As the protruding member surged with life, its warmth increased. A moan escaped the parted lips of the still dazed Gray Eagle as Leah intentionally enflamed his hazy senses. His mind was precariously clouded by the deluding peyote. He automatically responded to this exquisite dream of his beautiful and gentle Shalee. His body was ensnared by the intoxicating sensations in his throbbing manhood. Gray Eagle’s hips arched upwards to freely offer himself to the vision of the woman he loved and desperately needed.
Passionate moans rumbled in his throat and chest as his right hand sought to caress the body within his hazy reach. His left hand seized a firm breast and teased the taut nipple between his- deft fingers, the right one wandering into her auburn hair. How he had missed his love, but now she was home again….
Leah thought she would go mad with the fierce cravings consuming her body, yearnings he was torturing and increasing. Her body a sheet of fire and her nerves tingling, she voraciously savored the feel of him. His body shuddered with overpowering needs. Thrilled by her heady effect upon him and blissfully accepting the pleasures he was giving her, she worked enticingly and generously as she stroked, delighted, and teased the masterful object held lovingly in her hands.
His deft and seeking hands worked just as feverishly to please his beautiful Shalee. In a wild frenzy, Leah’s hand rapidly and gently ascended and descended upon the flaming shaft connected to the squirming hips that plunged it upwards time and time again in search of the stimulating pleasures she freely offered it. She willed herself not to lunge upon it as she was sorely tempted to do. Impatient to feed her great hunger for him, she avidly entreated his full and promising member to demand its right to empty its contents into her. Surely he could not withstand her imploring actions much longer.
Impassioned to the fullest degree, Gray Eagle reached for his love and drew her up to him, covering her mouth with his, ravishing it before doing the same to the creamy mounds that burned his chest. His mouth and fingers sought to drive her wild with the same fires that burned fiercely and brightly within his barely restrained body. She groaned and writhed upon the mats, yielding completely to his onslaught.
As his mouth seared her lips and her face, Leah made an irrevocable mistake. Her throaty voice pleaded for him to take her, to allow her to push painful memories of Shalee from his mind, to sate his great needs within her fiery body, to permit her to take the place of his lost love. His mind battled to sober and clear quickly. He stiffened and pulled away as he realized it was not Shalee driving him mindless with love and passion. Shalee was dead; Leah was brazenly seducing him!
“Hiya!” he harshly rejected her as his body struggled to master its flames and desires. He shuddered at the ache that painfully knotted his defiant manhood. He struggled to find strength to resist this brazen temptation until his senses could return in full force.
Leah rubbed her naked and shapely body against his, pulling upon his neck to return his lips to hers. She urgently pleaded, “Please, Gray Eagle. My body and heart burn for you. You need me. Let me ease the hunger in your manhood and your heart. You can take me anytime you desire me. Treat me as you wish: hurt me, take me, use me. I don’t care. I must feel you inside me. Please. Shalee is gone forever. Yet your body burns for what Leah can give. It will be our secret. Take me,” she desperately coaxed. Before he could react to her stunning words, she resolved to tempt him beyond control or rebuff. Her hand closed around his still erect member and she stroked it feverishly.
Unbidden but pleasing agony swept over him. He shuddered. Carnal cravings pleaded for hasty release, for he was precariously stimulated. He seized her soft shoulders and tried to push her away from the torrid shaft that practically demanded to be left where it was. His mind raged a fierce battle with his body. “Hiya, Leah,” he repeated, his strained and difficult reluctance encouraging her. Leah did not obey his shaky command.
Weakened and aroused, Gray Eagle was briefly tempted to permit his body this humiliating but desperately needed release. For the first time since Shalee’s irretrievable loss, he was experiencing an emotion other than anguish and void. Was his ravaged heart enjoying this degrading punishment, for surely submitting to this castigator with Shalee’s likeness was a purgative penalty? Were his heart and body separate warriors? Could one defeat the other? Could a physical victory of the body assuage an emotional defeat of the heart?
