Gideon-CHeatComanche HeatRobin GideonThe Wild Rose PressCopyright © 2009 by Robin GideonErotica/Romance. 31872 words long. enNovellatext/xmlErotica/Romance

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Comanche Heat
by Robin Gideon
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Erotica/Romance

The Wild Rose Press
www.thewildrosepress.com

Copyright ©2009 by Robin Gideon

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

About the author...

Also available

Chapter One

* * * *

Comanche Heat

by

Robin Gideon

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Comanche Heat

COPYRIGHT ©

2009 by Robin Gideon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com

Cover Art by Angela Anderson

The Wild Rose Press

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewilderroses.com

Publishing History

First Scarlet Rose Edition, February 2009

Published in the United States of America

Chapter One

1863—The Colorado Territories

He was Broken Blade, and his most immediate goal was to stay alive long enough to kill Blue Elk. The odds of success weren't in Blade's favor, but then, on this particularly savage quest, they never had been. Not even at the very beginning, when the identity of the murderers was not yet known to the leader of the Northern Comanche.

Her name had been Summer Without Rain, and her body had been found eight days earlier on the southern banks of the Arkansas River. Her corpse was naked, and the suffering she had experienced prior to death was as evident as if the defilement had been written in words. She had been kidnapped—not an unusual fate for young women among the tribes of the plains. What was unusual was the viciousness of the gang-rape and murder.

That ruled out the usual enemies of the Northern Comanche, namely the Cheyenne to the north, the Kiowa and Sioux to the southeast, and the Sauk and Fox farther to the east and north. While something significantly less than consensual romantic encounters were not uncommon among the Plains Indians, gang rape followed by murder was considered by all the tribes as an abomination.

It had taken less than a day and a half to determine that Summer Without Rain had been abducted by Blue Elk's ragtag band of renegades, killers, and outcasts. They weren't a tribe, or even a clan, per se, in as much as their numbers were less than twenty, and all were braves who had been banished from their tribes. Blue Elk, along with his younger brother, Dog, had banded together with outcasts from the neighboring Cheyenne and Kiowa tribes to form a formidable fighting force of thieves and outlaws.

On the Great Plains, being banished from one's tribe meant a death sentence, as often as not. Living without the protection of the tribe made a man vulnerable to all manner of hostility from any number of tribes. And the white man had never been one to miss an opportunity to kill a defenseless Indian.

Blue Elk understood this and used it to his advantage, assembling braves who possessed a great regard for their own life but no regard for anyone else's. Even before the hostilities between the Northern and Southern states had turned into open warfare, Blue Elk had been terrorizing whites and Indians alike along the Arkansas River, robbing and pillaging, killing indiscriminately, raping whenever possible.

Summer Without Rain had been young and innocent when she was abducted. A virgin, she had been wistfully looking forward to the coming winter, when she would at last be old enough to accept a Northern Comanche brave as a husband—and she had her eye on several young braves who met her idea of bravery and masculine beauty.

Her death—violent, sexual, and completely unnecessary—was an affront to the nearly one thousand Northern Comanche, and it was up to Broken Blade, the Chief of War, to uphold the honor of the tribe and see that justice was served. In this case, nothing less than death would do.

He had chosen to go after Blue Elk alone. To catch Blue Elk, Blade had to ride deep into Cheyenne country. The more riders there were, the greater the chances of being seen.

At least riding alone, should a wandering Cheyenne clan see the tracks of his horse, they would be less inclined to assume a raiding war party was in their territory. Braves often got lost traveling from one encampment to another, or white men from one city to another. But a single rider wasn't a threat; many riders constituted a threat that the Cheyenne would have to address to maintain their dignity. The Cheyenne were nothing if not proud and dignified—and more than willing to defend their territory against all trespassers.

If the Cheyenne captured Blade, he would either be killed, or sold back to the Northern Comanche for a hefty ransom, using the universal currency among the tribes—horses. If the Kiowa caught him, he would be killed immediately. The Kiowa had lost many horses and more than one skirmish to warriors under Blade's command. They wanted revenge, and the longer they had to wait, the more they hungered for it. And if Blue Elk and his vicious band of cutthroats captured Blade, he would surely be tortured before he was killed.

Which meant Blade had to sneak into Blue Elk's camp, kill him, then sneak back out—all without drawing any attention to himself or his activities whatsoever.

A bitter smile pulled at his mouth. This time, doing the honorable thing was probably going to cost him his life.

* * * *

They're going to kill me.

Samantha Murchison tested the strips of rawhide surrounding her wrists and ankles. Like all the other times she'd struggled against them, she found the leather unyielding, her bindings attached as they were to four wooden stakes hammered into the ground.

But before they kill me, they are going to make me suffer. How many are there? A dozen? Maybe more? They'll all take their turn with me ... then they'll kill me.

Hours earlier, Samantha had been aboard the northbound train, headed for Colorado City where she hoped to find a new job teaching children. When the train stopped midway between stations, she hadn't understood at first that things had gone desperately wrong. But then Blue Elk and his band of renegade outlaws raced through the four passenger coaches, pistols blasting and knives slashing, killing everyone in sight without hesitation or mercy.

Only Samantha's life had been spared—and she knew why. Blue Elk had decided she was too beautiful to be killed outright. He had said as much when he introduced himself with mock formality, bowing low as a courting gentleman would ... except there had been blood on the enormous blade of the knife he held.

That had been only a few hours earlier. To Samantha, it seemed like a lifetime.

Laughter came from outside the tepee. Blue Elk and his men were drinking whiskey and having a good time. It had been a profitable day for them. Several of the passengers were carrying their life's savings on their way to Colorado City, intent on setting up a new life. Samantha knew she was scheduled to be their entertainment for the evening ... but first they were going to get good and liquored up.

Sounds of movement outside caught her attention. A moment later, Blue Elk stepped into the tepee. He was short and dark-skinned. The small fire in the center of the tepee cast flickering light on his naked chest.

“Are you ready to honor me?” Blue Elk asked, slurring his words slightly.

Samantha gasped softly when Blue Elk dropped to his knees beside her. For several seconds, his eyes caressed her, fondled the naked fullness of her heavy breasts. When he put his big palm upon her stomach, she flinched.

“P-please don't hurt me,” she said, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

His hand, heavily callused, slid up her stomach, pausing briefly at the under-curve of her breast before he cupped the firm mound.

“Nice,” Blue Elk said quietly. “Your body pleases me.” He squeezed her breast with one hand as he took a drink of whiskey from the bottle with the other. “If you are good to me and make me happy, perhaps I will let you live.” He paused, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I have never seen a body as beautiful as yours.” He caught her nipple and pinched hard enough to make her wince in pain. “Do you have a rich father, yellow eyes? Maybe I can sell you back. Are you rich?”

Samantha opened her eyes and looked up at her captor. “No,” she said softly. “I'm not rich. And I don't have much family, and even if I did, none of them are rich.”

Blue Elk released her breast, sat on his heels, and looked down at Samantha, trussed up securely for his pleasure. His gaze trailed slowly down her nakedness until it reached the small, triangular patch of hair at the apex of her thighs.

“What is this?” He caught several of the curly strands between his forefinger and thumb, tugging on the pubic hair hard enough to pluck several strands.

Samantha made a whimpering sound in her throat, both in pain and humiliation.

He scowled disdainfully and shook his head in condescension. “You yellow eyes are all cursed. You know nothing worth knowing.”

Blue Elk tried to take another swallow of whiskey, but discovered that the bottle was empty. “I need more whiskey, yellow eyes, then I will be back for you.”

He stood and looked down at Samantha. She shivered at the way his eyes roamed over her nudity. There wasn't a trace of human warmth in his dark gaze. “Blue Elk is first with you.” He tossed the empty bottle to the opposite side of the tepee. “When the sun comes up, you will not be so pretty.” He grinned, showing several missing teeth. “My braves are true warriors. To have someone like you will make their blood run hot. That is good for them ... but bad for you, yellow eyes!”

Blue Elk was laughing softly as he left his tepee.

* * * *

Blade saw the first sentry long before he even got close to the renegade camp. It was impossible to tell whether the young man was Kiowa or Cheyenne, judging by his coarse buckskin shirt and the leggings that had seen much use.

The answer was of little interest to Blade. What he did care about was the man's attention, and at present, as he leaned back against a solitary elm tree, most of that attention was focused on a bottle of amber liquid in his right hand. Transiently, Blade wondered what the young warrior had done to get kicked out of his tribe. Aware that it had to have been something heinous helped ease Blade conscience.

Blade had stripped down for the attack to nothing but his buckskin breechclout, moccasins, and weapons. On his left hip, in a crossdraw holster, was a .36 caliber Colt revolver. Attached to the same wide leather belt, on his right hip, was an antler-handled knife with a heavy twelve-inch blade. The knife had been Blade's father's. Upon proving himself to be a man of honor, a hunter and provider, and a warrior, Blade had earned the right to carry it.

Extracting the knife slowly from its sheath, he made his way cautiously through the tall grass, moving ever closer to the sentry's post and to the four tepees beyond that, his progress as silent as a stalking cougar's.

The sentry's head was tilted back, and he was pouring whiskey down his throat when he died. He did not make more than a brief gurgling sound as death claimed him. Blade was already moving forward through the shadows when the sentry's strong heart beat its last.

Blade continued on. He could hear the raucous laughter of the braves around the campfire, their words clear enough he could make out the language. As was so often the case when tribes had overlapping territory, the languages tended to blend one into another. He recognized Kiowan words, as well as words from the Algonquian family language, which encompassed the Cheyenne. A grim smile touched Blade's mouth. He was in the right place.

Movement to his right, from the one tepee set aside from the other three, caught his attention. A warrior of medium height stepped out of a tepee, pulling the cork on a bottle as he walked. Blade watched, appalled as the warrior tilted the bottle back, drinking and walking at the same time.

Once, a dozen years earlier while attending college, Blade had foolishly filled his champagne glass and was walking and drinking at the same time. His geology professor, the host of the gathering, pulled him aside and, in quiet but granite-hard tones, informed Blade that no gentleman ever walked and drank liquor simultaneously. It simply wasn't done.

Blade never made that offense against propriety again.

As the warrior let the bottle dangle from his hand at his side, moonlight settled on his swarthy features. Blue Elk. There could be no doubt about it.

The urge to rush forward, pistol in hand, and settle the score was almost overpowering for Blade. For a moment—he dared not do it longer—he squeezed his eyes tightly shut and searched within for the discipline he knew was necessary. Any fool could commit suicide and perhaps, just maybe, do something good in the process. But a wise warrior fought only when he had to, and then he fought with stealth and cunning and an eye toward surviving the battle, not with foolhardy bravado that only created dead warriors and grieving widows.

It was then, as Blade was harnessing the personal discipline that was the hallmark of his personality, that Blue Elk spoke.

“I come back to give you what's left of this bottle,” Blue Elk said, much more loudly than was necessary to carry on the still night air. “I am going to my tepee now. Tomorrow, we will talk.”

There was a general uproar of bawdy laughter from the more than dozen men surrounding the campfire, all of them in various stages of inebriation. Blade didn't wait to consider what the laughter meant.

Though he was a tall man by any standard, when he moved, it was soundless, his moccasins seemingly gliding over prairie grass, the muscles in his chest and back moving beneath his sun-darkened skin like the muscles of a mountain lion rippling beneath velvet-soft tawny fur.

Blade slipped through the open entrance flap to Blue Elk's tepee without breaking stride, the razor-sharp knife in his steady right hand, his heart pounding but his confidence soaring. Soon, Blue Elk would be dead, and he would have avenged the small tribe known as the Northern Comanche, and the weight pressing on his soul would be lifted.

And that's when he saw the pale-skinned woman, spread-eagled in the tepee, her arms and legs outstretched, tied to wooden stakes that had been pounded through the buffalo robes beneath her.

The breath caught in Blade's throat, and his teeth clenched. The warrior in him whispered that she wasn't his responsibility, and as such, wasn't his problem. Besides, any involvement she might have in his life would create an infinite number of complications in regards to his escape once the pesky problem of Blue Elk's continued good health was dealt with.

But there was another part of Blade's body and soul, that part of him instilled by an innate sense of decency and the knowledge of universal rights and wrongs, a part that had been inculcated in him by his Northern Comanche elders as well as the Jesuit priests, who said with quiet conviction that to let this poor, unfortunate woman suffer at the hands of Blue Elk's band of savage misfits would be a crime against humanity. And if Father McMurphy had lectured endlessly on any subject, it was the need for good men to uphold the dictates of humanity.

The woman turned her head, and when she saw him, her eyes became enormous. It appeared as though she was about to say something, and Blade reacted with catlike speed. He was on his knees, a broad palm clamped over the woman's mouth to silence anything she might say.

Though he continued to hold the knife in his hand, he put his index finger to his lips in the universally recognized hand-symbol for silence. He looked straight into the woman's eyes when he nodded. Seconds ticked by—seconds he didn't have to spare—before the woman nodded.

Blade removed his hand from her mouth and leaped to his feet. He was back near the entrance, opposite the woman, an instant later. He knew if she made a sound, if she did anything at all that would indicate things were different than a few minutes earlier when Blue Elk left the tepee, then Blade's bold, impromptu plan for revenge would be for naught ... and his death would have accomplished nothing.

No longer directly above her, Blade experienced the full magnitude of her nudity, of the awesome splendor of her body. She was pale-skinned, not particularly tall, with tapering thighs, curved hips, a waist neither slender nor ample ... leading to breasts that caused a man's heart to leap in his chest. The sheer, extravagant size and shape of her breasts caused Blade's heart to leap. Heavy, full, deliciously rounded mounds of feminine splendor guaranteed to entice the eyes and....

Blade closed his eyes for a second and shook his head, as he often did to clear his thoughts and calm his mind. This was not the time to be rendered catatonic from a woman's beauty—especially not for a man whose experience with women, Caucasian or Indian, had caused countless tongues to wag from Sioux Falls to Denver City to St. Louis. When he opened his eyes an instant later, the knife in his hand held maximum importance; the woman, bound naked with leather cords to the floor of the tepee, was of fleeting, insignificant interest.

He heard Blue Elk's footsteps. The sound of them pleased Blade. It told him the warrior he hunted, the man who had caused such blind fear in the territory, had lost the sharp edge of his perceptions. Blue Elk had, like so many before him, come to believe savagery and murderous indifference to others’ sufferings was the same as having power. Earning the fear of others was infinitely easier than earning their respect ... but Blue Elk didn't understand that distinction.

Blade looked at the woman once again, her face ghastly pale in the flickering light of the small fire. With his left hand, he motioned over his own eyes, closing them. Then he pointed to her. To his pleasure, she immediately closed her eyes and turned her face away from the tepee entrance, exactly as he had wanted her to.

In a warrior's life, there were some things that had to be done that should never be witnessed by a woman. Blade understood this, and even though the laws of his tribe didn't extend to the white man's world, his heart said it should.

Blue Elk bent low to step into his tepee. Once inside, he stood erect and looked down at his naked and helpless captive. “I'm going to stuff your pussy.”

He was dead a heartbeat later, and Blade's only regret was that he had allowed the vile murderer and rapist the chance to speak one last time.

Easing the corpse to the opposite side of the fire from the blonde woman, Blade turned the body face-down, then grabbed a buffalo skin from the floor of the tepee and tossed it over Blue Elk's bloody head and shoulders. A jugular vein, when severed, created massive bleeding.

When Blade looked again at the woman, her face was still turned away but her breasts moved with her rapid-fire breathing and her eyes were not merely closed, they were squeezed fiercely shut. She was scared. Scared out of her mind. But she had shown the good sense to do exactly as she had been instructed and hadn't made a sound.

In a soft tone he hoped was comforting, Blade spoke in the flawless English, taught to him by his mother, by an assortment of priests, and by university professors. “Please, no matter what you do, don't make any noise. I'm not here to hurt you. I promise you that.”

The woman turned her head and looked straight at Blade with eyes the size of saucers. For the first time, Blade could tell just how young Blue Elk's voluptuous captive was, and it shocked him. She might be out of her teen years, but if she was, it wasn't by much.

In a hushed, rather incredulous tone, she asked, “Y-you ... you speak English?”

“Quite well, actually.” He smiled. “My name is Blade.”

“But you're...” The remainder of the sentence remained unspoken, but not mistaken.

“An Indian. To be more specific, a Northern Comanche. However...” He smiled charmingly, even though every instinct in him was to run like the wind and let this yellow eyes squaw fend for herself. “You have a name? Can you walk?”

“My name is Samantha, and I can run if you'll just cut me free,” the woman said. And then, despite the poor light inside the tepee, she blushed and added, “And if you could find me some clothes, I'd be ever so grateful.”

The civility of the words, in stark contrast to the visual image of a voluptuous Caucasian woman trussed up naked inside a tepee, was enough to make all the internal gyroscopes that kept Blade's thinking on the level suddenly begin to tilt. In a flash, his glinting knife cut the leather thongs binding the woman's wrists and ankles.

“Listen to me carefully.” Blade did everything he could to keep from looking at the woman's breasts, which, he noted with a connoisseur's eye for detail, were nothing less than splendid. “If you want, you can follow me. But you must remain absolutely silent the entire time. You must keep running. No matter what happens, keep running and say nothing. Is that clear?”

She had an arm folded crosswise over her bosom in a vain and unintentionally erotic attempt to hide their naked fullness. Her other hand was between her legs to hide her sex. Blade would have liked to pretend he hadn't noticed the woman's allure, but his libido was as fine-tuned as the precision watches coming out of Switzerland that kept perfect time. Circumstances be damned; a beautiful woman, his body said, was something to pay attention to.

“Well?” he demanded, keeping his voice low when she didn't immediately respond. The majority of his anger was directed at himself since he couldn't keep his eyes off her body or his thoughts off vaguely licentious notions of what pleasures would be his should he slide his hips between those shapely thighs, and...

“I won't make a sound. I promise you that.” Her blue eyes filled with sincerity, and her naked breasts trembled enticingly despite her best efforts to conceal them with a single slender arm. “Please, take me with you. Take me away from this.”

