Steal Me Away (7 page)

She knew all too well from tales of other women who had
lived among the Comanche and returned to their families that for her to go back
and live among the Anglos would not be easy. They would conclude that she had
been raped—and was soiled goods. Or that she had accepted the Comanche as her
mate and her equal and for this, her people would also shun her. Although their
actions would be unjust, she understood their views. Better to accept her lot
here with Bull Elk where she could count on his protection of her than to run
from him. Her existence here seemed safe as long as Bull Elk cared for her and
protected her. If that ever changed, she would find a way to escape the tribe.
But she doubted she would return home. She might be an Anglo here, but going
home meant she would live forever as an outcast.

By the forth day of her life among the Indians, Fancy had
physically recovered from her long ride. Her ankle was stronger and she could
stand more steadily. Her ribs were no longer sore from the wild ride away from
Bravado. And as she grew stronger, her curious mind grew bored.

Dressing in her new buckskin dress, Fancy walked out of
their tent that morning and found Willow Talks speaking with Bull Elk by a low
fire.

“Good morning,” she said to them both and peered into a pot
hanging from a spit. “Is this breakfast?”

Willow Talks nodded. “Deer and corn soup.”

Fancy fought mightily to keep a straight face. In truth, the
concoction smelled terrible. “Is it good?”

“We think it is,” her husband told her. “Give her a bowl,
Willow Talks.”

Fancy took the earthenware bowl from her sister-in-law and
did not inhale the aroma as she ate. The meat was tough. The corn savory. The
broth greasy. “Can I help you cook?”

“If you wish,” Bull Elk said, “and if Willow Talks will
permit it.”

“Why? Is it forbidden for a wife to cook?”

Willow Talks shook her head. “No. But it is my duty to you
and my brother. Would you like to help me?”

“I would.”
Please let me, or I may die of starvation.
I can no longer eat this steady diet of roasted deer and buffalo. I hunger
for potatoes and carrots, corn or nuts.
“I am a good cook and did it for my
family often. I would like to gather berries and nuts too. May I?” she asked
her husband. “Please?”

“You need your own food, do you?”

The Comanche were hunters and gatherers and she had grown up
on wheat and rice and beans. Fancy had seen none of that in the past few days
and she had begun to feel ill, eating such a steady ration of meat. “I do.”

“Then I will get these things. You must eat to be healthy
and bear my son.” He grinned at her, hugged her close and brought his sister
into the circle of his embrace.

That day, Fancy and Willow Talks took baskets and searched
the woods for berries. But the live oaks and cedar trees north of Bravado did
not offer enough cover for the blackberry bushes to grow tall or the fruit to
grow ripe. Disappointed, Fancy returned to camp. Instead, she took heart in
showing Willow Talks how to skim fat from her deer stew and mix in wild
rosemary needles to give the broth a less gamey flavor.

The next morning when Bull Elk rose from their cot, she
caught him back with a hand to his nape and a smoldering kiss on his lips. He
had loved her well and often through the night and she had returned the
delicious favor. She would ask for a new one.

“Do we change camp soon?”

“Why do you wish to know?” His hell-dark eyes turned grim
and she knew at once he feared she would use the knowledge to leave him.

Rubbing her nipples against his warm, firm chest she purred
like a happy cat and smiled up at her worried husband. “I know of a grove of
trees where we could gather nuts. I would also love a succulent pink-and-yellow
fruit that the German settlers near Fredericksburg grow. We call them peaches.”

“I know of them,” he said with a sigh of relief. “If you
want them, I will take them for you.”

She winced.

He saw her displeasure and asked her to explain.

“You would take the fruit from their trees. I hoped you
could buy them.” But she knew that was silly because she had not seen anyone
here talk of coins or bills. Money was the Anglos’ invention.

“My moon, it is the only way I know to get this for you.”

“Of course.” She hated that Bull Elk and his braves would
steal from the farmers to satisfy her, but she understood that her husband
would do whatever he could to make her more comfortable.

