He vaguely knew he’d once had reasons he shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be taking her body, but he couldn’t remember them just now. He had Summer, hot and willing in his arms, and his mind refused to function. There was no stopping him this time. The blood pounded so wildly in his ears that he scarcely head her startled cry as his hardness tried to impale her soft flesh. Her spine arched in shock as he thrust into her, as he encountered the fragile barrier to her womanhood.
Virgin! his conscience screamed at him. He had to go slowly—but God, he wanted her! And he knew that for this moment at least, Summer wanted him. Her breath coming in erratic, ragged gasps, she clung to him, her eyes closed, her teeth painfully clenching her lower lip as she waited for his claiming.
“Easy,” he rasped in a raw, shaking voice. Jesus, he didn’t want to hurt her.
Fighting for restraint, Lance forced himself to slow down. His own eyes fiercely primitive, he drew Summer’s slim legs up to clasp his hips. Swiftly then, he rose up on his knees and laid her down on her back. His body covering hers, he eased his weight onto her, trying to hold back.
Summer went rigid as his swollen shaft again sought entrance to her body, but Lance was kissing her face, murmuring soft words of passion in his Comanche language, and she forgot to be afraid.
The moment she relaxed, he thrust into her, slowly, inexorably, sinking, squeezing his huge sex into her tight heat now slick with desire. The impact made her gasp. She knew a sharp, shocking moment of pain as he filled her to bursting…but then her flesh seemed to swell around him, her body to soften, molded by his. The pain slowly died away, leaving only a dull, full throbbing.
Panting, Summer held completely still, afraid of the strange arousing ache caused by having Lance deep inside her, part of her. He was so big, so overwhelming, and yet she wanted this pleasureful hurt…wanted him joined to her this way…
He was watching her, his obsidian gaze smoldering and intense with determination as he slowly withdrew, then crowded into her again. For an instant her muscles tensed at the fresh invasion, but then her body closed around him with a long, desperate shudder.
Lance groaned aloud at the shattering relief as her hot, moist flesh tightly sheathed him. Vainly he clenched his teeth. His control was slipping, his rough excitement burgeoning beyond restraint. His hips began moving against hers, rhythmically, driven by an urgent, primal force.
In a daze of awareness, Summer arched instinctively against him. She was whimpering steadily now, but not in pain. Some primitive part of her nature had taken control. She writhed, frantic, her nails digging into his hard flesh as she tried to get closer.
Reveling in her helpless response, Lance reacted with violent hunger, his hips thrusting hard and rhythmic, his arms closing convulsively around her, his movements rawly frenzied. He had known desire before, but not this gnawing, tearing desperation. Where had it come from, this terrible need?
Summer felt it, too. She sobbed, bucking beneath him, striving to get closer, seeking escape from the fiery heat that was too fierce to be borne, but then his hands closed over her buttocks, lifting them so he could thrust harder, deeper, his shaft plunging in a savage claiming.
The inferno broke over her first. Something went wild inside her; she could no longer hold her body still as passion wrenched her, racked her. Her gasping cries filled the tepee moments before a low, rough groan burst from Lance’s throat. With uncurbed, hammering wildness, he joined her, his body contracting, shuddering, as a throbbing white-hot orgasm exploded from him, filling her with his seed.
Afterwards—long moments afterwards—he sank against her, spent and shuddering, his breath coming in rasping gasps. Summer lay panting beneath him, dazed and weak, her face pressed against the smooth, sweaty silk of his bare shoulder.
Finally she heard him draw in a long, ragged breath, felt him rise up on his elbows, relieving her of some of his heavy weight.
“You all right?” His voice was low, still hoarse with passion.
Her lids lifted slowly. Deep in the obsidian eyes burning close above her was a fierce possessiveness.
“What…what if I said no?”
