“The only audience we will have tonight will be the moon and stars,” Strong Wolf said, laughing as they walked away from everyone.
“It is good to hear you laughing,” Hannah said, casting him a troubled glance. “Darling, tonight you seem more moody than usual.”
“Yes, and I apologize,” he said quietly. “But I have concerns that I carry with me, over having left my people, along with your sister Clara, back at the village. Too many white people are shrewd and land hungry. While I am gone, should they . . .”
“Darling,” Hannah said, interrupting him. “Colonel Deshong won’t allow anything to happen to your people while you are gone.”
She dropped the pelts from her arms when they reached a secret place that was sheltered by thick brush and a heavy stand of birch trees. “Please don’t worry about it,” she further encouraged. “You are doing what you were meant to do . . . go for your people in Wisconsin, to lead them to their new home in Kansas.”
Strong Wolf lay the blankets and his travel bags on the ground beside the pelts. He drew Hannah into his arms. “You are so good for me,” he said, his hands caressing her back. “When I feel low, you lift me up. When I worry, you give me reason to hope again. How could I have been so lucky to have found you? You are a woman of much wisdom, and heart.”
“I am the true lucky one,” Hannah said, framing his face between her hands, bringing his lips to hers. “Kiss me, husband. Please kiss me.”
His lips came to hers gently. He cupped her buttocks through the fabric of her buckskin dress and yanked her against him, where she could feel his tight bulge as he ground it into her.
The feel of him, although only through the fabrics of their clothes, made her grow dizzy with passion.
She reached between them and stroked his manhood through his buckskin breeches, evoking a deep groan from the depths of his throat.
“We . . . must . . . first . . . build a fire,” he whispered huskily against her lips, yet leaned into her hand, so that she could grip him, then stroke him again. “My woman, you are making me mindless.”
“We don’t need a fire,” Hannah whispered back. She reached her hand down inside his breeches and sucked in a wild breath of rapture when she felt the true flesh of his shaft, aware that some of his juices had spilled from the tip.
She rubbed the moisture into his flesh, then gripped him and slowly moved her hand on him again. She could feel his body stiffen and his breath quickening. She gazed at him, not surprised to find his eyes closed, and his head held back as he groaned again, again, and again.
Her heart pounding, afraid that she was arousing him too much, so badly wanting to join him in this ecstasy, Hannah eased her hand away and slid it from inside his breeches.
Breathing hard, Strong Wolf yanked her against him. His steel arms enfolded her as he kissed her.
She felt his hunger in the hard, seeking pressure of his lips, and she answered his kiss with a need of her own. It rose up within her, spreading and swelling. She ached almost unmercifully at the juncture of her thighs.
She gasped with pleasure when he bunched up the skirt of her dress with one hand and pushed it up past her thighs, the fingers of his other hand splaying across the heat of her passion.
His hand caressed her, then when he slipped a finger up inside her, she became light-headed with rapture.
Ecstatic waves of pleasure splashed through Hannah. She ground her mouth into his, her tongue flicking as he opened his mouth to receive it.
Their tongues danced.
His finger began thrusting, his thumb caressing the core of her womanhood until she was almost mindless with the pure ecstasy of it.
And then he drew away from her.
With a racing pulse and a heart beating so soundly her knees would hardly hold her up, Hannah watched as Strong Wolf spread blankets and pelts on the grass beside the river.
The moon poured bright from the sky, like silver.
The stars twinkled like jewels on black velvet.
An owl hooted in the forest, and was joined by the eerie call of a loon across the water.
Overcome with a feverish heat of need for Hannah, Strong Wolf went to her and gazed at her as he reached for the hem of her dress and began slowly smoothing it up over her, struck anew by her loveliness. She was, ah, so awesome in her beauty.
When her breasts were revealed to him, her nipples taut, the ache in his loins became more pronounced. He yanked the dress on over her head and tossed it aside, then cupped her breasts within the palms of his hands.
He bent low and flicked his tongue over one nipple, and then the other, then he covered one with his mouth, sucking, licking, nipping.
Hannah’s heart was pounding even harder as she closed her eyes and enjoyed the euphoria that filled her entire being. Her breasts throbbed with his kisses. Her passion was so intense, his mouth was so hot and sweet, she was finding it hard to bring her breathing under control.
Shaken with desire, she reached her hands inside his shirt and swept them over his powerful, sleek chest. And as he kissed her breasts, holding their weight in his hands, she placed her thumbs and forefingers at the waist of his breeches and slowly lowered them.
She did not have to look at him to know that he was totally aroused. As his breeches fell away from him, she reached a hand to his throbbing shaft and circled her fingers around it.
She heard his quick intake of breath, knowing now, by experience, that he became so sensitive there before making love to her. She was careful not to go too fast with her caresses, or hold him too tightly with her fingers. She wanted him all to herself; the ecstasy shared.
Strong Wolf, hardly able to bear the wild ripples of desire that were licking through him in heated flames, reached down and grabbed Hannah’s hand. He took it away from his aching heat, then enfolded her within his arms and led her down onto the blanket.
