Proud Wolf's Woman

by Karen Kay

  There, it was decided. Neeheeowee brought his head up and gazed overhead to where the sky remained blue, despite the ominous appearance of the blackened clouds to the west. He would speak with Julia, and soon.

  But not now. For now, he would enjoy her, the love they shared a little while longer, still knowing that on the morrow, all could change.

  Oddly enough, Neeheeowee’s emotions settled back down after his decision to talk with Julia, and he continued to lead her out over the prairie. He looked to the west where the sun set farther and farther down, the orb finally taking refuge behind the darkened clouds. And though he tried not to think of it, he couldn’t help wondering: Would Julia stay with him willingly when she knew the truth? Would she put behind her all those things a woman seemed to need most: a home, a husband, family? It seemed doubtful that she would, but Neeheeowee knew he wouldn’t back away from telling her the truth. And he would face her decision as he had faced many others in his life, with stoic reserve, his hurt only acknowledged to himself in the darkness of night.

  “Neeheeowee,” she spoke to him, touching his shoulder and, pointing off toward the west, where the sun peaked out from behind the storm clouds, she said, “look there.”

  He nodded in answer to her and gazed behind him. But when he said, “yes,” to her question, he wasn’t at all surprised to find that he spoke not about the sky at sunset, but rather about her.

  Ah, his Julia. When he looked at her, his troubles fled.

  And if all else paled before his feelings for Julia, if Neeheeowee were temporarily blind to the complete and full extent of the emotion within his heart, he was saved from the realization of it…at least for the moment.

  Beauty filled the prairie, which even the dark clouds in the west could not hide. Flowers bloomed within the tall, tall grasses, the pinks and blues of the flowering pea vines as pretty as if purposely planted there, while a type of purple wildflower Julia had no way of identifying grew abundantly. Winds had come up from the west, bringing with it the cooler scents of rain-drenched prairie. Birds soared through the sky as though hurrying home to their loved ones, and elk scattered, sensing the storm.

  She and Neeheeowee trudged within the buffalo paths, which generally ran north and south, no more than eight inches wide, though Neeheeowee turned to the west more often than not. And though Julia wondered where he took her, what their plans were from here, she did not ask. In truth, it was only a minor thought, most of her attention centered on Neeheeowee.

  He looks so handsome when he smiles.

  Julia grinned at her thoughts.

  He was handsome no matter what he did, but so very much so when he smiled, which was rarely.

  Julia stared, dreamy-eyed, at the man before her. Stripped to only breechcloth, leggings, and moccasins, she caught brief glimpses of his tanned buttocks as he moved before her. And oh, how she longed to reach out and touch him there, how she desired to capture that buckskin cloth and pull it away, exposing all of him to her view.

  Julia sighed, more than a little scandalized at her thoughts. But what was she to do? Neeheeowee possessed more potent sexuality than she had ever imagined a man could have, and she could barely believe she hadn’t been aware of it seven and one-half years ago. Or perhaps she had noticed it then, unwilling to acknowledge it.

  The sun dipped at that moment, falling behind the storm clouds gathering off to the west, the result of which threw the prairie into a darkness that rivaled the very skies at night. Julia shivered and reached out to touch Neeheeowee, her fingers brushing lightly over the skin at his shoulders.

  It was a simple stroke, nothing more than a fleeting caress. Yet she witnessed his shudder.

  He broke stride and Julia almost bumped into him. He turned.

  She smiled, taking her time to look up at him as he stood before her.

  He drew in his breath. He reached out a hand toward her. He touched her once, gently, then again, himself quivering in response.

  “I love you,” he said in Lakota and then he took a step toward her, taking her in his arms so quickly, Julia barely had time to register the fact that he’d moved. He kissed her, his tongue searching out the taste of her mouth, imbuing his own taste within her. Conscious thought fled her mind, leaving nothing behind for her to grasp onto except the feel of him, his muscles hard beneath the satiny tone of his skin. His scent filled her nostrils, the slight muskiness of it mix in with the fragrance of sweet, prairie grass.

