Captive Eden (2 page)

“Mama?” Charlie’s eyes watered.

Eden knew how he hated to cry. A prideful trait she
suspected he inherited from Brant.

“He won’t hurt you, my sweet boy.” She hurried to reassure
Charlie, putting her hand on his leg. “He’s your father and he’d never do
anything to harm you.”

Eden pressed her fingers to her lips to quell the quivering.

Brant had hardened into a man she didn’t understand.

“This isn’t right,” she pleaded. “You were never one to be
cruel. Charlie doesn’t deserve to be punished for my mistake. Please. I’m
begging you not to do this to him.”

Brant’s hand covered hers. She assumed to stop her from
jerking Charlie off the horse, but she’d not play a tugging game with her
child.

Then it became obvious Brant’s intentions were not as she
believed.

For a moment, seemingly lost in thought, he rubbed her
knuckles. He stood close. The scent of him surrounded her. His breath passed
along her cheek, heating her skin. She turned slowly as his other hand skimmed
upward, over her hip to her side. Her clothing did nothing to hinder the brief
but scorching caress of his fingers. The steady glide stopped as she faced him.
His thumb rested against the underside of her breast and then swirled circles
upward, coming to a halt just before skimming over her aching nipple.

Desiring his attention, she slid a foot forward, drawn to
him. He bowed his head and stared at her mouth. She tensed with anticipation of
his kiss, imagining it before it could happen.

“Are you really my father?” Charlie asked, breaking the
spellbinding moment that had captured Eden’s thoughts.

“Yes,” Brant answered, letting go of her.

“He’s only four, Brant. Can’t you let him stay here at the
house with me?” she pleaded with a compromise. “You can come visit, get to know
him and then maybe—”

Though she had only come to settle her father’s affairs,
knowing it wasn’t safe for her to live alone on the prairie, she had always
hoped Brant would want her.

A loud drum of thunder interrupted her. She never liked
storms. Her mother had died in one when she was little. They had been picking
blackberries when the sudden tempest came upon them. Her mother had rushed them
under a tree just as lightning struck.

Eden had laughed from the tingling sensation that stood her
hair on end, but her mother had fallen to the ground in silence and didn’t get
up. It was years before Eden had understood what had happened, and she had been
haunted by that event ever since.

Brant knew her fears. He put his hands on her shoulders with
the kind of weight she imagined him using to lay claim to her. To have him
offer a sympathetic squeeze to her arms displayed a thread of his gentleness.
She accepted the sign as the goodness in him she recalled from years ago and it
renewed her hope in reasoning with him.

“Please.” She tried not to sound like a whimpering child or
a sniveling woman as she moved toward Charlie. She needed to remain calm and
clear-thinking for him, even though his full attention was on the well-trained
horse patiently standing still.

“And then, when I am not looking, you will get on a train
and disappear again?” Brant accused, withdrawing from her.

She spun around, facing him. From his quick, sharp tone, she
became aware his hurt ran deep in regards to not having his son for four years.
She sympathized for that kind of anguish and touched his arm, stroking the
short fibers of black hair with a soothing glide of her hand. How often had
Charlie required her to comfort him when troubled? Father and son, so much
alike.

“I didn’t disappear.” Looking back at Charlie, she was glad
to see the horse had overtaken her son’s interest instead of their predicament.

He had always wanted a horse, but in the city it wasn’t a
practical animal to keep. Though she had let friends lead him around on theirs
when they came visiting.

Slipping her fingers over the warmth of Brant’s forearm,
putting her other hand against the center of his chest, she pushed him back
from Charlie’s hearing range. “Don’t do this to me—to him.” She bowed her head.
“I’m begging you not to take the only thing I have left in my life.” She kept
her gaze down, afraid if she looked into Brant’s eyes, she’d lose the fight to
keep hidden her deepest feelings for him.

His silence kept her talking, explaining.

“You stopped coming to visit me, Brant. For days, I sat
waiting in the apple grove down by the pond and you never showed up. I thought
you must have already known I was carrying your child and hated me for it.
Feeling abandoned and frightened, I had to tell someone. My condition left me
little choice. I had to tell my father.”

