“What was that?” Meyra asked, turning to him so the whole side of her body was pressing against him. He could still feel her flesh quivering as if she was freezing.
“Nothing,” Stone said with a deep sigh, looking up at the sky to try to grasp hold of the stars, the moon, for a second, to find his bearings. But there was only that black sheet high above, the spreading cloud of atomic death that seemed to gather in the darkness and swell as it spread out across Colorado to the east and south. He almost felt tears come to his eyes. It was as if there were nothing sometimes. Just an abyss into which one could fall if one looked too long, thought about it too often. Everything was wounded or dead; even the sky was filled with a black blood that would soon rain down. The abyss. It never had seemed closer.
“Come on,” Meyra said suddenly. “You look like shit. Come with me. I need your help, anyway.” He started along, almost dragged by the young Cheyenne woman hardly half his size. Stone caught Bull’s eye as he was led in a near daze away from the fire and toward Meyra’s all-terrain vehicle, parked near a boulder in the darkness.
“Keep an eye on things, okay, man?” Stone whispered through the flame-stitched darkness out of the corner of his mouth as if he were trying to be a ventriloquist.
“Sure, Stone. Get some sleep. We’ll cover your back,” Bull replied, giving the thumbs-up. He immediately headed back to the tank where he set himself down in the fold-out metal seat, just a few feet below the top of the hatchway, and sat there putting his legs up out of the hatch and crossing his arms. Like a watchman at a proverbial factory, the big ex-NAA recruit watched the scene below him with a wary eye.
“Here,” Meyra said as she knelt down and crawled into the little lean-to that she had created by putting a large blanket between the three-wheeler and a six-foot-high, egg-shaped boulder. “My little home.” Stone followed behind her, closing the flap, and with the lantern she suddenly snapped on and the pads of blankets on the ground, it did feel like a goddamn home. More of one than he’d had for a long time.
“Just lie back,” she said with an almost imperceptible little smile that dashed back and forth across her full lips. She reached over and gently pushed him back so he lay down on a thick bearskin pelt that felt exquisitely wonderful and soft against his aching back and legs. He let his head fall back onto a hide pillow and closed his eyes, suddenly deciding that maybe things weren’t that bad, after all. And when he opened them again just a slit a few seconds later, he saw that things were a hell of a lot better than he could have imagined.
Meyra was just pulling off her olive sweatshirt beneath her buckskin so that her full, young, pear-shaped breasts bounced out into the rippling rays of the erratic light put out by the short-circuiting lamp off to one side of the little shelter. His eyes suddenly opened wide and his heart started beating faster. Stone wondered if sleep was as close as it had seemed a second ago.
Naked from the waist up, she examined herself in the thin rays of illumination. Leaping Elk had gotten her right breast —one good slice along the outer side, about three inches long. She held her breast in her hands, pushing it up and toward her to get a good look at the wound. The blood was still oozing out, but it wasn’t spurting or flowing fast. As deep as it had gone, the wound hadn’t severed any large veins or dug into an artery. She would live. The Cheyenne woman reached into a bison-hide pouch attached to her belt and extracted a small piece of hollow mountain-goat horn, sealed at both ends. She took off a bark cap and poured about a tablespoon full of green powder into her hand. Carefully recapping the hom, she grabbed some water from a nearby gourd and sprinkled just enough into the powder to make it into a paste. Meyra dug the fingers of her other hand into the stuff, mixing it around for nearly a minute until it was of a thick oatmeal consistency. She slopped the goo-filled hand down on her breast and smeared the green stuff all over the wound, even opening it and pressing the paste inside.
Stone alternately opened and closed his eyes at the scene. Though he liked looking at her breast, he didn’t necessarily like the vision of her pushing green slime onto it. She caught him staring at her suddenly, and she let out a sharp little laugh.
“You look funny,” she said with smile. “You have a very strange expression on your face.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t get to see swamp juice pumped into a beautiful breast too often,” Stone replied in a low and tired voice.
