Savage Tempest (27 page)

Joylynn stepped closer to High Hawk, tempted to tell him of her fears, but she knew that it was best not to question his judgment, authority, or his trust, certainly not in front of the many people who had come to watch Andrew's departure.

“Rose, I will see you soon!” Andrew said, pride in his eyes.

As he rode away, Joylynn saw Andrew reach back and pat the Bible in his pocket.

That gesture made her almost certain that she would never see Andrew again, not unless he returned with a whole cavalry of men to do what they had been prevented from doing earlier.

She slid a hand into High Hawk's and clung to it, hoping he could not feel the sweaty coldness of her palm, or divine the deep worry inside her heart.

A growing number of bald eagles, casting massive winged shadows over the icy water of the stream, marked the first days of November. The mammoth birds buzzed the flocks of geese and ducks gliding overhead, on their way south to warmer weather, then circled back.

Having heard the commotion, Joylynn and High Hawk stepped from their tepee just as several eagles settled down onto the limbs of the willow trees. Others stood on the ice, while some were roosting already for the night on outstretched limbs of the fir trees and ponderosa pines in the shadows of the deep, dark canyon beyond.

Just before sunrise they would lift off and wing toward their feeding grounds.

With wing spans as wide as eight feet, the bald eagles were strong and agile fliers.

“The heavier snows will begin any day now,”
High Hawk said as he gazed at the thin layer of snow on the trees and ground that had fallen during the previous night. He slid an arm around Joylynn's waist, drawing her close to his side. “And Andrew has never returned, as he promised. Even now my warriors are searching one last time for him.”

“I doubt they will find him,” Joylynn said softly. “When you handed him that rifle, I saw a look in his eyes. It was the look of someone who has been given a second chance at life.”

“I did not see that look,” High Hawk said thoughtfully. “I truly believed him to be a man eager to do what he could to win the woman he loved. But I was wrong. He has been gone for many sunrises now. It does not take that long to find a horse suitable to be offered as a bride price.”

“He might have loved her, but not enough,” Joylynn said, her voice drawn. “Poor Rose. Her heart is broken.”

“And Two Stars,” High Hawk said, sighing heavily. “He trusted Andrew more than anybody. He fears that our people will see him as a foolish old man who trusted too much, for he showed even more trust than I.”

He lifted the entrance flap and stepped aside so that Joylynn could enter the warmth of their lodge.

“Everyone loves Two Stars so much, and all know of his goodness. No one will hold it against him that he put such trust in someone who spent
many hours with him, speaking of
Tirawahut
,” Joylynn said. “Andrew did truly seem interested.”

“There have been no signs of Andrew anywhere,” High Hawk said, bending to one knee and lifting a log onto their lodge fire.

Then he sat down beside Joylynn and gently placed a blanket around her shoulders. “We will have at least the winter months before he can return with armed soldiers to try to kill off my people,” High Hawk said sadly, his gaze following the flames wrapping themselves around the new log. “That will give us time to prepare for the fight. We will be the victorious ones, not the white eyes. My warriors will be perched in prominent places where they can see everything below. Their vigilant eyes will not miss one movement. Andrew will surely be with the soldiers, leading them to bring death upon the Pawnee. He will be the first to die.”

That thought sent a chill up Joylynn's spine. Although she now believed the young man was a traitor, his death would bring heartache to more than one Pawnee.

Rose and Two Stars.

Unless the long months of winter inactivity led them to think about how Andrew had tricked them with his dishonest ways. Perhaps by spring they both would be bitter enough over the betrayal to see that his death was warranted.

“My husband, I have news today that will help
ease the anger in your heart,” Joylynn said, reaching for one of his hands. She brought it over and laid it on her stomach.

She didn't even have to speak the words. He knew.

“You are with child,” he said, his eyes filled with pride.

