The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series)

by Shirl Henke

  “What a bleak and lonely mission you've charged me with, Mother,” he murmured, “trying to save our people even when I know their way of life is ending, when I wish only to die.”

  He leaned forward, looking out across the vast undulations of mountains and valleys spread before him in the dim light, praying for some trace of her. Then he saw it, a faint wisp of smoke against the bluffs. Was it a trick of the air at sunrise? He murmured a prayer to the Everywhere Spirit and kicked the dun into a gallop. When he saw the small figure huddled beneath the mound of robes, lying so still beside the faint embers of the smoldering fire, his heart twisted with dread.

  “Stevie!” He leaped from his horse and ran to her, cradling her in his arms. She lay cold and unresponsive. Frantically he buried his face against her neck and felt the faintest hum of a pulse. She was alive but almost frozen. Frantically he chaffed her hands and face, breathing his warm breath against her cold cheeks and fingers. She stirred and murmured something drowsy and incoherent, then drifted into unconsciousness again.

  Chase could see this exposed place would offer no shelter if another storm blew up. Looking at the western sky, he knew that was a distinct possibility. He gathered her in his arms and kicked out the small fire, grateful at least that she had been able to build it. Its warmth and signaling smoke had saved her life...or at least he prayed it had. Now that he'd found her, he could not chance leaving the sign for an enemy to follow.

  “Can you hear me, Stevie? You have to wake up. Help me. You can't sleep or you'll never wake up again.” The low urgency of his voice brought a faint murmur. He thought she whispered his name but could not be certain.

  “I'm going to put you up on my horse. You have to hold on. Can you do it?”

  Without waiting for her response, he lifted her across the dun's withers. Somehow although still semiconscious she hung on as he swung up behind her and rode up the sharp rise of the western mountain. Please let my memory be good. Then he saw the partially concealed opening of the cave. “Now if a bear hasn't decided to hibernate inside, I'll have you warm and dry in a few minutes, Stevie,” he murmured to her as he carried her up to the opening.

  Stephanie felt the prickle of pain in her face, hands and feet, like the sting of tiny needles at first, gradually building to a stark agony. It felt as if her bones were being smashed by a great mallet. She had been having nightmares about blood and death, wolves and Chase. Chase was here, holding her—or had she dreamed that, too? Her head was muzzy and her eyes refused to open, so heavy were the lids. Then she sensed his presence. He was touching her and she was naked beneath the covers. He must have removed her clothes and now he chaffed her arms and legs, moving over her body. His hands felt warm and strong. She opened her eyes and blinked. They were in a cave. The leap of firelight danced over the walls and gave off sensuous lovely heat, but not half so sensuous or lovely as his touch against her bare skin.

  “Isn't this where we started?” she asked, light-headed, the words slurred.

  His expression was tense. ‘‘You're awake at last. I've been trying to revive you for half an hour. The fire's finally begun to warm the air.”

  “It feels heavenly. Where are we?”

  “Not far from where I found you. I remembered this cave, which fortunately wasn't occupied. We had to have shelter before the next storm blows in.” As he spoke he continued massaging her cold limbs. He could feel her shivering in spite of the warmth provided by the extra furs and robes he'd brought along. She was practically buried in them and still he could not break the chills gripping her.

  He cursed beneath his breath as he pulled off his wet buckskins and climbed under the robe. Pulling her against him, he placed her between the heat of his body and that of the fire. “Damn you for running away, Stevie. What the hell made you think you could find your way through hundreds of miles of mountain wilderness in the dead of winter?”

  His soft breath against the sensitive skin of her neck set off alarm bells in her head, breaking through the comforting lethargy her brush with freezing had wrought. The crisp abrasion of his body hair rubbed against her delicate skin, tickling, enticing. In spite of his angry accusations, she could feel the pressure of his erection against her buttocks. She was back to full consciousness now, growing warm—altogether too warm!

