by JoAnn Ross
But even his iron control had its limits. It was impossible, with her body melting against his—in total surrender, total trust—not to ache. It was futile, as her graceful hands skimmed up and down his back, not to burn.
When Wolfe felt the passion begin to burn through his loins, when he began to imagine stripping away the borrowed clothes from her lissome body, then taking her quickly, while the birds sang in the nearby fruit trees and the wind whistled in the corn and the stream flowed over polished red rocks on its way to the sea, he buried his face in her hair and took a deep breath.
She heard him say her name. Noel. It was like a promise. A prayer. And then, another word, which she could not translate, but recognized all too well to be a curse.
"That should not have happened." His voice, while not as strong as usual, was both flat and final. And, she thought miserably, heavy with self-disgust.
Wanting—needing—to hold on to the delicious, drugging heaviness a bit longer, she hesitated before opening her eyes. When she did, she found herself staring into a gaze so intense, she wondered if Wolfe could see all the way into her heart.
Noel had never been one to lie. Not even to herself. Especially to herself. That being the case, she was not about to begin now.
"I think it was inevitable," she suggested softly. "From the beginning."
He shook his head. "I took advantage of your confusion. And your fear."
"I may have been confused, Wolfe, but believe me, a woman, no matter what century she lives in, knows when she wants to be kissed."
"And you wanted to be kissed."
She met his probing look with a level gaze of her own. "Absolutely."
Reminding herself that discretion was the better part of valor, she did not add that by the time he'd broken off that heady kiss, she'd wanted more. Much, much more.
Even as he felt his body cooling, Wolfe's gaze drifted to her lips and felt another deep painful tug of hunger. He took both her hands in his, lacing their fingers together.
"You are an extremely passionate woman, Princess Noel de Montacroix," he assured her. "And I enjoy kissing you." He watched the warm memories of that kiss flood into her remarkable eyes and realized that although they were so far apart on so many things, about this they were in total accord. "Very much."
His thumb gently brushed across her knuckle. "Too much, perhaps."
It was happening all over again. Noel felt herself being pulled into the warmth of his masculine gaze, and wondered if part of this unruly attraction was due to the dangerous dramatic circumstances in which they'd met. Danger, she reminded herself, thinking back on Belle's words, was a powerful aphrodisiac.
Perhaps, if their paths had crossed in some ordinary, everyday way—either in his time or tier's—they would have merely shared some pleasant conversation, a bit of congenial companionship.
"It's our situation," she said, wondering who she was trying to convince. Herself? Or him? "It's bound to heighten emotions." The practical side of her, the side that had always ruled her behavior—and her heartfelt much better now that she'd solved the problem.
Wolfe considered that possibility and instantly dismissed it. However, since it was more than a little obvious that it was important to Noel that she believe her analysis of the shared desire that had sparked between them from the beginning, he decided there was no point in distressing her further by arguing.
"I suppose that's a possibility," he mused out loud, resisting the urge to capture those rosy lips again and kiss her senseless.
"It's the only answer," she said firmly.
That's all it was, she assured herself as they returned to the hogan. It was all she could allow it to be.
Naked, save for a deerskin breechcloth favored by his ancestors, before the invading Spanish and bilagaana had introduced shirts and trousers to his people, Wolfe galloped along the floor of the canyon, enjoying the feel of the sun beating down on his bare back and the wind rushing against his face. The mare strained for speed beneath him, her hooves kicking up clouds of red dust as he urged her on.
Behind him he heard the pounding of other hooves. Without taking time to look over his shoulder, Wolfe dug his heels into the mare's flanks and pushed her harder, raster. Trying to outrun his pursuer. Trying to outrun his torment. And most of all, trying to outrun his princess-hunger.
The latter, he feared, would be impossible.
Finally, taking pity on his stouthearted mare, Wolfe reined in. Moments later, his childhood friend caught up with him.
"One of these days, I'll beat you," the moon-faced man said, cheerful in his acknowledgment of Wolfe's victory.
