Love A Rebel...Love A Rogue (Blackthorne Trilogy)

by Henke, Shirl

  “I would speak with my nephew in private, if you do not mind, my lady?” Tall Crane said, as politely as if they were in an English drawing room.

  Her cheeks aflame, she dared to raise her eyes to meet Dev's. He seemed to hesitate for an instant, then let his hand fall to his side and nodded to her. “Please, return to the village. I'll be along shortly.”

  Barbara stiffened her spine and stepped regally past Tall Crane, retracing her path without a backward glance.

  “She is angry with us,” Tall Crane said.

  Devon smiled ruefully. “She's angry with me for dismissing her like that.” Although he was certain what his uncle was going to say, he had to ask, “What do you wish to speak of?”

  “I have been observing you and the Lady Barbara for many days now, and my heart is troubled,” the older man said gravely. “She is not only a white woman, but a titled English noblewoman. Her family will not allow you to wed her.”

  “I doubt Barbara would consent to wed me even if I were to ask her,” Devon replied stiffly. ”I know well enough the gulf between a half-breed and the white world.”

  “And yet you let this attraction grow...on both your parts. It can only end badly, Golden Eagle. You cannot live in her world, nor she in yours. Send her back to her own kind. I can have an escort of warriors ready at first light,”

  “No.” Devon answered too quickly, then added, “I’ll take her to her brother in Savannah in a few days. I'm responsible for her being here, and she saved my life. I'm almost fully recovered from the knife slash. I know my duty, Uncle, and I’ll do it.”

  * * * *

  Over the next two days, Devon avoided Barbara as much as he could, leaving her with Mocking Bird and her daughters while he helped several of the men of his clan construct a two-story storage house. It was hot, strenuous labor, and Barbara feared he might reopen his wound, but he seemed to grow stronger each day.

  She relived the magic of that kiss every sleeping and waking hour, wondering what might have happened if Tall Crane had not interrupted them. She knew Devon was avoiding her because of the old man's admonition. Why did he have to meddle in something that did not concern him? Soon it would be time for her to go to Savannah. Would she ever see Dev again?

  Lady Barbara Caruthers was no stranger to cold reality. She had always known her future would be a marriage much like that of her parents. She and Monty had their duty, after all. But why can't this be one small moment in time for me? It was not fair. Life had never been fair to her or to Dev.

  As she knelt in the garden plot pulling weeds, she watched Dev work, binding saplings for the frame of the building. She decided that just once, she would seize a bit of happiness for herself.

  When the day's labor was done in mid-afternoon, most of the Indians ate their main meal and adjourned to the chunky field, but it was always Dev's habit to bathe when he'd finished working. She had observed him head to the river with soap and clean clothes the past several days. That afternoon, she followed him at a distance as he went far upriver, where no one would interrupt him. When she heard him splashing in the cool water, she quickly slipped behind the leafy bough of a willow and stripped off her own clothes.

  The riverbed was secluded, shrouded with a canopy of tall willows. Cattails and other marsh grasses formed a thick curtain at the river's edge. She chose a spot just around the bend in the river and slid into the shallow water where she could perform her hasty toilette. The water felt heavenly after her strenuous labor in the garden. Indeed, she had grown as accustomed to daily bathing as a Muskogee maiden! After rinsing her long, pale hair, she flung the mane back and climbed from the water. Soaking wet in the midday warmth, she walked on noiseless feet across the mossy bank to where Dev was swimming.

  Barbara watched him cut cleanly through the water, then reach the shallows and stand waist-deep in the current. The sun shone with blazing brilliance on his golden hair and deeply bronzed skin. Every droplet of water seemed to cling, glistening like silver on the swell of his muscles. Beads of water were trapped in the dark gold pelt of hair on his chest. She longed to bury her hands in the wet, springy mat.

