Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (42 page)

   
Her stomach gave a sudden growl and she reached out for a handful of the berries, stuffing them greedily in her mouth. “I haven’t eaten since I grabbed some wild persimmons yesterday.”

   
“Try the mushrooms. They’re almost like meat—at least the chewiness makes it seem that way,” he said between mouthfuls.

   
They shared the repast, making casual conversation about the bitterness of iris bulb or the sweetness of the dried choke-cherries, gradually becoming more aware of each other’s nakedness and their proximity, sitting in the middle of the cavernous room. Outside, a leopard frog snorted and rattled while a chorus of wood frogs kept up a steady chicken-like clucking in the background. The gentle hum of the river’s current was broken by the erratic slapping of sawyers on the embarras, pounding the water as they rose and fell with the tug of the current.

   
Another current, hot and electric as a summer storm was pulsing inside the lodge. Suddenly as they each reached onto the pile of food their fingers touched. Both pulled away as if burned, speaking at once.

   
“I didn’t—”

   
“You must—”

   
They stared at each other, their eyes glowing, meeting across the gloom, dark stormy blue and glittering deep emerald.

   
“What are we going to do, Livy?” he asked at length, breaking the spell of silence.

   
“I... I don’t know,” she whispered, fighting the urge to cover herself in spite of the cloaking gloom.

   
“I want you,” he admitted, unwilling to formulate his thoughts any further than the obvious.

   
“You say that as if you begrudge your own desire.” Her voice was at once hurt and scornful. “You don’t trust me, Samuel. You don’t want to want me.”
You don’t love me.

   
“I admire you—your courage, your resourcefulness. As to trust...” he hesitated, then admitted, “I have reason to suspect your guardian of treason. Considering the circumstance that first brought us together, can you blame me for being suspicious?”

   
“I suppose not...but I have just as much reason to detest Emory Wescott as you and things have changed over the past months...”
I have fallen in love with you.

   
“They sure have changed over the past days. We are married, Livy,” he reminded her.

   
“Don’t call me that.” The pet endearment hurt. “My father used to call me Livy.”
And he loved me.
Not wanting to dwell on that she quickly added, “Neither of us wanted this marriage. We were foolish to consummate it.”

   
He smiled in the darkness. “Then you admit I wasn’t the only one who participated that night?”

   
“You’re the most insufferably arrogant man I’ve ever known.”

   
“I’m the only man you’ve ever known...at least in the biblical sense.” The idea pleased him suddenly. He reached out and slipped his hand around her slender wrist, pulling her toward him as he stood up.

   
Olivia did not resist. His heat drew her, cool and shivering, up against his body. His scent, his hard male vitality seemed to surround her as he enfolded her in his arms and slanted his mouth over hers, tangling his fingers in her long wet hair. When he rimmed her lips with the tip of his tongue, then pressed the seam, prying them apart with gentle insistence, she opened to him.

   
Samuel tightened his arms around her as he claimed her mouth, and felt her small cool palms press against the muscles of his back as her silky body molded itself against his. He could feel the tilt of her pelvis as he cupped her buttocks, lifting her to press against the aching insistence of his erection, groaning low in his throat as her hips unconsciously undulated against him.

   
When he swept her up into his arms and walked over to the narrow loft edging the room, she clung to him, returning his kisses with wicked abandon. He had to crouch low as the domed ceiling curved downward. Then he knelt and lay her onto the soft, dry bed of fine bark shavings. She closed her eyes as he loomed above her, his hands moving with deft sure strokes across her belly and up to her breasts, circling them, cupping and molding them until his mouth, hot and seeking, fastened on one nipple, drawing a sharp exclamation of bliss from her.

   
He felt her fingers dig into his scalp, pulling his head closer as he moved between her breasts, feasting on one, then the other, back and forth as she arched up and thrashed with the pleasure he was giving her. His hand slid lower, caressing the concave hollow of her belly, letting his lips trail soft, wet kisses down to her navel. When he circled it with his tongue she quivered.

   
His fingers found her wet, warm center, parting and delving inside in slick, delicate rhythm. She undulated against the erotic pressure, expecting him to cover her and fill her again. But he did not. Instead his mouth nuzzled the curls shielding her treasure, before delving lower. His head dipped between her thighs as his hands pressed them apart. Olivia was too shocked to resist when the heat of his mouth found the velvety folds of her sex, suckling and drawing on it, his tongue working maddeningly around the small nub where ecstasy centered.

   
When she moaned, he felt a surge of pleasure that he could give her this, some small atonement for the pain he had inflicted on their wedding night. He worked patiently, slowly, subtly, all the while gauging her reactions. Gradually her legs opened wider and wider and her hands clutched frantically at his shoulders. He could feel her whole body stretched taut as a bowstring. Using the flat of his tongue, he massaged the swelling little bud with long, soft, slow strokes, until it began to spasm.

   
Olivia came up from the mat, a keening sound torn from her throat as the most intense pleasure rode in sharp little waves, jolting through her whole body, right down to her toes. Just when she thought she could stand no more, or go mad with it, he pulled away.

   
She lay open to him, throbbing in her release as he mounted her, guiding his rigid phallus into the pulsing heat of her body. He could still feel the fading aftershocks of her climax as he began to move slowly, deeply, willing himself to be patient, to make it last as long as he humanly could.

   
Nothing could surpass what she had just experienced. Or so she thought until his hard length pressed into her, this time sliding effortlessly deep. There was no barrier, no pain, only the enrapturing pleasure of his body joined to hers. Soon the lethargy of repletion began to fade, once more sharpening into renewed need. Olivia looked up at his shadowed face, able to make out only the glow of his eyes as he moved over her. Her arms raised, encircling his neck, pulling him down. Their lips met in a slow, tentative kiss that grew along with the building ecstasy they shared in the coupling.

