“Perhaps we can strike a bargain. In exchange for assistance, I would give you ten horses and a hundred Yankee dollars.” He stopped at the other man’s sneer. “I see your scorn, my brother, but the white man’s money can be used for trade, to provide food for the young ones when the buffalo are scarce.”
For a long moment, Fights Bear was silent. After a hard glance at Summer, though, he nodded. “We will hold a council and share a pipe to discuss the matter. But the woman will not be welcome.”
Lance nodded dispassionately. “Aho, thank you.” He turned to Summer, who had been listening without comprehension, and briefly explained that the tribal leaders were to meet to decide their action. “It may take a while. Go with Fights Bear’s wives. They’ll show you where you can sleep.”
Grateful that their request hadn’t been denied outright, Summer offered a tentative smile to his brother, and rose obediently. When she ducked through the entrance flap, she found the Mexican woman waiting outside.
“Do you understand Spanish?” the woman asked in that language.
“Sí,” Summer replied. “A little. The nurse who raised me when my mother died taught me, but I am not fluent.”
The woman grinned broadly. “My name is Kwasutu, Short Dress. I am the third wife to Wasape Naaohrutu, Fights Bear.”
“I am Summer.”
“You will share my lodge, Summer.” Turning, Short Dress led the way to a tepee a short distance behind her husband’s. Someone had taken care of their horses and picketed them outside, Summer noticed as she followed the woman inside. The tepee looked similar to the one she’d just left, except that this was smaller and more sparsely furnished.
She settled herself on the ground near the entrance, where Short Dress indicated, and watched as the woman unrolled a bundle of buffalo blankets and began fashioning a bed.
“How is it that you speak Spanish so well?” Summer asked.
“I came here from Mexico when I was a girl.”
“You were a captive?”
She couldn’t keep the horror from her voice, but Short Dress merely nodded pragmatically. “Yes. They beat me at first, especially Wasp Lady, until I learned to work hard.”
“Wasp Lady?”
“The grandmother of Fights Bear and Sharp Lance. Very likely she will visit here tonight. She wishes to observe you.”
Summer noticed the use of the word “observe” rather than meet,” but before she could ask about it, Short Dress went on chattering. “Fights Bear sometimes calls on me to speak to the whites who come to our village, for they often know Spanish, and he will not learn English. Fights Bear is a good husband—strong and brave and wealthy, with many horses. I have my own lodge with my two sons. Fights Bear summons me when he wishes to sleep with me. My sons will come soon, and you will see how they resemble their father—and their uncle, your husband. They will be happy to see their uncle, Kanap-Cheetu, for they have heard many stories about his bravery.”
“Kanap…Cheetu…” Summer tried to pronounce the awkward words. “Is that my husband’s Comanche name?”
Pausing in her task of building a fire of buffalo chips, Short Dress looked at her in surprise. “Why, yes. Did you not know your own husband’s name?”
“Lance doesn’t talk much about himself,” Summer replied contritely.
Short Dress nodded in approval. “It is good. Men’s deeds should speak, not their words.”
“His name—what does it mean?”
“Sharp Lance, of course. What else?”
Summer smiled ruefully. “I feel so ignorant of Comanche ways.”
“I could teach you, if you care to learn, señora.”
“I would indeed be grateful, especially if you would tell me about my husband.”
“What do you wish to know?”
She had so many questions, she didn’t know where to begin, but before she could frame the first one, an ancient Comanche woman entered the tent silently.
Short Dress immediately rose to her feet, and Summer did likewise. The Mexican woman performed the introductions with great deference to the old woman, before finally murmuring to Summer, “This is Peena Waihu, Wasp Lady.”
Not knowing what else to do, Summer curtsied politely, which elicited a giggle from Short Dress, but absolutely no response from the silent Wasp Lady. Her form was unimposing, small but plump, yet she possessed the same fierce black eyes as her two grandsons, the same hostile stare of a wild panther toward humans, or a Comanche toward whites. Finally she stepped forward and grasped Summer’s hand, inspecting the palm intently.
