He bowed his head, then looked above again, through the smoke, and smiled, for he knew that what he had prayed for would be granted him.
He had never disappointed the spirits, nor had they him.
Chapter Twenty-four
Quick!
I want!
And who can tell what tomorrow may befall—
Love me more, or not at all.
—Sill
As Wolf Hawk held Mia ever so close in his arms, kissing her, she clung passionately to him. She had never known such feelings could exist and had not even fantasized about being with a man like this.
But it seemed natural to be there with Wolf Hawk, becoming oh, so dizzy, the longer his lips lingered on hers.
And then she drew quickly away from him, her eyes wide, as she gazed down at the mats on the floor of the tepee. She looked quickly up at him.
“Did you feel that?” she gasped out, searching his eyes. “Did you hear it? The floor trembled for a moment and I even heard a strange sort of rumbling, but now both are gone. Did you experience the same thing? It felt like the beginning of an earthquake, but thank goodness it stopped.”
Wolf Hawk smiled at her. He reached out and took her by the hand, then led her to a thick pallet of furs. “Come and sit with me,” he said, leading her down to sit beside him. “What you felt and heard happens sometimes, but rarely have my people experienced an earthquake serious enough to do harm to our village or our lives. There seems to be a weakness of the ground where we have made our home. Perhaps that is one reason white people do not make their homes here.”
Wolf Hawk had not told her the full truth. He understood the magic of his grandfather and he felt that what had just occurred was his grandfather’s doing.
Wolf Hawk was not alarmed. He knew that his grandfather only caused the earth to shake for good reason.
Wolf Hawk did not know why his grandfather had chosen to use his powers today, but he never questioned Talking Bird’s power.
If his grandfather saw a need for an earthquake, so be it.
“But aren’t you afraid that the earthquake might come in full force some day and kill you all?” Mia asked.
She looked toward the closed entrance flap, wondering if everyone beyond it had experienced the same tremors as she and Wolf Hawk.
She didn’t hear any excitement or cries of terror outside, so if his people had felt and heard the shaking, they were no more excited than Wolf Hawk.
“Do you see fear in my eyes?” Wolf Hawk asked, smiling at Mia.
“No,” she murmured.
“Then you should not be afraid, either,” Wolf Hawk said softly. “I will not allow anything to harm you ever again.”
He smiled into her eyes. “Our Earthmaker keeps us safe,” he said, still holding her hand.
Before she had become alarmed, Wolf Hawk had felt the yearning in Mia’s kiss and the way she had clung to him. She had even pressed her body against his as though to tell him that she accepted them as a true couple now.
That was what he desired from the bottom of his heart. He wanted her to want him as badly, as deeply, as he ached to have her. Not only for a moment or two, but forever.
He wanted to make her his wife.
“Your Earthmaker is something like my God, I am sure, yet God doesn’t always stop bad things from happening,” Mia murmured, seeing her father’s grave in her mind’s eye.
“Nor did your Earthmaker keep the two young braves who died in the traps safe,” Mia went on.
She saw his body stiffen. He seemed affronted that she was questioning his people’s god.
She lowered her eyes, then looked up into his again. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I shouldn’t have said that about your Earthmaker. I apologize.”
“You never need apologize to me about anything,” Wolf Hawk said. He placed a hand on her cheek, loving its softness. Her skin was as soft as were her lips against his.
“Just as in your world, your god cannot guard your people against all evil, so it was with the trappers who caused the deaths of our young braves,” he said. “It is just the way of life…birth, death, and…happiness. I have learned that one must take from life what is given, both bad and good. But it is true that the Earthmaker is always there for my people in all ways when his guidance is needed. I’m sure you pray to your god for the same sort of guidance.”
“I understand that sometimes misfortunes occur, such as my stepping into those poison ivy vines before I realized it,” Mia murmured. “I understand that neither God, nor your Earthmaker, can reach down suddenly from the sky and keep those types of things from happening. I also realize that life is ruled by both good and evil, and that everyone must do what they can in order to have good on their side.”
She smiled at him, loving the way he rested his hand on her cheek. The touch of his flesh against hers made it hard for her to think.
She ached for his kiss again, for the feel of his body against hers.
These things were new to her.
These feelings!
These wants!
These yearnings!
“I know that you have told me I don’t need to thank you for things you have done for me, but I must thank you again for what you did for me when I was so ill,” she said.
She was unable to keep herself from shuddering with the memory of how awful she had felt. She stretched her legs out before her and ran a hand down the smoothness of one of them. “It’s a miracle that my skin is not left scarred,” she murmured. “The sores were so horrible.”
She turned to him, and as his hand fell away from her cheek, she held it between hers. “I shall always be grateful for what you have done for me,” she said, her voice breaking. “You took me in your own home and cared for me even though I was no more than a stranger to you, a woman you first saw as your enemy.”
She fell into his embrace as he wrapped her gently in his arms and held her close.
He laid her down on the plush pelts, then moved atop her so that his body gently pressed against hers. She moaned with ecstasy when his lips came to her mouth in a passionate kiss.
