by Shirl Henke
“You’re driving me mad,” she whispered, feeling her breasts ache as his fingertips brushed so near…yet so far.
“Oh, I’ve barely begun,” he replied, tossing the shirt behind him. “Now I’ll be your maid.” His hands cupped her shoulders, turning her so he could reach the buttons running down the back of her gown. As he worked, deftly unlooping velvet-covered buttons, his mouth brushed away her hair and found the bare skin at her nape. He trailed soft kisses around her neck, then down her sensitive spine. A surge of primitive delight filled him when she shivered with pleasure and arched her back.
Delilah tugged the heavy gown down her arms and stepped out of it. Clint took it from her and laid it carefully across the chair. “It really is lovely,” she said. “Thank you for the trouble you went to.”
“Not nearly as lovely as its owner, but my pleasure,” he replied, letting his eyes sweep hungrily down her body, clearly outlined through the sheer silk and lace undergarments she wore. “Now, darlin’, your valet services are required once more.” He looked down at his breeches, stretched out by his erection. “Damned uncomfortable,” he murmured, yanking off his boots and stockings. He stood half-dressed, waiting to see what she would do.
Delilah’s mouth went dry as she stared at his belt buckle. Did she dare? How could she not? She reached over and unfastened it, then set to work on the buttons closing his fly. When she inadvertently brushed his straining staff, he gasped an oath of pleasure as it sprang free. He shucked both suit pants and underclothes down his legs. Now he was fully naked, aroused. Her breath hitched. She let her gaze roamover his body, tracing each scar, the patterns of hair, his muscles and sinews, all so magnificently male. “Yes, I do desire you,” she admitted, oddly liberated by her confession.
Clint’s smile was rueful as he glanced down at himself. “You can see the feelin’s mutual. Lordy, woman, you are a sight to tempt a saint—and we both know I’m not one.” She stood in her undergarments, silk stockings and high-heeled slippers, not moving back an inch as he stepped closer, picked her up and deposited her on the bed behind them.
Very slowly, he peeled down one stocking, kissing her inner thigh, the sensitive place in back of her knee, even her toes after he tossed the slipper across the floor. His fingers encircled her slender ankle. “Your legs are so long, so lovely…” He was rewarded by her little moans and wriggling movements as he repeated the process on her other leg. By the time he completed the task, she was writhing on the mattress. He leaned over her and unlaced the strings holding her chemise, then shoved it down her arms, baring her breasts to the cool night air.
When her nipples hardened into two tiny pink buds, he brushed one, then the other with the heat of his mouth. Her hands drew him closer, locking behind his neck, while her fingers dug into his long, thick hair. He took one hard, pink nipple in his mouth and suckled, teasing it with his tongue until she moaned again. His hand caressed the fullness of the other breast before he replaced hand with mouth.
Delilah arched her spine, letting the exquisite pleasure sweep over her. When she felt the scalding heat of his staff against her thigh, she took the hard member in one hand and stroked it boldly, eliciting a growl from him.
“Better stop…before I lose control,” he gasped, reluctantly pulling her hand away. He slid down her chemise and pantelettes, pausing to kiss the concave silky skin of her belly and let his tongue swirl around the hollow of her navel before he rid her of the last of her clothing. While it floated to the floor at the foot of the bed, he lay down beside her and took her in his embrace.
She went eagerly, trapping his staff between her thighs and pressing. “Consider yourself my prisoner, sir,” she whispered, kissing his ear.
“Oh, Deelie, I think we’re both captives.” He rolled her atop him so she straddled his hips. At her startled look, he said, “Let me guide you.” He took his hands and lifted her above his erection, teasing her soft feminine heat by lowering her just close enough so the head of his penis stroked back and forward.
His eyes glowed in the gaslight, devouring her breasts, moving lower to gaze at the place where they were almost joined. Delilah watched his expression, rolling her hips, uncertain about this strange new position. She felt utterly vulnerable, yet at the same time in complete control. What a shameless hussy I’ve become. She could stand it no longer. “Now,” she said through gritted teeth, impaling herself in one swift, hard stroke.
