Not having to be asked twice, his loins on fire and aching with building ecstasy, he gently laid her on the bed. Then he stood up beside it, and as Flame watched, he undressed.
His clothes and moccasins tossed aside, White Fire stood there for a moment to see her reaction to his total nudity . . . to his arousal that was so evident. He could tell by her eyes, by how wide they were as she gazed at that part of his anatomy which pained him so from need, that she had most certainly never seen a naked man before. He was glad that he didn’t see fear in her eyes. Instead there was an innocence in that first look at a man’s sex.
Flame could hardly control the erratic beat of her heart that seeing him nude caused. His body was so hard, so ready. A part of her was afraid of his hugeness. Another part of her could only imagine how such endowment could pleasure a woman.
She had read books her mother had tried to deny her as she had grown up. She had been curious and in need of answers to the strange feelings that were stirring within her body as her breasts had begun to blossom and tiny curls of hair had begun to sprout at the juncture of her thighs. Although she had never seen pictures of a naked man, while feeding her curiosity with the books obtained from other friends, who had obtained them from the hidden drawers of their mothers’ bedrooms, she had read about how a man should look. Also, while reading the forbidden literature, she had felt the thrill of how it might feel to have a man touch her where she had strangely throbbed.
Now, here it was, instead of being confined to the pages of a book. Flame was aglow with the passion that made her head reel with pleasure.
Without any more undue hesitation, Flame rose from the bed and stood facing White Fire as she slowly unbuttoned her blouse.
She watched the need darken his eyes as she opened her blouse and fully revealed her well-rounded, thick breasts to him.
Her heart pounded as her own desire surged. She tossed her blouse aside, feeling nothing even akin to shame for being so brazenly bold while in the presence of a man. She reached around and undid her skirt at the back. Then she slowly slid it down past her hips and let it fall to rest around her ankles on the floor.
Breathing hard, her fingers trembled as she finished disrobing then stood square shouldered and still as White Fire’s gaze raked slowly, approvingly, over her.
Suddenly he swept her up into his arms again. His eyes locked with hers, he again placed her on the bed. The startling beauty of her naked body had made a fiery fever in his loins.
And now, as her hair spread out like a huge red blossom beneath her, he trembled and knelt down over her.
The white of her skin meeting the copper of his, his lips brushing her throat, she bent under him.
Then he kissed her, hotly, deeply, his hands on her breasts, kneading. His senses swam as he felt the utter softness of her breasts and felt the nipples harden at once against his palms.
Flame abandoned herself to the wondrous feelings that were awash throughout her. There was only now. There was only them. There were only the wonders of touching, throbbing, burning!
But when she felt the velvet tightness of his heat probing where no man had been before, she could not help but grow tense with apprehension. The books she had read had warned of a moment of pain upon the man’s first entry into a woman.
White Fire felt her body tighten and her breath catch. He swept his hands up to her face. He gazed endearingly into her eyes. “Trust me,” he whispered. “What we are about to share is worth your brief moment of pain.”
Eyes wide, her pulse racing, Flame swallowed hard, then nodded. “Hold me,” she murmured.
He gathered her into his arms. He held her with an exquisite tenderness, as though she might be a delicate flower whose stem might break. He brought his mouth down on her lips and kissed her.
The press of his lips, so mesmerizing, so warm, made Flame forget why she had only moments before been tense with apprehension. She returned the kiss with a wild abandon. She opened her legs more widely to him when she felt him begin to slowly enter her.
Her whole body quivered and she moaned when the moment of pain grabbed at her consciousness.
Then, when he buried himself more deeply inside her, placing his maleness perfectly within her, he fell into a wild, dizzying rhythm with the slow thrusting of his pelvis. Her heart soared. As he moved within her, she learned quickly that the feelings of ecstasy were intensified if she lifted her own hips and moved with him.
Her spasmodic gasps filled the air as he filled her, over and over again, his powerful hips thrusting, her hips gyrating in rhythm with his movements.
She moaned when his mouth slid from her mouth and his lips moved over one of her nipples, licking, softly biting, then licking again.
Almost wild with the building pleasure, Flame ran her fingers through White Fire’s thick, black hair.
She then ran her hands down his muscled, copper back to his thrusting hips.
The feeling came to her all at once, the explosion of ecstasy claiming her so quickly, she was startled by the intensity of the rapture that overtook her.
She clung. She sighed. She rocked with him.
She moaned as White Fire still thrust inside her in steady, heated, deep movements.
She breathed hard as his hold on her tightened and his lips came to hers in a frenzy of kisses. She knew that he was nearing his own release and wondered if it would be as magnificently wonderful as hers.
White Fire covered her mouth with his lips and kissed her hotly, deeply, the explosion of his ecstasy near. He had felt her own spasms of rapture, glad that he had given her such pleasure. But wanting to fulfill his own hungry needs, he held her as though in a vise and plunged over and over again inside her.
The explosion soon claimed him. His body shook and quaked with spasms as he thrust endlessly deeper into her, his seed filling her with an instant warmth.
Afterward, they lay together, their legs entwined. He leaned up over her and tenderly kissed her eyelids closed, then nestled her close at his side.
