by Robin Gideon
Blade looked at the woman once again, her face ghastly pale in the flickering light of the small fire. With his left hand, he motioned over his own eyes, closing them. Then he pointed to her. To his pleasure, she immediately closed her eyes and turned her face away from the tepee entrance, exactly as he had wanted her to.
In a warrior's life, there were some things that had to be done that should never be witnessed by a woman. Blade understood this, and even though the laws of his tribe didn't extend to the white man's world, his heart said it should.
Blue Elk bent low to step into his tepee. Once inside, he stood erect and looked down at his naked and helpless captive. “I'm going to stuff your pussy."
He was dead a heartbeat later, and Blade's only regret was that he had allowed the vile murderer and rapist the chance to speak one last time.
Easing the corpse to the opposite side of the fire from the blonde woman, Blade turned the body face-down, then grabbed a buffalo skin from the floor of the tepee and tossed it over Blue Elk's bloody head and shoulders. A jugular vein, when severed, created massive bleeding.
When Blade looked again at the woman, her face was still turned away but her breasts moved with her rapid-fire breathing and her eyes were not merely closed, they were squeezed fiercely shut. She was scared. Scared out of her mind. But she had shown the good sense to do exactly as she had been instructed and hadn't made a sound.
In a soft tone he hoped was comforting, Blade spoke in the flawless English, taught to him by his mother, by an assortment of priests, and by university professors. “Please, no matter what you do, don't make any noise. I'm not here to hurt you. I promise you that."
The woman turned her head and looked straight at Blade with eyes the size of saucers. For the first time, Blade could tell just how young Blue Elk's voluptuous captive was, and it shocked him. She might be out of her teen years, but if she was, it wasn't by much.
In a hushed, rather incredulous tone, she asked, “Y-you ... you speak English?"
"Quite well, actually.” He smiled. “My name is Blade."
"But you're...” The remainder of the sentence remained unspoken, but not mistaken.
"An Indian. To be more specific, a Northern Comanche. However...” He smiled charmingly, even though every instinct in him was to run like the wind and let this yellow eyes squaw fend for herself. “You have a name? Can you walk?"
"My name is Samantha, and I can run if you'll just cut me free,” the woman said. And then, despite the poor light inside the tepee, she blushed and added, “And if you could find me some clothes, I'd be ever so grateful."
The civility of the words, in stark contrast to the visual image of a voluptuous Caucasian woman trussed up naked inside a tepee, was enough to make all the internal gyroscopes that kept Blade's thinking on the level suddenly begin to tilt. In a flash, his glinting knife cut the leather thongs binding the woman's wrists and ankles.
"Listen to me carefully.” Blade did everything he could to keep from looking at the woman's breasts, which, he noted with a connoisseur's eye for detail, were nothing less than splendid. “If you want, you can follow me. But you must remain absolutely silent the entire time. You must keep running. No matter what happens, keep running and say nothing. Is that clear?"
She had an arm folded crosswise over her bosom in a vain and unintentionally erotic attempt to hide their naked fullness. Her other hand was between her legs to hide her sex. Blade would have liked to pretend he hadn't noticed the woman's allure, but his libido was as fine-tuned as the precision watches coming out of Switzerland that kept perfect time. Circumstances be damned; a beautiful woman, his body said, was something to pay attention to.
"Well?” he demanded, keeping his voice low when she didn't immediately respond. The majority of his anger was directed at himself since he couldn't keep his eyes off her body or his thoughts off vaguely licentious notions of what pleasures would be his should he slide his hips between those shapely thighs, and...
"I won't make a sound. I promise you that.” Her blue eyes filled with sincerity, and her naked breasts trembled enticingly despite her best efforts to conceal them with a single slender arm. “Please, take me with you. Take me away from this."
