Warrior's Embrace (44 page)

Leaning forward with the moon impossibly
bright upon her hair and on the whiteness of her shirt, she shaded
her eyes, trying to see into the darkness.

The wanting of her pierced him like arrows,
and watching, he knew it would always be so. She was in his blood,
and the mere sight of her stirred him beyond imagining.

He stepped from the shadows, so close his
thigh touched hers. She spun around, dropping the mop, her mouth
round with surprise. The knowledge of what they were to each other
and what they would be sparked in their eyes.

“Be generous, Kate,” he said, reaching for
her.

She hesitated only a moment, then,
surrendering, she wrapped herself around him, her arms circling his
shoulders, her hands woven in his hair, her left leg pressed
against his groin and her right curved around his leg.

“Where have you been?” she whispered.

He cupped her face. “Waiting for this.”

Her sigh was as soft as prairie grasses
bending before the wind.

Even before his lips touched hers he knew the
honeyed taste of her, the warm, musky scent of her. It filled his
nostrils and the pores of his skin. It raced through bone and sinew
and blood, pounding with the insistent beat of war drums.

There was no need for words. Mouths joined,
skin touching skin, they sank to their knees, weak and dying of the
love-lust that consumed them. His hands were under her shirt, on
her soft breasts, and hers massaged him through his well-worn
jeans.

She made a soft, keening sound, like a
wounded animal, and Eagle scooped her into his arms. He whistled
once, twice. Out of the darkness came his black stallion. Kate was
no burden to him as he mounted.

“I will not submit to these barbaric ways,”
Kate said even as she wrapped her arms around his chest.

“Submissive women bore me,
Wictonaye
.” He bent close, his eyes challenging hers. Kate
held his stare while night winds soughed softly about them. From
far away came the cry of a coyote.

Still holding his gaze, Kate unlaced the
leather thongs at the neck of his shirt, wet the tip of her finger
with her tongue, then slowly traced his nipple.

“I will
never
submit,” she
whispered.

Smiling, Eagle dug his heels into the
stallion’s flanks.

Thundering across the prairie with the wind
in her hair, Kate existed in a state of being beyond time and light
and knowledge.

All she knew was the sound of hoof beats on
the hard prairie floor and the swaying motion of the horse that
rocked her in Eagle’s arms.

o0o

Hal waited until the house was quiet then
climbed out the window. The minute his feet hit the ground he began
to run. There was no need to look back. Nobody would pursue him.
His father had been snoring like a downed buffalo when he left, and
Deborah was out with one of her many boyfriends.

He’d be back long before she was, tucked
safely in bed when she checked, as innocent as a newborn babe. Hal
tipped back his head and laughed. A coyote in the hills answered
him.

Hal wasn’t scared. Nothing scared him. He had
the power of the wolf.

His feet were swift and sure as he ran. He
could outrun anybody in the Chickasaw Nation. Someday he would be a
famous runner, earning lots of money, so everybody in Witch Dance
would look at him driving by in his red Corvette and say, “There
goes the luckiest man alive” instead of “Poor Hal.”

He was sick of being Poor Hal, the boy whose
mama got herself shot and whose daddy barely even knew he was
alive.

Or maybe he’d prefer a black Corvette.

Wolf Man, he would call himself when he got
famous. It would be a tribute to the great man who had shown him
the future.

The Great One was waiting for him inside a
small hut tucked in the foothills of the Arbuckle Mountains.

“You came.” The man sitting on the dirt floor
of the hut with his legs crossed nodded wisely. “It is good.”

“Eagle is looking for you,” Hal said, sitting
opposite him and imitating the older man’s posture.

“How long?”

“Four days now.”

“The others?”

“They keep silent.”

“Good. We will let the white medicine woman
think peace has come to her clinic, then . . .” He made a slicing
motion with his hands.

“I understand.”

In the dim lights of the hut, the older man
looked like a god as he reached into his pouch.

“To reward you for destroying the witch
woman’s work,” he said, handing Hal a tiny packet.

