After the Thunder (20 page)

Then he reached for her, took her by the arms, rubbed them up and down to warm her, but that was only to prolong the delicious anticipation, and she knew it.

“You’re shivering,” he said, and that was true, too, but she hadn’t realized it until then.

He drew her closer.

Her gaze clung to his.

“It … it turns cold fast when the sun goes down.”

“Let me warm you, Cotannah.”

His eyes, heavy-lidded and hot, set a fire at the very core of her, before his mouth, his incredible mouth, met hers and melted her bones. He kissed her, and she clung to him and kissed him back and lost all connection with everything else on earth.

He smelled of horse and dust and the wool of his coat and of his own special scent that never failed to go to her head. He tasted of his own self, too, purely sweet and darkly mysterious.

He took all her breath and all her strength and at the same time he made her very heart sing and fly. He found her tongue with his, twined them together, and her whole body melded with his.

This. This was all she wanted, ever, ever, and she was never going to let him go.

But at last he savored her lips one last time and then drew back and held her away.

“I can’t kiss you now without doing more,” he said. “Go. Go on in and start the fire. I’ll see to the horses.”

Every instinct in her screamed for her to stay. Her bruised lips opened to argue, her hands moved to reach for him again.

But he was right. It was too dangerous, for her very soul wanted to be with him, and he might soon be gone.

She turned and ran toward the house, wanting to stay but afraid of what would happen if she did. The tips of her fingers and her breasts and her thighs and her belly tingled. She could still feel him against her; her lips held the taste of his and so did her tongue. She was trembling all over, and she barely could breathe.

The cold night closed around her before she reached the porch, and she pounded up the steps and across it by pure instinct, opening the door and moving across the room to light the lamp. Robert was gone and they would be alone and what would they do?

Nothing. They mustn’t. Walks-With-Spirits had been right to send her away from him.

Her hands were shaking but she found the matches and lifted the glass chimney to light the lamp. The old, familiar room sprang to life all around her.

Then she moved toward the hearth, where the banked fire glowed. No. Walks-With-Spirits hadn’t been right to send her away because it felt too right to be with him, too destined for them to lie together, skin against skin.

But she’d better be careful with that destiny. She had never before made love with a man whom she loved. So how would she survive when he was gone?

Shoving the thought away, she knelt and grabbed the
poker, began to stir up the fire. Adding more kindling, watching the flames come to life as tiny tongues of yellow and red, she tried not to think of him at all.

Because then she’d have to think of him being shot one moon from now. She put two new sticks of wood on the fire and stared into it harder. Old Grandmother Stonecipher who lived over by Piney Branch could read the past and the future in the fire, it was said.

“Will I be able to save him?” she whispered to the blaze she was creating. “Will I get to keep him with me for the rest of my life?”

Try as she would, though, she could see no answer in the shimmering sparks or the flames. Cool night air rushed in and fanned them higher, but still she saw no shapes, nothing.

“Cotannah.”

He stood in the doorway, his arms full of wood, the saddlebags swinging from his shoulder.

She went to him, slid the strap from his shoulder to hers.

“Come in. Welcome to my old home.”

He smiled and took in the whole room with his eyes, drew in a deep breath of the smell of the house. The wind rose in the eaves and made small creaking sounds in the walls.

“I can feel you here,” he said.

She laughed.

“That’s because I am here.”

“No, I mean I feel you in the past. The little girl and then the big girl Cotannah, helping Aunt Ancie with the cooking and Uncle Jumper with the garden.”

“And pestering Cade to take me riding with him,” she said, her voice giving way a little when she thought about those days. “Whenever he was home.”

A profound sorrow swept through her as she turned
and started toward the kitchen with the bag of food, dropping the other one into a straight chair sitting by the window as she passed by. Walks-With-Spirits carried the firewood to the hearth.

“Was he gone a great deal?”

She stopped in the kitchen doorway and looked at him.

“Yes. Aunt Ancie always said that his Wandering Year lasted for ten years.”

“Did you have friends close by?”

“No,” she said, and went on into the kitchen to see what food Robert had left.

She found blackberry jam and tomato preserves, both of which must have been made by Aunt Sally, Robert’s mother, and some baked sweet potatoes and parched corn. Standing there, looking at the food, she tried not to remember the bountiful table Aunt Ancie had set and tried to forget how lonely she had been during all those years that she’d lived here.

Now, even if they didn’t make love, she would be lonely beyond belief if she was separated from Walks-With-Spirits.

“Cotannah.”

She turned to see that he had come into the kitchen without her hearing him.

“I know how you must feel,” he said. “I would be sad right now if I went back to my old home.”

Tears filled her eyes.

“Did you have friends close by?”

“No. There were plenty of children in the town, and I played with them sometimes, but I was always separate, too. No one else was being raised by a medicine man and a missionary woman; no one else was being taught how to heal and how to say incantations. No one else was an orphan from nowhere.”

