Savage Tempest (25 page)

“As well as clothes for your husband,” High Hawk said, giving her a teasing smile. “It will be a life far different from what you are used to.”

“
Ho
, quite different,” Joylynn said, nodding. “While I lived with my parents, I ignored my mama's teachings, but instead listened to my father's. I so loved the outdoors. I thought sewing and cooking were tedious.”

“But now?” High Hawk said, still trotting alongside the river. “You will not mind caring for a husband, doing all the things women do for them?”

“I cherish every moment now of being able to make you happy,” Joylynn said. “Even cooking. Your mother told me today how your favorite dish is prepared. The flesh of a calf is boiled with pomme-blanche roots in a broth made of water and marrow from the bones of cows. Lungs of the buffalo are added after being dried and roasted on coals, along with corn.”

“My mother is an excellent teacher, and obviously you are an astute student,” High Hawk said. He slowed his pace, then stopped in a curve of the hauntingly beautiful river. He nodded and gazed toward the clear water.

Joylynn followed the path of his eyes, then gasped in awe. “A canoe?” she said. “I have never seen you or any of your people in canoes.”

“Last night several of my warriors left the village and made this canoe especially for our wedding
day,” High Hawk said. “It is not as large as most, but large enough for what we will do with it.”

“We're going to go for a ride in this canoe?” Joylynn asked excitedly.

“
Ho
,” he said, stepping up to the canoe with her.

When Joylynn could get a better look at the canoe, her eyes widened. “Rose petals?” she gasped as she gazed in wonder at the wild bright red rose petals spread along the bottom of the canoe.

Lying on each side of the canoe were two paddles.

“Especially for you,” High Hawk said, easing her down into the canoe.

The rose petals were cool and soft against Joylynn's flesh as she ran her fingers through them, and the smell was so heavenly, surely no expensive French perfume could smell more wonderful.

“This is so beautiful,” Joylynn murmured as she gazed up into High Hawk's eyes. “Rose petals. And so many. You have made this a day I shall think back on forever and smile.”

High Hawk smiled and shoved the canoe into deeper water, then waded out and climbed inside. “My people are not canoe people, but there are times when we have needed them, and we have mastered the art of making them,” he said, settling down on his knees behind her. “This canoe is smaller than most, so we must position ourselves on our knees before paddling. Stay where you are and I will kneel behind you. From where you are,
your view will be unobstructed. Today we will both see the marvels of this land yet unseen by any other man or woman.”

“I . . . have . . . never been in a canoe. I don't know how to paddle one,” Joylynn said, suddenly nervous. Thus far she had impressed him by being able to do things that most women could not.

“Watch me for a moment. Lift the paddle and place it in the water,” High Hawk said. “Begin pulling it through the water as I am pulling mine. You must get into the same rhythm as I. Do not use the muscles in your arms, but let the rotation of your torso move your paddle through the water.”

Joylynn did as he said, smiling when she discovered how effortless it was, especially with him using his paddle in the same rhythm as her own.

“My people mainly travel by horse, but when I am in a canoe, I cannot help thinking that, besides making love, this is what the body is made for,” he said softly. “Canoeing is one of the gentlest, least disturbing and most graceful ways of moving through physical space.”

Joylynn gazed over her shoulder at him and saw a look of joy on his face. There was something almost rapturous about being out there on the river, only the two of them, moving so easily through the pristine water.

She knew they were experiencing something together that would be with them always . . . a landscape
of wildness and purity, so vast and ancient, that the distinction between individual existence and nothingness was almost meaningless.

She turned her eyes away from him and enjoyed the experience to the fullest. On her knees, she focused on the way the paddle made a little swirling whirlpool as it bit into the water, and how it cast off two more little whirlpools when she took it out at the end of the stroke. She found that a slight twist of her wrist turned the blade vertical and made it easier to take it out of the water.

For long stretches, the only sounds were the drops of water falling from the paddle as she brought it forward and bit into the water again, and the little straining sound, like a trickling rivulet, that the bow of the canoe made as it parted the water.

