"You wish you were Sister Lizard," he whispered.
Mattie’s face flushed, and she gulped.
His thumb traced her trembling lips. "Don’t be afraid."
She wasn’t afraid. At least not of him. She was more frightened by her own feelings. She felt as if she was about to render the most wondrous portrait, and she didn’t know where to begin.
Sakote wanted to make a kiss with Mati. Her mouth was as warm and sweet as the honey of kawkati, summer, and he thought he’d never fill his hunger for that taste. But Mati was afraid, quaking under his palm even more than the lizard. He must be patient.
"Your skin is smooth and pale like the white deer," he told her, brushing his knuckles over her cheek, letting the soothing music of his voice work its enchantment. "And your hair, it catches the colors of the sun." He rubbed a strand of it between his fingers, and then he circled the rim of her ear with the tip of his finger. Her eyelids flagged, and her soft sigh sent an unexpected bolt of desire through him. He raked both hands through her hair, capturing the damp tresses, smoothing her forehead with his thumbs, watching the fluttering of her nose and the parting of her lips. By Wonomi, he wanted to make a kiss with her. Now.
His breath came heavy in his chest. Mati’s eyes drifted close, and he pulled her closer, inclining toward her until he felt her breath upon his mouth. This kiss was warm with sun and as sense-stealing as the white man’s whiskey. Sakote felt the world slide and tilt as he closed his eyes to savor the nectar of her lips.
Her small hands touched the hollow of his throat, where his heart beat strong, and then he felt her fingers curl upon his chest as their tongues mingled. She half-moaned, half-sighed into his mouth, and low in his belly, he tightened like the sinew of a bow.
Without releasing her lips, he rocked forward and, cradling her head, lay her back along the boulder. He rested on one elbow, freeing his other hand to work its magic on her. He trailed the back of his fingers down her throat, between her breasts, over her belly, soothing her with the same motions he’d used on the lizard. Her clothing was thinner than a moth’s wing, and he could clearly see the sinuous contours of her body. It was driving him mad, this patience. His man’s-knife stood stiff and ready. It didn’t understand the hunter’s vigil.
But again and again he moved his hand over her, sometimes the tips of his fingers, sometimes the flat of his palm, each time slipping lower and lower, nearer the source of her woman’s pleasure until she arced with longing toward his touch. Then he tugged loose the ties of her underdress and parted the sheer white petals until her fair flesh gleamed in the bright sunlight. She made small motions of protest, but when he grazed the bare skin of her bosom with his fingertips, she stilled in surrender.
By Wonomi, she was softer than the finest doeskin. Her nipples were small and pink, like manzanita blossoms. He wanted to make a kiss there, too.
He let his hand trace her quivering belly until it nestled at the top of her woman’s curls, and listened while her breath grew sharper, swifter. Then he bent to nuzzle her throat, placing kisses upon the pulsing line to her heart as she gasped softly near his ear.
Again, he stroked her with his palm, this time close to the crest of her breast, and he made a trail of kisses along the bone of her shoulder. She shivered as his hair brushed across her, and he smiled wickedly, sweeping his head intentionally, lazily, back and forth across her torso, lashing her slowly with his hair until her nipples hardened to delicate points.
He groaned at the sight. His heart pounded against the basket of his chest till it hurt. His belly knotted. His loins ached. He could endure no more.
He bent to close his lips around a delicious nipple, sighing at its sweetness. Mati flung her arms wildly about his neck, arching into the palm of the hand that cupped her below. He sought to pleasure her, parting her delicate flower to fondle the bud within.
Mati gasped, a sound of wonder and dismay all at once, and Sakote was surprised by both. He froze. Did she not know this pleasure? Surely the young men of her world had shown her...
But Mati was a white woman. Perhaps, as Noa had told him, it was true that the whites didn’t play pleasure games.
His doubt quickly vanished as Mati strove against him, her face alight with joy and yearning. His smile of triumph became a grimace of pain as his loins swelled with need. But he made the dance of pleasure for her, moving his practiced fingers nimbly over the petals of her womanhood, like the gentle rain upon a spring flower.