“Payutyukatu!”
Summer looked questioningly at Short Dress.
“She says you are too soft to be the wife of her grandson.”
Biting back the retort that she had never asked to marry her grandson, dismissing the fact the Lance held the same contempt for her softness, Summer forced a smile. She didn’t want to antagonize his grandmother by arguing, especially if the old woman might have some influence over the decision to search for Amelia.
“I am strong enough,” she replied pleasantly.
Wasp Lady returned a scoffing look. “We shall see,” Short Dress interpreted. “My grandson does not appear to have made a wise choice.”
Summer raised her chin. “Tell her I am the wife he chose.”
“How many horses did Sharp Lance give for you?” the old woman barked.
“Why…none,” Summer said, taken aback by the question. When Wasp Lady smiled in grim triumph, however, Summer felt the need to elaborate. “My family owns many horses and did not need more. Instead Lance offered money.” Which was true, if stretching a bit. Lance had been determined to use his own money to ransom her sister. “Furthermore,” Summer added staunchly, “he risked his life to save me from two evil men who attacked me.”
For the first time since entering the tepee, the old woman’s expression softened. “Yes, that is good.” She added something else in Comanche, then turned abruptly and left.
Summer breathed easier, until she asked what the old woman had said.
“Tomorrow I am to test your boast of being strong.”
“What…does that mean?”
“You must work with me, perform the tasks of a Comanche woman.”
“I don’t imagine I shall be very skilled.”
“Sí, but I dare not defy her,” Short Dress said uneasily. “Wasp Lady has much power.”
Summer gazed thoughtfully after the old woman. “I thought females were not regarded highly by the Comanches.”
“Yes, that is so, but Wasp Lady makes good medicine.”
Their conversation was interrupted just then by the return of Short Dress’s sons, who raced into the tent and stopped abruptly at the sight of the strange white woman. The boys were perhaps ten and eight, but already possessed all the swaggering arrogance of men twice their age, she realized at once. Refusing, however, to be intimidated by youths half her own age, Summer set out to charm them.
With Short Dress acting as interpreter, Summer told them about her family’s horse ranch, embellishing only a little on her brothers’ adventures when they were younger. By the time their mother ordered them to bed, the two boys seemed to have gained a marginal respect for the white visitor.
Both Short Dress and her two sons went quickly to sleep on their pallets, but Summer remained far too tense to follow suit. Instead she settled on her own pallet to await Lance’s return, and listened to the unfamiliar sounds of the Comanche camp.
Once or twice she thought she heard voices raised in anger, but it was hours later before Lance quietly entered the tepee.
Summer was sitting on her bed of buffalo robes, her arms wrapped around her legs, her chin on her knees, but she immediately lifted her head. “What happened?” she demanded, forgetting to whisper.
Lance glanced pointedly at his sleeping nephews; she could see him in the faint glow of the smoldering fire Short Dress had lit for the night. “I thought I told you to get some sleep.”
His mouth curved in a faint smile as he said quietly, “Fights Bear demanded twice the fee in money and horses, but he agreed to help. He means to send out emissaries tomorrow to search neighboring bands for Amelia.”
Bowing her head, Summer felt a sob of relief well in her throat. It was a full minute later before she had control of herself enough to thank Lance.
“Thank me when your sister is safe.” He sounded tired. When she looked up, she could see that he was removing his leggings. “Go to sleep, Summer. There’s nothing more you can do tonight.”
A vast weariness overtook her as she realized he was right. Obediently she lay down on the pallet and pulled a buffalo pelt up over her.
“Not like that, princess. Take off your clothes first.”
She turned her head to stare uncertainly at him in the dim light.
“Kwasutu will think it strange if I let you share my bed fully dressed.”
“What…should I wear, then?”