Hal’s palms dampened as he stuffed it into
his pocket. He would save it for a time when he was alone in his
room with no one to come and bother him.

“I have to go now.”

“You will remember?” The older man made the
slicing motion with his hands once more.

“I will remember.”

He raced into the night, dreaming of fame and
the kaleidoscopic journey he would take with the peyote.

o0o

They came suddenly upon his campsite. A
blanket woven of all the colors of the sea lay upon the ground
beside blackened embers from a recent fire, and the whisper of the
river sang through the valley.

Eagle dismounted, taking Kate with him, and
when he spread her upon the sea-colored blanket, she knew she would
remember the moment always, the song of the river and the
brightness of his eyes as he undressed himself, then her. It was a
slow unveiling, surprising considering the sexual frenzy that had
brought them there.

Bending low, he touched her—touched her
breasts, the soft down of her abdomen, the tiny indentation of her
navel, the blue-veined skin inside her thighs. And all the while he
chanted the strange beautiful words of his people.

He didn’t have to speak English for her to
understand. Eagle was speaking the language of love.

Breathless, she watched him. Every inch of
her skin trembled under his inspection.

Levering himself over her, he gazed deep into
her eyes.

“Say you want me, Kate.”

“I want you, Eagle.”

“Say you want me as I want you.”

“I’m shameless. I would ride through an
inferno to feel your arms around me. I would storm the very gates
of hell to have you inside me, there” —she touched herself— “where
I burn.”

“
Waka ahina uno, iskunosi Wictonaye.
Waka.
”

“Yes. Teach me, Eagle.” She cupped his face.
“Teach me to fly.”

“Come.” Taking her by the hands, he lifted
her up so that they were facing each other, kneeling. “In the
ancient traditions of my people, there is a ceremony lovers use so
that they may know each other.” He traced her lips with the tips of
his fingers.

She closed her eyes, breathing in the dark,
musky scent of him. Behind her, the mountains cast giant shadows
while the river murmured its timeless song.

When Eagle withdrew his hands, she leaned
toward him and raked the tips of her nails down his chest. “In the
tradition of my people ...we would long since have been joined
together, panting on this blanket.”

“Patience,
Wictonaye
.” Smiling, he
touched her breasts. “See what the waiting does.” Her nipples,
already peaked, turned hard as diamonds in his skilled hands.

He withdrew his touch once more. She was
almost screaming with need.

“I’ve never had patience.” She ran her hands
over his chest. “If I had a weapon, I would take you at
gunpoint.”

“Will this do?” He pulled a lethal-looking
knife from his belt and held it toward her, hilt first, the blade
gleaming in the moonlight.

She traced the flat side of the blade,
shivering at the feel of the cold, deadly steel. Then, setting the
knife aside, she scooted close to him, close enough so that their
bodies touched from chest to knee. Lacing her arms around his neck,
she bent down and slowly traced his lips with her tongue.

She felt the shiver run through him, then
leaned back, smiling.

“So ...mighty warrior. Teach me
patience.”

“We will begin” —he took a deep shuddering
breath, then reached for her right hand— “like this.” Slowly he
laced their fingers together. His palm was warm and strong. “And
then you will touch yourself” —he grazed her breasts with his
fingertips— “like so, to indicate what you like.”

“And you?”

“I will do likewise.” He pressed his hand
against the flat of his belly and ran it downward. Breathless, she
watched. “It is the mirror dance ...an ancient and time-honored
prelude to love.”

With her eyes holding his, she touched
herself, touched herself in all the places she wanted his hands,
his lips, his tongue. She imagined him sliding through her slick,
satiny passages, imagined the hard, heavy feel of him, the blessed
friction that would both soothe and excite. Her breath sawed
through her lungs, and her head fell back on a neck too limp to
support its weight.

Her right hand clenched, tightened, and Eagle
felt the shudder that racked her. His blood roared in his ears. She
was ready for him now, ready for the final dance that would send
them flying to the skies.

He loosened his hold on her hand, and slid
his fingers slowly up the length of her arm, across the path of
moonlight that gleamed on her bare shoulder and over her tender,
blue-veined throat.

