Cheyenne Captive (18 page)

She blushed in spite of herself. “It’s a type of ladies’ undergarment, sort of like pants with lace on them, and they show under a shorter than usual skirt.”

He looked so serious that Summer had to smile. “
Bloomers’ seems a strange name for ladies’ undergarments.”

“They are named for Amelia Bloomer, the famous suffragette, and have become the badge of protest by those of us who fight for women’s rights!” Summer felt a trace of sadness now as she remembered the scene that night at the supper table, her father raging as always, her bratty little sister, Angela, looking pleased and smug that Summer was in trouble. Summer’s twin brother, David, had tried to come to her defense and been shouted down.

Her mother had said nothing as always, but Summer sensed that she was secretly amused and delighted at Summer’s defiance. Priscilla Van Schuyler hardly ever said anything anymore, going about lost in a fog of sherry and laudanum. She had always been almost a remote stranger to all the children. Priscilla seemed to prefer her self-induced haze, almost as if living in the real world hurt too much.

“And then what happened, Summer?” Iron Knife’s voice brought her back to the present.

“That’s about it, I’m afraid.” She shrugged. “He put me and my maid, Mrs. O’Malley, on a train to St. Joe and we came the rest of the way by stage. He said I could come home in six months or a year, when people in Boston quit laughing at our family. I bought Mrs. O’Malley a good bottle of sherry. Being Irish, she’s quite fond of a wee nip. When she passed out, I grabbed a bag and ran. You know the rest of it.”

“And now you will never go back to Boston in six months or even six years,” he whispered, snuggling her closer to him.

“No, I will stay here forever,” she agreed, putting her face against the hard muscles of his great chest and looking toward the camp.

It was mostly quiet now, for the hour was late, but she could see the great campfire and hear the drumbeat pounding for the few remaining dancers.

Somewhere, far away, a coyote howled in the autumn air and the stars hung like bits of glass in the velvet night. It was very warm for early fall, she thought as she smelled the crushed grass beneath them and held her beloved close. In all the world, there was noplace she would rather be tonight; no one she would rather be with.

“Summer, what are you thinking?” His breath was warm on her ear. “Are you regretting getting on that stage? Regretting me?”

“Never!” she declared. “Never!” As if to reinforce her words, she turned her face up to his and he kissed her closed eyelids ever so gently and then moved his lips down her face to her mouth. She opened willingly as he caressed its depths with his own and then she probed the velvet of his mouth deeply even as his manhood had probed the first time he took her.

His tongue went to flick the inside of her ear and she shivered uncontrollably. “Do you like that, Little One? Tonight, I am going to teach you many things and take a long, long time to love you!”

She felt a surge of eager wetness between her thighs and reached out to clasp his manhood with her hand.

“Not yet!” He pulled away from her. “After all, we have all night and there is more to it than that!”

“You’re right. We really do have all the time in the world,” she gasped. She stood, and looking around to see that they were alone, pulled the. deerskin shift off over her head. She stood there naked in the warm moonlight, partially covered by her long, blond hair hanging free almost to her hips. The moonlight gleamed on her proud, jutting breasts, but her flat belly shone concave and shadowy as did the soft place below.

He didn’t move from his place against the tree but she felt his hungry gaze on her body. “You were so eager to dance before,” he whispered. “Dance for me now—me alone now that no other man can see you!”

“Here? Now?”

“Yes, now!” he ordered. “You are, after all, my captive, my plaything. Entertain me now by dancing!”

Summer hesitated a long moment, listening to the steady beat of the far-off drums and then the rhythm became her pulse and she began to dance. In her imagination, she was a harem slave girl, ordered to please her master and, instinctively, she knew how.

There on a hillside in the moonlight she danced naked and unashamed, writhing and turning to the distant beat. She thrust her inviting breasts at him, moved her hands slowly down her thighs to tantalize him, sending a message of hot, savage blood calling out to his. Civilization was only a thin veneer she had stripped away with her clothing. Deep down, she was as savage as her mother’s English ancestors, dancing a ritual mating dance in the heart of a dark, Druid forest.

Rhythmically, she moved, swinging her hips at him, shaking her long hair so that it caught the silvery gleam of the moon, luring a man with her ripe body.

She might be his captive but she could enslave any man, and she knew it as she heard him breathe heavier. She danced closer, cupping her hands over her breasts, then reaching for him. Sweat broke out on his forehead as she twisted and writhed before him.

“Now, you dance with me,” she urged, holding out her hands to him. He stood slowly, not taking his eyes from her body. Pulling off the shirt and leggings, he stood before her clad only in a brief loincloth.

Taking his hand, she pulled him out of the shadows and almost hypnotically he began to move to the slow drumbeat.

“I want to see your body as you see mine,” she whispered and moved close to pull away the loincloth and tossed it to one side. “ Now, dance with me!”

They danced without touching, only caressing each other’s body with their eyes. She reveled in the sight of his nakedness, his broad shoulders, narrow hips, and prominent manhood. He wore nothing but the gleaming earring and the eagle bone whistle. Summer gloried in his powerful, rippling muscles and the way his maleness paid tribute to the eroticism of her moves. It was a primitive mating ritual and she danced with abandon, making him hunger for her as she did for him. She knew she would only be sated when his thrusting dagger filled her aching void.

Reaching out to touch his erect hardness, she stepped backward out of his reach as he grabbed for her. She danced closer, touching his hard nipples and brushing her fingers lightly across the sun dance scars.

“Enough! I can’t stand any more!” He jerked her to him roughly and tangled one hand in her hair. He crushed her against him and his mouth forced itself inside hers.