  He walked slowly from the water, as if preoccupied. This time she did not avert her eyes as his splendidly naked body drew close but studied the beauty of his virility, enthralled. Her eyes traveled down the fascinating pattern of his body hair from his chest to where it narrowed in an arrowlike descent across his hard belly, then bloomed around his male parts. The slash across his waist was only a dull pinkish scar now.

  Devon felt her eyes on him and sensed her presence just before he stepped out of the shallows. He stood frozen for a moment. “How long have you been here?” he asked in a strangled voice, unable to hide his body's immediate response to her. God above, she was wet from bathing. The thin strip of white cotton thrown carelessly about her lush curves concealed nothing!

  Barbara did not answer him but walked silently to the water's edge, praying her courage would not desert her. She could see visible proof of his desire as he stood motionless, his hands clenched in fists at his sides. Taking a deep breath, she slid the cloth away and tossed it on the ground, then set one foot in the water.

  “Don't,” he pleaded hoarsely.

  She ignored his command and drew closer, watching the look of tortured longing that blanched his swarthy face until it was almost pale. When she was within two feet of him, she paused, feeling the heat of their bodies calling one to the other. She watched for a moment, then said, “Please, Dev.”

  “This is wrong. You belong in England, in a fine mansion, surrounded by servants, not here in the wilderness.” The words came out in a rush, raw and breathless. “You're a lady, you'll marry a man with a title, a rich Englishman—”

  “Most probably so,” she said with quiet sadness in her voice, “but first...first, Dev, I want what every Muskogee woman has the right to have. Is that so terrible? To want one time just for me?” For love?

  With an oath, he reached out and crushed her in his arms, his mouth coming down on hers in a sweet, savage kiss. She melted into him, molding her wet, naked flesh to his while her hands glided over his shoulders and slid down his back, her palms flat, her fingernails biting into his muscles.

  Devon trailed his mouth hungrily down her throat and buried his face against her shoulder while one hand found the curve of her breast. Then he moved his head lower, capturing one pale pink nipple in his mouth. He felt a thrill of desire race through him when she keened out his name and arched against his lips, offering herself to him. His mouth moved to the other breast, repeating the soft suckling. He cupped the milky globes in his hands, marveling at their perfection—so lush, yet at the same time so delicate.

  Her eyes were glazed with passion as she felt his hands on her breasts, cupping, teasing, his mouth tasting her. Then he reached down and scooped her into his arms and carried her to the bank, where he knelt and laid her on the mossy earth. He leaned over her with a question in his eyes.

  She reached up and stroked his chest, urging him to come to her. He held back, then whispered, “Once you said you'd taken your mother's lover away from her, even though you didn't bed him. Has any man—”

  “No. Never.” Her face flamed as she felt his troubled dark eyes study her. She forced herself to meet his gaze. ”I want you to be the first.”

  He knew this was madness, for he could not be the last, the one to claim her in marriage, but when those clear blue eyes implored him, he lowered his body over hers and kissed her once more. He would be the first.

  As she enfolded him in her arms, all other thoughts fled. Gently, reverently, he worshipped her flesh with his hands and mouth, using the tip of his tongue to flick at errant droplets of water that were caught above her collarbone and in the vale between her breasts. Her skin felt like wet silk against his mouth. His body fought the restraint he was placing on it. Never in his life had he been so afire to take a woman, but Barbara was a virgin and deserved slow, gentle wooing.

  S
he did not make his resolve easier, for in her innocent abandon she pulled him closer, taking her cue from the magical way he used his mouth. She tasted him, licking, biting, exploring...and growing hungrier, marveling at the contrast of her skin, so pale and soft, pressed intimately against his hard, bronzed flesh. When he took a fistful of her silvery hair and wrapped it around his neck, she felt a primitive surge of heat catch fire deep inside her belly.

  As if understanding what was happening to her, Devon's hands traced a trail from her breast across the curve of her flat little belly, then lower. His mouth followed where his hands roamed. When his tongue circled and then probed her navel, she arched her hips and held his head in her hands. He moved lower, his hand gliding over one slender, rounded hip and thigh, then around to brush the soft curls between her legs.