“Are you all right?” he finally asked when she had yet to say anything since their lovemaking.
Her eyes closed, and still in a state of euphoria, Flame smiled lazily and nodded.
“Flame, I guess you know that I am yours for as long as there will be stars in the heavens,” White Fire whispered, then showered her breasts with warm kisses.
“You are the stars,” Flame said, slowly opening her eyes. “You are the sun, the moon, the wind. You are everything to me.”
He kissed her mouth with a lazy warmth. Then he sat up and drew her up to sit on his lap, to straddle him. “You are only eighteen,” he said thickly. “Do you truly wish to marry me, an older man, a man who has a son who is six?”
“Darling, I came here today after my outing with you and Michael mainly to tell you how much I love not only you, but also your son,” she said, glad to see his eyes take on a glow of pleasure at her words. “I do want to marry you and I do wish to be a mother to Michael.”
“But you still think we should wait?” he asked, forking an eyebrow.
“I fear my father’s wrath too much not to,” Flame said, her voice drawn. “I’m going to talk to him. I’m going to make him see reason.”
“Do you truly think that is possible where you and I are concerned?” White Fire asked somberly.
“It has to be possible,” Flame said. She brushed a kiss across his brow, then rushed from the bed. “I’ve been gone for way too long. Father is surely having fits.”
“And you expect to get him to listen to reason?” White Fire said, sour bitterness in his voice. He left the bed and pulled on his fringed breeches. “I doubt he even knows the meaning.”
“I must give it a try,” Flame said, hurrying into the rest of her clothes.
She ran her fingers through her hair to straighten it. Then she thought not to worry about it. It would just look windblown to her father. He would never think that it had gotten tangled this much while she had been mak
ing maddening love with the man she would soon marry.
“My husband,” she said, flinging herself into White Fire’s arms, hugging him. “Soon you will be my husband.”
White Fire did not allow her to see his frown, nor know his doubts. He would allow her to have this faith in her father. Soon enough she would discover how wrong she was ever to believe that he would allow her to marry White Fire without a fight.
Chapter 20
Do you ask what the birds say?
The sparrow, the dove, the linnet and thrust say,
“I love, and I love!”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Flame avoided her father’s glare as he sat at the far end of the dining table from her. He had met her at the gate when she had arrived from her outing—from her lovemaking with White Fire. He had told her that he was just getting ready to send the cavalry out to look for her.
She shivered even now at the thought of how it might have been had the soldiers arrived at White Fire’s cabin in their search for her while she and he were making love.
The soldiers might have surrounded the cabin. She could even envision them firing at the cabin in rapid bursts of gunfire.
Her thoughts so morbid, so frightening, Flame forced them away and again gazed at her father, whose eyes still had not left her. In them there was such a coldness, such annoyance.
“Reshelle, I’m thinking of sending you back to St. Louis,” he said, his voice a monotone. “You are out of hand here in the wilderness. You won’t listen to anything I say. You ride off on that damn horse of yours at the drop of a hat. All I have to do is look at you crosswise and you are off to only hell knows where.”
The threat to send her away was real enough for Flame. She had worried that the strained relationship between herself and her father would make him seek the easiest way out. To be rid of her altogether was his out.
Knowing that she might say the wrong things if she did not take the time to think before she spoke, Flame picked up her fork and began eating the roast pork from her plate. All around her candles glowed from fancy candle holders, wall sconces, and the chandeliers. The large oak table was covered with a lacy, fine linen tablecloth. Goblets of sheer crystal, china from France, and gold flatware from Italy, graced the table, along with piles of rich foodstuffs on fancy gilt-edged platters.
On a side table, cream puffs, cherry and apple pies, and cinnamon rolls covered with gobs of white icing, waited to be chosen for dessert.
“Reshelle, did you hear what I said?” Colonel Russell said, banging the dull end of his fork on the table to draw her attention.
Her hair swirled into a fancy chignon atop her head, with diamond combs glittering from the folds, and wearing a low-swept green satin gown, with rubies sparkling at her ivory throat, Flame looked quickly at her father.
“Yes, I heard,” she murmured, her cheeks flushed pink from the strain of the moment. “And, Father, your still calling me Reshelle is only one way of proving how little you care about what I want, or desire. Yes, you can think you might rid yourself of the bother of having me around by sending me back to St. Louis, to force me on some unwilling relative of ours, or by locking me away in a convent. But you know that is not at all what I want.”
She placed her fork on the table. Her fingers trembled as she twined them around the stem of a goblet. She slowly turned the goblet around as she gazed with defiance at her father.
“Father, do you truly care about what I want?” she asked softly. “Do you truly care about me at all?”
Colonel Russell’s face flooded with color. His eyes narrowed and squinted as he gave Flame a dark frown, the sleek lines of his uniform and the shine of its gold buttons a sight that Flame had grown to resent. The uniform meant authority. That seemed to be her father’s guideline in life. He had to be the one who gave orders. He expected everyone to obey them.
“I see that you are having trouble answering my questions,” Flame said, sighing heavily. “You know that you would not be able to say what I would like to hear.”
