by Karen Kay
He could make her agree with him, he knew, if he were to take her into his arms again and make love to her. It would be an easy thing to do, and it would have the advantage of easing the ache inside him.
But Gray Hawk was Pikuni, a chivalrous man. He would not push her toward such passion, nor would he remind her of how easy it would be for him to convince her to agree. To do so would be to take advantage of her.
He would not do it.
And so he did no more than glare at her. Then, taking a step away and spinning about on his toes, he sprinted from their camp.
Gray Hawk lay next to her, not touching her, his even breathing telling her that he was asleep, or at least close to it.
He was upset with her, and she could understand why. But there was little she could do about it.
She could not marry him. She had to make him understand this.
Perhaps if she didn’t have a father to think of, perhaps if she had grown up within his society, perhaps if he could fit into hers—maybe then she could marry him.
But not now.
There were too many things to consider, too many things in the way.
Yes, she had determined that she loved him, but was that enough reason to build a life around him?
She didn’t think so.
Besides, the love she felt toward him was too new, too fragile, to construct any hopes around it.
She undoubtedly hadn’t been thinking with her head when she’d declared her feelings to him.
But now that they were apart, at least physically, she could think more clearly, more logically, and she began to ponder some important questions. For instance, if they were to stay together, where would they live? She was certain she could not abide staying in his world. Could he live in hers?
And if he could, what sort of work would he do? His main job in his world, as she could see it, was that of hunter and defender. Not much call for that in her culture. Could he adapt to her society? Take up a trade? Would he even want to?
Or would he expect her to give up everything she knew, loved and owned to live with him? Probably.
Yet she was certain she could not do that.
Besides, what would her father say? Her friends back in England?
And how would she raise any children that might be the result of such a union? Would they be considered Indian or white by her society? By his?
Genevieve was a realist, if nothing else, where this issue was concerned. She couldn’t expect Gray Hawk, who had been brought up in an entirely different culture, to be able to reside in her society without great change to him, and she would never begin to suppose that he might have the means to support both her and their children as any other Englishman might do.
He knew nothing of her society. Mightn’t it take him the rest of his life just to learn the intricacies of the English culture, her world?
And this, provided he would agree to live there, which she doubted he would.
Besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted him to change all that much. Here, in his environment, he was magnificent. In hers…?
There would also be the ever-present prejudice, which they would have to fight for the rest of their lives. No one would sympathize with a white woman who had taken an Indian husband, particularly when most frontiersmen did not even consider the Indian quite human.
The situation, if they were to live in her society, would be unbearable. How long could they keep a marriage alive under such conditions?
Would it be any different in his culture?
But there was even more. She had just now discovered that Gray Hawk had asked her to marry him so that he might preserve her reputation among his people, and this only because she had saved his life. He spoke nothing to her of love, nothing of his feelings toward her, only of lust and now of duty.
Would it have been different if he had declared his undying devotion to her? Would she have felt more inclined to accept his proposal?
Maybe. But she didn’t think so. Not when she had her father, his life and his reputation to consider, as well as her own.
Which brought her full circle. She needed to get home.
Focusing on her past rather than her future, Genevieve considered the possibility that if she married Gray Hawk, she might be able to convince him to take her home. It was also conceivable that Gray Hawk, having married her, would keep her shut off from the white world, knowing that contact with them could cause her to run away.
In truth, he might have asked her to marry him only because he had no intention of taking her back to her own home—thus his overwhelming concern for her reputation, since she would have to spend the rest of her life in the Indian camp.
But she had to return home. She could not allow it to be otherwise. Without her, her father stood to face the degradation of losing all that he had spent a lifetime accumulating, plus his reputation.
She could not even admit to herself the possibility of this happening. Not to her own father.
And so she had to return. She had to make Gray Hawk see this, and she had to convince him to take her there.
She really had no other choice.
A chilling wind blew over her suddenly and she shivered, glancing at the same time over to where Gray Hawk lay with his back toward her.
He looked warm.
“Gray Hawk?”
He didn’t answer.
“Gray Hawk, I’m cold. Do we have another robe?”
She heard him draw in a deep breath. “There is only mine.”
“Gray Hawk, I don’t suppose that we could…that you—”
He turned over to face her, his dark gaze seeking hers. She could almost feel his breath, his anger upon her.
She said, “I was thinking…that we could share the—”
“Do you know what will happen if I come over there now?”
“I—we would—”
“Make love.”
“Not necessarily. We could just share one another’s body heat and robes and—”
He snorted. “After what happened between us today? Do you honestly believe I could take you in my arms and lie with you all night without kissing you, without caressing you, without loving you?”
She felt as though something had hit her in the pit of her stomach and all at once a warmth spread through her.