  “I wasn't certain I could find my way out...but I had to try, Chase.” She felt utterly vulnerable—not only to him as they lay naked beneath the covers, but to herself, to the cravings of her hungry young body which had known lust but never love. If he took her now she could not lie to herself. It would not be rape. She ached to turn into his arms and beg him to hold her, to love her.

  He could feel the awakening awareness in her body and the answering leap of his own flesh which he could not have subdued even if he wished it. Chase admitted to himself that he did not wish it. He sighed into the silk of her hair, dyed a rich dark hue by the firelight, the color of winter molasses. His fingers stroked the gleaming masses and her tense shoulder beneath. “I want you, Stevie...and you want me,” he murmured.

  ‘That's why I tried to escape, Chase. This is wrong.’’

  “Maybe it is—by your laws—but not by mine.”

  ‘That's right. I'm merely a slave, yours to do with as you wish.”

  The words stung. “You know better, Stevie. You ran because you knew I wouldn't have to force you the way a warrior takes a captive.” He turned her on her back and raised his body above hers, pressing her into the soft furs. His mouth came down in a fierce, life-affirming kiss as he moved his lips over hers, waiting for her to open to him, his tongue teasing along the seam until she complied. Then he probed the delicate recesses, tasting, savoring, letting the bittersweet memories of all their impassioned kisses of so long ago replay in his mind.

  Groaning, Chase buried his fingers in her hair, holding her face framed between his hands. He continued to savage her mouth, his body growing taut as a bowstring at full draw, ready to release the power of an arrow. His back arched up and his hips ground into hers in an uncontrollable surge of long-denied passion.

  Stephanie was lost in the hot rich passion of the kiss. For her, too, it evoked wondrous memories of a far happier time so long ago. But when he arched his back and bucked his hips, the power of his hard phallus scalded her. She felt her hands embracing his flexing shoulders and knew she was about to press her nails into the bunched muscles and urge him to drive deep inside her.

  “No!” She quickly lowered her arms and pressed them against the hard slab of his chest, trying to push him away as she turned her head, crying angrily, “You really are the white wolf in that dream—ripping the gray one limb from limb. You take what you want no matter who you hurt!”

  Chase froze. He stared down at her, his eyes wide with incredulity. All the air seemed to leave his lungs, searing them. “What do you know of a white wolf fighting a gray?”

  As he pulled away from her in shock, the hoarseness of his voice startled her. She turned her head and looked into his eyes, which burned like two black coals. The flickering firelight cast his harshly beautiful features in shadows, giving them a satanic intensity.

  “I—I had a nightmare back there, when I fell asleep in the snow,” she began, uncertain of how to explain what was more hidden than revealed, an intangible figment of her mind as it prepared to die, obscured like wisps of cloud scudding across the moon.

  He sat up beside her, pulling one robe about his body and offering her another. Disconcerted by her nakedness, she seized it and wrapped it tightly around herself, scooting as far away from him as she could on the narrow confines of the pallet.

  “Tell me about this dream.”

  His manner set her teeth on edge yet beneath the arrogant command she sensed confusion, even a strange desperation. “It's hazy now.” She rubbed her eyes and rested her head in her hands for a moment, trying to gather her scattered thoughts. “There were two wolves, huge and fierce looking, one pure white.” She paused to steal a look at him.
His eyes were hooded now, glittering obsidian slits fixed intently on her. “The...the other was iron gray. They circled each other, then lunged, attacking with such savage violence it was incredible.”

  He let her describe the dream sequence in a terse, halting narration, interjecting a few questions, asking her to dredge up more detail. When she reached the part where she recognized the wolf as him and followed after him, crying out his name, he felt the final shock of recognition. “How can you know these things?”

  Frightened by his intensity, she replied, “I don't know anything. It was only a nightmare.”

  “What you've just described so precisely is my medicine dream.”

  Her eyes widened and she blanched. While living with the Cheyenne she had learned a great deal about their customs and beliefs. She had even dared to ask Red Bead once about the scars on his chest. “The vision you received during the Sun Dance?”

