Savage Arrow (17 page)

He was interrupted when a maiden brought a large wooden platter of food, which he would share with Jessie.

Jessie gazed at it, not recognizing anything on it.

Yet knowing that she must not be rude, nor appear to doubt what was being offered her by the Sioux, she eagerly
took a piece of meat and ate it as everyone else sat down to enjoy the fruits of their long day’s labor.

Jessie gazed around her, noticing how happy everyone was, the women now sitting with their husbands, eating and laughing.

She noticed that no children were there. When she asked why, Thunder Horse told her that they were home with the elders, as were the warriors who had been assigned to remain in the village to protect the old as well as the young.

She noticed that Sweet Willow wasn’t among the women and knew that she would be caring for White Horse in Thunder Horse’s absence.

She knew that Thunder Horse’s mind drifted often to his father; White Horse seemed to worsen now more each day. Thunder Horse had told her that the day was coming soon now when his father would be put to rest among the other great chiefs of their Fox clan.

“I have prepared a place for us to sleep separate from this camp,” Thunder Horse said softly into Jessie’s ear, causing her to turn and gaze into his dark eyes.

“Will you come with me?” he asked. “Will you sleep with me?”

“Do you mean . . . sleep separate as we have slept in your tepee at the village?” Jessie asked softly. Yet already she guessed the answer to her question from the look in his eyes, a look of love and need, which matched what she felt within her own heart for him.

“No, not separate,” Thunder Horse said, shoving the empty platter aside. “I wish for you to share my blankets alongside me tonight. I prepared a special place
for us after giving thanks for the hunt to my brother deer.”

“You already prepared it?” Jessie asked, her eyes wide, her pulse racing.

She was feeling a sensation between her thighs that she had never felt before. It was a pressure of sorts, yet felt strangely delicious.

She had been told by friends how it felt to sleep with a man when one was deeply in love. The feelings that were being awakened inside her were surely what they had been talking about.

Her heart pounded. Her knees were strangely weak.

She wasn’t sure if she could walk, even if she tried to go with him to this place he had made just for them—a lovers’ lair!

When she had made love with her husband, she had never felt like this. She had just wanted to give him satisfaction because of his kindness toward her, his willingness to take her in when she had no one else to go to.

She had never shared the excitement she knew he felt. His pleasure had been evident in his hard breathing and the pounding of his heart as he thrust himself inside her.

And then at the end! He had seemed to enter another world as he groaned and moaned with pleasure.

She had wanted to feel the same things he felt, but she just didn’t. She was a woman doing her womanly duty, that was all.

Now she was a woman who truly anticipated being
fulfilled in the most wondrous ways by the most wondrous man of all!

“
Ho
, I have prepared a place for us to spend the night together,” he said hoarsely, his eyes searching hers. “The fire is built. The blankets are spread. Will you come with me?”

Her pulse racing, everything within her crying out for these upcoming moments with the man she would always love, she nodded. She took his hand as he offered it to her.

“Come then,” he said huskily, rising to his feet and drawing Jessie up with him.

She didn’t look around to see if anyone was paying heed to what their chief was doing. Feeling as though she were walking on clouds, she left the camp with him.

They walked only a short distance before she saw a small campfire up ahead, where a cozy nest had been made of blankets against an upcropping of rock. A slight bluff reached out just above them, providing a roof of sorts.

Suddenly Thunder Horse stopped and turned to Jessie. He swept her up into his arms and carried her onward to the camp. He kissed her as he leaned low and placed her atop the blankets.

“
Techila
—in my language that means, ‘I love you,’ ” he whispered against her lips. “I have wanted you from the moment I first saw you. I want you for my
mitawin
, for always.”

“I want you as much,” Jessie murmured, overwhelmed by the emotions exploding within her.

As he kissed her he slowly removed her clothes until she lay splendidly nude beneath him. He quickly tore off his own clothes so that nothing remained between them.

