Her heart lifted, then began to race. She was learning already. The deer hadn’t moved. Before she met Walks-With-Spirits, she would never have thought even to try this.
The yearlings twitched their nostrils, but otherwise they didn’t move. Slowly, slowly, she lifted her hand toward them, to let them catch her scent before her whole body might threaten them with its closeness.
Her feet brushed through the grass but even she could barely hear the sound they made. She glanced toward the river again. Halfway. She was almost halfway across the open space between Walks-With-Spirits on one end of the valley and the deer on the other. She could do this. He was going to be so surprised!
If only she had some grain in her outstretched hand. Or some acorns or pecans. Something for them to eat, something to tempt them to come closer, something to distract them a little bit from her.
Her arm trembled. Her legs shook, too, from moving so slowly after having ridden for so long. They had been almost numb when she got down off Pretty Feather’s back. But none of that was any excuse. She would make friends with these deer, and Walks-With-Spirits would be so glad.
He needed to teach her just as much as she needed to learn. She’d discovered that when he’d agreed that she could come with him, she had felt the need spring to life in him like a fever when she’d told him she wanted to learn what he knew. He needed her in lots of ways.
Tears stung her eyes, she blinked them back. Never, ever, would she forget his voice as he told her that loneliness would kill him now if she hadn’t come here with him.
One of the deer gave a snort of alarm and then they bolted. They were gone. Vanished, before she could even blink
“O-oooh!”
She stared at the trees for a short, useless span of time, then she whirled to look at him, beating both fists against her thighs, shouting in frustration.
“That makes me so mad! I can’t believe they would run off when we were doing so well!”
He was walking toward her, laughing.
“Don’t you dare laugh at me! I almost had them!”
That made him laugh harder.
“I did! You saw it for yourself. If I’d had some food, they’d have stayed right where they were and by now they’d have been eating out of my hand!”
He walked up to her.
“Admit it, Walks-With-Spirits!”
She was fighting tears again, and she didn’t want him to see. What was the matter with her? She never cried easily like this.
“It’s just that I wanted so much to succeed, to show you that I have a little bit of the gift …”
He finally quit laughing when he saw her distress and he put his arm around her shoulders.
“You did great at the beginning. All you did wrong was stop sending messages to their spirits, you stopped sending them your thoughts and listening for theirs.”
“Is that all?”
“Well, you crowded them a bit, too,” he said, and started them walking back toward the horses and their camp site.
“I couldn’t have moved any more slowly.”
“No, but you could’ve stopped. When you got to about here, you could’ve stopped and let them come to you.”
She looked up at him and quit walking as the words rang in her heart with more truth than just that about the deer.
“You have to respect their feelings and let them make some of the judgments. You have to listen to what they’re thinking and give them some chance to move toward you if you want to be friends with them.”
Every bit of that advice was true of Walks-With-Spirits, too, and she knew in that moment that she had to give up the thought of deliberately trying to make them be lovers even if it was for the purpose of trying once more to convince him to run for his life. It would be wrong to set out to seduce him as she’d done to other men.
Yes, it was true that if they forced themselves to stay apart and spent this whole week looking at each other and agonizing to touch, then they wouldn’t really have lived life to its fullest as they’d set out to do. But, no matter if she was willing to risk the even deeper hurt to her heart at the time of parting, this decision was not for her to make.
If he came to her bed while they were at Blue River, it would have to be because deep in his own heart he felt it was right.
Unloading the horses and setting up camp, making the fire and warming the food Emily had sent, then eating it and cleaning up the dishes kept them occupied until well after dark. Then they spread out their bedrolls and sat on them beside the campfire, drinking coffee and talking quietly about the deer again.
“Remember this about any of the animals we come across,” he told her. “Listen to their spirits and stand still and let them come to you. You’re the one who is new here in the place where they live. Be still and send them thoughts that you’re a friend and let them come to you in their own good time.”
She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them.
“Next time, I will.”
“It may not happen to you the very first time you try it, but eventually you’ll be able to know what their spirits are saying.”
She nodded.
“I’ve learned to do it with you,” she said.
She felt his quick look, but she didn’t turn to him.
“Ever since you caught me at the tall pine,” she said, “I’ve been listening to your spirit. It tells me that I’m the center of your concern, the same as you’ve been telling me with words, yet you also must satisfy your honor and find your peace.”
Then she looked at him. The fire was throwing streaks of light onto his face, but his eyes were in shadow. She could feel their power, though, just the same as she had on that first night they met.
Suddenly she ached so to touch him that she thought she would die if she didn’t.
“This afternoon when you said you weren’t going to touch me again, I decided to tempt you until you changed your mind.”
He tilted his head, and, in the firelight, she saw his quick, amused glance.
“Am I to take this as a warning?”
“No. I changed my mind. I respect your decision, and I don’t want to cause you to do something you’d regret.”
His slight smile changed to a grin.