Blade nodded, and then turned away from the woman. He couldn't look at her any longer without a certain part of him, which he'd never had much control over in the first place if the truth should ever be known, standing up and paying rather obvious attention to the blonde woman. Considering the fact that he was wearing only a buckskin breechclout, his intemperate thoughts and wayward body part would be impossible to conceal.

Using his knife, Blade sliced a long hole in the back of Blue Elk's tepee, crawled through, then helped the woman through.

Despite his better judgment, despite all the reasons he had for distrusting white people he did not personally know, Broken Blade, War Chief of the Northern Comanche, took the woman's hand and started into a ground-eating dogtrot he could keep up for hours. His only concern was how long the barefooted, naked white woman could keep it up, and how much danger she would put him in because of her deficiency.

To the surprise of a man who had lived in jeopardy literally every day of his life, the additional danger of that woman in his life seemed a very small price to pay.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter Two

Samantha kept up with the tall Indian, but she wasn't certain how much longer she could continue the pace. What would he do if she slowed him down? Abandon her to the band of cutthroats who had abducted her from the train, or silently kill her himself so that she wouldn't betray his escape plans?

At first, it had hurt to run barefooted through the tall buffalo grass, but now her feet just felt numb. She hadn't been outdoors without shoes on since she was a child.

Blade's enormous left hand was wrapped around her right wrist. Once, when Samantha tripped, he simply hauled her upright without breaking stride. She suspected he could snap her wrist with very little effort if he felt so inclined.

She was wildly embarrassed at her own nudity and grateful that Blade, running in front of her and dragging her along behind him, wasn't in a position to leisurely ogle her. With each hurried stride, Samantha's heavy breasts bounced and swayed erratically, making it impossible for her to forget for even a second that she was completely naked with an Indian warrior, who, she knew without any doubts whatsoever, was a killer. A cold-blooded killer ... who spoke English with a precision that could only come from a formal education. But he had the bronzed skin and wore moccasins and a buckskin breechclout of a Plains Indian.

She stumbled and this time completely lost her footing so that for several steps Blade dragged her along behind him.

“Wait!” Samantha gasped, scrambling to get to her feet, gulping in air. “I c-can't go much further.”

“My horse is less than fifty yards from here. You can make it that far,” Blade replied with only the faintest trace of sympathy in his tone.

Samantha looked at him appraisingly, stunned that, though she was quite winded, he wasn't even breathing particularly hard. The broad expanse of his naked chest had become moist with perspiration, and it reflected the pale moonlight in a distinctly erotic manner. But as her gaze caressed the relaxed muscles in Blade's naked chest, his dark eyes locked on her breasts that wiggled tautly with her panting breaths.

“Lead the way,” Samantha said, suddenly aware of Blade's scrutiny and feeling decidedly uneasy because of it. “I promise, I won't slow you down.”

By the time they reached Blade's pinto, a thick-chested mare with patches of black, chestnut brown, and white, Samantha was beginning to wonder whether the man who had rescued her from certain death ever got tired.

As they neared the mare, the animal lifted her head and whinnied in greeting. Blade rubbed her nose to calm her.

“You're going to have to carry two of us, Tikki,” Blade said to his mare as he picked up the reins from where they dangled to the prairie grass. “Be a good girl and don't complain too much.”

The horse was a four-legged arsenal. Attached to a very abbreviated saddle on the left side of the mare was a sheath holding a bow and a quiver full of arrows. In a saddle scabbard on the right side of the horse was a lever-action rifle.

“Tell me you know how to ride,” Blade said, turning sharply toward her.

Crossing an arm over her breasts and placing a hand between her legs, she nodded, grateful that her father had insisted she learn.

“At least I've got that bit of luck working for me,” Blade murmured. He put a moccasin-shod foot into a rawhide stirrup and swung up into the saddle with deceptively lithe grace, considering the size of the man. Once in the saddle, he kicked his foot out of the stirrup and reached a hand down to assist her. “Come on, we'd better put some miles between us and those men. They're not going to take kindly to me killing Blue Elk.”

Trying to tell herself there was nothing of her body he hadn't already seen and that she had much more pressing problems at the moment than trying to maintain some semblance of modesty, Samantha put her hand into Blade's outstretched one, eased her bare foot into the stirrup, and pulled herself up onto the mare's back. She slipped her arms around his waist, feeling the warmth and wetness of his abdomen beneath her palms. Feeling, too, the tempting sensation of his muscular back, heated with exertion and rock solid, against the mounds of her breasts and tantalized nipples that were curiously sensitive.

“Let's go, Tikki.” Blade kept his voice low as he touched his heels to the mare's ribs. The horse broke into a canter that could eat up the miles without exhausting either horse or rider. Glancing over his shoulder, Blade looked at Samantha and smiled. “I'm sorry to say it, but that bare bottom of yours is going to be red as an apple by sunup.”

Samantha closed her eyes as the blush of embarrassment crept swiftly up her neck, coloring her cheeks and ears to a rosy hue.

* * * *

The girl's got courage, and she knows not to complain.

Blade walked Tikki into a cool stream, fed by melting mountain snows. They were now miles away from the corpse that had at one time been a heartless monster named Blue Elk. Though Blade had kept the pace steady, he didn't travel as fast as he could, choosing instead to show some sympathy for Samantha's naked backside, and for Tikki, who was carrying extra weight.

Of all the plains and mountain Indians, perhaps none were greater equestrians than the Comanche tribes. By the time a Northern Comanche boy was five, a girl eight, they were riding by themselves. But even with his own lifetime of experience on horseback, should he have a bare ass while riding at a canter for very long his flesh would be rubbed raw, his testicles flaming red.

That was one of the purposes of wearing a six foot long breechclout made of butter-soft buckskin. By folding the leather beneath the rider, it provided cushioning and several protective layers of leather between man and saddle.

“We'll go at a walk now,” Blade said over his shoulder. “How are you holding up?”

“I'm a little sore.” After a pause of several seconds, apparently not wanting to appear ungrateful, she added, “But I'll be fine ... thanks to you. That man ... he ... he was going to—”

“Don't think about that now,” Blade said quickly. “He can't hurt you anymore. Blue Elk's days of hurting women are over. And do you want to know something? I feel pretty damned good about that.”

Tikki dipped her head, wanting a drink of the cool water, and Blade let her. Sitting loose in the saddle, at last convinced that the escape had been complete and that sudden death was a most unlikely event, he was disturbingly aware of the woman's breasts against his naked back.

When he had to concentrate on making good their escape, it was easy to focus on the very real threats he faced, but now that their safety was assured, his mind, body, and libido could leisurely take in the deliciously evocative tactile stimulation received when a very voluptuous woman was riding double without wearing any clothes.

Blade's slumbering cock woke and began to lengthen inside his breechclout.

“Would you mind if we stopped? Just for a couple minutes?” Samantha asked, her voice very soft.

Realizing that the best thing he could do was put some distance between himself and the naked woman he had rescued, Blade quickly agreed. He walked Tikki to the opposite side of the stream and found a place where the grass was thick and green. “Stay where you're at.”

Blade leaned back to kick his right leg over Tikki's neck and was immediately aware of the extravagant mounds of Samantha's breasts against his back, the fullness and firmness of which sent an intensely erotic electric shock shooting through his body. Before his moccasins hit the cool, moist grass, Blade could feel his sexual willpower begin to crumble.

In a voice that suddenly sounded slightly strained, he reached up with both hands and said with as much indifference as he could muster, “Let me help you down.”

Gripping her naked waist just above her hips, he helped Samantha off his horse. His brain screamed savagely at the injustice of being so close to an amazingly voluptuous, stunningly beautiful young woman who just happened to be completely naked ... and probably shouldn't be seduced when hours earlier she had narrowly eluded gang-rape and execution.

The instant Samantha's feet touched the grass, Blade released her and turned sharply away. He wasn't a man with much experience in sexual temperance.

“We'll stay here ten minutes. The water here is crystal clean, if you're thirsty.”

Samantha whispered a grateful “Thank you” as she headed toward the stream a few feet away.

From his buckskin pack on Tikki, Blade removed a work shirt, simple in design and without the adornments of quills and beadwork his war shirt had. The shirt would be extremely large on Samantha, though he doubted the tails would come down far enough to protect her buttocks from the ravages of horseback riding. After considering his options for a moment, Blade came to the conclusion that the only other article of clothing he could offer her was some of his own breechclout.

“I have something for you.” Blade held the shirt in his hands.

Early in the spring, after the squaws had stretched and softened the hide, Blade had sewn the two leather halves of the shirt together himself. The act of self-reliance had created something of a scandal within the Northern Comanche tribe since sewing was in the exclusive realm of the squaws. The fact that a war chief of Broken Blade's esteem should be sewing his own clothing had not set well with tribal elders, and Blade was given a stern warning that he should pick a wife soon ... or one or more wives would be picked for him.

His older brother's widow, Moon Will Shine, was now through with her mourning, and as the next oldest male sibling of the family, Blade was honor-bound to provide for her. That did not necessarily mean he had to take her as his wife, but such accommodations were quite common among the Northern Comanche.

Samantha approached, the ineffectual arm across her breasts making her appear more naked than if she weren't trying to hide herself. The hand between her thighs hid her sex but left on display the erotically sweeping curve of her hips. Blade did all he could to not stare. The sun wouldn't come up for another hour, and with the sunrise he would have a fully illuminated view of Samantha's naked perfection, which, he suspected, would be irresistible.

Never in his life had Blade's willpower been so tested. Though he was a man of many extraordinary talents, harnessing his libido had never one he could boast about. There were, however, any number of women who could testify to his ability to sensually entertain for literally hours and hours on end.

As he handed her the buckskin shirt, he shrugged. “At least it's something.” He tried to sound casual, as though Samantha's nudity left him unaffected. “It'll be big on you.”

Samantha took the shirt, and in order for her to pull the soft leather over her head, abandoned her efforts at modesty. In a tiny corner of Blade's mind, he could hear Father McMurphy's voice whispering that a gentleman would turn his back when confronted with such enticing but nevertheless forbidden temptations.

Despite his best intentions to the contrary, Blade was unable to turn his back on her when she pulled the buckskin shirt over her head. Somewhere in the process an arm got trapped in a sleeve, or perhaps she hadn't quite positioned the garment properly for her head to slip through the sizable neck hole. However it worked out, for fully thirty glorious seconds, her head and arms were inside the buckskin shirt and the rest of her body was gleaming naked in the moonlight for his leisurely, appreciative inspection. Unbidden, his penis began swelling.

As the leather came free and slithered down over ripe breasts and slender arms slipped into sleeves made for much larger limbs, Blade turned his back.

“Thank you,” Samantha said, “for allowing me my modesty.”

Blade looked at her again, and for a moment, the tightness in his throat was so intense he couldn't speak. He looked directly into her pale blue eyes, searching for some sign of theatricality, some indication that she wasn't really as sweetly innocent and grateful as she appeared.

Though the history of his people and life's circumstances had, in many ways, made Blade a cynical man ... there was nothing in Samantha's eyes that suggested she was anything other than a very frightened woman who was extremely grateful to the man who had saved her life.

The shirt came down to the middle of her thighs. Though the buckskin concealed Samantha's sex, the sight of her white legs, naked and beautiful beneath the unadorned hem, was the very definition of feminine temptation.

After clearing his throat, Blade said, “If you'll give me a moment, I think I can create a little something else that should make it more comfortable to ride.” He smiled, and his shoulders once again moved in a fluid shrug. “It won't be much, but it should help.”

Samantha turned her back to Blade but didn't take so much as a single step away. In a voice barely audible, she said, “You've been so kind to me, how will I ever repay you...?”

Blade squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as shockingly intemperate wayward thoughts of repayment by way of sexual satisfaction rocketed through his brain. For the nth time since discovering Blue Elk had a captive in his tepee, Blade had to remind himself that Samantha was a young woman who had been kidnapped, and the last thing in the world she needed was for a lusty man to turn his amorous attentions upon her.

Ignoring her feminine charms was the gentlemanly thing to do. Father McMurphy most assuredly would have agreed with Blade's decision. But then, the good Father was strong when it came to temptations of the flesh.

However, it was thoroughly and completely impossible for a man of Broken Blade's well-honed libertine sensibilities.

He waited for a moment, looking at Samantha's motionless back while his mind whirled like a tornado. Her blonde hair reflected the sparse moonlight with a golden glow, and the urge to take her into his arms was suffocating in its intensity.

With dispatch, Blade's hands did the bidding of his better judgment. He unbuckled the wide leather belt, holding his revolver and holster at one hip and a sheath and knife at the other, and dropped them to the ground. Then he unknotted the slender braided cord surrounding his waist, and instantly the soft buckskin fell to the grass at his feet. His arousal, half-formed and yet already impressive in both length and girth, sprang free and swung away from his loins.

Don't look at her! Don't! Don't! Yet his efforts were futile. Samantha represented a feminine magnetism that was much stronger than his willpower. In a vain effort to maintain some semblance of self-control, he consciously called forth bigotry. She's a yellow eyes!

This last thought was so ludicrous it nearly made him laugh. He had seduced far too many ‘yellow eyes’ to make any credible argument that he found something unseemly about the Caucasian race. The fact that his mother, who Blade adored with the devotion given only to saints, was a high-born Englishwoman was conveniently forgotten during this brief but riotous self-examination.

As his erection swelled, Broken Blade determinedly pulled the knife from his sheath, folded his breechclout in half and cut across its twelve-inch width. Taking one half of the breechclout, he pulled it up between his legs, grimacing when he discovered how little extra buckskin hung in front or back, and quickly tied the braided leather sash around his waist to hold it in place. His erection caused a portentous bulge in the soft leather.

What remained of his breechclout for Samantha to wear was not nearly long enough to provide much cushioning on horseback but enough to give some protection from the elements, as well as providing a measure of modesty. Therefore, a success, though he felt silly wearing a breechclout only marginally long enough to cover his erection, now nearly fully engorged and throbbing painfully.

It was about at this time that Blade realized the fatal flaw in his sartorial plans for his abjectly embarrassed but wildly erotic companion. Though he had a decidedly abbreviated breechclout for Samantha, he didn't have a cord to secure the buckskin in place. After a few frantic seconds, he came to the conclusion that his only option was to take a slice lengthwise from the breechclout to be used as the sash.

A few minutes later he had a finished product. It wasn't much, but something had to be better than nothing.

“Turn toward me,” Blade said, still on his knees on the bank of the stream.

She turned slowly, and when she saw him on his knees, she seemed surprised.

“I've made a breechclout for you.” He held the leather up for her to see.

She caught her lower lip between her teeth and nibbled, an act that, though innocent, was wickedly arousing to Blade's rapidly overheating senses. “I've never ... I mean ... um ... how do you put it on.”

“Let me help you,” Blade replied, his tone infinitely more casual than his riotous emotions. “Lift the shirt.” When she hesitated, he looked up into her troubled gaze. “I'm only trying to help you.”

Samantha caught the buckskin shirt at the hips and slowly raised it. Blade watched, hardly breathing, as the leather drifted upward, revealing more and more of the pale thighs, and then finally the cleft of her sex and the triangular patch of dark blonde pubic hair. The feminine vision of beauty completed Blade's erection, which now bulged mightily inside what little remained of his straining buckskin breechclout.

While holding the leather, he reached between Samantha's thighs. Without having to be told, she spread her feet wider apart. Though putting the breechclout in place and securing it with the strips of leather only took a few seconds, they were the most trying seconds of Blade's life.

The spirits are giving me a test. This is punishment for something I have done wrong.

The instant he finished knotting the makeshift sash at Samantha's hip, Blade rose to his feet. She released the buckskin shirt, a faint smile of gratitude touching her full-lipped mouth.

“I can't thank you enough.” Something caught her gaze, and she looked down at the enormous length of his erection fighting to be freed from its prison of soft leather. She put a hand to her mouth and whispered, “Oh, my! Did I cause that?”

[Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter Three

A hundred distinctly separate emotions went through Samantha in a heartbeat. She thought of her ex-fiancé and how he always said if she got him aroused, then it was her responsibility to see that he was given satisfaction.

She thought, too, with great bitterness, how when she told Jimmy she was pregnant and that they should move up their wedding date, he had ridden out of town the following day and never come back. The fact that Samantha miscarried a week later kept the secret of her pregnancy from the town gossips, but there were still those wagging tongues who speculated on why he left town so suddenly.

But that was Jimmy, and though he had taught Samantha that making love could be a pleasurable experience, his erection now seemed to Samantha like a miniature version of what Blade possessed.

“Oh,” Samantha said softly and amended it with, “oh, my!”

Blade just stood there as her gaze stayed for long seconds on the angry-looking bulge in the soft buckskin before finally, very slowly, crawling up the dark abdomen and hairless chest corded with muscles ... and lastly up to Blade's face. He was starkly handsome with high cheekbones, a wide mouth that faintly mocked, and dark eyes that glittered like wet onyx jewels.

He's so beautiful. It was a wayward thought, one she wished she hadn't had, but once it was there, she couldn't deny its existence. And when the thought, He's dark as sin itself went through her mind, she flinched. Young women of Samantha's education and social class were never supposed to think of an Indian man as being at all beautiful and certainly not sexually arousing. But what her socially-reinforced prejudices yelled at her and what her own body whispered were polar opposites.

Her tongue slipped nervously out between her lips for only a moment before her hand, somehow disembodied, as though it was another woman's hand, trembled as it crossed the small expanse that separated her from Blade.

Why am I doing this?

On a breath-held moment, she caught one end of the braided leather sash at his waist and gave a slow, steady pull. The leather unknotted, and a moment later the straining buckskin fell to the ground and Blade's erection, very long and fiercely rigid, angling upward and visibly pulsing, sprang free.

Blade sighed with relief, and Samantha gasped softly, a hand rising to her mouth.

“Oh ... my...” she whispered.

A plethora of conflicting emotions were at work within Samantha. The marrow-deep fear she'd experienced when Blue Elk had taken her hostage after killing everyone else on the train was greater than anything she had previously experienced. But then Blue Elk and Dog tied her to the stakes and cut off her clothes, and her fear-level had reached new heights. Worst of all was looking into Blue Elk's eyes as he casually touched her, her body and soul naked and vulnerable in his tepee, listening to his demeaning and vile words.

