Nan Ryan (28 page)

Diane was tempted to ask how he had lost his innocence if he wasn’t allowed to court the young girls. She didn’t dare. But, then, she didn’t have to.

Suddenly Golden Star was amazingly frank. “In our village lived a lonely woman twice widowed. She was a Sioux by birth, tall, straight-backed, and as pretty as any woman I’ve ever seen. Her name was After-the-Summer-Rain; she kept to herself much of the time and seemed not to care what gossip was spread about her.”

Golden Star fell silent, closed her eyes, and Diane, dying to hear more, was tempted to shake her. Hardly daring to breathe, she waited, hoping Golden Star wouldn’t forget what she was talking about.

The papery-thin lids remaining closed over the black eyes, Golden Star added, “Summer-Rain was twenty-seven at the time. Twelve years older than Starkeeper and knew better.” Again she stopped speaking.

“Knew better?” Diane prompted.

“The Sioux woman lured Starkeeper to her tipi on his first night at home. After that they were together every night in her lodge.” The old woman’s eyes opened. “Summer-Rain fell in love with him, wanted to take him as her third husband.”

Diane made a face. “When he was only fifteen?”

“Then. And after he became a man. And even now.”

“After-the-Summer-Rain still lives here at Wind River?” Diane suddenly experienced a sharp jolt of jealousy.

Golden Star nodded. “The Sioux woman lives alone in the same lodge where Starkeeper so rapidly grew up that fifteenth summer.”

Diane swallowed hard. “Do they—does Starkeeper— what I mean, is …” Her words trailed off.

The old woman shrugged narrow shoulders. “Who knows?”

Diane told herself she didn’t care. Didn’t give a fig if Starkeeper had gone straight to After-the-Summer-Rain’s lodge and had been staying there the entire time they had been at Wind River. If he was spending his nights and days in bed with a woman forty-seven years old, then it was revolting testimony to what an overly sexual animal he was! Imagining the lean bronzed Starkeeper making love to an aging, unattractive gray-haired woman filled Diane with disgust.

She first blinked in confusion, then narrowed her violet eyes in resentment when, on their way back to the tipi, Golden Star pointed to a tall, strikingly attractive woman with silky black hair falling past her waist and voluptuous curves who stood laughing in the sun.

“Summer-Rain,” said Golden Star.

Diane felt sick.

She quickly shook her head no when Golden Star asked if she’d like to meet the Sioux woman. Diane fretted all afternoon and wondered how any woman that old could look that young. Now it was all too easy to imagine Starkeeper and Summer-Rain together, and Diane was tortured with mental images of the beautiful Sioux woman and the handsome Shoshoni man.

Restless, troubled, Diane left Golden Star napping and went for a stroll in the middle of that hot afternoon. She had no destination in mind. In the distance, on an open quadrangle beside the agency buildings, she saw a small crowd gathered. There were women among the men, and they were laughing and talking, so Diane sauntered forward to investigate.

When she was approximately thirty yards away, she saw that a handful of men were engaged in a tomahawk-throwing contest. A large bull’s-eye was painted on the side of an agency building. Several contestants had already had their turn. A tall, lean man stepped into position to have a go, and Diane’s heart skipped a beat, then raced.

Starkeeper stood before the admiring crowd, a sharp tomahawk in his right hand. He wore a pair of snow white leggings that clung to his lean flanks and long legs like a second skin. His naked torso and deeply clefted back and long, leanly muscled arms had been well oiled and shone like bronze satin in the sunlight. His silver-streaked raven hair was plaited in two shiny braids, the braids’ tips bound with soft white leather strips that brushed his shoulders. The wide silver bracelet flashed on his right wrist.

All eyes clung to the tall, magnificent man as he lifted the hatchet and threw it with perfect precision and power, hitting the bull’s-eye dead center. While the crowd of admirers, including the pretty Summer-Rain, clapped and called his name, Starkeeper stood there godlike in the brilliant sunlight. Diane was so awed by his masculine beauty she felt something akin to worship. Felt as if she should fall to her knees before such a supreme being.

