Savage Heat (26 page)

Totally baffled, he went immediately to her, and pulling her up, enfolded her close to his chest with one long arm. He looked all about, gun poised at the ready.

“What is it?” he said anxiously into her hair. “Are you sick? Are you in pain?”

Martay’s slender arms wound tightly around his waist and she buried her face on his chest. “N-no … I … I …”

“What, Martay?”

“A … a … big … ani-animal … was … was …” she stammered, pressing her face more securely into the curve of his neck and shoulder.

“An animal was here?”

“Y-yes … it … it … tried to …”

“I really doubt …”

Her blond head shot up. “It was here, I’m telling you!”

While she clung tenaciously to him, Night Sun slowly turned all around, his alert black eyes cautiously looking over the circular room. He stopped and squinted. There, directly beside the fur bed where Martay had been sleeping, were four long, wide slashes in the thick buffalo hide.

A shudder surged through him and Night Sun’s protective arm tightened around Martay’s slender shoulders. He need move no closer to know that a hungry panther had come down from the hills to prowl. The ripping sound had fortunately awakened Martay, she had screamed and frightened the beast away.

“Is help needed?” came Lone Tree’s voice from just outside the tipi, and Night Sun suddenly realized others in the camp had been awakened by Martay’s screams. There was the excited chatter of several braves.

“A panther,” Night Sun called out in their native tongue. He made a move to go out and speak to the concerned men, but Martay refused to loosen her death grip on his waist. “The girl is safe,” he called. “The cat got away. Go back to bed.”

“Good night,” called Lone Tree, and the men retreated, talking low about the panther problem that had grown with the thinning of the elk and buffalo herds.

Still Martay clung to Night Sun. “I was so frightened,” she murmured, her lips moving against his collarbone. “Something was trying to get me and I saw these gleaming eyes and I …”

“I’ve got you,” said Night Sun, gently stroking her trembling back through the wispy satin of her chemise. For a time they stood there embracing, her slender, quivering body pressed to the hard, comforting strength of his.

Her fingernails digging so deeply into the smooth, brown flesh of his back, he would have half-circle scratches come morning, Martay told him how scared she had been and how glad she was he had come so quickly and how she wished she had never left his tipi and asked would it be possible, did he think, for her to go back with him? At least for one night?

And all the while, as she spoke excitedly, relating what had happened, she was innocently pressing her slender, barely covered curves against a man who had, half an hour earlier, become aroused just thinking about her.

Above her golden head a pair of tortured black eyes slid half closed. Night Sun drew a labored breath, took her arm, and roughly set her back from him. She stared at him in puzzlement. Then it dawned on her that she was practically naked, and so was he.

His narrowed black eyes touched her breasts as her arms flew up to cross protectively over herself. Her wide green eyes were drawn to his exposed belly as his hand grabbed at the loosely hanging leather thongs of his half-unlaced buckskins. His eyes lowered to her long, slender legs, bare to mid-thigh. Her eyes climbed to the broad, smooth chest gleaming with a sheen of perspiration. Her breath grew short. His breath grew labored. She took a step toward him. He stood his ground. She didn’t fight her rising emotions. He refused to give in to his.

Staring down the dangerous, stalking female swaying seductively closer, Night Sun snatched up a blanket and swirled it around Martay’s bare shoulders. With one hand he held the ends together beneath her chin and said, in a voice gone as cold as his eyes, “Let’s go. I’d like to get a little rest tonight.”

Martay was not sure why he had so suddenly grown angry. But that was Night Sun. Kind and thoughtful one minute, cold and unreachable the next.

They trekked to his tipi in strained silence, and once inside, he remained mute, pointing a long finger toward her bed. She nodded and went there at once. Night Sun stretched out on his own bed and lay there in the darkness, still unable to sleep.

Damn her to hell! He couldn’t sleep if she was with him, he couldn’t sleep if she was not. Unreasonably angry, muttering oaths beneath his breath, he turned his back to her and closed his eyes. But he did not go to sleep.

Martay didn’t suffer the same frustrations as her more worldly companion. Not yet awakened to full-blown sexuality, she never thought past kisses and caresses. So, feeling safe once more inside Night Sun’s tipi, it was easy for her to drift toward slumber, even as she pondered Night Sun’s warmth, then sudden coldness, back in Little Coyote’s lodge. Sighing softly, thinking about his sullen, sensual lips, she turned her back to him and went to sleep.