   
Samuel felt her thighs tighten on his hips and his thrusting grew harder, faster. He reached up with both hands and placed his palms against her bent knees, pressing them backward so her hips raised higher, her body opened further, allowing him deeper access, increasing the maddeningly pleasurable friction, tightening the velvety sheath that surrounded his staff, drawing him ever deeper into her beckoning softness until he knew that he was lost.

   
This time she knew what the spiraling tightness, the thrumming ache meant, where it would lead her, where she would most willingly follow. She rocked her hips against him with each thrust, greedy for it, impatient, mindless with the sweet pain of need and fulfillment blended all together at once, until it burst upon her again. The splendor of climax was heightened even more with his answering response.

   
Samuel threw back his head and felt himself swell in that last glorious stroke which brought him finally home, spilling his seed in the highest seat of her womb, pulsing life into her in long powerful throbs, until he was utterly spent, panting and breathless as she.

   
When her smooth legs slid down the hair roughened sides of his and she felt his chest press against her breasts, she clutched his head against her neck, running her fingers through his thick night dark hair. She felt the warm flutter of his breath as he murmured against her throat indistinctly.

   
“Livy.”

   
Or had she imagined it? Somehow the endearment no longer seemed inappropriate as she drifted off to sleep, cocooned by his warmth.

Chapter Nineteen

   
“Damned if we ain’t a gittin’ close, Dirt Devil.” Micajah ‘squatted, examining the body of a slain Osage warrior while the hound paced excitedly, eager to continue. “Now jest stick ta Sparky’s trail. She fer certain got shut o’ them varmints,” he instructed as they resumed their search.

   
Micajah had to find her before Pardee and those renegades recaptured her. He had read the signs of her escape and encounter with Shelby, a matter of some good luck. Having his horse shot out from under them certainly was not lucky, but at least with two weapons they stood a better chance. As the dog sniffed and dashed, Micajah trotted behind him in ground-devouring strides.

   
Suddenly the hound stopped, growling low in his throat, his fur bristling up along the ridge of his spine. At once Johnstone crouched behind the scant cover of a clump of buttonbush as a shot whistled by his shoulder. He held his rifle steady, gauging from where the attack had come, not wasting his own fire. The dog took off circling around, swift and silent.
Flush ‘em out, Dev
.

   
After several minutes he heard the sound of a feral growl followed by a human scream. He took off in the direction of the snarling sounds of battle, but just as he crested the rise he hard a loud yelp, then ominous silence. Dirt Devil lay sprawled on the grass with blood pooling at the side of his head. A badly chewed up Osage with a tomahawk in his fist was climbing to his feet.

   
Micajah quickly took aim and started to squeeze the trigger but before he could get off the shot, another rang out from his left side, The impact of the ball slammed the big man against the trunk of a sycamore. He slid down the rough bark as blackness hazed his eyes. The last thing he saw was that Osage who had clubbed Devil coming at him with his scalping knife in his hand.

   
The Indian who had shot the fallen man in the back reached the victim before his hound-chewed companion. He toed the big man’s body, and when there was no response, he set aside his rifle and started to draw his own scalping knife. He sensed rather than heard the danger behind him and whirled about, too late. His terrified scream was cut short. The other Osage turned and ran as fast as his fleet feet could carry him, all thoughts of a fine trophy scalp forgotten.

   
Micajah Johnstone lay still as death at the base of the tree, while blood oozed from the hole in his back in a life-ebbing trickle. The hound, covered with its own caked on gore, crawled across the clearing to his master and began licking the bearded face and whimpering low, piteous cries.

   
Micajah did not respond.

* * * *

   
Samuel awakened to the sounds of the river at dawn, the splashing of sawyers, the low hum of the current and the counterpoint of cooing mourning doves in the tall cottonwoods that overhung the bank. He started to move, then felt the softness of Olivia’s body burrowed against his side. The long tangled skein of her hair lay across his chest. A new shaft of sunlight trickling in from the air hole above burnished it like living flame.

   
His legs lay possessively across her slim thighs and her head was pillowed on his arm, which was numb when he flexed his fingers and tried gingerly to withdraw it. She awakened slowly, blinking her eyes in the dim light as he rolled up and reached for his pants. As he tugged them on she raised her upper body on her elbows and watched, uncertain of what to say after what had passed between them last night.

   
Finally, he broke the silence after shoving on his miserably wet, stiff boots. “I’ll bring us some more of the beaver’s hoard for breakfast while you get dressed.”

   
“Then what?” The question seemed to ask itself, pregnant with many meanings.

   
He grinned at her. “Then we eat.”

   
She struggled to slide into the still damp britches and shirt and refasten the makeshift clothes with the rope belt, then examined her feet. The yarrow had done its work. Already they looked less red and raw but she still had no shoes and they faced a long trek. As she considered the dilemma, he returned and they both found themselves famished, quickly devouring a pile of berries, mushrooms and other roots and tubers the beavers had gathered.

   
When they had finished, he looked at her and said, “When I was tracking you and Pardee, I prayed he hadn’t hurt you—that I found you before—”

   
“He never touched me,” she quickly interrupted, then shuddered in revulsion. “Not that he didn’t intend to. I overheard when he talked with the Osage. They didn’t know I could understand their language. He told them I was not to be touched, but I think it was only because he wanted to keep them from fighting over me.”