Savage Spirit (12 page)

"The Apache are slow to quarrel within the tribe, so why do you?" Cloud Eagle asked heatedly. "What sets you apart from the others and makes your tongue become loose with your chief?"

With a sneering smile, Ten Bears conveyed his answer. "My sister," he stated. "I demand that you do not replace my sister in your lodge with a red-headed white woman!"

"Who are you to make demands of your chief?" Cloud Eagle fired back. "You speak out of turn and disrespectfully to your chief one time too often. Because of this, I have no choice but to challenge you to a fight. The fight will be witnessed by all of our people. If you are the victor, I shall give up my title of chief and hand it over to you. If you are the loser, you shall be banished from our stronghold forever."

Cloud Eagle paused, then said something more which caused Ten Bears to teeter with the shock of it. "When you leave, you must take your sister with you," Cloud Eagle said, his voice void of emotion. "She is an embarrassment to me. She is of no use to me anymore. She is childless. To have a wife who is childless for as long as your sister has been unable to bear me a child takes away my virility in the eyes of my people."

Ten Bears stared blankly at Cloud Eagle, then turned and ran away from him.

Cloud Eagle followed behind him slowly, his thoughts troubled. He understood how it must look to his people to have taken a white woman into his lodge.   Yet before her arrival, his people had witnessed him sleeping outside his lodge for many sunrises and had to understand that for some time now the marriage was all but over between their chief and his barren wives. Alicia had nothing to do with it. It had been only a matter of time before he would have rid himself of those wives to take another.

He must have a child.

If not, his world would not be complete.

His jaw went slack and his eyes grew heavy with further thoughts about his virility. If a third wife bore him no child, he would then know, as would his people, that he was the cause, not the women he had taken to bed with him.

The thought of such a discovery caused an acute emptiness to overwhelm him.  

Alicia was glad to return to the safe haven of Cloud Eagle's lodge. While she was safe inside it, she doubted there would be any repercussions over what had transpired with Spring Dawn and Lost Wind.

She even doubted the two women would enter the tepee alone with her. Though she hated doing it, she seemed to have struck fear into the hearts of Spring Dawn and Lost Wind.

It was never her intention to interrupt a family's harmony. And she knew that she hadn't. Nothing was at all normal between Cloud Eagle and his wives.

Leaning closer to the fire in the firepit, Alicia rubbed her wet hair briskly with her fingers in an effort to dry it. If nothing else had gone off as it should since Cloud Eagle's departure to look for Snow, at least her bath in the river had felt wonderfully invigorating.   She laughed and glanced over at Gray. He had even leapt into the water with her and had swum masterfully at her side. She watched him lick one paw and then another, his way of drying himself.

Moment by moment she found herself becoming more attached to Gray. Snow had always kept distant from her, but she no less wanted to see Snow returned to the safety of Cloud Eagle's protection.

"Don't fret, Gray," she said, reaching out to stroke his damp fur. "Snow will return to you. I'm not sure just when, but I'm certain she will return to you and Cloud Eagle."

As though Gray understood her, he whimpered and nudged his nose into the palm of her hand. "You are so gentle," Alicia murmured. "But of course you would be. The one who taught you how to trust men is gentle."

She looked with longing toward the entrance flap, then through the smoke hole overhead.

The sky was darkening. Cloud Eagle had been gone for far too long.

She watched the fire-thrown shadows dance across the walls of the lodge. Then she stared into the flames.

She found herself missing Cloud Eagle more than she would ever have thought possible. Because of him, her life had suddenly turned around into something sweet.

And she doubted that she would ever wear man's clothes again. How could she? She felt feminine through and through.

Because of Cloud Eagle, she felt like a woman.

Her head jerked around when Cloud Eagle entered the tepee. At first glance, she could tell   that something was terribly wrong with him. She had never seen him frown so hard. She had never seen him in such an ugly mood.

She said nothing as he slammed his bow and quiver of arrows down at the back of the tepee with the rest of his weapons. She feared hearing the answer if she asked if he had found Snow. His frown had to mean that the news would not be good.

Cold and withdrawn, Cloud Eagle moved to his haunches on the far side of the fire, far from Alicia. He said nothing, just stared at the dancing flames.