Back and forth his distorted and deluded mind fiercely wrangled for what seemed ages while Leah worked greedily upon the traitorous flesh, but only moments actually passed. He could not betray Shalee in this repulsive manner. He firmly shoved upon Leah’s body to end this demented agony.
“Please, Gray Eagle. Don’t you see how much you need this? He is filled with fire and war. Let me cool his fever and give him peace,” she seductively wheedled, knowing he was swiftly gaining the strength to halt this madness. She struggled to regain her enticing position, but he would not allow it. “How can you deny him this way? Greater pains will attack him if I do not please him. Let me feed him.” Her hand reached for the shaft.
Gray Eagle painfully seized her wrists and snarled, “Hiya! Ya, Leah!”
“How can I go when I need you and you need me? Plunge him into me until our bodies cry out in pleasure,” she urgently coaxed.
“Ya, Leah,” he stated again, his voice now distinct and cold.
“You are cruel, Gray Eagle! Why do you create such fires within me if you will not put them out? Don’t you realize I love you? No man matches your beauty or prowess. Each time I see you, my body burns to have yours. You need a woman to take care of you and Bright Arrow. He needs a woman to comfort him,” she declared of the stiff extension that seemed to point accusingly at her. “If you cannot bring yourself to enter my body, then let me drink of its sweetness. Let me drain the fires that burn within him.”
Her brazen words shocked and disarmed him. How could a female speak so wantonly and plead for her enemy to ravish her? What strange lust crazed her mind? Was his prowess so large she could not resist it? Why was she willing to deny her own vivid needs and simply sate his? Did she believe there was great magic in his seeds, or perhaps in her skills? Her glazed eyes were glued to his manhood as if mesmerized by it. In spite of his resolve and control, the traitorous warrior flamed anew and stood proud and tall before her visibly appreciative gaze.
She lunged for the object of her lust. He threw her backwards to the hard ground and pinned her there. How dare this lowly white slave tempt him to such a betrayal of his lingering love for Shalee! Leah continued to plead for their union. Furious with himself and her, he rashly debated if he should brutally stab his manhood into her many times and punish her evil lust and rash actions! For once, Gray Eagle was irrationally and vindictively compelled to savagely rape a woman, this infuriating and reckless female! If he hurt her badly, then she would leave him alone! She would then avoid him! Then she could not entice him to respond to the likeness of Shalee within her!
The weight of his shoulders upon her wrists caused her to wince in sadistic pleasure. As if a message from the Great Spirit, slivers of light from the full moon entered the ventilation opening and blazed across Leah’s face and body. A bold invitation gleamed in her eyes. A smug and taunting smile curled her lips. Suddenly she did not even slightly remind him of his lost love. Just before losing his temper and vengefully ripping into her womanhood, control and reality assaulted his warring emotions and conquered them.
“Ya, Leah,” he ominously warned, resentment and fury flashing menacingly in his igneous eyes. The lines upon his face were harsh and unrelenting. Danger permeated the oppressive atmosphere. It was staggeringly clear the battle was lost to her, for now.
There was but one thing to do, graciously and proudly yield defeat. As he moved to sit upon his mat to await her departure, she slowly sat up and reached for her garments. After pulling them on, she looked down at him. “Perhaps it is too soon for you to take another woman. When the time is ripe, come to me and I will please you bey
ond your wildest dreams or needs,” she confidently vowed. “Shalee is gone forever, but the needs of your body are not. I will never refuse you any pleasure you seek upon me. I have loved you and desired you since the first moment I saw you. Send for me, Gray Eagle, when your hungers become too great to bear.”
With those provocative statements, Leah calmly left his tepee. As she stretched out upon her sleeping mat, fury was the first emotion to lie with her. Gradually it deserted her company for vanity to take its place. She smiled as she realized her daring act had accomplished several vital facts: Gray Eagle had found it nearly impossible to reject her advances; in time, he would weaken even more as his body’s needs increased with a lengthy denial and he helplessly recalled her many skills; he had temporarily mistaken her for Shalee; with effort, she could force that delusion to happen more frequently and be timely; he had not appeared to reject her as a white woman, only as a woman who desired to take Shalee’s place. The situation wasn’t hopeless after all, she promptly decided.