“Cheyenne medicine,” Meyra said as she looked back down at her right breast to make sure she was getting every square inch saturated with the not-unpleasant-smelling slop. “My father was a medicine man, besides being chief of our tribe. He showed me and—and Little Bear all the secrets of herbal healing. The Spirit Gods have given mankind everything he needs on this earth to heal and protect his body. But no one ever listened to the stupid Indian. They had more fun making pills and injections of powerful drugs that most of the time they didn’t even know the results of, the long-term impact. All that I use on my body—and the others of the tribe—are natural things, given from nature, from the plants and the seeds, the minerals of the ground. I am the Healer now. It is all here, Stone. All. Everything has been provided. It takes a scientist not to know it.”
“I’m not going to argue.” Stone laughed, wanting to reach up and cup those golden breasts more every second. “You saved my ass just recently with a similar type of goo, if my memory serves me correct.”
“That’s right, gringo,” she said, finishing up with her treatment. She didn’t bandage the wound or anything, although already the paste seemed to be drying up and forming a shiny, protective coating. Blood was no longer flowing. “I saved your ass, and now you saved mine.” And as if all the talk of “asses” made her physical embodiment of such an attribute want to get in on the action, Meyra suddenly stripped off her jeans and was stark naked before Stone, her perfect, lithe body, glistening with a thin coat of sweat that seemed to sparkle like diamonds in the low light.
Stone’s hands suddenly reached out as if with minds of their own. He grabbed her around the ass, pulling her down on top of him. She fell, half squealing, half laughing, and suddenly she was crushing hard against him, pulled toward his chest by his strong arms, though he was careful to keep her right breast just off him so as not to open the wound again.
“Zounds,” she said with another little laugh that sent shivers through Stone’s back. “Me thought you were near gone from this world, into the land of Nod.” Her face was so beautiful to him as it glowed from the lantern’s stroking rays, smiling, eyes open and there for him, without a trace of darkness or deceit behind the shining brown irises. Her body was a soft paradise of flesh covering him. A musky perfume, sweet and filled with both the scents of flowers and animals in heat, seemed to drift from her entire body, intoxicating Stone, making him swoon, making his nasal passages open up, his lungs fill with the scent like an opium he had to inhale.
Suddenly her face came down close to his and she pressed her lips against his. For a few seconds she bobbed up and down on him with her mouth, like a timid bird testing a bite of food. And then suddenly her mouth was glued to his, and her tongue was seeking a desperate entry. They kissed hard, and Stone pulled her even tighter against him, loving the way she felt, the way she cleaved to him like a glove around a hand. Suddenly she seemed to jerk, and Stone groaned loudly as he felt the golden triangle between her legs become hot and burning with desire.
“Here,” she said simply, suddenly rising up and away from him. “You are tired, let me disrobe you, as the woman should.” She kneeled around him as he lay flat on his back on the bear rug and she peeled off first his pants, then his jacket and shirt, until he was as naked as she was. She looked down admiringly at him, her lips filling with desire. In the little bit of light that was still being emitted from the half-working lantern, she could see his recent scars, wounds over myriad parts of his body that he had been collecting from various delightful experiences over the last few months.
“You’ve been hurt,” she sai
d, kneeling back down by his side and stroking a long purple streak than ran down the whole side of his ribs, as if someone had almost, but not quite, driven a knife into him and skewered him as he had just done to Leaping Elk.
“Nothing fatal.” Stone grinned as he felt his manhood rising for her as a tree rises for the sun. “Anyway, my uncle’s a plastic surgeon out in Beverly Hills—said he could fix all gunshot, stabbing, and razor wounds—at twenty percent off—since I’m a relative. Have to get out that way—as soon as I can move, of course.”
“You’re crazy.” She laughed again, with a wide-eyed kind of girlish innocence in her face that all women get when they’re with a man they know they could love. “Hold my breasts,” she said to him in a guttural whisper. “Hold them, squeeze them.” Stone didn’t need much coaxing in that department and reached up, cupping her round breasts, which were now as hard as freshly plucked fruits, the dime-sized nipples rising up for his mouth. Stone squeezed her, softly at first, rolling his hands around the Cheyenne woman’s flesh. And then, as she groaned, he squeezed harder, kneading her hot mounds in his hands and fingers with an animal intensity. He felt her lips twitch against him, and her whole body seemed to soften and relax as she gave in to his maleness, his possession of her.
