LeClerc 01 - Autumn Ecstasy (9 page)

Carrying a bowl of fresh water back to the bed, Linsey placed her hand against his smooth cheek, hoping for a noticeable drop in his temperature. She tried to swallow her disappointment when his skin felt as hot as ever.

With a sigh, Bear turned his face into the inviting coolness of her hand, trapping it between his cheek and the bed. Already his thick black hair had lost some of its glossy luster, as if the fever was draining the vitality from it. Linsey stared at his hair rather than the distorted skin now clearly in view. Hesitantly, her gaze dropped, and for the first time she really looked at his scars.

They began at his hairline above his ear, one scar joined at his cheek by a second and then a third near his jaw. They were evenly spaced, parallel scars barely missing the edge of his eye and the corner of his mouth. The surrounding skin was almost mockingly smooth.

It is only skin and bone; it can not harm you.
As she studied his face, his words seemed to whisper through the room.
Only skin and hone … can not harm.

“And an overactive imagination,” Linsey muttered to herself with disgust. The scars were not nearly as terrifying as her overwrought mind had made them.

Linsey felt pity for his pain and suffering, but it didn’t begin to compare with the shame she felt at herself. She had been so noble, helping him when he was sick. Yet she had ignored a part of him that suffered all the more because of its damage. The scars were probably extremely sensitive to the heat of the fever. It was quite simply a face, and she had treated it as if it were something contagious.

“Forgive me, I’m so sorry,” she whispered to the unconscious man. “I’ve been so selfish.”

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she lifted her free hand and hesitantly traced the outline of his firm lips, delighted that the scars did not touch their perfection. The heat radiated against her skin, and her guilt soared. How could she have ignored this side of his face? He had shown nothing but kindness and thoughtfulness to her, even going out this morning to get the dress when he already showed signs of being sick.

“Konah?” Bear whispered through dry, cracked lips. “Konah
M’tuk o hee?”
He turned his cheek into the coolness of her hand.

“Bear?” Linsey called gently. “I don’t understand you. Please, speak English.”

“Snow?”

Her brow furled in puzzlement. “The blizzard has stopped, but there’s several feet of snow on the ground.”

“My Snow,” he sighed, trying to wet his lips with his tongue. “Water, Snow —” A heaving cough racked painfully through his body.

Still confused by his reference to snow, Linsey stood, pulled her hand free and filled a cup with water. She lifted his head with one hand and held the cup to his mouth.

The water felt cool in his mouth, and his heated body cried for the moisture. Still held by the delirium, Bear tried to swallow and choked, knocking the cup from her hand and spilling the water over his chest. He began to shake violently as the icy liquid touched his skin.

Linsey backed away, growing terrified as the choking grew worse. When she began to think he’d never breathe again, he stopped coughing, falling helplessly back onto the bed.

She saw the stain darkening the buckskin shirt and knew she would have to get it off of him. He was already so sick. He could not be allowed to stay in the wet shirt.

“Bear, you have to help me,” she explained as her shaking hands unlaced the thong that closed the front of the shirt.

She tried pulling the shirt up, but his weight held it firmly in place. “Bear, sit up!” she ordered in a gruff voice that she hoped would penetrate his daze.

“Snow?”

“Sit up!” If he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, cooperate, there was no way she could do it by herself short of cutting it from him.

“Grouchy Snow,” he whispered in a teasing voice. “Always in a hurry to get my clothes off!”

“So Snow is a woman,” Linsey muttered as she pulled and tugged, hoping to get him upright. “I sure don’t know why she’d be in a hurry to undress you.”

After she got him sitting up, his fumblings to help her were more of a hindrance. Finally, in spite of his aid, Linsey managed to awkwardly pull the shirt over his head.

“Konah, my wife,” he sighed, wrapping a massive arm around Linsey’s waist and resting his head against her breasts.

“Wife?” Linsey’s movements stopped abruptly. “Snow is your wife?”

He nuzzled against her breasts, his hand dropping down her back to caress rounded slopes. Linsey tried to push his head away from her breasts with one hand and stop his gentle touches with the other.

“How many hands do you have, anyway?” she questioned when she was unsuccessful in her attempt to catch his wandering hand.

“So long since we’ve loved,” he mumbled, the delirium teasing his mind with long-ago memories. His hand slipped to the bare skin of her leg and began slowly creeping upward.

“Bear, stop!” Linsey gave up trying to move his head and reached for the hand nearing the apex of her thighs. “I’m not your Snow!”

“So long … “ His voice trailed off into indistinct murmurs that Linsey realized must be Shawnee. He held her firmly but gently. A tender steel trap.

A startled squeal left her lips when his hand reached its goal. At the same time his lips found the bud of her breast. Even through the dress, Linsey felt her nipple harden to the unfamiliar, exciting tug of his lips.

“So warm.”

“Stop!”

Linsey tried to squirm within his grasp, hoping to dislodge his hand … or mouth … or both. She was astonished by her body’s response to his touch.

“No, Bear, you must stop.”

“Come to bed, my wife.”

“I’m not your wife!”

His caresses were awakening her body to exciting sensations she never knew existed. A warmth filled her, coursing like liquid fire through her veins, wanting to burst free.

Bear’s mouth left her breast, nuzzling its way down to her stomach. “The babe,” he whispered reverently. “Our babe.”

“Baby?” Linsey ceased struggling, her heart hammering an unnatural beat. “A baby?”

A gentle smile crossed his face as he laid his scarred cheek against her flat stomach. “We will raise enough little warriors to make their grandfathers proud. Our children will know the best of both worlds, my Snow: the dignity and pride of their mother’s people, the elegance and knowledge of their father’s. Deeply loved by their parents, could any child ask for more?”