The faint curl of his mouth told her the answer she dreaded. And yet she wasn’t prepared to argue. If following Comanche customs was the price she had to pay, even if it meant sleeping naked with her husband, she would do it.
Wrapping a robe around her as a shield, Summer awkwardly removed her moccasins and leggings and deerskin dress. Lance stood over her, waiting, but she refused to look at him, knowing he was completely naked.
Finally, unable to delay any longer, she stretched out again and lay there rigidly. In silence Lance slid in beside her and pulled the pelts up over them both.
What shocked her, though, was how, without a word, he compelled her to roll over on her side with her back to him, and curled his arm around her waist, drawing her tense body back against his.
Summer caught her breath in a soft gasp. His bare skin was sleek and hot as a furnace, his manhood hard and throbbing against her buttocks.
“Relax, princess,” he murmured, his warm breath teasing her ear. “I told you you’re safe from me. Go to sleep.”
Summer forced herself to close her eyes. Lance wasn’t going to claim his rights as her husband tonight. He’d said he didn’t intend to make love to her until this ordeal was over, and he was a man of his word. Even if physically his body was clamoring for hers. Even if physically her body was beginning to feel the same wanton urges.
Summer exhaled slowly, trying to relax as he’d commanded. He’d said she would be safe from him. The only trouble was, that was no longer what she wanted, to be safe.
She could feel Lance’s heat enveloping her, scalding her skin, could smell his hot, musky maleness. His thick shaft pressed blatantly against her buttocks, nestling in the backs of her thighs. Her pulse had quickened to a hammering beat, while desire curled like a coiled spring inside her.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Summer found herself wondering, scandalously, if Lance could take her from behind, like a stallion takes a mare. What would it be like to have him thrusting into her? If she moved the slightest inch…
Hardly daring to breathe, she shifted, pressing back against him, into his tantalizing warmth.
Her movement played havoc with Lance’s control. Having Summer naked and restless in his arms was sheer hell, even worse than he figured it would be. Her twitching was enough to drive him wild; her tight little fanny rubbing against his groin was pure torture.
She was definitely aroused, he knew. And whether consciously or not, she was trying to arouse him.
Determinedly Lance ground his teeth. He wouldn’t give in to her teasing. This was all a game to Summer. She was testing her power over him, pulling his strings like all the other fawning puppets she called her beaux. His body might be betraying his need, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of falling for her tricks.
Then again…maybe it was time she got a taste of her own medicine.
After another moment of deliberation—of enduring her silken bottom pressing against his throbbing erection—Lance reached his hand to cup her right breast in his callused palm.
Summer went rigid, her gasp loud in the firelit darkness.
Her nipple had peaked instantly, and Lance found incredible pleasure in running his thumb over the tight bud. His touch featherlight, his fingers closed over the quivering nipple, gently squeezing, pinching, torturing her until her breast pressed wantonly against his stroking palm, until she arched instinctively against his caress.
“Do you like this, princess?”
Her reply was barely audible, a breathless moan.
“Summer? You have to tell me what you like.” His whisper was hoarse in her ear.
“Yes…Lance…yes.” She could scarcely summon the power to think. His long, brazen fingers were lingering over her sensitive nipples, kneading, plucking, until they throbbed and pleaded for his touch, till they felt like points of fire.
Then one of his arms slipped beneath her while his other closed around her waist, pulling her tight against his nakedness. Summer shuddered at the feel of him: the hard, hot wall of his chest at her back, the powerful horseman’s thighs cradling hers, the heated granite probe of his manhood.
And then his caressing hand moved lower.
Drawing a sharp breath, Summer held it as his hand crept downward, over her slim waist and flat stomach, seeking the soft mound of hair between her thighs, sliding intimately between her legs.
She was wet there…hotly, invitingly, drenched with dew.
“Does this make you hot, princess? Does it feel good when I touch you here?”
He trailed his fingertips over the soft lips, probing the moist secrets of her.