But Blade represented something else. Something exotic ... and more than just a little dangerous but in all the right ways ... erotic ... indefinably sexy ... a taboo temptation ... a promise of fulfillment that Jimmy's caresses hinted at but never really satisfied.

Samantha had never acted so rashly before, at least not when it involved sex. She wasn't what the preachers called ‘easy.’ Even so, Blade was somehow the embodiment of sex, the epitome of carnal temptation.

Kiss me. Please, kiss me!

Samantha moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, searching for the courage to put her longings into words just as Blade took a half-step closer. Her heart seemed to seize up in her chest. Though she began to literally tremble from head to toe, she did not take a step back from the tall, powerful man standing so close she could feel the heat and virility of his body in the marrow of her bones.

He raised a large hand, his fingers long and bronzed. When he touched her lightly to smooth an errant lock of hair away from her eye and behind her ear, it seemed as though she had been given the most sensual caress of her life. Her eyelashes batted briefly against cheeks that had heated with excitement and embarrassment.

The finger that had smoothed the tresses behind her ear eased beneath the heavy fall of her hair until it rested at the base of her neck.

He moistened his lips with his tongue, and it seemed a devilishly erotic thing to do. When he spoke, his voice was deep, low, unmistakably masculine, and ringing clearly with a formal education that Samantha could only speculate at. “You've had a very difficult time of it. If ... if you don't want me to kiss you, I won't.”

Samantha closed her eyes. It was glaringly obvious that she had sexually aroused Blade, and even though she had done that, he was gentlemanly enough to understand she was vulnerable—and didn't want to take advantage of her weakened physical and emotional state.

Samantha whispered, “Please, kiss me.”

She opened her eyes and looked up into his dark, glittering, jewel-like eyes. Her limited experience with men made her feel terribly insecure. “I'm not a virgin, but I've never before asked a man to kiss me.” She parceled out the truth very carefully. When Jimmy made love with her, he'd make her say things like ‘fuck me’ while they were doing it. She wondered if Blade wanted her to speak so coarsely, or if it was just Jimmy who got excited by such words.

Jimmy had taught her all the slang words for body parts and sex acts and continually prodded her to use them, particularly when she was masturbating him. She hadn't liked using the coarse language when she was with Jimmy, but there was something about Blade that pushed her toward temptation.

A half-smile toyed with Blade's mouth as he bent toward her. He hesitated a moment, his lips an inch from Samantha's. Impatient and needy, she leaned into him, tilting her head further back on her shoulders. He slanted his mouth over hers.

With infinite precision, Samantha was aware of all the different tactile sensations evoked by Blade. She tasted his lips, felt the firm, confident pressure of his mouth sealing hers, moving slowly, almost leisurely, in stark contrast to the enormously swollen and glaringly impatient erection she had seen. When he pulled her in closer, she felt that erection touch her, its solid length a barrier between their bodies, burning her through the borrowed buckskin shirt.

She had been kissed before, of course, but she had never before responded so quickly nor so completely to a kiss. And when the tip of his slithering tongue touched her lips, she opened her mouth willingly, wantonly hinting that a deeper exploration, a more intimate kiss, would be to her liking. As Blade's tongue slipped between her lips, the tremulous sigh of pleasure that drifted to her ears was unprecedented for Samantha—because the lustful moan was hers.

His hands landed on her shoulders briefly before the broad palms began making their way slowly down her arms. She literally swayed as he kissed her. His tongue danced with hers. When his hands reached her wrists, long, strong fingers curled around them.

By the time he ended that first kiss, she was incapable of denying him anything. Slick, feminine honey lubricated her entrance, her clit was erect and tingling, and her pussy ached for Blade's touch.

Samantha looked down just in time to watch him wrap her fingers around the thick, heavily-veined shaft of his cock.

“Oh ... my,” she whispered as she felt the heat of Blade's erection seep into her blood stream. It surprised her that he didn't have so much as a single strand of pubic hair.

She discovered that, with his erection in her hands, she could not touch her fingertips to her thumbs. Nervously clearing her throat, she worked both hands up and down over the length of his cock, and across the surface of her imagination came the question of whether his size was such that taking him into her body would only cause her pain, or if some pleasure might be possible despite his being so extravagantly endowed.

Fear colored her tone when she said, “You're so big that...”

“I know what to do,” Blade replied in answer to the half-formed statement, his hands once more on Samantha's shoulders as she stroked him. She suspected he had heard similar trepidation from his lovers many times before. As though reading her mind, he added, “Trust me. I'll make it magical.”

As she stroked him, she watched her hands, mesmerized by their movement. She studied their progress with a certain detached objectivity, as though they belonged to someone else. When a pearl of liquid formed at the slitted tip, Samantha resisted the urge to bend over to lick the drop off. The fact that she had even considered doing such a thing surprised her since she'd never before willingly performed that intimacy. She had on occasion been wheedled and cajoled and bullied into doing it by Jimmy.

Samantha looked up into Blade's eyes again, and he slanted his mouth once more over hers. When he kissed her, she was incapable of coherent, rational thought. As his tongue traced the circumference of her lips and entered her mouth, all she was capable of was feeling. She had been reduced to nothing more than responsive nerve endings by the sensuality conjured by Blade. She was incapable of inhibition or prejudice. She couldn't think.

He caught the bottom of the buckskin shirt and began raising it. She had to release the hold on his erection, and for several seconds, as the shirt was pulled over her head, she had the eerie sensation of drowning or suffocating, of being helpless against a man who could make her feel things more powerfully than she had thought possible.

But then the shirt was over her head and seconds later, when the half-length breechclout fell to the ground at her feet, Samantha stood completely naked—and it wasn't a feeling she was at all comfortable with. She started to cross her arms over her naked breasts, but he caught her once again by the wrists.

“Don't hide,” he said, extending her arms outward. “You are so beautiful. You mustn't hide.” He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, then on the neck. “You're much too precious to hide.”

Samantha had never before had the word ‘precious’ used in conjunction with herself, and most certainly never when she was naked. To hear it now, from a man who fascinated her in a thousand different ways, made her nipples tighten and the feminine nectar flow more freely to her pussy. Sharing her passion with Blade, an Indian, was taboo. But the man was irresistible, his charm an unspoken promise of forbidden pleasure, his sensual expertise dispensed with the casual ease of a man who had proven his skill too often already.

He bared his teeth and nipped at the delicate flesh of her throat. Samantha uttered a short, high-pitched gasp, her head spinning, all her thoughts in a chaotic jumble. She tried to pull her wrists from his grasp, but her efforts were easily thwarted. His physical strength was countless times greater than hers. She felt submissive ... and the awareness of his masculine dominance made the nectar lubricate the entrance to her feminine temple, preparing her for his invasion.

“B-Blade ... wait ... I don't think you realize...” Samantha began, a small but still rational part of her brain suddenly found its voice. But then his mouth, warm and moist, captured the crest of her left breast. He drew a firm suction upon her nipple, his cheeks caving inward as his tongue flicked across the throbbing tip. Her protests died in a whimper. “Oh, God! Blade, that's so...”

It was the strangest experience for Samantha, both fearful and exciting simultaneously and in equal measures. When she had been tied up by Blue Elk, the helplessness she felt against his greater power—especially with those rawhide cords wrapped around her wrists and ankles—made her feel defiled, even when he wasn't touching her.

With her wrists trapped within Blade's hands, she similarly felt in bondage. But the sensation this gave her, of being utterly overwhelmed by his masculine presence, dominated by his size and strength, did not make her feel defiled. It made her feel small, though she was by any measure a woman of generous dimensions and by comparison to his stark masculinity, distinctly feminine.

And then there was his heritage, which couldn't be ignored. The man was Blade, and he was a Northern Comanche, tall and proud and too damn handsome for her own good. Since Samantha was a proper school teacher—a second generation school teacher, in fact—and of Swedish-Irish descent, her options in men were limited to Scandinavians and the Irish. Perhaps out of necessity, a suitor of English or Welsh descent might do. But a Northern Comanche? A half-naked savage from the Plains? Not in a thousand years.

Or, perhaps, somewhat less than a thousand years, Samantha thought in a moment of intellectual clarity as Blade kissed his way across the front of her body, moving without haste from one thoroughly-tantalized nipple to one thus-far-neglected.

It was worth the wait. By the time Blade finally sucked her right nipple between his lips, Samantha was on the verge of begging for relief. She did not need to sink to such abject levels of carnal surrender because, obviously an aficionado of seduction, Blade knew exactly how to heighten expectation by increasing delay and precisely when fulfillment was necessary.

When he used his teeth on her nipple, Samantha's knees buckled. She started to fall, but his arms whipped around her middle in a heartbeat, holding her up as he continued to suckle upon a breast that literally ached with passion. She pushed her fingers into his long, thick, velvety hair, quite intent upon pulling his mouth away from her over-stimulated breast. But once her fingers were entwined in silken hair as black as a raven's wing, they suddenly refused to do the bidding of her better judgment. In fact, her traitorous hands did quite the opposite. Rather than pulling Blade's heated mouth away from her throbbing nipple, she hugged him even closer, pressing his face into the sumptuous mound.

Samantha had been taught to never use the Lord's name in vain, so even under this moment of astonishing stress, this life-lesson remained intact. However, as she felt Blade easing her to the thick cushion of grass at the edges of a clear-running mountain stream, she heard herself whisper for the first time in her life without being forcibly coerced, “Oh, fuck.”

Dreamily, as the cool grass touched her naked shoulders and his tantalizing lips traveled from her breast down her stomach, where he tickled her navel with his tongue for maddening seconds before continuing his downward journey, she smiled to hear herself say something so unladylike. With more confidence and less trepidation, she said, “Fuck ... me.”

“Patience, precious ... patience. I'll take you there.” He chuckled lightly and added, “Such language for a lady to use...”

Again, the sibilant endearment that worked as an aphrodisiac. And that confidence of his. Always the confidence, an invisible underscore to words that assured her in delicious ways and to a sensual degree nothing else ever had.

He knows what he's doing. Samantha closed her eyes, giving up the last vestiges of resistance to seduction. But then, almost immediately and like the woman who poisons her own well, she thought, He's learned to be this good in the arms of a thousand other women.

The sensually dampening effect of this self-defeating thought did not last long, because hardly had the reality of other women in Blade's life come to mind when his strong hands were at the insides of her naked thighs, spreading them wider apart. An instant later an inquisitive tongue, perhaps even more skilled than the rest of the man, began a slow journey between passion-inflamed labia before circling and then caressing her clitoris.

“Fuck!” she cried again.

She felt his mouth on her clitoris, and his tongue. And when he upped the ante by easing a finger between the lips of her pussy, Samantha wondered whether it was possible to go to heaven without dying first.

When a second long, bronzed finger eased into between her labia while his lips and tongue worked with increasing vigor, she considered death and thought that it wouldn't be too high a price to pay to have Blade take her to the end of this road. But this thought was almost immediately dwarfed in significance when a third finger was inserted as he sucked with the skill of a connoisseur.

With her heels digging into the soft grass of the stream's bank, Samantha gasped “God!” She arched her back, pressing her pussy against Blade's mouth as an orgasm of frightening intensity began.

There were four extremely powerful contractions, a strange pause, and then a final fifth spasm. The strong convulsions were immediately followed with another two or three spasms of diminishing strength and intensity. When the last of the spasms shuddered through her body, it was as though every muscle she possessed had suddenly turned to mush. She slumped to the ground. Blade had stilled his frisking tongue and thrusting fingers.

Seconds ticked slowly away as she tried to comprehend what she had just experienced. Finally, still gulping in air, she asked in a breathy whisper, “What the hell was that?”

“That,” he said, easing her legs off his broad, naked shoulders and moving upward to settle his naked length atop her, “was a good beginning.”

Samantha felt Blade's erection press against her abdomen, the hard length trapped between their bodies. “Really? Just a beginning?” It seemed impossible that there could be more.

He smiled, his long black hair framing his face, his teeth white in the dim moonlight. “You really must learn to trust me.”

Then he pushed into her, his unyielding cock forcing her labia to spread, and though her mouth opened, no words were emitted.

He was wrong!

A flash of bitterness swept through her as delicate tissue was forced to expand further than it ever had before and a stiletto blade of pain stabbed through her body, emanating outward from an overheated vagina overstretched by an oversized man.

Blade's initial invasion was partial, hardly more than a quarter of his length. Though inexperienced in such matters, and even though her teeth were clenched against the pain, she was aware that her lover had not cruelly bore into her. He knew his size just as he understood her limitations, and for that, Samantha wrapped her arms more tightly around his neck and breathed, “Thank you.”

As he withdrew, she felt a sense of relief ... and nascent pleasure hinted at something significantly more evocative. For breath-held seconds, he withdrew slowly until only the very tip of his crown still separated the lips of her pussy. He hesitated, waiting, his patience infinite when hers was not. Her fingernails gouged into the flesh of his taut buttocks, prompting a downward thrust that filled her completely, even though he had not given her all he possessed.

“Oh, God!” she gasped, feeling herself swell, expanding to accommodate, opening to his relentless thrust.

But even on the second thrust, he did not give her everything he had. It wasn't until the third revolution of Blade's lean hips that Samantha at last felt his torso pressing against hers, his erection deeply buried within her ... and she knew at last that she had taken all that this dangerous warrior had to give.

“Oh, yes!” she whispered, holding Blade tightly, her legs looped around his. “Just wait ... Just give me a second ... You're just so...” A shudder went through her. “Big.”

Once again, treasonously, the notion slithered through her consciousness that she was not the first woman to have some difficulty adjusting to Blade's dimensions and requested tolerance and self-discipline on his part lest intended ecstasy become agony. Samantha cursed herself for the thought.

“Let me know,” Blade said, his breath warm against the side of her face, his lean body tense from head to toe.

Holding his body tightly to her own, his powerful chest pressing against the full mounds of her breasts, Samantha was struck with the image of Blade being a thoroughbred at the racetrack, quivering with anticipation in preparation for the opening of the gates and the beginning of the race.

“You're just so...”

Her words faded when he began a slow retreat, the unyielding shaft pulling at her tender labia and rubbing against an aroused clitoris. With just the tip of his cock still between the lips of her pussy, he hesitated, waiting. Her cheek was pressed against his when she nodded, and this time the invasion was faster, impaling her with his entire erection.

As his torso slapped against hers, she whispered, “Yesss.”

Like a locomotive engine steadily being given more coal for the furnace, Blade began slowly. But each thrust, each invasion followed by retreat, happened just a little more quickly than the previous. Samantha came a second time, her body twitching beneath Blade's, his hips churning as he filled her with his lust-hardened flesh. She had never before had an orgasm while her lover's erection was filling her, so when the spasms started, she accepted them with an almost grateful sense of wonder. Discordantly, she thought it curious that an uncivilized heathen warrior such as Blade should be the man to expand her worldview so thoroughly.

Samantha felt his breath burning the side of her face, heard the hoarse gasps of his labor as he pummeled her body, no longer the practiced lover with a velvety touch, now a virile warrior stripped down to his primordial elements. She was wondering if yet a third orgasm was possible when he suddenly withdrew completely. An instant later, he groaned deep in his chest and she felt the thick, heated eruptions of his climax hit her stomach.

Stroking his hair, holding him close, his erection trapped between their bodies and his semen warm and slippery against her skin, she whispered, “Thank you ... thank you for everything, but especially for not climaxing inside me.”

Blade put his weight on his elbows, lifting up enough so that he could look into Samantha's eyes. “Precious, that was exquisite.” He smiled and kissed the tip of her nose, the point of her chin, and then her mouth. “And now I think we both could use a quick dip in the stream.”

“In a second,” she said, pulling him back down so that his chest again pressed against the mounds of her breasts. Samantha was in no hurry at all to have his weight off her. “In a second.”

* * * *

Samantha was drifting tranquilly in the half-world between sleep and consciousness. She was on her side, her head resting on the biceps of Blade's left arm. Through the buckskin shirt, she felt the heat of his chest against her back and the front of his naked thighs against the backs of hers, his pelvis against her buttocks. She did not want to wake up. Bliss was right here in her semi-conscious dream world, and bliss was an emotional state she had experienced too few times in her life.

She heard and felt Blade yawn, and a sleepy smile curled her full-lipped mouth. Blade was awake. Samantha remembered feeling him get up several times during the night to check the surrounding area to make sure that they were still safe. Then he would come back to her, his body large and warm as he slid up against her, easing one arm beneath her head as his other hand went around her body to rest against her stomach, touching her lightly but possessively through the buckskin shirt.

She felt the morning sun against her face, and though she wanted nothing more than to remain in Blade's arms, she blinked her eyes several times, but then closed them again.

“Good morning.” Blade's voice was low, a soft purr of sound. “I wondered when you would wake up.”

“I'm not awake.” Samantha didn't try to hide the impishness of her smile. “I'm sleeping very peacefully, thank you very much.”

His body moved as he chuckled silently. In her muzzy-minded state, it seemed that she was surrounded and protected by his powerful, warrior's body.

Blade took his hand from Samantha's stomach and, with his forefinger, smoothed hair away from her temple. A little shiver went through her when his fingertip lightly touched her face. For a moment, she held her breath, still not entirely awake yet distinctly aware of all the places where her body was in contact with his.

He traced the circumference of her ear. As she came slowly to full consciousness, she was aware of her own awakening passion. The surface of her skin tingled, and her clitoris began to itch pleasingly. A sensual warmth spread slowly outward from her pussy.

“You're beautiful when you sleep.”

His voice caressed her intimately. She felt it as surely as she felt his fingertip sliding along her eyebrow, her cheek, her temple, her ear. When Blade's rapidly swelling penis pressed against her bottom, she parted them just enough to allow his erection to slip between her thighs.

“Blade...”

The single word came from her as a breathy sigh. He moved his hips forward, his erection continuing to grow, sliding against the moistening lips of her pussy.

“So beautiful.” Blade eased his left arm out from beneath her head.

