Savage Heat (38 page)

Feeling himself growing painfully hard beneath his tight buckskin pants, he was resolved to have her in any way and every way he chose. To teach her a lesson she would never forget. To ignore her pleas for gentleness and patience. So he ripped the soggy, tattered buckskin skirt from her just as a fierce gust of wind slammed into the scooped out enclosure, almost knocking Martay from her feet. With one steadying hand, he held her up. While the big black whickered loudly and nudged at Night Sun’s shoulder, and fierce lightning skittered within feet of them, and the winds and the rains grew more angry and intense, Night Sun, as tumultuous and as violet as the worsening tempest, stripped Martay naked.

He sat back on his heels then, anticipating her fear, expecting the tears and the begging. But Martay defied him. Proudly she stood there, bare and wet and beautiful, her emerald eyes shining with unashamed desire, her hands outstretched to him, beckoning him to take what he’d unwrapped.

Watching her intently as though she were some strange, erotic apparition that would surely vanish in the mists, Night Sun shuddered, groaned, and reached for her, his hands roughly encircling her narrow waist. Martay, unafraid, looked steadily into his dark eyes, love and desire shining clearly in her own.

That open, inviting look, the brazen offering of her pale, beautiful body in sweet surrender, angered Night Sun. More determined than ever to shock her, he swiftly pulled her down, positioned her on her back atop the blanket, and stretched out beside her. A firm hand pressing her bare shoulder to the blanket, he brought a long leg over her knees to hold her down. His mouth lowered to hers then and he kissed her forcefully, deeply, his open lips twisting, slanting on hers. Martay felt the abrasive rub of his buckskins against her bare flesh as his chest pressed heavily on hers and his knee moved between her legs to nudge them apart. After just one deep, intrusive kiss, his lips left hers and immediately began moving aggressively down over her bare, tingling body.

Clutching at his shoulders, Martay murmured his name breathlessly and whispered, “Darling, take off your clothes. Your buckskins are scratching me.”

He gave no answer. His eyes closed, his strong, possessive hands sweeping over her, he continued to kiss her naked flesh hungrily, feasting on her as though he would never get his fill.

When his hot, open lips reached her bare belly, Martay shuddered, excited with pleasure. Night Sun turned his head from side to side, brushing his lips, his teeth, his tongue on her quivering flesh. His long silky hair, damp from the rains, fell around his dark, moving face to tickle and excite her.

Her hands clutching at the spread blanket, Martay lay there completely naked while Night Sun, fully clothed, pressed plucking kisses to her flat stomach as the high plains hailstorm raged around them. While his lips and tongue played passionately over her sensitive skin, Martay inhaled deeply of the rain-freshened air and smiled foolishly. Wonderingly, she turned her head and saw, as if in a dream, great balls of frozen ice fall from the stormy sky into the swirling waters surging through the canyon.

The violent winds continued to howl. The rains became torrential. The sky was as dark as midnight. The black stallion and the sorrel mare, standing not six feet away, whickered with nervous excitement, their eyes wild.

Unbothered by any of it, Martay felt absolutely no fear. She was not afraid of the late-summer storm. Nor was she afraid of the dark, handsome man furiously kissing her bare belly. She didn’t understand him—she’d never been able to fully penetrate the mystery that was Night Sun—but she loved him with all her heart and soul. She was his. Would always be his. And he could love her in any way he wanted.

Night Sun’s heated lips eagerly moved down, down until they touched the top edge of the damp golden curls between Martay’s pale thighs. Immediately the blazing heat she’d felt since the first moment his lips had touched hers, became a hurting, painful need.

“Night Sun,” she murmured.

Night Sun never lifted his head. On fire himself, hating her, loving her, wanting her with a dangerous, animalistic passion unlike any he’d ever known, he pressed his cheek to the soft gold curls even as his firm hands urged her legs to open for him. With sure, warm fingers he stroked the soft insides of her thighs until they parted to allow him total access. Then swiftly, deftly, as he did all things, he moved between her parted thighs without ever having taken his fingers from their silky insides, his lips from her trembling belly.