Little did the rosy-eyed Leah know how deeply Gray Eagle loved and missed Shalee. Little did she realize how great his pride and strength were. But Gray Eagle was all too aware of his emotions….
Chapter Five
The lovely creature feverishly thrashing upon the buffalo mat was totally unaware of the multiple dramas taking place around her. Her body burned with the fiery illness that raged within it, pressing upon her chest like some heavy mound of dirt. The bleeding from the jagged wound upon her right temple had finally ceased its steady flow into her auburn hair, which was fanned out around her head. From all appearances, the ointment and bandage were doing their best to deny infection, to ease the pain, to seal the laceration, and to reduce the swelling and purplish cast upon the ivory skin. She babbled incoherently during her delirium, always in English. She called for people her rescuers did not know; yet, she never cried out the names that should have been upon her lips.
Shalee had been enslaved in the fiery world of blackness for the past four days, since the pair of black eyes filled with panic and love had touched upon her limp body entangled in a log jam at the river’s edge. Relief and fear washed over him as he glanced down to sight the beautiful face of Shalee barely held above the greedy water’s surface by long strands of flowing auburn hair entangled in the branches.
He thanked Napi for leading his feet to where this lovely creature was fiercely, but unknowingly, resisting the calls of the Bird of Death. How had she come to be swept away by the forceful and deadly currents of the river? The Oglala camp was situated two days’ ride to the west of their camp! The river that moved past that camp joined with this one many, many steps from here. Even if she had accidentally fallen into the rushing flow, how had she been carried so far away from the Oglala Camp and still survived? Surely the Great Spirit watched over her and had spared her life.
But she was injured badly. Either some treacherous enemy had attacked her and the Oglala village or some heavy branch had smashed into her skull after she fell into the water. If not for her loose hair, which had ensnared itself upon the upper branches of the floating log, Shalee would be dead now. He had carefully stepped forward into the icy water and untangled her hair. He lifted her seemingly lifeless body in his strong arms. She was so cold and numb; her lips and flesh were tinged like the blue heavens. Placing his ear to her chest, he could hardly breathe until he detected the faint thudding that seemed to shout of hope.
In spite of the heat from her body, she shuddered with a perilous chill as he lay her upon the ground. He must act quickly or she would die anyway. Taking his knife, he cut her saturated clothes from her body, then removed her moccasins. He seized the blanket from his horse’s back and dried her, roughly teasing the flesh to regain some warmth and blood flow. He called her name many times, but she was too deep in her illness to hear him or to waken. She coughed as the frigid water inflamed her lungs and denied her enough air to breathe easily.
The troubled warrior stripped off his buckskin shirt and put it over her naked frame. He then removed his leather leggings and placed them upon her lower body. Because of his towering height, the legs were long enough to cover her chilled feet. Dressed only in a breechcloth, the biting winds nipped at his bronze flesh. As he feared, the snow began to fall, lightly at first, but steadily increasing in force and amount. He must get her to his village swiftly, for she was sinking fast. He wrapped her garments in his damp blanket and carried her to his horse. He laid her across the animal’s broad back before him, hoping the position would send blood to her upper and lower body. Tearing a strip from the bottom of her own dress, he secured it tightly around her head to halt the flow of blood from the gash there. He kneed his horse into a gallop to make camp as soon as possible, the fleecy snowflakes filling each track he made, later to wet the earth and cause it to ooze into the impressions and obliterate them.
For three torturous days, the frantic warrior and his sullen wife had aided the medicine man in his attempt to save the life of the daughter of their own chief. Two messengers had been sent on their urgent missions to Chief Black Cloud in the Sisseton Camp and to Gray Eagle in the Oglala Camp. Both should be at her side very soon. But as two more days passed, neither man approached the winter camp of the Blackfoot Tribe. The warrior left in charge of the camp wondered at this curious event; he had no way of knowing the two braves had been slain before delivering their messages. His mind plagued by the sufferings of the woman who would have become his wife if not for Gray Eagle, Brave Bear had little encouragement to consider the feelings of his past rival where Shalee was concerned. Memories of his love for her returned to stir dangerous tenderness within his heart.