She said, however, “Do you think we would really make love?”
“Aa, I do.”
“And if I objected to your making love to me?”
“Then it would not happen. Do you think that you would…protest?”
“I believe so. I—”
“Do you forget that I did not meet my satisfaction today?”
His satisfaction? Did he mean that same sort of feeling she’d had when he had taken her to the culmination of—
She pulled up her thoughts.
No, she honestly hadn’t known. She gazed at him in the darkness, trying to interpret his look. She said, “You didn’t?”
“Saa, no, I did not,” he responded. “And it is all I can do right now to hold myself back from seeking you out again. If I come over there, be assured that we will spend the night as lovers.”
Emotion surged through her. She wanted him, wanted his touch, his embrace. But she mustn’t, she shouldn’t…
She ran her tongue over her lips, and she felt his attention shift there, to watch.
What she did next, she could never really explain or justify to herself—especially after logically analyzing her situation only a few moments earlier.
Maybe it was because she felt herself to be in the grip of more sensation than a person had a right to, or perhaps she simply needed his comfort. Whatever the reason, she could barely contain herself as she said, “I want you to come over here, Gray Hawk. I… Gray Hawk, I want you to hold me.”
She could feel the intense look he gave her, but he paused for probably no more than a second.
And then suddenly he was there, taking her in his arms, bringing to her his robes, his warmth…
his passion.
“If I make love to you now, we cannot go back to the way we were. I will demand that you marry me, for you will no longer be a virgin.”
She just looked at him.
“Do you understand this?”
“I—”
She meant to object. Truly, she meant to say no.
But he kissed her then, and she could no more think logically than she could have scaled the moon.
He said, “Oh, Gen-ee, how I need you. Do you know how much?”
She shook her head.
“I will show you.”
Chapter Fifteen
He held her, just held her, for a long time, his hands running up and down her spine.
She breathed in the musky aroma of his skin, savoring the smell of it, the texture of it, the salty taste of it, storing all the perceptions of it away in her memory in case she wished to bring it back to mind in the future.
The northerly wind blew upon them, over them, but neither one of them seemed to notice, both too caught up in the awareness of one another.
She felt the evidence of his arousal against her, and she wanted nothing more than to reach out and caress him, to hold him, to look at him.
But she dared not do it, feeling too shy to initiate such a thing. Oh, how she wanted to, however.
When they had made love earlier this day, she had been the one who lay naked under him. He had been clothed, at least in a breechcloth, and she had not seen him—
“Go ahead.”
“What?” she asked.
“Do you forget that your thoughts are quite plain to me?”
“Oh.”
He took her hand in his, and slowly he brought her touch down toward the juncture of his legs.
She drew in her breath. She touched him, and she had the pleasure of hearing him sigh.
She whispered, “Do you like that?”
“Aa, yes. Do you?”
“Yes,” she said. “Very much.”
“Aa, Gen-ee, there is much good between us, much pleasure.”
“Yes.”
“We will have a happy life together, my beautiful sits-beside-him-woman.”
Thoughts of denial didn’t even occur to her. She smiled. “What is a sits-beside-him-woman?”
His lips nibbled at her ear. “It is a man’s first wife.”
His first… She suddenly could barely breathe. She mumbled, “First…wife?”
“Yes,” he said. “It is the highest place of honor for a woman, and I will give it to you. You will have a voice, a say in all things that pertain to me, to our life. You will direct any other wives that I might take. You will always be first in my affection.”
She physically backed away from him.
“There will be no other affection, no other wives, because there will be no marriage,” she said.
He took her back in his arms. “There will be after tonight.”
“No.” She struggled away, out of his embrace. She said, almost to herself, “I don’t know what came over me. I was all ready to bed you, even perhaps of a mind to marry you. I… Thank goodness you told me all this before…”
He lay back, staring at her. He asked, “All what?”
“Wives, sits-beside-him-woman, other women. I could never, I will never—”
He paused for a moment. “That is right. I had forgotten. The white man takes only one wife.”
“Yes,” she said. “Naturally.”
He grinned at her. “It is not so natural as you might think. Because of this way of reasoning, I have observed the white trader making a slave of his Indian wife, requiring her to do all the heavy work of the home with no one else there to share the workload. There is much work for the woman; it is only right that there be other women—other wives—to help with the load.”
“I would never—”
“It would be your place to direct all the other wives. You would not be required to—”
“There would be no other wives.”
“You wish to take on all the work for yourself? You would become burdened down and haggard. Better it is that I get you help.”
She scooted away from him even farther. “There will be no other wives because there will be no marriage. I don’t know what came over me. How could I have even considered something so foreign, so primitive, so—”
“Natural?”