When she could again breathe and think and move, she whirled and hurried away. But she couldn’t get the vision of him out of her mind. All afternoon and on into the late evening she kept seeing that gleaming naked torso, those long legs encased in white leather, that sure, skilled hand wielding the sharp-bladed tomahawk.

What had seemed so spiritual at the time became more worldly as Diane continued to think about Starkeeper. He was not a beautiful, untouchable god. He was a handsome, accessible man.

“I think I’ll take a walk,” Diane casually announced to Golden Star at sunset.

She looked the village over for Starkeeper and couldn’t find him. But she felt a great sense of relief when she spotted After-the-Summer-Rain talking with other women of the village on the agency porch.

Diane turned and headed directly to Starkeeper’s tipi. She had never been there, but she knew where it was. She hurried, anxious to get there, feeling she couldn’t wait one more second to see him. The last traces of pastel light remained behind the peaks of the Wind River Range when Diane reached Starkeeper’s lodge. She stood before the closed flap of his tipi.

Diane didn’t call out to him. She was afraid he wouldn’t invite her inside. And she had to see him. She pulled back the lowered flap, ducked in, and let it fall back into place. A flickering fire burned at the tipi’s center.

Starkeeper lay stretched out on his bed across the tipi, his hands folded beneath his head. He still wore the tight white leather leggings. His smooth bronzed chest still gleamed with oil. His raven hair was still braided and dressed with white leather bindings.

He slowly turned his head and looked at her. In his dark eyes was a strange, unsettling expression, one she’d seen before in the eyes of the Redman. He appeared both dangerous and vulnerable. The combination was overpowering.

Starkeeper looked at the incredibly beautiful young woman standing there staring at him, the white eyelet blouse falling off one pale, delicate shoulder, her raven hair shimmering in the firelight. He knew exactly what was going through her mind. She was curious, just like all the other beautiful white women he had known. That’s why she had come here. She was wondering how would it be to make love with an oiled, hatchet-throwing savage.

He wanted her. Wanted her so badly he was almost ill with desire, but still, he hoped that she would prove him wrong. That she would turn him down. Prayed she would say no.

Starkeeper’s flat voice was soft when he said, “Go now, Beauty. You still have not learned who I am. Go back to Golden Star. You’re not safe here with me this night.”

Diane felt her knees go weak. The pulse in her bare throat throbbed. It was unforgivable, it was foolish, it was wrong, but she was overwhelmingly attracted to this paradoxical man.

Nervously she said, “What if I don’t want to be safe this night?”

“Then come here.”

Chapter 26

For a minute Diane didn’t move. She couldn’t.

She began to shiver, although it was so warm inside the firelit lodge Starkeeper had rolled up the tipi’s back panel to admit the cool fresh air.

It wasn’t the chill of the night that caused Diane to tremble.

It was emotion. Powerful, potent emotion.

Her fear of and fascination with the dark, lean man lying in the firelight was so compelling Diane felt numb, incapacitated. She couldn’t go to him, but neither could she retreat. Paralyzed by an odd mixture of anxiety and anticipation, she stood there transfixed. Trembling.

Starkeeper silently stared at her.

As intense as the physical attraction was between them and as much as he wanted to make love to her, he already felt a sad sense of loss. The pale beauty standing across the tipi from him was about to become interchangeable with dozens of other restless, spoiled, thrill-seeking white women he’d held in his arms.

How naive he still was. How childlike. How incredibly foolish he’d been to hold out any hope that she might be different.

Starkeeper was annoyed by the painful squeezing of his heart. How absurd he was to feel a sense of loss over something he’d never had. Could never have.

His chiseled face abruptly hardened, and so did his heart.

The dark eyes that were fixed on Diane changed as well. Beneath the lazy lids those eyes began to smolder with sexual heat as he languidly examined the lush, slender curves appealingly outlined beneath the white blouse and skirt.

