She ran her palms over his back, feeling the contours of his muscles flexing like iron wrapped in silk, and her whole body exploded with the need for that same delicious sensation. Only to assist him with her clothes and his did she leave off that caressing, and after a lifetime of the agony of doing without it, at last she came into his arms, flesh to sweet flesh with nothing between.
“Now,” she said, her voice a ragged whisper as she brushed the desperate tips of her breasts back and forth against his hard chest, “now tell me, Walks-With-Spirits, is this too blatant a temptation for you?”
He laughed, a low, throaty sound that truly did take all her strength away and leave her helpless in his arms, her lips parted, existing only for his kiss. His mouth came closer and closer, slowly, with its inexorable heat and when she thought she couldn’t live another second without tasting him, he grazed her lips with his. Once, twice, and then again.
“And this?” he whispered. “Is this tempting you?”
“Yes! Yes! I’ll even beg if you want me to.”
“Not necessary,” he murmured. “I’ll give you anything you want with open arms.”
Except your life.
But instantly the wretched thought was gone and he was hers forever, a part of her, because he knew without thinking what she needed before she herself knew. He held her like a treasure too precious for price, he cherished her like a woman too passionate for playing at love.
And that told her, suddenly and well, in a way that felt so different in her blood from the way she already knew it in her mind, that this time, indeed, she was not playing at all. This was going to sear her very soul, this was going to bind her to him for all the rest of the days and nights that she drew breath.
He kissed her mouth to satiation, then he held her breast in his hand and suckled it until she cried out his name and thrust her fingers into his hair to hold him there and never let him go. Until she begged him to stop and then implored him to do it some more.
“More,” she murmured, with her greedy, bruised lips already craving another kiss, “more.”
She wanted more of his kisses and his touch, more of everything he was doing and was going to do with her. She wanted to be part of him, she wanted to be inside his skin and have him inside her.
The voluptuousness of his power, the dark delight of his body struck into her heart like a shivering lance. This was more, more than she’d bargained for, more than she’d ever imagined. Maybe more than she could bear.
More than she could ever hope to control, she knew that already.
But there was no stopping now.
Her palms hungered to know every ripple of sinew, every bulging of muscle, every stretching of tendon, every shape of bone beneath his flesh. Never before had she felt this need, this pulsing of desperate desire that she could not command. She could only give herself to it, go with it wherever it carried her.
Her fingers thrust into his hair, brought his mouth back to hers, but before she kissed him, she had to whisper against his lips.
“Love you,” she said. “Walks-With-Spirits, I love you.”
Never before had she made love with a man that she loved.
Never before had she loved a man.
And with those two thoughts her mind left her. Walks-With-Spirits was kissing her again with a leisurely, lazy, possessive pleasure that made her blood run fast and hot and her breath slow to stopping.
But even breathless, even existing without air, without sight, hearing or speech, she never had felt so gloriously alive inside and outside her skin. Alive and dangerous. Alive and able to do anything.
He knew before she did that she had to have him at her breast again and this time he took the other rigid, begging tip into his mouth to send those arcing sparks of fiery happiness flying through her body until the pleasure grew so great she could not bear it. No, it was the other wantings he was creating with his teeth and tongue that she could not bear, for she needed his mouth at the wet center of her woman’s body and his hands on her, on every bit of her skin that was not already pressed against his.
Walks-With-Spirits knew that, too, for he knew her too well, far too well. He slipped his free hand along the curve of her waist and then, as she arched up and into his mouth more fully, he cupped the swell of her hip and pressed her against his hardened manhood. Then he moved his mouth back to hers in a kiss so slow and gentle and hot and succoring that it melted her very bones into the ground.
Her mouth melded with his and then they parted, only far enough for delicious torment, only long enough to prove that they could come back together again and again. Always. They always came back together again.
Until, at last, with his hands caressing her shoulders and his legs wrapped around hers, as if to enclose her in a living circle of his body, he began to trail kisses along the line of her jaw and then over the vulnerable curve of her throat that she offered to him. Tiny, laving tastings of his tongue to her skin. He wanted to love every inch of her, those kisses told her. He wanted to know and to love all of her.
He made his way down into the valley between her breasts, which were aching for his attentions again, but his mouth moved past them, on down and down, not varying from its straight path. Until he reached her waist.
Then he stopped and got up onto his knees beside her, raised his head to look at her. She laid her hand against his heart and felt it bucking against the cage of his chest-bone.
Very gently, with a touch so intriguing, so tantalizing that she trembled and let her hand fall away from him, he stroked her thighs, the delicate, responsive insides of her thighs, which were yearning for him. Which she opened to him. He knelt between them and looked down at her.
“Cotannah,” he said.
That was all. Just “Cotannah.”
But his eyes gleamed with the amber of the fire, and his chiseled cheekbones silvered in the starlight when he cocked his head and looked at her as if she were the most wonderful sight he ever had seen. A smile touched the corners of his full, sensual lips.
Then he bent to bestow a perfect, tender kiss on the sensitive spot halfway between her belly button and the core of her woman’s body, hot and wet and weeping for him. A kiss as a gift holding all of his love.