He stretched out above her, his arms around her, nestling her close. Then he drew back a little, so his eyes could gaze into hers. He kissed her again, this time even more passionately, his hands going over her body, touching and awakening her every pleasure point.

She sighed and melted beneath his caresses, and soon learned that the man was not the only one who should receive something wonderful from lovemaking.

Thunder Horse was tender. His mouth was sensuous, not only as he kissed her lips, but also as he pressed them to her throat.

She clung to him as the very nearness of him shot desire through her. And when he came into her, filling her with his magnificence, his heat so thrilling inside her, delicious shivers of desire raced across her flesh.

As he enfolded her within his solid strength, she spread herself more open to him. He came to her, thrusting deeply, each thrust sending a message to her heart that he loved her without question.

Sheer happiness bubbled deep within her as he leaned low and kissed one breast and then the other, then sucked a nipple between his teeth, gently chewing.

She ran her fingers through his thick black hair, then down his solid, muscular back until she reached his buttocks. She spread her fingers across his tightness,
pressing him even more closely to her as he stoked the fires within that had never burned until tonight.

Thunder Horse’s passions, which had lain smoldering just below the surface, burst out tonight. They exploded within him as he felt the curl of heat growing, his world melting away in a passion he’d never known could exist between a man and a woman.

Her groans of pleasure fired his passion even more as he continued to stroke within her. His eyes were glazed, drugged with rapture, as he paused long enough to look down at her.

“We were meant to be together,” he said huskily, a hand at her hair, brushing it back from her face. “I have waited a long time for you. Now I can never let you go.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Jessie breathed out, sucking in a breath of rapture when he again kissed her. His body thrust deep, taking her to a plateau of feelings that soon exploded into a million sparks of light. She clung to him as he reached that same place, then rolled away from her and lay on his back, breathing hard.

“I still feel you inside me,” Jessie said, laughing softly, for she did still throb where the feelings she had never experienced before had spread like fire.

“And I still feel as though I am,” Thunder Horse said. He gazed at her as she closed her eyes, still smiling into the darkness of night. “My woman, you are everything to me. Stay with me. Bear me a son.”

The mention of children brought her eyes open
quickly. She became aware that he was stroking her belly, oh, so gently.

It . . . was . . . as though . . . he already knew a child grew within her.

She reached for his hand and held it still on her stomach. “I am with child already,” she said, and wondered why that confession didn’t cause him to withdraw his hand in surprise, or worse yet . . . in disgust.

“I already knew,” he said, smiling into her eyes as their gazes met and held in the fire’s glow.

“You . . . did?” she gasped. “How could you?”

“I was not certain, but I believed that you were,” Thunder Horse said, sitting up beside her. He stroked her belly with his hand gently, almost meditatingly.

“How could you?” she asked, aware of his gentleness and his acceptance of her baby.

“Many times when you were not aware of it, you have rested your hand on your belly as women with child often do,” he said softly. “I saw this with my sister. She was oh, so protective of her baby before he was born. All women who want to have a child are.”

“And it doesn’t matter to you that I am carrying another man’s baby inside my belly? I do love you with all my heart and want to marry you,” she blurted out, her eyes searching his.

“Everything about you I love,” he said thickly, slowly smiling. “Even the child that will be born of your other love.”

“I loved my husband, yet not with passion,” she confessed. “It was a gentle love. He . . . my husband . . . took me in and married me when my parents were
killed. He wanted children so badly. But he didn’t even know that I was with child before he died. I only realized it myself on the journey from Kansas to Arizona.”

“I shall love the child as though it was born of our union,” Thunder Horse said. “It will be my child. I shall raise it and protect it. I shall teach it everything the young braves of my people learn. We shall hunt together.”

Jessie was almost in tears, she was so happy and grateful to have found such a love as Thunder Horse’s. She sat up and flung herself into his arms. “I love you so,” she sobbed. “Thank you for loving me.”