  Barbara was on fire, consumed by a nameless need. His fingers opened her nether lips carefully, patiently, as if he were unfolding the petals of a rose. She gasped and cried out his name.

  He crooned low love words against her skin as he stroked her wet, satiny flesh, aching to plunge into her, desperately holding back. When she writhed against his hand, he knew he could wait no longer. He rose over her and took her hand in his, guiding it to touch him, wrapping it around his straining phallus.

  The heat and hardness of it amazed her, and the velvety smoothness of it made her long to feel this ultimate caress. “Please, Dev, please,” she whispered.

  “Open for me. Aah, yes, that's the way,” he gasped, his large hand wrapped about her small one as he guided himself into her, then pulled her hand away and held her tightly as he lay between her thighs, struggling to move slowly. She was small and tight, but wet and eager all the same. She arched against him. He gritted his teeth and slowed his steady invasion. ”I don't want to hurt you, Barbara. Hold still.”

  The feeling of his hot flesh probing hers drove all reason from her. She bucked beneath him, and the thin wall holding him back was forever vanquished. Her nails dug into his back as she urged him deeper inside her. She could feel the incredible stretching pressure more than she could any pain. For all the foolish theatrics about it, losing a maidenhead was not a painful ordeal in any way. She tightened her legs about his hips and felt him move inside her. This was bliss!

  Devon could feel the tearing of her maidenhead, but she did not hesitate or cry out, only urged him on—as if he could stop by then! Once fully inside her, he kissed her fiercely, possessively. She is mine.

  But only for now, a voice mocked him.

  He swept the disquieting thought aside and began to move. She moved with him, quickly catching the rhythm, as hungry as he. His tongue plunged into her mouth, mimicking the thrusting of his lower body. When she closed her lips around his tongue, he nearly went mad.

  They rolled around on the soft, mossy ground until she lay atop him. He took her hips in his hands and raised them, then lowered them, never breaking their kiss. Barbara felt a heady sense of power when she lowered herself onto him and felt him strain up as she controlled the pace of their mating. And what a glorious mating it was, the pleasure building, delicious, compelling, the hunger consuming her. She longed for some unknown culmination; she longed for the ecstasy never to end.

  Her hair spilled over her shoulders and covered them in a silken cocoon.Lost in their own world, they strove on, intent only on each other. She pressed her breasts against the hard warmth of his chest, letting his hair abrade her aching, sensitive nipples. He held her head with one hand as he ravaged her mouth, groaning and gasping for air.

  Just when Barbara was certain she would die of the pleasure, that it could grow no more, a great swelling surge of intense ecstasy washed over her in successive waves. She rocked up and down, riding it out as her nails clawed at his shoulders. Then his body grew rigid and he shuddered. His staff swelled even larger inside her and he pulsed life into her in those same surging waves that she had felt.

  Slowly, they grew still, their bodies sated, sweat-soaked and exhausted. Her fingertips traced patterns on his muscles, and her lips kissed the faint scars scattered across his upper body. “Thank you, Devon,” she whispered, not knowing what else to say.

  “Did I hurt you, Barbara?” he asked, although he was almost certain her discomfort had been fleeting.

  Her hand gently soothed the scar on his side, and she chuckled. “Better if I asked you that question. For a man at death's door only a few short weeks ago, you've recovered marvelously, Mr. Blackthorne.”

  ”I owe it all to your nursing skills, your ladyship,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose. Then his expression sobered. Your ladyship. She was as far beyond his reach as the North Star, blazing with fiery beauty in the night sky.

  “I'm not sorry, Devon,” she answered in reply to his unspoken question. “Please, let us live one day at a time.”

  “For how long? You must go to your brother in Savannah, a place where I'm little welcome.” He lifted her off him and sat up, taking her in his arms as they huddled together by the river's edge.

  “There must be a way,” she whispered fiercely. Having just had a taste of paradise, she did not want to speak of relinquishing it.

