Wild Splendor (8 page)

“Several men are wounded, aren't they?” Harold shouted, leaning his face close to Lieutenant Nelson's. “Others are wounded, aren't they? That's all I need to know about what the Navaho chief's intentions were. We're trying to find him and string him up to the tallest tree we can find. Let his people view him and see what it means to go against the United States cavalry.”

Nervously running his fingers through his thick head of red hair, the lieutenant's eyes wavered as he broke the further news to Harold, the news that would really throw him into a frenzy. “Are you aware, sir, that your fiancée was on that stagecoach with the other women?” he said guardedly. He had heard through the grapevine before the departure of the stagecoach that Leonida was to be the only woman
not
to go and why.

“What . . . ?” Harold said, grabbing the corner of the desk to steady himself.

“Leonida apparently boarded the stagecoach just before it left,” Lieutenant Nelson said even more guardedly. “Sir, she's among those that Sage and his warriors have taken captive.”

Harold slumped into his chair and held his head in his hands. “Lord, this gets worse by the minute,” he said somberly. “Leonida. My Leonida. She's being held captive? That damn savage renegade. Wait until I get my hands on him. He won't get away with this. He probably ambushed the stagecoach just to get Leonida.”

“But, sir, you act surprised that she's gone,” Lieutenant Nelson said, raising an eyebrow. “Sir, she's been gone for two days now. Didn't you even know it?”

“I thought she was in her room, pouting,” Harold grumbled, his face reddening as he looked slowly up at the lieutenant. “I figured that she'd heard that the other women and children had left and . . . and was being stubborn about confronting me about it. I guess I was wrong.”

“I'd say so, sir,” Lieutenant Nelson said, grinning nervously down at the general.

Harold bolted from his chair. “Well, don't just stand there,” he shouted. “Gather together as many men as you can and get out there searching for Sage and his captives. Don't come back until you have some word as to their whereabouts.”

Kit Carson ambled into the office, his shoulders slouched. He sank into a chair. “It's a waste of time to send anyone after Sage,” he said, his voice flat. “He's had enough time to get into the mountains, too close to his stronghold now for anyone to find them. We've got to wait and see what his next move is.”

“But Leonida . . . ?” Harold whined. “She's with them.”

Kit Carson nodded. “Yeah, I know,” he mumbled.

Harold turned on his heel, stomped to the window, and looked at the mountains in the distance. In the dusk they were streaked with opaque purple shadows. Leonida was in those shadows somewhere with Sage. The knowledge tore at his heart.

“Go after them, anyhow,” Harold blurted as he sent a determined glare Kit Carson's way. “No matter how long it takes, find Sage.”

He paused, then hissed, “And damn it, let's have no more pussyfooting around. Kill the bastard.”

Chapter 10

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Pr'y thee, why so pale?

—S
IR
J
OHN
S
UCKLING

 

 

A gentle hand on her cheek awakened Leonida. She blinked her eyes open, realizing that she had slept the entire night through. It was early dawn, and soft grays were buried in the cliffs. The walls of the canyon loomed soft with wells of coolness. The world seemed a secret place, one of peace.

Sage bent down low so Leonida could see him, and she quickly drew her blanket more snugly to her chin. Glancing around, she realized that she and Sage were the only ones awake. She could not help but fear what he might be wanting of her before the others awakened . . .

“Come,” Sage said, taking the blanket from her. “It is time to bathe. We will bathe together.”

Her face hot with blush, Leonida jerked the blanket away from him and covered herself with it again. “We most certainly will not,” she said in a harsh whisper.

Sage sighed heavily and stared at her, then in one motion swept her and her blanket into his arms and carried her away from the campsite, toward a shining stream a short distance away.

Leonida kicked and squirmed and pounded his chest with her fists. “Let me down,” she said, trying to keep her voice from awakening the others. “I absolutely refuse to take a bath with you. Why would you even expect me to?”

“There is much between us that you are fighting,” Sage grumbled, frowning down at her as she stopped pummeling his chest. “We will bathe, talk, and settle our differences before we travel onward. The journey will become less strained for both of us.”

“The journey is only strained because you are constantly forcing me to do things I don't wish to do,” Leonida said, inhaling unsteadily. In his arms she was weakening in her defense against him. He troubled her so, in all ways sensual. If he kissed her, oh, but how she would be lost to him, to his desires, to his demands.

She was thankful that he could not read her thoughts, even though sometimes she wondered if he just might be able to do exactly that. Although he still expected her to be betrothed to another man, he was obviously pursuing her affections.

He would do that only if he realized that she cared for him instead of Harold.

“After today I will not have to force you to do anything,” Sage said. “After today, you will no longer think of the other man in your life. He will become as the fleeting wind.”