He knelt down over her. He lowered his mouth to her lips as once again one of his hands found her warm and secret place and began his slow caresses.
Wanting more, hungering for the feel of him inside her, she gently shoved his hand away and placed her hands around his manhood and led it to her throbbing center.
“Love me,” she whispered against his parted lips. She flicked her tongue across his lips. “Take me to paradise. Oh, my darling, how I need you. I need you now.”
A tremor went through her body when he shoved himself into her. It felt as though he was reaching much farther than usual, touching places inside her that she didn’t know existed.
As his pelvis moved rhythmically against her, his thrusts became maddeningly fast. He sank deeper and plunged over and over within her.
Hannah threw her head back and sighed as the incredible sweetness swept through her.
Strong Wolf buried his face in the valley of her breasts, smothering his repeated groans as he felt the passion rising, spreading, turning to a liquid fire within him,
Having never felt as alive, so desired, Hannah opened herself wider to him, and her hips responded in a rhythmic movement all their own as she clung and rocked with him.
The pulsing crest of Strong Wolf’s passion was near. His mouth closed hard upon hers as he kissed her, his hands stroking her softly pliant limbs, caressing her skin feverishly with his fingertips. His hands searched all of her pleasure points until she shuddered with desire,
Then he held her in a torrid embrace when he felt the
storm building within.
Her hands clung to his sinewed shoulders when she felt the pleasure building, climbing, spreading.
And then that sudden onslaught of passion overwhelmed them both. Hannah clung to him as his body became rocked with spasms, and he sent his seed deeply within her.
Her own silent explosion of need sent her senses reeling. She gave herself up to the rapture as her fingers clamped onto his muscular male buttocks, feeling them tightening each time he plunged into her.
Then it was over, their ecstasy sought and found. Their bodies were pearled with sweat. Their hearts were pounding. Their breathing was raspy.
Strong Wolf leaned low over Hannah and pressed his lips to her throat. “I love you so,” he whispered against her flesh.
Legs entwined, their bodies straining together as they turned on their sides to face one another, Hannah reverently breathed his name against his cheek. “Strong Wolf, my husband, my wonderful, sweet husband,” she said. “Life was nothing before I met you. You have made me realize what it truly feels to be a woman. I have proven that I am more than a tomboy, haven’t I?”
He leaned away from her, his eyes dancing. “Much more,” he said, then kissed her softly. “You are all woman, and you are mine.”
“I wish to have your child,” Hannah said before she even realized that she had been thinking about it. “Darling, let us have a child soon. I so badly want that.”
Something she said seemed to seize hold of Strong Wolf as though a dark, dank wind had blown between them. He rose quickly to his feet, dressed, and started gathering wood for a fire, leaving Hannah on the blankets and pelts, staring, disbelievingly at him.
Trembling, afraid, now suddenly aware of the chill of the night, Hannah rose slowly to her feet and grabbed a blanket around her shoulders. Staring, she watched Strong Wolf light the fire, then stand over it, his back to her, his naked body a copper sheen beneath the moonlight.
“Strong Wolf?” Hannah said cautiously.
When he didn’t respond, she took a blanket and placed it around his shoulders.
The blanket warm, he gripped it around himself, but nothing would ease the torment that made him cold inside at her mention of having children. Of course, when he first thought of marrying her, his dark past came back to haunt him, to know that marriage usually brought children into the world.
But every time he had thought of them possibly having children, he had cast it from his mind. He had wanted nothing to get in the way of their marriage!
He wanted only to have Hannah, any way he could have her.
Then everything else would come later . . . the worry, the concern, the downright dread of having children!
If their children inherited the traits of his family that came from his mother’s side, then that child would have to live with the same secrets he had carried with him all of his life.
It would not be fair to the child; yet besides that one fear, for himself, life had been grand!
As for now, he had a woman who met his every need, who fed his desires, who filled his arms with her sweetness.
She made him have faith in himself again.
Only she!
And now? She had seen his fear. She had felt it. He could no longer hold it within himself like a dark sin that he had no control over. He could no longer live a lie!
The blanket dropping away from him, Strong Wolf turned to Hannah and gripped her by the shoulders, causing her own blanket to flutter to the ground. He drew her into his embrace, their bare bodies pressed together as he held her.
For the moment he enjoyed the pleasant, sweet smell of her, the gentle way she clung to him, the way she pressed her cheek against his chest.
She could have plied him with questions!
For having left her so quickly, after having just made love, she could even hate him!
“I have much to tell you,” he suddenly blurted, feeling her grow tense within his arms. “Hannah, I should have not waited so long to tell you. But I was afraid of losing you, I may even lose you now. If I do, I am not certain I can go on. Please listen. Please understand. Please do not go away hating or loathing me.”
Hannah scarcely breathed as she heard his pleas. Her eyes were wide as she clung to him a moment longer, afraid now for him to tell her the secret that she knew he had held from her. It seemed not at all to do with his people’s welfare, after all, as she had hoped. It was something else . . . something frightening.
He seemed so afraid to tell her. What if she couldn’t understand? What if what he said did cause her to want to leave him?