“Fly with me,
Wictonaye
,”

“Yes ...oh, yes,” she whispered, reaching for
him.

She was a lily stretched upon his Indian
blanket, a fallen flower offering her nectar to him. And he took
it, took all of it, searing her with fingers and tongue until she
was thrumming with need.

Humming low in her throat, a sound both
musical and passionate, she rose from the blanket and bent over
him. Her tongue made fire in his blood as her hair fell in a bright
curtain across his belly.

And Eagle knew that her hair was the thing he
would remember most about this night, her shining hair strewn
across his dark skin like blood.

All the poetry in his soul spilled forth, and
he whispered praises in the ancient tongue of his people, praises
to her bright hair and her skin that was white as the wings of
doves. Lowering her to the blanket, he covered her and together
they soared.

Eagle and his
Wictonaye
.

She was totally without shame, lying on the
Indian blanket in broad daylight, tangled with her lover. A pale
pinkish glow lay on the land as the sun peeked over the mountain.
In the early morning light his skin glowed, smooth and
earth-colored. She knew how every inch of it looked, felt,
tasted.

Kate bent down and pressed her tongue against
the base of his throat. So fast she hardly saw him move, Eagle
imprisoned her against his chest.

“I see the new dawn in the East, Kate, We
must greet it properly.”

“I have to go back before Dr. Colbert
discovers I’m missing.”

“He knows you’re with me.”

“No. I didn’t tell him.”

“He doesn’t need to be told; he saw.”

“When?”

“The day I brought you flowers.”

Not only was she shameless, but now Dr.
Colbert knew, and everything she’d worked for would go up in smoke.
She’d go home in disgrace, and he’d find somebody who was
committed
.

And all because she couldn’t control her
libido.

“We won’t do this again,” she said.

“No.” Eagle’s eyes gleamed as he wound her
hair around his fingers.

“No?” His ready agreement stung.

“No. Each time will be different. We will
love in as many ways as there are stars in the sky.”

“I’m telling you that I came here to practice
medicine, and I won’t let you interfere with that.”

“Fate sent you to me. It’s useless to argue
with fate.”

It was also useless to argue with Eagle.
Especially when he was naked.

Kate sighed, leaning against him.

“Tell me about greeting the new dawn
properly.”

“Everything goes in a circle, Kate, and that
circle is sacred. The new dawn of the East becomes the wisdom of
sunset. The rain that comes down from Father Sky drenches Mother
Earth, then returns as vapor.” Eagle moved as he talked, running
his hands through Kate’s hair, gliding his tongue along her throat
and down to her breasts.

“Someone will see,” she whispered, but she
was beyond caring.

He continued the erotic tongue bath as if he
hadn’t heard. She shivered as he licked the flat planes of her
belly.

“In honor of nature’s sacred circle, we will
perform the medicine wheel.” His tongue laved the skin of her inner
thighs. Devilish lights twinkled in his eyes as he lifted his head
to look at her. “I think you call it sixty-nine.”

She didn’t care what it was called, for she
was already on the wheel, spinning round and round.

o0o

He heard them come in, just after dawn.

Standing in the shadows, Clayton watched as
Eagle lifted Kate off his horse and kissed her. It was a kiss
between lovers, a long, passionate embrace with their bodies melded
and swaying together like two willows in the wind.

He watched. Imagining he was the one with his
arms around her. Imagining it was his name she murmured in her low,
love-sated voice.

Clayton couldn’t turn away, even when Kate
faced the window, even when she started into the house. He had to
see her, had to see the flush of sex on her skin and the brightness
of passion in her eyes.

His hands clenched into fists as she climbed
the front porch steps. Even when she opened the front door, he
couldn’t turn away.

When she was inside the house, he slid behind
the heavy drapery like a damned cowardly voyeur. Hiding in his own
house.

She passed so close, he could have touched
her. The smell of the fresh morning breezes and recent sex mingled
with her own floral fragrance to create an intoxicating scent that
almost brought Clayton to his knees. He clamped his bottom lip with
his teeth to keep from giving himself away.