After the Thunder (26 page)

He felt it, too.

“I can’t seem to keep from touching you,” he said, “but I’m going to stop. I promise.”

“Don’t.”

“I must,” he said. He tore his gaze free of hers and looked over the top of her head into the distance. “If we become … lovers, it’ll be even harder to part.”

If we become lovers maybe we won’t have to part!

The thought leapt to her tongue from the depths of the stubborn determination for which she was notorious. She bit it back and turned to stare out across the bright valley while she recognized the secret hidden from herself.

Why, she hadn’t given up, after all! She had told him she believed that all hope was gone and when she said it she’d thought she was telling the truth, but she wasn’t. Her expectation of saving him was so strong it couldn’t be killed, no matter what he said or did.

So she shook back her hair and turned to smile up at him.

“But if we came here to really live these few days, how can we not become lovers?”

Twin flames, brighter even, than the sweet gum trees, leapt to life behind his eyes.

“We can’t.”

He took her by the shoulders with a desperate grip.

“I am not willing to risk your heart that way,” he said, his voice dropping to a menacing growl. “Don’t mention this to me again.”

His eyes were fiercely sharp and they pierced her through.

“You! You can’t risk my heart because it doesn’t belong to you!” she lied.

“Good,” he said briskly, letting her go as he turned away. “You keep it safe, then, and that’ll be one less thing I have to worry about. We came here so you could learn from me,” he said softly, in a voice so quiet that at first she thought she had only imagined that he had spoken. “So look.”

For a moment she couldn’t even see him for the blur of frustration in her eyes, and she simply stood there trying to quiet her pounding heart. Finally she could follow his steady gaze: he was looking across the length of the narrow valley to the woods that closed in on its southern end.

It was quite a long time that she saw only the trees, slender birches with their leaves changing back and forth from yellow to silver in the breeze, with their peeling trunks mottled white and cream and every shade of brown. She glanced at Walks-With-Spirits once, but he was the stern teacher now and only flicked her a quick look and stared at the same spot again.

She did the same, and, although still nothing had moved but the wind and the leaves, this time she saw it. Them. Two deer, their tan coats blending in with the sun-drenched trees, their heads high and alert, their big eyes shining bright, their nostrils flaring wide for the new scents in their valley.

“Yearlings,” he said, using that tone that was less than a whisper again. “Twins. That’s your first lesson—find out if they want to be our friends.”

“But you haven’t taught me how yet!”

“You’ll be ready for teaching when you’ve tried on your own.”

They watched the deer, and the deer watched them.

“We’re downwind,” he said. “Anyway, they may
never have smelled a human being before.”

The deer were pulling at her, even through the turmoil raging in her heart. That first, sudden glimpse of them, frozen against the trees, would never leave her—the wildness in the stillness and the shape of them had vibrated through her whole body.

“Just watch me,” she said, trying to speak in that same soft way he’d used.

Her blood running fast with the excitement of this welcome to the wilderness, she began walking toward them, moving slowly, carefully, hardly moving at all. They stayed in place, their big brown eyes fixed on her.

The trek seemed interminable, but she was covering ground, she could tell by quick glances at the river’s crooked bank from the corner of her eye. The sound of the water had lessened a little, she felt less of the wind because of the curve of the hill.

Her heart lifted, then began to race. She was learning already. The deer hadn’t moved. Before she met Walks-With-Spirits, she would never have thought even to try this.

The yearlings twitched their nostrils, but otherwise they didn’t move. Slowly, slowly, she lifted her hand toward them, to let them catch her scent before her whole body might threaten them with its closeness.

Her feet brushed through the grass but even she could barely hear the sound they made. She glanced toward the river again. Halfway. She was almost halfway across the open space between Walks-With-Spirits on one end of the valley and the deer on the other. She could do this. He was going to be so surprised!

If only she had some grain in her outstretched hand. Or some acorns or pecans. Something for them to eat, something to tempt them to come closer, something to distract them a little bit from her.