  He nodded, looking at her strangely, with a trepidation bordering on fear. “When I left you in Boston it was the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life...until I met you again in Rawlins and brought you to my people. I'd always told myself that you could never belong here. You weren't destined to share my life because you were white.” A soft wistfulness wreathed his face. “Perhaps I was wrong. The Powers, for their own mysterious reasons, have cast our fates together.” Rising to his knees in front of her, he extended his hand, palm up.

  Now it was Chase who looked utterly vulnerable. He's afraid. She was frightened, too, as she reached out and placed her soft pale hand in his much larger dark one. “I violate every ideal by which I've lived...yet I can do nothing else but come to you,” she said softly as he drew her up into his arms.

  He dropped his robe and started to slip hers from her shoulders. She flinched. At once his hands grew still as he murmured into her ear, “What's wrong, Stevie?”

  “I've never...that is...it's daylight and...”

  “Phillips acted the gentleman and spared your sensibilities? He never undressed you?”

  Unable to speak she shook her head, her hair shielding her face as she hung her head down.

  Chase felt the anger churn deep inside of him, thinking of the perfunctory and cold way his beautifully passionate Stevie had been initiated into the marriage bed. He would make amends. Tipping her chin up with one hand, he held her close with his other splayed across the small of her back. Her cheeks were flushed and her lashes fanned down on them like sable brushes. He kissed the tip of her nose, her eyelids, temples, the soft indentations at the edges of her mouth, murmuring, “Proper Eastern gentlemen don't know how to make love to a woman. Don't ever be ashamed of your passions, Stevie. They're a gift of the most special kind, meant to be shared between a man and a woman.”

  Hugh had always made her feel cold and inept in bed, accused her of driving him to seek other women. She felt so uncertain, so insecure, yet the sweetness of Chase's kisses and the seductive purr of his voice made her bold enough to ask, “What if I don't please you? What if—”

  “What if a starving man would not want food?” he crooned, smiling into her hair as his fingers began to massage her back and shoulders very gently through the heavy fur. “I've already seen all there is to see of your beautiful body...and what I saw I liked very, very much, remember? And you've just recently seen all of me, even if I was too feverish to enjoy it at the time.”

  She could feel Chase's body heat through her heavy robe, feel the magic of his hands as they slowly worked their way past the barrier of fur and began to caress her hips, gliding around to the ripe slim curves of her buttocks. He kneaded them, sending exquisite ripples of pleasure coursing through her, pressing her lower body against his. All the while he continued to rain soft delicate kisses across her face, down to the wildly beating pulse at the base of her throat.

  She threw back her head, clinging to his shoulders, baring her neck to his lips. A hot, dizzying flush spread across her like a blanket of fire, sending her blood racing madly through her veins. She was so warm, burning up. A small incoherent cry escaped her lips as she felt the robe slip from her body. Chase enveloped her in his arms then and centered his mouth on hers for a deep dizzying kiss. Her lips, already parted, accepted the invasion of his tongue, feeling small frissons of delight as its tip probed hers, sweeping around her teeth, darting and teasing until she grew bold enough to answer in kind.

  When he felt her response, it was all he could do not to press her down onto the furs and plunge into her. Schooling himself to go slow, Chase let her explore his mouth timidly at first, encouraging and coaxing her to greater boldness, until their exchange grew fierce and breathless. Tearing his lips from hers, he trailed soft nips and brushing caresses down her throat to her collarbone, then lower, taking her breasts in his hands as she knelt before him. Reverently he raised the small perfect globes, letting his thumbs graze and tease the nipples, which at the first touch of his hands had hardened into tight little rosettes of palest pink.

  The touch of his hands on her breasts, raising them, cupping them and caressing their fiery ache, was scalding in intensity. But then he took one nipple in his mouth and tugged on it. What had been a tingling ache suddenly blossomed into an intense throbbing deep in the core of her body. She arched her back, pulling his head closer as he switched from one breast to the other, repeating the breathless magic. Her fingers worked their way deep into the coarse shiny thickness of his night black hair, holding him to her as she repeated his name over and over, like a litany.