Samantha kept her eyes closed as she turned the control of her body over to Blade, her feminine instincts whispering that she wanted to go wherever he wanted to take her. She was willingly submissive to his dominating presence and spirit.

He rolled her slowly onto her stomach, and she cradled her head in her arms as he lifted her hips and pushed the buckskin shirt up to the small of her back to expose the pale curves of ass. A moment later, when the bulbous crown of his erection rubbed up and down her labia, which had already become slick and creamy with her excitement, Samantha merely sighed her acquiescence.

He eased into her slowly, the shaft of his cock thick, unyielding. A warbling whimper came from her as he filled her tight channel.

“You make me wet ... so fast,” she whispered once he'd reached full insertion.

She wanted to ask how he could excite her so thoroughly, so quickly and easily, but he began moving his hips, working the length of his cock in and out of her pussy, and the sensations elicited from each invasion and retreat were of such an intensity that she no longer wished to know, only to feel.

Some time later, it would occur to Samantha that beginning the day with a bone-melting climax put something of a golden glow to the rest of the morning.

* * * *

“How much farther is it to your camp?” Samantha asked, her cheek against Blade's shoulder as she rode behind him on Tikki. The lovemaking that morning had been even more glorious than the previous evenings, and she was feeling gloriously lazy.

“If you had a horse of your own, it would be two days. With Tikki having to carry both of us, it'll take twice that long.”

Samantha smiled, inhaled deeply, then sighed with contentment. Four days with Blade? The way she felt right now, she wouldn't mind if the trip took a month. Or three.

They rode in silence for a long time before he asked, “I would imagine you're anxious to get back to your world.”

“My world?”

“The civilized world.”

“Trust me, it's not that civilized.” She remembered the look in Jimmy's eyes when she said she was pregnant and they'd have to push their wedding date forward. In his eyes was contempt for her. He had quietly disappeared from town by the next morning. “The clothes are different and I suppose we do certain things differently, but it isn't a more civilized world.”

“While we're in camp, I'm responsible for you,” Blade said.

Samantha grinned sleepily. Discovering that Blade was responsible for her added an unexpected touch of eroticism to the awareness.

“You were headed to Colorado City, right?”

She nodded, her head against the back of his shoulder.

“Don't worry. I'll see that you get there as soon as possible.”

She leaned away from him. She wasn't in any hurry to part company from Blade, but it seemed as though he had already made a schedule for getting rid of her.

Aware now that her time with him most definitely was limited, she put her cheek against his shoulder again and, not knowing what else to say, whispered, “Thank you.”

[Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter Four

When they reached the encampment, there wasn't a soul in the tribe who wasn't waiting to greet Blade, and speculate on the woman riding double on his pinto and wearing a buckskin shirt but not much else.

“You're sure they're not going to be angry you've brought me along?” Samantha felt very vulnerable and completely underdressed while being scrutinized by countless pairs of dark eyes.

“You're with me,” Blade replied, as though that somehow answered all of her questions. He dropped his left hand down to her naked thigh.

“Please, people are watching,” Samantha said, though she did not push his hand from her leg.

“You'll have to get used to our ways. The Northern Comanche aren't as hypocritical as men and women in your white world.” He glanced over his shoulder, and she was reminded once again of his exotic, dark beauty. “Wait ‘til you meet my mother. You'll love her. Everyone does.”

The word ‘mother’ sent a frisson of excitement through her. He had seemed so bold, so utterly masculine, it never occurred to her that he would have the feminine influence of a mother in his life. But the pride in his tone, the undisguised love, made her all the more curious to meet his family, to discover how he had become the man that he was.

“Does she speak English?” Samantha instantly wanted to know everything about his youth, about what he had been like as a little boy. It never occurred to her that asking such a question might be interpreted as insulting.

“Of course she does,” Blade said after a moment. “She's as white as you are. In fact, she's from England.”

Samantha caught the coloring of disapproval in Blade's tone and made a promise to herself to think through her questions in the future before putting them into words.

She guessed there were well over one hundred tepees in the encampment. She noticed, too, that more than a few young women were looking at Blade with covetous eyes. When they looked at her, their expressions universally changed to emotions varying from mild disapproval to outright scorn.

The women adore Blade.

Samantha felt a growing resentment at the fawning attention her lover received. Women reached up to touch him as they rode Tikki through camp.

I wouldn't be surprised if he has a dozen young women vying for his attention.

The thought that he might have a wife filtered through her mind, and she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, mentally forcing the notion away. She wondered how much of the contempt she saw in the young squaws was because she was with Blade, or if it was because she was white.

A man wearing an elaborately beaded buckskin shirt, with similarly beaded leggings and moccasins, stepped into the path of Blade's pinto.

“Welcome home, my son,” the man said, his dark face almost glowing with pleasure and pride. “Were you successful?”

Blade replied, “Blue Elk is dead.”

“Good. And the woman?”

“Blue Elk and his men attacked a train. They killed everyone and took her.”

“You saved the woman's life.” It was a statement, not a question. He appeared pleased with Blade's actions. “I'll bet you're hungry. Come, the women have been preparing a feast for you since the sentries spotted you at Connor's Bluff.”

Blade flashed a smile at his father before looking over his shoulder at Samantha. “We rode past Connor's Bluff about three hours back. I'm afraid I have some business to attend to with my father, but the women will see to it you have everything you need.”

* * * *

Blade's mother, Constance, was the very essence of courtesy. She had dark blonde hair with sparkling green eyes that were clear and bright. She was a little taller than Samantha, and her body was becoming more plump the nearer to fifty she got. Constance's diction was flawlessly British, in startling contrast to the visual image given by her beaded and fringed buckskin dress and moccasins.

Constance inquired politely about Samantha's ordeal but was careful to not pry. Knowing she had to have an explanation for wearing Blade's buckskin shirt, and though the women gathered in Constance's tepee had not inquired, Samantha explained in matter-of-fact terms that Blue Elk had intended on raping her and would have done the deed had she not been rescued.

“Your son saved my life,” she said to Constance. “I'll never be able to repay him.”

A mother's proud smile spread across Constance's face. “That's my son,” she said with a pronounced British accent. She then turned her attention to a very attractive young squaw still in her teens. “Moon Will Shine, please get some dresses for our guest to wear.”

At hearing the request, Moon's gaze flashed over to Samantha. Behind the dark glance was anger, though Moon allowed it to show for only a moment. Still, Samantha had caught the resentment, and she suspected she had an enemy within the tribe that would not be easily placated. Moon left the tepee a moment later, without saying a word.

That left Samantha with Constance and three elderly women. “I don't think she likes me very much.”

“Moon is the widow of Blade's brother,” Constance explained. For a moment, grief was etched in her countenance.

“Widow? She seems so young.”

“She's just nineteen winters,” Constance said. “For a woman of the Northern Comanche, sixteen winters is when she takes a husband.”

“What is it for men?”

“Twenty-five winters.” Constance smiled. “A man must be a complete man before he can take on the responsibility of caring for wives and children. Besides, girls mature more quickly than boys.”

“How did Blade's brother die?” Samantha asked and immediately regretted the question when sadness teared up in Constance's eyes. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked. It's just that I'm so curious about Blade—well, about all of you, I guess.”

Constance shook her head and made a motion with her hand as though to dismiss Samantha's concern. “Blade's brother, Kills With Knives, was attacked by a Kiowa war party late last winter. The Kiowa and the Northern Comanche have been at war with each other for generations. Sometimes there's an effort at a truce, but it never lasts long. There's too much bad blood, too much animosity between us for a truce to last.”

She spoke with a weariness that startled Samantha. She suddenly had the appearance of an attractive, middle-aged woman who had personally been at war for a hundred years, and the change was a shockingly abrupt departure from the bright-eyed woman who had taken such pleasure in discussing her son's adventures.

“I'm sorry,” Samantha said.

She was about to say more, but Moon stepped in through the tepee entrance with an armful of dresses and moccasins. Her dark eyes were chilly as she placed the garments on the buffalo mat beside Samantha.

“Now, take off my son's shirt, and let's find a dress that's presentable,” Constance said, moving closer to inspect the clothing that had been brought.

Samantha pulled the buckskin shirt over her head. Moon made a derisive, snorting sound, her mouth twisting unpleasantly. The elderly women, who didn't speak a word of English, exchanged glances. All Samantha was certain of was that she had done something wrong, something she should probably be embarrassed about.

“What is it? What have I done?” Samantha resisted the urge to hide her body with her hands.

Constance again made a dismissive, waving motion with her hands. “I'll explain that later. For now, try on this.”

She handed over a doeskin dress of the softest leather Samantha had ever felt. The sleeveless dress was essentially two pieces of leather sewn together, with beadwork depicting a buffalo hunt on the front. She pulled the dress over her head and stood so that it hung on her body properly.

“It's too tight across the bosom,” Constance noted. “But the rest seems fine.”

“I should lose weight.”

“Nonsense. Our braves like their squaws to look like women.” Constance inspected the stitching on the dress's shoulder and beneath the arm. “Among the men here, a skinny wife or child is considered a sign that the husband cannot provide sufficiently for his family.”

I'm not Blade's wife.

Samantha soon realized it was much easier having thoughts of Blade being a husband than it was in banishing such romantic thoughts. Once Constance had broached the subject, whenever there was the slightest lull in the conversation, Samantha's thoughts drifted to idyllic, highly romanticized notions of sharing her life with the tall, gorgeous warrior who had recently taught her what pleasures were possible when in the arms of a man.

Constance turned to the elderly women and spoke in a language Samantha didn't understand. She was then told to remove the dress, and moments after that, the women and Moon left the tepee. Samantha was given a buffalo robe to cover her nudity.

“We're alone now,” Samantha said. “Why did Moon snicker so condescendingly at me?”

“You have body hair.” Constance smiled and blushed a little. “I remember when I fell in love with Parker and came here to live with his people. I thought it was strange, too. The customs of the Northern Comanche are not just rooted in mysticism and religion. Some customs are absolute necessities if the tribe is to flourish. Other customs, I suppose, are followed simply because they've always been followed, and nobody questions their meaning or origin.”

“Why would they get rid of their body hair?” Samantha recalled being surprised when she saw that Blade didn't have a single strand of pubic hair. And when she had been captive, Blue Elk had tugged hard enough on her pubic hair to remove several strands.

“Like most of the tribes of the Plains, the Northern Comanche believe that the hair on their head is intractably connected to their soul. From the moment they begin growing body hair, they remove it so that the only hair their soul will be connected to is the hair on their head.” She shrugged. “If you keep plucking the hairs, it doesn't take long for the hair to stop growing altogether.”

Samantha had never before heard such a thing, and the surprise showed in her expression.

“We used to use clamshells and pinched them together to remove the hairs, but we do a great deal of trading with the settlers, so now we use tweezers.” She picked up a gourd and took a sip of the liquid inside, then handed over the gourd to Samantha. “Having body hair is considered unhygienic to the Northern Comanche. That's why Moon looked so disgusted.” Her gaze met Samantha's, and the wife of the tribe's chief asked, “How long would you like to stay with us?”

The frankness and unexpectedness of the question caught Samantha completely off guard. After several seconds of silence, she finally replied, “I ... I'm not sure, really. Is it a bother to have me here?”

Constance's smile was enigmatic. “By the way, since Blade is your protector, you'll be staying in his teepee.”

* * * *

There were nearly one thousand men, women, and children of the Northern Comanche tribe headed by Parker Two Shoes, and nearly all of them were involved in the raucous celebration thrown to honor the safe return of Broken Blake after his mission of vengeance upon Blue Elk.

“The woman—she's important to you?”

Blade turned and looked down at his father. Blade towered over Parker, thanks to the genes passed down from his maternal grandfather, who was well over six feet tall.

“Yes,” he said after giving the question some consideration. “I didn't really expect it to happen.”

Parker chuckled softly. “I didn't expect to fall in love with a white woman, either. But then I looked into your mother's green eyes and all those great convictions I had about marrying within the tribe disappeared like smoke.” He smiled at the memory. “I've never regretted my decision. Not for an hour, a minute, or even a second.”

Moon Will Shine stepped closer, holding a pottery bowl in both hands. Inside the bowl was a man-sized portion of stew. The stew—a concoction of water, buffalo meat, potatoes, and any greens or vegetables that could be found—was the staple diet of the Northern Comanche.

Blade smiled at his older brother's widow. In the language of the Comanche, a dialect of the Shoshonean family, he thanked the young widow. As he took the bowl from her, Moon's fingers drifted along the backs of his hands considerably longer than necessary. He took the spoon from her, nodded his approval of her gift of food, then turned back to his father. Moon, understanding and accepting the protocol of the tribe that put warriors on a different level from squaws, walked away ... but not before she glanced back over her shoulder, her eyes glittering like jewels with open coquetry.

“I'll never be able to finish all of this,” Blade said as he put a spoon into the bowl. “Mom's been feeding me constantly since I got back.”

Parker was the highest ranking political leader of the Northern Comanche, and he had never been a man given to small-talk, so Blade wasn't particularly taken aback when his father asked bluntly, “Are you going to take Moon Will Shine as a wife?”

Blade looked at his father for a moment before replying. “I thought she was in mourning.”

“Her period of mourning ended with the full moon. As your brother's eldest male sibling, you are responsible for her.”

Blade hadn't known Moon's period of honoring her husband's life and mourning his death had passed. It hadn't seemed like that much time had passed since the murder. Almost on a daily basis, Blade thought about his beloved older brother, remembering all the magnificent times they'd had together, all the shared memories. He didn't have to be told that custom dictated Moon was his responsibility, and it irked him that his father had put his duties to the tribe into words.

“What about the white squaw?” Parker asked.

Blade smiled. “She's not a squaw, and you know that.”

“If you take her as your wife, she'll be considered a squaw.” Parker shrugged his shoulders. “I took a yellow eyes for a wife, and it was the smartest decision I've ever made. But that was long ago, and I didn't have a brother's widow to think about.” He smiled and placed a hand on Blade's shoulder. “Moon's awfully easy on the eyes, she's a wonderful cook, an excellent seamstress, and she adores the ground you walk on. You could do a lot worse than have Moon as one of your wives.”

“I know that.” Blade wished his father would drop the subject of his bachelorhood. “She stays in my tepee. I'll see she has plenty to eat, that she'll want for nothing.”

“Look into her eyes sometime,” Parker said, giving his son's shoulder a squeeze. “She wants more from you than to see that she's got food to eat, hides to make warm clothes with for the winter, and security. She wants a husband ... in her bed.”

* * * *

Samantha told herself she wasn't going to get jealous. She told herself that her time with Blade was limited and that he had made it quite clear he would make sure she made it to Colorado City quickly, so she obviously had no claim on him—at least none that he might recognize. So it was all really quite simple. She just wouldn't get jealous.

It didn't work, though not for lack of trying.

There were no less than a dozen young, pretty women flittering around Blade at all times during the celebration. The women—girls, really—were, without variation, slender and attired in buckskin dresses elaborately adorned with quillwork and beads. It was impossible to not notice all the ladies were wearing their finest dresses. Without exception, the women had long hair, some all the way to their waist, parted down the middle and festooned with owl, eagle, and hawk feathers and ribbons of various colors.

Constance approached Samantha and touched her forearm before speaking. “Have you had enough to eat?”

“More than enough. Thank you.” She gave Constance a smile but couldn't resist glancing quickly back at Blade. There seemed to be fewer coquettish ladies vying for his attention now; there couldn't be more than eight or nine stunning young women smiling flirtatiously at him. “Blade seems to be quite the hero.”

Constance looked at her son. “The tribal elders are unhappy that he hasn't taken a wife yet. The young women—they all know his time is running out. His days as a bachelor are numbered.”

The words cut into Samantha's heart. Memories as precise as reality flooded her senses. She remembered the weight and feel of Blade's powerful body above her, crushing her to the grass as his beautiful cock pumped deep and hard into her receptive body. It was as though she could once again feel his long-fingered hands caressing her, stroking her flesh to ignite fires of lust that swept away her inhibitions. It all came back to her like a tidal wave, and for a moment, green-eyed jealousy flashed in her eyes.

“Well, it's obvious that he'll have quite a number of women to choose from.” The words came out clipped and bitter.

Constance smiled and touched Samantha's forearm. “Why don't you go over there and talk to him? He's quite an accomplished conversationalist.”

Oh, Constance, your son is accomplished at much more than just conversation.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter Five

Blade found Samantha at the very outskirts of the camp, standing by herself in the moonlight, looking up at the stars. For a moment, he just looked at her from a distance. The beauty of her curvaceous body and the delicacy of her facial features insinuated itself into his masculine appreciation. A smile touched his lips. Most Northern Comanche squaws weren't as voluptuous as Samantha, and he suddenly found himself favoring her more dramatic form of feminine allure.

As though sensing his presence, she suddenly looked at him. She did not smile. That, he knew, wasn't a good sign.

“Not enjoying the celebration?” he asked, stepping closer.

“It's not that I'm not enjoying myself,” she said with little inflection in her voice. “I just got tired of watching all those beautiful women touching you constantly.”

A smile tugged at Blade's mouth. He was accustomed to being touched by women, just as he was familiar with jealous flare ups between his lovers. What he wasn't accustomed to was seeing Samantha, in all her blonde Nordic glory, wearing a lavishly ornamented Northern Comanche ceremonial dress. He liked her appearance in the traditional clothing of his tribe. He also liked the fact that she was both jealous and possessive of him, and this was monumentally surprising. Never before in his life had he tolerated a lover to openly display either of those traits, and he wondered now, why they were acceptable from Samantha.

As he stepped up to touch her arm. “They meant no harm.”

She flinched and took a step away. “Your mother is quite a woman.”

Even in the dim moonlight, he saw the anger flash in Samantha's green eyes. “Yes, she is.”

“She told me that you're supposed to be picking a bride soon.” Her mouth twisted. “Just one bride, or were you planning on having a harem?”

Blade understood Samantha's anger, but his own anger piqued at hearing the condescension in her tone. He had lived his life without answering to any woman, and he wasn't inclined to start now. “There are certain advantages all around for a warrior to have more than one wife.” It was an honest, if incomplete, answer.

