Wicked Angel (Blackthorne Trilogy) (39 page)

      
Joss had pleaded, "Spirits will kill you! Make you sick!" The man nodded. Joss waited.

      
"You are absolutely correct, wife of Sun Fox. The white man's rum and gin are a potent poison," the tall man agreed in perfectly precise, unaccented English. "That is why my nephew Golden Eagle refuses to allow any of it into Muskogee lands."

      
"But—but you just finished drinking whiskey," she sputtered.

      
The old man smiled gently and explained, "What you just witnessed was a cleansing ritual. The drink is a powerful purgative, and taking a morning draught of it is a common custom among the Muskogee—although I must confess that my nephew and grandnephew seldom embrace this particular custom of their people."

      
Joss's face burned, "Oh, my...you must be Mr. Mc-Kinny...."

      
"Yes, my niece, I am Tall Crane, Charity's brother. I've only recently returned from Cusseta."

      
Joss blurted out, "Please, sir, forgive my impudence and accept my apology." With that, she had turned and run.

      
Her unpleasant reverie was broken by Alex's caustic comment.

      
"You naturally assumed an ignorant savage knew no better than to swill down whiskey until he vomited."

      
"I admit that I made a foolish mistake. But why are you being so hateful?"

      
"Why are you here? It's obvious you don't want to be."

      
"I was invited by your grandmother—she wanted to meet me."

      
Alex sighed in defeat. "And of course my mother leaped at the chance to come and—"

      
"Have a proper celebration of your wedding," Barbara said as she, Devon and Charity entered the house. Seeing the tense confrontational stance of both Alex and Joss, she continued, "Your father and I were unable to be present at your nuptials in London. The least you can do is to allow us to have a feast in your honor with our family here."

      
Groaning inwardly, Alex knew he was trapped.

* * * *

      
The ceremony was even more elaborate than Turtle Snake's casting out of the curse and much better attended. Everyone in Coweta and many people from surrounding towns came to join in the feasting in honor of Golden Eagle's son and his English wife, who was now being called Magic Eyes.

      
Alex sat beside Joss at the head of a long low table, dressed in his Muskogee finery. The leaping flames from the big fire in the square bathed his face with glowing bronze highlights and shadows. To Joss, seated on the cool earth beside him, he looked like a savage stranger, not the laughing, charming Alex she knew so well. Or thought she had known.

      
Now he was dressed in a beaded buckskin jacket, open to the waist and sleeveless. A breechclout and fringed leggings revealed an alarming amount of his dark skin, made even more coppery by the firelight. On his chest a heavy silver gorget gleamed and he wore barbarous-looking armbands over his rippling biceps and heavy silver loops in his ears. His ears had been pierced all this time and she'd never even noticed it! A massive turban decorated with gemstones and feathers covered his head.

      
The only evidence of his predominantly white blood was the gleam of golden hair on his forearms and chest. He sat talking in that infernal unintelligible language with his uncle and various other of the Indians, occasionally making a comment to his parents or grandmother. To his wife he said almost nothing.

      
Nor was Joss at all inclined to speak to him, especially when a tall sultry-looking Muskogee woman walked sensuously up to him and sat down. Alex greeted her affectionately and they chatted in her language for several moments, laughing with great familiarity.
They were lovers.
Joss could sense it at once, remembering Alex's sanitized descriptions of the wild debauchery of his Georgia backwoods days, which had led to his English exile.

      
The woman was striking, with gleaming ebony hair plaited in two fat braids that were intricately coiled at the sides of her head and decorated with feathers and beads. She wore an emerald green tunic and a short skirt that revealed a shocking amount of her long, shapely legs. A pang sliced through Joss's heart.
She belongs here with him. I do not.

      
Charity and Barbara had outfitted Joss in Muskogee finery, too. She wore a bright red skirt of soft cotton, trimmed with tiny shells, and a tunic of deep rich indigo. An elaborate belt of engraved silver cinched it about her waist. Her moccasins were beaded, and displayed—to her way of thinking—too much of her ankles and calves to be decent, but Barbara had insisted she looked lovely. Since Charity had made them especially for her, she could not refuse to wear them, or the heavy copper and silver jewelry on her arms and at her throat. Her elaborate ear bobs were so heavy she feared they would pull her ears off! In her heart of hearts Joss knew she was not as attractive to Alex as the girl he addressed in English now as Water Lily.

      
Joss stared down at the strange food on her plate. She'd been living on fresh fruits and nuts and the vegetables grown in Charity's garden. The feast introduced her to a plethora of peculiar things she was loathe to try such as the ash cake on her plate, a pallid-looking conglomerate of pulverized corn shaped into patties and cooked in the ashes of the hearth. A bowl of purified bear fat mixed with honey sat beside them for dipping. Eggs that she knew were not from chickens and various kinds of fish and wild meats were offered her. She ate sparingly of the fish while declining the bear meat, turtle and other exotic game, all the while grateful for the bowls of fresh plums and peaches.

      
What I would not give for a plain lamb chop
, she though twistfully, but in truth Water Lily had caused what little appetite she had to depart.

      
"You've scarcely touched a thing," Alex chided. 'Try the sturgeon if you won't eat buffalo or bear," he commanded, offering her a flaky slab of baked fish wrapped in some sort of leaf.

      
It did smell agreeable but Joss was not inclined to feel that way. "No, thank you. I'm quite content," she replied primly.

      
He scowled. "You look anything but content, dear wife."

      
His cold clipped tone made her want to shout and ask what had happened to her merry rogue from those halcyon London days. Instead she stiffened her spine and shifted uncomfortably on the ground as several dancers began to perform for the assembly.

