A Wild Yearning (43 page)

He felt her swallow. She tangled her fingers in his hair to hold his head in place. "Ty," was all she said. It was enough.

Her fingers tightened, pulling his head down. She arched her back, pressing her breasts into his face. "Suck me," she said, and the words sent an erotic, burning thrill lashing through him like flame.

He accepted her invitation and feasted on her breasts. He lavished them with compliments and kisses, flattened, massaged, suckled, and worshipped them. He placed his hand low on her belly... then followed it with his lips. He planted a loud, sloppy kiss on her stomach, just above her pubic hair, and nuzzled her with his face until he had her laughing. Then he slid his hands beneath her bottom, lifting her to his hungry mouth, and felt the taut muscles clench with shock and ecstasy as his tongue delved between her soft, wet folds of flesh.

"Ty!" she gasped. "What are you doing?"

"Loving you."

"But it's... Oh, Lord above us..." But her thighs opened wide and she grasped the sides of his head, pulling his face deeper into her in case he had any intention of stopping. Ty smiled as he moved his tongue and lips along her hot, sweet cleft. Delia McQuaid might be hard to woo, but once won she was the most uninhibited lover he had ever known.

He scraped her tiny nub of pleasure with his teeth, then sucked it between his lips. She seemed to swell beneath his mouth. Her head flailed back and forth. Her fingers dug into the fur at her sides and the air was rent with her guttural moans and cries. He felt powerfully male that he could do this to her, wonderfully blessed that she would let him. And when she came, it was against his hot and moist open mouth.

"I love you," he cried against her as the last of her tremors faded away. "Love you... love you..." He rose over her and came down on top of her, slamming his mouth over hers as he drove into her. She raised her hips higher, meeting his piercing thrust and grasping him so tightly that he shouted.

He withdrew until only the rounded tip of him remained inside her, then delved into her, again and again stroking her clenching tightness. He held back, held back, held back... until he thought it would kill him. Then he set his teeth and thrust some more. The blood thundered in his ears; their breathing sounded like a nor'easter gale. Their bodies, slick with the heat of their passion, sucked and popped as they came together and drew apart.

Her legs fell so wide apart, her knees were touching the bed. He heard a pathetic whimpering noise and realized it came from himself. He didn't feel so powerful now. She was grinding him between her thighs, wringing him dry, sucking him empty, reducing him to a poor, quivering male animal who was nothing, nothing, nothing without her.

The fire disintegrated into a mound of coals. The night air was full of the coming winter and Ty pulled the furs close around them.

Sighing sleepily, Delia snuggled into the circle of his arms, burrowing against his broad chest. "I love you, Tyler Savitch," she said, so softly he wasn't sure if it was she, or only his own memory, that he heard.

His arms tightened around her and he pressed his lips to her ear. He spoke to her in Abenaki, crooning the words of a love song. Then he repeated them in English, so she would know...

"Sleep, sleep, my beloved. Do not fear the dark... for tonight my heart beats with your heart. Tonight we are one."

She slept, but he did not. He leaned on his braced elbow, resting his head on his fist, and looked at her. Simply looked at her. He couldn't believe she was actually his and he didn't want to sleep for fear that when he awoke it would all have been a dream. Besides, he liked looking at her...

Hours later, Delia opened her eyes to find him gazing down at her with a bemused expression on his face. She smiled. "What are you staring at, Tyler Savitch?"

His lips brushed her temple. "My wife."

"Oh, her." She laughed and nestled deeply into his warm embrace, shifting so that her back was to his chest, his arms around her waist

His hands moved up and gently cupped her breasts. "Delia? How awake are you?"

She moved her bottom in a seductive bump and grind. "Do you want to do it again?" she asked with such eagerness that he laughed with delight.

"Yes." He fitted their bodies close together so that she could feel his growing arousal. "Incredible as it is to me, I do. But there's something else I want to do first."

She looked back over her shoulder at him. "Eat?" she said, with even more eagerness.

He laughed again, rubbing noses with her. "Well, we can do that too. Afterward."

She complained, but good-naturedly, when he threw back the furs, exposing their naked bodies to the crisp air. He helped her dress, although they had to search the entire wigwam twice for one of her moccasins. Then he pulled on his shirt, tied on his leggings, and stepped into his moccasins. Snatching one of the furs off the bed, he led her into the night.

The air seemed to crackle with the frost, pinching their skin, and their breath made clouds of vapor around their faces. It was so clear the stars looked close enough to touch. A pair of wolves cried to each other, their howls echoing across the lake.