"In the North, perhaps," Wolfe said, referring to the Navajo afterworld. "But not before."
"Probably not," Many Horses said with a resigned sigh. "You have always been the best rider in both our clans. And the best storyteller."
"And you have always been good to my clan." Wolfe knew he owed a tremendous debt of gratitude to this man, who in so many ways was like a brother to him and who saw to so many of his aunt's immediate needs. "Taking care of so many of my responsibilities while I spend too much time away in the white world."
"You would not have become so wealthy if you'd remained here in Dinetah."
Wolfe's curse was short and crude.
"And," the man continued, "if you had not become wealthy, your clan would not have nearly so many sheep. Last winter, when so many people lost livestock in the blizzards, those sheep, bought with the money you so generously sent home, kept all our people alive. Not just the Bitter Water Clan."
"That's me," Wolfe muttered. "Savior to the Dineh."
"You have been called worse."
Wolfe laughed at that as he was supposed to. Then felt himself relaxing for the first time since his arrest.
"There are many who were surprised that you would bring an Anglo female here," Many Horses said carefully as they walked their horses back to camp.
"I didn't have any choice. She killed a man trying to help me escape. I couldn't leave her for the hangman."
"It would be a shame for such a pretty neck to be stretched." Many Horses grinned. "At least, if you are captured, you will have spent your last days pleasurably… Several men back in Whiskey River would probably like to hang you just for taking the blond whore away from her brothel."
"She's not a whore." Wolfe's jaw clenched. His eyes hardened.
"She dresses like one."
"That's a long story."
"I see." His longtime friend gave him a long, considering look. "You care for this woman." It was not a question.
"Any man would be grateful to someone for trying to save his life," Wolfe muttered.
"True. But I think it is more than that." There was another pause. "I think you want her."
"What man wouldn't?"
"I think you want her for more than a warm moist place to plant your seed. I think you want her for a wife."
"You're wrong," Wolfe answered quickly. Too quickly, he realized as his friend's gaze narrowed. "She's Anglo."
"So was your father."
"That was different. My father raped my mother. For that reason alone he should have died."
A muscle clenched in Wolfe's jaw as he thought about how many times over the years he'd considered killing the soldier responsible for his mother's tragic fate. But he'd never been able to learn the man's identity.
"I think," Many Horses said with a bold, masculine wink, "you would not have to rape this Anglo woman. The way she looks at you, making love to you with her eyes, tells me that she would willingly spread her legs for the famous Wolfe Longwalker."
"She's promised to another."
"Promises have been broken." He flashed another quick grin. "If they have taught us nothing else, the white men have shown us that their promises change like the moon. It is obvious that she wants you, Wolfe. Not many men could turn down the opportunity to bed such a woman."
It was the same thing Wolfe had been telling himself. The pro
blem was, he had the feeling that the princess with the corn-silk hair was not a woman whose bed a man could easily walk away from.
And that, he reminded himself, was the reason he would continue to resist temptation. No matter how appealing.
As he entered the ceremonial hogan, Wolfe knew that it was important—imperative—that he banish his princess from his thoughts before his upcoming confrontation with the monster Yei Tsoh.
Aided by Many Horses, he washed himself with water mixed with medicinal herbs. After this ceremonial washing, he lifted the bowl and drank the remaining water.
His mind was fully focused as he took his place on the woolen rug that had been spread on the dirt floor. In the center of the rug, woven by Second Mother, were the four sacred plants of the Dineh—corn, squash, beans and tobacco. Guarding the eastern edge of the rug—the only side not protected by the Rainbow, was the woven image of a medicine bundle.
The healer, Red Hawk, had already taken his place at the hogan's western wall and was singing a song to call the deities from the four sacred mountains.
Wolfe knew that Red Hawk could see things they could not see, and knew things they would never know. Like all such holy men, he was custodian of the past and intermediary to the world beyond. He could talk to the gods, talk to the animals, and the clouds. And unlike the silence Wolfe had heard far too often in his life, they would answer Red Hawk.