Even when Gray went to him and nudged his side with his nose, Cloud Eagle was not responsive.

Alicia moved shakily to her feet. She flinched when pressing her full weight on her leg caused it to pulse even more painfully as a result of the pounding that Lost Wind had given it.

Limping, she went to Cloud Eagle. Easing down beside him, opposite where Gray had stretched out, Alicia placed a gentle hand on Cloud Eagle's arm.

"Surely the news you've brought back about Snow isn't good," she murmured. "I'm sorry, Cloud Eagle. I know what she meant to you."

Cloud Eagle mumbled something beneath his breath, then turned his midnight-dark eyes to Alicia. "My search was in vain," he said sadly. "Snow has eluded me again. I am certain now that she has gone away to mate with one of her kind."

Alicia forked an eyebrow. "But, Cloud Eagle, I thought perhaps your ugly mood was because you had found Snow and that she was . . . was . . ."   "My mood has nothing to do with Snow," Cloud Eagle said, anger flaming in his eyes again at the thought that Ten Bears had given him no choice but to challenge him in a fight. "It is something else."

Again he turned his eyes to the fire, his jaws and lips tight.

"Cloud Eagle, don't go silent on me again," Alicia murmured, placing a gentle hand to his sleek copper cheek. "Tell me what has upset you. Sometimes it helps to talk about it."

"Ten Bears," Cloud Eagle ground out between clenched teeth. "He is the cause."

"Ten Bears?" Alicia said, puzzled. "Who is Ten Bears? What did he do?"

"Ten Bears is Lost Wind's brother," Cloud Eagle said, looking slowly over at Alicia, his eyes locking with hers. "His disrespect for me as chief caused me to challenge him to a fight. It is not a good thing to fight one's own warrior."

He paused and ran his fingers through his long black hair. "It must be done or others might feel free to show disrespect also," he mumbled.

Alicia grew cold inside. "In truth, the fight is over me, isn't it?" she dared to say, not wanting it to be true. "He came to you over my presence here, didn't he?"

"Had I not brought you to my lodge, Ten Bears would have found other reasons to face his chief with insults," Cloud Eagle said solemnly. "Ten Bears is a troubled man who seeks trouble from others so that they can join his misery."

"Cloud Eagle, no matter what you say, I feel responsible for what has transpired between you and Ten Bears," she said softly. "Even between Spring Dawn and Lost Wind." She lowered her   head and swallowed hard. ''I will leave. All trouble will leave with me. Things can return to the way they were. Your two wives can surely make you happy again."

"Have I not told you that in my eyes and deep inside my heart, they are no longer my wives?" Cloud Eagle said, turning to Alicia. He took her wrists and slowly lowered her to the pelts that were spread on the floor. He leaned over her, his breath warm on her lips. "They have not made this chief happy for many moons now. This man who no longer felt as though he was a husband has slept outside at night while Spring Dawn and Lost Wind slept inside. Do you not see? I was going to send them away anyhow. They are both barren. Unable to bear children. I want, I hunger for, children."

"That is the reason they have lost favor in your eyes?" Alicia said softly. "Because they cannot give you children?"

"That and other reasons," Cloud Eagle said. "Lost Wind has a loose, spiteful tongue. Spring Dawn is learning this from Lost Wind. They do not fit into this chief's life any longer."

"I see," Alicia said, paling when she recalled her own spiteful tongue those first days with Cloud Eagle. He seemed to have overlooked it. Or possibly he had known that it had all been pretense on her part.

"But still," she quickly added. "I feel as though I have interfered."

Her heart pounded as he gripped her shoulders and his mouth brushed her cheeks and ears. She shivered with ecstasy when he tenderly kissed her eyelids.

"It would be best that I were not here at all,"   she managed to get out between gasps of building passion when his hand left her shoulder and slid beneath the skirt of her dress.

"Do you truly wish to leave?" Cloud Eagle said, gazing at her with passion-heavy eyes. He placed his hand over the frond of hair at the juncture of her thighs and began stroking her.

Alicia tried to control her ragged breathing. She clung around his neck. "Never," she moaned, his burning lips brushing hers with feathery kisses. "Oh, Lord, Cloud Eagle. I love you. I never want to leave you."