“My right breast, massage it,” she said, commanding him urgently.
“But won’t it hurt—” Stone began to protest.
“Touch heals all wounds, especially the touch of a man and a woman. Especially your touch. Your touch will heal me. Like magnets—that’s what we’re like. Like magnets.” She groaned again as his organ stiffened more and throbbed up against her thighs like something alive. Suddenly she could stand it no more. She wanted him, needed him. His staff, the magic wand that healed all wounds. She lowered herself down in front of him until her head was at his groin. She buried her face in his dark hair, rolling it around as if in a luxurious fabric. With both hands she gripped the stiff organ that curved upward into the air like a sword of flesh. And then, as if in a mesmerized state, she lowered her mouth down over it.
Stone moaned in the darkness now as but a few orange rays trickled out from the now virtually dead battery lamp. She moved up and down, a little farther each time, and her long black hair cascaded down over his stomach like a curtain of silk. She seemed to take him down impossibly deep, opening her throat, her lips, wide. But her desire drove her to that extra madness that super hominess brings out, and she drove herself down on his stiff organ as if she had to get it all inside her or die.
Stone nearly screamed out as he felt her lips and throat suddenly push down, covering him completely. He was totally enveloped in the velvet warmth of her throat. He pumped involuntarily into her, knowing he was pushing deep, but she grunted and just took him even farther, her hands now around his testicles, squeezing them hard as she fed his manhood into her mouth.
Suddenly it was Stone who couldn’t stand it anymore, and he pulled her up from her kneeling position .so that his staff ripped out of her mouth, a coating of saliva from stem to top. With the strength of total arousal he literally lifted her up above his midsection and then lowered her down atop him. She pulled her legs apart as she came down on him, reaching down to make a path through the wet, furred forest of reddish-golden hair that formed a triangle between her legs. They stared into each other’s eyes, seeing each with only the dim light from the camp-fire that percolated beneath the edges of the lean-to. Their eyes were locked in electric circuitry as his organ suddenly entered her.
He had barely pressed past her throbbing opening when Stone felt a shudder of raw energy pass through him. Holding her tight around the waist, he pulled down with all his might as he thrust up into her. The entire organ entered the beautiful Cheyenne warrior woman in a second, stunning her with its thickness and length. Kneeling atop him, her eyes seemed to close tight as her whole head fell to one side, so powerful was the sensation of being filled with him.
Stone relaxed for a second, barely gaining control of himself. Then, pulling himself back down into the bearskin, he moved his hands down and gripped her around the ass and the top of her thighs. Slowly he pushed up into her, then out again. And slowly her mind returned to her, though she began breathing hard as she followed his strokes. Moving with him, her pelvis rotating around on the organ, her arms, leaning down on his chest, pressing up and down as she did push-ups on him.
Then she seemed to go completely crazy as she suddenly began pumping up and down on him like a pneumatic jack-hammer. She would raise herself up until the very tip of him was in her and then come down hard, all the way to the hilt, so that her buttocks were slamming right against his stomach. Faster she went, moving with total abandon as her mouth fell open and drool trickled slightly from both comers. Drool from the food of the body. Stone could hardly hang on as she rocketed up and down atop him.
Then they were both driving hard against each other, their bodies slamming together in loud, wet sounds as their desire came to a fevered pitch. Then they were both animals, inhuman creatures whose flesh and smell were the only realities, the only consciousness. Both in the state of highest bliss a man and a woman can know on this fucked-up planet, they ground their bodies like savage beasts as Stone pumped a lava of love into her volcanic center.