She dug her nails in his chest and his other hand went to her small bottom and pulled her even closer. His hardness thrust at her belly and he tried to lift her from her feet so he could take her standing. But she guessed his intent and broke away from him, laughing coquettishly as she ran from him. “I think I have changed my mind!” she laughed as she ran.

But he ran after her, caught her, whirled her around. “You will not tease me like that!” he ordered, kissing her wildly. “I will have you now if I have to take you by force!”

“I don’t think you can!” She struggled, but not too hard. Her blood ran hot tonight and she wanted to be taken violently and conquered while she fought him.

She didn’t fight long. With his superior strength, he lifted her clear off the ground and his lips found the hollow of her throat and then, as she arched backward over his arms, his mouth went to her breasts. She could not stop from crying out at the feel of that hot, moist caress.

Gradually, they both slid to the ground and she clasped his head to her nipple as she felt the soft cushion of the grass beneath her. She gasped in pleasure as his mouth went to her navel and then down one thigh. She could feel his hands forcing her thighs apart.

“I must kiss the font of all my pleasure,” she heard him whisper as his breath felt warm against the triangle at the top of her legs.

“You shouldn’t!” she protested. “You really shouldn’t kiss me there!” She was still uneasy with the idea and tried to pull away from him. But she was helpless on her back against his superior strength as he spread her legs.

“Put your hands behind your head!” he ordered harshly. “You are my captive and I will do as I will with you and you will not try to stop me!”

Numbly, she obeyed, knowing he could force her obedience by sheer strength and she put her hands above her head and let him do as he would. When his warm lips touched her most secret place, she whimpered and her hands gripped the grass above her head and she could not stop her eager body from arching itself against the moistness of his searching mouth.

She felt him forcing her thighs even further apart and she forgot about everything but the sensation of the blade of his warm tongue sliding home in her scabbard. She was one quivering nerve as she gave in to the feel of his lips and she had to bite her own to keep back the moan of satisfaction and excitement as she came. It seemed a long time that she drifted in an almost unconscious state and when she finally opened her eyes, he was looking down.

“Have I satisfied you, Little One?”

She was embarrassed. “You know you have.”

“I want to hear you say it,” he demanded.

“Yes!” She almost screamed it. “You have more than satisfied me, you have made me writhe in hunger like I never knew existed and then sated me!”

As he looked down into her eyes she could see the veins standing out in his neck and feel the unfulfilled throbbing with each heartbeat of his maleness against her leg.

Summer reached up to touch one of his hard nipples and he gasped.

“And now, I will satisfy you!” she declared and her small teeth lightly bit his chest.

“You are a yellow-haired witch,” he moaned aloud. “A dream creature like the Mihn, pulling men under in the bottomless lakes!”

“Then relax and enjoy being taken to your doom,” she whispered. “You may have had many women, but none of them can have loved you with the passion I am going to give you!”

She sat up and pushed him down onto his back, and then she leaned over and kissed both edges of his mouth. Her hair trailed across him as she sat up and stroked his scarred face and chest with feather-light touches of her fingers.

His hands came up, trying to pull her down on his chest but she shook them off. “No,” she protested, “this time you are the slave and must lie there and let me do as I will with you.”

Obediently, he slid his hands to his sides as he humored her. But she felt him tremble all over with the effort of keeping his hands off her. She knew that no doubt those same big hands had broken men’s backs, strangled the life from those far more powerful than she. Summer felt heady with the power of her sexuality, heady with the way she could control this giant, dominant male.

Her lips caressed the hard, flat belly and he stirred restlessly.

“Be still!” she ordered. “I’m not through. I’m going to make you ache with wanting me, until you think you can’t stand it anymore!”

“I’ve passed that point!” He sounded tense.

“But I haven’t made you want me as much as I intend to,” she whispered as her mouth moved down his taut belly. The male scent of him excited her and she did something she would have thought almost unthinkable only a few minutes before: she kissed his manhood.

Summer was suddenly transported back in time and she was a priestess in old Egypt, worshiping at the shrine of the eternal male phallus. What she did, she did instinctively now that she had been freed from her straitlaced Victorian upbringing. This was her man and it was her right to love him as she chose and there was nothing right or wrong. The female in her seemed to know exactly what to do although she had been so lately a virgin.

Her mouth caressed him, teasing him with her warm tongue, tasting the saltiness of him. He was hers now—all hers, for she had kissed all his body.

He began to thrust upward with his strong hips, still keeping his hands clenched on the grass as she had ordered.

“Please, Summer!” he gasped. “I can’t take any more of this. Please—!”

And with that plea, she gripped his thighs and took him deep in her mouth, feeling his seed surge as he thrust upward and his hands came up to grasp her face to his groin.

For a long moment, he surged and she tasted the wonder of the slightly salty lifeseed and she had never loved him so much.

Finally, he lay still, breathing heavily and she sat up and looked down at him, knowing no other woman had ever given him so much pleasure.

He rose on one elbow and pulled her up to lie beside him and he looked with tenderness into her face. “You are truly magic!” he murmured, kissing her hair. “How can a virgin make such a love slave of a man? You have to be bewitched, for you hold my heart hostage.”

“No, I am the captive, remember? And you have taught me love in a way I never even knew existed.”

He pulled her to him in an embrace that crushed her. “I will never let you go even if you want to leave! I swear I have never made love like this to another woman; never even knew it could be so good! I have given you my
tasoom
, the deepest, most tender part of my heart. I don’t think I could let you go, no matter what!”

“I will never leave you, my dearest,” she promised, kissing the hard planes of his face. “You must learn to trust me for I will never, never hurt you!”