Many Horses's usually merry expression was grave as he picked up a bowl of thick mutton tallow and proceeded to spread it over Wolfe's naked body.
A chill of expectation mixed with foreboding went through Wolfe. Although the side of him that had been educated by the bilagaanas and that had lived and worked in their world assured him he had nothing to fear, and despite those reassuring words he'd spoken to Noel, another deeper, primal part of his subconscious worried that he might not survive the upcoming battle alive.
The singing continued, a steady, droning chant. Smoke rose from the fire, rising to the open hole in the domed roof of the hogan. Beneath the thick coating of tallow, Wolfe began to sweat.
"And now don your armor." Reaching into a bowl, Many Horses took out a handful of ash made from a juniper tree that had been struck by lightning. "The armor that the Holy Twins wore to defeat the giants. The armor that will make you invisible to the giants."
He spread the grainy mixture over Wolfe, giving him the appearance that had earned the ceremony the name, Blackening Way.
As the medicine man continued to sing, Many Horses tied wristbands braided from strips of yucca around Wolfe's wrists. More strips had been tied together, meant to be worn over the body, serving as additional armor against the deadly enemy. As the medicine man chanted about Wolfe's life among the bilagaanas, of his birth on the Long Walk, of his success in the white man's world, a success that had resulted in the white man's jealousy and hatred, the bands absorbed more and more of the infection contracted from the enemy.
Wolfe's head began to spin dizzily from the herbs that had been in the water he'd drunk. And from others that had been thrown into the fire. From the battle taking place within his body. His mind. And his heart. Sweat beaded on his darkened forehead, his upper lip, beneath his arms, running down his sides, leaving wet trails in the blackened ash.
"Step into the shoes of Monster Slayer," the medicine man sang tonelessly. "Step into the shoes of him whose lure is the extended bow string. Step into the shoes of him who lures the enemy to death."
The chant was pounding in Wolfe's ears like a leather-covered drum while lightning flashed before his eyes. Corn pollen was sprinkled over the ash clinging to his body. The yellow dust would help make him invisible to the giant.
"I am hungry," a thunderous voice boomed from somewhere above his head, echoing off the juniper walls of the hogan. Wolfe knew the voice belonged to the giant Yei Tsoh. "I will eat a Dineh tonight."
"You will soon throw those words back into Yei Tsoh's ugly mouth," Many Horses assured Wolfe as he reached into a leather medicine bundle and took out a crow's beak.
He pressed the beak, known for its healing properties, to Wolfe's feet, then began working his way up Wolfe's legs, knees, chest, back and finally his head. That act completed, he gestured upward toward the open smoke-hole, the sacred motion designed to extract the enemy's taint from the patient.
When Red Hawk instructed Wolfe to leave the hogan, in order to motion, four times in succession, away from his body and toward the sun, Wolfe discovered that his legs had turned unreasonably wobbly. He was staggering like a drunk and having a difficult time focusing. The holy place of Dinetah had become a softhazed world alive with the buzz of insects, and brightened by dancing lights and swirling suns.
There were more songs. More chants. All day and all night, Wolfe relived the mythical battle between his Dineh ancestors, the children of the Sun, and that fiercest of all—the alien, man-eating god.
With a mighty roar, Yei Tsoh clawed him, slicing open Wolfe's arm from shoulder to elbow. Blood gushed forth from the torn artery, flowing over the land like a river. Just when he thought he'd lost the battle, that he was going to die, a silver-edged cloud floated down from the storm-tossed sky, and out of the cloud stepped a female with hair the color of moonlight.
She was carrying a pot of magic herbs. With soothing words and a calming touch, she tended to him, bathing his wounds with empathetic tears before rubbing the herbs into the cleansed flesh.
Healed, he returned to battle. A battle that raged inside him. Around him. Battering at his senses, raging through his blood. Ripping him apart from the inside out.