His hands cupped her buttocks, guiding her up and down, until she found the rhythm, improvising on it with rolls and twists of her hips that left them both breathless. “Woman, you’re a natural-born rider,” he gasped raggedly, his fingers pressing into her hips to stop her before he lost control.
“Please, don’t stop,” she found herself begging, and knew there was desperation in her voice.
“Anythin’ you want, love,” he replied, beginning to thrust upward slowly once more, freeing her hips so she could follow his lead. His hands cupped her breasts, thumbs circling and teasing the nipples. She was a glorious sight from any angle, but especially this way. “Let’s just take it slow, easy. We want this to last….”
And it did. Each time she began to shudder in culmination, he stilled and held her hips, letting her glide off alone, watching as her head fell backward and a deep rosy flush tinted her body. Finally, with sweat beading his body and face, he clenched his jaw, the sight of her breaking his intense concentration. “I can’t…wait…any longer, darlin’…. Hang on …for…the…ride…of…your…life!”
With those desperate words, he began to buck and thrust, waiting for her to begin another climax. When he felt the soft, tight heat of her body again convulse around his staff, he let go with a low, rough cry, echoing her sudden gasp of pleasure.
Delilah flew beyond the vastness of the starry sky outside, yet at the same time was completely centered on the man joined with her. How that could be so, her mind could not encompass during each surge of blinding ecstasy, especially once he gave in and followed her to surfeit. As his staff swelled and released its seed deep within her, she did not—could not—think at all. She only felt.
At last, utterly spent, she collapsed on his chest and nestled her head against his shoulder. She could feel one of his hands gently gliding through her tangled hair while the other lay possessively across the curve of her derrière. His breath came in ragged gasps as did hers, and his heart pounded like a drum in his chest. They lay for several moments without moving.
Finally she stirred, lifting her head as she climbed off him. But Clint did not let her go. One arm wrapped around her waist, pressing her to his side. She seemed to fit so naturally there that she relaxed and let him continue to hold her. Then he reached down and pulled up the covers. The night air was suddenly chilly now that their passion had been spent.
“I shouldn’t stay. Sky or Uncle Horace might knock on my door,” she protested.
“Not until mornin’. I’ll tuck you in your bed safely at dawn.”
They lay contented for several moments. Then, sleepy yet emboldened by yet another new experience in making love, she said, “I never imagined a woman could…that I could…so many times.” She could feel the slight rumble of a chuckle in his chest.
“What? No credit for my stamina?” Before she could make an indignant reply, he said, “You’re a passionate woman, love. You respond wonderfully.”
“I never imagined that a woman could be on top.”
“Top, below or any other way. No matter what position, with us it’s pure magic, Deelie.”
“There are more ways than a man or a woman on top?” The words tumbled out before she could stop them. Delilah knew her face must be red, but she looked up at him, more curious than embarrassed.
He smiled at her innocence, brushing a long strand of dark hair from her cheek as he replied, “Oh, there are lots and lots of possibilities and, er, other things I’ll show you. It’s a long way to Fort Benton and back.”
After he reached up and turned down th
e light, she snuggled against his side once more, envisioning the weeks ahead and all the delights of new discovery. Before she could consider the price she might pay, sleep claimed her.
After the layover in Bismarck, the Nymph pushed on. Delilah dreaded the day after next when her new friend, Sky Eyes of the Ehanktonwon, would leave them. Her father, Talks Wise, had arranged for a party of kinsmen to meet them at a small fort within a day’s ride of their reservation. As far as Delilah was concerned, the timing could not have been worse. There was so much to ask Sky about Clint, so much she wanted to know. But perhaps it was best this way. The magic interludes at the pool and in town, even what lay ahead for them as lovers, all would end in a few brief months. Upon returning to St. Louis, she would buy out Clint’s share of the boat and he would return to Eva and the Blasted Bud with a handsome profit on his initial investment.