Blade nodded, and then turned away from the woman. He couldn't look at her any longer without a certain part of him, which he'd never had much control over in the first place if the truth should ever be known, standing up and paying rather obvious attention to the blonde woman. Considering the fact that he was wearing only a buckskin breechclout, his intemperate thoughts and wayward body part would be impossible to conceal.
Using his knife, Blade sliced a long hole in the back of Blue Elk's tepee, crawled through, then helped the woman through.
Despite his better judgment, despite all the reasons he had for distrusting white people he did not personally know, Broken Blade, War Chief of the Northern Comanche, took the woman's hand and started into a ground-eating dogtrot he could keep up for hours. His only concern was how long the barefooted, naked white woman could keep it up, and how much danger she would put him in because of her deficiency.
To the surprise of a man who had lived in jeopardy literally every day of his life, the additional danger of that woman in his life seemed a very small price to pay.
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Chapter Two
Samantha kept up with the tall Indian, but she wasn't certain how much longer she could continue the pace. What would he do if she slowed him down? Abandon her to the band of cutthroats who had abducted her from the train, or silently kill her himself so that she wouldn't betray his escape plans?
At first, it had hurt to run barefooted through the tall buffalo grass, but now her feet just felt numb. She hadn't been outdoors without shoes on since she was a child.
Blade's enormous left hand was wrapped around her right wrist. Once, when Samantha tripped, he simply hauled her upright without breaking stride. She suspected he could snap her wrist with very little effort if he felt so inclined.
She was wildly embarrassed at her own nudity and grateful that Blade, running in front of her and dragging her along behind him, wasn't in a position to leisurely ogle her. With each hurried stride, Samantha's heavy breasts bounced and swayed erratically, making it impossible for her to forget for even a second that she was completely naked with an Indian warrior, who, she knew without any doubts whatsoever, was a killer. A cold-blooded killer ... who spoke English with a precision that could only come from a formal education. But he had the bronzed skin and wore moccasins and a buckskin breechclout of a Plains Indian.
She stumbled and this time completely lost her footing so that for several steps Blade dragged her along behind him.
"Wait!” Samantha gasped, scrambling to get to her feet, gulping in air. “I c-can't go much further."
"My horse is less than fifty yards from here. You can make it that far,” Blade replied with only the faintest trace of sympathy in his tone.
Samantha looked at him appraisingly, stunned that, though she was quite winded, he wasn't even breathing particularly hard. The broad expanse of his naked chest had become moist with perspiration, and it reflected the pale moonlight in a distinctly erotic manner. But as her gaze caressed the relaxed muscles in Blade's naked chest, his dark eyes locked on her breasts that wiggled tautly with her panting breaths.
"Lead the way,” Samantha said, suddenly aware of Blade's scrutiny and feeling decidedly uneasy because of it. “I promise, I won't slow you down."
By the time they reached Blade's pinto, a thick-chested mare with patches of black, chestnut brown, and white, Samantha was beginning to wonder whether the man who had rescued her from certain death ever got tired.
As they neared the mare, the animal lifted her head and whinnied in greeting. Blade rubbed her nose to calm her.
"You're going to have to carry two of us, Tikki,” Blade said to his mare as he picked up the reins from where they dangled to the prairie grass. “Be a good girl a
nd don't complain too much."
The horse was a four-legged arsenal. Attached to a very abbreviated saddle on the left side of the mare was a sheath holding a bow and a quiver full of arrows. In a saddle scabbard on the right side of the horse was a lever-action rifle.
"Tell me you know how to ride,” Blade said, turning sharply toward her.
Crossing an arm over her breasts and placing a hand between her legs, she nodded, grateful that her father had insisted she learn.
"At least I've got that bit of luck working for me,” Blade murmured. He put a moccasin-shod foot into a rawhide stirrup and swung up into the saddle with deceptively lithe grace, considering the size of the man. Once in the saddle, he kicked his foot out of the stirrup and reached a hand down to assist her. “Come on, we'd better put some miles between us and those men. They're not going to take kindly to me killing Blue Elk."