“You’re very sure of your powers.”
She grinned back at him.
“Yes, I am.”
She leaned back on one arm, angling away from him to show the silhouette of her body against the light of the fire.
“I know that you are flesh and blood, no matter how strong your spirit is,” she said.
“Ah, but I’ve had years and years of practice in putting my spirit in charge,” he said.
However, his eyes caressed the shape of her long legs with the knees languidly bent, anyway—she could tell by the tilt of his head, even if his face was no longer in the light. And she could tell by the heat as it roamed slowly over the curve of her breasts that his glance was lingering there.
It made her hold her breath.
It made her breasts tingle, and her hands itch to touch him.
Slowly, deliberately, she straightened up, crossed her legs in front of her, and leaned the other way, toward him.
“Ah, but your spirit wants me, too,” she said softly. “Will you admit that’s true?”
He chuckled.
“No?” She leaned closer still, close enough for him to smell the fragrance of the flowery perfume she’d used from the bottle in her saddlebags. “I would hate to have to torture an admission from you,” she whispered. “It’s not nice to lie.”
His laugh was throaty and low.
“You are torturing me right now. Is that admission enough for you?”
“Well, I’d say it’s a start,” she drawled.
His eyes were hot and bright in the dusk of his face. They caressed her mouth. However, his big, hard-muscled body stayed still.
For a long, long moment, their eyes held in a look that stopped her heart.
“Thi
s is how it is with me, Cotannah,” he said, at last. “I gave in to my flesh and my spirit lost control and that’s when I put the curse on Jacob. If I give in to my flesh again, and make love to you, it’ll be like putting a curse on you that makes it harder for you to bear our parting.”
Consternation started her blood flowing again.
“But you’re not a spirit!” she cried. “You’re a flesh-and-blood man and you can’t always tamp that down. You shouldn’t.”
“I should,” he said, and his face filled with torment. “I’m supposed to be a healer, not a destroyer. And I used bad medicine. Me, a shaman with gifts given to me so I can do good, only good.”
“I didn’t behave right, either,” she said. “I was trying to get you jealous by the way I acted with Jacob, and that kept me from sensing his badness. But you sensed it, you knew he was a terrible person. See, your spirit was working, after all.”
“But not enough to keep me from killing him.”
“You didn’t,” she said, letting all the belief she had in him show in her eyes. “You didn’t kill Jacob because you didn’t mean for him to die.”
He watched her eyes and searched her face, she saw the desire to believe it leap to life in him.
“Do you really think so?”
“I know so. You don’t have a bad bone in your body—I sensed that with a powerful force when you set Sophie’s arm that day. I know it. My spirit tells me.”
He grinned.
“Is your spirit strong enough yet to change your behavior?”
She laughed. “Soon it will be, with you teaching me. I’m just glad I’m getting straightened out at your hands instead of Auntie Iola’s.”
He laughed, too, a low, silver sound that fired her blood.
“So you think my hands can change you, do you?”
She dropped her gaze to look at them, huge and hard and brown, with beautiful, long fingers and callused palms. Then she looked into his eyes again. Desire went tumbling through her body like a runaway wheel that wasn’t quite round. “I know they can.”
She parted her lips the slightest bit and wet them with the tip of her tongue. He watched, but he did not move at all. He was thinking it over, she could see that, and he was beginning to know that making love with her was right.
“And I know that they should,” she said. “I need to teach you that giving in to the instincts of the flesh doesn’t always bring on something bad.”
He gave her that grin again.
“So if we’ve got that settled,” she said huskily, “I’d think you would touch me.”
“I’m much tougher to tempt than most men,” he said.
She laughed.
“Maybe. But you aren’t tough enough.”
“Oh?”
He scooted toward her on the bedroll and bent to whisper against her ear. “Try me.”
“No,” she said and moved away. “I’d be taking advantage of you.” But her breath caught in her throat, and she could barely finish the last of it because that one hot breath in her ear, that seductive growl of two inviting words had melted her bones.
His arm brushed against hers and sent a heated thrill racing through her helpless flesh. She leaned back into the curve of his shoulder for one sweet moment of warmth.
Then she pulled herself together to inch teasingly away again.
“It wouldn’t be fair,” she said.
“Ah!” he said. “So you’re afraid of defeat.”
“No, you’ve dallied too long,” she said. “You’ve waited too late. Now I don’t believe that you really want me at all.”
“Well, you have to make your own decisions,” he murmured, “according to what your spirit tells you to do.”
She flashed him a look over her shoulder.
“And your flesh,” she murmured in return. “You also must listen to what your flesh tells you to do.”
He reached out and ran his hand over her hair.
“Mmm, your hair is smoother than cornsilks,” he murmured. “I love to feel it against my skin.”
“You should feel my skin against your skin.”
But she gave him a brilliant smile and shifted farther away from him.
He laughed. “I’m far too tough to fall for a blatant temptation like that. You’ll have to do better.”
