So many questions, and no answers. She didn’t even know if she would go with her father, wherever he might go. He had not wanted her before. Why should he want her with him now?
Besides, she was a grown woman and should not be clinging to her father or counting on him to take care of her.
And what of Hunter? Was he asking himself these same questions?
But it was not the same for a man, even one as young as her brother.
By the time Carson stopped for the night, Winter Fawn still had no answers.
“You’re awfully quiet tonight,” he said, pouring the last of the coffee into their cups.
Her only answer was a soft murmur.
“Is something wrong?” Carson gave a short laugh. “You’ve been forced to leave your people, your friends, your home, because you helped a stranger.”
His words only served to remind her of the uncertainty of her life.
“You’ve been shot, shot at, hailed on, frozen half to death, had nothing to eat for days but a little poor food. That ought to be enough, but why do I get the impression there’s more?”
All Winter Fawn could offer him was a slight smile and a shake of her head. “You are right. That is enough. I’m just tired.”
“Is your wound bothering you?”
She shook her head again. “No more than it should. Not much, really.”
He took a sip of his coffee and looked up at the night sky. “I’ve never seen wounds heal as fast as mine have. And yours. Must be the mountain air.”
She ducked her head. “Aye. That must be it.”
They spoke no more as they finished their coffee. Carson wondered at her pensive expression, the frown line between her eyes. But then, she had plenty to frown about. On top of everything he had named earlier, she had to worry about a man, a virtual stranger, who couldn’t keep his hands or his lips to himself.
Was that what concerned her tonight?
It concerned the hell out of him. He hadn’t wanted to stop kissing her this morning. That realization rocked him. Yet, with the way he’d been reacting to her from the beginning, he supposed it shouldn’t. He wanted her. It was as simple and as complicated as that.
Had he upset her, scared her this morning when he’d kissed her? She hadn’t looked scared or upset. She had looked like he had felt—like she wanted more.
Damn. He didn’t even want to think about that.
He was going to have to sleep beside her one more night. It would be too cold to sleep apart. They would have to share the blankets and buffalo robe. Not to mention the ground sheet; melting snow made for downright wet ground.
As he put out the fire, he steeled himself for the amazingly enjoyable torture of lying next to her one last time. Tomorrow they would reach his ranch. Her father would be there, and even if he wasn’t, there were beds in the house, beds in separate rooms. No more need to sleep beside her. No more excuse.
When he had delayed as long as he reasonably could, he crawled beneath the blankets and found her lying with her back to him. Tension seemed to radiate from her.
“Winter Fawn?” he called softly.
After a pause, she answered. “Aye?”
Carson lay on his back, not touching her. “Have I done something to upset you?”
The soft sound of the blanket shifting accompanied her movement as she turned onto her back. “Of course not.”
“Good,” he said. He was quiet for a long moment, waiting for her to turn her back against him again. When she didn’t, he started to wonder about things he shouldn’t be wondering about. Things like, had she liked his kiss as much as the look on her face that morning had led him to believe? Or had he misread her. Did she like lying next to him as much as he liked lying next to her?
Around and around the questions went, and all the answers he came up with told him she would welcome his touch, and more.
There couldn’t be any “more.” But he could hold her this one last night, couldn’t he? Deliberately hold her, rather than waiting for it to happen in their sleep.
“Are you cold?” Say yes, he silently urged. Say yes and give me an excuse.
“No,” she whispered.
Carson swallowed. Disappointment tasted sharp on his tongue. She wasn’t cold. He’d given her the perfect opportunity to snuggle up next to him if she wanted, and she hadn’t taken it.
“Not too much,” she finally added.
Oh, God. “Come here,” he said, slipping his arm around her and gently inviting her closer.
With a breathy sound that might have been a sigh, she rolled to her side and scooted closer, until she pressed flush against his side. Her head nestled into his shoulder as if the spot had been made specifically for that purpose. Her small, bruised hand rested on his chest.
Carson let out the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He tightened his arm around her and pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Sleep warm.”
“Aye, I will, now.”
If he wasn’t mistaken, that was a smile he heard in her voice.
He went to sleep with a smile of his own, and a nice, warm tingling in his loins.
He woke in the grayness of predawn with Winter Fawn’s knee pressed against his hard-on, and the rest of her sprawled across his chest. When she arched her neck and opened her eyes to look at him, he forgot all the reasons why he should not pleasure them both with a kiss.
What reasons?
It was only a kiss. That’s all he wanted. Just a quiet, good-morning kiss.
With one hand at the back of her head, he pulled her lips closer to his. With his other arm, he held her firmly against his chest. And then he kissed her.
It started out the way he’d planned, a quiet good-morning kiss. A soft sharing of breath, a gentle brush of lips. Then her tongue tentatively touched his lower lip and Carson felt his blood catch fire. He deepened the kiss, taking her mouth with his like a plundering marauder.
He felt her hands clutching at his head. He heard the soft whimper that came from her throat.