Then, finally, Yei Tsoh's massive body was pierced by a chain-lightning arrow hurled at him by this new Monster Slayer, Wolfe Longwalker. As he roared in pain and fury, another arrow struck its mark, scattering shells from the giant's armor. Yei Tsoh crumpled to his knees and was staring at Wolfe in fury and disbelief as a third, and fatal arrow hit the center of his heart. He fell onto his face with a force that made the world tremble. And then, he lay still.
There were shouts of victory from the observers in the hogan. A victorious Wolfe was helped into his buckskin breechcloth and led outside the hogan, where a man wearing a Yei mask and carrying a ceremonial staff and leather shield bordered by snowy-tipped eagle feathers, was waiting with Wolfe's mare. Both man and mare were bathed in a blinding golden light from the morning sun.
Refusing Many Horses's assistance, Wolfe managed to pull himself astride the mare, and together, the men rode up the steep trail to a jutting red mesa overlooking the canyon. From this location, Whiskey River was many miles to the south.
They sat on the ground, facing east, into the rising Father Sun as Red Hawk led Wolfe through one final prayer from the Blessing Way, designed to invoke good luck, good health, and take the evil enemy away, back across the vast red landscape, back to its origins in Whiskey River.
"Hohzho naa haas glih," the singer concluded the traditional prayer. "In beauty, it is done."
With that cue, Many Horses, Wolfe and the spear carrier sprinkled corn pollen over the edge of the cliff, where the western wind caught it and carried it out over the mesa.
Although his situation had not changed, as he watched the yellow dust ride the breeze, Wolfe felt blessedly at peace.
For the second night in a row, Noel tossed and turned, her mind filled with bloody, horrific warlike images too terrible to contemplate. At least once an hour she'd be jerked out of her restless sleep, surprised to find herself still in Wolfe's family's hogan.
Inside, the others' breathing was soft and slow and steady. Outside, the branches of the juniper and olive trees rustled softly in the wind. Every so often, a lamb would bleat, no doubt crying out for its mother. But mostly, there was only silence. Dark, lonely, disquieting silence.
And Noel's unceasing concern for a man she feared she was, against every vestige of common sense, falling hopelessly in love with.
Giving up on sleep, she retrieved her bag from a peg on the log wall and slippe
d quietly out of the hogan, making her way by moonlight back down to that peaceful spot beside the stream, accompanied, as usual, by the dog.
Her nerves felt as if they were on fire, images filled her mind like billowing smoke from a fire, images of Wolfe, caught in a desperate life-or-death struggle, images of armor-clad giants, biting heads off Navajo children, images of Wolfe as she'd first seen him in her vision, bare-chested, noble, astride his horse, accepting death not with honor, but scorn.
The problem, she considered grimly, was that try as she might, she could not see Wolfe saved, living a safe and happy life. Not with the members of his clan. Not with her.
"I'm so worried about him," she told the dog, who responded by wagging his tail.
Noel knew that the idea of giants eating children were as fanciful and illogical as those tales of trolls living in her own Montacroix forests. And if there was one word that anyone who knew her would use to describe Princess Noel de Montacroix, it would be logical.
"The problem is," she explained to the dog, who'd now tilted his head and pricked his ears forward as if listening to her concerns, "even before Sabrina gave me that invitation that set all this in motion, even before I found that book about Wolfe in the Road to Ruin, my own experience has taught me that some things can't be explained away by logic."
Her clairvoyance, for one, she thought. And now, this adventure through time.
After Wolfe had left her at the hogan and gone off to prepare for the ceremony, she'd tried to convince herself, one last time, that this was all just a dream, triggered by the woodcut on the invitation, the Rogues Across Time book and Wolfe Longwalker's own Native American stories.
Any time now, she'd wake up to the aroma of Audrey Bradshaw's rich dark coffee and crumbly blueberry muffins drifting up the stairs of the bed and breakfast. And she'd telephone Chantal in Washington and together they would laugh over the dream that had seemed so real.
The dream that Noel knew was no dream at all.
She sighed.