This ivory-skinned beauty wanted a naked savage to make fierce love to her. Well, so be it. He was her man. He’d give her what she’d come for. And more. By the time she sneaked from out of his tipi in the wee hours of the morning, she would feel both contentedly satiated and brutally violated.

Exactly what she wanted.

“Beauty,” Starkeeper said, continuing to lie there stretched out on his back, “come here. Come to me.”

“Yes … I … all right,” Diane managed, and was relieved to find that her legs would work, that she could walk after all.

That short walk seemed like a very long one to Diane as she made her way across the firelit tipi to the dark, reclining man. Finally she reached him. She swallowed with great difficulty and stood there above, unsure what to do next. Uneasily but eagerly she waited for him to rise. She expected him to leap to his feet and take her forcefully in his arms. Felt certain that those cruel, sensual lips would cover hers in a kiss of ruthless passion.

It didn’t happen.

Starkeeper stayed just as he was, lying there below her, his sultry dark eyes touching her with a force so powerful she could feel her skin flushing with warmth. At last his left hand leisurely came out from beneath his head and moved to the hem of her white eyelet skirt.

Diane held her breath as he casually reached up under the skirt, wrapping his long tanned fingers possessively around her slender ankle.

“Beauty, I’m not clean,” he said in that low, flat voice as his hand glided up over the curve of her shapely calf to the dimpled back of her knee. “I haven’t bathed or washed up since you saw me this afternoon at the tomahawk throwing.”

Diane foolishly felt the need to deny she’d been there. “Tomahawk-throwing contest?” Her voice sounded unusually shrill. “I have no idea what you’re—”

“Yes, you do,” he coolly interrupted. “You were there this afternoon. You saw me throw the hatchet. Saw me split the bull’s-eye. You heard the crowd applaud me.” His hand tightened its grip on the back of her knee. “That’s when you decided to come to me.”

Those black, burning eyes challenged her to contradict him. She didn’t. It was the truth. He had stood there in the sunlight in those tight white leggings with his bronzed chest and back and long arms gleaming with oil, and his overpowering maleness had been her final undoing.

“Yes,” she admitted, facing the truth for the first time. “I knew then. I watched you, and I knew I would come here.”

“I knew as well,” he said with calm authority. “I should have cleaned up for you. If you’ll wait, I’ll go wash.…”

“No,” she murmured, helplessly beguiled by the sight of his bare bronzed chest and long, muscled arms gleaming with the residue of oil. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care if you’re not clean.”

His fingers stroking the sensitive bend of her knee, Starkeeper finally rolled up into a sitting position. He turned slightly, and his right hand joined his left beneath her white skirt. Diane sighed when she felt the coolness of his wide silver bracelet graze the bare flesh of her leg.

With both hands wrapped around the backs of her knees, Starkeeper tipped his head back, looked up at her, and said softly, “Beauty, if I make love to you, then you’ll be dirty, too. Are you sure you want that?”

He waited, supposing that the beautiful but equally astute woman would immediately grasp the double meaning of his question. Starkeeper wasn’t speaking merely of the sweat and oil and semen his body would leave on hers, in hers. He was asking her if afterward she would feel unclean for making love to him.

For making love with an Indian.

He hoped she would say no, hoped she would assure him that his loving wouldn’t make her dirty. That neither of them was or would be dirty. That there was nothing the least bit profane about the two of them making love.

Unfortunately Diane was much too nervous and excited to comprehend his meaning. She knew only that she was tingling with the sweet anticipation of being in his arms and she didn’t care about the oil and perspiration that covered those arms, that smooth bronzed chest. She knew nothing else but that she wanted to be held and loved by him. She wanted to know nothing else.

“I don’t care,” she murmured throatily, “how dirty you are. I don’t care how dirty you make me.”

After she said those words to him, Diane’s violet eyes dreamily darkened to purple, and her heavily lashed lids slipped closed. So she didn’t see the expression of hurt that fleetingly clouded Starkeeper’s dark eyes or the flash of cold fury that replaced it.