Knowing the second her breathing changed, Night Sun turned onto his back and stared angrily at her. And he wondered, bitterly, who was actually the captive? Who the captor?

23

T
he next day a calm, cool Night Sun was again the one in control. While it aggravated him that a shallow, coddled creature like Martay Kidd could arouse him to the point of disturbing his rest, it was just that, an aggravation, nothing more. She was, as any man with eyes in his head could see, breathtakingly beautiful. And her seductive blend of insolence and vulnerability added to her erotic appeal. Still, it was only a physical thing. His body reacting to hers, nothing more.

Unworried and at ease, Night Sun stepped inside his tipi at midmorning, tossed a buckskin dress at Martay, and said, “Put this on. I’ll show you around the village.”

She didn’t argue. Restless, eager to get outdoors, she smiled at him and said, “Turn your back.”

“I’ll do better than that.” His voice was level, conversational. “I’ll wait for you outside. But don’t take all day.”

Nodding at his retreating back, Martay jumped up and held the buckskin dress to her shoulders. The garment was entirely plain and shapeless. She frowned, sighed, and said aloud, “I wouldn’t be caught dead in this thing!” And tossing it aside, she began the search for her own clothes. After several frustrating minutes, she found the neat bundle on the far side of Night Sun’s bed.

White silk dress, high-heeled slippers, and torn stockings. The exquisite pearl necklace and earscrews were inside a pouch of soft leather.

“Martay, I’m waiting,” came Night Sun’s deep voice.

“In a minute,” she called, and pulled the tight white silk dress over her head, smoothing the shimmering fabric over her curves. The stockings were past wearing, so she slipped her bare feet into the high-heeled slippers, and deciding the pearls were a bit too much for morning, left them inside their leather envelope. Hands behind her back, struggling with the gown’s hooks, she hurried to a pine chest where she knew Night Sun kept his personal items. From atop it, she took a silver-backed brush and, pulling it through the tangles in her long, unruly hair, smirked, thinking that the handsome half-breed had most certainly transported some of the white man’s handy tools to his wilderness camp.

“Martay,” he called again, a trace of impatience in his voice.

“Coming,” she said, and looking into his mirror, she bit her lips and pinched her cheeks to give them color, jerked at the low-cut bodice of her dress, fluffed at the cap sleeves, and went out to him.

“I’m ready,” she proudly announced. His back was to her; he slowly pivoted. Never had she seen a pair of eyes change as swiftly as did his at that moment. Instantly they went from calm to fierce, and he took hold of her arm with such force, she almost lost her balance.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said, roughly shoving her back inside the tipi. Too stunned to speak, Martay shook her head in confusion. “Did you suppose I’d allow you to walk around this camp half-naked?” With each word his eyes became harder, colder, blacker.

“This is a stylish, expensive gown! You can’t expect me to …”

“I expect you to keep yourself decently covered. Lakota women are very modest and they …”

“Well, I’m no damned Lakota woman and I refuse to go about in some hot, shapeless garment that does nothing for my coloring.”

“You’ll go about any way I tell you or stay inside this tipi for eternity. You’re so vain …”

“I am not!” she hotly defended, “but the dress is …”

“The dress is coming off,” he said, and taking her arm and jerking her about, he deftly unfastened the hooks she’d labored so painstakingly to close.

Insensed and insulted, Martay snapped acidly, “I’m a grown woman! You can’t tell me what I’ll wear.” She slapped and clawed at the strong brown hands that were stripping the white gown from her body.

He didn’t bother to reply, just kept on undressing her, no more bothered by her scratching than if a mosquito had attacked him. In seconds the white silk dress lay on the floor, and while Martay struggled Night Sun commandingly shoved her arms through the sleeves of the buckskin dress and lowered it over her head.

For a time she was caught inside; the smothering leather dress wrapped around her head and arms, hung there. Blinded and furious, she threatened him wildly until he took pity and jerked the buckskin garment down over her blond head. Her red, angry face appeared. He pulled the dress over her breasts and hips and was tying a belt around her waist while she continued to berate him hotly.