He stared down at her for a long moment. “Summer, I…”
She thought he might have started to make her an apology, yet he didn’t complete whatever he’d been about to say. Instead Lance eased himself off her and rolled over on his back, draping his forearm over his eyes.
Awkwardly, with a trembling hand, Summer pulled her skirt down over her naked thighs. Her flesh felt raw and aching, but her body fulfilled, as if their joining had made her whole. Lance hadn’t hurt her, precisely. Merely left her emotions shaken and raw, her thoughts in turmoil. She had wanted his passion, with a fierceness that shocked her. But she wanted more for him to understand.
“Lance…I have to…at least talk with your brother.”
At first she didn’t think he meant to answer. Then finally he spoke, his voice raw and unsteady. “You go to him, and he’ll think you’re offering to sleep with him.”
“Perhaps…I can persuade him to change his mind.”
Lance’s sharp huff of laughter mocked her.
“I can’t just let Fights Bear withdraw his support. Don’t you see? It could mean my sister’s life.”
“Yeah, I see. You’re willing to do anything at all to protect her.” His tone was bitter.
“Do you blame me?”
He turned his head to look at Summer; the black glitter had returned to his eyes. “You’re my wife. You think I want to share you with another man? Even if he is my half brother?”
“Do you think I want to sleep with another man? Especially an—” She bit off the word Indian, not wishing to insult Lance by denigrating his Comanche relatives. They were his people, after all, and she knew how thin-skinned he was on the subject.
He was still looking at her, his features shuttered. “I guess the vows you took when we got married didn’t mean a damn thing to you.”
Summer had no answer for that. She hadn’t wanted to take those vows, but she’d been forced to for her sister’s sake, just as she might now be forced to barter her body if his brother demanded it.
“Those were vows recognized by a white society,” she replied uneasily, “but we’re here now, where different customs apply. You’re half-Comanche. I would have thought you’d be anxious to uphold your people’s customs.”
Lance muttered an expletive under his breath at her reasonable argument.
“Lance…I’ve come this far,” she said quietly, unsteadily. “I can’t take the risk of hurting my sister’s chances for survival, simply because I don’t have the courage to make sacrifices.” Summer’s voice dropped to a mere whisper that threatened to crack with tears. “You said your mother was a brave woman. Well, I’m trying to be brave, too. And…and if I can…force myself to do something so naturally abhorrent to me, then I don’t see how you have the right to prevent me.”
Lance closed his eyes, struggling with the fierce urge to pull Summer into his arms and hold her possessively. He couldn’t argue with her, that was the hell of it. The only reason she had married him was because of her sister. This wasn’t much different. Summer only wanted to try and save her goddamned sister. What right did he have to stop her? Especially after the way he’d just acted. He was a savage bastard, just like he’d always been called. In his rage, he’d practically raped Summer, taking her like any experienced whore on the hard ground, instead of an innocent virgin.
What right did he have to prevent her? No matter how much it killed him to let her go to his brother, even if he felt like killing to keep her with him, he couldn’t stand in her way.
Lance curled his fingers into fists as sick, impotent rage twisted his gut. He couldn’t protect her. He was forced to stand by while another woman sacrificed in his place. It was a familiar feeling; he’d lived with it for most of his life.
When he didn’t reply, Summer rose unsteadily to her feet. She could feel a throbbing twinge
between her legs and the warm rush of Lance’s seed down her inner thigh, but she wouldn’t let herself dwell on what had happened between them. At least not now.
Fumbling to close her torn blouse, to smooth her rumpled skirt, she looked down at him. “Lance…I…I have to go.”
Turning, she went to the entrance and raised the flap. She cast one brief glance over her shoulder at Lance, then slipped quietly through the exit.
His fists clenched, Lance refused to watch her go, dimly aware of a sweeping sense of desolation, of a sharp, aching aloneness that he’d never felt so forcefully, even in all his years of being an outcast.
Chapter 11
She was shaking when she entered Fights Bear’s tepee just before dusk.
