Judith E. French (6 page)

He lay inches away, stretched out on their shared bearskin, his left hand casually supporting his head, one knee slightly flexed. She swallowed hard. Wolf Shadow was stark naked, his skin glistening in the flickering light.

Fiona’s mouth went dry as her gaze dropped from his dark, hypnotic eyes to the wide expanse of his powerful shoulders. Muscles bulged beneath the silken skin of his broad chest, accented by the copper bands that encircled his massive biceps. His torso was long and lean, his belly flat, his hips smooth and sinewy.

Here and there the faded scars of old wounds cut the surface of his golden skin, but they did not detract from his male beauty ... they made his physique even more breathtaking. Her eyes widened as she took in the bloodred tattoo of an animal’s pawprint on his muscular left thigh. Her eyes rose to meet his. In that fathomless, amused scrutiny she read an unmistakable challenge, a dare she could not let pass.

Trembling, she forced herself to look at his naked body again. Her cheeks grew hot, and a curious tingling began in the pit of her stomach as she stared at his hairless chest and the smooth, bronze planes of his waist and loins. She had never seen a man with such an absence of hair on his body, but the sparse nest of dark hair above his manhood seemed as natural as the length and fullness of his erect shaft. She couldn’t tear her eyes away until she heard his soft chuckle.

Fiona gasped, realizing that she was as unclad as he was. Quickly she pulled the tanned hide up to cover her nakedness. Fear and confusion filled her, and the fingers of her right hand knotted in a thick, silky animal pelt as memories of what had happened at the stream came flooding back. She shrank away from him, knowing that there was no place to run—that she was at the wolf-man’s mercy. “Who are you?” she managed weakly. “What are you?”

He chuckled. “You asked me that before.”

His words were slow and reassuring—the same tone he had used with the mule when it became bogged in the snow, she thought. But he’d cut the mule’s throat, suddenly and brutally and without reason. As he’d killed the two Indians. Murdered them and defaced their bodies ...

“You’ve nothing to fear from me,” Wolf Shadow repeated. “This cave is a secret place. They won’t find us here.”

Fiona couldn’t stop trembling. How could he lie there as naked as the day he was born and talk to her so calmly? The firelight reflected in the depths of his coal-black eyes. Was it compassion she read there, or madness? “You ... you drowned that man,” she began. “You murdered him ... and now ...” Her voice trailed away under the force of his gaze.

The thought that she had looked on his nakedness curled in the back of her mind. Not only had she looked, but she had taken pleasure in the sight of his terrible beauty. She forced the damning thoughts away. She couldn’t face them now. She stiffened. “Now do you mean to rape me?”

“Pah.” He rose and stalked to the far side of the fire. “I expected more of you, Irish.” Anger made his speech hard and clipped. “You were cold unto death. I warmed your body with my own—nothing more.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“Your clothes were wet—as were mine. I’m not such a fool as to try and dry your thick English clothes with my skin.”

“How ... how dare you?” Her words sounded idiotic as they fell from her lips. He didn’t expect her to believe he’d stripped her naked and lain with her for her health’s sake, did he? How could he think she would be so gullible?

He shrugged. He snatched up his drying loincloth and wrapped it around his hips, covering his genitals. “We did not join.” His gaze raked her insolently. “If I had shared pleasures with you, Irish Fiona, you’d not have had to ask. You would know you had been loved by a man.”

“And that—” She pointed to the bulge in his loincloth. “Do you take me for a lackwit? I know when a man is ... is sexually excited. You meant to take advantage of me. You—”

“Cease your caterwauling, woman. I am not made of stone. You are soft, and your scent is sweet. If my body reacts as any man’s would, I am not to blame.”

“You shame me,” she cried.

“You shame yourself.” He picked up her damp shift and threw it across the fire at her. “Cover yourself if it makes you feel safer. But do not blame me if you die of lung fever.”

“I never get sick. I won’t get sick now,” she flung back defiantly.

“Then what happened to you on the stream bank?”

“It was the cold. No one could stand in that icy water without suffering a chill—no human could. I don’t know about demons. Are you a warlock that you don’t feel as other men do?”

“I thought we were just discussing my human feelings.” He turned away from her and donned a sleeveless vest. “Cold water is nothing to me. It is the practice of my people to bathe summer and winter. Even Shawnee children break ice to swam.”

Fiona jerked the shift over her head, then wrapped herself again in the tawny fur. As angry as she was with Wolf Shadow, she still craved the heat of his fire. Keeping her eyes on him, she wiggled her bare toes closer to the coals. She couldn’t see a thing beyond the circle of firelight, so she assumed it was night.