“But I’m not trying to tempt you anymore.”
“Yes, you are. It’s not nice to lie.”
He pulled back a little and looked at her in the glow of the camp flames, brushed back a loose strand of her hair and circled her ear with his fingertip, then trailed it slowly down the side of her neck. A sparkle of fire went dancing through her blood. It took her breath away, and he saw that it did.
He was the tempter now, and he knew it.
“Don’t you be touching me, Shadow,” she said, in a tone that meant just the opposite.
He leaned forward and laid his big hand at the nape of her neck in a gesture so slow, so deliberate, that it could have only one intention: possession. Her heart stopped.
Her hair hung down her back in one long, thick braid, and he brought it over her shoulder with a dizzying caress that made her bend toward his hand. He untied the scrap of ribbon and began running his fingers through it.
“Or, instead of cornsilks, maybe your hair’s smoother than a raven’s wing,” he said. “It’s certainly blacker.”
“Mmn.”
He moved back and turned so he could use both hands.
“This is the way you should always wear your hair,” he said, spreading it out across her shoulders. “Look how it gleams in the firelight.”
She laughed softly, shaking her head.
“If I always wore it like this, there wouldn’t be any left to gleam in the firelight,” she said. “Every tree limb I passed would reach out and catch it.”
He smiled dreamily.
“Cotannah. Beautiful Cotannah. Every thing and every person wants to reach out and catch you as you pass. Especially every man.”
His eyes gleamed with a fierce heat. He dropped his arms around her suddenly, and turned her face away from his, pulled her back against his hard body. He fit her head into his shoulder, brushed her hair behind her ear before he pressed his cheek to hers.
His whole body was taut with desire now, she could feel it vibrating through him, through her, between them, like the plucked string of a bow. But he didn’t touch her in any other way.
“I know you’re right about our bodies coming together,” he whispered, “but Cotannah, I would never forgive myself if I broke your heart.”
Chapter 16
Her blood stopped pumping. He couldn’t deny her now, he just couldn’t. Not after the change of heart she’d seen in his face.
Yet, he stayed very still, the chiseled bones of his face pressing into hers.
“You won’t. I’ll die of a broken heart if you don’t love me, Shadow.”
“I do love you. With all my heart, my soul, and my spirit. But if I love you with my body, it’ll make it worse, much worse, for you when I’m gone. Then I won’t have to suffer, but your flesh and your skin will long for me, too, as well as your mind and your spirit.”
“They will anyway,” she whispered, her lips almost too stiff with despair to speak. “All of me is longing for you now so much that it’s devouring me.”
She pulled away from him then, although the loss of his hard warmth made her feel so bereft she could cry, and shifted her body to face him, took his dear face in her hands.
“I know how you feel,” she cried, and she willed her voice not to break. “You think that our coming together will make it harder for me, but it’s harder for us both right now, not to have the joy we could have as one spirit and one body.”
He stared deep into her eyes in the firelight. He was listening to her with his whole self.
“It’s wrong for us to throw away that joy, don’t you see?”
He made a noncommittal noise, deep in his throat. She didn’t know what it meant, but
somehow it gave her hope.
“Remember when you said that you had to live, really live this last week?” she cried. “We can’t do that unless our bodies come together and we share all of ourselves, Shadow, darling! If we don’t, we’ll be wanting it so much that denying our instincts will take all our strength, and we won’t really experience anything else!”
His eyes consumed her face, but he didn’t speak.
“I need your spirit to help me in the years to come,” she said simply. “And you need my earthiness to fully experience this life in this world. We are meant to share ourselves completely now.”
He looked at her some more, for the long, thudding length of a slow heartbeat and then, without a word, he held out both arms. She went into them and her heart took flight.
He settled her head into the crook of his neck and rubbed his cheek against her hair. With that same deliberate possessiveness as before, he wrapped her into his embrace and began to rock her back and forth.
“You are wise,” he said. “My every instinct tells me you are right.”
He pressed a hot kiss against the sensitive skin of her temple.
“But Cotannah, I don’t know how you can be so sure of how much you’re risking. I worry so for you after I’m gone. Can it be true that you really love me this much? I’ve heard the old men say that once a woman lies with a man, then she always needs a man. Perhaps that need is what you are feeling …”
She was already shaking her head, “no” and she turned quickly in his arms to meet his eyes.
“I need you. Only you.”
His dark face suffused with a light that had nothing to do with the fire or the rising new moon.
“Only you, Walks-With-Spirits. Only you.”
He made a low, broken sound and pulled her down with him onto the ground, already cupping her breast in his hand, kissing her mercilessly with wild teeth and tongue, stopping her breath forever and then giving her his own. She had no strength, not even to move one finger, but she untied his woven belt and snatched at the tails of his long hunting shirt. Finally, with his help, it came off over his head and that is when they broke the kiss—for that one flashing instant only.
After the Thunder Page 26