The war chief was alone, having dismissed his other wives when Summer humbly begged an audience with him. She had brought Short Dress with her, not for protection, although that would have been welcome, but because she needed a translator. Even if Fights Bear had spoken Spanish, her own mediocre command of that language would hardly be adequate to support the delicate negotiations she hoped to conduct.
A swift glance at the Comanche warrior’s dark features made Summer wonder if she was making a terrible mistake by thinking to persuade him to reconsider. Fights Bear’s smoldering ebony eyes, so much like Lance’s, held suspicion and anger, as well as his usual arrogance and the contempt he reserved for dealing with whites. He sat with his arms folded over his muscular chest in an attitude of complete disdain.
The thought of having to sleep with this man filled Summer with dread. Despite the resemblance his handsome copper features bore to her husband’s, Fights Bear was a stranger, a warrior from a culture that seemed barbaric and cruel compared to white civilization.
Could she permit him to know her body carnally the way Lance had just done? Could she submit to the most intimate act between a man and woman? Would Fights Bear take her brutally, without compassion, or would he show her even a small measure of the tenderness she had come to expect from Lance? If she failed in her goal, she would have answers to those questions before the night was through.
Summer clenched her fingers together to hide their trembling, finding it difficult to concentrate. Her mind felt numb, distracted, as if a part of her had remained with Lance in their tepee. After his fierce lovemaking, her body felt strange, different, acutely sensitive. Flashes of remembrance kept assaulting her: Lance becoming part of her, moving over her, within her. He had made her fully a woman. He had finally asserted his rights as her husband, insistently, without mercy. He had bonded them together physically, if not emotionally.
The image was seared into her brain; the feel of him thrusting between her legs, filling her, claiming her body, was branded on her mind, her nerves, her skin. And yet she had no time to dwell on what should have been one of the most momentous events of her life.
Too much was at stake.
Summer took a deep breath as she stood submissively before Fights Bear. She would do whatever she had to in order to help her sister survive. Other women had managed in far more difficult situations. Lance’s mother, for one. Charlotte Calder had been given no choice in the men she was forced to accept in her bed. It comforted Summer to remember Charlotte’s bravery.
Deliberately she kept her head bowed, her eyes lowered. She spoke softly, infusing a deference into her voice that she didn’t feel. “Short Dress, please tell him that I have come to clear up a misunderstanding concerning his brother, Sharp Lance.”
Fights Bear’s answer in the Comanche language came abruptly and held a stinging rebuke.
“He does not recognize Sharp Lance as his brother,” Short Dress translated.
“I regret that is so,” Summer murmured, “and so does Sharp Lance. He does not wish there to be anger between brothers. That is why he sent me to you,” she lied. “If you wish to claim me as your sleeping partner, then that is your right.”
When silence met her announcement, she stole another glance at Fights Bear and could see the harsh set of his features had relaxed somewhat, although the arrogance still remained.
She let her voice turn pleading. “Please, Fights Bear, I ask you to forgive him. He only wished to allow me to follow the ways of my people, but he knows that white customs mean nothing to Comanches.”
The war chief said something and waved an arm imperiously at his third wife in a gesture that signaled dismissal, but Summer broke in quietly, hiding her alarm. “No, please, Short Dress! Ask him if you might stay for a moment. I won’t know how to speak to him, otherwise.”
The Mexican woman complied, and after a moment’s consideration, Fights Bear grunted.
When he indicated for Summer to sit beside him, she knelt obediently, still keeping her head bowed. “I am honored to have been chosen by so great a warrior. Since coming to this camp, I have heard countless stories of your courage and your feats in battle.”
The war chief nodded as if such flattery were only his due.
Summer ventured a tentative smile. “I would also like very much to thank you for helping to search for my sister. She means a great deal to me, and I can’t bear to lose her. Sharp Lance has already promised you horses, but I would like to show my gratitude as well.”