She still felt weak and drowsy. Saint Bridget be thanked that she’d awakened when she had—before he’d had his way with her. Her hand clutched the fur at her throat, and for the first time since she could remember, she didn’t feel the familiar weight of the Eye of Mist. Frantically, she searched for it. “My necklace,” she cried. “Where’s my necklace? I must have—”

“Calm yourself,” Wolf Shadow soothed. “What you seek is here and safe. It is not the Shawnee way to speak of
mesawmi,
the spirit medicine of another, but I am a shaman, and what is forbidden some is different for me. When you shook with cold and would not wake, I feared the power had departed your amulet.”

“Where is it? Give it back to me,” she demanded.

He nodded and walked to the shadows. “I never meant to keep it from you.” He returned at once with a tightly woven bark basket, no larger than a man’s fist. Taking a forked stick from the edge of the fire, he secured the necklace without touching it and passed it over the flames to her.

Fiona grasped her amulet in surprise. It was no longer covered with black paint. Instead the beauty of the ancient goldwork gleamed as though it were newly forged from the artist’s hand. “Oh.” The charm seemed to pulse with life in her hand. She slipped it around her neck. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I . . .” She fingered the necklace, her heart thudding. “You had no right to take it in the first place,” she reminded him.

“Perhaps,” he replied, “but it was wrong to cover it so. Spirit medicine needs the light of the sun and the touch of your flesh. You dull the power when you hide it from the Creator.”

“My mother painted the necklace to keep it from being stolen by some man.”

He pursed his lips and nodded. “Perhaps you were right. I know little of Irish magic.”

“It isn’t magic.”

“No?”

“No. I’m no witch. I don’t deal in such evil.”

“Spirit medicine is never evil. It can only bring protection to the wearer—protection and good.”

“I’m a Christian—a Catholic. Don’t talk to me of heresy.”

He settled down on the far side of the fire, legs crossed, arms folded across his chest. “Heresy? You wear the amulet, Irish Fiona, not I.”

“It’s only a keepsake. Something my mother gave me.”

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Your tongue speaks one thing, but your eyes say another. Did I not warn you about lying to me?”

“My mother and my father,” she hurried to say. “It was important to my mother that I wear it—always.”

“And your father?”

“He’s nothing to me. If I wear what came from him, it’s to remind me that I’m going to kill him if I ever lay eyes on him.”

Wolf Shadow steepled his hands and idly rubbed his forehead with his joined fingers. “So ... You call me murderer when I kill those who would kill us, yet you seek the life of the man who gave you life.”

“You don’t understand. The two things have nothing in common. What’s between me and my father is none of your business. He killed my mother and he abandoned us both. He deserves to die. What you did—back at the stream—was unforgivable. That man you drowned—he was helpless. You could have let him live.”

He shook his head. “A Seneca is never helpless. If I left him alive, he would come after us. He’d seen you. Once Roquette knew that there was a white woman to be had, he would follow us with his Seneca dogs until we were hunted to ground.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who is Roquette? I didn’t hear any dogs. All I saw were two Indians, and you killed them both. You desecrated their bodies.”

“Roquette is a Frenchman, and the Seneca war cries you heard were the baying of his hounds.”

“You expect me to believe you?”

“You must believe me. Our spirit paths have crossed. It may not be what you or I wish, but your future is linked with mine.”

“You can’t hold me against my will,” she said fervently. “Take me back to my own kind—please. I don’t belong here.” She cpuldn’t be here. By Mary’s robe, if she stayed a day longer God alone knew what she might do. Thoughts of his virile male body loomed in the shadows of her mind. She didn’t know if she was more afraid of him or of herself.

She’d never been tempted by the sins of the flesh—she’d believed she never would be. Hadn’t her mother’s weakness for a man brought her to disgrace and an early death? Fiona had vowed she’d never make the same mistake. She’d sworn on a sacred relic of Saint Anne, promising to keep herself pure and to dedicate her life to the art of medicine.

Wolf Shadow poked at the glowing coals with a branch, then raised his gaze to hers. “What you and I want means nothing, Irish Fiona. The trail the spirits have planned for us is already blazed in the stars.”

“There is no us,” she protested, pulling the soft fur blanket tighter around her as fear again chilled her blood. “There is not and never can be an us. ”

May Inu-msi-ila-fe-wanu will it to be so, ” he murmured. “For I want to be free of you as much as you want to be free of me.”

F
or three days they remained hidden in the cave while snow fell outside, blanketing the forest and meadows, and making further pursuit impossible. They were the most disturbing three days Fiona had ever known.