“You are so confident of this, are you?” Leonida said, her heart pounding. She feared what he had planned in the next moments, yet anticipated it all the same.

She expected him to kiss her.

She expected him to hold her.

She knew that she would allow it.

Both became silent as he carried her farther and farther away from the campsite. They were a part of the intimate hour of dawn. The air was fresh and cool, and smelled sweetly of wildflowers just opening their faces to the first light of the sun rising from behind the mountains.

Sage carried Leonida until he came to a huge, thundering waterfall that tumbled over a high peak above them. The ground was carpeted in green, the grass thick and soft beneath Leonida's bare feet as Sage lowered her from his arms. She clung to the blanket, embarrassed as he began undressing before her, shocked at his boldness.

Although in awe of his muscular copper body, she had to turn her eyes away, her pulse racing. She had just seen a man totally nude for the first time in her life. Seeing the part of his anatomy that she had only heard women whispering about had made a strange sort of thrill shoot through her, and she was ashamed of such wanton feelings.

She flinched when she heard the splash of water, yet was relieved to know that he had dived into the river, thankfully hiding his body from her wide, wondering eyes.

Knowing that it was now safe, Leonida turned slowly around. Fear gripped the pit of her stomach when she did not see Sage anywhere in the river. A sudden thought came to her that made her knees grow weak: perhaps he had hit his head on rocks at the bottom of the river and had been knocked unconscious.

When his head popped to the surface, she could not deny the relief that flooded her. That alone revealed to her just how much she did care.

The reprieve from her anger at him did not last long. She blanched when he shouted something to her, another order that she most definitely refused to follow.

Sage treaded water and gazed up at Leonida, admiring her spunk, her fire. He smiled, then gave her the same command a second time. “Unclothe yourself and come into the water to bathe with Sage,” he shouted, seeing that her stubbornness did not wane as she clutched the blanket around herself and stared angrily back at him.

“I shall not,” she shouted back. “And you cannot make me.”

“Oh?” Sage said. With long and masterful strokes, he began swimming toward shore.

Leonida looked frantically around, feeling a desperate need to flee and hide from him, yet afraid to budge. He had carried her far from the campsite. Who knew what lurked out there?

Sage began climbing from the river, water surging from his lovely copper body. Leonida's breath caught at the sight of him. It was so captivating, she could not deny how her insides were melting. So taken by him, Leonida was locked in a strange sort of trance. As he moved toward her, his muscles flexing, his nakedness so blatantly beautiful, Leonida swallowed hard, her eyes following his every movement.

Then she looked up into his eyes, her heart beating so loudly she felt as though she might faint.

And then the spell was broken when he grabbed the blanket from her and began undressing her.

Again she struggled and tried to get away, only to become weakened and breathless in the process.

Seeing that her struggles were futile, Leonida stood stiffly before him as he tossed aside all her garments except for her petticoat. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, her voice quavering. Although her body was still covered, she tried to hide her breasts beneath her crossed arms, and she tried to cross her legs to cover that most intimate place at the juncture of her thighs that she feared might be visible through the thin gauze of her undergarment.

Sage refused to answer her. Words would come later, after she realized that what he asked of her this morning, before everyone else arose for a full day of travel, was right. Their closeness was needed to make everything in her heart and mind turn to a clear understanding of why he had gone against the white people.

To him it was very important that, above all else, she understand. It was their destiny to be together, as kindred spirits instead of enemies.

It was their destiny to be man and wife, their hearts locked into a mutual respect and loving forever.

And he would make her understand, even join him against those who were threatening the Navaho's existence.

Yes, for him, the man she would love, she would do this.

“Sage, it's so
cold,
” Leonida said, the crisp air brushing against her body.

“The water is warm in comparison,” Sage said, quickly sweeping her up into his arms. “You will welcome its caress on your body.”

Leonida's eyes widened as she looked from Sage down to the water, then up at Sage again. “Please don't,” she said, clinging to his neck. “I don't want to . . .”

Again her pleas fell on deaf ears. She choked back a scream as he let her ever so casually roll out of his arms. She kicked frantically and swung her arms in the air as she plummeted downward.

As she entered the water, she stiffened her legs and closed her eyes and felt herself plunging deeper and deeper. Then when she began paddling her feet, she stopped her descent and pushed herself back to the surface.

Infuriated, coughing, and wiping her drenched, clinging hair out of her eyes, Leonida glared at Sage. When he dived into the river, she made a quick turn and began swimming in the opposite direction. Her petticoat kept getting tangled around her legs, making it impossible to pick up speed, and then her breath caught in her throat when something else became even more of a threat. She began battling the motion of a whirlpool that was sucking her beneath the great splash of the waterfall.