She clutched the soft leather food bag with both hands.

“But now you and I are friends,” she said, “and that means the world to me. Not even Emily can see my true feelings the way you do.”

Her swollen lips felt awkward from the effort she was making to hold back the tears, but she managed to smile. He looked so sympathetic, so worried about her. He looked so dear.

“We are truly friends, aren’t we, Walks-With-Spirits? But I don’t know how. I never thought a man and a woman could be friends, did you?”

He returned her smile with one of his solemn looks.

“I never thought about it,” he said.

“Did you ever tell another woman she was your friend?”

The corners of his mouth turned up in amusement.

“No.”

“Have you ever told another woman that she was different from all the others?”

He shook his head.

“No.”

She gave him a mischievous grin that made her throat relax and her tears recede.

“Have you ever told another woman that she was degrading herself?”

His trace of a smile vanished, and he shook his head again.

“I wouldn’t have said that to you if it hadn’t been such a blow to look up and see you, not on the arm of one man, but of two,” he said, his voice hardening as he spoke. “And neither of them Jacob Charley, with whom you had already made a foolish scene in front of my very eyes.”

He pivoted on his heel and went back into the main room.

She stood frozen for a moment, listening to the echo of his voice in her head. Why, he was jealous! And he was admitting as much! Could that be true? Walks-With-Spirits, who lived in harmony with all the earth,
Jealous?

The thought boggled her mind but as she looked at it over and over, she knew that she was right. Still staring at the place where he had been standing, she picked up a jar of jam, turned it over in her hands, and set it down again on the tablecloth with a soft thump.

“Walks-With-Spirits,” she called, as she ran to find him. “Was it really a blow to you to look up and see me with the Bonham cousins?”

“Yes!”

He was kneeling in front of the fire, his eyes blazing as he turned to look at her. He gave the logs a vicious punch that made sparks fly everywhere, up the chimney, inside the big firebox and out onto the plank floor.

“I felt a white-hot rage,” he said, slapping one of them out with his bare hand.

She went to kneel beside him.

“You were jealous.”

“Yes.”

And then, with no warning at all, he reached out, touched her cheek lightly with the rough tips of his fingers. “Come here, Cotannah,” he said, his voice gone hoarse as a stranger’s.

“I am here. I’ll always be here, as long as you need me.”

He took her face in both his big hands and tilted it up for another kiss.

T
he wild scent of his skin—dark, primitive, deep woods and wind—entered her blood on the pungent incense of the burning logs. The flames of the fire, blinding bright and dancing, leapt in his eyes as he bent toward her, and then her sight was gone. Her sight and her breath, both gone.

But she didn’t need them. This, this was what she needed, Walks-With-Spirits’s mouth on hers once more. His mouth knew hers now and his lips and his tongue gave her such pleasure that her heart beat slow and hard to hold time still and savor it. This was more than pleasure, though—he was marking her as his with the fierce grip of his hand cradling the back of her head, with the authority of his tongue as it found hers and claimed it as his own. She drank that possessive kiss like a parched hummingbird would drink nectar.

Pleasure and wanting, startlement and knowledge all surged through her in one mighty wave after another. No one, no one had ever affected her like this before, this honest stealing of her very soul from her body. No other man had this power.

And then her mind, too, was gone, into his keeping.
She couldn’t think anymore but she didn’t want to, this was all she wanted, this kissing with him that pulled her to him, that melted her to him, body, soul, and spirit. Slowly, slowly, he drew back just a little and traced her lips with the tip of his tongue. Desire burst inside her like a flower coming open, and she let him dip in and taste her, drew him nearer again with quick, tantalizing touches of her tongue. His mouth was made to meld with hers, this was why they’d both been born.

He made a rough, ragged sound, deep in his throat, and turned his whole body to hers, cradled her head in both his callused hands, now, to keep her mouth beneath his. Her arms felt heavy, so heavy she couldn’t hope to lift them yet she couldn’t hope not to, for she had to touch him, had to hold him somehow captive as he was holding her.

She managed to wrap them around his neck at last, but it made him deepen the kiss so, made him moan in his throat and caress her so tenderly with his tongue and his hands in her hair that she could only cling to him and let him melt her very bones. She had no choice, she could only let him kiss her on and on, let him keep her in this heavy haze of pleasure that had no ending. This kissing with him was all she wanted, forever.

Forever.

Her eyes opened wide. She pulled back from him. Slowly, reluctantly, he let her, opening his eyes then to search her face. She could only look at him, she could not speak.

Never, ever had she felt this … this pull before. This kiss ran far deeper than any other from any other man, all the way deep into her spirit.

Fear blew through her like snow in a blizzard.