Wolf Shadow was unlike any man she had come in contact with—so much so that dealing with him stretched the limits of her patience. He was a superstitious savage, a man who could murder in cold blood and walk away without any sign of pity or regret. Yet he was also an intelligent human being who showed the compassion of a priest and courtly manners that would not disgrace a prince of Europe.

She was desperately afraid of him. Every instinct told her that trusting him would be a fatal mistake; yet she wanted to believe him when he told her that he meant her no harm. She was repelled by his utter barbarity, yet drawn by the sensual magnetism of his magnificent animal body and the memory of his touch.

His wolf’s mask image haunted her dreams.

Sleep should have brought her peace, but it did not. Instead, when she was so exhausted that she could no longer keep her eyes open, she found herself drawn over and over into the same disturbing dream.

With full consciousness came confusion and shame. Fiona drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them, trying to ignore the throbbing in her loins and the tingling in her breasts.

The memory of the golden man’s touch haunted her waking hours.

She was astute enough to know that Wolf Shadow was the erotic man in her dream, and that realization was so disturbing as to be almost mind shattering. Lust for a man, even a dream lover, was an emotion that Fiona had never before experienced.

She had never trusted men, and she had built up a lifetime of defenses against them.

Since she was a child, men had told her that she was beautiful—that she had hair like a sunset over Galway Bay and the come-hither eyes of a fallen angel. But experience had been a good teacher. She’d seen her once-exquisite mother change from a vibrant young woman to a gaunt, hollow-eyed jade. And when the sparkle vanished from her eyes and the quickness from her step, when her cheeks ceased to glow with youth and her body thickened from poor diet and ill use, the men stopped giving compliments and gifts. Instead, they called her hard names and tumbled her against the walls in dirty alleys.

Men used women. Men fed women lies and took pleasure on their bodies. A woman had no defense save her own wit and the strength of her own hands and spirit.

Fiona’s mother hadn’t learned the lesson. Eileen had never ceased to believe in the unkept promises Fiona’s father had made to her. She’d harbored no hate for her own father who’d driven her from his house, or the lover who’d cast her and her child away like useless chaff. A part of Eileen had remained innocent, even when she couldn’t feed herself on the coin she received from delivering the babies of prostitutes. Even when she was forced to accept the protection of one man after another to survive.

Understanding Wolf Shadow and defending herself against him would have been easier for Fiona if she could have hated him as she had hated the two white trappers. Evil men like Nigel and Karl were devil-spawned, but she knew what they wanted—she had seen many of them in her lifetime. She could fight them with her brains and her hands. But she had no emotional weapons against Wolf Shadow, and she couldn’t hate him. He had showed her kindness. He had cared for and protected her.

Weakness in men she could understand. Her grandfather, for all his bristly exterior, had been weak. He’d driven away a daughter he loved for fear of idle gossip, and he’d denied his Catholic religion and pretended to be a Protestant in order to study and practice medicine. Fiona had cared for her grandfather, but she had never forgiven him his weaknesses of character.

She was not foolish enough to believe that there were no good men. For the most part, the priests she had known had been genuinely good. And one of the British soldiers her mother had lived with had been a decent man. He’d fed them and provided a snug room and stout clothing during one bitter winter—before he’d been shipped back to his wife and children in Wales. Fiona didn’t doubt that some men treated their families with respect and compassion. But those men were few and far apart. She had more faith in her ability to care for herself, to control her own life, than to put her future in a man’s hands.

Certainly, she would never willingly place herself in the power of a man who thought he was a wolf. It was unthinkable.

As if he’d heard her unspoken thoughts, Wolf Shadow called to her, tearing Fiona from her troubled reflections.

“Come, Irish. Eat. The meat and bread will be cold.” He rose from where he was crouched beside the fire pit and held out a bark plate of food. “I am not known for my cooking,” he said, “but I did manage to roast the venison without burning it.”

His hand brushed hers as she took the food, and she started like a frightened doe. Shivers ran up and down her spine; her fingers throbbed as though she had been burned. Trembling, she retreated to her own nest of furs on the far side of the fire from his bedrobes. Her hunger had vanished . . . replaced by a breathless confusion.

She peered at him from under half-closed lids, afraid that he would make another move toward her, afraid that he would not.

It was the first time he’d touched her since she’d awakened naked in the cave to find them both wrapped in the same bearskin. He had returned her clothes to her as soon as they were dry, and he had taken care to keep his loins covered since then. He had behaved toward her with respect and compassion, but try as she might, she couldn’t blot out the memory of his long, muscular body next to hers. Or of his smooth bronze skin ... skin that shone even now in the flickering firelight.