Chapter Eight
When Stone awoke, light was seeping in under the edge of the blanket—and a white-and-brown face along with it. Excaliber stood half in, half out, of the little lean-to, not positive he was welcome. But as soon as Stone’s eyes opened and the pitbull made eye contact with his master, he pushed forward off his powerful back legs and in a second was on top of Stone and Meyra, a pile of legs that walked over their flesh with cold paws.
“What the hell”—the Cheyenne woman sputtered as she woke up, a paw digging into her right ear—”is going on?” She pushed away at the ghostly presence with both hands and sat up.
“Off, Excaliber, off!” Stone commanded the pitbull with a mean tone in his voice. The animal jumped off and slinked toward the flap, head down, emitting a pitiful little whine.
“Ah, he feels bad,” Meyra cooed with the sudden concern of her latent maternal instincts. As if the dog heard her, it turned around, looking at them both with a pathetic, plaintive expression worthy of Bambi.
“Here, pooch, here,” she said, clapping her hands.
“You’re making a mistake,” Stone began. “That animal’s the biggest con artist alive. He can get food from a starving orphan.” But it was too late, the bullterrier was already upon them with happy, slurping kisses all over the place.
By the time they got everything sorted out and emerged from the blanket shelter with shit-eating grins that only those who have been fucking all night can have, the rest of the fighting unit were already gathered around the cooking fire, which had been built up again so that it stood several feet high with crisscrossed, burning dead branches. The warming flames felt good in the cool, dark morning air as Stone made his way, rubbing his eyes, half stumbling toward the flames and the beckoning scent of coffee cooking up in several pots over the fire.
He and Meyra sat down without a word and poured themselves cups. They took a few sips and then looked up simultaneously. The eyes of the entire group were upon them.
“We were talking,” one of the braves, Singing Crow, said to be so named, if Stone remembered correctly, for his soulful renditions of tribal songs performed for the Cheyenne as they traveled through the badlands together.
“And?” Stone grunted as he took a deep gulp of the bum-ing black liquid, nearly scalding the back of his throat as he did so. He was still bone-tired. He wondered why.
“And,” Singing Crow went on, “we worked a few things out. After you two—eh—retired,” the young Cheyenne said diplomatically, for the sounds of the two in passion had occasionally drifted across the camp during the course of the night, “we started trying to sort things out.”
“This didn’t hurt.” Bull grinned from the other side of the fire, holding up an
empty bottle of gin that had miraculously appeared from out of the woodwork.
“Yeah,” the Cheyenne went on. “We partook of the peace pipe, liquid-style. And we talked like men. Not as Indian or white men but just men. And we found out that basically we’re coming from the same place. Don’t know where the hell we’re going exactly. But know that at least in many ways we see things through the same shit-colored glasses.”
“And we sure kick ass good when we work together,” Bull spoke up from his side of the fire. “Your general strategy really seems to work, Stone,” he said admiringly as the addressee tried to pry his eyelids apart. They felt like they were shut with glue. He took another huge swig of the thick but vaguely coffeelike substance and peered toward the pot to see if there was more.
“With the tank as the main core of protective firepower,” Bull went on, his big farmer’s face growing alive with enthusiasm, his eyes dancing, “and the all-terrains as a fast-strike mobile force, we’ve been knocking all comers down like they was pickup sticks looking to take a fall.”
“You sound like a military man”—Stone laughed—”with your ‘protective firepower,’ and ‘fast-strike mobile force.’”
“Well, being a tank commander, it kind of gets you thinking, you know.” Bull waxed poetic with a wistful look in his brown eyes. “It’s a lot of power—you got men under your command and you’re responsible for their lives. So I done a little reading, on my own. Some manuals on tank warfare I found inside the tank.”
“Very commendable,” Stone said with only a hint of sarcasm in his voice. He finished off his cup of now cold brew and reached for the pot, again filling his cup to the top. He needed two cups just to get the guts to look up at the sky that morning, which he knew by the gray light that filtered down between the men, by the dark peculiar mist in the air, by the fire, almost soggy as it snapped hard to keep burning, was bad. All he wanted to do was grab Meyra and head back to the tent. Tell them to wake them in the spring, at the end of hibernation.
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