His hands went beneath her, his long, spread fingers clasped her rounded buttocks, and he gave her no opportunity to evade him. As though he truly were an uncivilized savage, she his white captive, meant only for his heathen pleasures, he said, his voice heavy with unchecked desire, “You are mine, Martay. You cannot escape me. No one will taste the delights of your body but me. It all belongs to me.”

“Yes,” she whispered, “it’s yours. Take me, darling.”

He looked up at her then, and try as she might, she could not read those Indian eyes. Holding her gaze, his dark face slowly, purposefully lowered into the golden curls, and when she felt his hot breath on her, Martay gasped. She gasped again when he kissed her. Kissed her just as though he was kissing her mouth, his lips and teeth touching her, caressing her. And when his beautiful eyes fluttered closed, the dark, girlish lashes shadowing his high cheekbones, he opened his mouth wider and she felt his tongue boldly stroke her, Martay winced and shuddered with shocked delight.

Hearing her sharp intake of air and feeling her quiver against him, Night Sun buried his face deeply in her. He loved her with all the fire and fury she inspired in him. His tongue quickly found and probed and stroked and circled the tiny nub of pleasure that was his intimate ally. Knowing he would set her afire, would shock and frighten her, he reveled in the knowledge. He would excite this naked temptress until she begged him for blessed deliverance. He would push her to the very limits of all-consuming human desire. He would show her that he held the very key to her ecstasy.

Martay was frightened.

Frightened by the height of her wild joy. Frightened by the depth of the love she felt for this dark man responsible for her rapture. Frightened that he would take his dazzling mouth from her and leave her burning with desire. It seemed there was nothing about her he did not know. It was as though every square inch of her body had been fashioned solely for him to explore, to awaken, to make his own.

She was his, all his. Nothing could ever change that.

The heat enveloping her escalated as he kissed and caressed her, his skillful loving pushing her toward a release so total, she fought against it. Her nervous fingers twining in his raven-black hair, she moaned softly and murmured, “No. Please, no.”

Night Sun’s hands tightened under her, his long fingers cutting into the tender flesh of her buttocks. His hot, open mouth sank deeper. His tongue stroked harder. He loved and licked and lashed her until soon it began; a mixture of agony and ecstasy so intense, Martay’s slender shoulders rolled up from the blanket and she panted and pleaded and thought she could stand the fiery throbbing not one second longer. Wildly she clutched at Night Sun’s dark, moving head, forcing his face more deeply into her even as her jerking pelvis surged up to meet his feasting mouth.

It seemed to last an eternity. That forceful, spiraling, scary hurting that only his hot, marvelous mouth could heal. Frantically she called out his name as her wrenching, frightening release buffeted her as though she were a leaf tossed about by the rain-driven winds.

Night Sun stayed with her, giving her all she needed, loving her so hotly, so intimately, he felt his own release dangerously close. When at last the involuntary jerking of her body had stopped and her grasping hands had released their hold on his hair, he brushed one last kiss to the inside of her trembling thigh and lifted his head.

She lay panting softly, her eyes closed, her tongue wetting her dry lips. There were no tears on her cheeks, no murmured scoldings for what he’d done, no attitude of shock.

Night Sun rose to his feet. Martay remained just as she was. She made no move to modestly close her legs. They were just as they had been when he lay between them. Parted, the slick, swollen sweetness between completely exposed to his hot gaze.

Martay’s eyes opened to see Night Sun standing above, stripping himself of his clothes. She sighed with lazy happiness and watched appreciatively as his skin gleamed copper in a bright flash of lightning. Muscles played in his bare back as he peeled the wet buckskins down his long legs.

Naked, he stood there above, a bronzed god, fully aroused, his blatant masculinity a fascinating instrument of bold beauty to the woman who loved him. Awed by the proud, fierce sight of him, Martay trembled involuntarily.

Night Sun saw her tremble. He read quite a different meaning into her reaction to him. Now he had her as he wanted her. Afraid. Afraid he would fall to his knees and force himself on her while she was still shocked and shaken. And that was exactly what he would do.

Martay’s breath quickened when his sleek animal body came down against her own. The smoothness of his chest, the crisp hair of his groin, the throbbing male power against her belly made her shiver with rising excitement. His mouth came down on hers. She tasted herself on his lips and, appalled, desperately tried to pull free. Night Sun refused to let her go. His tongue skimmed along her teeth, then penetrated deeply and he ground his open mouth to hers, holding her head immobile with the force of his kiss while she pushed futilely on his pressing chest.