And then he slipped inside her and gathered her up, all of her, swiftly into his arms, held her hard and fast as they began to move together in the ancient, timeless rhythm that now was new as the slender moon rising. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and clung to him, drew in great breaths of the scents of his skin and his hair and his breath before she kissed his neck and licked his shoulder and filled her mouth with the taste of his sweat and then of his lips and tongue until his essence rushed in her veins with her blood and swirled in the marrow of her bones.
He plunged deeper and she welcomed him, clung to the immutable, solid strength of his dear body and loved it with hers, stroke for stroke, and flash for flash until they went soaring, fused together, spinning up and out through the dark sky into a sparkling spangle of stars.
He woke with Cotannah’s breasts warm against his side, her face buried in his shoulder, and her back and rounded bottom chilled by the autumn night air. With his free hand, he managed to reach the other quilted bedroll and pull it over them.
Then he lay, looking up into the blue-black, silvery haze of the night, gradually coming back into his mind now that his blood was no longer roaring in his head, glorying in holding Cotannah in his arms. What they had done had been magnificent, and he wasn’t going to worry now that it would make her pain worse later on. No matter that it was too late now, anyway, but such worry would only ruin the time they had left. She had made him realize that.
She had wanted this, too, she had told him in words and she had told him, oh, dear Lord, how she had told him with her body! And she had given it careful thought.
Triumphant heat bloomed in his veins. He had done well. He had known by instinct what to do, and they had fused, body and spirit, in a fire of passion. N
ow he knew why people set such store by this showing of love with their bodies. It was a mystery, he thought, as he slowly stroked her sweet skin while she lay sleeping with her arm splayed out across his chest—a wonderful, mysterious magic, in which somehow the mating of bodies made spirits mate as well.
Or maybe their spirits, already drawn together by love, were what created the wondrous sensations of their bodies.
Either way, it was joy, pure joy, and he was so glad that he had partaken of it. And that he had given it to Cotannah. Truly, though, it was Cotannah with her wise words who had given it to him, to both of them.
He let the wandering thoughts drift around and around in his head while he luxuriated in the feel of the soft quilt on one side and Cotannah’s even softer skin on the other. Their bed was already growing warm. Snuggling deeper into their nest, he shifted her position a little, pulling the quilt closer around her, leaning her head back against his arm so that he could see her face.
“Walks-With-Spirits?”
His name was a murmured question, but then she flung her arm around his neck with a satisfied sigh that proved she knew full well who he was.
“Is it morning?”
He chuckled and picked up her hand to kiss each of her fingertips in turn.
“No, you haven’t slept long. Look up and see the stars.”
She opened her eyes, he cradled her head in the curve of his shoulder.
“Crescent moon,” she said drowsily, “white feather moon.”
“Mmhm,” he said, and bent his head to drop a kiss onto her hair.
She froze, then, quit breathing in his arms, and for a heart-stopping moment he thought she was rejecting the caress.
“Look!” she cried. “Look at that star!”
He glanced up to see a star so bright that it stood out from the others like a beacon.
“Why didn’t I see that before?” he muttered, half to himself.
“Because it’s for both of us, because we’re meant to see it together!”
He stared at it.
It stared back at him, shining white-bright, not twinkling, not moving at all up there in the far, far away night blue sky.
Cotannah sat straight up, shivering in the sudden chill, and lifted her hand as if to try to touch it.
“That is our star, Walks-With-Spirits; it’s here for us.”
She whirled around to challenge him, her hair sweetly tousled, the quilt hanging half-off one beautifully curved, milky shoulder. She clutched it desperately against her chest like a talisman.
“Did you ever see it before? That mighty, blazing star?”
“No.”
“Then it’s a sign. For us. Because we love each other! Because we made love.”
He sat up, too, and pulled her, trembling, into his arms to warm her. To try to stop the words he knew would come.
“What does it mean?”
“It means love … and life! It means you aren’t going to … die,” she said, choking on the dreaded word. “It means we’ll both live … and love each other for years and years and years.”
He rested his chin on top of her head so he wouldn’t have to look into her great, shining brown eyes while his heart broke into tiny pieces inside his chest.
“Don’t … get your hopes up again, my sweet holitopa. Please, Cotannah, don’t.”
The star stayed with them all night. Cotannah fell asleep as soon as the excitement of finding it had become the great hope that had settled, warm and sustaining, in her heart. She nestled spoonlike into the curve of Walks-With-Spirits’s body, wrapped both her arms around one of his hard-muscled ones, and slept, deeply, until just before dawn.
When she woke the night was at its blackest, clinging desperately to the sky for its last hour, the moon and many stars beginning to fade. But their star shone on, splendidly bright and immovable.
For a long time, she didn’t realize that Walks-With-Spirits was awake.
“It’s an irony, isn’t it?” he said, and his low, rich voice rumbled softly in her ear as his chest rose and fell against her back. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be teaching you.”
She waited, but he didn’t say any more.
“Does that mean you believe me now, about the star?”
