“Our spirits are not wise enough to know that.”
“Mine is! I know that!”
He laughed again, soft and low.
“Now that’s why I wanted so much to dance with you that night we met,” he said. “I could not keep my hands from reaching out to touch you, for the life force in you was stronger than in Long Man river.”
A sharp, sweet shock shot through her even though he’d told her that before. She hadn’t known that he had longed to touch her. Was he longing to touch her now?
“How did you know that my life force was strong?”
“Your eyes flashed like lightning looking for someone, searching, always searching. Your feet stomped against the face of the Earth Mother, trying to make her give you your wish.”
“You could see it that plain that I was out of my mind in love with Tay,” she said slowly, remembering. “When all the time he only loved me as a sister. How I could have been so unseeing, so stupid, I’ll never know.”
“That, too, was part of the natural harmony,” he said.
“No!”
Her cheeks flamed with hot embarrassment, even after all this time, recalling her devastated pride.
She looked down at the ground, watched Pretty Feather’s small hooves cutting into the grass, one swift, trotting step after another. When she glanced up at him again he was looking at her, his topaz eyes gone soft and dark.
“Yet it must be,” he said.
“How can you say that? How?”
“Because all that has happened to you has made you this Cotannah today.”
“What does that mean?”
“You are Cotannah: a beautiful body inflamed with a fervent spirit. You have bubbling passions brave with hope, right-loving thoughts bright with honor. Never have I known another woman like you.”
She would remember all of that forever, she would think about it time after time. She would remember the sound of his voice; it stroked her skin as if he had reached out his hand.
He said it again while his horse moved beside hers through the golden afternoon.
“Never has there been another woman like you.”
His affirmation sent her heart soaring to the sun.
They rode up to the cabin at dusk. It lay in the shadows, folded into the quiet valley like a bird in the nest. A horse ran along the crooked, split-rail fence, nickering, and Pretty Feather answered as they passed.
“Robert had better be gone for sure,” Cotannah said.
“Why?”
“I want us to be alone.”
The minute the words spilled off her tongue, she bit it, incredulous that again she had blurted out to him exactly what she was thinking.
“I can’t believe I said that.” She ducked her head, unable to meet his eyes.
“I can believe it,” he said, with a low chuckle. “Even on the night we met you were speaking bold and straight to me—but then you called me an old black crow and told me to get away from you.”
He threw her a glance, his eyes flashing bright in the dusk.
“Now you want to be alone with me. I like this straightforward talk of yours much better.”
She felt heat rising into her face.
“I only meant that it’s going to be a good evening to make a fire and sit and talk,” she said quickly, as he sidepassed his mount up to the gate and bent to open it.
“Of course,” he drawled, leading the way into the horse pen, “and if Robert were here, we couldn’t build a fire or speak a word.”
He laughed, and so did she.
“You know what I mean! You promised to tell me about your childhood, and you know you wouldn’t if Robert were here.”
“I might. For all I know, Robert is a rapt listener.”
“He isn’t,” she said, dismounting in front of the open-sided pole barn. “Cousin Robert is a bigmouth who has to do all the talking himself.”
Walks-With-Spirits stepped off his horse.
“Oh, now I understand. You want to do all the talking yourself with no interference from Robert.”
“What a thing to say,” she cried. “Just listen to you—you talk lots more than I do, and you know it!”
Laughing, they walked to the horses’ heads and stopped, facing each other, standing close, very close. He smelled the way he looked—like a woodsman—pines and mountains, and juniper, she thought. Like sweet, pungent cedar branches mixed with that special scent that was his alone.
“But I like to listen to you,” she said slowly, as she drank in the sight of the dusky light falling across his high cheekbones and straight, broad nose, across his full, sensual mouth and hard jaw and chin, “even if you do talk in riddles sometimes.”
“I like to talk to you,” he said, in a voice so low and smooth it sent heat moving through her flesh, “even if you are only interested in my childhood.”
“That’s not true!”
“What else?” he said, smiling, teasing her with his eyes and his voice. “What else are you interested in, Cotannah?”
Without a thought, she lifted her hand and traced the line of his cheekbone, just with the tips of her fingers. A lightning strike of excitement ran up her arm, straight to her heart. He felt it, too—in the dusky, purple light his eyes shone like stars.
They stared at each other, stunned. For an endless moment she couldn’t take a breath, couldn’t move, could only press the tip of her finger against his warm, smooth flesh and feel his hot blood running like a river of enchantment through his skin to hers.
Then he reached for her, took her by the arms, rubbed them up and down to warm her, but that was only to prolong the delicious anticipation, and she knew it.
“You’re shivering,” he said, and that was true, too, but she hadn’t realized it until then.
He drew her closer.
Her gaze clung to his.
“It … it turns cold fast when the sun goes down.”
“Let me warm you, Cotannah.”
His eyes, heavy-lidded and hot, set a fire at the very core of her, before his mouth, his incredible mouth, met hers and melted her bones. He kissed her, and she clung to him and kissed him back and lost all connection with everything else on earth.