Her arm trembled. Her legs shook, too, from moving so slowly after having ridden for so long. They had been almost numb when she got down off Pretty Feather’s back. But none of that was any excuse. She would make friends with these deer, and Walks-With-Spirits would be so glad.

He needed to teach her just as much as she needed to learn. She’d discovered that when he’d agreed that she could come with him, she had felt the need spring to life in him like a fever when she’d told him she wanted to learn what he knew. He needed her in lots of ways.

Tears stung her eyes, she blinked them back. Never, ever, would she forget his voice as he told her that loneliness would kill him now if she hadn’t come here with him.

One of the deer gave a snort of alarm and then they bolted. They were gone. Vanished, before she could even blink

“O-oooh!”

She stared at the trees for a short, useless span of time, then she whirled to look at him, beating both fists against her thighs, shouting in frustration.

“That makes me so mad! I can’t believe they would run off when we were doing so well!”

He was walking toward her, laughing.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me! I almost had them!”

That made him laugh harder.

“I did! You saw it for yourself. If I’d had some food, they’d have stayed right where they were and by now they’d have been eating out of my hand!”

He walked up to her.

“Admit it, Walks-With-Spirits!”

She was fighting tears again, and she didn’t want him to see. What was the matter with her? She never cried easily like this.

“It’s just that I wanted so much to succeed, to show you that I have a little bit of the gift …”

He finally quit laughing when he saw her distress and he put his arm around her shoulders.

“You did great at the beginning. All you did wrong was stop sending messages to their spirits, you stopped sending them your thoughts and listening for theirs.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, you crowded them a bit, too,” he said, and started them walking back toward the horses and their camp site.

“I couldn’t have moved any more slowly.”

“No, but you could’ve stopped. When you got to about here, you could’ve stopped and let them come to you.”

She looked up at him and quit walking as the words rang in her heart with more truth than just that about the deer.

“You have to respect their feelings and let them make some of the judgments. You have to listen to what they’re thinking and give them some chance to move toward you if you want to be friends with them.”

Every bit of that advice was true of Walks-With-Spirits, too, and she knew in that moment that she had to give up the thought of deliberately trying to make them be lovers even if it was for the purpose of trying once more to convince him to run for his life. It would be wrong to set out to seduce him as she’d done to other men.

Yes, it was true that if they forced themselves to stay apart and spent this whole week looking at each other and agonizing to touch, then they wouldn’t really have lived life to its fullest as they’d set out to do. But, no matter if she was willing to risk the even deeper hurt to
her heart at the time of parting, this decision was not for her to make.

If he came to her bed while they were at Blue River, it would have to be because deep in his own heart he felt it was right.

Unloading the horses and setting up camp, making the fire and warming the food Emily had sent, then eating it and cleaning up the dishes kept them occupied until well after dark. Then they spread out their bedrolls and sat on them beside the campfire, drinking coffee and talking quietly about the deer again.

“Remember this about any of the animals we come across,” he told her. “Listen to their spirits and stand still and let them come to you. You’re the one who is new here in the place where they live. Be still and send them thoughts that you’re a friend and let them come to you in their own good time.”

She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them.

“Next time, I will.”

“It may not happen to you the very first time you try it, but eventually you’ll be able to know what their spirits are saying.”

She nodded.

“I’ve learned to do it with you,” she said.

She felt his quick look, but she didn’t turn to him.

“Ever since you caught me at the tall pine,” she said, “I’ve been listening to your spirit. It tells me that I’m the center of your concern, the same as you’ve been telling me with words, yet you also must satisfy your honor and find your peace.”

Then she looked at him. The fire was throwing streaks of light onto his face, but his eyes were in shadow. She
could feel their power, though, just the same as she had on that first night they met.

Suddenly she ached so to touch him that she thought she would die if she didn’t.