“
Ho
, I am with child,” Joylynn replied, smiling into his eyes. “When the flowers are blooming along the mountain passes and by the river where we spent our first night as man and wife, I will bear you a son.”

“It will not disappoint me if the child is, instead, a girl,” High Hawk said, slowly sliding his hand over the doeskin dress, knowing that beneath it, inside his wife's womb, was a child that he would always cherish. “If the child is a girl, I hope she is in your image, for I have never seen anyone as beautiful as you.”

“Even if she is ugly, you would love her,” Joylynn said, giggling. “Because she will be yours and mine, our firstborn.”

High Hawk moved to his knees facing Joylynn.

He slowly removed her dress, revealing her well-rounded breasts and a flat belly that would soon be growing into a round ball.

He ran his hand over her stomach, then leaned an ear low, scarcely breathing as he listened.

“It is too soon to hear anything within,” Joylynn said, laughing softly at how excited he was. “But
one day you will even be able to feel its movements inside me.”

He gently laid her down on the soft blankets and pelts beside the fire, then began kissing her body, starting at the nape of her neck.

Joylynn's heart pounded as the touch of his lips and tongue brought rapture to her. She closed her eyes and enjoyed each kiss.

When he flicked his tongue over one of her nipples, she sighed with pleasure.

And when he slowly kissed his way downward, across the flatness of her belly, her skin tingled with aliveness.

She raised her fingers to his hair and wove them through his long, thick tresses, then gasped with a new sort of pleasure when he flicked his tongue between her legs, where she had only recently discovered there was so much feeling and life.

As he kissed and licked that strange little nub of flesh, feelings that Joylynn had never felt before leapt into her heart.

Although she felt this might be wrong somehow, the pleasure she was feeling caused her to accept what he was doing, not question it.

The more his tongue and lips caressed her there, the deeper the feelings of pleasure went inside her.

Moaning as a blaze of desire fired her insides, she slid her hands away from his hair and slowly tossed her head back and forth.

She was responding to every nuance of this new way of making love. She even spread her legs wider apart so that he could have better access. The sensual throbbing increased.

Suddenly a bolt of heat spread through her and she realized that she had just experienced the same culmination she always felt when he was inside her, loving her in the usual way.

This time, her whole body was rocked with sensation and she knew that he had just taught her a new way of making love, and she had yielded, heart and soul, to it.

Still trembling, still feeling sensations where his tongue and lips had been, Joylynn opened her eyes and gazed questioningly at him.

“What you just did . . .” she began, but did not know what else to say about what had happened.

“Was it beautiful for you?” he asked, searching her eyes.

“So much so, I am still shaken by it,” Joylynn said softly.

He removed his own clothes and stretched out beside her on his back. When he reached for one of her hands, placing it on his erection, Joylynn's breath was stolen away. Although he had made love to her with that part of his body, she had never actually . . . touched it.

Now she was, and she was very aware of the heat of his flesh there, and its tightness.

She started to ask him what he wanted her to do,
but she didn't have to. He had wrapped his hand around hers and was showing her how to move her hand on him.

She saw his eyes take on a strange sort of deep darkness as she continued to move her hand on him. His own hand now fell aside to give her full access to his heat.

She could hear his breathing becoming faster, and he closed his eyes in ecstasy.

“You are making love to me now as I just made love to you,” he said huskily. Then he stiffened his legs as he felt the pleasure building within him, a pleasure that she was creating by the skill of her hands, even though she was new at this.

“Am I doing everything right?” Joylynn whispered, not stopping her strokes.

When he opened his eyes, and she saw how drugged they seemed to be, when he smiled and nodded, she knew that he was feeling the same pleasure he had given her.

He closed his eyes again, but this time thrusting his hips. His moans and groans told Joylynn just how much pleasure she was giving him.

She gasped when she saw his body quiver and quake, and something smooth and milky white came from his manhood, spilling endlessly, it seemed, into the palm of her hand.