His hand captured hers and drew it down to his aching arousal. He made her wrap trembling fingers around him, his own lean fingers guiding hers, showing her how. Their lips parted. He lifted his head and looked into her eyes, expecting to see distaste. He dropped his hand from hers, certain she’d jerk her hand away immediately.

Again she surprised him.

Her eyes filled with limpid desire, she gazed down on the rigid male flesh she continued to caress and she asked, quite seriously, “Does it feel best when I do it slowly, like this?” She unhurriedly let her curling, caressing fingers slide the impressive length of him. “Or a bit faster, like this?” Her small, clinging hand moved up and down three times in quick succession before Night Sun, in agony, jerked it away, his expression one of confused anger.

Gripping her wrist, Night Sun pinned her arm to the blanket beside her shoulder and moved over her. Poised just above, he lowered his head and caressed her breast. His mouth quickly found a ripe nipple and his lips and tongue sucked it into a hard, darkened point of sensation while his hand swept down over her belly. Fingers slipping between her legs, he touched her, seeking entrance, and was amazed to find her already wet and ready for him.

His lips deserted her breast. He moved into position. Looking straight into her eyes, he gripped himself, placed the swollen head into her, and letting his hands move down under her hips to lift her to him, he slid deeply into her. She offered no resistance. No look of pain or discomfort crossed her face.

Their eyes locked. Both sighed with the pleasure of it and at once began to move together. In seconds their mating was as violent and as savage as the thunderstorms still raging beyond their bed of love. Panting and perspiring, Martay bucked against him, her pelvis tilting up to receive his driving, filling thrusts. Night Sun, his slim hips moving rhythmically fast, threw everything he had into her, each deep, quick stroke bringing them both closer to the edge.

When the total release came, both called out in their ecstasy, the sounds of their cries swept away on the galelike winds. Night Sun collapsed atop Martay, and when finally she began to squirm, he refused to let her go. Balancing his weight on his arms, he remained as he was, still buried in her, waiting. Waiting until her warmth could make him hard and ready again.

It didn’t take that long.

Night Sun smiled when he saw, at last, a perplexed look come over her lovely face. Finally he had shocked her. That aroused him totally. He grew very hard and heavy inside her. At once he began the thrusting motions of lovemaking with no preliminary kisses or caresses. That’s the way he wanted it. That’s the way it would be. He would take his pleasure. She would endure. He would show her, once and for all, that she meant nothing to him.

Nothing.

But the warm, pliant body gripping his and the trusting emerald eyes looking at him so lovingly and the soft, feminine voice calling his name quickly changed all that. In seconds Martay was moving perfectly with him and Night Sun was murmuring her name and bending to press kisses to her parted lips and painfully holding back so that he could take her along with him on that magical journey to bliss.

35

T
he rains had stopped. Twilight was falling over the canyon. A peaceful quiet had replaced the thunderous roar of the afternoon’s fierce rain and hailstorm. The lonely call of a distant whippoorwill was the only sound in the hushed evening silence. That and the occasional whicker of a restless black stallion.

Two tranquil lovers, their tumultuous passions quieted as the storm’s, lay lazy and serene in their cozy high plains hideaway. Night Sun, flat on his back, was wide-awake. Martay, curled to him, her head pillowed by his supportive shoulder, knee on his stomach, dozed in contented exhaustion.

As he lay there with her soft, warm body pressed to his, Night Sun’s thoughts grew increasingly troubled. Once again Martay had not behaved as he expected, as he intended, as he wished. Instead of a repentant, frightened, subdued female, he had had in his arms, through the glorious rain-drenched afternoon, a fire-blooded eager, adventurous lover whose wild, unchecked passion matched his own.

The vivid recollection of the long afternoon’s loving, of all he had done to her, and all she had done to him, caused the confused Lakota chieftain to tremble suddenly. He trembled with fear. Night Sun was afraid. Afraid of the beautiful creature sleeping in his arms. Frightened deeply by the turbulent emotions the silky-skinned white girl so effortlessly stirred in him. Unused to fear, resenting its unsettling intrusion, Night Sun was angered by its unwelcome presence in his life.