Samantha snorted derisively. “I can imagine what the advantages are.”

“If a warrior has two wives, it cuts the work they must do in half. If he has three wives, then the work is divided even further.” He again stepped closer, and though Samantha flinched when he put his hand on her shoulder, she didn't step away this time. “But for what it's worth, I can't really see any man wanting more than you.” He smiled boyishly, but his tone was low and husky when he added, “You're more than a handful as it is.”

Not in the least bit mollified, Samantha asked, “Is that supposed to make me feel better? Or maybe you're saying something about my figure?”

She turned away, folding her arms beneath her breasts. The move had not been intended to be erotic, but with her arms folded together, they pushed her breasts upward, displaying more of their creamy bounty above the U-shaped neckline of her doeskin dress.

And since all Northern Comanche women are expected to be able to ride, the two halves of women's dresses were not stitched below the hip to allow straddling a pony. It had not been Samantha's intention to give him a view of her thigh almost to the curve of her buttocks, but that's what she did. And as the tall war chief of the Northern Comanche looked at her, his cock—always alert to feminine charms—awoke from its light slumber and began to respond.

“You're beautiful.” Blade took Samantha by the shoulder and turned her so that she faced him.

He had turned her so he couldn't see her thigh and wouldn't think about how carnally exquisite it was to have her legs surrounding his lean hips as he thrust into her. But by turning Samantha around, he was now given a view of her upturned breasts. Her cleavage drew his eyes magnetically, and vague but scintillating questions tickled his curiosity as he considered what pleasures he would experience when sliding his erection between her breasts.

Blade's cock, now fully awake, was very quickly outgrowing the confines of the elaborately beaded and fringed ceremonial breechclout that hung to his knees. It seemed whenever Samantha was within touching distance, his libido was always aroused, his body needing only the slightest hint of appreciation to respond approvingly.

“Let's not argue,” he said, gently massaging her upper arms.

When she tilted her face up to his, the breath caught in his throat. Her face, shining in the moonlight, was a vision of such ethereal splendor that for a moment, he wondered if he was really looking at the woman he had rescued from Blue Elk's tepee or if she wasn't a vision conjured up by the spirits to haunt his peace of mind.

The spirits were usually kind to Blade—they had been kind all his life—having blessed him with looks, charm, stature, strength, and an indefatigability that was legendary. Still, it wasn't good to question the benevolence of the spirits.

He touched her cheek lightly with his fingertips to make sure she wasn't just a spirit's specter.

“Sometimes you look at me with the strangest expression on your face,” she said quietly. “I never know what's going on in that brain of yours.”

He passed the pad of his thumb lightly over her lips. Her eyes closed for a moment, and she appeared even more spectral and erotic in the dappled moonlight.

In a whisper that barely reached Blade's ears, she said, “When you touch me, I melt inside. I keep telling myself I shouldn't be so responsive to you. I really do. But it doesn't do any good.” Her eyes opened, and she looked up at him with an expression of helpless passion. “Do me a favor and don't let me know which women in camp you've slept with. I don't want to know who your lovers are—past, present, or future.” And then, so softly that he had to bend to hear her words on the night breeze, she added, “We both know I've got no claim on you, but that doesn't stop me from pretending that I'm your one and only.”

Blade kept Samantha from saying any more by slanting his mouth over hers. She slipped her arms around his middle, and as his tongue eased between her lips, he was stricken with the awareness that this voluptuous yellow eyes with golden hair fit perfectly to his body. He pulled her in more tightly, the sensation of her heavy breasts compressing against his chest thrilled his senses like a narcotic flowing straight into his veins to make his head swim.

Her lips parted in invitation. He eased his tongue between their soft fullness, tasting her sweetness. Her tongue greeted his, moving erotically, allowing him to explore more deeply. As he kissed her, his hands slid over soft doeskin until he cupped her ass. He swallowed the sigh she emitted and pulled her in so that she had no choice but to feel how he responded to her.

Without ever stopping his kiss, his hands moved to her hips, eased between the two halves of her dress, then slid inward again. This time his long-fingered hands cupped naked buttocks, and the warmth and smoothness of her skin added the last necessary inducements for his erection to reach maximum size.

Samantha lifted her arms, entwined them around his neck, and turned her face aside to end the kiss. In a whisper, she said, “Now I know why the Northern Comanche don't wear bloomers. It's to make loving convenient for randy warriors like you.”

Blade smiled, his hands moving lightly over the twin mounds. “Actually, it's because we haven't much cloth, but that's going to get remedied soon enough.” He moved his hips just enough to rub the swollen length of his erection against her stomach. “But I'll admit there are advantages to you not having bloomers.”

Despite the softness of the buckskin breechclout, the size of his erection made wearing any clothing uncomfortable. Scintillating memories tickled his senses of what it had felt like to push through Samantha's resistance for the very first time, feeling the slick, pink lips of her pussy expanding as his hard cock invaded deeper and deeper until at last he was fully embedded and their bodies were intimately joined.

“Advantages that both of us are currently enjoying,” she purred, rolling her head on her shoulders, clearly savoring his caresses.

“Not angry any more?”

“I should be furious with you for letting all those simpering girls fawn all over you,” Samantha replied, tension in the corners of her eyes. “You saved my life, and you taught me what real passion feels like. I know I shouldn't be nasty and jealous, and the day is going to come when I'll have to leave to go back to my world. I just don't want to think about that right now.” She sighed and nibbled thoughtfully on her lower lip for a moment. “So what about what your mother said? How many wives are you going to choose?”

He squeezed her ass with both hands. “How about if I choose just one?”

Samantha flinched, clearly surprised at Blade's hint of matrimony. He flinched, too. He hadn't intended on implying any kind of permanence with her. The differences between them were enormous, and he had the gold mine and the acquisition of land to concentrate on.

He had seen with his own eyes the avaricious greed of the yellow eyes. Treaties and agreements meant nothing when gold was involved. He had been taught by his father and grandfather that the only hope for the Northern Comanche lay in having deeds to land that couldn't be voided in court and gold in the bank that couldn't be stolen. Land and money were the weapons that would protect the tribe, and to that end, Blade couldn't let anything or anyone change his focus.

The sound of young girls giggling drew his attention, and he found himself looking at several teenage girls, each smiling with naughty delight at having caught the tribe's war chief in a compromising position. He instantly took his hands from Samantha and spun to face them.

“You've had your laugh,” he said in his native tongue, unable to keep the smile from his face. “Run along and pester some boys your own age.”

With a chorus of giggles, the girls hurried away, chattering busily among themselves.

Turning back to Samantha, he said, “I'd better make an appearance, but it shouldn't take me long. Go back to my tepee and meet me there.”

Blade was surprised that, for once, Samantha didn't have a snappy rebuttal to his telling her what to do. He watched her walk away, then looked down and adjusted the front flap of his breechclout so the whole tribe wouldn't know just how enticing he found the golden-haired woman who seemed to be the topic of countless conversations in camp.

* * * *

Samantha's moccasin-shod feet seemed to barely touch the ground as she walked to Blade's tepee. She hadn't given much serious consideration to being Blade's wife. Their differences were monumental. And, being honest with herself, she admitted that while she was beginning to learn quite a bit about Blade and his family, his tribe, and the things that were important to him, he knew almost nothing about her.

As she walked, oblivious to the carnival-like chaos going on all around her, she considered what the ramifications would be if she should take Blade into her world. It only took a moment for Samantha to conclude that her world would be far less willing to admit an outsider into their ranks than his tribe was in making her feel welcome.

Samantha wondered if she could even go back to Twin Crossings, back to the school where she taught, doing her level best to teach children to read and write, always wondering when their parents would pull them out of school so that the youngsters could spend their days working on the farm.

She reached Blade's tepee. The entrance flap was pulled aside, held in place by a slender cord. She loosened the cord and, bending low to enter, let the leather flap fall into place, giving her privacy.

Inside, it was extremely dark, with the only illumination being the moonlight filtering in through the smoke hole at the top of the tepee. There were two beds made of buffalo hides and wool blankets obviously purchased from white traders. She considered which bed to take, feeling utterly without morals because in minutes or maybe even seconds, Blade would return and make love to her.

She slipped out of her moccasins, then pulled the doeskin dress over her head and tossed it aside. Completely naked, Samantha paused a moment, closing her eyes, thinking about Blade. As though moving by magic, her right hand slipped down low, sensitive fingertips trailing lightly over her abdomen and past soft curls before skipping feather-soft over tingling labia. Hazy images of the nights of passion she'd shared with Blade during their ride back to the encampment drifted over the surface of her mind.

“Ohhh,” she sighed aloud, the pad of her middle finger instantly finding her clitoris.

She rolled her head on her shoulders as she pleasured herself, her right hand tantalizing her pussy while she pinched and tugged on her nipples with her left. In her mind's eye she saw Blade, his chest naked and sweaty, the muscles of his pectorals crisply defined, the ripples of hard abdomen muscles practically begging to be traced by her tongue.

Opening her eyes at last, she stopped caressing herself. She once more looked at the two beds and decided the bigger of the two would be Blade's. She considered waiting for him atop the bed, completely naked and ready for his loving, but that was a bit too bold for her. Instead, she slipped beneath the light blanket, her eyes on the low entrance to the tepee as she waited for the man who had taught her just what ecstasy a woman's body was capable of experiencing.

When Blade stepped into his tepee a moment later, whatever insecurities Samantha harbored vanished. Despite all the beautiful, young, slender squaws he had his choice of later, he wanted her now and with a sensual greediness that made her pussy tingle.

“I got here as quickly as I could,” he explained, standing near the center of the tepee. He pulled his ornate buckskin war shirt over his head, and when she saw his naked torso, the breath caught in her throat. Not until she had met Blade had she ever really considered a man's body to be arousing to look at.

Dressed only in his long breechclout and moccasins, all dark-skinned perfection and lean-muscled beauty, he appeared wild, untamed, uncivilized—a man at the absolute pinnacle of masculine splendor. When he kicked out of his moccasins, then unknotted the braided leather sash so that his breechclout fell away, exposing a half-formed arousal, she moaned low in her throat.

He started to get down on the buffalo hide bed with her, but she quickly put a hand up to stop him. “Wait. Just ... just stand there a moment,” she said, her voice hushed with the lustful tension that gripped her soul. “I want to look at you.”

The right side of his mouth quirked upward in a smile. Completely naked and supremely confident, he stood up straight and put his hands on his hips. Rolling so that she was on her back beneath the light blanket, Samantha raised her knees a little, then touched her pussy intimately. Her lashes batted against her cheeks briefly before she forced her eyes open wide.

“You're so beautiful,” she whispered. “Can I ask a favor of you?”

His brows rose. “Why not?”

“Would you touch yourself?”

Samantha heard the request and knew she was the one who had spoken it, yet the words seemed utterly foreign to her. Samantha Merchison simply wasn't the type of woman who asked such things of men. That's what she tried to tell herself, anyway.

Blade took his cock in his hand and moved his fist back and forth. Within seconds, his arousal grew to its full, formidable length. As he stroked himself into a state of iron-hard rigidity, Samantha eased a single finger between the moist, tingling lips of her pussy.

“How is it,” she asked, her voice quavering slightly as her senses rapidly heated, “that whenever I'm with you, I find myself wanting to do the wickedest things?”

Blade shrugged. As he brought his fist back and forth, the muscles in his chest rippled and slid beneath the bronzed skin. She felt an overpowering urge to suck on his nipples and taste the tang of fresh perspiration on his skin.

A drop of fluid formed at the tip of his cock, the nectar glistening like a precious pearl in the moonlight. Her labia swelled in anticipation. Her middle finger eased between well-lubricated folds, gliding smoothly over her erect clitoris.

“Let me see your...” Samantha's words faltered until she decided on “...it.” Samantha's tone suggested she would beg, if necessary, to have her wishes fulfilled.

Blade released his cock. Its great length stood out from his body, angling slightly upward, the head and shaft enormously swollen with desire. Her pupils dilated at the vision of virile, masculine perfection. His erection appeared overtly dangerous, yet its attraction was undeniable. As she stared at his cock, her right hand beat faster between spread thighs, pumping a single finger into her pussy.

When he spoke, his deep voice was like a caress to her senses. “Get rid of the blanket,” he said, his hands at his hips, his enormous shaft jutting out prominently. “I want to watch you, too.”

“I feel so naughty when I'm with you,” Samantha replied without any censure.

She tossed the blanket aside, spread her knees even wider apart, and began using the fingertips of her left hand on her clitoris as she pumped a single finger from her right hand between the delicate, pink lips of her pussy.

“Come for me, Samantha. Show me how you pleasure yourself.”

She felt the slow tightening within herself, the first tingling warning that an orgasm was approaching. Her eyes grew unfocused with desire, her breasts quivering as she used both hands on her pussy.

“Talk to me,” she whispered, the strain of a fierce climax rapidly approaching. “Your voice ... it excites me.” She slipped a second finger into her pussy. “You make me wicked.”

In a tone that was calm but authoritative, Blade said, “Come for me, Samantha. Come ... now.”

On cue, as though the word now had magical qualities, she climaxed, her hands moving feverishly. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out as powerful spasms shook her curvaceous body.

When the last of the convulsions shuddered through her, her hands fell from her pussy, her naked body now in an unladylike, languorous sprawl atop buffalo hides. Though her eyes were closed, she could feel Blade's heated gaze visually caressing her.

“How do you get me to do whatever you want?” she asked softly as her breathing slowly returned to normal. “I have no doubt that if you told me to jump to the moon, I'd do just that.”

She shivered a little as he moved so that he stood between her ankles. Very slowly, he got down onto his knees, then, leaning forward, placed his hands on the buffalo hides near her shoulders.

“Guide me,” he commanded.

Samantha's hands were trembling as she reached for his erection and, as directed, brought the head of his cock to her still-tingling, moist entrance.

Looking up into his eyes, she whispered, “I'm yours. Do with me what you will.”

She uttered a short, sharp cry of ecstasy when the unyielding cock forced her tender body to expand. Samantha pulled at Blade, wanting to feel the full weight of his powerful body pressing down against her, compressing the mounds of her breasts as his lean hips pumped with smooth precision.

When he slanted his mouth over hers, and with his cock buried full-length inside the heated confines of her pussy, she knew her next orgasm would be upon her soon and powerful enough to shatter the illusions of a school teacher's sense of propriety.

A soft gasp of surprise drew Samantha from her private, erotic world and back to reality. With Blade still between her thighs and pumping hard into her, she saw that Moon had stepped into the tepee.

“Blade, stop,” Samantha gasped, pushing at his shoulders.

She was utterly mortified at having been caught making love, and nearly speechless with fury at Moon's uninvited entrance into the tepee.

Blade ceased the movement of his hips and turned his upper body to look at Moon. To Samantha's growing horror, he didn't seem particularly surprised that the young widow had simply walked into his tent.

“I'm busy, Moon,” he said, then turned his attention back Samantha.

“Aren't you going to do something? Tell her she's got to leave?” Samantha tried to push Blade off of her, but he was far too heavy for her to accomplish anything of significance. “Blade, aren't you going to do anything?”

His eyes were alight with amusement when he looked down at her. “Yes, I'm going to make love to you.”

“But we're not alone.” She spoke the final words slowly, as though he was somehow oblivious to the obvious.

Blade kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose. “She is my older brother's widow. As such, it is my responsibility to see that she has a tepee to live in, food to eat, and hides to make clothes. She lives here, Samantha.”

What had been fury dissolved into abject embarrassment for Samantha. She watched as Moon, her face pale and her expression one of unutterable sadness, walked to the opposite side of the tepee, removed her dress, then crawled naked between the blankets.

Blade began moving again, withdrawing his cock to the tip before plunging back into Samantha's welcoming embrace, his torso making a light slapping sound when he'd reached full insertion. She pushed at his chest—to no avail. When she looked past the glowing embers of the small fire, she saw that Moon had kicked the blankets aside and was lying on her back with her knees up, one hand between her slender thighs while the other caressed her breasts. Samantha's gaze met Moon's and held, neither woman saying a word, yet both communicating much.

Blade's tongue made a slow circumference of her ear and brought Samantha's attention back to where it was most needed. When she turned her face toward his, he kissed her softly, tenderly, nibbling at her lower lip with his teeth as his torso pumped slowly and steadily.

It seemed impossible to Samantha that she should be making love while a woman she had just met was watching her—and masturbating. Such a reality was unfathomable ... but as she danced her tongue against Blade's, and felt the long, slick slide of his cock against her clitoris, she had to admit having Moon in the tepee, watching as they made love, heightened Samantha's excitement.

When Blade lifted his upper body, then quickly threw her legs up onto his shoulders, the orgasm she had been anticipating arrived with teeth-rattling energy.

“Oh, yesss,” she purred as her body twitched through the orgasmic contractions.

Doubled nearly in half, she felt every steel inch of his cock as it sliced deep into her. As the dizziness of her orgasm passed, she blinked her eyes and found herself looking up at her lover's face, dark and handsome and showing the strain of his sexual labors. And, jarringly, she saw her own bare feet on each side of his head, her feet twitching a little as she rocked under the impact of his increasingly jarring thrusts.

She turned her head to the side and saw that Moon was still staring straight at her, a hand pumping quickly between girlishly slender thighs. To watch Moon pleasuring herself and to feel Blade's incredible cock filling her at the same time, was a voyeuristic and exhibitionistic thrill Samantha could not logically comprehend. Yet another orgasm approached when she heard the change in Blade's breathing. He would not last much longer.

For a split-second in time, Samantha thought of reminding her lover that he mustn't climax inside her. But then, for a reason she could not rationally define, she kept the words to herself. The fear of pregnancy being rendered mute by an emotion that lurked undefined in the shadows of her consciousness.

A moment later, he withdrew. With her legs still up on his shoulders, he unleashed a torrent of semen against her stomach and breasts. She stroked him gently and watched as a last drop of cum formed at the tip.

“You are amazing,” she said in a whisper as she rubbed the final drop away with her thumb.

“No, darling, you're the one who's amazing.” He leaned back so that he was sitting on his feet and eased her legs off his shoulders. “I've made another mess of you.”