Breaking in, he said, “This will do nicely.”

“It is shapeless and ugly, and I hate it!” She glared at him. “And I hate you as well.”

“I can live with that.”

“Well, I can’t live with you,” she shouted loudly, stepping in to him, tipping her head back. “You are a stupid, arrogant savage!”

His jet-black eyes sharpened and he softly replied, “And you are a selfish, predatory bitch.”

Refusing to allow the impossible, ill-tempered woman to embarrass him before his people, Night Sun waited until Martay’s mood had softened, just as he had waited until she was properly, decently, dressed before he would take her outdoors.

Warning her that if she didn’t wish to be imprisoned inside his lodge, she would keep a civil tongue in her head and behave as if she were a true lady, at last Night Sun ushered a docile Martay out into the brilliant Dakota sunshine.

It was almost noontime.

Martay looked around and inhaled deeply. Already the summer was dying; the deep azure sky had that autumn look about it. No hint of summer heat-haze. Just clean, crisp air and the slightest touch of morning coolness lingering even at this late hour.

Her anger forgotten, Martay marveled at the beauty surrounding her. It was her first venture outdoors since being brought, near death and unconscious, into the remote village. Windwalker’s Powder River Lakota camp was pitched in a lush, high meadow along a protective, high ridge where colorful flowers spilled down the slopes and wild berries grew in abundance and birds sang sweetly from the branches of tall pines.

Walking along beside the tall, silent Night Sun, her eager eyes taking it all in, Martay commented, honestly, “I am pleasantly surprised. Your quaint home is really quite beautiful.”

He cut his eyes to her, but he said nothing.

They were near the other tipis now, and dozens of Indians, men, women, and children, were outside, lined up in neat rows, as though they were expecting an important visitor to arrive. Suspicious dark eyes fastened on Martay. Instinctively moving closer to Night Sun, she whispered, nervously, “What are they doing?”

“Waiting to meet you,” he said, and put a hand lightly at her back.

A sudden hush fell over the crowd. And there stood Windwalker, a powerful figure, invested with absolute authority over every man, woman, and child in camp. The chieftain was a man of great size, with a full head of black hair touched with gray, alert dark eyes, and large, amazingly gentle hands.

Martay, shaking the shaman’s hand, recalled those kind, gentle hands touching her, caring for her through those foggy days and nights of raging fever.

“Thank you, Windwalker,” she said, smiling at the Mystic Warrior, “for saving my life.”

The chieftain’s glittery eyes never wavered from hers as Night Sun interpreted. A hint of a smile spread over Windwalker’s broad face, and his hand, still holding hers, tightened its grip for an instant.

Every eye in the village was on the two tall Lakota chieftains and the pretty blond woman. And when Night Sun guided Martay on through the camp, presenting her to his band, the morning promptly took on a festive air. Handsome half-naked brown-skinned children darted close to peer at her and to call to Night Sun. He flashed them the most incredibly disarming smiles, smiles Martay would have imagined him incapable of. Women twittered and giggled and looked from Martay to Night Sun, their gazes lingering on the dark chieftain, while the men nodded to them and smiled broadly and began to chant.

Leaning close to Night Sun, Martay, looking at the warriors and smiling appreciatively, whispered, “What are they saying?”

“Nothing, really. Foolish things.”

“Tell me, please.” She looked up at him.

“They are saying that you are lucky because … because the returning mixed-blood chieftain is the bravest of all warriors. That no saber-toothed cat from the mountains nor sneaky Crow dog from the valleys can harm you so long as I have you.”

“Mmmmm.” The chants continued and Martay, smiling and nodding to the men, said, “What are they saying now?”

A muscle twitched beside Night Sun’s full mouth and Martay could have sworn he flushed beneath his dark skin. “They say I am lucky too.”

Martay felt exhilarated by the time Night Sun walked her back to his lodge. She had always enjoyed being the center of attention and she had certainly had that honor for the past couple of hours. She had been presented to every member of the tribe, and from the tiniest toddler, a boy called Slow One, to the oldest warrior, a deaf-mute named Speaks-Not-At-All, the Lakota Sioux of Windwalker’s small band were clearly fascinated with Martay.