Silken Savage

Tonight, as Tanya lay on the mat watching Panther, she shivered, a shiver that had nothing to do with fear of being hurt, but everything to do with her fear of losing herself to him entirely.

He was a beautiful male animal; tall, bronze, graceful, with a power representative of his namesake. Panther lay down and gathered her trembling body close. Gazing deeply into her golden eyes, he felt his own body begin to throb with passion. His lips lowered to cover hers, claiming their sweetness as his alone, his tongue delving deeply into her mouth.

Tanya had told herself she would not respond to Panther's lovemaking this night, but the minute his mouth claimed hers, she was lost to reason. As his wandering hands charted her body, she began to tremble violently beneath his touch. His lips moved over hers, melting them like hot wax, boldly staking his claim.

Tanya arched against his body involuntarily. He was murmuring meaningless phrases, encouraging her touch. Her hands were spread out against his smooth chest, warding him off, but now they seemed to have a life of their own. Slowly, tentatively, they began to explore, measuring his shoulders, feeling the muscles contract beneath her palms, working their way gradually up into his thick ebony hair. White hot flashes of passion seared through her, making her cry out in longing — for what, she wasn't sure.

FIRE AND ICE

SATIN AND STEEL

ASHES AND ECSTASY

SUMMER STORM

FOREVER GOLD

NIGHT FLAME

CATHERINE HART

LEISURE BOOKS NEW YORK CITY

February 1989 Published by

Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

Fifth Avenue

New York, NY

Copyright © MCMLXXXV by Diane Tidd

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

The name “Leisure Books”and the stylized “LB”with design are trademarks of Dorchcster Publishing Co., Inc.

Printed in the United States of America.

A panther stalks the forest deep
And roams the mountain high;
A silent form so dark and sleek
Till shrill screams split the sky.
On padded feet he stalks his prey,
Eyes gleaming in the dark.
The sight of his great tensile strength
Strikes terror in the heart.
A shadow in the moonlit night,
He fears not beast nor man.
By day he sleeps and keeps from sight;
By night he prowls the land.
His mate he’ll take as his alone,
And fight to keep her safe.
He rules his kingdom from his throne,
Proud and strong and brave.
Take care if you should wander through
His empire on your walks,
For nature will provide his due
As the mighty panther stalks.

SILENT AS ghosts and nearly as invisible, the Indians watched the white women bathing in the river. Only their onyx eyes gave any sign of life, sparkling with lust as they spied on the scantily clad pale skin so near at hand. One young brave nudged his companion and pointed to a particularly lovely girl. In her chemise and pantalets, wet and clinging and nearly transparent, she was a vision of budding womanhood. Her breasts were high, firm and full, her waist so small his hands could span it, and her hips gently rounded.

As they watched, she lifted her head, and her face was fully revealed. Her forehead was high over delicately arched mink-brown brows. Below a small, straight nose, her lips gleamed a rose pink, perfectly formed to tempt a man’s, the lower lip slightly more full with just a suggestion of a pout. It was her eyes, however, that made him draw in a sharp, silent breath of surprise. They were a gleaming golden hue, too light to be brown, yet definitely not yellow; a shade that made him think of the eyes of a lioness on the prowl. The comparison was reinforced by the tawny color of her long, gently waving hair. It was an unusual combination of sun-streaked light brown and golden blonde, with just a hint of a few strands of strawberry through it.

The brave motioned to his friend, and they retreated as noislessly as they had advanced. In all, there were ten young Cheyenne in the group that met where they had left their ponies. Quickly, their eyes gleaming with excitement, they laid their plans. The leader made it clear to the others that he desired the woman with the golden eyes and mane of the lioness. She would be his before his heart could beat a thousand times more.

Heedless of the approaching danger, the women cavorted in the cool water. It felt so good to be clean again! There were six of them in the stream, all young except one.

Tanya Martin shook back her heavy wet hair from her golden eyes and reached for the scented soap her sister Julie was handing her.

“I’m going back to the wagon now,”Julie informed the others as she hastily dried herself and pulled on a loose dress over her wet underwear. “I can’t wait to slip into clean, dry clothes.”

The others waved her on, not yet ready to give up the cool luxury of the stream. They had traveled a long way, and the journey’s end was nearly in sight for some. The Martin girls and their parents had traveled all the way from Philadelphia, going from there to St. Louis by rail, and from St. Louis on by wagon train, following the Santa Fe Trail through Kansas and now into the Colorado Territory. It had been rough going through the April rains this spring of 1866, but they had endured.

There were sixteen wagons in their group, bearing an odd mixture of people all traveling west for a variety of reasons. There were farmers looking for more fertile lands; ex-soldiers from both sides of the Mason-Dixon line seeking their fortunes and trying to forget the horrors of the recently ended war; war-torn families hoping to relocate and recoup their losses in a new land. There were young men looking for excitement and old ones looking for peace. There were young women seeking husbands and older ones wearily following theirs across these vast miles of wilderness.

Tanya looked around her at the other women. In the shallows near the bank Rosemary Walters, older than the others at thirty-six, was washing her husband’s blue shirt, a pile of children’s clothing yet to clean. The Walters, all seven of them, were looking for good cheap farm land. Harry was the youngest of his family in Kentucky, and had no desire to share the skimpy profits from the tiny, crop-weary farm with his brothers. With his four growing sons, his wife, and small daughter he expected better success on his own.

Pretty Nancy Owen, at the tender age of fifteen, was relocating with her father, mother, and younger brother to New Mexico. Mrs. Owen’s doctor had recommended the change of climate for the lady’s lung condition.