“This afternoon when you said you weren’t going to touch me again, I decided to tempt you until you changed your mind.”

He tilted his head, and, in the firelight, she saw his quick, amused glance.

“Am I to take this as a warning?”

“No.
I
changed my mind. I respect your decision, and I don’t want to cause you to do something you’d regret.”

His slight smile changed to a grin.

“You’re very sure of your powers.”

She grinned back at him.

“Yes, I am.”

She leaned back on one arm, angling away from him to show the silhouette of her body against the light of the fire.

“I know that you are flesh and blood, no matter how strong your spirit is,” she said.

“Ah, but I’ve had years and years of practice in putting my spirit in charge,” he said.

However, his eyes caressed the shape of her long legs with the knees languidly bent, anyway—she could tell by the tilt of his head, even if his face was no longer in the light. And she could tell by the heat as it roamed slowly over the curve of her breasts that his glance was lingering there.

It made her hold her breath.

It made her breasts tingle, and her hands itch to touch him.

Slowly, deliberately, she straightened up, crossed her
legs in front of her, and leaned the other way, toward him.

“Ah, but your spirit wants me, too,” she said softly. “Will you admit that’s true?”

He chuckled.

“No?” She leaned closer still, close enough for him to smell the fragrance of the flowery perfume she’d used from the bottle in her saddlebags. “I would hate to have to torture an admission from you,” she whispered. “It’s not nice to lie.”

His laugh was throaty and low.

“You are torturing me right now. Is that admission enough for you?”

“Well, I’d say it’s a start,” she drawled.

His eyes were hot and bright in the dusk of his face. They caressed her mouth. However, his big, hard-muscled body stayed still.

For a long, long moment, their eyes held in a look that stopped her heart.

“This is how it is with me, Cotannah,” he said, at last. “I gave in to my flesh and my spirit lost control and that’s when I put the curse on Jacob. If I give in to my flesh again, and make love to you, it’ll be like putting a curse on you that makes it harder for you to bear our parting.”

Consternation started her blood flowing again.

“But you’re not a spirit!” she cried. “You’re a flesh-and-blood man and you can’t always tamp that down. You shouldn’t.”

“I should,” he said, and his face filled with torment. “I’m supposed to be a healer, not a destroyer. And I used
bad medicine
. Me, a shaman with gifts given to me so I can do good, only good.”

“I didn’t behave right, either,” she said. “I was trying to get you jealous by the way I acted with Jacob,
and that kept me from sensing his badness. But you sensed it, you knew he was a terrible person. See, your spirit was working, after all.”

“But not enough to keep me from killing him.”

“You didn’t,” she said, letting all the belief she had in him show in her eyes. “You didn’t kill Jacob because you didn’t mean for him to die.”

He watched her eyes and searched her face, she saw the desire to believe it leap to life in him.

“Do you really think so?”

“I know so. You don’t have a bad bone in your body—I sensed that with a powerful force when you set Sophie’s arm that day. I know it. My spirit tells me.”

He grinned.

“Is your spirit strong enough yet to change your behavior?”

She laughed. “Soon it will be, with you teaching me. I’m just glad I’m getting straightened out at your hands instead of Auntie Iola’s.”

He laughed, too, a low, silver sound that fired her blood.

“So you think my hands can change you, do you?”

She dropped her gaze to look at them, huge and hard and brown, with beautiful, long fingers and callused palms. Then she looked into his eyes again. Desire went tumbling through her body like a runaway wheel that wasn’t quite round. “I know they can.”

She parted her lips the slightest bit and wet them with the tip of her tongue. He watched, but he did not move at all. He was thinking it over, she could see that, and he was beginning to know that making love with her was right.

“And I know that they should,” she said. “I need to teach you that giving in to the instincts of the flesh doesn’t always bring on something bad.”

He gave her that grin again.

“So if we’ve got that settled,” she said huskily, “I’d think you would touch me.”