  They might have stood there a moment or perhaps an hour. Julia couldn’t be certain. All she knew was him, his tongue, his body, his kiss still creating havoc with her stomach, her senses, her very being.

  The ground felt warm and firm beneath her feet as the cooling winds of the storm blew in upon them. And still he kissed her, Julia responding with all the ardor within her, returning his passion one on one, her hands pressing against his chest, running over the smooth skin and sharp muscles there, up and down. She couldn’t get close enough. She wanted more; she wanted…

  He dropped to his knees, she too, his lips, his touch never leaving her. His kiss deepened, his mouth, his tongue demanding more from her while he pushed her dress up and over her hips, her breasts, then over her head until she, knelt before him in nothing more than her moccasins. He ran his hands over her skin, from her breasts, to her buttocks, over her stomach to that secret place between her legs.

  He groaned and, tearing away his breechcloth in one savage movement, broke off the kiss. But the moment of reprieve was quick. His gaze hungry, he looked at her, his hands following the movement of his glance. But it was too much.

  “I want you,” he said in words she could understand.

  “I want you, too,” she replied. And without another word being spoken, he drove into her, moaning as the tight recesses of her body fit around him.

  “Julia,” he cried.

  And Julia, hearing him, drew in her own breath, her body shivering in response to his. She needed this. She needed him. She moved up on him, her legs straddling him, her response to him wild, complete. And perhaps it was this that caused him to lose control. Julia could never be sure.

  “I cannot wait,” he cried out, straining against her.

  “Don’t,” she said as her sighs, her moans got caught in the storm winds blowing up all around them.

  Lost in enchantment, Julia looked up to him, his gaze locking with hers. His hair tangled in the wind as did hers, his pitch-black locks and her dark ones intertwining, blowing around them as their only covering.

  They strained toward one another, each one seeking a pleasure that was as delirious as it was sweet. Sweat broke out on them both, despite the cooling winds. Passion raged, emotion flared, Julia unsure she could endure the intensity.

  “Neeheeowee,” she screamed.

  “Julia.”

  They came together, the culmination of their pleasure flaring into splendor. And still neither one dropped their glance from the other. They stared, both gazing at the other as a desert traveler might at water.

  He moved. She met him.

  And it started all over again, the pleasure, the intensity, the love, neither one looking away from the other.

  Storm winds blew up, bringing with them the clouds, the rain, the thunder, and still neither one of them paid the storm heed. They loved through the rain, through the winds, the occasional lightning only throwing their bodies into better view. And if her screams were lost to the thunder, no one noticed. Certainly not Neeheeowee.

  Somewhere in the night he brought the buffalo robe more fully around them. But it didn’t stop them. Their passion could not be tamed, and if they made love again and again throughout the night, they were to be forgiven.

  After all, they had just found one another…

  Chapter Ten

  “Taku ote eciciyapi kta yustanpi, I have much to tell you.”

  “Han, yes,” Julia said, “I know.” She smiled and looked over to Neeheeowee. The baritone timbre of his voice, its quality, caused her
to quiver, and she wondered again, as she had done over these past few weeks, why neither one of them had remembered the language of the Lakota—a language they both understood. Although neither of them spoke it well, they could have at least understood one another sooner. Perhaps the intervening years had buried the memory in them both, awaiting only the jar of their situation to bring it back to them. What if Neeheeowee hadn’t remembered? What if he hadn’t… She shivered, unwilling to finish the thought.

  “Are you cold?”

  Julia shook her head and sighed, a tingle of satisfaction racing through her. It would seem that after a few weeks of traveling, of listening to Neeheeowee, she would have become used to the sound of him speaking to her, to his low, gravelly voice. Yet, she hadn’t grown tired of it, and she found herself looking forward to each moment they talked.

  They sat now in front of the evening fire, camped out as they were at a place Julia had never seen, a place where thickets of cottonwoods and willows dominated the scene, where the trees scented the air, pouring pure oxygen into the evening atmosphere, where their branches hid the two amorous travelers. Giant roots dug into the sandy soil beneath them, the ground feeling soft and cool to a weary back, although Julia couldn’t have known this firsthand. She reclined atop Neeheeowee in his lap, her backside toward the fire.