He held her for a while longer; then they lay back down and loved again, this time slowly, leisurely, yet still with a passion they could only find together.

Reginald rolled and tossed on his bed, fitfully throwing his blanket from side to side as another nightmare held him in its grip. This one was worse than any he had had before.

In his dream he was in the sacred cave.

The paintings of Indians along the cave’s walls began turning into living beings, jumping from the walls, yet they weren’t full Indians at all. They were bones that suddenly came together into hideous skeletons.

Howling and shrieking, they began running after Reginald, the click-clack-clack of the bones like something straight from hell.

There were skeletal remains of eagles flying around his head, squawking and clawing at him.

He awakened in a sweat. Panting, with sweat rolling from his brow, his eyes wide, he sat up and looked wildly around him.

He was in his room, where the moon’s glow shone through his windows onto his bed.

Trembling, he closed his eyes as he recalled this newest nightmare. It had all seemed so real—the bones, the skeletons, the birds, all running after him, grabbing, clawing.

“I can’t take any more of this,” he cried, leaping from the bed. He yanked off his nightgown and hurried into his clothes and shoes, then put on his eyeglasses and ran from the room, only to find Jade standing there, her eyes wide with wonder.

“What are you gawking at?” he shouted, doubling a fist and knocking her to the floor. “Mind your own business, do you hear?”

He didn’t stop to get a firearm. He had only one thing on his mind—to go to the Indian village and plead his case there. He went out to the stable, hitched a horse to his buggy, and headed out for the Indian village.

Surely the Sioux would listen to reason.

He would promise to do anything if they would only make the nightmares stop. If they didn’t, he would surely go insane.

He rode onward until he reached the outskirts of the village and was suddenly stopped by a sentry.

“What are you doing here?” the sentry asked, raising his rifle as he gazed angrily and with suspicion at Reginald.

“Please let me speak with your chief,” Reginald pleaded. “It is of the utmost importance.”

“It is late,” the sentry growled out.

“I know it is, but I must speak with Chief Thunder Horse tonight,” Reginald said, losing his patience.

“That is impossible,” the sentry said flatly. “My chief and many others of our warriors are gone. They are on the hunt. So turn around. Go back to your home.”

“I’ll talk with anyone who’ll listen, then,” Reginald begged. “I must. Please allow me to enter your village and have council with whomever is left in charge during your chief’s absence.”

“I am that man,” the sentry said, his eyes gleaming. “And it is my decision to turn you away. Go. You are not welcome here now; nor will you ever be by any of our people.”

“Please listen,” Reginald pleaded. “I beg your forgiveness for going to your sacred cave and taking what I shouldn’t have. I’ll return it all if it means that these nightmares will stop.”

“It is not meant for them to stop, ever,” the sentry said bluntly. He pointed away from the village. “I will tell you one last time: go. Do not ever come again to disturb my people.”

“You are wrong,” Reginald said, near tears. “If your chief learns that you turned me away after I promised so much, you will be severely punished.”

The sentry just laughed and turned away.

Reginald stared blankly at him, then wheeled his horse and buggy around and headed back in the direction of his home, a beaten man.

He felt so helpless. He hated to think he had been bested by a mere savage.

“What can I do?” he cried into the dark heavens.

Never in his life had he felt so helpless . . . so afraid.

And where was Jessie?

He truly believed that she could have helped him fight this terrible fear. If only he had been more decent to her when she had wanted to live with him.

Now he had not lost only his Sara, but also Jessie.

Life was becoming pointless, even though he had enough money to make him comfortable forever. But what had that wealth gained him but nightmares?

All of the wealth in the world wasn’t worth what he was living through every night.

“Damn you to hell, Thunder Horse, for cursing me with these nightmares!” he screamed, causing birds that had been roosting for the night overhead to scatter and flutter above him.

And then he heard something else that made his insides turn cold with fear. It was a strange moaning that came with sudden gusts of wind.

Was it the moans of those dead chiefs he had disturbed in the sacred cave?