Oh, how she loved and adored him. Surely there was nothing that he could say that could change her feelings for him.
“Please tell me,” Hannah said, easing from his arms. She gazed up at him and saw the silent torment; the wavering of his eyes as he stared down at her. “How could you possibly think that anything could change how much I love you?”
He reached down and grabbed a blanket. He wrapped it around her shoulders, bringing the ends around his, so that they were locked together amidst the warmth of the blanket. Gently he led her down beside the fire, then secured the blanket again around them.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Hannah said, gazing over at him. “If you feel so strongly against my knowing, you . . . don’t . . . have to tell me.”
“I must,” Strong Wolf said, trembling inside at the very thought of what she would soon know. “I feel that you are the sort of woman who won’t look at me with disgust when you know that secret part of me and my family. I must tell you. It has to be said. I should have told you before we exchanged vows. Then, should you have not understood and wanted to back away from me, it would have been easier. But now we are married. We might soon have children. You must be told my reasons for fearing fathering a child.”
Hannah froze inside as she gazed into his smoke-black eyes. “I’m listening,” she said. “And, darling, I will never stop loving you. No matter what you say, I will love you.”
He brushed a kiss across her brow, then looked away from her. He stared into the fire as he began telling her what happened all those many years ago between himself and Doe Eyes.
“Doe Eyes and I were born on the same day, at almost the same hour, to best friends,” he began. “My mother, Swallow Song, and Doe Eyes’s mother, Dawnmarie, plotted on that day that their son and daughter would be the best of friends who would then grow up and marry. I went along with their schemes, not seeing harm in them, since I was so enamored with Doe Eyes, at our young age of ten . . . until Doe Eyes revealed her true self to me.”
“What did she do?” Hannah asked, her eyes wide as she listened. She wasn’t jealous of Strong Wolf loving someone so much at such a young age. She had gone through many puppy loves herself at that age. The only true love that she had ever felt was for Strong Wolf. She had to believe that it was the same for Strong Wolf.
“It was not so much what she did,” Strong Wolf said, gazing down at Hannah. “It was what I did to cause her reaction to me, that turned her to loathing, not loving me.”
Hannah’s pulse raced realizing that finally she would be told what caused that haunted look in her husband’s eyes; yet now she feared that knowledge.
Strong Wolf took both of Hannah’s hands and held them in a tight grip. “On that day, Hannah, my mother’s·fears became a reality,” he said thickly. “On that day, Hannah, my body became something unfamiliar to me. It was then that I discovered that I had inherited something from my mother that was humiliating, degrading, and loathsome.”
“What . . . did . . . you inherit?” Hannah asked, her voice barely a whisper, for now she realized how much her husband feared her knowing. And what if his fears were founded? What if she saw him as someone who made her turn her head with disgust?
“What?” she persisted. “Tell me what happened? What did you inherit?”
“I was with Doe Eyes,” Strong Wolf said, releasing Hannah’s hands. He lowered his eyes. He swallowed hard.
“We were only ten. We shared our first kiss. Then . . . then . . .”
He turned his eyes away from her and moaned, as though someone had hit him.
Hannah moved to her knees. The blanket fell away from her. She knelt in front of him and placed her hands to his face. “Darling, please go on,” she encouraged. “When you get this behind you and realize that I shall always love you, then don’t you see? Your life will be like a newborn child’s. You won’t have to ever think about this again. You can begin fresh. I will be with you all of the way. I love you so!”
His eyes locked with hers. “While kissing Doe Eyes, my body began to tremble strangely,” he said, his voice breaking. “I suddenly jerked away from her, not by choice, but by being forced to as my body began shaking and jerking strangely. I was thrown to the ground by the impact of the shakes. My head was thrown back. My eyes rolled back inside my head. I almost swallowed my tongue, my body uncontrollably shaking.”
He paused and swallowed hard.
“At that moment I lost sense of time,” he continued solemnly. “Of reality, of self. I only became aware of the horrors that happened when the shakes stopped and I found Doe Eyes staring down at me. There was a look of total disgust, of loathing on her face. She was gagging, as though she might throw up. And I knew that I was the cause of her reaction.”
He took her hands in his and held them to his chest. “Hannah, when I moved to my feet and tried to reach out for her, she recoiled.” he said bitterly. “She told me that I disgusted her. And then she ran away. Since that day, she has not said one word to me until she came and spoke in behalf of Hawk. I had to live with knowing that my body could betray me at any time, that I could be the target of people’s loathsome stares. It has been a life of torture. Hannah, to think that I might have to relive those moments again.”
Hannah stared at him for a moment, stunned by the truth. Then she felt something more. It wasn’t pity. It was an intense caring, an intense wish to make things right for this man she would die for!
“Oh, my darling,” she cried, flinging herself into his arms. She pressed her body against his, loving the feel of it, and hardly believing that anything as beautiful could ever be ugly. “I love you still! I understand how you must feel! Please let me help you forget! Please know that I love you no less now than before you told me. Doe Eyes was a coldhearted fool! How could she do that to you? She betrayed you, Strong Wolf! She betrayed you!”
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