He smelled of horse and dust and the wool of his coat and of his own special scent that never failed to go to her head. He tasted of his own self, too, purely sweet and darkly mysterious.
He took all her breath and all her strength and at the same time he made her very heart sing and fly. He found her tongue with his, twined them together, and her whole body melded with his.
This. This was all she wanted, ever, ever, and she was never going to let him go.
But at last he savored her lips one last time and then drew back and held her away.
“I can’t kiss you now without doing more,” he said. “Go. Go on in and start the fire. I’ll see to the horses.”
Every instinct in her screamed for her to stay. Her bruised lips opened to argue, her hands moved to reach for him again.
But he was right. It was too dangerous, for her very soul wanted to be with him, and he might soon be gone.
She turned and ran toward the house, wanting to stay but afraid of what would happen if she did. The tips of her fingers and her breasts and her thighs and her belly tingled. She could still feel him against her; her lips held the taste of his and so did her tongue. She was trembling all over, and she barely could breathe.
The cold night closed around her before she reached the porch, and she pounded up the steps and across it by pure instinct, opening the door and moving across the room to light the lamp. Robert was gone and they would be alone and what would they do?
Nothing. They mustn’t. Walks-With-Spirits had been right to send her away from him.
Her hands were shaking but she found the matches and lifted the glass chimney to light the lamp. The old, familiar room sprang to life all around her.
Then she moved toward the hearth, where the banked fire glowed. No. Walks-With-Spiri
ts hadn’t been right to send her away because it felt too right to be with him, too destined for them to lie together, skin against skin.
But she’d better be careful with that destiny. She had never before made love with a man whom she loved. So how would she survive when he was gone?
Shoving the thought away, she knelt and grabbed the poker, began to stir up the fire. Adding more kindling, watching the flames come to life as tiny tongues of yellow and red, she tried not to think of him at all.
Because then she’d have to think of him being shot one moon from now. She put two new sticks of wood on the fire and stared into it harder. Old Grandmother Stonecipher who lived over by Piney Branch could read the past and the future in the fire, it was said.
“Will I be able to save him?” she whispered to the blaze she was creating. “Will I get to keep him with me for the rest of my life?”
Try as she would, though, she could see no answer in the shimmering sparks or the flames. Cool night air rushed in and fanned them higher, but still she saw no shapes, nothing.
“Cotannah.”
He stood in the doorway, his arms full of wood, the saddlebags swinging from his shoulder.
She went to him, slid the strap from his shoulder to hers.
“Come in. Welcome to my old home.”
He smiled and took in the whole room with his eyes, drew in a deep breath of the smell of the house. The wind rose in the eaves and made small creaking sounds in the walls.
“I can feel you here,” he said.
She laughed.
“That’s because I am here.”
“No, I mean I feel you in the past. The little girl and then the big girl Cotannah, helping Aunt Ancie with the cooking and Uncle Jumper with the garden.”
“And pestering Cade to take me riding with him,” she said, her voice giving way a little when she thought about those days. “Whenever he was home.”
A profound sorrow swept through her as she turned and started toward the kitchen with the bag of food, dropping the other one into a straight chair sitting by the window as she passed by. Walks-With-Spirits carried the firewood to the hearth.
“Was he gone a great deal?”
She stopped in the kitchen doorway and looked at him.
“Yes. Aunt Ancie always said that his Wandering Year lasted for ten years.”
“Did you have friends close by?”
“No,” she said, and went on into the kitchen to see what food Robert had left.
She found blackberry jam and tomato preserves, both of which must have been made by Aunt Sally, Robert’s mother, and some baked sweet potatoes and parched corn. Standing there, looking at the food, she tried not to remember the bountiful table Aunt Ancie had set and tried to forget how lonely she had been during all those years that she’d lived here.
Now, even if they didn’t make love, she would be lonely beyond belief if she was separated from Walks-With-Spirits.
“Cotannah.”
She turned to see that he had come into the kitchen without her hearing him.
“I know how you must feel,” he said. “I would be sad right now if I went back to my old home.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“Did you have friends close by?”
“No. There were plenty of children in the town, and I played with them sometimes, but I was always separate, too. No one else was being raised by a medicine man and a missionary woman; no one else was being taught how to heal and how to say incantations. No one else was an orphan from nowhere.”
She clutched the soft leather food bag with both hands.
“But now you and I are friends,” she said, “and that means the world to me. Not even Emily can see my true feelings the way you do.”
Her swollen lips felt awkward from the effort she was making to hold back the tears, but she managed to smile. He looked so sympathetic, so worried about her. He looked so dear.
“We are truly friends, aren’t we, Walks-With-Spirits? But I don’t know how. I never thought a man and a woman could be friends, did you?”
He returned her smile with one of his solemn looks.
“I never thought about it,” he said.
“Did you ever tell another woman she was your friend?”
The corners of his mouth turned up in amusement.
“No.”
