Savage Spirit (9 page)

Cloud Eagle expected that this incident would never be spoken about between them. Moon Shadow knew Cloud Eagle's special feelings for the white woman. Cloud Eagle had revealed them to the shaman when he had asked him to come and heal her.

Moon Shadow had honored his chief's wishes by coming. So would he honor his chief's feelings about the white woman by not doing anything to jeopardize her safety in the stronghold of the Coyotero Apache.

Moon Shadow's exit left a strained silence behind him. Cloud Eagle's and Alicia's eyes locked. Nothing was said between them for a moment longer.

Then Cloud Eagle tightened his jaw. His eyes were filled with fire. It was like the last nine miles to water when one was thirsty, those few steps it took before his hands closed upon Alicia's wrists. Glaring at her, he pushed her down onto the pallet.

"You know that what you did was wrong," he said between clenched teeth. "And you know that you should be punished for such disrespect."   "Go ahead," Alicia demanded. She was angry, yet at the same time breathless as he leaned down over her, his powerful body so close. "Punish me. What do I care? And do not expect me to apologize for what I did. I told you not to bring the shaman into your tepee while I am here. My beliefs do not include a medicine man."

"Knowing that you are different from most women, and that you stand up and defend what you feel is right, is why I will not punish you," Cloud Eagle said, his lips drawing closer to hers. "Do you not know how you fire this chief's insides?"

Before she could talk back to him, Cloud Eagle grabbed her by the hair and yanked her face close to his. Holding her there, he burned a kiss onto her lips.

Alicia gasped, then melted into his embrace.

She was left shaken when he jerked himself free of her and left the tepee.

Stunned, she reached her fingers to her lips. They were still pulsing from the hard, passionate kiss. She realized that she was caught in his spell and felt helpless and torn because of it. If moments ago, when she reacted to the shaman in such a violent way, was an example of how she might feel about other Apache beliefs and customs, there would surely be no place for her in the life of an Apache chief.

But on the other hand, she found that more and more, as time wore on, her thoughts drifted to Cloud Eagle and how it might feel to spend forever with him.

Then she just as quickly reminded herself that even though he had over and over again confessed to being innocent of the crime that   she was accusing him of, she did not have absolute proof. Until she did, she would have to continue putting on a protective front. The kiss that they had shared only a few heartbeats ago was a mistake and must not be repeated.

Spring Dawn and Lost Wind entered the lodge. Glaring at Alicia, they sat down beside the fire.

She looked guardedly from one to the other. They both looked bone-weary and sweaty, which had to mean that they had already labored hard this morning. The day had just begun and yet they had returned to their lodge. She wondered if she was the cause for their return to the tepee instead of continuing their work outside.

Had Cloud Eagle sent them there to guard her so that she would not escape in his absence?

She cast that conclusion aside. It was obvious that if she tried to escape, those two women would be more than eager to assist her and Cloud Eagle was intelligent enough to know that. He surely knew jealousy when he saw it.

Cloud Eagle ran to the river and sat down beneath a cottonwood tree. Troubled, he stared into the water. The image of Alicia was everlasting in his head, the fiery taste of her still in his mouth. Until he met her, he had given his undivided attention to his future, as the master of tribal affairs. He had taken two wives to guard himself well from the clutches of only one particular woman. To be chief of a household was one thing and chief of a tribe quite another. Now he felt like a wall of black cloud with a fork of lightning in the center!

He shifted his weight, then rose slowly to his feet and began pacing beside the river. He knew   that there were two ways to break this spell that he was suddenly caught up in.

He could take Alicia as his wife.

Or he could turn his back on her and return her to her people.

After much more pacing and much more thinking, he knew what the choice must be. Alicia was a part of him now, almost as much as the air that he breathed.

Alicia stared at the entrance flap, wishing that Cloud Eagle would return. She didn't feel safe alone with the two jealous wives.

Yet she didn't feel all that safe while with him. His most recent kiss surely preceded even more intimate moments with him. What she feared most was that she might yield to him, whereas until she met Cloud Eagle, no other man had ever so much as dared come near her.