Trying to tell herself there was nothing of her body he hadn't already seen and that she had much more pressing problems at the moment than trying to maintain some semblance of modesty, Samantha put her hand into Blade's outstretched one, eased her bare foot into the stirrup, and pulled herself up onto the mare's back. She slipped her arms around his waist, feeling the warmth and wetness of his abdomen beneath her palms. Feeling, too, the tempting sensation of his muscular back, heated with exertion and rock solid, against the mounds of her breasts and tantalized nipples that were curiously sensitive.
"Let's go, Tikki.” Blade kept his voice low as he touched his heels to the mare's ribs. The horse broke into a canter that could eat up the miles without exhausting either horse or rider. Glancing over his shoulder, Blade looked at Samantha and smiled. “I'm sorry to say it, but that bare bottom of yours is going to be red as an apple by sunup."
Samantha closed her eyes as the blush of embarrassment crept swiftly up her neck, coloring her cheeks and ears to a rosy hue.
* * * *
The girl's got courage, and she knows not to complain.
Blade walked Tikki into a cool stream, fed by melting mountain snows. They were now miles away from the corpse that had at one time been a heartless monster named Blue Elk. Though Blade had kept the pace steady, he didn't travel as fast as he could, choosing instead to show some sympathy for Samantha's naked backside, and for Tikki, who was carrying extra weight.
Of all the plains and mountain Indians, perhaps none were greater equestrians than the Comanche tribes. By the time a Northern Comanche boy was five, a girl eight, they were riding by themselves. But even with his own lifetime of experience on horseback, should he have a bare ass while riding at a canter for very long his flesh would be rubbed raw, his testicles flaming red.
That was one of the purposes of wearing a six foot long breechclout made of butter-soft buckskin. By folding the leather beneath the rider, it provided cushioning and several protective layers of leather between man and saddle.
"We'll go at a walk now,” Blade said over his shoulder. “How are you holding up?"
"I'm a little sore.” After a pause of several seconds, apparently not wanting to appear ungrateful, she added, “But I'll be fine ... thanks to you. That man ... he ... he was going to—"
"Don't think about that now,” Blade said quickly. “He can't hurt you anymore. Blue Elk's days of hurting women are over. And do you want to know something? I feel pretty damned good about that."
Tikki dipped her head, wanting a drink of the cool water, and Blade let her. Sitting loose in the saddle, at last convinced that the escape had been complete and that sudden death was a most unlikely event, he was disturbingly aware of the woman's breasts against his naked back.
When he had to concentrate on making good their escape, it was easy to focus on the very real threats he faced, but now that their safety was assured, his mind, body, and libido could leisurely take in the deliciously evocative tactile stimulation received when a very voluptuous woman was riding double without wearing any clothes.
Blade's slumbering cock woke and began to lengthen inside his breechclout.
"Would you mind if we stopped? Just for a couple minutes?” Samantha asked, her voice very soft.
Realizing that the best thing he could do was put some distance between himself and the naked woman he had rescued, Blade quickly agreed. He walked Tikki to the opposite side of the stream and found a place where the grass was thick and green. “Stay where you're at."
Blade leaned back to kick his right leg over Tikki's neck and was immediately aware of the extravagant mounds of Samantha's breasts against his back, the fullness and firmness of which sent an intensely erotic electric shock shooting through his body. Before his moccasins hit the cool, moist grass, Blade could feel his sexual willpower begin to crumble.
In a voice that suddenly sounded slightly strained, he reached up with both hands and said with as much indifference as he could muster, “Let me help you down."
Gripping her naked waist just above her hips, he helped Samantha off his horse. His brain screamed savagely at the injustice of being so close to an amazingly voluptuous, stunningly beautiful young woman who just happened to be completely naked ... and probably shouldn't be seduced when hours earlier she had narrowly eluded gang-rape and execution.