  “Neeheeowee?” she asked, basking in his gentle ministrations. “What is the full meaning of your name? I remember that part of it means wolf, but I do not recall the rest of it.”

  Neeheeowee shrugged. “It means Wolf on the Hill. It is the name of my grandfather.”

  “Wolf on the Hill…” she repeated. “It fits you well.” She smiled at him as his touch roamed over her back, her stomach, his hands and fingers soothing away her fatigue. She could never remember being so happy, and she reveled in the fact that he could not keep his hands from her; nor, if she were honest, she from him. She tilted her head, recollecting their recent journey over the prairie, remembering how neither one of them had been able to put the other out of mind, or rather, out of hand.

  They had been traveling a westwardly course, Neeheeowee intersecting, though not quite following what the white man called the Santa Fe Trail. And though Julia might have wondered from time to time where they traveled, she never asked, her attention centered more on Neeheeowee’s touch and the delirious sensations it sent running through her.

  Neither of them had kept strict vigilance over the land as they had passed through it, and perhaps it was pure luck that they had traversed over enemy grounds without so much as a chance encounter with another tribe.

  Or perhaps her God or his had watched over them.

  Whatever the cause, they had laughed and loved their way across the prairie, walking through it as though they were children out for a leisurely stroll, he teasing her, she, him. They had loved more often than they had traveled, and Julia had gradually discovered in Neeheeowee a gentle companion, one given to laughter as easily as passion. And she had discovered that she wished to share in his laughter as well as his lovemaking.

  She shivered now as Neeheeowee trailed his touch over her back, his hands coming around toward her breasts, and she reached up quickly to help him, to untie the straps of her dress, letting the article fall down around her waist. Neeheeowee looked at her, smiling, before dropping his gaze to her chest, letting his hands caress everything he could see…and more.

  Julia moaned her pleasure, Neeheeowee echoing the sound with a groan of his own.

  “We go toward Bent’s Fort,” he informed her after a while, speaking in Lakota, and Julia nodded, though she could barely focus her attention on what he said, her mind centering more on what he did. At length, he asked, “Do you know of it?”

  She shook her head, it taking her a while to translate the words, and he smiled. “We will be welcome there. My brother, Little White Man…”

  “William Bent?”

  “Haahe, yes.” Neeheeowee’s hands smoothed over her breasts while he talked; kneading the softened mounds, making Julia’s eyes roll back with the pleasure of it. “My brother,” he continued, “Little White Man, will welcome us. But we must be careful, you and I, and you must keep your eyes always down while we are there. There are many white men there, many traders, and they might not understand a Cheyenne warrior with a white woman. I do not wish to cause you any trouble. If they know you are white, they might try to take you from me. I have heard that white men do this, that they do not always respect a woman’s choice.”

  Julia nodded, and though she wished to say something back to him, she couldn’t, her attention too centered on what he was doing to her breasts with his hands. She breathed in deeply just before Neeheeowee said, “Julia?”

  She knew that note in his voice. She knew he, too, was aroused, but still he persisted in speaking, saying, “We need to talk, you and I. I need to tell you some things.” He stopped, scrutinizing her for a moment before burying his face in her hair. He nuzzled his face into her neck, inhaling deeply. “I must talk to you and I hope that you will understand all that I say,” he said after a while, his voice muffled against her hair. He lifted his head, looking back toward her, seeming to hesitate before he took her more fully into his arms. “Did I tell you,” he said, “that Little White Man, William Bent, married a distant cousin of mine, Owl Woman? I would like you to meet her. It is my desire that…”

  He groaned suddenly when Julia reached up to run her hands through his hair, though at length he continued to talk. “Did I tell you too that Little White Man is considered Cheyenne because of his marriage to my cousin?”