Ty turned Delia so that she faced north and she gasped with wonder. Bright spears and luminous bands of light shot up from the horizon and fanned across the black sky in rainbow splendor. "Oh, Ty!" she exclaimed. "It's beautiful. But what is it? I mean, how is it happening?"

"The Night Spirit has put on his robe of colored fire," Ty said, then laughed with a helpless shrug. "Actually I don't know what causes it. It's always most dramatic, though, at this time of year."

He stood behind her, wrapping the fur around them both, pulling her close against his chest. They watched the dazzling display in silence for several minutes before Ty spoke again.

"I was so afraid, Delia."

Somehow she knew he wasn't speaking of his fight with the Dreamer. "Of what?" she asked softly.

"Of loving you, in case I lost you. The way I lost my father and mother, and later Assacumbuit and the life I knew here at Norridgewock." There was a tenseness to the way he held her that came from deep within him. "From the very first, I was so damn afraid of falling in love with you, I was like a kid being dragged out to the woodshed for a hiding—I fought it kicking and screaming every step of the way."

She turned so that they were chest to chest and hip to hip within the fur. She rested her hands on his supple buckskin shirt and tilted her face up to his. Through her palms she could feel the low tremor of his beating heart. "Then what happened to make you stop being so afraid?"

A grin curled his mouth. "Nothing. I'm still scared blue at the thought that I might lose you—"

"You won't ever lose—"

He stopped her words with his mouth. "Sssh. Don't say it. You can't know the future. But as terrifying as the thought of losing you is, nothing could be as bad as never having you at all. These last months, seeing you married to Nat, knowing you shared his bed and that I might never have the joy of making love to you again..." He shuddered. "I've never suffered such hell."

Delia started to confess that her marriage to Nat had never been consummated, but then she realized such an admission might have been an embarrassment to Nat. He was dead, but she owed it to him to protect his pride. So instead she said, "You have me now, Ty. For as long as we live."

"Aye, I have you now, Delia. You are my wife, my lover." He rubbed his face in her hair and pulled her tighter against him, melding their bodies. "And even if I am never to have you again after this night, this moment, you will remain wife of my soul. Keeper of my heart."

His words were a balm to her own battered heart. For the first time she believed, truly believed that he loved her. She sighed against his throat. "It doesn't seem real... that we're married."

"It's real. But if it'll make you feel better, I'll marry you again in the Yengi way when we get back to Merrymeeting. Whereupon I will proceed to plant a dozen of my babies in your belly. One at a time, of course—"

"A dozen!" She leaned back against his clasped hands to glare at him. "Tyler Savitch, you'll have me pregnant the rest of my life."

He hugged her. "Um, yes... that's the idea—"

Suddenly a loud scream erupted from one of the longhouses at their backs. There was the sound of running feet and shouting, which set the dogs to barking, turning the village into a cacophony of noise.

Ty's head had flung up and he'd gone stiff in her arms.

"Ty? What's happening?"

Throwing aside the fur, he grasped her hand and started at a run for the longhouse, where the screams were still coming in short, staccato bursts.

"It's Elizabeth Hooker!" he cried out to her over his shoulder.

But Delia could tell that even Ty wasn't prepared for what they found in the lodge. Elizabeth lay on a pile of blood-soaked furs, her white skin stretched as thin as parchment paper over the stark bones of her face. Every few seconds she clutched her stomach and emitted a throat-searing scream.

"God in heaven," Ty breathed, kneeling beside the anguished girl. For a moment he hovered there, doing nothing, and when Delia turned to look at him she saw stark terror on his face.

Elizabeth screamed again and Delia had to clench her fists to keep from screaming along with her. "Oh God, Ty, is she dying?"

"No," he said, suddenly all brisk business as he bent over to examine her. "No, she isn't dying and she's not losing this baby either."

Suddenly the door banged open and the devil appeared on a cloud of sulfurous smoke. Delia's heart almost stopped from pure terror.

Then Ty said something in Abenaki and she realized the apparition was some sort of medicine man with a black-painted face, swinging a perforated bowl that oozed oily, foul-smelling smoke. He knelt beside Ty, shaking a rattle in Elizabeth's face and mumbling an incantation.

Elizabeth's blue-veined lids fluttered open, focusing on the medicine man, and she screamed.

Delia clutched the girl's trembling hand. "Ty, make him go away. He's frightening her."