The instant Samantha's feet touched the grass, Blade released her and turned sharply away. He wasn't a man with much experience in sexual temperance.
"We'll stay here ten minutes. The water here is crystal clean, if you're thirsty."
Samantha whispered a grateful “Thank you” as she headed toward the stream a few feet away.
From his buckskin pack on Tikki, Blade removed a work shirt, simple in design and without the adornments of quills and beadwork his war shirt had. The shirt would be extremely large on Samantha, though he doubted the tails would come down far enough to protect her buttocks from the ravages of horseback riding. After considering his options for a moment, Blade came to the conclusion that the only other article of clothing he could offer her was some of his own breechclout.
"I have something for you.” Blade held the shirt in his hands.
Early in the spring, after the squaws had stretched and softened the hide, Blade had sewn the two leather halves of the shirt together himself. The act of self-reliance had created something of a scandal within the Northern Comanche tribe since sewing was in the exclusive realm of the squaws. The fact that a war chief of Broken Blade's esteem should be sewing his own clothing had not set well with tribal elders, and Blade was given a stern warning that he should pick a wife soon ... or one or more wives would be picked for him.
His older brother's widow, Moon Will Shine, was now through with her mourning, and as the next oldest male sibling of the family, Blade was honor-bound to provide for her. That did not necessarily mean he had to take her as his wife, but such accommodations were quite common among the Northern Comanche.
Samantha approached, the ineffectual arm across her breasts making her appear more naked than if she weren't trying to hide herself. The hand between her thighs hid her sex but left on display the erotically sweeping curve of her hips. Blade did all he could to not stare. The sun wouldn't come up for another hour, and with the sunrise he would have a fully illuminated view of Samantha's naked perfection, which, he suspected, would be irresistible.
Never in his life had Blade's willpower been so tested. Though he was a man of many extraordinary talents, harnessing his libido had never one he could boast about. There were, however, any number of women who could testify to his ability to sensually entertain for literally hours and hours on end.
As he handed her the buckskin shirt, he shrugged. “At least it's something.” He tried to sound casual, as though Samantha's nudity left him unaffected. “It'll be big on you."
Samantha took the shirt, and in order for her to pull the soft leather over her head, abandoned her efforts at modesty. In a tiny corner of Blade's mind, he could hear Father McMurphy's voice whispering that a gentleman would turn his back when confronted with such enticing but nev
ertheless forbidden temptations.
Despite his best intentions to the contrary, Blade was unable to turn his back on her when she pulled the buckskin shirt over her head. Somewhere in the process an arm got trapped in a sleeve, or perhaps she hadn't quite positioned the garment properly for her head to slip through the sizable neck hole. However it worked out, for fully thirty glorious seconds, her head and arms were inside the buckskin shirt and the rest of her body was gleaming naked in the moonlight for his leisurely, appreciative inspection. Unbidden, his penis began swelling.
As the leather came free and slithered down over ripe breasts and slender arms slipped into sleeves made for much larger limbs, Blade turned his back.
"Thank you,” Samantha said, “for allowing me my modesty."
Blade looked at her again, and for a moment, the tightness in his throat was so intense he couldn't speak. He looked directly into her pale blue eyes, searching for some sign of theatricality, some indication that she wasn't really as sweetly innocent and grateful as she appeared.
Though the history of his people and life's circumstances had, in many ways, made Blade a cynical man ... there was nothing in Samantha's eyes that suggested she was anything other than a very frightened woman who was extremely grateful to the man who had saved her life.
The shirt came down to the middle of her thighs. Though the buckskin concealed Samantha's sex, the sight of her white legs, naked and beautiful beneath the unadorned hem, was the very definition of feminine temptation.
After clearing his throat, Blade said, “If you'll give me a moment, I think I can create a little something else that should make it more comfortable to ride.” He smiled, and his shoulders once again moved in a fluid shrug. “It won't be much, but it should help."