And then his body subsided into a strange stillness, and Joylynn watched what had been such a large size slowly shrink in her hands.

Hearing her silence, and knowing that she would be filled with questions, he opened his eyes and reached for his manhood, sliding it away from her hand.

Before saying anything, he reached for a soft doeskin cloth and wiped her hand free of his sperm, then tossed it aside, sat up and drew her into his embrace.

“We will make love again in this way, but the most pleasure comes from our bodies being joined,” he said softly. But before he could say or do anything else, a voice spoke from beyond the closed entrance flap. It was Three Bears requesting admittance.

“Three Bears and the others have returned from their last search for Andrew,” High Hawk said.

He quickly dressed, as did Joylynn. Then they went to the entrance flap.

Outside, Three Bears's face told it all. There was no smile, only annoyance.

“Again we found no sign of Andrew,” Three Bears said tightly. “He is probably even now sitting among people of his own kind, warm, comfortably full with white man's food, and already planning to come with the soldiers up to our new home in the mountain.”

“I now believe that is so, too,” High Hawk said glumly. “But I had to make this one last search for him. Since you saw no signs of my steed, nor the rifle I lent the young brave, which you would have
found if he had been killed by a cougar or bear, I now believe that he has returned to his own world. I only hope that he is not laughing about the foolishness of this Pawnee chief.”

“Please don't think that,” Joylynn said, gently taking one of his hands in hers. “You encouraged him to go and hunt for a horse out of the goodness of your heart. No one with such a good heart should be faulted for it.”

High Hawk smiled softly at her, always amazed at her ability to take away the feelings that he knew were harmful to him.

Three Bears gazed skyward, and then looked again into his chief's eyes. “We came home when we saw the thickening clouds,” he said. “I sense they will bring much snow.”

“
Ho
, much snow,” High Hawk said, nodding. He clasped his hand on his warrior's broad shoulder, where a thick bear robe lay. “Thank you for searching this one last time. Go and thank the other warriors for me. Also tell them there will be no more searches for the young man who broke the heart of one of our maidens and the trust of their chief.”

Joylynn looked past Three Bears and saw Rose standing just outside her lodge, tears streaming from her eyes. Rose, too, knew that this was the last time anyone would search for the young man who had betrayed not only her chief and blessed shaman, but also . . . her love.

Joylynn wanted to go and embrace her and say
things that might make what Andrew had done to her more bearable, but she knew that Rose had a mother who would do this for her. Even now the older woman stepped from the lodge and embraced Rose.

Three Bears nodded, then turned and went back to the others in the search party. High Hawk and Joylynn watched him spread the word of their chief's wishes; then the two of them went back inside their lodge.

Silently Joylynn sat down beside the fire and began cutting up vegetables that she had taken from the cache pit she shared with Blanket Woman. She now knew the art of preparing all the foods that her husband enjoyed eating. She was also cooking for Blanket Woman today, who was not feeling well.

Although there had been many strained moments between them in the past, Joylynn hoped that Blanket Woman did not have an ailment that would take her from this world.

“I will go and check on
Ina
,” High Hawk said, throwing a heavy blanket around his shoulders.

“Tell her that I am preparing food she will enjoy, for it is food she taught me how to cook,” Joylynn said, smiling at High Hawk as he stopped and looked back at her.

She felt so blessed that he had grown to trust her before he allowed himself to love her.

There was complete trust between the two of
them, and she could hardly wait to hold their baby in her arms, then offer it to him.

Ah, what a wonderful moment that would be!

As he walked from the tepee, she tried not to think of anything negative at this moment. They had just shared such wonderful lovemaking and had talked of their child so happily.

That darn Andrew! He might spoil everything!

And then there was always the haunting fear that Mole might somehow discover where she and the Pawnee were. If so, she knew to expect the worst.

“Andrew or Mole,” she whispered.

If either of them showed up on this mountain with the cavalry, everything could change in a heartbeat.