He watched her face with half-lidded eyes, delighting in her ecstasy, breathing with her, tensing with her, until his own lust was almost too much to bear. And then she stiffened, gasping, her fingers clawing at his arms, and he watched her soar over the precipice of desire like the eagle taking flight over a canyon. Her face glowed with rapture. Sakote had never seen anything so beautiful.
And after the shudders racked her body, he held her close, never wanting to let her go, and whispered Konkow words of comfort against her ear.
Chapter 23
Mattie felt like her bones had melted into the rock, fused like limp lichen to the granite. Only her soul still spiraled lazily overhead, reluctant to return to the earthly shell that had cast it free a moment ago.
Gradually, Sakote’s strange whispered words enticed her home. She heard again the soft whine of dragonflies, felt the rough rock beneath her and the alternating wash of parching sun and delicate mist from the waterfall. She drew a ragged breath through her parted teeth.
What had he done to her? She felt broken asunder, yet recreated even more whole. The sun laved her naked skin in places it had never touched before, and yet she felt no shame, only its cleansing warmth. She smiled the smile of unlocked secrets, of freedom.
Sakote growled playfully in her ear, and she lifted her languid gaze to meet his. But even as she reveled in her own contentment, she saw yearning in his smoldering eyes, an unrequited fire.
He’d done this to her—sent her aloft on a cloud of ecstasy, let her glimpse the realm of angels. Now she longed to do the same for him, to bring him pleasure, if she could figure out how.
She lifted a tentative finger to his lips. His nostrils flared once as she slowly traced his mouth. He liked her kisses. She knew that much. She ran her tongue over her lip. Already his taste—sweet, musky, warm—was imprinted on her memory.
She eased forward until their lips met. He clung to her, delving deeply into the recesses of her mouth. His breathing was harsh and desperate, like a carriage horse run hard.
She devoured him with her hands, snagging his damp, coal-black locks, riding the wild pulse in his throat, spanning his broad shoulder, gliding across the shallow planes of his chest. And then her hand strayed lower, brushing timidly over the strained hide of his breechcloth.
The breath seemed to scrape across his teeth as he gasped. In pain? She searched his eyes, but they were squeezed shut.
A sudden pang of indecision struck her. Perhaps she’d done the wrong thing. Perhaps she’d offended him, or worse, injured him.
"I’m..." she whispered. "I’m sorry if I hurt you,"
The last thing she expected was Sakote’s rueful chuckle. "It’s..." He sighed on a growl. "A good pain."
He took her hand, pressing it firmly against him then, against that part of him that swelled even as her palm made contact, and closed his eyes in self-imposed anguish.
His voice was strained. "A very good pain."
The blood rushed to Mattie’s face. She’d done this to him, this...improper thing. She knew she should withdraw, yet her hand continued to brazenly rest where it shouldn’t. It was so immoral, so unladylike, so...fascinating. And like a naughty child, halfway down the street with a stolen sweet, she’d gone too far to turn back.
Before she could think twice, the words spilled out of her in a heated rush. "And how do I relieve this pain?"
His groan seemed less agony, more pleasure this time, and he measured her with a long and dangerous stare that almost made her regret her
words. Almost.
Then he turned her hand over, carefully twining her fingers in his own. His nostrils flared, his eyes burned dark, and suddenly she felt swept away in their depths.
With his free hand, he unfastened the knot of his breechcloth and folded back the deerskin, revealing...everything.
He was more magnificent than Mattie remembered, and the sight of him did queer, wonderful things to her insides. If she could only capture that male essence on paper, she thought, with her pencil and...
Sakote caught her wrist. Now was evidently not the time to ask him to sit for a portrait. And if he kept looking at her like that, all smoldering and heathen and hungry, she wouldn’t be able to keep her hands from shaking anyway.