She was stunned to see that the river was filled with fish in pulsating abundance, streaking away from the bow of the canoe as it made its way through the water.

She gazed toward the riverbank and saw a lot of beavers and their lodges, and the sharp spikes of the aspens and jack pines that they had gnawed off.

Elsewhere, three otters were standing up on their hind legs, chattering adorably.

She sighed with pleasure and lifted her paddle up from the water. She had never seen such a lavender-pink sunset as was mirrored on the glassy surface of the river.

And just as she noticed it, she realized that High Hawk had turned the bow of the canoe landward.

She looked ahead and was struck almost speechless when her gaze fell upon a pure white tepee standing a short distance from the riverbank. Outside, a fire was already burning. No doubt High Hawk had instructed someone to start it.

She looked on both sides of the tepee and into the forest of pines and aspens that stood statuesquely behind it and saw no one. Surely whoever had come had traveled by horse and was now headed back for the village.

Ho
, she could feel no one's presence except their own. Her heart raced in anticipation of the moments that lay ahead as High Hawk landed the canoe.

She smiled up at him as he came to the side of the canoe and lifted her into his arms.

“My wife, tonight is ours alone,” he said, his voice husky. “Come. See what I have prepared for you.”

“You?” Joylynn said, clinging to his neck. “You built the tepee? When? And how could you have started the fire when I have been with you so much of the day?”

“The tepee was built by my own hands, but Three Bears came and prepared the rest for his chief and his bride,” High Hawk said. He took her inside the tepee, where more red rose petals were strewn over blankets and pelts that had been spread thickly on the earthen floor.

“It is all so beautiful,” Joylynn sighed. Her heart pounded when he brushed her lips with his, then laid her gently on the thick bear pelts.

As the sun cast its lavender glow down the smoke hole overhead, and the outdoor fire made of cottonwood logs sent wisps of soft fragrance into the open entrance flap, High Hawk slowly, almost meditatively, removed Joylynn's clothes.

Feeling drugged with passion, she lay there and watched as he removed his own clothes, even tossed aside his headdress of fox skin, until he was kneeling perfectly nude over her, his knees straddling her tiny form.

As they lay on the plush furs with the crackling fire so close outside the entranceway, the clear, liquid fluting of a hermit thrush hidden in the nearby trees pierced the gathering dusk. To that sweet music, High Hawk and Joylynn slowly ran their hands over each other's flesh.

The song of the bird was of the most exquisite purity, embroidered with brilliantly improvised rising and falling arpeggios.

It filled the tepee with its loveliness as High Hawk rolled Joylynn's nipples with his tongue, awakening a raging hunger inside her that she had only known since she had made love that first time with High Hawk.

She gave herself up to the rapture, then sighed with wonder as he kissed her with a lazy warmth that left her weak.

She quivered with passion when she felt his manhood touching and softly probing her hot, moist entrance.

“I love you so,” she groaned against his lips, sighing with intense pleasure when he thrust himself deep within her. He began moving slowly inside her, then faster with quick, sure movements that blocked out everything but the rapture that was blossoming in Joylynn's heart.

“As I love you,” he whispered against her lips. “Forever and ever, my woman, my wife.”

She tried to draw air into her lungs, to respond in kind, but could only tremble as the rhythmic pressure of his heat within her created a euphoria that was almost more than she could bear.

As his steely arms enfolded her, she again felt his hunger in the hard, seeking pressure of his lips. He kissed her as his body continued to move within her.

“Feel how I want you,” he whispered against her parted lips as he gazed into her passion-clouded eyes. “I shall always want you as much.”

“As . . . I . . . want and . . . need . . . you,” Joylynn managed to whisper, although she felt almost mindless now with the building pleasure within her.

She couldn't think any more, could only feel. She gasped when he swirled his tongue across her breasts, sucking her nipples, one at a time, into his mouth, his teeth gently nipping each.