  He stroked her cheek and then lifted that proud, stubborn chin. “What way? Could you live among the Muskogee? Scrape deer hides and cook over an open fire? No, your ladyship. You're destined for silks and servants. And I can't provide either.”

  She threw her arms around him with a sob of misery and he stroked her hair, rubbing her back to comfort her.

  * * * *

  Panther Woman watched them return from the river. Her black eyes narrowed with hate as she looked from Devon to the pale-haired woman, who walked so arrogantly beside him. Although they did not even touch, she knew they had made love. There was a certain tension between a man and woman, an aura that glowed from their eyes as they exchanged covert glances. She saw the heightened color in the pale one's cheeks, the way Barbara's eyes followed Devon when he bade good day to her at Mocking Bird's house. Rage washed over her.

  Always she had known that his white blood called to him, that he took white women when he traveled to their cities, but such were insignificant liaisons. He would never give his heart to a tavern wench. She knew this woman was different. She also knew Devon would never come to her bed again so long as the English one was alive.

  “This evening I shall go down to the river and trap one of my pets,''she murmured low and vanished inside the doorway of her house.

  * * * *

  Tonight was the final and most important day of the eight days of feasting to welcome in the new year, the celebration called the Boos-ke-tuh, or Green Corn Festival. Devon escorted Barbara to the large town square, where four rectangular open shelters faced the center of the square. Since the seats were reserved by clan for the families of distinction, Devon, as a member of the prestigious Wind Clan, was allowed to bring Barbara to observe the ceremonial lighting of the new fires.

  Already she had helped Mocking Bird's family clean their house and empty their hearth of the past year's ashes. All broken pottery, utensils, and tools were carefully gathered up and discarded. Special dances were held each night, and every morning the Black Drink was taken by all the men of the village.

  Devon explained to her that sexual abstinence was considered an essential part of the religious ritual. “But I never was religious, either the English or Muskogee part of me,” he said with a wink that made her blush.

  He had felt obliged to join some of the communal male ceremonies at the opening of each day during the festival. He purged himself by using the Black Drink and by sitting in the sweat lodge with his uncle and cousins, then plunged into the cold river, although he did not join in the dancing.

  Barbara noticed that there were few women seated in the assembly. Most of the females and a good minority of the males stood back beyond the perimeter of the square, watching at a distance. “They're men who haven't distinguished themselves in war or hunting, second wives, or just people of l
esser clans. This is as class-conscious a society as any in Europe.”

  “Second wives?” she said with a raised eyebrow. So that explained the two older women who lived with Mocking Bird and did her bidding!

  He smiled at her righteous indignation. ”A Muskogee man can take a second wife—but only if his first wife consents.”

  “Why ever would she do such a thing?”

  “To share the chores. It's considered a sign of wealth and prestige for a man to be able to provide for more than one wife. Many women think it an honor. Besides, if a woman becomes angry with her husband's treatment of her, she can divorce him and he has to leave her house, for all property remains with the woman's clan.”

  “How very interesting,” she said, turning her attention back to the priests moving to the center of the square with four youths in their wake. Each carried a large log. The earth had been swept clean and sprinkled evenly with white sand. Now each boy carefully positioned his log on the sand, and the laborious process of building the fire began.

  “Four is the sacred number, representing the sun, created by the Breath Master who makes the corn grow,” he explained.

  By the time all the rituals were performed, the fire blazed high in the night sky. It would burn without being extinguished until the next year's Green Corn Festival. Now the youths were sent to every clean, cold hearth in the village, bearing a live ember from this fire. Home hearths, too, would remain aglow for another year.

  Barbara felt her eyelids growing heavy when they finally stood up and began to file out of the shelter. The night was warm and starry. They walked slowly back to the two-story building where Barbara,as a guest of the family, was sleeping. Devon stayed across the way in another large dwelling with his uncle and aunt.

  “Sleep well,” he said simply, aching to draw her into his arms and kiss her, but there were people everywhere, returning home after the festival.