"No, I need him. He knows more about healing than I could learn in a lifetime." He bracketed Delia's shoulders with his strong hands. "My love, I'm sorry but you're the one who's in the way." He gave her a gentle smile. "If you want to be useful, you can keep us supplied with hot water."

Throughout the rest of the night and the long day that followed, Ty and the Abenaki shaman worked to save Elizabeth's life, while Delia abided their wishes by staying out of the way except when they asked her to fetch more water or rags. For the first time Delia understood something of the courage it took Ty to be a doctor. He seemed to suffer empathetically with Elizabeth's pain and she knew he would take the loss of any patient, no matter how old or sick, bitterly hard.

The sun was just beginning to set again when Ty suddenly appeared before her. He wrapped his arms around her and clung to her, shuddering with exhaustion and the release of long-suppressed emotion.

He sighed into her hair. "She's going to make it, my love."

Tears of relief stung Delia's eyes. "And the baby?"

He laughed shakily. "That little unborn tyke is a fighter. I can't believe the way he's clinging to life. But, Delia—" He stepped back so that he could look down into her face. He smoothed the hair from her brow. "If the baby is to have any chance at all, he's going to have to stay in the womb for at least three more months, and it isn't going to be easy keeping him there."

She clasped the hand that cupped her face. "We can't go home, can we?"

"Not until spring."

The hunter studied the cloven-shaped tracks left by his quarry. They were fresh, for the flattened snow crystals sparkled in the fading winter sunlight. He smiled to himself—the hunt would be over soon and he was anxious to be home.

He picked up his pace, gliding effortlessly across the deep, soft snow on wide, flat oval shoes of bent wood frames and rawhide webbing. He saw where the tracks detoured around a pair of birches that grew six feet apart and knew then that the moose he followed was a bull, and a big one. The animal's antlers had been too wide for it to pass between the trees.

When he came to the shore of a frozen lake, the hunter stopped, concealing himself within a thick stand of snowclad spruces. The ice stretched before him, flat and empty, eerily green in the white winter light. From a distance the man resembled the animal he hunted, for he wore a thick coat of mooseskin and a set of antlers on his head. Holding a birchbark instrument to his lips, he reproduced the deep lowing sound of the bull moose. Then he settled mind and body to wait with the patience and endurance he had learned as a boy.

Now that he was no longer moving, the hunter could feel the belly-shrinking cold. The air was raw and piercing, and in spite of the deerhair stuffing in his moccasins, his feet soon grew numb. Long streamers of clouds flowed in layers across the sky; it would snow again soon. He could smell the snow and feel it in the tight pinching of his nose.

A tree that couldn't take the weight of the ice snapped suddenly with
a
crack that echoed like a rifle shot. It startled
a
snowshoe rabbit, which bounded across the frozen lake, jumping high on his huge hind feet. But the hunter didn't move. He'd been listening for some time now to the moose slogging through the wet drifts, coming his way.

When the moose emerged into the open, he raised his enormous head and sniffed the air. The hunter lifted his short, powerful bow, knocking a cane arrow into the sinew string. The moose turned his head. Man and animal, hunter and hunted, locked eyes.

Tyler Savitch pulled back the bowstring and let the arrow fly.

The arrow, flighted with eagle feathers, flew true. It sliced into the animal's thick neck, and blood from the jugular vein spewed into the air like the blow of a whale. The great animal swayed, sinking onto his foreknees in the deep snow, dying in silence. The hunter threw back his head and sang, thanking the spirits for their gift, and the music seemed to bounce off the sky.

Ty butchered and quartered the animal where it fell, leaving a portion of the entrails and some meat as a gift for the other predatory birds and beasts with which he shared these hunting grounds. He had to carry the meat in pieces the two miles down the trail to where he had stashed his toboggan. He used parfleches—rawhide containers—carrying the heavy packs on his back by a tumpline of coarse bark webbing.

The going was much easier once he got the meat onto the toboggan. Like snowshoes, the toboggan was an Abenaki invention—a sledge made of a board about a foot wide, its front end turned up, which could be dragged by men or dogs across the snow. The toboggan made a swishing sound as it slid through the drifts and the icy pellets squeaked beneath Ty's snowshoes. But in spite of the heavy load he pulled, Ty's pace was swift. He had been away from his wife all day and he missed her.

Coils of smoke rose blue against the sky, smelling of burning spruce. Ty topped a rise and paused to look down on the village spread in the valley below. The thatched roofs of the longhouses were dirty gray against the pure white background. The wigwams, snow-laden cones, resembled white wasp nests.