“You look pensive,” Sky said to Delilah as Bismarck vanished on the horizon. A smile lit her blue eyes. “Was last night as wonderful as the afternoon at the pool?”
Unable to resist Sky’s uninhibited glee, Delilah grinned. “Let’s just say it was even better in a bed.”
Sky clapped her hands together and gave a shout of joy that was drowned out by the noise of the engines, but several of the crew did look up to where the two women stood on the aft section of the boiler deck, hugging each other.
Unaware of their audience below, Sky said, “Now I’ll be able to leave and not worry about my brother. You will be good for him, Delilah.”
Delilah knew she meant be a good wife, but said nothing to disillusion her friend. “We have a long way to go before we sign marriage lines,” she equivocated.
“Oh, I don’t know. One member of the party coming to meet me at Berthold will be a priest—or so my father says. He could marry you tomorrow.”
Delilah paled. “No—that is, we can’t rush this. Clint’s a man who can’t be pushed.”
“And you’re a woman who is just as stubborn as he is. That’s why you will deal so well together.” She sobered. “My sister loved him and he her, very much, but he must remain in the white man’s world now. And that means having a white wife. No simpering finishing-school girl would ever suit him.”
“I suspect Eva St. Clair is more to his taste,” Delilah said before she thought, then realized her gaffe. “I mean—”
Sky laughed. “Oh, you mean that woman at the Bud. I know more than my brother could imagine about his life in St. Louis. Clint would never marry her—and now that he’s met you, I know he’s not once considered bedding her.”
Delilah looked dubious. “There’s a very good reason for that. She’s well over a thousand miles away.”
“No, silly goose, I mean before we even left the city. He never touched her. Not that she didn’t try to lure him back. She was really miffed when it didn’t work.”
“How on earth would you know that?”
A beatific smile wreathed Sky’s face. “I overheard Clint talking to Banjo Banks the day before we sailed—you remember Banjo?” At Delilah’s rather dazed nod, Sky continued, “Well, Clint was giving him instructions about running the Bud while he was gone and Banjo asked him why Eva had been so foul-tempered with everyone for the past weeks. Clint tried to hedge around the subject, but Banjo can be quite persistent when he wants to know something, especially if it concerns the saloon.”
“He actually told Mr. Banks that he hadn’t…”
“Yep,” Sky replied with a satisfied smirk. “Oh, he wasn’t happy about confessing it either, let me tell you. You should’ve seen his face when Banjo asked if that had anything to do with you.”
“Of course he denied it,” Delilah said with a smirk of her own.
“Of course.”
In spite of the inner voice cautioning her that the idea of a permanent relationship with Clinton Daniels was madness, Delilah could not stop herself from hugging Sky again. Both women giggled as if they were fourteen-year-old girls.
When they reached a wide curve in the river late the following day, the remains of Fort Berthold’s guard tower became visible upon the shallow bluff on the east side of the Missouri. Clint and TalksWise, using post and telegraph, had settled on the deserted fort as a safe meeting site. It was a good distance from white army officials and marauding Indian tribes, yet only a few days’ ride from their lands. Sky’s father had led a large party of her kinsmen and women, as well as the missionary serving on the reservation. With a clergyman to act as intermediary, they would have a safer journey if they ran into any army patrols. Sky was ready to begin a new chapter in her life, standing between red and white worlds.
Delilah and Clint watched as the captain skillfully maneuvered the boat to the shore. It was several hours before sunset, but they would lay over here tonight to have a farewell feast with the Ehanktonwon. She watched him scan the vast open horizon past the dilapidated remains of the fort. “Do you miss it?” she asked, wondering again about his violent past and how great a hold it had on him.
He did not reply for several moments. “Some of it, yes…” The reluctant tone of his voice and posture indicated that he did not wish to discuss the topic.
Delilah did not press. “I see a campfire and people up on the hill,” she said, squinting in the bright afternoon sunlight.
“They’re preparing the feast. Still a few buffalo around for the taking. They’re probably roasting the hump.” He turned and looked at her. “Guess you’ll get your first real taste of the West. Not quite like Luellen’s cookin’.”