Too much. He was taking too much, pushing to hard, too far. With more effort than it should have taken, he pulled his mouth from hers, astounded to realize how hard he was breathing.
“I’m sorry,” he managed.
“No,” she whispered forcefully. She shifted upward along his chest until their lips brushed.
The movement forced her thigh more fully against his groin. Blood rushed there, pooled, heated. He bit back a groan.
“Don’t stop.” It was not a plea she spoke, but a demand, as, this time, her mouth took his with fierce hunger.
Ah, God, he could taste the hunger in her, feel it feed the craving in him even as that craving grew stronger. He took her kiss and gave in return. His hands roamed up and down her back, up, and down, then up beneath the soft doeskin tunic, over the bandage at her waist, to bare flesh. Smooth. Soft. Silky flesh. Warm and living. He couldn’t get enough of it, of her. He wanted to just gobble her up, swallow her whole until she was inside him, a part of him that would always, always be there, warm and exciting and giving.
She shifted atop him and he raised his thigh between hers to keep her from slipping off. God, she was hot. Through his denims and her doeskin skirt he could feel the searing heat between her thighs.
Winter Fawn, too, felt the heat. The heat, and so many other things. Something was there, something she could not define, just beyond her reach. Something she instinctively knew she wanted. Had to have.
Her blood rushed to that secret place between her legs and created a deep, powerful throbbing. So deep and powerful that she pulled her mouth from Carson’s and, gasping for breath, stared down at him in shock.
With his hands on her shoulders, Carson raised his thigh more firmly against the heat between her legs.
Heat gushed through her. The throbbing deepened. With a soft cry, she shifted and pressed against him even more.
“Yes,” he hissed, his breath as harsh as hers. “Feel it. Let it happen.”
An instant later, she did both. The explosion was inside her, shocking in its intensity. The scream was breathless. On and on, the sharp ripples slammed through her, rocking her. Changing her. Forever.
Carson watched her face as it happened. A deep shudder wracked him. Watching her pleasure was the most arousing thing that had ever happened to him. He was torn in two with the need to raise her skirt and bury himself inside her, feel her inner muscles clamp around him and give him the same sort of pleasure she had just found. Yet if he sought his own pleasure, he would miss the chance to soothe her, to ease her back to the world, back into herself.
Not to mention that she was the daughter of a man who trusted him to keep her safe. Even from himself.
No, he would not—could not—take his pleasure. But pleasuring her was proving to be fulfilling in its own right. He was man enough, he hoped, to give unselfishly to this woman who had already given him so much.
Gently he eased her back down onto his chest and wrapped his arms around her. He held her there, stroking her back, her hair, her arms, praising her with whispered words.
When Winter Fawn once again became aware of her surroundings, the first thing she realized was that Carson held her safely in his arms. She was wrapped in a cocoon of warmth. She could almost feel the caring in his embrace.
The second thing she realized was that the hard ridge of his arousal still pressed beneath her thigh. Slowly she pushed herself up on arms that were alarmingly weak and looked down at him in the gray light. “Why did you do that?”
His expression was tender, yet somber. “Because, for all you’ve given me, this was something I could give you.”
Winter Fawn felt a squeezing sensation around her heart. “Payment? You give me this for payment?”
“No.” His arms tightened around her. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just wanted to give you something.”
“But you did not take anything for yourself. Is this not something that is to be shared between a man and woman?”
“Between the right man, and the right woman.”
The squeezing around her heart tightened painfully. “And I am the wrong woman?”
“I am the wrong man. Don’t think for a minute that I didn’t get anything out of this.”
“You dinna get what you should have.” She rubbed her thigh against him and watched his eyes close, felt his chest heave.
“Stop that,” he said with a low groan and a short laugh. “I got what I wanted.” His eyes opened and stared into hers. “I’ve never…watched a woman find her pleasure before. There was nothing unselfish about it. It was something I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Thank you for giving me this.”
Winter Fawn did not know whether to laugh exultantly, or weep in despair. She laid her head on his shoulder. “You are a generous man, Carson Dulaney.”
“I’m a selfish son of a bitch.” There was a smile in his voice. “Don’t ever forget it.”
“I won’t.” She knew he meant for her to never forget he was selfish, but what she meant by her answer was something else entirely. Never would she forget this morning and the man who had shown her what it was to experience her womanhood.
Before the sun was up they were on their way. They followed the creek west and up toward its source. Snow clung to the north-facing sides of the canyon, but the warm wind and sunshine of the day before had cleared the south-facing wall. Gradually the canyon widened into a grassy valley bordered with tall pines. The creek narrowed until it was nothing more than a stretch of wet grass instead of a flowing stream.
Then there was no more evidence of the stream, and they crested the pass and started down the drier, western side of the Wet Mountains.
Winter Fawn had never seen the Wet Mountain Valley. Bordered on the west by the high, snow-packed Sierra Blancas, the valley stretched south as far as the eye could see, thick with cottonwoods still winter-bare along the creeks, and wide wetlands of willows.
