Night Thunder's Bride: Blackfoot Warriors, Book 3 (20 page)

He paused. “Do you speak of that dance? The one where you were to meet the man you would marry?”

“Aye,” she said, glancing away from him, “the dance. That and seeing with my own eyes the beautiful shores of my mother’s birthplace, Ireland.”

His voice was soft as he said, “
Aa,
yes. I understand. A person must hold onto his dreams. But know this, reluctant captive. I care for you. And despite what you say, I will continue to hope that you will find a way to be happy with me.”

She whimpered and deliberately stared down at the ground, away from him. “Please, Night Thunder,” she pleaded softly, “if you truly do care about me, you will not keep asking me to take you as husband.”

“Are you certain of that?”

“Aye.”

He smiled at her. Reaching a finger out to place under her chin, he brought her face toward his, and said, “I do not think so. It is because I care that I keep asking you to become my wife in truth. Do you know this?”

She sighed. Of course she did. She perceived, too, that if he could, he would make things different for her, for them. But he was as unable to alter the way he was, as was she herself. And if she were to be honest, she would admit that just as she had asked him to allow her to have her dreams, so too should she grant him his.

After all, how could she require him to relinquish his hopes, his aspirations, when she was objecting to him trying to make her over into something she was not? Didn’t he deserve the same sort of consideration?

But she could never accept the kind of life that he offered her. Not ever.

And he could not give up his honor. She must grant him that.

Truly, there was no hope for them.

Yet, she did have feelings for him…deep, nurturing feelings.

He said, “Perhaps there will be a way for us that we do not see. It is what the dead are trying to tell us, I believe.”

She moaned. How could she make him understand that these ghosts did not direct her life, that she did not believe in such things? That no earthbound spirits were more to her than her own hopes and desires?

He said, again, “We will find a way.”

“Night Thunder, I—”

“Sh-h-h,” he held a finger over her lips. “We must not think on it.”

“But my life, I—”

The finger came back to her lips.

Still, she felt urged to say something, and she voiced, “Please, Night Thunder, do not misunderstand me. Though I have great feelings for you, I do not believe that I can find my dreams in your camp. My destiny does not belong there.”

“What is this ‘destiny’?” he asked.

“The future.”

He considered this for a moment before he asked, “Are you certain of this?”

“I think that I…” She had meant to be emphatic, but somehow the words failed her. She tried again, “I think that I…I…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. Why? “I don’t know,” she admitted at last. “I have never seen your camp, I know nothing of it. So I cannot say, for true, what I will find there, but I will tell you that I was not unhappy in my old world. And there are things there that I would still like to do, places I would like to see.”

“
Aa
,”
he said, his look at her tolerant. “I understand. But you say that you have great feelings for me?”

She nodded.

“Then let us not throw away what is here between us, not yet. Let us think on this.”

She didn’t answer.

“In your heart you know that we should remain together, do you not?”

She couldn’t dispute him.

He smiled, then. “It is a good thing, not bad, that has happened between us here tonight, I think. But since our way of thinking is different, I would not have you do something that is not within the manner of your heart. And I would not knowingly hurt you.”

She groaned.

While he continued, “Still, our path, even though it be hard, is to be as one, if only because what we feel for one another is so strong.”

She shut her eyes. She knew she should say something about Blue Raven Woman, about his commitment to her, but she couldn’t. What he said was too close to the truth, and it was not in her to refute him. Instead she sobbed, the unwilling whimper ending in a hiccup.

“
Omaopii,
hush, now.” He took her in his arms. “No more until we have thought well on this.”

She surrendered to his touch, melting into him as though she had been awaiting it all her life. Placing her face against his chest, she stuttered, “All…all right. No more. At least for now.”

She could feel the hard muscles of his chest as she lay her cheek against him, hear the steady beat of his heart. It comforted her.

She would do as he had asked and think on it. She doubted that much would come of it, but she would try.

Perhaps, too, she would start to seek a way home. Although, the more and more she considered it, the less and less Fort Union began to appear as her home.

Where did she belong in this vast and unusual world? Ireland, a land she had never seen? America, the land she had been born to?

Was there truly a place for her?

She sighed. Her old life, at this moment, seemed as equally unappealing as the thought of Indian life. Nor was the homeland of her heritage, Ireland, holding out the welcome beckoning that it once had for her.

She didn’t understand the change in her, nor could she appreciate why she was feeling the way she was. Perhaps she might never come to grips with it. But of one thing she was becoming more and more certain: she loved this man who held her. Despite who he was, despite who she was. She loved this man who had proved himself to be honorable, trustworthy and…a friend.

She peered skyward, toward the stars, and willed herself to think no more on it this night. Tomorrow would be soon enough to try to assimilate all that had happened here. Tomorrow she would force herself to start envisioning a way home, wherever that was.

Tomorrow…

Chapter Fourteen

Blue Raven Woman heard the hoot of the owl, but she resolutely ignored the sound, turning over onto her side in her sleeping robe. It was Singing Bull calling to her, she knew. Hadn’t she agreed to meet him tonight?

But she couldn’t go. She could not risk her honor, no matter the urging of her heart.

Why had she agreed to meet him? Was it because he would leave soon on the warpath? Was it because she feared she would never see him alive again? Or was it because she could not deny forever the yearning of what was in her spirit?

Whatever the cause, to agree to meet with him had been a weakness, a weakness she had to restrain in herself from this moment forward.