“I want to,” he said, “but that’s not the most important thing. I had no right to tell you not to hope. Your spirit is brave, and it flies high; I shouldn’t stand on the ground and try to shoot it down.”
She turned within his embrace to face him and snuggled deeper into their cozy bed until her head rested in the crook of his arm. She grinned at him in the light from the fire.
“Fly with me,” she said. “We might see your friend Hawk that you claim sits on your shoulders. I hope he comes to visit while we’re here in his valley.”
He gave her a look that made her blood run hot again.
“You’re the only friend I need.”
When he bent his head to kiss her she met him halfway.
They got up and dressed, shivering in the frosty morning, after the sun splashed its first light into their faces, made a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs and bread toasted on sticks, ate it ravenously, and set out on foot across the valley meadow.
“The wild horses may not be anywhere near here anymore,” Walks-With-Spirits said, swallowing up the ground with his long, effortless stride, “but this valley and the one over the next ridge will have good grass during the Cold Time, and they wintered here last year.”
Cotannah stretched her long legs and tried to keep up.
“I guess so. The turkey grass is knee-high here.”
Suddenly, she whirled around and walked backward, staring at Pretty Feather grazing near the bank of the river.
“What if they’re behind us instead of over this ridge? Would your wild stallion try to steal my mare while we’re gone?”
He shrugged and walked faster.
“Who knows? She’s hobbled, so I doubt he could take her far.”
“But what would happen if he did? Could we get her back from him?”
“No,” he said, in a teasing tone, “we’d have to stay here forever.”
Cotannah looked around, at the sunshine glinting off the silver frost that covered every leaf, every blade of grass, every rock. At the intriguing white mist she loved to watch rising along the length of the river. The deep wine red of the sumacs and the brighter oranges and yellows of the oak and sweet gum leaves shimmered beneath the frost like sweet promises, the evergreen junipers looked blue in places, so thick was their burden of berries.
The sky picked up the blue again, one shade deeper, and the mountains showed every blue in existence, rolling on and on until they darkened with distance into purple and indigo. And back there, at their camp, their fire glowed, safely banked within its circle of stones.
“That’s fine with me,” she said, drawing in a long, deep breath of the forest-scented air. “There’s nowhere I’d rather stay forever.”
They walked on in silence, then, afraid to say any more lest they ruin this first precious day.
The herd of wild horses was grazing and playing exactly where Walks-With-Spirits thought it would be, in the circular valley on the other side of the nearest wooded, rocky ridge paralleling the river. Halfway down the other side, he signaled her to be quieter yet, and when they slipped through the trees at the bottom of the hill and peered out through a screen of close-growing cedars, the horses appeared to be completely unaware of them.
Cotannah had to clap her hand over her mouth to stop her gasp of delight. The adult horses had their heads down, lazily grazing, scattered across the frosted grass like different-colored jewels spilled out on cotton—burgundy bays, yellow buckskins with black points and dorsal stripes, blue and red roans, blazing red sorrels, blacks and whites, solids and paints. The sun streaked their pasture and set their hides to gleaming, picked at the edges of the frost crystals that had formed on their backs in the night, made them twinkle.
“But look ove
r there,” Cotannah said, trying to speak in that way of Walks-With-Spirits’s in which the sound was less than a whisper. “That’s the best of all.”
He nodded. Of course. He had spotted them before she had.
They were three young ones, yearlings, like the deer, and every bit as quick and graceful, dancing and prancing between the trees and the herd, running in spurts and then sliding to a stop, slowing down only to pretend to kick and bite at each other, bursting with pent-up energy that threatened to explode from beneath their little hides. They were so silly, so full of vigor—they had to have been playing hard for quite a little while, they’d gotten themselves hot enough to have steam rising from their backs.
The sight of that steam stirred some picture in the back of Cotannah’s mind, something she couldn’t quite catch long enough to know it. She shook her head and looked again, especially at the yellow dun colt, but the connection or the memory or whatever it was wouldn’t come to her. She tried again, almost got it. Then it was gone completely.
Then she forgot about it because the spotted baby and the yellow one reared at the same time, stood on their tiny back hooves and pawed at each other with their forefeet, sending out high, baby squeals of masculine challenge. Cotannah looked at Walks-With-Spirits, and they both stifled laughter.
The stallion thought that was ridiculous, he threw up his head and called to the rowdy colts in a tone that sounded like a reprimand and that made it even harder not to laugh out loud. He was a dictator, that stallion, she could tell by his attitude. A tall, muscular buckskin, he had stationed himself behind the mares and young ones, grazing off to one side, watching them constantly. From time to time he lifted his nostrils to the wind and his eyes to the hills, searching for danger anywhere in the mountainous country that surrounded his herd.
Now, after he watched the yearlings for a minute and saw to it that his get were causing no harm, the horse turned to face her and Walks-With-Spirits. He whinnied softly, his gaze directed exactly at their hiding place.
“He’s asking us in,” Walks-With-Spirits said.
“I’m not crazy about visiting him,” she said.
After the Thunder Page 27