Had it been scorn, disgust for a person with something wrong inside, that he’d been feeling?
Yes. Hadn’t he sounded scornful as anything when he’d told her to put her jacket on?
Walks-With-Spirits could tell her what was wrong with her, if he would.
The thought settled one of the shifting rocks in her head and froze her whole body, as well. She needed to find out, once and for all, or the rest of her life would go on just the way it was now.
But he had been in such a fury, he had looked so scary, he had been so angry with her! Going to see him now at his cave would be like bearding a lion in his den.
Still she had to face him again, if only just to thank him. Her sense of honor demanded that.
Besides, Walks-With-Spirits had helped her twice now, maybe saved her very life twice, and she owed it to him to try to help him. His spiritual life, his life as a healer, was in danger because of her, and she ought to try to keep him from making it all worse by using Jacob’s saliva at the water at dawn.
If she got there and found that he was still furious with her, that he wouldn’t listen to her, the least she could do would be to thank him. And then her guilt would be lessened because she’d know that she had tried.
She had to change her ways, get herself in hand before Iola did. She had to take responsibility for her actions because she was sure enough going to have to learn to take the consequences of them. Iola and Tay, on Cade’s orders, would see to that. Nobody would protect her anymore.
And she didn’t want them to. She wanted to be a grown-up, capable woman, a real woman in the old Choctaw way as Cade had said. If she didn’t change her ways, she’d always be no more than a spoiled child and she’d never really be in charge of her own life.
Plus, she would always feel something was wrong with her, and she wouldn’t know what.
She swung her feet out of bed, reaching with her toes for the cool plank floor, throwing off the sheet and feeling for her chemise all in one swift motion, then she ran to the window to look out into the night. There was a nearly full moon, starting down toward morning. She could reach Buckthorn Ridge before dawn if she hurried.
Never, at any time had Walks-With-Spirits been so far from sleep in the dark, when most creatures were meant to rest. He had run for hours up and down the ridge, both sides of it, through the trees and along the creek, trying to wear himself out so he could drop off into oblivion. Or into dreams. Even horrible nightmares would be better than this fury that set every nerve in his body afire.
But he didn’t even feel tired. He forced himself to the floor of his cave, anyway, stretched his stiff body out onto the length of his pallet, unfolded the muscles that kept knotting and jumping all over his body.
What had ever possessed him? He’d done bad medicine right in front of half the Nation. He’d been so filled with hatred that he’d nearly killed a man with his bare hands. He’d lusted after Cotannah so much that he’d longed to grab hold of her, jerk her body close to his, and kiss her senseless.
What an idiot he was!
What a bad shaman, ungrateful for the powers given him by the Great Spirit!
He was nothing to Cotannah except a handy rescuer whenever her silliness got her into trouble. She was nothing to him except a weaker creature he had saved from a stronger one. She was none of his business. He couldn’t be working himself into a frenzy over her.
And he couldn’t, God knew, be doing black medicine because of her.
The sick disappointment coursed through him again. How could he have done such a terrible thing? The ones calling him “witch” would cry it even louder. What if their ranks grew, now that he had behaved like one? What if his healing powers were taken from him? What if his good work was finished almost before it was begun because he had used the evil charm?
But the worst thing of all was that in one stubborn corner of his heart he wasn’t even sorry! In that one corner, he still wished that he had killed Jacob with his own hands, right then and there.
Oh, God, what was this ungenerous feeling that had sunk its claws into him like an owl’s into a ground squirrel? Could it be jealousy, this wild wishing to rip Jacob away from his life and his home and hurl him off the face of mother earth?
He was lost, he was lost forever from goodness, if he didn’t cleanse his heart and soul and fill them with love. He must seek the help of the Great Spirit and hope the spirits of Chito Humma and Sister Hambleton also would come to his aid in trying to regain his balance and peace. Now. He must begin trying now.
He closed his eyes and threw his arm across them. Even though the interior of the cave caught very little of the moonlight, this complete darkness would make it easier to look into his own self, his own soul, easier to root out these poison weeds of hatred and agonized confusion that had sprung to life, full-grown, in his guts.
But, immediately, Cotannah’s face appeared on the backs of his eyelids, her dark eyes shining huge with shock and horror. She, too, had been stunned to see him put the death curse on Jacob Charley.
She, too, had wished he could take the black words back—he would never forget the sound of her voice saying, I thought you only did good medicine.
At this moment, in his mind, she looked very real, as real as when she sat staring up at him standing over her. It had taken all his strength, even after the horror of what he’d just done, to take his eyes off her beautiful bosom glowing pale in the dark shadows thrown by the trees. That memory made his blood grow hot for her even now. Even while regret twisted his insides into a knot.
How could he have been looking at her in the very next moment after casting a death charm?
But he couldn’t stop remembering how she looked. In his thoughts she looked so real that he imagined he could hear her voice.
“Hello, the cave! Walks-With-Spirits, are you there? Will you please come out and tell Basak to let me pass? It’s Cotannah.”
He dropped his arm and sat straight up.
She was here! It was another example of how truly upset his balance had become. If he hadn’t been so wrought up, he would have felt her coming through the woods.