  Julia, after a moment of translation, shook her head and gazed up toward Neeheeowee before she asked in Lakota, “As I am now too?”

  Neeheeowee frowned, a darkness coming over his features that Julia found hard to explain. It was a small change in him, minute at first. But when he drew back, his hands stopped their handiwork over her skin. He looked at her, his glance puzzling. He paused. A moment passed, another. At length he gazed away from her, the wind catching a lock of his hair and blowing it into and around his face. After some time, he spoke, saying, “You are not Cheyenne.”

  “Yes, I know. I am white but I…we—”

  “You are not Cheyenne because I do not make you so.”

  Julia straightened herself and gazed at Neeheeowee. Not one single emotion could be distinguished on his features, and Julia all at once felt bereft. What was wrong here?

  Cool night air blew in upon her and Julia suddenly felt the need to protect herself. She brought her hands and arms up, covering her breasts from the night wind, from Neeheeowee.

  What did he mean, she was not Cheyenne? And why did he look so solemn all of a sudden? She gazed up toward him, but he still peered away from her, into the darkness. She cleared her throat, an attempt to speak, but no words would come. What was happening here?

  They had just been in one another’s arms, wanting each other, barely able to restrain their passion for one another. How could something have changed so abruptly? She didn’t know and yet…

  She narrowed her eyes, gazing more intently at Neeheeowee. Perhaps she mistook his reaction. Perhaps he merely played with her. Or perhaps she had translated it incorrectly.

  She stared at him, a frown forming over her brow. No, she had it right. She’d not heard incorrectly. Neeheeowee appeared more moody than she had ever seen him. Why?

  She set her gaze away from him, staring out into space, looking for some distant spot, trying to get her thoughts in order.

  She shivered once, then again. At last she said, “I do not understand.”

  He hesitated, and though Julia looked back toward him, he still stared away. In due course, he lifted his shoulders, saying, “I have delayed speaking to you on a matter of great importance and by not saying anything to you before now, I have misled you and I never intended that.” He frowned, then, “Know you that I can never make you Cheyenne as my cousin, Owl Woman, did for the white man, Bent. If you ever do becom
e Cheyenne through marriage, it will not be because of me. I will not ask you to marry me—I cannot.”

  Julia sat still for a moment, shock keeping her silent. Marriage? The thought of marriage had not even entered her thoughts, her attention too focused on her physical relationship with Neeheeowee. But now that he mentioned it to her, she realized that the thought of it, the knowledge that she expected it from him, had been there in the back of her mind all the while. Why otherwise would she have come with him? Given up her world for his?

  “I still do not understand, Neeheeowee,” she said, speaking in Lakota. “Kristina once told me that in Indian culture when a man asked a woman to go away with him, he offered her marriage. Is this not so?”

  Neeheeowee hesitated. “This is true in many tribes,” he said, his voice steady for all that he appeared reluctant to talk. “It is true for the Lakota, but it is not the custom of the Cheyenne. For the Cheyenne, even if a couple steal away to be together, the marriage custom must follow or the two people are never considered married, the woman will be dishonored.”

  Julia sat still, unable to breathe. Suddenly she felt light-headed, as though her world were spinning for a moment out of control.

  It was incredible, the effect his statement had on her. And she realized all at once the great amount of trust she’d granted Neeheeowee. Perhaps it had been misplaced, or perhaps she truly did not know the Lakota language that well.

  She cleared her throat. “Did you not ask me to come away with you? I thought that—”

  “I can never marry you.”

  There, he’d said it to her, correctly, plainly. There was no mistaking his intent, no misinterpretation of the language.

  Julia shut her eyes, her throat muscles working convulsively. He meant to dishonor her. He meant to heap shame upon her. She could not credit it. How could she have been so wrong about him? Hadn’t she witnessed his care of her, his attention to her needs? Hadn’t she known his desire? She’d been so certain of him; he whom she regarded as her Proud Wolf. Hadn’t he rescued her when there had been no one else to come to her aid? Treating her with kindness? Hadn’t it been Neeheeowee who had asked her to stay?