She felt as though she were melting inside as she returned the kiss and twined her arms around his neck. She couldn’t believe that she’d ever thought him guilty of evil things. She knew now that he could not possibly be responsible for the death of her mother. She knew that he was not guilty of her father’s death. It was her father’s weak heart that had taken him from Mia.
No, it was truly not Wolf Hawk’s fault that Mia had been left without a mother and father. He was kind and generous and loving, everything Mia’s father had been.
She had always said that she wanted to marry a man just like her father, who had been so gentle with his wife and daughter in every way.
Mia was becoming almost mindless with desire as the kiss deepened and Wolf Hawk began kneading one of her breasts through the soft doeskin of her dress. The mere touch of his hand there made her feel as though she might faint from the desire that was sweeping through her.
And when his other hand reached down and began moving slowly up the inside of one of her legs, touching places that seemed to come alive beneath his exploring fingers, Mia sucked in a wild breath of desire.
When his fingers touched that place where her heart seemed suddenly centered, where no man’s hands had been before, she could feel something wonderful being aroused in her. It was a sweetness, a spiraling plea sure, that she never knew existed.
He caressed her where she now throbbed with a need she had never known before. She clutched his neck as he twined his fingers through the strands of auburn hair at the juncture of her thighs, then sank one of those fingers slowly into her. She knew she should not allow such intimacies until she was a married woman, but she just couldn’t stop him. She had never felt anything so deliciously wonderful as the feelings being awakened inside her.
It was as though something was ready to explode with ecstasy throughout her.
“I can stop i
f you wish me to,” Wolf Hawk suddenly whispered into her ear, yet he did not miss one stroke inside her with his finger.
He knew he was arousing her for the first time in her life, for her innocence was plain to see. She was not the sort to let just any man touch and caress her.
He could hardly consider stopping what he had initiated, for his loins were on fire with need, his manhood tight and throbbingly hot.
But he knew the kind of woman she was and did not want to cause her to feel shame if they did continue.
Almost too mindless to think, Mia was breathless with the plea sure that was overwhelming her. Oh, how could she ask him to stop when everything within her cried out to be with him totally, to share with him what she knew they both wanted?
Of course she knew what her mother had taught her about sinning with a man before vows were spoken.
But since so much had happened to her, and she had realized just how quickly one’s world could be changed, she had a new attitude toward life and love. Who was to say there would even be another tomorrow for her or Wolf Hawk?
“I will marry you soon,” Wolf Hawk said softly as he leaned away from her and gazed into her wondering eyes. “Yet if you would rather wait to make love until vows are spoken between us, I will understand.”
Seeing that he did respect her and was actually willing to wait, Mia felt her eyes mist with grateful tears. She had known that he was not the sort to force anything on a woman.
She had instigated their lovemaking as much as he, for something inside her cried out for his caresses and kisses.
Even the fact that she had allowed him access to that place where only she had touched, as she had washed herself so delicately, proved to her just how much she did trust and need him.
She placed a gentle hand on his cheek, her own hot with a blush. “I don’t think I can wait after realizing just how much I need you,” she murmured. “Wolf Hawk, I love you so dearly. And I do believe that you will marry me, so, my love, I do not think I can bear another moment without you making love to me. I…I…love you. Oh, how I do love you.”
“I do not know how it happened, but I fell in love with you almost as soon as I met you. But I could not act out that love, for at that moment I was not certain what your being at the fort with your father and that tiny man truly meant,” he said huskily.
He reached a hand up and gently smoothed several locks of fallen hair back from her flushed cheeks.
“Were you to have been associated with those trappers, you would have been my enemy forever,” he said thickly.
“But neither I, my father, or Tiny had anything to do with them,” Mia said. “It was just coincidence that we happened to be where those evil men hid the pelts.”
“Ho, I believe you, and I regret that I did not know the truth from the beginning, for I could have possibly helped your father by taking him to Talking Bird for his special medicine,” Wolf Hawk said, now tenderly rubbing her cheek with a finger. “That was not meant to be. But you and I are.”
He brushed a soft kiss across her lips. “We were meant to be,” he repeated. “We were meant to meet and come together. When we wed, we will be as one until a child is born of our love. Then we will be three, not two.”
“A child,” Mia sighed. She adored the thought of having a baby, especially with Wolf Hawk fathering it. “A son? A daughter? I so badly wish to have both. I was raised as an only child. It was lonely, Wolf Hawk, ever so lonely.”
“I, too, was the only child born of my mother and father’s love,” Wolf Hawk said. He smiled into her eyes when she saw surprise leap into them. “You see, my mother was not strong. She gave birth to me, then died shortly after. My father never married again.”
“My parents were everything to me,” Mia murmured.
“They are gone, so I will be that everything now, my woman,” Wolf Hawk said, then swept both arms beneath her and brought her lips to his again with savage abandon.
Mia was not certain how it happened, but suddenly she realized that they both were unclothed.