Samantha's reply was cut short when, on the other side of the tepee, Moon uttered a high-pitched, squealing sound, lifted her hips off the blanket, and fingered herself into what was obviously a very powerful orgasm. When her orgasm ended and her slender body was naked and relaxed on the blankets, she smiled weakly at Samantha, then rolled onto her side and promptly fell asleep.

“Does she really live here with you?” Samantha asked.

Blade picked up a small, folded blanket, opened it with a snap of his wrist, then began slowly and lovingly wiping away the residue of his desire from Samantha's cooling body.

“It is tradition,” he said, as though those three words explained everything. “There's not much I can do about tradition.”

Samantha closed her eyes, feeling the delicate touch of his loving hands as he cleaned her body carefully and tenderly. She loved Blade. There could be no doubting it. But equally true was that the man she loved lived in a tepee with a very attractive young squaw who was clearly ready, willing, and able to share her passion with him. Samantha knew in her heart she would have to confront those unsettling facts soon ... just not tonight.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter Six

Samantha came gently awake the next morning alone on a bed of buffalo hides. Blinking away sleep, she faintly recalled Blade kissing her eyelids and murmuring that he had work to do and that she should continue resting.

With a sleepy smile, she yawned and stretched, warmly recalling the hours of lovemaking she had gloried in the previous evening. His sexual stamina, his orgasmic discipline, and his ability to recuperate were all astonishing. Samantha couldn't remember how many times she had climaxed.

Blade was an expert with his hands, with his lips and tongue, and with his cock, and he had spent hours proving his skill. He knew just how to heighten the sensual tension until it was nearly unbearable and then provide the release with an orgasm that left her shaken to the core and satisfied to the marrow.

And he knew enough not to climax inside her. However much Samantha was enjoying this idyllic time with Blade and his Northern Comanche tribe, she was an unmarried woman, and he was showing no signs of relinquishing his bachelorhood.

She didn't know what the customs were among the Northern Comanche regarding out-of-wedlock births, but in her world, such a stain on her character would prevent her from ever again teaching in a school for white children. And having an out-of-wedlock child with Indian blood would add further complications that Samantha didn't even want to consider.

Somewhat grudgingly, she opened her eyes. Through the smoke hole in the tepee, she could see the sun was up and had been for at least an hour. When she looked across the tepee, Moon was sitting with her legs folded beneath her. She was combing her long, silky hair with a factory-made hairbrush. She was also completely naked and clearly comfortable with her nudity.

Rather hesitantly, Samantha said, “Good morning.”

Continuing to brush her hair, Moon replied, “Good morning.” And then, after several weighty seconds, she added a bit cattily, “Did you sleep well ... once you decided to sleep?”

A pink blush crept into Samantha's neck and cheeks. She pushed herself into a sitting position on the buffalo robes but kept the light wool blanket wrapped around her naked body. She wasn't nearly as comfortable with her nudity as Moon appeared to be.

After deliberating for a moment on what her answer should be, Samantha finally decided on going with the truth. “Yes, I did sleep well,” she said with a tone that subtly hinted at an inner sense of triumph.

Silence hung in the tepee like a black, ominous cloud. Samantha watched Moon's small, firm breasts move tautly as she brushed her hair. Would Blade prefer it if she had small breasts, like Moon's? Would he prefer her nipples to be a deep chocolate brown, instead of a pale pink? These were not comfortable questions, but ones her insecurities insisted be addressed.

“His brother knew how to make love, too.”

The statement, delivered in a no-nonsense tone by Moon, made Samantha's heart seize up in her chest. After several seconds, she had to consciously force herself to exhale and inhale again. She hadn't wanted to get into a battle with Moon, but now it seemed inevitable.

“My husband was magnificent. Like Blade, he could make love all night long.” Vestiges of sorrow showed in Moon's dark eyes. “He made me feel like I was the only woman in the world. His love made me feel like a...” She made a motion with her hands and her brow furrowed. “I don't know the word in English. Umm...”

Samantha looked within herself for an answer, thinking about how Blade's lovemaking made her feel. “Like a goddess?”

Moon's face broke into a beaming smile. “Yes, like a goddess.” She parted her hair down the middle and began braiding one side, but as her hands worked her hair, her eyes never left Samantha's.

“What do you want to ask me?” Samantha finally said. “I call tell there's a lot on your mind.”

“Blade is a good lover, no?”

“Blade is a good lover, yes.”

“He is a wonderful hunter, too. He can kill many buffalo in the summer. And in the winter, when we go into the mountains, he always finds deer and elk for us to eat. He can provide enough meat for four or five families.” She sighed softly, used a piece of blue ribbon to secure the bottom of her braid, then began braiding the opposite side. “That is why I do not understand you.”

Samantha's brow furrowed. “I'm not sure I know what you mean.” She also wasn't sure she wanted to know what Moon meant, but the young widow seemed quite determined to get answers, even if Samantha didn't want to provide them.

“I do not understand why you are so selfish.”

The statement made Samantha sit up a little straighter. She secured the blanket around herself, wondering if perhaps Moon's somewhat limited grasp of English might be to blame.

Samantha cleared her throat, looked away for several seconds, then replied, “In what way am I selfish?”

“To keep Blade all to yourself. He is man enough for both of us. He is a true warrior. My husband is gone, so Blade provides for my needs. But my bed is empty and my period of mourning for my husband is over. I do not see why you keep Blade all to yourself and do not share him.” This time it was Moon who briefly looked away in discomfort. “Have I done something to make you dislike me?”

Moon tied off the second braid with a red ribbon and then tossed both braids over her shoulders. She got to her feet, and Samantha saw that the young widow's mons pubis was completely smooth and hairless. Insecurities again welled up inside Samantha as she wondered whether Blade found her pubic hair—as Constance had earlier explained—a sign of poor personal hygiene. She suddenly felt a bit unclean.

“No, you haven't done anything wrong.” Her voice was a whisper. “Not at all.”

“I have done you no wrong, yet you make love to Blade in front of me and will not let me share in your bounty. This I do not understand.” She shrugged her slender shoulders, sending her breasts bobbling tautly.

The idea of being the subject of malicious gossip in the camp was appalling and appeared inevitable. “Will you tell anyone that you saw Blade and I make love?”

Moon went rigid for a moment, looking down at Samantha with a mixture of suspicion and hurt in her chocolaty eyes. “You do not know about our ways.” It was a simple statement, and one that made her smile a little to herself with understanding. “Yes, that is it. You do not know our ways, and that is why you would ask such a question.”

“What ways are you talking about?”

“Among the Northern Comanche, it is considered a blasphemy to speak to others what has been said or done in a tepee. It is a blasphemy to ask others what has been said in a tepee.” She pulled an unadorned buckskin dress over her head and shimmied it down over her trim hips. “That is why, whenever there are important things that must be discussed, the talk always happens outside. If they happened inside a tepee, we could not talk of them through the tribe.” Moon smiled. “Come now, I will take you to the stream, and we will have our morning wash.”

* * * *

The posse had nine men in it. In the lead was a broad-shouldered, unsmiling man with an enormous moustache and a badge pinned to his vest. His name was Sheriff Burns, and he looked at Blade with the thinly veiled contempt of a man who sometimes must deal politely with Indians but despises it.

“I came upon their trail after they attacked the train,” Blade explained, standing at ease though he held his Henry repeating rifle cradled in his arms. “Blue Elk was responsible for the murder of one of our tribe. When I found his trail, I tracked it to where they were camped out. I slipped into camp, and that's when I killed Blue Elk.”

“You killed Blue Elk, but you left the rest of the cutthroats alive.” There was censure in Sheriff Burns's tone. “They just let you waltz on in and kill their leader and didn't do a damned thing about it?”

“I killed the sentry on my approach and waited for Blue Elk in his tepee. That's where I found the white woman. When Blue Elk came for her, I killed him. Then the woman and I escaped into the night.” Blade looked straight into the sheriff's eyes, refusing to be intimidated by the badge on his chest. In the white man's town, that badge gave him authority. On this land, Broken Blade's word was the final judgment. “As for the rest of the men riding with Blue Elk, I do not seek revenge upon men who have done me no wrong.”

“They may not have done you any wrong, but they sure as hell done wrong to all those folks on the train that they slaughtered,” the sheriff replied sharply, spittle flying from his lips in his vehemence. “Why didn't you think none about them?”

Blade's expression remained passive, despite the sheriff's escalating temper. It seemed fruitless to explain that the Northern Comanche didn't feel any responsibility toward the murdered white people because the murderers had been renegade Kiowa and Cheyenne Indians. The Northern Comanche were uninvolved. He had taken his revenge upon Blue Elk and only upon Blue Elk because he was solely responsible for the murder of one of Blade's tribe.

The sheriff took off his dusty, sweat-stained Stetson hat and wiped his perspiring forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “This white woman—she can tell us for certain who the men are that attacked the train? She can identify them?”

Blade nodded, though he wasn't at all happy about getting Samantha involved, however tangentially. He looked at the sheriff, wondering what was going through the man's mind. It was Blade's experience that whites often grouped all Indians into a single entity. This meant that the murderous behavior of one tribe might well cause all tribes to get blamed. He had heard more than a few stories about Indians being attacked on the basis of a mistaken identity. That being the case, it might be safest for the Northern Comanche if he gave the posse some assistance.

“How good is your best tracker?” Blade asked.

Sheriff Burns's eyes narrowed angrily, but only for a moment. “Not too bad.”

Blade lifted an eyebrow. “Not too bad, but not too good?”

Even the sheriff had to grin at that. “That's about the truth of it. He ain't too bad, but he sure as hell ain't too good, neither. Truth is, we lost their tracks miles ago.”

Blade didn't bother asking the sheriff why he felt he had the right to ride through Northern Comanche territory on the foothills of the Rocky Mountains known to locals as the Blue Ice Mountains. When Indians trespassed in white territory, it resulted in spilled blood as often as not. But whenever the white man trespassed into Indian territory, it was expected to be tolerated—a fact which irked the war chief of the Northern Comanche enormously.

“I'll be your tracker,” Blade said after a moment. “Dog is no better than his brother. He just hadn't made himself my enemy, so I didn't kill him.” By helping this sheriff find the killers, he could at least ensure that innocent Indians wouldn't get blamed for Dog's murderous impulses. “We'll leave at dawn.”

Sheriff Burns said, “That killer's been alive too long. You help us find him, and you'll be doing a good thing.” The sheriff's gaze flicked to the nearly new, well-oiled rifle in Blade's arms, and to the Colt Navy pistol in the holster on his left hip. “Got yourself some fine weapons.”

Blade didn't bother giving an explanation for the quality of the weapons. His younger brother, whose complexion was more like Constance's than Parker's, had negotiated the deal for crates of new weapons directly with a gunsmith out of Santa Fe. He had donned a suit and necktie and used his “white” name to conveniently circumvent any laws preventing the sale of firearms to Indians. Besides, gold had a way of making most men see only what they wanted to see.

The sheriff looked over Blade's shoulder, and an expression of confusion spread across his face. Blade turned to look in the same direction and saw Samantha approaching, her hair a spray of gold over her shoulders, the simple doeskin dress she wore pleasing him in a myriad of ways too complicated to be easily understood.

“That the gal that got kidnapped from the train?” the sheriff asked.

Before Blade had a chance to stop Samantha, she approached the sheriff with a welcoming smile. It was obvious to Blade that she didn't share his suspicions of white men in general, and white lawmen in particular. His instinctual distrust was especially elevated when it came to posses who started out on a mission of justice with honorable intentions and regularly disintegrated into groups of men driven by revenge, blood-lust, and prejudice.

Samantha answered the sheriff's greeting. “Yes, I was kidnapped by Blue Elk's tribe.” She hesitated only a moment before adding, “Blade saved my life.”

“That's not a tribe,” Blade corrected, ignoring the compliment. “That's a gang. An outlaw gang. Every man who rides with Dog has been banished from his tribe.”

Sheriff Burns kept his attention focused on Samantha. “And you think you could identify them? You can look ‘em in the face and know if they was the ones that killed all those people from the train?”

Samantha took a moment before replying, and when she spoke, it was evident she was choosing her words carefully. “Sheriff, there are very few things in this world that I'm absolutely certain of ... but this is one of them. I'm absolutely certain that for the rest of my life I will remember the faces of the men who kidnapped me.”

“Would you mind riding with us, ma'am? Once we find ‘em, if you tell us you're certain they are the Injins that kilt those people on the train, that'll make it a whole lot easier for us to do what it is we got to do.”

Samantha's eyes hardened. “Ride with you? Oh, sheriff, you couldn't keep me away if you tried.”

The sheriff's mouth pulled up on one side. “I suppose you'll be wanting us to take you back to town when we finish with this business.” It was a statement, not a question. “That's no problem for us, miss.” His eyes narrowed a bit as he looked at her. “You will be coming with us, won't you, miss?”

Samantha glanced at Blade. Her returning to the white man's world had been an unasked question that hovered around them for days now. Blade shocked himself when he discovered that he was holding his breath, waiting for Samantha's response.

“Yes,” she said at last. “I suppose I will.”

Twenty minutes later, at the outskirts of camp though still within shouting distance, Blade clenched his teeth together so tightly his jaws ached.

“I'm going, and that's the end of the discussion.” Samantha folded her arms together beneath her breasts, a glint in her eyes suggesting she would get into a fistfight with Blade before she willingly backed down to his demands.

“It's too dangerous, so you're staying here in camp, where it's safe.” He took a half-step closer to her, his dark eyes darting toward the camp. If anyone saw her openly defying him, he would lose prestige among the warriors, and his leadership and manhood would be brought into question. “Now the discussion is over, so let's drop it.”

“Fine. The discussion is over.” But as his face softened, she added, “I'm going with the posse. We don't need to discuss it any more.”

“Goddamn it, Samantha,” Blade hissed under his breath, using the curse that the priests always took so much umbrage with. “Why won't you listen to reason?”

It was her apparent calmness that infuriated him the most. She was just standing there, quietly and consistently refusing to follow his orders. He was the son of a chief, and a chief in his own right, and women simply didn't disobey him. Didn't she realize that?

“Blade, I think you should calm down some,” Samantha said conversationally. “You really look agitated, and it's frankly undignified.”

Closing his eyes, Blade inhaled deeply and then let his breath out slowly. “You are the most stubborn woman the world has ever known?”

“Perhaps I don't always do what you want,” Samantha replied sweetly. “But when it comes to making love, you've got to admit I do whatever you ask. Gladly, too.”

Despite himself, Blade had to smile. “Promise me you won't tell anyone that I let you openly defy me and that you won an argument. My reputation would be in shambles.”

* * * *

Blade saddled Tikki and rode out of camp, furious with the hot-blooded, passionate, mind-bendingly stubborn yellow eyes woman, who had entered his life without being invited and seemed determined to do whatever she wanted to, with or without Blade's approval. As a man long accustomed to having his instructions followed instantly, Samantha's stubborn determination to make her own choices was more than mildly vexing.

He rode alone, eastward toward the lush, verdant mountains, and when he was miles from camp, he dismounted and let Tikki drink from a cool stream and eat the rich grass. To the east were the Blue Ice Mountains, much of which his tribe—under his mother's maiden name—already owned. Eventually, from the gold that Blade and a select group of warriors were extracting from the mountain, he hoped to own enough land and have enough gold in the bank to ensure the security of the Northern Comanche for the turbulent coming years.

The safety and security of his tribe meant everything to Broken Blade. That emotion had been foremost in his great-grandfather's heart when he took a small band of followers and separated from the Comanches of Texas, moving northward with a Jesuit priest into more moderate climates. The safety and security of the Northern Comanche was the driving force behind the frequent trading done between the tribe and the white man. Quite literally for generations, in an effort to ensure the safety and survival of the Northern Comanche, the tribe was forced to deal directly with its most pressing and persistent enemy—the white man.

These thoughts plagued Blade's tranquility as he sat on verdant land that he and his tribe owned.

But there was something else that haunted his peace of mind. That something else was pale-skinned and curvaceous, and her golden blonde hair reflected the sunlight with the luminescence of the sun itself. Her smile had the ability to go through his eyes and hit him straight in the heart. The sound of her laughter was the purest form of music that he'd ever heard. Her kisses were the very essence of passion's promise.

And Blade was in love with her.

He had just now fully realized it, and the awareness horrified him.

Damn.

Damn it all to the Hell that the Jesuits priests always warned about.

Blade hadn't counted on falling in love. He had too much to do for him to allow himself to fall in love. There were too many people who counted on him. He had too much responsibility for him to take on the additional burden of love.

He closed his eyes and sought the advice of the spirits. Perhaps they had answers, for he was a man sorely in need of them.

He had hoped for a vision to give him answers, but he didn't get one. Instead, a small voice whispered inside his mind ... telling him that Samantha had to leave. He had to return her to the white man's world. To do otherwise was to jeopardize the tribe. He had responsibilities that were bigger than himself, more important than his own wants and wishes. He had to remember his responsibility for nearly a thousand men, women, and children.

So Samantha had to go back to her world once Dog and his band were dealt with. When the posse headed home, she would go with them, back to the life she knew. She would stay in her world, and he had to stay in his.

It was as simple as that.

* * * *

Blade made a point of not returning to camp until after sundown. As he approached his tepee, he could hear feminine laughter from inside. He smiled. Apparently the animosity between Samantha and Moon had been short-lived, a fact for which he was grateful. He didn't need any more confrontations in his life.

In the morning, with any luck at all, Samantha would oversleep and he'd be able to convince Sheriff Burns she was ill and that they'd have to go after Dog and his band of cutthroats without her. After Dog was dealt with, Blade could return her to her white world so that he could concentrate on his personal duties to the Northern Comanche.

He stepped through the entrance and found Moon and Samantha sitting with their legs folded beneath them, facing each other as they played the hand-game of rochambeau. When Blade had played the game during his university days—the loser invariably having to buy the next round of drinks—he discovered in the white man's world it was called Paper-Rock-Scissors.

Both women looked up at him, a beaming smile coming from each.

“I see that you two have gotten over your differences,” Blade said a bit cautiously.