He closed his eyes and lay back, and while she watched with tattered breath, he guided her hand where he wanted it. His skin was like velvet where she clasped her fingers about him, and for a moment he held her hand there, letting her experience the warm throbbing of his blood. Then he led her, sliding her palm in a slow dance that drew the breath from him in frayed gasps. She could feel the strength in him, yet also a tenderness she’d never imagined a man could possess. As she held him literally in the palm of her hand, a heady sense of power overcame her, for she knew she’d become the instrument of his salvation.
Steadily he guided her with clenched fingers, his brow furrowed in a longing so intensely bittersweet that it caught at her very soul.
Suddenly she wanted him, wanted to touch every part of his body, every fiber of his being, wanted to hear his every thought, know his every feeling.
As if he read her mind, he murmured something to her in his tongue and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer, against his heart, giving her full rein to take him where she willed.
Instinct and nature showed her the way. As his thrusts became gradually more deliberate, she answered them in kind. When the heaving of his chest grew more rapid, she matched the rhythm of his breath. And when his gasps of anticipation echoed around her and he clasped her tighter, she cleaved to him in breathless wonder. At last, his brow creased in ecstasy, and his body flexed like a powerful lunging animal as he groaned in release, hugging her again and again, shivering off the last of his need like a wolf shaking off frost.
His eyes were still closed when he collapsed, spent, upon his back. His nostrils quivered, and his chest still rose and fell rapidly. But his limbs and his long black hair draped over the boulder as if he were no longer a man, but part of the rock itself.
Moments later, as Mattie propped herself up on her forearm to gaze down at him in awe, she bit her lip. How she wished she had her sketchbook now, to depict Sakote in all his naked bliss. With his golden skin, his sculpted contours, his sparkling eyes, his flashing teeth, no one could more perfectly represent unconstrained art…pure emotion…unadulterated nature.
His lips curved into a broad, lazy smile, and he murmured, “Ah, Little Acorn, are you sure you have not done this before?”
She gasped at the idea and gave his shoulder a soft chiding punch. When he opened one eye and frowned in puzzlement, she realized he’d meant no insult.
She tried to explain. “Of course I haven’t done this before. In my world, proper ladies don’t just…” Proper ladies. Now Mattie sounded like her priggish aunt. “One must guard one’s repu-…” How rigid it all seemed. “To do…this…without the benefit of wedlock…”
“Wed-lock?”
The way he said the word made her laugh. Sakote sometimes had a way of making English sound absurd and unnatural. Perhaps it was.
“Where I come from,” she said, rolling onto her back and gazing up dreamily into the leafy bower overhead, “it’s considered…uncivilized…to act upon our desires. Instead, we keep them leashed, hidden away.”
He pushed up on one elbow and frowned down at her. “And this is civilized?”
She nodded. It truly was silly when you said it aloud.
He broke off the stem of a foxtail, rolling it thoughtfully between his fingers. “So if you have a desire to eat?”
“You pretend you’re not hungry at all.”
His scowl deepened. He brushed the furry tip of the weed lightly under her nose. “What if you have an itch that needs to be scratched?”
She twitched beneath his teasing touch. “You keep a stiff upper lip.”
He tossed the stem aside and let the tip of his finger take over, caressing her mouth with infinite patience, making his tortuous way down her throat, between her breasts, and lower. She held her breath as he smoothed over the gathered skirt at her waist, then delved farther, deeper, sinking into the aching space between her thighs.
She moaned as her body responded, rising to meet the lovely pressure of his hand.
“And if you wish to feel pleasure?” he murmured.
“You…deny it.”
His soft chuckle was as rich and delicious as cream. “I think I do not wish to be civilized.”
She smiled on a sigh. “Nor do I,” she whispered, throwing her arms about his neck and crushing her breasts against his chest.
The shadows of the leaves moved gradually from one end of the boulder to the other as Sakote initiated her into his savage, delectable, uncivilized ways. Mattie had never felt more precious, more alive, more part of the world around her as she let him explore every secret of her body and learned every mystery of his.