It’s Cotannah.
As if he wouldn’t know that the instant she spoke!
A great white anger surged through him, washed his confusion clean. He couldn’t regain his balance as long as she was around; he couldn’t hear the spirits outside him or within. He had to get rid of her, she had no right to be here, no right at all.
He got to his feet, strode across the cave, and stepped out of it into the night. He saw her by the light of the moon and went toward her, walking beneath the trees.
“Cotannah. What are you doing here?”
She jumped and whirled to face him, which made him ashamed he had deliberately startled her. His words, harsh and forbidding, echoed from the rocks of the ridge.
For a moment there was silence. Such a silence that he could hear his own heart.
“You didn’t have to scare me to death, sneaking around quiet as a shadow!” Then, after a moment, she said, “I came to talk to you.”
The sound of her voice coming out of the night was a windsong in his ears, but it sent a storm through the rest of his senses: lightning made of desire to reach for her struck his touch, thunder made of longing to look at her forever rolled inside his sight, rain made of tears fell bitter on his tongue, smell of winter coming rushed strong into his nostrils. She would blow him away, this storm of a woman-child, Cotannah, if he didn’t drive her from him right now. He couldn’t risk his powers because of her.
Yet he already had.
And now she’d come here to torment him some more.
“I don’t want to hear it,” he said angrily. “Go away.”
But he started walking toward her anyway.
She stood waiting for him, beautiful and still in a pool of moonlight. A dozen new, vehement, unnameable feelings rose in him.
“I don’t blame you for not wanting me here,” she said, and he had nev
er heard her sound so purely sincere—and so sad, “but at least let me thank you for saving me again.”
Did she want to talk to him that much? So much that it made her sad for him to send her away? No. He was only a convenience for her.
“I had no choice but to save you,” he said. “You called my name, screamed for me to help you.”
The petty, accusing tone that came out of his mouth disgusted him.
It made her angry as well.
“Well, how could I know that you would put a death curse on Jacob?” she cried out, her calm voice breaking with passion. “I didn’t scream for you to do that!”
“So you didn’t.”
This time he sounded cold and distant. Uncaring. That was better. He must stay calm, at least on the surface, or she would draw him too close.
“Another reason I’ve come out here,” she said, and now she sounded as cold and hard as he had, “is to beg you not to make it all worse by using Jacob’s saliva.”
“Then you do feel responsible in some way.”
What an ass he was, what a pettish lout! Why was he engaging her like this when he’d come out of the cave to send her away?
He stopped in his tracks.
Already, though, he was too close. Close enough to look into her eyes in the moonlight. Close enough to reach out and touch her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Let me take back those words. The curse is not your fault. It’s nobody’s doing but mine.”
Tears welled in her eyes. Tears and trouble. Such trouble. Trouble as big as his own.
“No, it’s mine,” she said, in a way that threatened to tear out his heart. “In spite of what I said to you at first. Something’s wrong with me that draws men like Jacob to me, men who want to mistreat me. Other men, men who are good to me, well, I mistreat them.”
She was breathing hard and fast, but silently, as if scared of the sound. Perhaps she had run the last part of the way by the light of the moon. Her breasts were heaving beneath the dress she wore—a plain, cotton one buttoned to the neck this time. Beautiful breasts, high and full, calling to his hands.
“It’s something wrong with me that made you do black medicine. It must be, for you’re too good to have done it otherwise,” she said rapidly. “And I’m hoping you can tell me what it is.”
He stared at her, surprised, trying to assimilate what she’d just said.
“What do you mean tell you what’s wrong with you?”
Her tears spilled.
“Yes. You can see into my soul. You told me I degrade myself. Why do I? What is it?”
“There’s no evil in you if that’s what you mean,” he said. “You’re only human, Cotannah.”
She brushed her eyes clear and gave him a challenging stare.
“Then why did you put a death curse on Jacob?”
“Because you unsettle me,” he said, which was as close to the truth as he knew how to say it. “I put the curse on Jacob because you unbalance me so much, Cotannah, that I lost my mind when he called you one of his women.”
She collapsed. Her knees buckled, his words felled her like a blow from his fist.
“No!” he cried and ran to her, dropped to his knees to pull her against him. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that, I shouldn’t blame you. I put the curse on him because I let my baser instincts take over. That’s all.”
He tried to force his hands to take her by the shoulders and keep her away from him instead, but his arms ached to embrace her—she was crying great, racking sobs, with her face in her hands. She wouldn’t let him hold her, though. She pulled back and lifted her head to fix him with her incredible eyes full of pain.
“What baser instincts?”
“Hate. Jealousy.”
“See? Such feelings aren’t natural for you. I unsettle you because there’s something wrong with me, isn’t that right?” she said brokenly. “I have to know. What’s wrong with me, Walks-With-Spirits? What’s bad in me that causes me to hurt people and people to hurt me? Tell me. Tell me now!”
The demand rocked him back to sit on his heels.
“Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. Tell me.”
“Nothing’s wrong with you,” he said, and need to make her believe him made a knot in his throat.