The next morning before dawn, Fancy stood outside their tent
and waved goodbye to him and his men as they went to find peaches for her. They
returned at dusk, their bags full of ripe ones and green ones. Two of Bull
Elk’s braves looked green themselves. When she saw one of them rush off, a hand
to his mouth, she knew he had eaten the unripe fruit and become ill. That
night, Bull Elk told her that his men tried the fruit themselves and while many
liked the taste, they vowed never to travel so far again for food that made
some of them sick.

Fancy understood their position and regretted she had ever
asked for the peaches. Still, she ate Bull Elk’s remaining portion with gusto.
For him to see her enjoyment of the sweet fruit was enough. And yet, the
incident tore a hole in their euphoria together.

She began to count her days among the tribe by carving
tallies in a tree trunk. The Comanche had no system of a calendar that she
knew. And she had not yet learned enough of their language to understand their
ways.

One morning after she had counted forty-two days, Fancy
grinned. She must find her husband and speak with him.

She tucked the small knife that Bull Elk had given her for
her own use in skinning and dressing fish and deer into the belt around her
buckskin dress. Then she headed through the camp. Squaws sat cooking over their
fires. Unmarried girls talked and played games with dolls made of sticks. Young
men who were not yet braves sat sullen and beady-eyed as they watched her walk
among the tents. Braves were bolder, speaking in gruff tones as she passed. Not
acknowledging their presence, Fancy kept her steps quick and her eyes straight
ahead. At the edge of the camp, she saw Bull Elk and waved to him.

He spoke with one of the elders and Fancy stood apart,
waiting for them to end their discussion.

Bull Elk strode to her, his chest bare and glistening in the
brilliant sunshine. He took her by the shoulders. “You seek me, wife? The day
is young. Are you ready to let me lie between your pretty legs again?”

She jumped up and hugged him fiercely. “I am, my love.” She
stopped, tearing up when she realized the word she had used for him.

He chuckled and pulled her forcefully into his embrace.
Flush to his marvelous body, she wiggled against him. She was rewarded when his
cock thrust up beneath his breechcloth. “If we return to our tent now, everyone
will know I will fuck you.”

She took a quick glance around, then jumped up to curl her
legs around his hips. “Take me to the woods and make love to me.”

Baring his teeth, he growled. “You are hungry, woman.”

“You make me so.” She slipped her hand under the tie of his
breechcloth at the back of his waist. “Take me quickly or I will have you here
and they must not see. Not even White Hawk must witness this time we have each
other.”

His gaze darkened with curiosity and need. Then he turned
for the woods and, marching deep into the foliage with her hooked around him,
he found a long flat rock where he had often before fucked her.

There he stripped her of her dress and she untied his
loincloth. Putting two hands to his cock, she cupped him and stood on her
tiptoes to speak against his lips.

“My husband, I carry your child.”

Lightning struck his chiseled features in a thousand
expressions of joy. He clenched her arms and crushed her to his chest. “You
know this is so?”

She told him of her tree marks and how she had her flux
always on time. “Come inside me again and make me happy.”

He caught her chin. “I will not hurt you.”

She stared at him as he stepped backward from her. “You will
not make love to me?”

“We must wait. We must be certain you will not bleed. I will
not—”

She grabbed a fistful of his hair and hauled him close to
her. “Bull Elk,
Patuwa kum
, of the Antelope, I am your woman. Your wife.
And you will service me. No woman of my family has died of miscarriage or
childbirth. And I want you.” Tears dribbled down her cheeks, and she was
shocked at her own change of moods from joy to desire to anger. “Now.”

A storm of delight broke over Bull Elk, his face a study in
shock, followed quickly by laughter. In one swoop he lifted her up and swung
her around in glee. Then he laid her to the rock. With tender kisses, he made
love to her as if she were made of glass until the end when she pulsed around
his thick cock and groaned how she loved him.

Later, alone in their tipi, she knew she did care for him
with all the felicity she had inside her. She had not lied to him. She valued
him as dearly as anyone she had loved, perhaps more, and from that love came a
new life. She put a hand to her belly and smiled at her future.