His naked body pressed against hers, and she felt the full length of his manhood as he guided it with his hand between her legs. He pressed it against her opening, where she only now realized that she was wet and ready for his entrance.
She had never seen a man unclothed before, even though the spaces on the scow were small and did not give one much room for privacy. She could not help being dismayed by the size of Wolf Hawk’s manhood as it pressed against her flesh. Its warm touch made her feel oddly giddy.
“Open more widely to me,” Wolf Hawk whispered into her ear. “It is time for us to make love. I will be gentle. I want you to remember this first time as one of much plea sure.”
Having no idea what to expect when he went all the way inside her, and being somewhat afraid, since he seemed so big and she was so petite, Mia felt her pulse race.
If not for that strange yearning inside her, she might even change her mind about making love, but her heart seemed to cry out for their complete togetherness.
Wolf Hawk realized how tentative she now was about what they were doing, and he understood. The first time for a woman, especially a woman as sweet and as inexperienced as Mia, could be frightening.
“I shall kiss you and hold you in my arms as I go further inside you,” he whispered into her ear, holding her tenderly against him. “There will be some pain, but with me the pain will be very brief and I will then take you with me to a place that will make you cry out with plea sure.”
Trying to ready herself for that moment of pain Wolf Hawk had prepared her for, Mia lay stiffly, her mind no longer filled with ecstasy but fear. She clung to him as he tenderly nudged her legs farther apart.
She closed her eyes as he slowly shoved his heat within her. To her surprise, she was filled with desire all over again when Wolf Hawk held her tightly against him and kissed her.
She did feel a pang of pain when he went even farther into her, but then realized it was true what he had said about plea sure coming after pain. As he began his rhythmic strokes inside her, now thrusting deeply, ecstasy rose up in her.
Her eyes pooled with tears of joy as he leaned down and showered her breasts with sweet kisses, then stopped at one of the breasts and drew its nipple gently between his teeth to nibble on it.
Never had she known such things happened between a man and a woman, that a breast could be worshipped by a man as Wolf Hawk was now doing. He cupped one of hers so gently in his hand, as his tongue sent plea sure throughout her.
She felt a splendid joy when his lips came to hers again and kissed her hungrily. She knew now to move her body with his, in order to deepen the plea sure that was filling her.
Wolf Hawk enfolded her in his solid strength as he held her. Their togetherness, their lovemaking, stoked fires within him that he had never felt before.
But he had never been in love before. He had never known a woman like Mia before.
Ho, the Winnebago women were beautiful and desirable, but there was something about Mia that made him know she was born to be his, no matter the color of the skin. In her heart she was Winnebago.
Theirs was a union that had been blessed by not only his Earthmaker, but also her own god.
“I want you as mine forever,” he whispered against her lips as he paused for a moment before taking her on to paradise with him. “I want you as my wife.”
Mia’s eyes clouded with doubt for a moment. “But will your people accept me?”
“They already have,” Wolf Hawk said, searching her eyes. “Will you be my wife?”
“You know that I will,” Mia said, smiling sweetly at him.
Everything within him sang and soared as Wolf Hawk smiled back at her.
“Soon, my woman,” he said huskily. “Very soon we will be blessed by both our gods as husband and wife.”
“I already feel that we have been,” Mia murmured.
“My woman, my love,” Wolf Hawk said, then kissed her with a heat that w
as new to her, yet welcomed.
Fiercely, he drew her even closer. He thrust into her as their lips met again in trembling kisses.
And then as they clung and made love, Mia felt something so wonderfully blissful, she knew that she had just experienced the ultimate of plea sure. The wondrous feeling seemed never to stop as he continued with his thrusts, and then moaned as his body quivered and quaked against hers.
Slowly they came down from the clouds of rapture, lying together beside the slowly burning embers of the fire, their bodies still touching, their hands clasped. Mia closed her eyes and smiled.
“I never knew such wondrous feelings could exist between a man and a woman,” she murmured.
She opened her eyes, turned on her side to face Wolf Hawk, and ran a hand slowly over his powerfully muscled chest. Then she dared to move her hand lower, where he was no longer as large, yet still large enough to amaze her at his greatness.
“A man is so different from a woman,” she said, smiling into his eyes as she moved her hand away from him. “I’m glad I don’t have something like that to deal with every day as I walk around in my clothes.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “How can you get…get…yourself arranged in your clothes so that it is not uncomfortable every time you move?” she asked.
She blushed when he laughed good-naturedly and took her hand to lay it on his manhood.
“This that you think might be a bother is a source of pride to every man. If it is large, he is glad that it will give plea sure to the woman he loves,” he said. “I, personally, never feel it is an intrusion in my life.”
He enfolded his manhood with her hand. “Move your hand on me and see what happens,” he said, already feeling the renewed plea sure her hand was causing.
Mia blushed, for this was all new to her. Even this morning before Wolf Hawk had taken her in his arms, she never would have believed this could happen.
But there they were, as intimate as a man and woman could be, and she was actually not embarrassed by it.
It seemed the right thing to do. They were meant for each other.
Savage Abandon Page 16