Red-haired, sassy Suellen Haverick was the spoiled brat of the entire wagon train, beating out even the fractious Julie in Tanya’s estimation. The daughter of a prominent eastern lawyer, she was used to demanding anything and everything and expecting results immediately. When disappointed, she voiced her displeasure loud and long in a voice that resembled fingernails scraping across a chalkboard. For this reason, among others, Tanya was glad the trip was almost done and the Havericks would continue on to California. If only Suellen had not been prone to
mal de mer
they could have sailed instead and spared the others her presence these past two months.

Last, there was Melissa Anderson. A petite blonde with eyes as blue as cornflowers, Melissa as an orphan at fourteen. She was traveling with the Wells family, also heading for California, to live with a distant cousin she’d never met, her only other living relative.

Tanya and her family were headed for Pueblo, just two days away. Edward Martin’s brother George and his wife Elizabeth had come west during the gold rush of 1859, settling in Pueblo. Uncle George now ran a mercantile and a small lumber yard.

When Aunt Elizabeth had visited back east last year, she had traveled with a handsome cavalryman by the name of Jeffrey Young. Once the dashing Jeffrey was introduced to Tanya, he courted her with undaunted spirit and boundless energy until she finally promised to marry him. He returned to Fort Lyon where he was stationed, and now awaited her arrival in Pueblo, where he had been transferred and promoted to lieutenant.

Tanya’s family was to stay with Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle George, vacationing awhile after the wedding. Uncle George was determined to convince his brother Edward to stay and help him in his business. Edward and Sarah Martin were willing to entertain the possibility, as their eldest daughter would now be residing there, but they would not commit themselves without first seeing the town and territory. Julie, two years younger than Tanya’s sixteen, was not happy about the whole idea, loathe to leave her friends and comforts back home. To hear her tell it, they had nearly walked across the continent barefoot and ragged. She complained every step of the way, until Tanya was ready to slap her.

Now they were almost there. They had survived rain and boiling sun that had baked the mud into cracked ruts. They had learned to combat bugs, snakes, and all manner of creatures, to cook over hastily built campfires, and to sleep and travel in the crowded confines of the wagon. Quickly they learned how to pull together as neighbors, repair wagon wheels and broken harness, take advantage of safe streams for washing, and put up with the dust and grit good-naturedly when they must.

Only a few of the original travelers had not survived the trip. Old Elmer Jones had a heart attack and died trying to help push a stuck wagon out of a mudhole. Tom Travis had died of snakebite, but Helen Wells had survived one. Iris Miller’s baby was stillborn, and ten-year-old Joey Cord had died of a fever. That had nearly thrown the entire group into a panic as they thought it was cholera, but no one else had become sick, so they considered themselves lucky. A couple of oxen had eaten some kind of poisonous weed and died, and a couple of others had died of pure exhaustion, but no other ills had befallen the travellers. Luckily, they had encountered no Indians. There had been signs of them along the way, and once they had seen what looked like a family band traveling in the distance, but they had not had any problems or attacks to counter.

Four days past they had stopped at Fort Lyon, a combination trading post and fort, where they had met William Bent and his Indian wife Yellow Woman. Mr. Bent had told them that the Indian bands always rejoined their tribes in the spring, coming together to perform spring rituals, exchange news, and unite against the threat of warring tribes. The soldiers confirmed that all had been quiet so far. Little was heard of Roman Nose and his band of Cheyenne for months now, though he was prone to attack along the western Kansas border when the mood struck. Black Kettle, the chief of the Southern Cheyenne, was peaceable and more apt to negotiate than fight, but he was in his sixties and getting rather old for war. Black Kettle’s brother had been killed in the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, and things had been touch and go for a while, but as long as Black Kettle could keep his young buck of a nephew, A Panther Stalks, under control, there shouldn’t be any trouble. Red Cloud and his band of Sioux were quiet, and Sitting Bull, chief of the Sioux, was in treaty with the government for once.

The wagon train had left Bent’s Fort on its next ninety mile trek to Pueblo with only six added soldiers as escorts, who were being exchanged for half a dozen new recruits from Pueblo. Things were too quiet to warrant more, and no trouble was brewing that they knew of.

Tanya dove under the crystal clear water, swam to where Melissa stood in her underslip, and surfaced next to her.

“Where’d you learn to swim like that back in Philadelphia?”Melissa wanted to know, her blue eyes big and earnest as always.

Tanya laughed and tossed back her streaming hair. “We’re right along the Delaware River, Missy, and summers Daddy would rent a cottage outside of town along a sandy stretch. Mother could get away from the city heat that way. Daddy paid a couple of boys from a neighboring cottage to teach Julie and me to swim so Mother wouldn’t have to worry so about us. I took to it right away, but Julie couldn’t stand to get muck between her delicate toes and never did learn.”

Melissa nodded her understanding. “I hope for her sake Pueblo is a nice place. The trip has been rough on her.”

“Oh, pooh!” Tanya retorted. “Julie isn’t happy unless she has something to complain about.”

Melissa smiled one of her rare smiles. “You haven’t complained much. I’ll bet you’ve been too busy dreaming about what’s-his-name …Jeffrey?”

A dreamy look of anticipation crept over Tanya’s face. “Yes, Jeffrey. I can’t wait to see him again. It seems like forever since we’ve been together,” she sighed. “Just think, in less than two weeks we’ll be married and I’ll be Mrs. Jeffrey Young.”

Melissa cast her a wistful look. “I envy you, Tanya. I really do. I wish I had that to look forward to.”

Tanya was instantly contrite. “Oh, Missy! You will! Just wait and see! You are going to love California, and you are so pretty, all the boys will be lined up knocking on your cousin’s door and begging for your hand. You’ll be breaking hearts left and right just trying to decide who to accept.”