“Have you ever told another woman that she was different from all the others?”
He shook his head.
“No.”
She gave him a mischievous grin that made her throat relax and her tears recede.
“Have you ever told another woman that she was degrading herself?”
His trace of a smile vanished, and he shook his head again.
“I wouldn’t have said that to you if it hadn’t been such a blow to look up and see you, not on the arm of one man, but of two,” he said, his voice hardening as he spoke. “And neither of them Jacob Charley, with whom you had already made a foolish scene in front of my very eyes.”
He pivoted on his heel and went back into the main room.
She stood frozen for a moment, listening to the echo of his voice in her head. Why, he was jealous! And he was admitting as much! Could that be true? Walks-With-Spirits, who lived in harmony with all the earth, Jealous?
The thought boggled her mind but as she looked at it over and over, she knew that she was right. Still staring at the place where he had been standing, she picked up a jar of jam, turned it over in her hands, and set it down again on the tablecloth with a soft thump.
“Walks-With-Spirits,” she called, as she ran to find him. “Was it really a blow to you to look up and see me with the Bonham cousins?”
“Yes!”
He was kneeling in front of the fire, his eyes blazing as he turned to look at her. He gave the logs a vicious punch that made sparks fly everywhere, up the chimney, inside the big firebox and out onto the plank floor.
“I felt a white-hot rage,” he said, slapping one of them out with his bare hand.
She went to kneel beside him.
“You were jealous.”
“Yes.”
And then, with no warning at all, he reached out, touched her cheek lightly with the rough tips of his fingers. “Come here, Cotannah,” he said, his voice gone hoarse as a stranger’s.
“I am here. I’ll always be here, as long as you need me.”
He took her face in both his big hands and tilted it up for another kiss.
Chapter 12
The wild scent of his skin—dark, primitive, deep woods and wind—entered her blood on the pungent incense of the burning logs. The flames of the fire, blinding bright and dancing, leapt in his eyes as he bent toward her, and then her sight was gone. Her sight and her breath, both gone.
But she didn’t need them. This, this was what she needed, Walks-With-Spirits’s mouth on hers once more. His mouth knew hers now and his lips and his tongue gave her such pleasure that her heart beat slow and hard to hold time still and savor it. This was more than pleasure, though—he was marking her as his with the fierce grip of his hand cradling the back of her head, with the authority of his tongue as it found hers and claimed it as his own. She drank that possessive kiss like a parched hummingbird would drink nectar.
Pleasure and wanting, startlement and knowledge all surged through her in one mighty wave after another. No one, no one had ever affected her like this before, this honest stealing of her very soul from her body. No other man had this power.
And then her mind, too, was gone, into his keeping. She couldn’t think anymore but she didn’t want to, this was all she wanted, this kissing with him that pulled her to him, that melted her to him, body, soul, and spirit. Slowly, slowly, he drew back just a little and traced her lips with the tip of his tongue. Desire burst inside her like a flower coming open, and she let him dip in and taste her, drew him nearer again with quick, tantalizing touches of her tongue. His mouth was made to meld with hers, this was why they’d both been born.
&
nbsp; He made a rough, ragged sound, deep in his throat, and turned his whole body to hers, cradled her head in both his callused hands, now, to keep her mouth beneath his. Her arms felt heavy, so heavy she couldn’t hope to lift them yet she couldn’t hope not to, for she had to touch him, had to hold him somehow captive as he was holding her.
She managed to wrap them around his neck at last, but it made him deepen the kiss so, made him moan in his throat and caress her so tenderly with his tongue and his hands in her hair that she could only cling to him and let him melt her very bones. She had no choice, she could only let him kiss her on and on, let him keep her in this heavy haze of pleasure that had no ending. This kissing with him was all she wanted, forever.
Forever.
Her eyes opened wide. She pulled back from him. Slowly, reluctantly, he let her, opening his eyes then to search her face. She could only look at him, she could not speak.
Never, ever had she felt this … this pull before. This kiss ran far deeper than any other from any other man, all the way deep into her spirit.
Fear blew through her like snow in a blizzard.
Why did it have to be, this truth that she’d known ever since that very first kiss at his cave? Why did her life have to turn out so that he was the one man she truly ever loved?
Oh, dear God, he was sentenced to die a few days from now!
She closed her eyes against the beautiful sight of him and reached weakly for the rock ledge of the hearth to help her get up and away from him. Wouldn’t that just be the way things always were for her? Wouldn’t that just be another of the bitter ironies that had speckled her life if Walks-With-Spirits, her one true love, was held guilty of Jacob’s murder to the very end and she had to give him up to the Lighthorse with their rifles?
Cotannah walked away from him after the earth-shattering kiss they shared. Walks-With-Spirits heard her in the kitchen rattling dishes so hard that he knew her hands were shaking, but he didn’t have to hear that to know she was as shaken by the kiss as he. And he felt as if his bones lay in pieces inside his limbs, pieces so small that they could never come together again.
After the Thunder Page 19