The dogs' baying announced Ty's arrival and women emerged from the wigwams and lodges to relieve him of hi burden. The meat would be taken to the smokehouse where i would be cured. Part would go into the village's communal stores, but the bulk would go to the clan of families Ty hunted for. The muffle he kept for himself. The fleshy part of the upper lip and nose of the moose was a delicacy reserved for the man who had slayed the great beast.

As he made his way to his own wigwam, Ty passed the bare poles of other lodges that had been stripped of their hide and fur walls. In winter, when food was scarce, many families chose to leave the permanent village and follow the game animals into the snow-laden forest. Because of the pinching cold, everyone, even the dogs, was indoors.

"Delia-girl!" Ty sang out happily, as he unstrapped his snowshoes, whacking them against a pole to knock the packed snow from the webbing. He pulled aside the flap and, ducking low, entered his lodge. "Where are you, woman? I'm cold and tired and starving for a kiss..."

The last of his words faded and the smile dissolved from his face as he realized the wigwam was empty. No doubt she was next door at Assacumbuit's longhouse, visiting with Elizabeth and the baby. Still, he couldn't help feeling disappointed that she wasn't there to greet him, especially since he'd fantasized all afternoon about the taste of her mouth and the feel of her breasts filling his hands. He wanted her.

He laughed at himself. Hell, when
didn't
he want her? The only thing that tore him from her side was the need to hunt for food. If they could have lived on love alone, he wouldn't have left the wigwam at all.

The air inside was warm from the fire and redolent of bay-berry candles and steam from a French kettle that sat on the coals, bubbling with a mush of corn, acorn, and cattail.

As he dropped down on the mats beside the hearth to take off his wet moccasins, Ty scooped up a ladleful of the mush and tipped it to his mouth. His stomach was suddenly reminding him that he'd eaten nothing all day except a small piece of
quitcheraw
—a cake of parched corn sweetened by maple sugar—and he'd probably trekked a good twenty miles all told, most of it dragging the laden toboggan behind him.

He smiled when he saw that Delia had left a birchbark pail of melted snow by the fire so that he would have warm water to wash with on his return. After living alone all of his adult life, this seemed the greatest luxury to Ty, having a wife to anticipate his every need. He was especially blessed with Delia; she seemed to know what he wanted even before he did. He had tried to tell her all this pampering wasn't necessary—he would be the happiest man on earth simply for the joy and excitement she brought him in bed. Her answer, he recalled now with a fond smile, had been to quit being a wooden-headed fool. He felt himself grinning inanely at the mere thought of her. God, but he loved her. Delia, his wife...

A shudder of utter horror passed through him at the memory of that day on Falmouth Neck when she had told him she would make him the best wife ever, and he had rejected her and the love she offered. For the hundredth time he thanked his guardian spirit Bedagi, the
gitche
manitou, and the Christian God as well for giving him a second chance to take this rare and beautiful woman to wife.

His stomach full and his feet warmed, Ty now scowled impatiently at the door, feeling suddenly most neglected. He was feeling ill from a lack of kisses. He mentally counted backward —it had been eight hours since they'd last made love. If they weren't careful, a certain valuable part of his anatomy could atrophy from lack of use.

Ty was up and pacing the wigwam. Damn it, this was serious. Where was she? Surely one of the other women had told her he was back by now. Grumbling another curse, Ty shoved his feet into his now-dry moccasins. He shrugged back into his moosehide coat, picked up a parfleche of the fresh meat, and headed out the door. Obviously he was going to have to go and get her and bring her back to his bed, where she belonged.

On entering the longhouse, Ty was met with an astonishing sight. Assacumbuit, that great, proud warrior, was shuffling in a little dance around the fire, bouncing Elizabeth Hooker's bundled baby in his arms. He was singing, too—a made-up song about a
waligit wasis,
a handsome baby with hair the color of cornsilk, who would grow up to be a tall, strong hunter and warrior, a great sachem of his people. The baby made little oohing sounds of delight, while Assacumbuit's daughter-in-law, Silver Birch, kept her head bent to hide her amusement.

Ty set the parfleche down by the door and entered the lodge quietly, unwilling to disturb this remarkable scene.

Although there were no windows in the longhouse, bars of dust-moted sunlight came through the smoke holes. The lodge was rectangular in shape, fifty feet long and divided into separate living cubicles, but with a paved central fireplace. The smoke from many fires had blackened the rafters. Even for the Abenaki, whose dwellings were more permanent than most of the other eastern tribes, this lodge was fairly old. Both Ty and the Dreamer had lived in it as boys.