She closed her eyes to block out his image, but her mind betrayed her. What would it be like to be kissed by a man like Wolf Shadow . . . to unleash that untamed might in a frenzy of sensual passion? The recklessness of her thoughts terrified her, and she clutched the bark plate so tightly that the wood cut into her fingers.

What was wrong with her? Was she bewitched for certain? Mother Mary help her! She had never known a man—she was a virgin. How could she have such sinful lusts?

Fiona swallowed the knot rising in her throat and tried to breathe naturally. Moisture gathered in the hollow between her breasts and trickled down in beads of warm perspiration. Waves of dizziness assailed her. Abruptly she dropped the plate, rose, and wrapped a lynx skin around her shoulders as a shawl.

She crossed to the cave entrance and scooped up a double handful of fluffy snow. Thrusting her face into it, she welcomed the numbing cold, letting it shock her back to reality.

I’m a captive of this man as much as I was of Nigel and Karl. I need to use my wits to stay alive and to escape as soon as I can. Any unnatural thoughts I might have are only the results of what I’ve been through. I need to remember who I am, and who and what he is. Wolf Shadow is an Indian, and I’m white. He’s my enemy, and I must never forget it.

“Fiona.”

“What?” She whirled and faced him, pulling the lynx skin tightly around her for protection.

“The wind bites. Don’t linger there. Eat all you can and try to sleep,” Wolf Shadow advised. “Tonight there is no moon. As soon as it is dark, we’ll leave for my sister’s village.”

“By night?” She returned to the far side of the fire, still unable to look directly into his eyes. Her heart beat a tattoo against her chest. “What about wolves?” She’d heard their howling in the darkness, and it brought back memories of the night Wolf Shadow had stormed the trappers’ cabin. “I’ve no wish to be devoured by a wolf.”

“The Iroquois—the Seneca are a part of the Iroquois League—do not hunt at night.” He smiled thinly. “They are afraid of ghosts.” He finished the last bite of his portion of venison and licked the tips of his fingers clean. It was not necessary to tell Fiona that he had given the enemy reason to fear the supernatural.

He’d left the cave the past two nights while she was sleeping and harried Roquette and his allies. He’d killed a Seneca sentry and marked his body with the bloody print that was his signature. A second warrior he’d overpowered and left alive, being content with merely scarring the brave’s chest with a wolf’s teeth. That man had been barely more than a boy and too young to be guilty of the heinous acts that most of Roquette’s men had committed against the Shawnee.

“I said wolves—not Iroquois,” Fiona reminded him.

Her face was pale against the dark cave wall, and he longed to crush her against his chest and taste the warm sweetness of her mouth. His heart leaped within him as he remembered the feel of her cradled against his shoulder. He should have thought her ugly—this woman of his white enemies. Instead, he found her fair skin with its smattering of freckles intriguing. He wanted to touch her cheek . . . to cup her firm, round breasts in his hand. He wanted to smell the unique woman-scent of her and taste the honey of her woman’s cleft.

His hand still tingled from her touch. He could not stop his eyes from following her.

Wolf Shadow had always found night-black hair beautiful. In his years in England, he’d never considered the blond-haired women attractive, and the redheads were nothing to turn his head. But Fiona’s hair caught the flame of the campfire at night and the glory of the sun by day.

She was trouble, and he wanted to be as far away from her as possible. She was his enemy. They shared nothing—not religion, not native language or customs, not even friendship. She feared him, and he wasn’t certain she wouldn’t try to kill him if his back was turned. He could never let down his guard enough to trust her.

There was no room in his life for a woman. There could never be room for a white-skinned woman.

Yet he desired her with every breath he took. She haunted his dreams. She shadowed his every waking thought.

“I said nothing about Indians. I’m afraid of wolves.”

Her soft English with its lilting Irish accent touched a chord deep within him. He wondered how his name would sound on her lips in a moment of shared ecstasy.

Shaking off the disturbing thoughts, he tried to look at her dispassionately, as though she were his cousin or the wife of one of his friends. Without longing. Without wishing for what could never be. “Four-legged wolves will not harm us.” His voice sounded harsher than he meant it to. “They are my totem animals,” he explained, “my spiritual brothers.” He clasped his hands together. “Besides, the wolves of the forest are not hunters of men. The deer have more to fear from them than you do.”

He would take her to his village and give her over to the care of his sister, Willow. Once he was back with his own people, he could focus on the importance of his mission. He could depend on Willow to do what was best for Fiona and to make her welcome among the Shawnee.