Something touched her on the shoulder and she jumped.

A finger brushed over her lips, keeping her silent. She inhaled, recognizing the clean yet tantalizing scent of Singing Bull.

He had come to her. A part of her rejoiced. A part despaired.

He lay between the tepee covering and the inner tepee lining, a space which would allow for a single body. Blue Raven Woman turned her face toward the inner lining, lifting the soft rawhide slightly so that she might see him.

She let out a barely audible gasp. His face rested only inches from her own.

He smiled at her, a finger coming to his lips to silence her again.

If she were caught this way, her honor would be forfeited, no matter that she had not asked Singing Bull to come here. As it always was, she as a woman would bear the brunt of shame, while he as a man walked away unscathed.

Blue Raven Woman glanced around the tepee quickly, noting the sleeping bodies of her mother and father, those of her younger sister and brother. Luckily, her older brother was away, hunting with his more-than-friend. Her older brother would have caught her, she was certain.

Turning her head back toward Singing Bull and bringing one of her hands upward, she motioned toward him in the language of sign, “Why are you here?”

“You agreed to meet me,” he signed back.

She inhaled deeply. “I changed my mind,” she motioned silently. “Leave here at once, before you are discovered.”

“Leave with me.”

“I cannot.”

“We will marry. Then there will be nothing more that anyone can do about it.”

“You think that my brother would accept it? More likely he would cut off the end of my nose.”

“I would not allow him to do that.”

“You would be unable to prevent it. You know this. And if
my brother did not, if he let me do this, his society, the
Mut’-siks,
the Braves, might do it in his place. Can you deny this?”

Singing Bull remained silent for a moment, his hands still. At last, however, he motioned, “We could leave and seek out my mother’s sister who lives amongst the Gros Ventres. We could stay there until the bad feelings here are gone.”

Blue Raven Woman lay her head back against her robe, the tepee lining falling at her side. She could do it. What he spoke of was true. Though she might not see her mother or her father again for many years, still, she could do it.

Singing Bull touched her on the shoulder and she lifted the buckskin lining to stare back at him. He motioned, “What say you? Do we do it?”

She hesitated.

She shouldn’t have, because his hand slipped down beneath her robe, as though she had invited him. She drew in her breath in a hiss. She lay naked beneath the robe.

His hand cupped her breast and she almost cried aloud with the ecstasy of it. But that wasn’t all he was doing. Slipping another arm under the tepee lining and over her body, he drew her closer to him, toward that inner lining of the lodge until she faced him. He slid the robe down her body, exposing her breasts; and where his hand had gone before, his lips now followed.

She withered beneath his touch and shut her eyes, willing herself one last time to pull away. But she couldn’t, and though she told herself that she mustn’t do this, it did no good. This was Singing Bull. This was the man she loved. She gloried in his touch, and her heart seemed to have more force of will tonight than her spirit.

His lips remained on her breast, while his fingers dipped lower, over her stomach, down farther toward that private place where no one had ever touched her, though that part of her ached for him to do so now.

Would he touch her there? She yearned for it, and yet she must make him stop…mustn’t she?

Suddenly, he found the soft moistness of her and she barely held back a moan of ecstasy. She caught her breath as raw feeling overwhelmed her, and her mind ceased to function.

He rubbed her down there, his lips still nibbling on her breasts. Still stroking her gently, he slipped a finger inside her, and she thought that Mother Earth might open up and swallow her, so consumed was she with feeling.

He brought her upward in a passionate spiral, then, pushed her further and further, toward what, she did not know.

Then it happened: her body convulsed with so much pleasure, she thought she might die. But she didn’t. Instead, she moved her hips toward him, straining for more. Such intense feeling she could never remember experiencing, and it went on and on, racking her body with a pleasure so strong, she thought she might cry out.

But she didn’t. Such would be the height of foolishness.

She reached for him and he released his swollen member into her hand. She felt him shudder in reaction as she softly stroked him and she gloried in her power over him, feeling his pleasure as though it were her own.

He pulled her under the tepee lining, placing her between the lining and the outer buffalo-hide covering. Quickly he positioned himself on top of her.

But this action, far from bringing her again to the height of ecstasy, had the same effect as dousing her with cold water.

She grew stiff beneath his touch; she began to think.

She had not married this man, could not marry this man, and he was about to take her as a husband takes a wife—or as a man takes a dishonorable woman.

Dishonorable.

What had she done? What was she doing?

She pulled away from him all at once and scooted back under the inner lining, into the safety of her home.

She had almost let him take her—and without the benefit of becoming his wife. She would have shamed herself, her parents, her brother. She might even have had to pay the price for her wanton behavior, a thing that would mar her beauty and be a testimony to her dishonor for the rest of her life. Too, if she had let Singing Bull have his way with her now, wasn’t it true that she would never be able to sponsor a dance to Sun when she grew older? Never be able to use its healing power to cure someone close to her—a husband, a son, perhaps even a daughter?

She began to weep.

Again Singing Bull touched her shoulder, but she brushed his hand away.

He tried to roll her over, too, to regain what he had lost, but she remained rigid beneath his touch, refusing to turn over and look at him or even speak to him in the language of sign.

He tried once more, again, but all to no effect.

Eventually she heard him sigh before he pulled up the buffalo-hide covering of her parents’ dwelling, replacing the stones which had held the covering down. Quietly she heard him slip away into the night—without the bride whom he had sought.