Eden paused and took a slow, deep breath to keep from
crying. Brant’s desertion had crushed her spirit. The baby coming had been her
salvation from falling into the permanent despair she had suffered.

“You have to know how hard that was for me, knowing how my
father felt about you. I was sixteen, unmarried and terrified. After he took a
willow switch to me, he sent me back east to live with his sister in Boston.
They fabricated a lie, telling their friends that my husband died of a fever. I
hated leaving you but going meant our child would be safe from him.”

She glanced at Charlie, hoping her whispered tones kept him
from hearing the heart-wrenching story she’d never told anyone.

Brant’s silence distressed her. What was he thinking? Why
wasn’t he responding?

She continued blurting out facts to make him understand. “I
trusted you to be there for me and you weren’t. I went away to have a baby,
Brant. I stayed away so my father couldn’t abuse him.”

Brant lifted a hand, touching her side and she pushed away
from him. The feelings she had buried long ago rose with a resentment she hadn’t
wanted to face.

“I had to do what was best for me and Charlie. You have no
right to treat me as if you were wronged more than I was.”

“He is mine and I want him.” Brant declared as if she hadn’t
spilled her soul to him.

“Then take me too.” She lifted her face and looked straight
at him, fighting to not lose her son but also seizing the chance to have Brant
in her life. “I’ll do anything you ask, anything at all, I promise.”

A glimmer, a tiny trace of agreement flickered in Brant’s
brown eyes. It gave her hope. Maybe she’d been wrong to think he no longer cared
for her. After her initial fear she had done something to upset him, she had
created a slew of plausible excuses as to why he had stopped coming to see her.

His father wouldn’t let him take a white girl for a wife.

His mother worried he’d be hurt or killed by white men for
touching a white girl.

He got sick—terribly ill so that it prevented him from
visiting her.

She had lengthened the list with every passing month until
Charlie’s birth. Then the illogical explanations for his disappearance took
over again. Most importantly, he had never loved her.

“You would live in my village with me?” His tone softened,
hinting at vulnerability.

“Yes.” Her mind soared with the prospect of what he
suggested.

He lifted his hand too quickly near her face and she
flinched. She hated she had no control of the reaction. Years of abuse by her
father had left her scarred in a way no one could see.

Brant dropped his arm back down. “I will be in charge of his
teachings from now on.”

Eden nodded quickly. He made his intentions clear. Agreeing
to be with him under any terms filled some of her needs. For Charlie, she’d
save her arguments for battles she could win.

Brant stared at her as if he reconsidered the hasty
arrangement. Did he fear she’d be trouble? His expression gave away nothing
about his decisions. Then he slowly lifted his hand to her face again. He
lightly touched her cheek and slid one finger along her jaw.

“You will do as I say?” He gripped her chin and leaned
closer.

“Yes,” she answered gently, seeing desire in his eyes more
than danger.

He let go of her face, but he didn’t withdraw from being
close. His gaze moved over her face in a searching manner. Did he look for
telltale signs of her lying? She closed her eyes as a memory flooded her
thoughts.

Sitting between his legs, Eden leaned back against Brant
and watched the ripples in the pond from the gentle breeze. She shivered each
time he swept his fingers across her belly or brought his hands up to cup her
breasts.

It seems as if hours had gone by since they had
undressed, yet minutes since Brant bedded her right there in the soft patch of
grass and clover.

“Will you come into me again?” she asked, more nervous
than the first time since she knew there was pain.

“I want to.” His pushed his hand down her belly and
fingered the patch of hair covering her sex. “But I do not want to make you cry
any more.”

“They were tears of joy, Brant. You made me a woman, your
woman.” Her breath came quicker as Brant’s fingering moved into her.

“I will be patient, my Eden.”

“Why?” She panted, laying her head back against his
shoulder.

“So you do not tire of me coming into you.”

“Why would you think I would tire of having you so close
that we are practically one?”