When he was done with her, she had not an ounce of strength left. Every inch of her bare skin tingled from his arousing, soothing, invigorating touch. And she felt as if the last drop of civilization had been wrung from her like water from a wet rag.
This was paradise, she thought—a place with no responsibility, no guilt, no shame.
“I wish I could stay here forever.” But the cool breeze soon reminded her that the day was growing late, and she was forced to wrap her chemise about her. She sat up, fussing with the ties, trying to restore herself to some semblance of order. “But I suppose I can’t just do whatever my heart desires.”
He sat up beside her, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Why not?”
“Well, because…because…” She twisted her mouth, unable to come up with a reasonable answer. “What about you? Do you always do whatever your heart desires?”
After careful consideration, he replied, "Always."
"Even if it’s...immoral?"
“Immoral?"
"Improper, indecent."
He scowled at her. "I don’t know these words."
She let her hands fall to her lap and stared at him. He really didn’t know those words, and something about that was terribly endearing. "Surely you have things that are forbidden?"
“Ah.” He nodded. "It’s forbidden to eat the wolf. It’s forbidden for men to enter the woman’s hubo. It’s forbidden to speak the names of those who have gone to the other world."
"And this?" Against her will, her gaze slipped to his loins, and she blushed.
He looked at her as if she were crazy. "Why would this be forbidden?"
All she could think was, how odd. A man couldn’t utter a dead person’s name, but it was perfectly admissible to make wild, passionate love in the middle of the woods.
She shook her head in amusement as she smoothed down her skirts. But then an ugly thought occurred to her.
If this wasn’t forbidden—if exchanging intimate caresses in the forest was completely acceptable—then this probably wasn’t the first time he’d done it. In fact, Mattie was probably just one of many women he’d pleasured. She was nobody special. She was just another of his conquests.
She knew she shouldn’t be hurt. It was simply how he’d been raised. But she suddenly felt humiliated, and she turned away in silence, unable to explain the hollow pain in her chest.
"This is forbidden in your world?" he asked cautiously.
Her chin quivering, she tried to give him a casual reply. "No, it’s not forbidden...between a husband and wife."
"Ah. Then you don’t play the pleasure games unti
l you have the marriage?"
Games? Was that all this was to him? A game? It was as if an anvil fell on her heart, and she fought to hold back the tears. Still, a tiny mortified sob escaped her as she tried to climb to her feet.
He caught her by the arm before she could escape. "I’ve made you cry."
"I’m not..." But it was no use to deny it. The tears were thick in her voice.
"If you don’t wish to do this, Mati," he said under his breath, "then we won’t."
"Fine. After all, I’m sure you have plenty of other women to play pleasure games with." The words snapped out of her like a spring from an old pocketwatch, and even the wise voice of regret couldn’t push them back in.
He rubbed his thumb along her arm and screwed up his forehead, baffled. "I didn’t mean to hurt you, Little Acorn. It’s just the Konkow way."
Mattie’s heart sank further into the pit of her stomach, and her throat tightened with tears. The Konkow way. Society’s dictates. What was the difference? She’d given him the gift of her passion, but it wasn’t special to him at all.
Suddenly she was reminded of a story her father had told her once, about a tribe of natives he’d encountered in the tropics. He’d given the chief a valuable strand of pearls as a token of friendship, which the chief had politely accepted as if it were a rare treasure. But the next day, her father had seen the pearls adorning the wrist of a little girl with a dozen such bracelets.
So it must be with Sakote. Her passion, her body, her virtue—the most precious things she possessed—meant nothing to a man who had willing women at his beck and call.
Her eyes filled with hot tears, blurring the dogwood blossoms and the chartreuse ferns and the sun-sparkled creek into a messy palette of watercolors. She was hurt and embarrassed. And though she knew in her heart Sakote had done nothing to deserve her anger, she wanted to hurt him back.
Salvaging the shreds of her dignity, she flung her hair over her shoulder and tried to control the wavering in her voice. "If it’s the Konkow way, then perhaps I should try to learn. Whom do you think I should play the pleasure games with next—Domem or Bercha?"
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