She glared at him, disbelief plain, her eyes shining with determination as much as with pain.
“When I was fourteen an evil old man ripped my clothes off and would have raped me. In Texas, a few years later, bandidos captured me and stripped me and handled me and forced their stinking tongues down my throat. They would’ve raped me soon.” She stopped and stared at him triumphantly.
He shook his head. “That doesn’t prove something is wrong with you.”
“Oh, yes, it does. Do such things happen to other women?”
“To some, I’m sure.”
“Not to very many. Not at two different times in their lives—now three, counting Jacob—and in different states, everywhere they go. I can’t stand it anymore. What’s wrong with me?”
“You’re silly and earthbound, you’re in turmoil inside. You’re squandering the strength of your spirit.”
“And now I’m squandering the strength of yours.”
The bald words, said out loud, struck his heart. True. Yes, they were true, but at that moment he didn’t care.
He slid his knees apart, reaching for a closer tie to the earth beneath the damp grass, willing its strength and its wisdom to come into him through his flesh. His weak, treacherous flesh that made him realize he needed to move away from her.
Instead he bent closer to her stricken face.
“If that’s true,” he said, “then it’s my fault. I’m letting you do it.”
“Why? Why would you? What’s this destructive thing about me …?”
Her words trailed away as she kept looking up into his eyes.
He was watching her face in the moonlight, the sensual movements of her lips, the shape of her high cheekbones. His fingertips tingled with wanting to touch her.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth in return, and he could feel it resting there, laying a heat like the sun’s across his lips.
“Cotannah,” he said, “you say that you think I’m a good person.”
Her eyes met his again, and she nodded.
“So if I am good and I have powers to know your heart, do you think I’d have come running to save you from Jacob if something was so evil in you that you deserved his bad treatment?”
The thought shocked her, he saw that in her eyes.
“I deemed you worth saving,” he said.
A cloud scudding across the moon threw a shadow onto her face. When it was gone, she was still looking at him solemnly, searching his eyes.
“You’d save any smaller animal from a bigger predator whether it deserved it or not,” she said.
“No. I’d let the laws of the Earth Mother prevail.”
She didn’t speak.
“Do you believe me?”
Her eyes told him that she wanted to, that she was beginning to believe him.
“Nothing is wrong with you, Cotannah,” he murmured, aching to give her comfort.
But aching more deeply to kiss her lush mouth.
“I want you to know how sorry I am,” she whispered. “Oh, Walks-With-Spirits, it was my fault you did the black magic because I made such a fool of myself with Jacob, and I want you to know that I am so ashamed, ashamed to the bottom of my heart. I had no right to lead him on and then yell for you to save me.”
His heart swelled with pride. With possession.
“I was happy to save you.”
Her dark eyes looked up into his for a long, breathless moment, and then he took her fragile shoulders into his hands because if he couldn’t touch her right then, he would have died of holding back.
“I was happy you did,” she whispered.
He also would die if he didn’t kiss her, the blood roaring like thunder in his head told him that.
So
he bent his head and took her mouth with his.
Her lips were soft, so incredibly soft that he couldn’t believe it, and sweet, deliciously sweet beyond description. Tantalizingly, strongly sweet, with some tartness underneath, like sourwood honey.
He could not get enough of her, not ever. Slowly, slowly, he deepened the kiss, his whole body filling with wonder that her mouth had been created to meld perfectly with his, his mind longing to tell her so but his lips and his tongue refusing to pull away from her to speak, refusing to do any other thing, anything at all, but kiss her. He would kiss her, just this way, forever and ever.
But when the tiny little sound of welcome purred in her throat and she kissed him back, he began to kiss her in another way. He found the ripe, dark tastes of the warm mystery of her mouth, and he explored it slowly, luxuriously, as the most wonderful treasure he had ever been given.
Her arms came around him, slipped up his back and stopped, splayed soft and warm on his shoulders. She smelled of lavender and of the woods she had just run through and of her own special scent, the scent of her skin and her hair. Her breasts brushed his chest, and desire began to build in him like heat before a summer storm.
He wanted her, he wanted to lay her down, right then and there, on the dew-dampened ground. But the more of her he tasted, the more of her he would want: He knew it already, knew he would never get enough.
He could not let his feelings become so entangled with hers now, not when his whole soul was unbalanced by the awful curse he had thrown. So he summoned all the will that was in him to savor the kiss, then to pull gently away, slowly, slowly.
Oh why, why, had she come back into his life? And why had he known that she would?
He looked into her eyes and took her face in his hands, his hands that were threatening to tremble at any moment. He cupped them around her face.
“I’ve wanted to do that since the moment we met,” he whispered. “Cotannah, I’d have died if I hadn’t kissed you.”
She smiled at him, her vision still hazy from the kiss. “You wanted to kiss me when I was sitting a rearing horse that was about to come down on your head?”
He laughed and ran his big hands over her hair, smoothing it back from her face with slow, deliberate motions that she wished never, ever would stop. She leaned her head into his hands, a new, deep-souled feeling of peace flooding through her. Home. As soon as he kissed her she knew she had come home.
After the Thunder Page 12