Her fingers bit into his shoulders and she closed
her eyes as the ecstasy spread within her. His hands were all over her body now, touching, moving, dancing.

High Hawk was trying to hold off the inevitable for as long as he could, for he wanted his wife to feel pleasure such as she had never known until tonight.

But it was hard not to let it all go, to feel the utmost of pleasure a man could feel while with the woman he loved. His need was so great, he could hardly fight off the hot, white flames that seemed to be roaring in his ears.

He could not get enough of her soft flesh as his tongue and lips moved over her body, especially her breasts. He again licked one nipple and then the other, yet not missing a stroke within her. He knew she was building now to the highest pleasure a man and woman could give one another.

“I am there,” Joylynn cried, clinging to him as the most wondrous of sensations claimed her, sending wild ripples of pleasure throughout her entire being.

She was liquid inside, filled with heat and longing. She arched her back, closed her eyes, dug her fingers into the flesh of his shoulders, then cried out as she felt him delve more deeply inside her with his heat. He was thrusting, ever thrusting, his breathing hard as he held his cheek against one of her breasts, then made one more deep plunge inside her. His body quaked and trembled as he
spilled his seed inside her waiting womb, while sharp contractions of pleasure knifed through him.

And then they lay side by side, breathing hard, both aware that night had fallen as the full moon cast its white sheen down through the smoke hole and over them.

“It was so wonderful,” Joylynn murmured, clinging to one of his hands. “It was even more enjoyable than the other time.”

“Each time, as you become more relaxed with lovemaking, you will experience something more beautiful than the last,” High Hawk said, reaching over and brushing some of her damp, fallen locks from her cheeks.

“I shall teach you many ways to love,” he said huskily.

“There are more ways than what you have already shown me?” Joylynn asked as she sat up and gazed in wonder down at him.

“Many,” he said, chuckling. “But for now, there is something else I have planned tonight that I think will please you.”

“Nothing could be better than what we just experienced together,” Joylynn murmured, but when she saw him already rising to his feet to go outside, she followed him. She sat down on a blanket that he spread out before the fire.

She watched him go a short distance away, and her eyes widened when she saw him kneel beside a
square-shaped depression that had been dug in the ground. It was covered by a buffalo bull hide that he was now lifting from it.

“What is that?” she asked, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders and going to kneel beside him.

She was suddenly aware of a wonderful aroma, and knew that something had been buried there to cook.

“You may have noticed that Three Bears was gone for most of the day, as well as part of the prior night,” High Hawk said. “As a gift for our wedding night, he dug this depression in the ground and lined it with leaves, on which he spread out a large number of buffalo ribs. A layer of clay was spread over this, and over it was built a slow-burning fire. After it burned down to glowing ashes, the fire was covered again in order to retain its heat as it slowly cooked the meat below.”

“He did all of this for us?” Joylynn said, glad to have such a friend.

“
Ho
, for us,” High Hawk said, continuing to remove everything until he reached the steaming ribs. The tantalizing aroma rushed up from the newly uncovered pit.

Joylynn took the blanket from around her shoulders and spread it out beneath the moonlight.

High Hawk removed two meaty ribs, handed one to Joylynn, then sat down beside her with his own.

As the night songs of crickets and frogs filled the
air around them, they ate until they were almost too full to move.

“The rose petals, the canoe, the beautiful tepee, and now this?” Joylynn said, sucking her fingers clean of grease, one by one. “It seems too wonderful to be real.”

She scooted closer to High Hawk.

He slid an arm around her waist and drew her next to him. They both gazed contedly into the moon-splashed water.

“This is a version of Eden,” she murmured, leaning her head against his shoulder. “How fortunate it is that you have found this wilderness valley for your people that has not, until now, known the hand of man.”

“It is a place that I hope is never discovered by whites,” High Hawk said.

“Yet there are two white people among your Pawnee,” Joylynn said softly. “I am one; Andrew is the other.”