  Chase raised his head at last from the feast of her breasts, his fingers splayed around her rib cage. He looked up into her flushed face and met her eyes, heavy lidded and dilated with passion now. ‘‘Lie back,” he commanded softly, helping her to stretch out on the pallet of fur on which they knelt. The rosy glow of firelight gilded her creamy flesh, so pale in contrast to the coppery darkness of his hands moving over it. He let one hand slide slowly from the soft mound of her breast over the hollow indentation of her slender waist, then skim across the concave silk of her belly.

  “You are even more incredibly lovely than I remembered,” he said raggedly, staring down at her.

  Stephanie could suddenly see that long-ago day when they were in the hunting lodge and he had stood over her naked body, appraising it with frank male desire. What a different course both of their lives would have taken if he had not pulled away from her then, if he had made love to her. Her eyes locked with his as if he, too, were recalling that fateful day. “I only wish...I...”

  “Shh...this was always fated to be. We just didn't know it then. But now we do.” He took her hand and brought it to his lips, planting soft wet kisses on her palm and fingertips, then pressed it to his chest where his heart slammed hard and furious as a war drum.

  Her fingers burrowed into the black hair. She thrilled at the racing of his heart, knowing it beat so for her. Then her hand felt the heavy ridge of the Sun Dance scar, alien and forbidding, yet as much a part of Chase as the dream which sprung from it—a dream she had mysteriously shared. She placed a soft kiss on the scar, then on the other one opposite it, unable to imagine the agony he must have endured to belong with the Cheyenne. “I belong only to you,” she whispered.

  “I've waited all my life to hear you say that,” he replied, trembling with relief that she could accept who and what he was.

  Stephanie marveled at the differences in their bodies, his dark, hard and sinewy, with crisp beguiling patterns of hair on his chest, arms and legs. She pressed her mouth to the muscled wall of his chest, letting the tickle of hair brush her face as her lips sought the hardened coppery coin of a flat male nipple. Small white teeth nipped at it and he cried out in pleasure. She repeated the caress on the other one, nuzzling his chest and murmuring, “I love the feel of this.”

  He smiled, twining her warm bronze hair in his fingers as he said, “I always hated having a hairy body—a reminder of my Remington blood...white blood, but now I'm glad if it pleases you.”

  When
she raised her head from his chest, he lowered his and kissed her once more, moving his body across hers. One long powerful leg pressed her into the pallet as he insinuated it between her thighs, spreading them. Willingly she let her legs slide apart, opening for him. His hand moved down, sweeping over her hip, then across her belly to reach the soft dark curls at her mound. When he massaged it she moaned into his mouth. The feel of his hand on her there sent a raw jolt of need through her. The low insistent ache deep in her belly had been growing with every love word, each caress. She felt her hips arch up, her pelvis tilt against the massaging of his hand. Yes, do it now. Touch me!

  He moved deeper, his fingers brushing the soft wet petals of her sex, finding her ready for him. Still he did not give in to the ache in his groin. To plunge in now would be disaster for he would surely spill his seed before he could bring her with him. She writhed restlessly beneath the soft massage of his hand.

  “You want this...even though you don't know yet what it is,” he murmured against her throat, kissing the racing pulse there, then moving lower, taking time to lavish more caresses on her breasts.

  The faint scratch of his whiskers against her sensitive nipple made her keen her pleasure in a high soft wail. She stroked his cheeks and jaw line, urging him on as he suckled her, then at last abandoned her breasts, moving lower to dip the tip of his tongue into her navel and swirl it around. She felt that tightening ache squeeze even tighter. His strange words of a moment before flitted through her mind. Yes, she wanted him to complete the act, to plunge into her, deep inside and join his flesh with hers. What then?

  What more could there be? Before she had felt nothing but tight dry pain, and she had always been glad it was mercifully over quickly. But now she desired this joining—this man—so intensely she wanted it never to end. When . his fingers found the small mysterious bud of her passion and glided ever so softly over it, she gasped, nearly fainting with the sudden, utterly unexpected pleasure.