“I've had a great day with Moon. We discovered we have much in common,” Samantha said.

For a moment, Blade took in the feminine beauty on display before him. Neither Moon nor Samantha were making any effort at trying to be sexy, and perhaps that was the reason why their physical beauty struck him so powerfully.

Seated with their legs folded caused their doeskin dresses to split at the hip, giving him a view of beautiful and feminine legs, one set being dark and slender, the other pale and more shapely. And though Moon's bosom was such that she did not have much skin on display, Samantha's neckline, though not low-cut by any means, still showed a mouthwatering amount of creamy pale femininity he found impossible to resist. Samantha's hair had been brushed, parted down the center, and put into two braids—the same hair style all the squaws of the Northern Comanche wore.

“Have you eaten?” Samantha asked. “We were expecting you hours ago.”

“No, I haven't.”

Blade hadn't planned on being gone as long, either. He had completely missed the communal evening meal. He had needed the additional time to come to terms with his personal responsibilities to the tribe and the unpleasant actions he had to take to fulfill those responsibilities.

“Moon and I saved a bowl for you. It's not hot any more, but it's still a little warm.” Samantha unfolded a buffalo hide and revealed a small pottery bowl with a lid. “Sit down over there and we'll help you.”

Blade's brow furrowed. Samantha wasn't really a difficult woman to be with, but there had to be some reason for her to be this accommodating. And there was an amused gleam in Moon's eyes that Blade couldn't account for, a devilish twinkle he hadn't seen since before her husband's murder.

He sat cross-legged on the buffalo hides that constituted his bed. Samantha and Moon quickly sat down with him, one at each knee.

“It's awfully good,” Samantha said, handing Blade the bowl. “I had two bowls myself.”

Blade took a wooden spoon from Moon and tried the stew. It was, as promised, delicious. He knew it would be. What he didn't know was what the women had planned during his absence, though he sensed they were up to something.

“You should get comfortable.” Samantha tugged free the leather thong that held on one of Blade's moccasins.

“Yes, you should be comfortable,” Moon added as she removed his other moccasin. This left him wearing only his buckskin breechclout.

“You like the stew?” Samantha asked solicitously. “Eat. It'll make you strong and give you stamina.”

Looking straight into her blue eyes, he asked, “What's going on in that clever and devious mind of yours?”

She took the bowl and spoon from him. “Let me help you,” she said, her voice now a sultry purr. She dipped the spoon into the stew and brought it to his mouth. “Open up.”

“I can feed myself,” Blade replied, but that didn't stop him from opening his mouth. She spoon-fed him, and as he chewed the sumptuous buffalo meat in the gravy-like stew juices, he became aware of Moon's small hands upon his left thigh. Samantha had another spoonful at his mouth. “Wait, I—”

She silenced him with a mouthful of stew as small fingertips, touching as delicately as a butterfly's feet upon landing, walked up his naked thigh. Before those slender brown fingers reached the top of his leg, there was a distinct tightening in his breechclout, and he had curiously cleared his throat somewhat nervously three times in the previous thirty seconds.

“Do I want to know what you women have been talking about in my absence?” Blade asked, his cheek puffed out because Samantha continued to ladle the stew into his mouth and seemed hell-bent on seeing to it that he ate every last morsel in the bowl.

“I've been talking with Moon, and she explained some of the ... um ... customs of the Northern Comanche that are ... well, let's just say that they're different from what I'm accustomed to.” When she looked Moon, there was an affectionate warmth in her eyes that hadn't been there before. She reached out and casually eased Moon's braided hair over her shoulder, and Blade felt a rush of excitement come to life in his veins at the innocent contact between the women.

“Moon's had a very difficult time of it since the death of her husband.” Samantha placed her left hand lightly onto Moon's smooth, naked thigh, and Blade's erection sprang to life swiftly, vibrantly. She leaned forward and kissed him briefly and lightly on the lips, then sat back. “Moon, perhaps you could help Blade get more comfortable. He seems ... um ... to have outgrown his clothing.”

With a tug on the braided cord holding his breechclout secure, Moon released the knot and then pulled the entire front of the buckskin garment away. His cock, not yet fully erect, bobbed when freed, coming to rest warm and heavy against his thigh.

“Blade, pay attention,” Samantha said a bit scoldingly, holding yet another spoonful of stew close to his face. “You've only got a little bit left in the bowl, and you need to eat so that plenty of strength.”

“I can believe that,” Blade replied with a sardonic grin, turning his face toward Samantha.

He was taking the stew from the spoon when Moon's lips, soft and wet and warm, surrounded the head of his cock. In that instant, he responded to her oral caress with jaw-stretching results. He looked at Samantha and saw her watching Moon as she pleasured him. Jealousy and pain flared in her eyes, flaming like a sulfur match head.

Instantly, he worried that he was about to have one hellacious fight on his hands, but then Samantha closed her eyes and gave her head and shoulders a little shake as though to physically release disturbing emotions. When she opened her eyes again and looked into his, the emerald green fire that so enraptured the warrior was blazing magnificently once again.

Blade started to look down at Moon, but Samantha put her hand under his chin and raised his face. “So, what did you do when you rode out of camp today?”

The sensation of butter-soft lips traveling back and forth over the crown and much of the shaft of his erection was creating a spike of lust that demanded all his concentration, but Samantha seemed unwilling to allow him do precisely that. With some difficulty, he swallowed the last of the stew.

“Well?” she prodded, setting the bowl and spoon aside. “You must have done something. You were gone for hours.”

Blade set his hand lightly atop Moon's slowly nodding head, neither hindering nor guiding her movements. The texture of her ebony hair against his palm was that of velvet. The soft moans that emanated from the girl were a carnal symphony that added significantly to the dimensions of his erection.

“Kiss me,” Samantha said, placing both hands on his face to position him properly and hold him steady.

It was a hungry, demanding kiss, a bold and declarative statement of her burgeoning passion. In a flash, Blade remembered how with her first kisses she had been timid and uncertain. Now she was a woman in charge, passionately determined to give and receive all the pleasure the human body was capable of.

Thirty seconds later, Samantha pushed Blade away, grabbed her doeskin dress, tugged it over her head, and then cast the garment disdainfully aside.

“Kiss me,” she demanded again. Only this time she lifted her left breast as she hooked her hand behind Blade's neck and guided him to her pink nipple. When his lips surrounded the crest of her breast and his tongue scraped the erect nipple, she rolled her head back on her shoulders and purred. “Yes!”

[Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter Seven

Samantha held Blade tightly to her breast, her eyes open but hazy with lust as she stared at the gorgeous man who was busily sucking on her nipple.

After several seconds, she turned her gaze to Moon, whose head was continuing to bob up and down, taking much of his exquisite erection into her mouth and throat. Jagged-edged jealousy and heartfelt pain surged through Samantha, and for several agonizing seconds she was entirely convinced that she'd made a the biggest mistake of her life in thinking she could share Blade with another woman. The emotions she had for him, though assuredly carnal, included something more inclined toward love than mere lust—and love, as she was beginning to understand, wasn't very good at sharing. At least not when it came to sharing Blade.

“I want some of that.”

Samantha heard herself say the words, though she hadn't consciously thought them. And unless she was completely mistaken, there was a distinct cattiness to her tone she surely wouldn't have approved of ahead of time. She clenched her teeth, fighting against emotions green and uncharitable, as she watched Moon nibble down the shaft of Blade's thick cock, the lovely young widow's eyes closed as she pleasured with practiced ease.

It was a novel experience for Samantha. Though she had performed fellatio previously, she had never wanted to take an erection into her mouth. But then, everything about her emotions in conjunction with the warrior named Broken Blade were entirely new. He inspired an adventurous spirit, especially when it came to matters of a carnal nature.

Easing her breast out of Blade's mouth, Samantha bent to flick her tongue across his nipple. She heard his sharp intake of air and knew then that his nipples were every bit as sensitive as her own. With this in mind, Samantha kissed across the hard-muscled surface of his naked chest and sucked on his other nipple. And when she heard his low, throaty moan of approval, her labia swelled and creamed in anticipation of being forced to stretch to accommodate his flaring cock.

Moon seemed not to have heard her since she continued to feast upon Blade's extravagant erection—a fact which irked Samantha to the quick. Sliding down his powerful body, she put a hand on Moon's shoulder and, with unladylike determination, simply pushed the slender widow with so much force that she tumbled backward.

“Sorry,” Samantha said with a noticeable lack of sincerity in her tone. “It's my turn now.”

She straddled Blade's left leg, positioned herself over the arousal that stood up tall and proud, and blew her breath lightly upon the flaring crown. The taut knob flexed, and the skin stretched even more tightly over the swollen inner core.

An opaque drop of fluid formed at the slit, and Samantha purred kittenishly and licked off the salty droplet. The flavor was not one that Samantha particularly appreciated, but with nascent jealousy continuing to flow more heatedly through her veins with each passing second, she wouldn't dream of putting her negative thoughts into words. She pushed her lips over the massive crown, then began nibbling down the shaft, using only her lips and tongue, careful to sheath her teeth from touching the sensitive flesh.

Samantha took Blade to the back of her mouth. She knew she wasn't taking him as deeply as Moon had, and this fact infuriated her. But when she tried to take his unyielding flesh into her throat—as Moon must surely have done, at least to some extent—her body protested and she was forced to lift her head quickly as she coughed and sputtered.

“Let me,” Moon said, almost lunging for the suddenly available erection.

Samantha had Blade back in her mouth in an instant, rather churlishly depriving Moon of the opportunity to prove she was better at giving fellatio. She chewed lightly with her lips on the thick, somewhat oval-shaped shaft as she used her tongue against the underside of the crown. Blade groaned softly of his approval, and she answered him with a moan that was perhaps slightly louder than warranted.

As she descended upon him, the heavy weight of her breasts slid against a hard thigh, thick with muscle from having lived a life on horseback. She gave her shoulders a little shake, slapping her breasts against his leg, and he responded with a sigh of pleasure.

Tilting her head back with her lips still encircling his flesh, Samantha looked up into his dark eyes. She saw the strain of sexual tension in his features, and the expression gave her sudden confidence, and a certain sense of charitable generosity returned.

She released Blade with a wet slurping sound, looked up at the man who had taught her so much, and saucily declared, “What do you think of me now?”

Samantha's blunt, saucy question caused Blade's jaw to drop. She, vastly amused at her own burgeoning sexual confidence, made a lewd spectacle of licking the head of Blade's arousal for several seconds before she said, “Moon has been explaining some of the differences between our cultures. She's been lonely. It's seems to me that we might be of some assistance to her.”

Samantha wasn't in the least bit annoyed when Blade rather brutishly grabbed her by the hair and hauled her up so that he could give her a fierce kiss. It was when he was at his most barbaric and his least civilized that Samantha's body reacted instinctively and spontaneously. The warrior in him was what most excited Samantha, making her juices flow freely to the tingling lips of her pussy.

With her hair still wrapped around his fist, Blade ended the kiss. He stared intently into her eyes, and for a moment, she wondered if she had done something wrong. The sounds of a sensual, wet fellatio being passionately given drifted up to Samantha's ears, letting her know that Moon had taken advantage of the opportunity presented her. Together, Samantha and Blade looked down and watched as Moon sucked with passion.

Samantha kissed him one last time, then looked into Blade's eyes and gave the merest of approving nods. Blade removed Moon's doeskin dress, then stretched her out onto the buffalo hides. Looking at Moon, Samantha again felt a twinge of jealousy and uncertainty. Dusky-skinned, extremely petite, Moon's body was almost the antithesis of hers. When he was perched over Moon, bending low to kiss her left nipple, she appeared even smaller in contrast to the powerfully-built Great Plains warrior.

Blade flicked his tongue over Moon's blunt, erect, chocolate-brown nipple, and Samantha squeezed her eyes tightly shut against the pain and turned her head away, fighting tears that wanted to be shed. Seconds passed. A battle raged inside her. She was hooked on the horns of a dilemma, part of her wanting to be generous to Moon, and part of her wanting to be exclusive to Blade.

Samantha opened her eyes just as he eased his middle finger into Moon's damp cleft, smiling when the young widow moaned with rapidly escalating passion before he withdrew the glistening finger altogether.

“Taste her,” he commanded, raising his hand to Samantha's mouth.

Samantha resisted, having no particular desire to taste Moon's passionate nectar. But as was so often the case, his willpower and Samantha's sensual curiosity were her undoing. She parted her lips and he eased his finger into her mouth. She could taste the young widow's honey as he eased the finger back and forth between her lips, pantomiming fellatio. Samantha moaned softly, letting him know she was willing to do whatever he asked.

Blade hooked his hand behind her neck and pulled her close. After a brief kiss, his lips brushed against her ear. “You don't want this to happen. I can see it in your eyes.”

Samantha shook her head in negation of his statement and replied in a voice so low that only he could hear, “Moon has been without a loving touch for so long...”

He smiled, paused a moment to watch Moon as she waited in a half-conscious sensual haze, then looked up again. “Do you trust me?” he asked in that wickedly tempting way of his.

For a moment, Samantha closed her eyes. It seemed to her terribly unfair that he should be so capable of making the world conform to his wishes. He was a man who seemed to always get what he wanted. But she knew, both instinctively and from experience, that when he guided her actions, her own sexual satisfaction was virtually guaranteed.

Blade lay down beside Moon on his buffalo hide bed. For a moment, Samantha was afraid she couldn't continue. But he smiled reassuringly and made a gesture for her to lay down on the opposite side of Moon.

“Such beautiful ladies,” Blade said, his gaze going slowly over both women. “So different and so beautiful.”

He dipped his head, sealing his lips over Moon's mouth. His mouth opened, and Samantha felt her own heart seize up briefly. The kiss did not last long, but even before it had ended, she wondered if there was any possible way for her to make a quick exit from his tepee.

“Your turn,” Blade said, sliding his hand around Samantha's neck to pull her so that she was leaning over Moon.

Whatever notions Samantha may have had about leaving the tepee vanished the instant his lips came in contact with her own and his moist tongue began its tantalizing dance. She moaned soulfully, distinctly aware of the places her naked body touched Moon's.

By the time the kiss ended, Samantha's head was spinning drunkenly. His hand was still at the back of her neck, and after a quick kiss on the tip of her nose, he pushed her head down toward Moon.

“Now it's your turn to kiss Moon.”

Samantha hadn't meant to gasp, but the simple declaration caught her by surprise. She looked down at Moon, seeing the young woman in a way she never had before, taking in the softness of her lips and the loveliness of her dark eyes. She resisted the pressure of Blade's hand, but only briefly. If this was what Blade wanted her to do, kissing Moon seemed a small chore to please Blade.

Very slowly, Samantha bent over Moon. She felt the heaviness of her breasts come into contact with Moon's much smaller bosom, and though the sensation was one she'd never before experienced, Samantha's body responded favorably in an instant. Her nipples became even more erect, the slick nectar of her passion flowed freely.

“I've never done this,” she whispered before slanting her mouth over the young widow's, tasting another woman's kiss for the first time in her life.

Samantha immediately came to the conclusion that kissing another woman was significantly different than kissing a man—not necessarily better or worse, just different. Moon's mouth was much smaller than Blade's, her lips softer and more acquiescent.

Quickly learning to delight in the differences, after a few light kisses, Samantha pressed her mouth more firmly against Moon's. Within a minute, she eased her tongue between Moon's lips, heightening the intimacy between them as a lifetime of inhibitions regarding taboo pleasures slowly vanished.

A shiver went through Samantha as she played her tongue against Moon's while blindly reaching for a small, firm breast. When she lightly pinched Moon's nipple, the two women shared a mutual moan, Samantha taking unprecedented enchantment in giving pleasure to her new friend.

Moon flinched and wrapped both arms tightly around Samantha's neck, hugging her tightly. With some effort, Samantha extricated herself from the young woman's boa constrictor embrace and discovered what had caused the girl's strong, physical response. While Samantha and Moon had been sharing a series of deeply intimate kisses, Blade had slipped down on the buffalo hides and repositioned himself between brown, slender thighs.

Samantha was momentarily shocked but wickedly aroused at seeing Blade using his lips and tongue upon Moon's delicate sex. Seeing his handsome face wedged between Moon's legs, his eyes closed in either pleasure or concentration, was perhaps the most shockingly erotic thing Samantha had ever seen. Moon's low moans of pleasure were almost continuous, and Samantha smiled because she knew from experience the kind of spine-jarring climaxes Blade was capable of producing with just such intimate kisses.

Propped on an elbow, Samantha let her gaze go leisurely over Moon's naked body, taking in the petite beauty of her bosom, the areolas small and distinct, the nipples fiercely erect with passion, her stomach flat, the slender legs now parted to accommodate Blade as his tongue worked sensually between the lust-enflamed lips of her pussy.

Slowly, almost in a trance, Samantha bent down once again, but this time instead of feasting upon Moon's delicious mouth, she captured the girl's nipple between her lips. She sucked tenderly upon the small, feminine button of flesh, her mind in a whirl as she tried to comprehend the fact that she was tasting a woman's nipple and taking profound pleasure in the act. Her oral caress elicited an immediate gasp and sigh from Moon, informing Samantha that her actions were appreciated.

Strong fingers pushed into her golden hair, the hand large, tugging on her hair, its action commanding. Following Blade's guidance, she kissed down the front of Moon's body, pausing briefly to play her tongue into the dimpled belly button.

The nearer to Blade that Samantha moved, the harder her heart hammered against her ribs. She had shared a deep kiss with Moon and had taken pleasure in sucking on her nipples, but neither of those activities could be compared to what Samantha knew would next be expected of her. She loved it when Blade kissed her in that supremely intimate and stimulating way ... but could she do the same to Moon?

“Kiss me,” Blade said when Samantha was very close, “and you'll taste Moon's passion.”

Hearing the bold words caused the breath to catch in Samantha's throat. She folded her knees beneath her and met Blade's gaze, knowing hers must be filled with apprehension.

“You'll do fine,” he said, once again amazing Samantha at how accurately he could read her thoughts. “Just do to her what I've done to you.”