As fiercely as he tried to conceal and master his deep affection for the girl upon the mat, he failed to do so. Each time Chela caught him gazing longingly at Shalee with such worry and love in his dark eyes, resentment and jealousy flared in her mind. It was bad enough this half-breed girl had stolen her rightful mate many winters ago, but to linger in the heart of her present mate was too much to generously accept. She had been pledged to Gray Eagle, but Shalee had invaded his heart and life and taken him from her. To appease Brave Bear’s loss of her hand, Gray Eagle had given Chela to Brave Bear for a mate. Indeed, Brave Bear was a worthy and excellent replacement for Gray Eagle, but both men had lost their hearts to the half-white girl lying upon the mat in her own tepee, perhaps dying.
Chela wondered if she should fervently pray for Shalee’s death to end her magic spell upon both men. If she had not been proven the daughter of Black Cloud, she would still be Gray Eagle’s offensive white slave; and she, Chela, would be Gray Eagle’s proud mate. These past five winters with Brave Bear had been good ones, even happy ones. Why did Shalee have to intrude upon this enforced compromise and remind Brave Bear of his love for her! What was keeping Gray Eagle away? Surely he could come to his injured wife’s side within five or more moons! Was the meeting in the Sisseton Camp so vital that both Shalee’s father and husband would allow her to die without coming to check on her?
If Black Cloud would hurry home, Shalee could be taken to his tepee, away from her husband’s desirous gaze. Even if Gray Eagle and Shalee had argued and she had run off, why would he refuse to come to her side knowing she was gravely ill? Chela was bewildered and vexed.
It was true she and Chela had established a mutual acceptance of each other. They could not be called friends, for too much had happened between them in the past. Neither had forgotten that Chela had attempted to stab Shalee to rid Gray Eagle of her magical spell. Nor had they forgotten how Shalee had boldly argued against the lashing Chela received for her reckless act. When Shalee visited her father in the Blackfoot camp or Chela visited her family in the Oglala camp, both women were polite and genial. Chela had even come to ignore the fact that her husband had loved and desired Shalee as his wife before losing her to Gray Eagle during a fierce challenge. Chela could not deny that Shalee and Gray Eagle were deeply in love, for she had viewed their attract
ion and passion many times. Chela scolded herself for blaming Shalee for Brave Bear’s weakness for her; yet, the venomous teeth of the green monster continued to nip at her heart and mind.
Shortly before midday, Shalee quietened most noticeably. Brave Bear jumped up from his seat by the campfire and raced to her mat, fearing her breathing had halted for all time. He sighed heavily in relief. “The fever has broken, Chela. Napi will spare her life. Still, I fear for her safety, for she is very weak and pale.”
Chela joined him at Shalee’s side. “She is strong, Brave Bear. If Napi wills it, soon she will awaken and return to her husband’s side,” she stated factually, but tenderly. “Gray Eagle and Black Cloud will be happy we have taken such good care of her, if they ever return,” she added snippily. “What words could be more important than news of Shalee’s survival? If I had been injured and lay dying, would you not rush to my side?” she asked. “My mind does not understand the slowness of her family,” he replied, not wishing to scold them by name. “Even now, she could still die.”
“It often seems love and passion must yield to war and a man’s honor. Does the face of a chief honor his rank before his love, even when she lies near death? I had thought Shalee was more important to Wanmdi Hota than even his own life. Why does he linger?” she reasoned aloud.
“I do not know, Chela.” To soothe the lines of resentment from her brow, he smiled and stated, “If my wife were gravely ill, I would go to her side the moment such news touched my ears.” He caressed her cheek. Chela had been a good mate. It was not right for dreams of Shalee to bring sadness to her brown eyes or trouble between them. “He will come for her soon. We will help her to get well quickly to return to her family. Do not overtire yourself, wife; you carry the son of Brave Bear,” he proudly reminded her.
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