She feared that beautifully delicious feeling that Cloud Eagle had aroused in her which made her aware of her femininity.

Alicia breathed shallowly when Lost Wind left, then returned with a platter of food and sat it before Alicia.

The growling of Alicia's stomach made her know that more time than she realized had passed. She looked up at the smoke hole. The sun was at its center point in the sky. It was noon, when she usually ate her second meal of the day.

Alicia eyed Cloud Eagle's two wives suspiciously when she noticed that they were not eating, but were watching her with amusement in their eyes.

Then she studied the food laid out before her. Could she safely eat something that the jealous   wives gave her? Yet the food looked innocent enoughlike some sort of meat. And its smell was tantalizing.

Wanting to busy her fingers while awaiting Cloud Eagle's return, and wanting to fill the hunger that was gnawing at the pit of her stomach, Alicia picked up one piece of the meat and placed it delicately into her mouth. She chewed it slowly, trying to guess what it might be. Though the taste was somewhat peculiar, it was good.

Curiosity got the best of her.

"What have I been served?" she asked as she picked up another piece of the meat.

Lost Wind and Spring Dawn gave each other mischievous smiles, then gazed at Alicia and giggled.

"We have prepared lizard for the white woman," Lost Wind said, once again giggling as she watched for Alicia's reaction.

Alicia gagged and threw the remainder of the meat into the fire. Swallowing hard, she desperately wiped at her mouth with her hands. "You spiteful wenches," she hissed.  

Stony silence fell inside the tepee when Cloud Eagle entered. His jaw was set. His eyes were on Alicia.

Seeing something different about his attitude, Alicia followed his movements as he walked past her and grabbed his bow and slipped it over his shoulders, then fastened a quiver made of a wildcat's pelt with the tail hanging down at his back.

When he went to Alicia and swept her into his arms and carried her toward the entranceway, she was so stunned by the suddenness of his action that she did not have the chance to lodge a complaint.

They were so quickly gone from the tepee, and she was so quickly placed on the saddle of panther skin on his horse, that she was left breathless.

"
Ish-kay-nay,
say nothing spiteful about what I do," Cloud Eagle said as he swung himself into   the saddle behind her. ''I am going to take you to a special place."

Alicia looked over her shoulder at him. Their eyes momentarily locked. "Where? Where are you taking me?" she asked guardedly.

"You did not allow my shaman to perform his magic over you to help heal your leg," Cloud Eagle said, lifting the reins. "You will surely not object to a thing of nature that can work healing powers on one's wounds."

"Nature?" Alicia said, grabbing at her sore leg when the horse jolted into a soft trot through the stronghold. "Cloud Eagle, please don't tell me that you are going to place more herbal medications on my leg. What you used before did seem to help. But how can you be sure that any other herbs might work as well?"

He clung around her waist and held her close to him as he left the stronghold and sent his roan into a gallop. "No more herbs," he said flatly. "Water. Water will show you its healing powers."

"You are going farther upstream, away from the stronghold, so that we can have privacy in a river?" she asked warily.

"No," he said, his mood lightening. His eyes danced into hers. "No river."

"Then where?" Alicia asked impatiently.

"Cloud Eagle takes you where hot springs flow freely from the ground," he said, glad that she was not sparring with him angrily. He knew that she had a soft, vulnerable side. Slowly it was being revealed to him. "This water has healing powers."

"Of course you will insist on going into the water with me," she said, forcing sarcasm into   her voice. She turned her eyes from him and envisioned him as she had seen him nude that one time. The remembrance sent waves of sensual pleasure through her.

"And you would object?" Cloud Eagle said, recalling how he had caught her staring at him the one time she had seen him naked.

He smiled. More than once he had seen the hunger of a woman for a man in her eyes. He had tasted it on her lips as he had kissed her.

And no matter how spiteful she pretended to be, she was nothing at all like Lost Wind, who knew the art of being spiteful so well.

Lost Wind's ugly disposition was her true personality.