“No. I will not do it. I will not marry you.”
“Even if I take no other wives?”
“You… I…what do you mean?”
“Perhaps my mother and my sisters could help you with the workload so that you would not become too old before your time. Maybe, too, there will be orphans within the camp who could help you. If a sits-beside-him-woman does not wish her husband to take other wives, then he does not. I would not force you to break your own custom.”
“I could never… I would not… You wouldn’t?” She gazed at him.
And he shook his head, saying softly, “No. You have my promise.”
She didn’t want to feel it; she didn’t want to compromise her own ideas about such things, her own convictions. But what he’d said, the way he’d said it, made her feel as though she was the most important thing in his life. He was giving up the way he believed—for her?
Suddenly her objections to him, to what he proposed, seemed petty and silly compared to what he was sacrificing, and she felt her reasons for denying him start to melt, slipping away from her as though they had never been there in the first place.
She said, “If we were to marry, you would take only me?”
He nodded. “Aa, yes.”
Perhaps she shouldn’t have felt what she did. And maybe she should have remembered her resolve of earlier. But it was just not to be.
All at once, if only for a moment, she forgot about her heritage, about her father, her home, her society, her objections. The only thing of importance to her right now was this man who lay beside her, not more than a few inches away, this man who was disregarding his own custom to accommodate hers.
She smiled at him then, and scooting up closer to him, she said, “Oh, Gray Hawk.”
And he grinned back at her before taking her fully into his arms.
“Gen-ee, my sweet Gen-ee. How great is my desire to make love to you.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then you want it, too?” he asked, his lips just barely touching hers.
“Yes.”
“Then you wish to marry me?”
“Oh, Gray Hawk. How I wish it could be.”
She could feel him smiling, though at last he said, “Do not worry, my Gen-ee. If you wish it, it is done, then.”
And Genevieve, barely knowing what she did, grinned.
“You are so beautiful,” he said as he began to strip her dress away. “I have always thought so.”
“Even when I had first captured—”
“Even then. I did not like you at that time, but I have always thought that you are beautiful.” He kissed her lips. “I did not know it then, but I will always hold close to me the day I first saw you.”
He began then to kiss his way down toward her breasts, from where he had just removed the upper part of her dress.
“Gen-ee,” he whispered against her skin. “I think of you as Woman with Many Stars.”
“Woman with Many Stars?”
He lifted his gaze to hers and grinned.
And she said, “That’s quite a beautiful name. Why do you think of me in that way?”
“Because,” he said, “when you smile, I see many different lights in your eyes.” He looked up and gestured above him. “Like the stars.”
She smiled at him. “You are very poetic, Mr. Gray Hawk.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “But I speak the truth.”
He gazed down toward her breasts, and, bending, he kissed first one, then the other soft mound. He said—muttered, really—against her skin, “I believe that I should tell you that Gray Hawk is not my true name.”
Sh
e went all quiet and started upward, but he held her back.
He raised his head, resting on one elbow over her, while with his other hand he played with her hard nipples. He said, “It is what I called myself when I lived with the Black Robes, because I had caught and tamed a hawk that looked more gray than brown. But now that you are my sits-beside-him-woman, you should know that this is not really my name. It is also unlucky for me to speak it to you, but because we are married, it is a belief we can put aside. I am known in my tribe as White Wolf, but do not say the name aloud, for my people believe that to do so takes away a part of my spirit.”
“Do you truly believe that?”
“What?”
“That for me to speak your name would take away a part of you, that it is unlucky to do so?”
He rose up a little on his elbow. “I have seen bad luck fall to a person who did such.”
“I see,” she said. “Do all Indians believe this?”
He shrugged. “I do not know. It is the way of things with my people.”
“I still don’t understand. Do all your people have two names, then?”
“Some have more.”
“What?”
“When a man demonstrates greatness, he is permitted to take on a new name in honor of the coup he has claimed, no matter how many times this happens. But he never speaks the name if he is wise, nor would anyone call him by that title.”
“But how do others address him, then?”
“A man sometimes has another name which he permits to be spoken, as I have. But more often we call one another by our relation: brother, uncle, friend.”
“I think I understand. And so you would call me Genevieve, although my name would be Woman with Many Stars to the Blackfeet?”
“No. Women have only one name, which they use throughout their lifetime.”
“But you just said…”
“That is for men only.”
“But you gave me—”
“You are an unusual woman. Enough of this.”
He returned his attention to her breasts, and she sighed. “Gray Hawk?”
“Aa.”
“Say it in your language.”
“Say what?”
“Woman with Many Stars.”
“Kakato’siiksiaka Ohpnaapiaakii.”
“Ka-ka-to…”