A long, tremulous wave of longing racked her body. Yes, she was hot, flaming hot. Her whole body burned in anticipation. She wanted to be touched, wanted Lance to stroke her there.
She arched her hips feverishly against his fingers as he parted the quivering folds of flesh.
“Does this feel good, Summer?” she heard him ask.
Whimpering in answer, she clenched her hands as those fingers teased her, sliding inside her…lingering, withdrawing, moving slowly in and out. Summer trembled at the sweet assault, the exquisite torture.
“Do you want me, princess?” Lance growled softly in her ear.
Yes, she wanted him. She wanted him with a fierceness that shocked her.
When she moaned a breathless “Yes…” Lance replied with a terse “Good.”
Abruptly withdrawing his fingers from between her legs, he gave the curve of her hip a condescending pat. He wouldn’t give her the release her hot little body was craving.
Releasing his hold on her waist, he turned over on the pallet, giving Summer his back.
“Lance?” Her tone was bewildered, shaken, her body rigid with unfulfilled sexual tension as she raised herself up on one elbow.
“Go to sleep, princess.”
“Sleep? You expect me to sleep now?”
Lance’s smile was grim in the darkness. “Now you know how I feel all the time. I only left you aching like you do me.”
In the stunned silence that followed, he was certain he could feel his wife’s green eyes glaring daggers between his shoulder blades. It was a long, long moment before she lay back down on the pallet with a definite flounce.
Unsympathetically, Lance shrugged. Let her suffer a little while. It wouldn’t hurt Summer to know what it was like to want someone so bad, it kept her up nights. Maybe now she would understand what her heartless teasing did to flesh and blood.
He wouldn’t satisfy her craving for him—or his for her. He would live with his own deep ache.
And he would keep his hands off her if it killed him.
Chapter 9
The following week at the Comanche camp was one of the most trying of Summer’s entire life. Besides the mental strain and uncertainty regarding her sister’s fate, and the added tension of sleeping naked and aroused in Lance’s arms each night, the physical effort expected of her nearly drove her to exhaus
tion.
Her every waking moment was filled with work—gathering firewood, carrying water, preparing meals, keeping the tepees in order, dressing and tanning hides, sewing clothing and robes, storing supplies for the winter months, all the thousand and one tasks that a Comanche wife was responsible for. To make matters worse, Short Dress was not only Fights Bears’s third wife, but the chore wife, which meant she performed many of the menial tasks the other two wives didn’t care to do. And Summer was required to help. Lance’s grandmother saw to that.
A virtual slave driver, Wasp Lady oversaw her progress with a sharp eye for laziness or mistakes, frequently waving her gnarled fists. Once the old woman nearly struck her.
Lance’s sister was scarcely any more friendly. Huwuni, which meant Dawn, had two sons of her own, as well as a daughter—a mere baby whom she carried on her back strapped in a cradleboard. Huwuni refused to let Summer look at the child, and laughed at her effort to make pemmican, which was concocted by pounding wild berries and walnuts together with dried meat and then adding tallow and marrow fat.
“You are a worthless wife,” Dawn observed disdainfully, according to Short Dress’s translation.
Fights Bear’s other two wives said something similar, only their remarks were more subtle. Summer needed no translation, though, to know that she didn’t measure up to their standards.
Their scorn made her feel so unworthy, so alone—and at the same time, more sympathetic toward Lance’s struggle to gain acceptance in her world. Such blind bigotry was no worse than what Lance had endured from whites for so many years.
Yet Summer gritted her teeth and bore the adversity with grim fortitude. She was determined not to shame Lance before his people, or give his grandmother the satisfaction of defeating her. Besides, her sister was no doubt suffering worse as a captive, Summer knew. She could endure any hardship as long as in exchange she could expect help in rescuing Amelia.
To her infinite gratitude, the search had begun. As agreed, Fights Bear had sent out emissaries to various neighboring bands with the power to negotiate for Amelia’s release. In the interim all Summer could do was wait—and work.
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