Taking advantage of her sudden lack of resistance, Bear’s hand slipped between her thighs to caress her rounded bottom. He lightly rubbed his scarred cheek against her abdomen, and Linsey knew it was a remembered response to a befogged mind. Sometime in his past he had rested his head against a swollen belly that held his growing child.

Linsey stroked his hair, offering comfort. Her eyes brimmed with unreleased tears. What secrets in his past tormented his present? He had deeper scars than the visible ones. Without being told, she knew that Snow and their child were dead. She had no doubt that if Snow still lived, Bear would be with her. The depth of love in his voice told Linsey that only death could have separated them.

Carefully, Linsey tried to dislodge his caressing hand. She knew that this was not an attempt at rape. His mind was in another place, another time. He was loving Snow. He was caressing the mother of his child, not the strange woman he had found in his cabin the night before.

“Don’t leave!” His voice broke with anguish as he clutched her painfully to him. “So alone … not again.”

Deep, rattling coughs rumbled through his massive frame, and he abruptly released her. Stumbling backward at the sudden freedom, Linsey watched him attempt to breathe. She was relieved to be free … and yet, her body tingled where he had touched. Her breasts throbbed for more of his exciting kisses.

When the coughing eased, Bear’s chin dropped to his chest while deep shudders made his big body tremble like a leaf in the wind. He slowly raised his head, his dark eyes meeting hers … eyes filled with a haunting pain. Linsey realized that for the moment he was once again lucid.

“She’s gone, she and the babe. I wasn’t there when they needed me.” His gaze left her, his eyes turning toward the fire, hi its gentle glow, Linsey saw a tear streak down his cheek. “I failed them.”

Whoever she had been, Snow was still very much loved by this gentle giant. Feeling his pain and grief, Linsey briefly envied Snow, wondering what it would be like to be so loved.

With a deep sigh, Bear fell back onto the bed. His eyes drifted close, the tear a silver memory on his cheek.

As she approached the bed, Linsey wondered at her lack of fear. If he had not started coughing, he could have easily raped her, never remembering the deed. She knew he would have been gentle with her. After all, he would have been loving his Snow again. For a momentary flash of time, Linsey regretted not knowing the experience of his love.

“What kind of a woman are you, Linsey Marie Mac Adams?” she berated herself. She had been physically stimulated by a man that only moments earlier she had thought of as some kind of a monster. She had enjoyed the caresses he had thought he was giving to his wife, a woman he deeply loved. And for a brief time, she had envied the woman — a woman who in death still retained his love.

Shaking herself out of her thoughts, Linsey called his name. When there was no response, she sighed and reached for the tangled furs. It was then that she looked at his massive chest. It was heavily muscled and thickly covered with crisp, curling hair.

And more badly scarred than his face.

The three scars that ended abruptly at his jaw started again just above the middle of his chest. Only here there were four lines that became five farther down his stomach. They continued on an angle from left to right, slashing down his body, turning into six scars where they disappeared beneath the pants low on his narrow hips.

“Ach mon, what have ye done?” she whispered, unconsciously using the long familiar brogue her father had brought with him from his native Scotland so many years earlier.

There were four newer marks slashing across the scars. Not nearly as deep as the older scars, they still showed signs of having bled. With a pang of regret, Linsey realized they were from her fingernails.

The incoherent ramblings of the man on the bed snapped her out of her shocked trance, and she quickly covered him with the furs. She turned and stumbled to the table, her trembling legs unable to support her slight weight. She sat down, looked at the fire and vaguely realized it needed another log, but her hands were shaking so much she knew she wouldn’t be able to put a log in without risking burning herself.

Her reaction to Bear mystified her. She had never responded to any of her many escorts in Philadelphia with such abandon. How could she feel repulsion, pity and attraction all at the same time?

Across the room Bear rested quietly. The only sound in the cabin was the crackling of the fire, its light throwing a golden glow over the room and the anguished young woman who stared hypnotically into it.

Bear’s feverish mind wove in and out of delirium, meshing reality and dreams as the long night slowly passed. The nightmares of past tragedies taunted him cruelly, memories of things never forgotten.

Linsey forgot time as she endlessly sponged him. She carefully tended the left side of his face and extended the baths down his chest. She felt reluctant, at first, to touch him — somehow it seemed too intimate even in its innocence — but as dawn approached, she was no longer hesitant. Taking special care in the areas around the scars, she worried that they were more sensitive than the surrounding skin and that she might inadvertently cause him pain.

Moving like someone older than time, she walked back to the fire to replace the warmed water. Linsey sat down, her head cradled on her folded arms. It had been a long night, and still Bear’s fever raged. She fought sleep, knowing she must stay awake, but exhaustion was taking its toll, making her movements slow and clumsy.

“Autumn Fire?”

Linsey raised her head. The sound had been so soft she was not sure if she had heard it or imagined it. Her eyes met his, and for the first time in hours his dark, clouded gaze was rational.

“Bear?” Linsey stumbled in her haste to get up, tripping over the chair and sending it crashing backward.

“Water?” A slight smile crossed his face as he watched her awkwardly hurry to do his bidding. The smile vanished when she reached the bed and he saw the dark circles beneath her eyes and the evidence of the long night.

Remembering the last time he had tried to drink, Linsey dipped a clean rag into a fresh pail of water. She held the cloth to his mouth, dampening his lips and letting him suck the liquid from it. She pushed the tangled hair from his face, unconsciously resting her hand on the scarred cheek to check the temperature. His skin was still hot, but she thought, or maybe just hoped, it was slightly cooler than it had been.

“You are tired, Autumn Fire,” he whispered in a deep, gravelly voice, very aware of where her hand rested.

Linsey smiled softly at him. “I think you’ve been making up for all those healthy years.”