Why did it have to be, this truth that she’d known ever since that very first kiss at his cave? Why did her
life have to turn out so that he was the one man she truly ever loved?

Oh, dear God, he was sentenced to die a few days from now!

She closed her eyes against the beautiful sight of him and reached weakly for the rock ledge of the hearth to help her get up and away from him. Wouldn’t that just be the way things always were for her? Wouldn’t that just be another of the bitter ironies that had speckled her life if Walks-With-Spirits, her one true love, was held guilty of Jacob’s murder to the very end and she had to give him up to the Lighthorse with their rifles?

Cotannah walked away from him after the earth-shattering kiss they shared. Walks-With-Spirits heard her in the kitchen rattling dishes so hard that he knew her hands were shaking, but he didn’t have to hear that to know she was as shaken by the kiss as he. And he felt as if his bones lay in pieces inside his limbs, pieces so small that they could never come together again.

Except to reach out and pull her to him.

His lips hurt for another kiss, his tongue cried out for another taste of her, his arms ached to hold her. His very blood burned with the sudden, coursing need to know how it would be to lie down with her—here in front of the fire, to press her whole body against his, to strip off their clothes and feel the yielding of flesh against flesh and the shimmering heat of the fire on one side, the cool nipping of the night breeze from the window on the other. Or to carry her outside into the night beneath the waxing moon and make sweet, sweet love with her until the moon went down and the sun came up.

The thought set fire to the inside of his skin, gave his body complete control over his spirit.

He couldn’t let himself think this way, he could not.

If he kissed her again and again, he would hold her and do more and that would only make it harder, much harder for him to meet his fate with a serene mind and spirit. A stab of panic cut through him. Could he regain his harmony? It had been disturbed ever since the first time he had laid eyes on Cotannah, yet whenever they kissed, he had never felt so attuned to his soul, body, and spirit, to the Earth Mother and the Great Spirit.

Yet now, at this moment, he had never felt such a tumult.

Nor had she, judging by the noise she was making.

His kiss had moved her deeply. If he ever hoped to help her prepare to go on with her life without him, he must not so much as touch her again.

She appeared in the doorway with a bucket in her hand.

“I’m going for fresh water,” she said, her eyes wild in the glow from the lamp.

“Let me.”

“No! I have to do something,” she cried.

She ran across to the door and out into the night.

He got up and paced back and forth in front of the fire, his whole body aching for her. But if he ever hoped to dissuade her from this hopeless quest to save him, he must not touch her anymore. He bent his head to his hand in despair. Now he didn’t want the quest to be hopeless, he wanted to stay in this world, to stay with her, and, if that was so, how could he ever pass to the other world with a scrap of true peace left to him?

This was so shallow, so wrong, to be so enamored of the sensations of his mortal body that he let desire steal his peace. He tried to cling to that thought but as he stared into the flames his spirit saw that his feelings for Cotannah were more, far more, than those of his mortal
body. Truly, she fit into his soul although he could not know why or how.

She came back into the cabin like the whirlwind she’d become, filled the coffeepot and hung it over the fire, went back into the kitchen without a word. He followed, and the minute he stepped silently into the room, she knew he was there. She turned to him, conflict raging in her beautiful face.

“Tell them the truth when we get back to Tuskahoma,” she said. “Please, Walks-With-Spirits. Half the Nation or more will believe the words of an
alikchi
. Tell them you didn’t mean the curse, so it didn’t kill Jacob. Tell them because that may be our only chance.”

“Don’t,” he said, gripping the doorframe to keep from going to her and taking her into his arms. “Please, Cotannah, don’t worry like this.”

“I can’t help it. Will you tell them?”

Pure despair sharpened the edges of her voice.

“How can I? What if it’s true? I did say the incantation, after all. You heard me.”

She gripped the edges of the table with both hands. Her soft skin—oh, his fingertips and his lips knew how soft it was!—stretched tighter across her bones, hardened the beauty of her features.

“Did you hear me when I said that you are too good in your spirit to ever kill anyone? I saw you with Sophie and I sensed how much you wanted to stop her pain. I felt your righteous wrath when you saved me from Jacob. You were angry—that’s all the curse was, just angry words coming out of your mouth. That incantation didn’t have your spirit in it, so it had no power.”

She was trembling, and her voice shook, her eyes were wilder still. At this rate she would never stay whole through the hard days to come.

It would be easier for her not to carry so much hope
that might be misplaced. He walked to the table and leaned toward her, held her eyes with his. “I wish I knew that as surely as you do,” he said. “But you didn’t see inside my heart as I said those words over Jacob. At that moment, Cotannah, I wanted him dead.”

He stared deep into her eyes, willing her to listen, to know this.

“I felt so protective of you and so jealous of him—never, ever have I felt so strongly about anything,” he said. “Those feelings I had were strong enough to kill him, no matter what we both would like to believe.”