Assacumbuit's dance ended with a flourishing jig. He whirled around on his toes... and froze at the sight of his grinning stepson. For the first time in Ty's memory the mighty warrior appeared embarrassed. He actually blushed!

"The brat looked like he needed to burp," Assacumbuit said gruffly.

"Ah, I see," Ty replied, his grin widening. "And were you trying to jiggle it out of him?"

The grand sachem snorted with pretended disgust. "Here, woman, take him." He held out the wriggling bundle to Silver Birch, who put the baby back in his cradleboard, hanging it from a center pole.

"So," Assacumbuit said, "there's been a rumor singing through the village that the Yengi shot with one arrow a moose with antlers big enough to fill a wigwam."

"Um," Ty acknowledged modestly. "There's a parfleche by the door."

Silver Birch exclaimed with delight as she unwrapped the meat. "Look, Father-in-law, he has brought us the muffle!" She turned grateful eyes on Ty. "But you must take it back with you. It is the hunter's reward."

"Nevertheless we accept the generous gift," Assacumbuit put in quickly and Ty hid a smile. The old warrior was known to trade a pair of beaver hides for the delicacy, which when made into a stew had a flavor of the sweetest spring chicken.

Crooning nonsense words, Ty dangled a string of painted bone dice in front of the baby, who stared back at him with unblinking gray eyes.

Every time he looked at this child, Tyler Savitch the physician was struck anew by the miracle of life. Five months ago, when he had seen Elizabeth Hooker tossing and screaming in a pile of blood-soaked furs, he had been struck with horror, assailed by the memory of his dying mother. If Delia hadn't been watching him with those big golden eyes, so full of love and faith, he might have given in to his fear. But he couldn't bear the thought of failing Delia, and so he had fought for Elizabeth and her baby as if he could defeat death through willpower alone.

The baby's hold on life had been tenuous throughout the following three months, until his early birth in January. It had been impossible for Elizabeth to leave her bed, let alone make the arduous journey back to Merrymeeting. Now they would have to wait until the warmer weather, when mother and baby would both be strong enough to travel.

Ty had spent two weeks tracking down the old timber beast, Increase Spoon, to have him take a message back to Merrymeeting for Caleb and the others, letting them know that both women were alive but that they wouldn't be home until spring. He and Delia both fretted over Nat's orphaned daughters, but they knew Anne Bishop would care for the girls until they returned. Ty didn't think Nat had any relatives, except for a distant cousin in England, and so he and Delia planned to adopt the girls as soon as they got back to Merrymeeting.

Ty suddenly became aware that all his cooing and rattling was a source of considerable amusement to his father. Laughing, he tossed the dice string in the air, catching it one-handed, then dropped down beside Assacumbuit by the hearth. An elk intestine, stuffed with meat, hung from a forked stick over the fire, filling the lodge with the sizzle of splashing fat and the aroma of bubbling grease.

Silver Birch, the Dreamer's pregnant wife, watched Ty from beneath shyly lowered lids, her hands neglecting her work. She had been tanning a deerhide by rubbing it with a mixture of brains, elm bark, and pureed liver. Her mother, blind and stooped with age, sat beside her, bent over a stump mortar, grinding corn. Molsemis, Assacumbuit's five-year-old grandson, played with a miniature bow and arrow, shooting at a target painted on the far wall. There was no sign of Delia or Elizabeth.

"Where are my women?" Ty asked casually, although inwardly he was a little alarmed. He had been sure he would find Delia within Assacumbuit's lodge, gossiping with Elizabeth and fussing over the baby.

Assacumbuit shook a gambling bowl up and down lazily, rattling the dice, no doubt hoping to entice Ty into a game, something which Ty fully intended to avoid since he always lost.

"Ice fishing," the old man said.

Ty's brows quirked up. "Elizabeth as well?"

"Ai.
Your
lusifee
thought the fresh air would be good for her." The baby in the cradleboard above their heads let out a loud gurgle. The sachem glanced up, his black eyes as warm as glowing coals. "He's a fine boy. You ought to take the
awakon
Elizabeth as your second wife." Ty had bought Elizabeth from her captor for five beaver hides, so Assacumbuit considered the girl Ty's slave.

Ty laughed at the old man's blatant attempt to acquire another grandson. "Haven't we been through all this several times? Elizabeth already has a perfectly good husband. And Delia would wrap my innards around the torture pole if I so much as
thought
about taking a second wife."