      
The festivities dragged on interminably with rounds of speeches, and drinks to the health and good fortune of Sun Fox and Magic Eyes. After one long speech regarding Joss's fertility and the hope she would give him many fine sons, Alex had had enough. He would certainly not translate that message for her! Heartily sick of the charade, he did not wish to offend his Muskogee friends or hurt his parents and grandmother. So he did the only thing he could think of to escape.

      
He picked up Joss and carried her back to Grandma Charity's guesthouse, thinking to deposit her there and slip away to brood in peace. But he had forgotten the custom about wedding nights...perhaps because he'd hoped never to have one.

      
The entire assembly let out congratulatory cheers, then rose to file after him, surrounding the house. He was left with no choice but to climb the ladder with Joss, who had been struggling and protesting ineffectually ever since he'd picked her up. Out of patience, he gave her rump a good hard swat which was received with general laughter from the men.

      
"Hold still or I'll drop you from the ladder on that hard English head of yours," he gritted out as he climbed to the upper floor. At least they would be away from the crowd, which he devoutly hoped would disperse in short order.

      
Joss stilled, mortified to be the subject of such public humiliation. When he set her on her feet in front of him she stepped back, rubbing her derriere, which she was certain bore a red imprint from his hand. "My father never in my life spanked me!"

      
"He bloody well should have. You're acting like a petulant twit!"

      
"You have no right—"

      
"I have every right. I'm your husband," he said furiously, looking around their bridal bower, which his mother and grandmother and probably half the women in Coweta had decorated for this special night.

      
"So you keep reminding me—when it suits you to belittle me or demand my blind, unflinching obedience."

      
He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her. "What would you have me demand. Joss ... ?" The insinuation hung between them as his eyes traveled down her tall, slender body with insulting thoroughness. When they reached her curved calves and incredibly slim, delicate ankles, she blushed and took a step backward.

      
"This marriage has been a mistake, Alex," she said, tears and anger churning in her belly, thickening her voice.

      
"This marriage has been no marriage at all," he snapped.

      
" 'Tis as you proposed it be," she replied.

      
"And you now propose something else?" His tone was low, lethal. Long months of acute sexual frustration had built into a crescendo of lust when he'd first caught sight of her tall, slender body and wild mane of tawny hair this afternoon. She'd seemed appalled with everyone and everything around her, an English noblewoman looking down her blue-blooded nose at ignorant, superstitious savages ...at him.

      
And still he desired her.

      
"I propose that we end the charade." Her voice sounded unnaturally calm. "We should never have begun it. You don't want me—"

      
"Bloody hell I don't want you!" he snarled, seizing her wrist and yanking her against his chest before she could utter a sound. Her body fit his so perfectly, her unusual height a complement to his own. Her soft curves seemed to mold themselves to his very bones, to melt into him as if they were two streams flowing into one river.

      
Joss could feel his heart slamming in his chest—or was it her heart keeping a matching thunderous beat? She could not tell as his mouth came down on hers fiercely, hungrily, as if he were angry and wished to devour her. This was quite unlike the way his first seduction had been with its butterfly-light kisses; no, this was raw, desperate.

      
Her palms pressed against his chest, feeling the flex of muscle, the crisp abrasion of hair that had been graven on her memory for all eternity. A deep compelling need filled her like a deluge of rainfall, wild and turbulent, destructive. Doing this would only bring her more pain, yet she was powerless to stop herself. She slid her hands up his chest, over his shoulders and around his neck, clinging to him as he repositioned his lips over hers, his tongue plunging deep inside her mouth, ravaging.

      
Joss let her own tongue twine with his, instinctively trying to gentle it, but instead he opened his mouth wider and sucked it in until she was imitating his actions, tasting of him as he had of her. Would he be shocked? Repelled? She no longer cared. He groaned and pressed her tighter against him, the rocking of his hips urging her on.

      
He tangled his fists in her hair, pulling out the feathers and beads Barbara had so artfully woven through the long masses. The sharp pressure on her scalp tilted her head back and his mouth at last left hers, trailing harsh wet kisses and bites down her jawline to her exposed throat.

      
Somehow in this rough encounter he'd lost his headgear and his long straight gold hair fell around his face. He'd not cut it since they left London. Her hands reached up, fingers digging into his scalp as she grabbed fistfuls of it, pulling his head closer against her body, lower, lower, toward the aching crests of her breasts. Her nipples were drawn so tight that they burned; she burned for his hands and mouth upon them.

      
Alex could feel her spine arch, feel the hard peaks of her breasts pressing against his bare chest. The little witch was offering herself to him, damn her! And damn him if he wasn't going to have her, devil take the consequences come morning. He reached up and tore open her tunic, ripping the buttons until the two pale mounds were exposed, glowing in the moonlight.

      
The deep coral tips seemed to beckon him, tilting upward toward his mouth. Cupping one in his hand, he raised it as his lips skimmed along her collarbone, then down the milky swell of her flesh to suckle. Her low keening cry, her hands pulling his hair, her hips pressing to his, all spoke of her wanting...and sharpened his wanting. He feasted on one nipple, then the other until they glistened darkly in the moonlight.

      
When he raised his head Joss could feel the cool night air on her breasts and cried out again. She clung to him, her knees too weak to hold her up if he should let her go. For an instant she feared he would when he reached down, but instead he unhooked her belt and ripped the remnants of her tunic from her body, tossing it aside. She shivered, but not from cold, as her upper body was bared for his inspection.

      
When she started to wrap her arms over her breasts he said in a hoarse, guttural voice she scarcely recognized, "God, you are perfection."

      
He swept her arms away and took the aching globes in his hands.
How perfectly they fit
, he thought as she came again into his embrace. Her hands slid inside the open front of his shirt, pushing it from his body, pressing her nails into the tense muscles of his shoulders. She clung to him desperately as he encircled her waist with one arm and pressed her to him once more.