Our People, she knew, would love it here. The western slopes of the Wet Mountains were drier than the valley floor and looked to have good ground for a small village here and there.
But there were the Utes to consider. This was their territory. She also suspected that this valley would be colder and get more snow than the small valley where Our People wintered on the other side of the Wets.
But the Utes would not come today, or anytime soon. There was too much snow in the Sierra Blancas. They would wait for an easier time.
With her arms around Carson’s chest, Winter Fawn leaned against his back and watched a heard of deer, unafraid of the intruders approaching, amble toward a stream.
Carson confused her. The things he had made her feel that morning had been so incredible, she could not fathom why he would deny himself those same feelings. Perhaps it wasn’t the same for a man.
Winter Fawn nearly laughed aloud. She had always heard that it was the man who enjoyed the intimate encounters, and the woman who must endure. Perhaps she and Carson were made backwards.
He said she should wait to give herself to the man who would be her husband. What man would that be? Certainly not Crooked Oak. Never Crooked Oak.
If she did not return to her grandmother’s lodge, how was she to ever get a husband? The usual way was for a man to chose the girl he wanted and make arrangements with her male relatives.
Slowly Winter Fawn raised her head from Carson’s shoulder. Her mother had not waited for a man to make an offer for her. Smiling Woman had told the tale often when Winter Fawn had been a child. She had come across the white man in the forest.
Winter Fawn smiled fondly. Her mother had seen the white man and had thought he was smiling at her. Right then and there, she had fallen in love with his smile.
Smiling Woman had not been in the habit of falling for a handsome smile, nor had she been in the habit of approaching white men. But she had felt drawn to the big man with hair the color of flames. And the hair was not only on his head, but his face as well!
It was only as she had neared him that Smiling Woman had realized the man was not smiling, but grimacing in pain. His foot was caught in the steel teeth of a white man’s bear trap.
Using a stout pine branch, she had pried his foot free and helped him back to the village. There she helped her mother and the medicine man nurse him back to health.
And then, Winter Fawn thought with a soft smile, Smiling Woman had pursued Red Beard shamelessly. “I knew,” she had told her daughter years later, “that I would welcome no other man but him to my blankets.”
Mother, Mother, I fear that I know just how you felt.
But no, Winter Fawn told herself, she was not in love with this white man. She knew naught of love. She would do both him and herself far better service by keeping an eye out over her shoulder to make certain Crooked Oak had not found their trail and followed them to this peaceful valley.
Crooked Oak and his men did not follow. When the blizzard had struck they had ridden before it down the mountains and returned to camp. They were cowards, Crooked Oak thought with scorn. Children, to run and hide from a little storm. He was furious at their behavior. Even more furious with himself for accompanying them. He should have let them go and followed the white man on his own.
Now he might never find Winter Fawn. At least, not alive. That fool white man had headed straight into the teeth of the blizzard. In the spring they would probably find his body, and Winter Fawn’s.
Crooked Oak reigned down every curse he could think of upon the white man’s head. How am I to achieve my
rightful greatness among Our People without Winter Fawn?
Winter Fawn was part of his destiny. Nothing was possible if he did not have her.
She could not be dead. He would not let himself believe that all his plans were in vain, that his sacred vision had been false. She was alive, and he would find her if he had to search clear into Ute territory; if he had to search alone.
“Come,” he said to the men gathered in his lodge—the same five men who had ridden with him. The same ones who had turned away from the storm and made for home like children afraid of the dark. “Surely it is warm enough for you now,” he said with a sneer.
No one said anything as they followed him out of the lodge into the sunshine. They had all argued viciously as they had huddled around Crooked Oak’s fire while the storm had raged. All but Crooked Oak had fallen sullenly silent the next day when the warm Chinook winds came.
“Where do you intend we go?” Two Feathers was the only one among them brave enough to speak directly to Crooked Oak. “Do we try to pick up their trail again?”
“Yes. But first we go get the wagon.” What heros they would be, Crooked Oak thought, when they returned to camp with a wagon load of goods for everyone to share. There might be food, clothes, who knew what. “Our People will welcome the goods and supplies. Perhaps there is ammunition.”
“We should split up,” Talks Loud stated. “Some go for the wagon, the others after the white man and Winter Fawn.”
“We stay together,” Crooked Oak said sharply.
“Crooked Oak is right.” Red Bull nodded. “The wagon is on the white man’s road. If there is trouble, six of us are stronger than three.”
The others concurred. Cowards, Crooked Oak thought. Were they not Dogmen, the fiercest of warriors? It would take more than a dozen white men to best three Dogmen.
But he did not discourage them in their fear. He did not trust any but himself to see the job done. Talks Loud would keep too much of the loot for himself and not share it with the others. Two Feathers would see the goods fairly distributed, but if Crooked Oak let him, and took off after Winter Fawn, then he himself would get none of the supplies.
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