As her stomach grew larger with their baby, Fancy’s
pregnancy thrilled her and scared her. She knew much about what her next nine
months would be like with sickness in the morning and back aches. Fancy had
cared for her older brother’s wife when she awaited the birth of her son five
years ago. But Fancy had been so young and she did not remember anything about
the birth itself. That had been so frightening, what with Amy screaming and
crying for hours until Willie was delivered by their mother. Fancy wondered if
Willow Talks knew much about childbirth and she worried that no other woman in
the tribe would want to care for the Anglo intruder when her time came to
deliver her baby.

Certainly, Willow Talks was kind and Fancy’s friend. True,
the young woman was a constant companion to her when Bull Elk was away. But
often now Fancy wished to rejoice and to learn about pregnancy from her own
family and female friends. Once more, Fancy tamped down her wish and, as she
had since the day Bull Elk stole her away from her family, accepted her lot.

Settling into joy at her coming motherhood, Fancy gave into
a daily existence serenely accepting her custom and language barriers and
rejoicing in the growing lust for her husband’s loving. Bull Elk took her many
times a day. In the river. Against a tree. Sitting on a rock, his cock plunging
into her pussy as she straddled his thighs. He took his time, savoring her,
showing her that his desire for her seemed boundless. As was hers for him.

After that first night when he and White Hawk had bound her,
Bull Elk took his rawhide strip and bound her in various positions to his cot.
One night, he tied her ankles. Another it was her wrists. A favorite position
she coveted was for him to bind her at the bend of her knees and tie them to
her wrists. In this way, he drove firmly into her cunt, never releasing her
until she had come numerous times.

She spent much of her days coveting his attention, ravenous
for his touch, his domination. She told herself her need was amplified by her
pregnancy, that her condition made her petulant and needy, wild as a cat in his
arms one minute and yet soft as a kitten the next.

“I live for your touch,” he told her one night after he had
fucked her and he remained rigid inside her cunt. “You have made me your
slave.”

She brushed his hair from his cheekbones. His confession was
one he should not make. He was the chief of the Antelope. Not submissive to
anyone, even the woman he loved. She spoke to save his pride, for now she knew
him and his people well enough to understand that she gave up nothing in the
statement. “No, my love, I am yours. Only yours.”

Their union changed, matured and blossomed in the torrid
Texas summer. He taught her his language. She told him stories about her family
and he did the same. She trusted him to confide in her. She bid him success as
he rode off with his braves and returned with horses or oats or pots and pans.

One particular night after he had gone on a raid to steal
settlers’ cattle, he returned in a rage.

Muttering in his language about his outrage over some incident,
he sat down inside his tipi and fumed for long minutes. She sat on the cot and
took a pine brush that the tribe’s women used to comb their hair and she began
to untangle his. She had learned this soothed him and she wished to ease his
fury.

He caught her wrist. His gaze hard and glistening, he shook
his head at her to ward her off.

She smiled sweetly at him. “No, my husband. I will do this
for you.”

But the instant she sank the brush into his hair, he whirled
on her. He caught her up in his arms and pushed her down on the cot. Never had
he been rough with her.

But at the moment, she sought only to ease his woes and she
let him do as he wished, for she had learned weeks ago she trusted him.

He tore her soft hide gown from her body. As ever, beneath
her Indian garment, she was naked. That morning, as she always did, she bathed
in the river. She was glad she had when he kissed her mouth and her nipples and
drew her pussy lips apart to suck her little button into his mouth. She
writhed, she moaned, loving his adoration. She reached out to bring him closer.

But he was a man possessed. Wild, quick in his actions, he
pulled off his leather boots and with a snap, untied his breechcloth rope. The
rawhide, she knew, was his prized possession and with it, he loved to tie her
down.

Eager to please him and pleasure herself, she scooted into a
comfortable position on the cot and opened her legs. With a growl, he pulled
her up, wound the rawhide around her waist and then flipped her over. There,
with dexterity that must have come from tying other women so intimately, he
cinched the rope around her and up under her pussy. Pushing her to her back, he
yanked at the tie, forming knots, and as he did, he wound the rawhide through
her wet swollen flesh in such a way that her cunt lay wide open for him.