He pressed his lips into hers.

Alicia's gasping breath was like sudden lightning flashes in the dark. Frenzied with desire, she opened her legs to his caresses.

When he drew away from her, she reached out for him.

But when she saw why he had stopped his lovemaking, she smiled and joined him as she removed her clothes as he tossed his own away.

When she was fully disrobed, his eyes widened. Tenderly he touched the bruises she had gotten during her fight with Spring Dawn and Lost Wind. She looked down at them and shuddered. The bruises were dark purple already, turning into yellowish-gray.

Then Cloud Eagle reached for her leg and lifted it closer to get a better look. The wound was red and raw-looking there and contusions surrounded it.

He gazed up at Alicia and questioned her with his eyes.

"This happened while you were gone," she confessed.

"Ten Bears said that you attacked his sister and   Spring Dawn," he said. "I knew that could not be so. They ambushed you, did they not?"

"Yes," Alicia said, trembling when he leaned a kiss to the throbbing wound on her leg. "I was going to the river to wash the breakfast dishes. Suddenly they were there."

She paused as he lowered her to the pallet of furs, then straddled her. His hands were moving over her in a soft caress as she continued talking, yet finding it hard to speak as her mind was slowly clouded with a dizzying rapture.

"I didn't want to fight them," she said, sighing deeply when his hands moved over her breasts and he began kneading them. "They gave me no choice. After they spat on my face . . ."

A quick anger entered Cloud Eagle's eyes. He reached his hands to her face and framed it. "They spat on you?" he said, his voice filled with emotion.

"They hate me so, Cloud Eagle," Alicia said, her voice breaking. "They hold me responsible for all their disappointments, I am sure."

"Only because they do not want to accept their own shortcomings," Cloud Eagle said. Once again he softly kneaded her breasts, his thumbs grazing the nipples. "It is easy to cast blame elsewhere."

Guilt surged through him at the thought of casting blame. Was he not, in fact, also responsible for such blame-casting? If he ever discovered that he had wrongly criticized his wives for being childless when it was himself who was at fault, he would hang his head in shame.

"I'm sorry if my presence caused your decision to send them away from your lodge to come perhaps sooner than it would had I not been around to complicate things," Alicia murmured,   moaning when his mouth moved over one of her nipples.

"Do you forget that I brought you here?" Cloud Eagle said, casting the thoughts of his possible shortcomings from his mind. "That you did not come here of your own free will?"

Knowing that what he said was true, Alicia said nothing more. And it was hard to think rationally while he was teasing her breast with one hand, and stroking her pulsing cleft with the other. She whimpered tiny cries as pleasure began to rise like hot flashes within her.

But somewhere, where she was lucid and still had some control of her consciousness, she felt sorry for the women who had lost the love of this wonderful man.

But she understood Cloud Eagle's reasoning.

He was a virile man. He needed a woman to match his virility.

He was a gentle, caring man. He needed a woman who appreciated this side of his nature.

Hopefully she could fill both needs.

She wished never to be banished from him. She would be happy to spend an eternity with him in his stronghold.

She had adapted to life without a mother and father in the wilds of the Arizona Territory. She would adapt as well to the ways of the Apache!

His mouth sought hers, and his burning hot lips closed over hers in a quavering kiss. She was aware of him nudging her legs apart, then knew why.

She shuddered with desire when she felt the strength of his manhood enter her, filling her so magnificently. She lifted her legs around his hips,   forgetting the pain in her wound, the bliss taking over when the pain began.

As he moved rhythmically within her, she felt the curling heat of pleasure spreading within her.

His hands cupped her swelling breasts. His mouth moved from one breast to the other, his tongue lapping, his teeth nipping, leaving Alicia breathless and shaking.

Cloud Eagle felt a tremor from deep within, the silver flames of desire leaping through him like flashes of lightning.

He emitted a husky groan as Alicia's hips strained even more tightly against his, drawing him more deeply within her, the walls of her womanhood tight against his throbbing hardness.

He thrust within her with maddening force, his perspiration-dampened hair thrashing and flailing like a whip around his shoulders.