She held out her hand, palm up, offering him a small object. It was a lady’s watch whose gold case was ornamented with delicate filigree.
“This belonged to my mother. I would like you to have it in appreciation for helping to save my sister. Perhaps you would care to give it as a present to one of your wives.”
Accepting the watch, the Comanche chief studied it closely.
“If I may,” Summer offered. “The clasp opens like so…” Carefully she pried open the case to reveal the watch face inside.
Fights Bear grinned with genuine delight.
“The hands move with time,” Summer explained. “You wind it like this…” Demonstrating, she made the minute hand revolve, and then directed his rough fingers to do the same.
Suddenly, though, he frowned. Cautiously he held the watch to his ear, listening to the faint tick. His black eyes widening, Fights Bear dropped the watch as if it were a live coal. The shock and apprehension on his face were genuine.
When Summer picked it up and offered it to him again, he gave her a long stare before accepting it.
“It has a heart that beats!” Short Dress translated in awe.
“Well, yes,” Summer admitted, not knowing what else to say.
“It is good medicine?”
“Very good,” she prevaricated, praying he would believe her and that Comanche superstition would work to her advantage. “I have always worn it next to my own heart”—she indicated her breast where she usually kept it pinned—“and felt comforted by it.”
For a while longer Fights Bear inspected the watch without speaking. Finally, though, he nodded regally.
“It is a present worthy of a war chief,” Short Dress explained. “He will keep this for himself and use its medicine.” Fights Bear added something else gruffly. “He thanks you for your gift, Tahma.”
“I am honored that I, a mere woman, have pleased the mighty Fights Bear.” Summer gave him a brilliant smile, the kind she reserved for flirting with her beaux, and she wasn’t disappointed by the spark of interest in his dark eyes. The male ego, she suspected, was the same in any culture.
“I do not wish to be bold or impolite,” she added softly, “but if I might explain why Sharp Lance showed reluctance to give me to you, then perhaps you would lose your anger with him.”
The war chief’s pleased look faded, but he did not prevent her from continuing.
Assuming her most charming manner, Summer raised her eyes to gaze admiringly at Fights Bear. “Your brother esteems you greatly and craves your respect. He has told me that you taught him the skills of a warrior.”
“This is so.”
“He would never willingly incur your censure. That is why he regrets angering you. He realizes that he was mistaken to
deny your request. Sharp Lance said you wished to sleep with me, and he bows to your wishes.”
The grunt the war chief gave was no more than an acknowledgment of the facts.
“And although your customs are not mine, I do not want to make Sharp Lance lose the respect of the Comanche People. I wish to honor my husband, as a wife should.”
Fights Bear nodded approvingly. “This is good.”
Summer took a deep breath. She was prepared to present her reasons why their coupling would be a mistake—and to suggest an alternative. She only prayed she could make him listen.
“I don’t wish Sharp Lance to be cast out from the Comanche people, and yet…he must also live in the white world. It is against white laws for a married woman to sleep with a man who is not her husband.”
Scowling suddenly, Fights Bear looked every inch the dangerous barbarian that he was. “I care nothing for these white laws!”
“Of course not,” Summer said soothingly. “Forgive me for implying such a thing. But truly, I was merely explaining the thoughts that ran through your brother’s mind. He only hoped to protect me. Whites do not think highly of a woman who would give herself to many men.”
Impatiently Fights Bear thumped his chest with his fist. “Not many men! One only! We are brothers. It is fitting for brothers to share wives.”
“In the Comanche culture, yes. But it would shame Sharp Lance terribly before whites if his wife were to take another man as her lover.”
“Whites are fools!”
Summer smiled. “I have often thought so. But that is another subject. My concern now is my husband. It would deliver a fierce blow to his pride if he could not protect his woman. Perhaps you can understand. A proud man suffers far more from shame than from physical wounding. And Sharp Lance is very proud.”
The Savage Page 21