“Jacob had enemies,” she said stubbornly. “He was not a good person, Shadow, dear. His own actions killed him, not your few words.”

A sharp, new sensation ran through him. A thrill.

“What did you call me?”

“Shadow,” she said, smiling. “You appear and disappear silently, like a shadow.”

He smiled back.

“A nickname.”

Her smiled broadened.

“Yes. A nickname for you, Mr.
Alikchi
, sir.”

He couldn’t stop smiling at her, couldn’t stop hearing the affection in her voice. But he mustn’t forget what he was about, here, mustn’t let her fall in love with him. And he mustn’t fall in love with her.

“Listen, Cotannah, my darling, and listen well,” he said. “No matter what I might say to the judges it would make no difference. That death curse convinced too many people that I am a witch.”

She looked at him with the storm still raging in her eyes, then, gradually, it died down. “I go by my instincts that you once called earthbound,” she said, speaking slowly, as if working out her conclusions in her head as she spoke. “Those instincts tell me that there’s more to
Jacob’s death than meets the eye. They tell me it wasn’t a natural death, because he was young and healthy and very strong. So I’m going to keep on looking to see what I can find out.”

“Usually I’m all in favor of hope,” he said, around the lump that was forming in his throat. “But in this case it’s going to make you hurt so much more, Cotannah. Look at the state you’re already in.”

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “Out of old habits, I’ve let my feelings get out of hand here, but I’m in control again. Really, my darling, I’m calm inside. I really am. Finding out how Jacob died, trying to prove that you didn’t kill him—that gives me a purpose like I’ve never had in my life before.”

He heard it all, but it was the endearment, the sweet quoting of the words that he had said to her that rang in his ears like a bell. Her voice was filled with so many feelings that he knew she not only meant them but that she understood everything he was trying to tell her as well.

She nodded, as if she had read his mind.

“Jacob had enemies,” she said again, but very calmly. “Everyone knows that.”

“So tomorrow you’ll go on to see this Folsom Greentree?”

“Yes. Will you go with me?”

“Yes. I’m going to protect you until the day I die.”

Quick tears sprang to her eyes.

“Please prepare yourself, just in case,” he said softly. “One thing to remember is that I can’t ever be at peace or find my balance again if I sully my honor by swearing that my curse didn’t kill Jacob when I don’t know for sure if that’s true.”

She went pale around her eyes, at the sides of her nostrils.

“That helps me some,” she said, just as softly, “but not as much as clearing your name will do. Even if I, God forbid, should fail to find out what the secret is about Jacob’s death, I have to leave no stone unturned. Cade told me that my thoughtless selfishness would cause a killing someday, and now it has. I have no choice but to do everything in my power to stop it from causing the Lighthorse to kill you.”

He stared at her in the kitchen’s lamplight, willing her to understand. Praying that she would hear him.

“And I have no choice but to uphold my honor. One reason I now see—and it is because of you—is that if I refuse to run away, if I practice the old Choctaw way and return to accept my sentence after being set free for my last days, I will help to strengthen the old traditions against the culture of the white man.”

He paused to let that soak in, telling her with his eyes not to speak.

“When I say this thought came to me because of you, I speak true,” he said, too quickly, because it scared him to think how much she already had come to mean to him. “Most of the time the healing I do and the connections I make affect animals in the woods and the Earth Mother, but not a human person.”

Her lips parted and her eyes grew huge and shiny. For an instant he feared that he had made her cry, but she didn’t. She was listening intently, taking in his words, thinking about them.

“When you met me on the road that morning beside the Tulli Creek and said that you believed your flirting with Jacob had caused my death sentence, I understood, suddenly, how one person’s decisions could be said to cause another to act in a certain way, that people’s lives do tie together when they live in a community.”

He waited, but she only looked at him, her eyes narrowed
thoughtfully. He felt a stab of surprise at her quietness. And hope. He was getting through to her.

“Now, because of you and your honor, which demands that you try to get me out of this death sentence because you think you got me into it,” he said, “I want my actions to affect other people’s lives. I see that I strengthen their honor when I satisfy my own.”

“So,” she said softly, “you will die so that your life will affect other people.”

He nodded.

“Because of you,” he said.

“But don’t you see?” she said, triumphantly. “That proves that you agree with me: it is my actions that have brought you to this terrible pass.”

His heart clutched as an awful sincerity suffused her face.

“That means that now you also must agree that I cannot stop trying to save you.”

She searched his eyes.

“You understand that now, don’t you, Walks-With-Spirits?”

“Yes.”

She smiled, a glittering, unexpected pleasure to see, a new smile like sun coming out on snow. His heart gave a quick, hard stroke and began to beat faster and faster.

“So you’ll start to help me now. You’ll use your powers and help me at Greentree’s place?”