Pale Moon Stalker (The Nymph Trilogy) (35 page)

The old woman merely grunted, urging him to finish it. When he did so and returned the cup to her, she smiled broadly, revealing several missing teeth. "Sleep good tonight," was all she said, scurrying off.

"Any idea what that was about?" he asked his wife.

"Perhaps a fertility drug. It didn't taste familiar. Or, it might just have been some of that stuff Grandfather put in your food the first night we met him. You had good dreams that night."

"So I did," he said thoughtfully as they approached the small edifice. He held open the leather flap that served as a door. "M'lady?"

She ducked her head and stepped inside where a small fire leaped from the pit in the center of the circular space, its wispy smoke traveling up to the opening at the apex of the roof. In spite of the summer heat, the night was cool...but Sky was beginning to feel a strange warmth stealing over her. As soon as she felt Max's body heat close behind her, she stepped quickly away and felt her head spin.

He steadied her with one hand. "Watch you don't fall," he said, his speech slightly thickened. "What the hell was in that drink?"

"I feel tipsy," she said, suppressing an absurd urge to giggle. She did not move away from him this time.

He looked at her in the soft firelight. "We certainly had no alcohol tonight. Good Heart doesn't allow it on his watch."

"No, he doesn't."

They stood looking into each other's eyes, drawn irresistibly closer...closer. "That chalice—or medicine bowl—or whatever it was, did the drawings on it mean anything?"

"I didn't get much of a look at them. Wild flowers...a bee...oooh." She started to laugh in earnest now.

Max was not amused. "If we've just been poisoned, I scarcely think it's a laughing matter."

"You were right," she said, stifling her laughter.

"About being poisoned?" he asked, incredulous.

"No, about it being a love potion. The bee travels from flower...to flower...to flower..." She stepped closer and raised her arms to encircle his neck. Her eyes closed as she tipped her face upward to his.

He could smell her sweet essence, feel those soft, lush curves as her breasts pressed against his chest. He was suddenly stone hard and desperate to make love. But not this way! They'd both been drugged.
That crafty old medicine man put Bright Leaf up to the trick. I'd bet my bloody barony on it!

"It won't do any good to fight it," Sky whispered, having drunk considerably more of the concoction than he.

He could feel her pelvis wriggle against his lower body and sweat broke out on his forehead. "You'll hate yourself in the morning, love," he managed to say through gritted teeth.

"Let the morning take care of itself," she murmured, feeling his erection against her belly, able to think of nothing else. She kissed him, probing at the tight seam of his lips until he opened them and returned the caress with savage hunger. When she began unfastening his fly, he unlaced her tunic, then reached inside and cupped her breasts. She felt his hands working their old, familiar magic and cried out against his mouth with the pleasure of it.

This time it was she who took his hand and pulled him down onto the neatly laid out bedroll. She knelt before him and pulled the loosened tunic over her head, laying it beside the bedroll. Her body gleamed like pale, polished bronze in the firelight. The night darkness of her plaited hair contrasted with her skin, one braid lying enticingly over a breast. He had never seen such perfection in a woman, never imagined one to equal his Sky.

All he could think of was joining their bodies, holding on to her forever. When she reached over and started unlacing his buckskin shirt, he quickly yanked it over his head, then kicked off his moccasins and shucked off his breeches. There would be nothing between them but love this night.

Sky looked at the patterns of dark tan and white skin on his lean, powerful body, tracing with her palms the gleaming hair on his chest in its arrow descent to the hard jut of his staff. When her palm encircled it, he made a low guttural sound and pressed her back onto the bedroll, covering her body with wet kisses. She spread her legs and pressed her thighs against his hips, encouraging him to drive deep inside her.

Max could not have stopped if lightning struck the lodge that very instant. He felt her arch toward him and sank all the way inside her. She was wet and slick and tight, so perfectly right for him that he stopped, glorying in the sensations overwhelming him. Her breath hitched at the ripe fullness of his body inside hers, stretching her, driving her mad with desire. When he began to withdraw and then plunged back, she locked her ankles behind his back, urging him to stroke harder and faster.

The wild ride was fierce and sweet. Perhaps it was something in the drug, but it seemed they were both insatiable that night as passion consumed them. By the time they finally reached culmination, the fire had burned to pale embers and they lay, locked together, sleeping soundly in mindless contentment.

They could not hear the soft chanting emanating from True Dreamer's lodge at the opposite side of the village...

* * * *

When she awakened the next morning, Sky looked at her husband, who lay beside her, his green eyes studying her as he propped up his head with one hand. "I broke my word," he said quietly. "But I'm not sorry. Are you?"

"No. Like so many other things, this was fated to happen." She grew pensive. "I have never felt my Sioux blood so strongly before," she said with a tiny smile.

"Fate and all that?" he asked, relieved that she was not angry.

"A fate named True Dreamer. It wasn't the drink. It was some spell he cast, although the drink was most probably a fertility drug."

He swallowed. "Sky, love, if...if it worked, would you be angry then?"

She felt his eyes studying her and considered his question. "When I sat beside Fawn last night, I wished she were mine. I've always wanted children...for awhile, I dreamed of having your children...but not this way. Not to fulfill the terms of a—"

He cursed and rolled over. "I want you, that bloody accursed will of Harry's be damned! What must I do to make you understand?" He sat up and combed his fingers through his hair in frustration.

"We're trapped for the moment, Max. Until we can stop whoever it is who's trying to kill us."

"You haven't answered my question." He sounded accusatory and knew it, but was powerless to stop his feelings of loss and hurt.

She looked away, unable to bear the intensity of his angry green eyes. "I don't know, Max. I honestly don't know."

With that choked admission, she slid from the blanket and pulled the tunic over her head. He watched in silence as she lifted the flap and walked from the lodge.