“I have heard talk in my village, women complaining of
their husband’s appetite for sex.”

Eden’s quick, short gasps prevented her from speaking.
She swung her head back and forth and writhed with delight at the sensations
Brant created inside her.

When they subsided, he pulled his fingers out and licked
them. Then he twisted her face up and kissed her. The fervent passion of his
mouth moving on hers and his hands squeezing her breasts continued. Then he
pulled his mouth from hers.

“I will never tire of you wanting me, Brant. Never.” She
twisted in his embrace.

He lowered her to the ground and rose over her as he had
before. His elegant body pressed to hers as they came together.

Brant’s touch startled her from the reverie of how he once
enveloped her in the warmth of his adoration.

With his grip on her elbow, he led her to his horse.

“Can we get our things from the wagon?” She glanced in that
direction.

“I will provide for you.” Heat radiated from his palm
against her back.

While she’d eventually miss some items from her luggage, like
her shell hair combs and her lilac water, she trusted Brant to provide all she’d
really ever need.

“What about the horse. You can’t leave him hitched to the
buggy.”

He walked to it, flipped the brake off and hooked the reins
over the harness. “He will return to the trading post.” He slapped the horse’s
rump and sent it trotting off.

She watched her possessions roll away with the horse.
“Someone will come looking for me.”

“But they won’t find you.”

She didn’t like the prospect of what the people at the trading
post might do if she was missing, but she couldn’t think of that now. She’d not
let Brant leave her behind.

“Can I ride with Charlie, then?” She watched her son petting
the horse he sat on.

“The boy is old enough to sit a horse alone.” Brant gripped
her by the waist.

For one long minute, she and Brant stood as they had many
times before. His gaze traveling to her face, the expression suggesting he also
recalled the past. How many times had he set her on his horse? His gentle
manners always impressed her.

Placing her hands on his shoulders, she readied for him to
lift her to sit sideways on the saddle. “His name is Charlie,” she reminded him
as he made picking her up seem easy. “I don’t see why I can’t ride with him.
You and I both know you could catch us if I tried to escape.”

“The boy does not need his mother holding him.” He swung up
behind her.

She looked back at her son. He appeared so small on the
horse. “Hold on tight, Charlie, just like I taught you.”

“He will be all right.”

“Fine, but could you please not scare him?”

Brant gave her a grunt as an answer. His rigid body pressed
against her back. One arm circled her waist, the other hung midair where he
held the reins. When his long fingers tensed, she wondered if holding her wasn’t
his real reason for not letting her ride with Charlie.

“Is the lead rope to Charlie’s horse secure?” Eden peered
around Brant’s arm to check on Charlie again. “In Boston, we rode in carriages.
Sometimes I led him around on a horse, but he’s never ridden one so you can’t
let the rope go free.”

Brant glanced at Charlie first and then to the rope tied in
the ring.

Eden noted the hint of worry in his eyes and rubbed his arm
in understanding. “You will teach him.”

A magic spell couldn’t have captured her any better than the
movement of Brant’s fingers digging into her side, latching on as if she’d get
away.

“He will learn everything there is to know about a horse,”
he whispered hoarsely over her head. “He will learn to be a brave warrior like
his people.”

“His people are mostly white. The only Indian blood in him
is the half from your father.” She reminded him, looking back to see Charlie’s
horse still calm and safely hitched to Brant’s saddle. “He’s been raised white
and you can’t take that from him.”

“The boy will learn to be Pawnee.”

“I see your stubbornness hasn’t changed.” She turned her
head and stared at the strong line to his jaw, the determined set to his mouth.
“You can’t undo his life up until now.”

Brant’s gaze drifted from her eyes to her mouth. He swept
loose wisps of her hair back from her face. “I do what I want,” he answered.

If that included kissing her, she was prepared. She had
longed for the day Brant’s passion spilled over her again. Leaning on his rock-solid
chest, she waited for him to bow his head and press his lips to hers. She
tipped her head back, ready to find out if her memory was different from
reality.