Floundering, fighting to keep her head above the water, Leonida screamed between swallowing great gulps of water. “Help me!” she cried as her head went under. Then she bobbed back up to the surface, which took all the effort she could muster. “Sage, help . . . me . . . !”

She saw a great blur of black as another vicious spin of the whirlpool pulled her under. Leonida stared with wide eyes through the hazy water at the fish swimming past, and then . . . and then . . .

She breathed in a great gust of air as Sage grabbed her by the waist and tugged her upward. Surfacing beside her, he drew her into his embrace and held her there until she was breathing more easily, then swam her to safety on a ledge hidden behind the falls.

Shivering and coughing, her eyes and throat burning from the water, Leonida welcomed his comforting arms around her as he held her close. She lay her head on his chest, still heaving from exhaustion. “
Uke-he,
thank you,” she murmured, twining an arm around his neck. “For a moment I thought . . . I thought that I was going to drown.”

“Not with Sage so close,” he said thickly, leaning her partially away from him, weaving his fingers through her thick golden hair, spreading it away from her entrancing face. “Never would I let anything happen to you. Surely you know that.”

“Yet you take me captive so easily?” Leonida murmured, searching his eyes, melting inside from his closeness.

“Do you think I knew you were aboard that stagecoach?” he said, tracing her chin with a fingertip. “Do you think I would have ambushed it had I known I was placing you in danger?”

“You should not have placed anyone's life in danger,” Leonida fussed, now knowing for certain that he had not planned just to steal
her
away. She was torn in her feelings about that. She had felt honored, in a way, that he might have cared enough for her to go to any lengths to stop her flight from Fort Defiance, and
him
.

“The white leaders should not have placed the Navahos' lives in danger,” Sage said, slowly drawing her into his embrace again. “Then not everyone's life would have been altered. Yet weren't our lives altered the moment we spoke that first word to one another? Did you not feel the magic being spun between us? Did you not feel the energy flowing between us, as though we were one heartbeat—one soul? Let us explore those feelings. Let me show you the extent of mine for you. Show me the extent of yours for Sage.”

Leonida drew in a ragged breath as he gently framed her face between his hands and lifted her lips to his. Her whole world seemed to begin spinning as his mouth bore down upon hers, so hungry, so demanding, awakening her to an ecstasy she had never experienced before. The first kiss they had shared had been filled with wonder and rapture, but it had been too short-lived.

This time she could not pull away. She had dreamed of this moment, of the thrill of being held and kissed by him again. She would not deny herself the pleasure anymore than she would stop herself from breathing.

Sweet currents of warmth spread through her, and she twined her arms around his neck and clung to him as he lowered her to the shelf of rock beneath the falls, ignoring the occasional sprays of water and the coldness of the rock pressing on her back.

Sage leaned over her, his mouth never leaving her lips, and she shivered with passion when she felt his hand cup one of her breasts through the clinging wet material of her petticoat. She moaned and leaned into his hand as he began kneading her breast, the nipple hardening from the fires that his fingers seemed to be igniting. The heat spread as Sage's hand trailed downward, soon gathering the petticoat between his fingers and shifting the wet garment upward . . . upward . . . upward.

Leonida sucked in a wild gasp of pleasure when she felt his first touch at the center of her passion. She drew her lips away and closed her eyes in ecstasy as his fingers began caressing her, arousing her to blissful feelings.

When his mouth found her lips again and his tongue flicked between them, tongues meeting, tip to tip, she began running her hands over his bare flesh, thrilling at the feel of his taut muscles, and then dared to move her fingers lower, breathless at the thought of touching his manhood. Could she give him the same sort of pleasure that he was giving her by the mere caress of her fingers?

Then she drew her head away and closed her eyes, shame filling her at where her thoughts had taken her. She began shoving at Sage's chest, but he grabbed her wrists and held them as he began caressing her passion's center with his manhood, his eyes dark and passion-filled as he gazed down at her.

Leonida's eyes widened as she felt his manhood begin to twitch and grow against her flesh. Her heart was thundering wildly from these feelings that she seemed to have no control over.

“Sage, please . . .” Leonida said with her last trace of reason. “Let's stop now, or . . .”

“Or else Sage might take you to paradise and back?” he said huskily. “Or Sage might prove to you the extent of your love for this Navaho chief?”

“I'm so confused,” Leonida murmured. “I want you, yet I do not want to be forced. I want it to be beautiful, Sage.”

He released her wrists and held his hands out away from her. “You are no longer being forced to do anything,” he said. “Rise and leave if you wish. Sage will even give you a horse to return to Fort Defiance. You are captive no more. In truth, Sage is the captive—to your heart. I will love you always, even if only in my midnight dreams.”