* * * *

Sky hugged Fawn, promising to return for a visit as soon as possible. She did not say whether or not "Stalker" would come with her and the girl did not ask, simply assuming they would be together. Sky wondered if Fawn as well as the rest of the village knew about the machinations of the crafty old medicine man and what he had done last night. She saw the old woman who had given them the "ceremonial drink" smiling knowingly at her while True Dreamer approached Max.

"You must leave and search for the evil ones who wish you ill. May the Powers guide you safely on this journey. I give you this powerful medicine for protection." With that he removed the gleaming brass medallion from his neck and placed it over Max's head.

Knowing that it was considered exceedingly impolite to refuse a gift, Max still felt he must protest. "But this is your medicine. You are the one who should wear it to protect and guide your people here."

True Dreamer shook his head. "When you no longer have need of it, you will return it, just as I returned the gruella to Good Heart. I will survive without it as I did when the Powers sent me to you."

Max felt the old man's dark, penetrating eyes bore into him and knew he must not refuse the protection offered. "I thank you. And I will return this," he said, looking down at the heavy brass disc hanging over his chest.

The old medicine man grunted his approval and turned his attention to Sky. "I must speak privately with you before you leave," he said, ushering her to his lodge, which was only a few yards away.

Sky followed, wondering if he intended to ask her about the spell he'd cast last night, further complicating what was already an impossible tangle of emotions. "Grandfather, about last night—"

His sense of urgency when he turned to face her made her stop. "That is not important. This is. Hear me now. You must never allow Pale Moon Stalker to remove the medicine symbol, awake or sleeping. When the time is right, you will return it to me. Then you will no longer have need of it. Do you swear this?"

Almost mesmerized by his vehemence, she nodded. His request must have something to do with the attempts on their lives. "Yes, I swear, but how will I know when the time is right?" she asked, praying that it would not be when she removed it from Max's dead body.

His harsh expression turned into a warm smile now. He beamed at her, only saying, "You will know...and you will know what must be done."

Long after their fond farewells to their Cheyenne friends, and to Bronc and Clyde Campbell, True Dreamer's words echoed in Sky's mind. How would she know when the time was right? And what should she do then?

Max noted her troubled expression, but was loath to inquire about it, assuming that it had to do with their interlude last night. Finally, after they had ridden in silence for over an hour, he could endure it no longer. "What did True Dreamer say to you?"

She stared at the brass disc hanging suspended from his neck. "That you must never remove that talisman. It will save your life, I think."
I pray.
"Asleep or awake, it must stay with you."

He grimaced. "It's heavy and uncomfortable. I'll have a green chest within a fortnight," he added in a teasing tone.

"You won't have to wear it indefinitely," she replied, "only until we stop the men who are after us."

"Do you honestly believe it will protect us?"

"You've seen what True Dreamer can do. What do you think?" she asked angrily. "I swore to him I would see you kept it on and I won't break my word."

He digested that. "He is a truly powerful man...but that does mean you'll have to remain by my side, perhaps for a considerable while," he added thoughtfully, grinning at her.

When he smiled at her that way, Sky felt her heart turn over. Without making a reply, she kicked her mare into a brisk trot and pulled ahead of him.

They spent the days on the trail following a cautious routine, watching every time they approached any arroyo or hillside that might mean ambush. They shared standing watch at night outside the perimeter of the campfire, caring for the horses and doing the cooking and clean-up chores. What they never shared was a bedroll. Sky always laid hers carefully on the opposite side of the fire from his.

They spoke little, except when it was necessary for their mutual safety. Max's nightmares still stalked him. Although Sky would soothe him when it happened, she would quickly withdraw when the dark warriors released him. Every passing day, his hard-edged green gaze pierced her with increasing anger. The smiles of earlier times that had melted her heart had now vanished.

And Sky knew it was her doing. She felt alternately guilty, bereft, then angry herself because it was he who clung to his need to avenge his brother by thwarting Cletus even though she'd given up her need to avenge Will. He was the one who had deceived her and refused to speak of his earlier life. Then a sudden thought occurred to her. She had a new understanding of True Dreamer's cryptic words about the brass medicine disk...but what if she was mistaken?

Looking over at her husband's harsh visage in profile as he rode slightly ahead of her, she felt her heart lurch. No matter what happened, she would always love him. At this point in their relationship, it was a bittersweet knowledge, but a tiny flicker of hope filled her.

Yet she said nothing.

A sudden rainstorm struck as they were climbing a gradual slope in the narrow strip of no-man's-land below the Colorado border. They took shelter beside some boulders at the foot of an upcropping of red rock and huddled together beneath their rain slickers, trying to keep the cold downpour from soaking them. The horses stood, restive at the lightning flashes and roll of thunder, but they were well trained and did not bolt.

"I think we'll have to spend the night here," Max yelled at her over the din.

"We've hours of daylight yet," she yelled back.

"Traveling will be too treacherous once the rain stops."

His reply was reasonable. Sky knew that the vicious storms passed quickly but soaked the thirsty earth until it was a quagmire of slippery mud. The ground ahead of them was rising at a steep grade. One of the horses could stumble and break a leg. Grudgingly, she agreed, although it would mean another day on the trail before they could reach Pueblo and the railroad back to Denver.

As they expected, the storm vented its fury and passed them by within the hour. They made a wet, muddy camp at the base of a series of rocky hills covered with scrub oaks and sage. Sky laid out their clothing and footgear on the underside of the rain slickers, to hasten the drying so they would not have to be packed up damp the next morning. Then she tended to the horses and staked them so they could find graze in a patch of short prairie grass. Max went in search of enough dry wood to make a small, smoldering fire and then prepared a meager dinner of bacon, day-old biscuits and coffee.