“You are wrong,” Colonel Russell said, clearing his throat nervously. “I do care for you, Resh—er . . . I mean . . . Flame. It’s just that I always have so much on my mind I find it hard to show my feelings toward you.”
His jaw tightened. “And your behavior warrants scoldings more than my confessions of how I feel about you,” he was quick to interject.
“Don’t you know, Father, that you cause much of the behavior that you resent?” Flame said, sliding her hand away from the glass. She fidgeted with the white linen napkin that lay across her lap. “If you would just once treat me like . . . like . . . a daughter instead of the soldiers under your command, I truly believe I might not be so hasty to—”
He interrupted her. “To go and meet with the ’breed?” he said, his voice low and measured. He laughed shrewdly. “Of course you weren’t going to say that, were you?” he said menacingly.
Flame rose so quickly from her chair it toppled over behind her. “You see?” she cried, her voice breaking. “Just when I thought we were beginning to have a civil conversation, you have to turn into that ogre of a man who just . . . who just . . .”
She couldn’t find the words she wanted to say quickly enough. Yes, he was right to accuse her of meeting with White Fire. Yet it was the way in which he threw the subject of White Fire in her face which hurt her to the quick.
Brushing past the fallen chair, Flame rushed from the room. Blindly, she climbed the stairs that took her to the upper floor. She then ran to her room and closed the door behind her.
As she leaned against the closed door, tears flowed across her cheeks as she thought of White Fire and how she wished to be with him.
And she hadn’t even been able to talk to her father about their marriage plans.
“But he wouldn’t listen, anyhow,” she whispered, brushing the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand.
Then she thought of what White Fire had told her about her father, about him surely being sent from the fort in the next few days, or perhaps even arrested.
“I have to set things right now, or perhaps never,” she whispered.
But then again, she recalled how her father had only moments ago threatened to send her back to St. Louis to live with relatives, or to a convent.
“He can’t do that,” she sobbed. “He . . . just . . . can’t!”
“Reshelle, open the door,” she heard her father say outside in the corridor.
When she didn’t respond, he tried another approach. “Flame, I’m sorry about having said the wrong things a moment ago,” he said, his voice drawn. “Open the door. Let’s continue our talk. I promise to keep a civil tongue.”
The fact that he had actually called her Flame a second time tonight sent a ray of hope into her heart that just perhaps he might listen to reason.
And if he wanted to get rid of her so badly, surely he could see that it could easily be done by her getting married.
“But to a man who is half white and half Indian?” she whispered to herself.
She had already decided that no matter what her father would say about her plans to marry, whether or not he gave his blessing, she was going to marry White Fire.
Holding that thought to keep her nerve up when it came to telling him that she would do as she wished and him be damned, she turned and opened the door.
Waiting, hoping for him to draw her into his arms, not having had that sort of intimacy with her father for so long, Flame gazed into his eyes.
When he stared at her for a moment, then brushed past her and went on into her room, Flame’s heart and spirits sank. Somehow, somewhere he had lost all ability to love. He was a stiff, cold-hearted man, whose only thoughts were of himself.
Through the years she had seen his gradual change into this person she scarcely knew. She felt sorry for her mother all over again during moments like this.
“Flame, I just don’t know how to communicate with you anymore,” Colonel
Russell said, turning to face her. “I am a cavalry officer. I sleep, eat, and drink the duties of a colonel. Can’t you understand? Don’t you see how my work has so overwhelmed me during these past years?”
“Yes, so much that you lost a wife’s love, and now you are close to losing a daughter’s,” Flame managed to get out, although she knew that her father surely had to be hurt at least a little by her words.
“Not because I want it that way,” Colonel Russell said. He reached for her hands and twined his fingers through hers. “Flame, I do love you. I just find it hard now to voice it aloud. Tell me you understand.”
Tears burning at the corners of her eyes, touched by how her father had finally found the words that she had so longed to hear, Flame flung herself into his arms. She could feel his awkwardness in how his arms hesitated, then moved slowly around her waist and held her tight to him.
“Flame, has my indifference hurt you so badly?” Colonel Russell said, his voice drawn with emotion. “If so, let me make it up to you.”
“Do you truly mean that?” Flame said, inching away from him. She gazed into his eyes. “Father, do you truly wish to make things up to me? Do you wish to see me happy?”
“Parents want only happiness for their children,” Colonel Russell said, reaching a hand to her cheek, softly touching it. “Tell me. What would most make you happy?”
At this moment, she hated thinking about the devious side of her father’s character, that he was building up the fort arsenal to bring war between his soldiers and the Indians. There was only now and his soft words, his soft hand on her cheek, the look of apology in his eyes.
“Father, you truly want me to tell you what would make me happy?” she asked, smiling at him, believing that he wanted to hear the truth and would give her his blessing, no matter what.
“I want nothing more at this moment than your happiness,” Colonel Russell said, his eyes slowly raking over her as she stood there so angelic and sweet before him.
When his gaze lingered longer on her generous swell of breasts than what was appropriate for a father, Flame was taken aback by the boldness of his stare.
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