Alicia's was all pretense.

Soon that would change, he convinced himself. Patience. He just had to practice being patient until she revealed her true self to him, and her true feelings for him.

His question drew Alicia's eyes back to him. "What did you say?" she gasped.

"I asked you if you would object if I joined you in the water," he repeated, his eyes dancing into hers.

"You think that I would not?" she asked, her voice quavering.

"I think not," Cloud Eagle said. His lips tugged into a slow, teasing smile.

Alicia's lips parted, then she failed to come up with a reply that could sting the confidence from his voice.

She turned her eyes away again, her pulse racing. And to try and forget what might happen these next few hours, she concentrated on   everything but Cloud Eagle and her tumultuous feelings about him.

They rode past fruit-bearing plants at the foot of the mountain, then past piñon nuts growing in cool groves. Bees were humming around various blossoms.

They rode onward until the sun began its descent in the sky and frogs sang along the riverbank.

Still they rode onward until the evening took on the soft glow of twilight.

Alicia wondered if they would ever come to their destination. She was sore and aching all over. The wound on her leg throbbed.

"The older people of the Apache tribe think highly of going to the hot springs, to boil themselves after the chill leaves the air," Cloud Eagle said, suddenly breaking the silence between himself and Alicia. "It is also a place of conference, where headmen and medicine men sit for hours while waiting for those thoughts which come best when the sweat is flowing free."

"How can such a place be so popular with your people when it is so far away from your stronghold?" Alicia asked wearily. "We've been traveling for hours. Lord, Cloud Eagle, are we about there?"

"Yes, soon," Cloud Eagle said, nodding. "And the distance ensures privacy."

"Privacy?" Alicia said sarcastically. "When so many have access to it?"

"Cloud Eagle knows when it is being used, and by whom," he said. "Tonight it is solely ours."

The thought of being alone with him, away from everyone else, caused another sensual thrill   to soar through Alicia, one that she did not wish to feel.

Yet she could not deny that she was being caught up more and more in a web of desire for him. She could not deny the thunderous beating of her heart when she recalled his fiery kisses and the passion they had aroused in her.

She was fighting these feelings, as well as Cloud Eagle, but losing the battle. Her heart, her need for Cloud Eagle, was becoming the victor.

Oh, but if she could just be certain that he was not capable of crimes against the white community. It would make it much simpler to love him.

"There is a waterfall close to the spring," Cloud Eagle said, guessing the cause for her silence. He knew that she wanted him. He knew that she was fighting this want with every fiber of her being.

He also knew that she was losing the battle and that her heart would be the victor.

"The uppermost cup of the falls that tumble into the spring is a huge, smooth basin where one can sit on a hot day in the spray until chilled to the bone and then step out onto a dry cleft and know what it means to be brought back to life by the sun on the rocks," he continued saying.

"You speak as though you have been there often," Alicia said, turning to gaze up at him. "Have you taken manymany women there?"

"Cloud Eagle has taken no woman to the hot springs, until now," he said thickly.

His dark eyes, and the meaning behind his words, caused Alicia's insides to melt.

She turned away from him again. Night came quickly. She was almost swallowed whole by her wildly beating heart when she saw the waterfall   up ahead in the moonlight, and then the misty haze that spiraled up from the stream at the foot of the falls.

Her knees weakened, for she knew that she had arrived at the place where she might lose all of her reason, and even all her inhibitions. She wanted Cloud Eagle that much. Her every nerve ending seemed to cry out to be caressed by his masterful hands.

Cloud Eagle drew a tight rein and stopped his horse close beside the hot springs. He dismounted and spread a blanket on the ground. He then helped Alicia down from the saddle and carried her to the blanket.

Breathless, her eyes wide, Alicia watched Cloud Eagle unsaddle his horse, then stake it to a strong picket pin in the tall grass. She gasped when she recognized a small pouch that he took from his saddle. It looked similar to the one used by the shaman. And she knew that she was right when Cloud Eagle opened the pouch and sprinkled some of the
hoddentin
powder into the palm of his hand.