“I understand it’s rather like beef,” she said, not at all certain she believed it. At least they weren’t boiling dogs in pots! She’d overheard crewmen speak of that practice too.
Clint shrugged. “Beef tastes like beef. Buffalo tastes like buffalo. And nothing tastes like chicken but chicken.” Then his expression changed when he saw a tall man dressed in buckskin breeches climbing down the steep embankment to where the boat would moor. “Stands in Water, my brother!” he called out, and the greeting was returned.
The warrior’s fringed buckskins were similar to the ones Clint had on, but his upper body was bare except for a breastplate made of quills. His hair was long, worn in two shiny plaits decorated with beads and feathers. Large gold hoops adorned his ears. Delilah looked at Clint and for the first time noticed, among his other scars, that his earlobes had once been deliberately pierced.
While he and his adopted brother called out to each other in the Sioux dialect, she considered how easily he could revert to being one of these people. He’d worn such primitive adornments and lived this life. Once they’d left behind the dubious elements of civilization in Bismarck, Clint had immediately returned to his buckskins. She could imagine his shaggy hair untouched by a barber’s razor, braided in the fashion of the Sioux tribes, his body bare save for loincloth and moccasins, his face marked with stripes of vermillion war paint.
“He could be one of them again. Don’t let him, Delilah.”
Delilah turned, hearing Sky’s voice, and was shocked at the transformation in her friend. Miss Sky, who had read law inSt. Louis, was now Sky Eyes, daughter of Chief Talks Wise of the Ehanktonwon. Her hair was parted in the center and wound in plaits at the sides of her head. She, too, wore large hoops in her ears and a buckskin tunic, elaborately fringed and worked with beads and quills. Under the long tunic her legs were encased in moccasins, knee-high and beaded to match the rest of her clothing.
“My, you look like a princess,” Delilah said, shocked at the transformation from finishing-school lady to Indian.
Sky laughed. “There are no Indian princesses. That was just a term the first white settlers used for the daughters of our chosen leaders.”
“You’re dressed for riding tomorrow?”
“No, this is purely ceremonial for the feast tonight. I’ll wear an ordinary tunic with leggings and lace-up moccasins, but not this fancy. It takes our women weeks to work the beads and quills into ceremonial leathers—not to mention the backbrea
king amount of labor that goes into tanning buckskins to get them this soft.”
“It’s lovely. You’re lovely,” Delilah said. And she meant it. When she reached out, Sky hugged her in return.
“We’ll have more time together. I know it in my heart.”
“Well, since there’s a telegraph near where your people live, every time we make a trip upriver, I’ll wire ahead and we’ll plan to meet,” Delilah said, only praying that it would be possible. She refused to consider whether Clint would be with her. He had already gone ashore and was surrounded by a group of Ehanktonwon.
Sky waved to her father and several of the women, who excitedly returned her greeting. “Come, meet my people.” She took Delilah’s hand and they climbed down the stairs and headed for shore. But just as they reached the top of the gangplank, Sky stopped to stare at a white man wearing a clerical collar and dark suit. Although Clint was a tall man, the fellow towered above him. He was young, with rusty reddish hair and warm brown eyes. The laugh lines at their corners and the wide smile on his face indicated that he was agentle giant. He held his hat in one hand and made an elegant bow to the women.
“Oh, my, who is that great red bear?” Sky whispered with a gulp.
Delilah smothered a chuckle. It was obvious that her friend was smitten. “Love at first sight can be quite a trial,” she said dryly. So could lust!
Chapter Sixteen
Your foster father is indeed a wise man, just as his name implies,” Delilah said to Clint while they stood at the back of the boiler deck, waving to the assembly on the shore as the Nymph pulled out into the current following two days of feasting. A lump formed in her throat as she watched Sky, her father and the others grow smaller in the distance.
“You mean because Talks Wise advised me not to try livin’ Indian again.” His expression was unreadable as he stared at the vanishing figures.