“But—”

Blade silenced her protest by kissing her on the mouth, his lips tasting of Moon's lubricating honey. Samantha kissed him for a long time, becoming more excited with each passing second, as she always did whenever his passionate attention was directed at her. As the kiss ended, he repositioned her so that she was on her elbows and knees, her face so close to Moon's feminine temple that she could smell the fragrance of lust.

For several seconds, Samantha simply looked at Moon. The girl's pubic mound was completely free of any hair, the skin smooth and velvet soft, the petals glistening wetly in the dim light of the tepee. Seconds ticked by, and just when she thought she'd have to apologize for not following through with what was clearly expected of her, she felt Blade's hands on her bottom, pulling her hips downward. A moment later, when his knowing lips come in contact with her pussy, a shiver went through her as his probing tongue separated her labia and grazed over her clitoris.

The best antidote to inhibition is extreme desire. If Blade wanted Samantha to give Moon pleasure, then she was willing to do it. To please him, to entertain him, to impress him—Samantha was willing to do anything. Anything at all. With a shiver and a sigh, as Blade's tongue moved slickly over her clitoris, Samantha lowered her head and brought her mouth to Moon's pussy.

Moans and sighs of carnal excess filled the tepee. Samantha went about pleasuring Moon, clumsily from her inexperience, though she went at the task of eliciting a satisfying orgasm for the young widow with dogged persistence and limitless energy. It was easy for Samantha to lose concentration, since Blade was doing to her what she was doing to Moon—and Blade most definitely had experience in this sort of adventuring.

Samantha was the first to reach orgasm, though Moon did not trail by much. With her arms wrapped around Moon's naked, slender thighs, she kept her mouth pressed tightly to the girl's pussy as she bucked and writhed in ecstasy against Blade's mouth, rippling waves of pure emotion shuddering through her system.

Only when Moon was gasping and begging for Samantha to stop did she lean back and put an end to her oral caresses.

As soon as Moon had finished with her climax, Blade turned his attention to Samantha again—to her complete delight. He grabbed her by the upper arms and twisted her around on the buffalo hides, her prone body half atop Moon even as he positioned himself between her tapering thighs.

His first invasion was full-length, brutish in its intensity, his practiced charm having been stripped away by her wanton sense of sexual adventurousness and Moon's delicious enticements. He stretched himself over Samantha, his chest glistening with perspiration, his mouth slick with her honey.

“Take me,” Samantha whispered, finding it arousing to feel Moon's naked thigh beneath her head like a pillow as his thick cock filled her completely. “Take me any way you want me.”

Samantha was primed for the next orgasm, which struck with sledgehammer force on the fourth stroke of his exquisite cock into her pussy. The scent of Moon's arousal significantly heightened Samantha's own readiness for culmination.

She pulled him down so that his chest crushed her breasts. This was how she loved him the most—when his weight was upon her and she could feel his great strength dominating her both literally and metaphorically. She could tell he was throwing everything he had at her, his muscular body pounding her into the buffalo hides, the thickly-veined shaft of his erection tugging at her labia and rubbing against her clitoris.

Opening her eyes, she discovered that Moon was sitting up with her hands behind her. Samantha looked into the girl's dark brown eyes as she was tossed once more into the abyss, her body wracked by powerful orgasmic spasms that left her weak and gasping for air.

“Wait,” she whispered. “P-Please ... I need to ... catch my ... breath.” She stroked Blade's ebony hair, smoothing the thick strands away from his face. “You're so...”

Words failed Samantha. All she was absolutely certain of was that she didn't want this evening to end, that she wanted it to go on and on so that Blade could teach her all the ways it was possible to give and receive pleasure. Whatever the question, Blade was always the answer.

Moon eased her leg out from beneath Samantha's head and crawled across the tent to her own blankets. Samantha let out a small moue of disappointment and was distinctly aware of that fact that she no longer had the scent of Moon's passion tickling her senses.

“Now, my darling,” Samantha purred, feeling the hard length of his cock filling her, “I think it is time you concentrated on your own pleasure.”

“You have no idea how much it pleases me to see you passionate. You got excited by tasting Moon, didn't you?” Blade replied, his words hardly more than a whisper though their impact on Samantha's senses was a roaring thunderclap.

“You liked watching me,” Samantha answered ambiguously.

He began moving his hips, the long retreat of his cock done slowly so that she could feel each individual nerve ending being tantalized. She pulled his head down, needing his chest against her tingling breasts. When she felt his teeth nipping at her throat, she let out a squeal of submissive delight.

With his ear close to her lips, Samantha whispered, “Fuck me hard.”

His hands gripped her ass, long fingers mauling her flesh as he lifted her hips upward to meet his ramrod downward thrusts. Ever the dutiful lover, Blade had been given a request by Samantha, and he fulfilled that request spectacularly, his lean hips pumping between her thighs as his cock plunged and retreated, the roar of his labored breathing hot and moist against the side of her face.

Samantha's next orgasm was even more powerful and draining than those previously experienced. She was just beginning that slow, blissful, post-orgasmic descent from the emotional stratosphere when Blade thrust full-length into her, plunging deeply as his guttural, strangled growl of ecstasy burst from his lungs. Samantha felt him shudder as he released his cum deep inside her.

“Yes,” she purred, stroking the back of his head as his body went lax atop hers. “I love the sound that you make when you come.” When Blade started to roll off Samantha, she tightened her legs around him. “Not yet. I love the way it feels to have you inside me.”

She was blissfully aware that his sperm was inside her. This time he hadn't practiced coitus interruptus as he always had in the past. When he propped himself on his elbows to take some of his weight off her, Samantha looked up into his dark eyes, wondering what thoughts were going through his mind.

“You're mine now,” he said, answering her unasked question. “You're mine.”

His arousal had lost only a portion of its stature after his orgasm, and to Samantha's amazement and delight, she felt it grow to full-length once more.

“You're mine,” Blade repeated, a little louder than before, his hips beginning their rhythmic pumping. “You're mine. Do you hear me? You're mine.”

* * * *

They headed out after Dog and his men at dawn. Blade had hoped Samantha would oversleep, but the spirits weren't kind. When he saw her, dressed in doeskins and with braided blonde hair, he found himself questioning his earlier decision to return Samantha to the white man's villages. She was a teacher, and one of the main reasons for the Northern Comanche's success despite their small numbers was because of their literacy, which was now into the third generation of the tribe.

And, of course, there was that oft-repeated declaration of ownership the previous evening that Blade couldn't forget uttering. Samantha hadn't mentioned it, and for that he was grateful. But he had spent well over a decade keeping his status as bachelor firmly fixed in place, and had accomplished that by making a point of never making claims of exclusivity.

What he had said to Samantha was a staggering departure from the status quo ... but was it inaccurate? And why had he allowed himself to climax inside her? That was something he never allowed to happen with his other lovers. It simply wasn't done ... until Samantha. And with her, he'd done it three times. Trying to explain all three occurrences as ‘accidents’ was a pitiful alibi for his irresponsible behavior, and Blade knew it. Besides, he'd never been good with self-deception.

Forcing such thoughts from his mind, he patted Tikki's neck and resumed concentrating on following the three-days-old hoof prints left by Dog's band of murderers.

* * * *

“How far ahead do you think they are?” Sheriff Burns asked.

Blade got down on one knee to more closely inspect the hoof print. “Twelve hours. Just twelve hours, and they're moving slow.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

Blade shrugged his broad shoulders. “They don't think they're being followed. But we've got to be careful. Dog is just as vicious as his older brother was, and he's a lot more cunning. Blue Elk was their leader only because he was older.”

“What kind of men are we after?”

The right side of Blade's mouth pulled upward in a bitter smile. “The worst. They kill for sport, and they don't make allowances for women and children.” He looked at Sheriff Burns, trying to see past the man's gruff exterior. “You should know that Blue Elk and Dog watched their parents get slaughtered by your cavalry about ten or twelve years ago. I'll grant you those brothers are human monsters, but they got an early education in barbarity from the white man.”

“That's no excuse for what they've done. It's not important.”

“Maybe not now,” Blade replied. “But it was damned sure important at one time.”

* * * *

There was less than thirty minutes of sunlight left. Blade pulled Tikki to a stop and twisted in his saddle to look at Sheriff Burns.

“How far ahead are they?” the lawman asked.

“Eight hours, tops. We'll stop here and set up camp. We don't want to stumble upon them in the dark.”

The sheriff nodded and turned his horse around to give the directions to the rest of the posse. Samantha, having heard the exchange, smiled to herself. She had noticed how, during the course of the day, Blade had become the leader of the posse. Even Sheriff Burns, who clearly didn't like having to deal with Indians, followed Blade's orders without complaint.

They ate beans and buffalo jerky that night. Though the posse all had their blankets arranged near the small campfire, Despite the rather disapproving looks from the sheriff, Blade and Samantha put their blankets off to the west about twenty yards. Blade had earlier commented on the surreptitious, covetous looks the posse members had been casting in her direction. Though she said nothing, she was thrilled with Blade's protectiveness toward her.

“How are you feeling?” Blade asked, sitting in the prairie grass, chewing on tangy dried buffalo meat.

“Fine,” Samantha replied. She blushed a little. “Actually, that's a little white lie. I'm sore, but I've never felt such a wonderful pain in my life.”

Blade's dark eyes turned away from her guiltily. “I shouldn't have made love to you that last time. If I'd stopped, you wouldn't be hurting now.”

“Perhaps. But I wouldn't have experienced the pleasure, either.”

She bit off a small piece of jerked buffalo. Her legs were folded to the side, covered by the simple doeskin dress she had learned to appreciate for its practicality. She looked at Blade, enjoying the stark perfection of his profile, fully understanding why he was in such demand by women without regard to the color of their skin.

Memories of watching Moon taking his cock into her mouth, of seeing her writhing in passion as he pumped his finger into her body, flittered across the surface of her mind, and Samantha shivered. She was not unhappy that she had shared Blade with Moon ... but it was something she hoped would never happen again.

“Tell me what you're thinking,” Blade said.

She suddenly found it uncomfortable to look into his dark, fathomless eyes. “Moon needed you last night. She said I was being selfish by keeping you all to myself. I ... I purposely invited her to join us so that you could pleasure her, but you never penetrated her, did you? You pleasured her with that devilish tongue of yours, and you had me pleasure her with mine ... but you didn't really make love to her, did you? Not like you did to me.” She cleared her throat nervously. “She's the one who is staying. She's part of your tribe ... your family ... Shouldn't she...”

Blade sighed wearily. “Yes, I know my obligations are to her.” He sighed again. “You've got to understand that your customs and ours are not at all alike.”

Samantha's lifted her gaze. “What's it like to be in such demand as a lover? What's it like knowing you can have practically any woman you want, whenever you want her?”

“It's not really like that.”

“I suspect it is.” Samantha felt a nebulous emotion welling up inside her, one she couldn't identify. She was as susceptible to Blade's easy charm as all the other women within the sphere of his influence. “When I'm gone,” she continued, but then her throat tightened, cutting off her words.

“Let's not talk about that now.”

“When I'm gone,” she said, forcing herself to say the critical words, “will you take Moon as your wife? She needs a husband, and it is so obvious that she's completely smitten with you.”

“It's my obligation to see that she has food and shelter, but that doesn't mean I'm going to take her as my wife.”

“With your hunting skills, and your sexual skills, you could easily have three or four wives.” Her tone had suddenly become colored with a kind of peevish petulance, but she seemed powerless to stop it. “You could have four or five wives, now that I think of it. Just think, every night could be a veritable orgy for you.”

“It's not like that.”

“Yes, it is. It's exactly like that. You just won't admit it.” Samantha stood abruptly. Night would descend over the land in just minutes. “Come take a walk with me.”

Blade got to his feet, let Sheriff Burns know he was taking a short walk, then returned to Samantha. He held his rifle in the crook of his right arm and the Colt was in the holster at his left hip. She could tell from his posture and the ease with which he held the weapons that—if circumstances warranted it—he could be a savagely dangerous man. She understood why the Northern Comanche had chosen him to be their war chief and why young men would follow him into battle. He exuded confidence without saying a word, and in doing so, he inspired confidence in others.

They walked in silence, moving away from the camp. When Samantha's hand bumped Blade's, he slipped his fingers around her hand and she was nearly brought to tears. It felt so natural to be holding hands with Blade, but she couldn't help but wonder how much she'd miss that touch when she was in town once again, an unmarried schoolmarm that nobody would ever believe could be swept away by an ungovernable passion.

“It's been a while since I've been in this territory,” Blade said quietly, distracting Samantha from her troubling thoughts. With his rifle, he pointed to a stream perhaps a hundred yards away, visible with the moonlight shining off its slowly moving surface. “Three years ago we got into quite a skirmish with a Kiowa war party right near that bend in the stream. We ended up with two of my men wounded.” His lips pressed into a thin line, and he shook his head. “I hate it whenever my men get hurt.”

“What happened to the Kiowa war party?” Samantha asked, though she wasn't at all certain she wanted an answer.

“We killed nine the first day. They retreated, then attacked again in the morning.” His voice was distant as he recalled the battle. “They lost two or three more before just riding away and leaving us alone.”

Blade shrugged his powerful shoulders and combed his fingers though his hair. She could see, then, the burden of leadership he carried with him always. He was more than just a warrior; Broken Blade saw the entire Northern Comanche as his personal family, and as such, he was responsible for them. She was beginning to understand the totality of this emotion, and the more of it she understood, the greater her respect for Blade.

“You worry about your people all the time, don't you?” she asked.

A flashing grin displayed startling white teeth. “Not all the time. Sometimes I worry about you.”

He eased his hand around the back of Samantha's neck. For several seconds, their gazes locked and held, then Blade slowly bent toward her. But before his lips reached hers, he stood upright again.

“What's wrong?” She was always in the mood to receive Blade's kisses.

“You're already sore,” Blade explained. “I don't want to compound my guilt.”

“You've saved my life, taught me passion, and have never, ever done anything to me to feel guilty about. So give me that kiss you just shied away from, or I really will feel poorly treated.”

He kissed her then, and her first thought was that she shouldn't succumb so thoroughly and so quickly to a simple kiss. Except no kiss from Blade could be considered either simple or harmless, and her body, though tender from sexual excess of the previous evening, instantly warmed to the possibility of his passion.

“Stop this now,” Blade said when that kiss finally ended. “You told me yourself that you're sore.”

Samantha eased her hand beneath the front flap of Blade's breechclout. Beneath the soft leather, his burgeoning shaft jumped. When she squeezed, he uttered a soft groan of pleasure, and his cock instantly lengthened.

“Stop it.” There was equivocation in his tone.

“That's what your mouth is saying to me, but it isn't what your body's saying ... or wanting.” She squeezed again, and this time there could be no denying he was gaining a fierce erection. “I may have overindulged, but you obviously haven't had enough.”

Samantha was feeling more confident in her sexuality than she'd ever dreamed possible. She began tugging at the buckle to his gun belt with hands that trembled from excitement but not fear. “Help me, Blade.”

“You don't have to do this.”

“Yes, I do. I'll go crazy if I don't.”

Blade unbuckled his belt, then untied the braided sash holding up his breechclout. The buckskin fell to the ground between his feet, and the length of his magnificent cock swung out toward her. Although not yet fully aroused, it was already impressive in stature.

“Has anyone ever told you that you've got a beautiful cock?” Samantha asked as she sank to her knees. She held him in both hands, angling her head back on her shoulders to look up into his face. “I'm sure women have, so please don't answer that last question.”

Blade chuckled at Samantha's sauciness until she eased her lips over the crown of his erection and put her tongue in motion against the underside. As she began nodding to and fro, she looked at the man she adored.

In his buckskin shirt and leggings, but without his breechclout, only his groin was exposed. He seemed to her then to be the personification of untamed manliness, a warrior utterly dangerous and completely exciting. She moaned to let Blade know that she loved being on her knees before him. She was responsible for his flaring erection, and knowing she had created such a response from a man as beautiful to the eyes as Blade made her confidence soar and her clitoris start to tingle.

Samantha slipped a hand inside her dress. Touching her delicate labia, she found she was already wet, and though better judgment suggested she be satisfied with selflessly giving satisfaction to Blade, his allure was such that she needed to feel him inside her.

Leaning back and releasing him from her oral embrace, she looked up at him. She offered a soft smile as she sat back, kicked her legs out in the grass, and raised the front skirt of her doeskin dress.

“Make love to me, Blade,” she whispered. “Not for too long ... but I've got to feel you inside me.”

Blade argued that he shouldn't, but he seemed as incapable of resisting her as she was of resisting him. And though it did, in fact, hurt to accept his dimensions into her tender pussy, it was worth it, though, when the white hot shards of her orgasm struck like lightning. Her satisfaction was complete when she heard his growl of pleasure as he released his semen deep inside her.

Afterward, Blade was resting his weight on his elbows as Samantha smoothed his hair out of his eyes. He was still atop her, their bodies joined physically in the most intimate way possible.

“You're mine,” he whispered. He dipped his head down and brushed a kiss to the tip of her nose. “And we've got to find a husband for Moon Will Shine.”

Samantha's heart skipped a beat. Or three. Not daring to trust her own senses, she queried, “Pardon?”

“Maybe I'm getting the order all mixed up, but I want a husband for Moon because I want you as my bride.”

Hot tears formed in her eyes, but she refused to shed them. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

“Yes. Badly, but yes.” He kissed her forehead. “Will you marry me?”

“Only me. No other wives?”

“Only you. No other wives.” Blade's expression was stone serious.

She didn't want the tears to flow, but they wouldn't be checked.

Blade groaned. “And now I've made you cry.”

“Tears of joy.” She wiped the tears away. “Yes, I want to marry you. I don't know what customs you follow to get married, and I don't care. So long as I'm your only wife, I don't care about anything else.”

* * * *

They found Dog and his men the next day. Samantha, peering through powerful field glasses, confirmed their identities as the men who had attacked the train. As the posse got ready to attack the larger force, Blade explained to Samantha that she had to stay far from the battlefield. When she resisted, he said that “no wife of mine it going into battle, so don't argue with me.”

She would have argued, but the word ‘wife’ sounded so magnificent that she was left speechless.

While Samantha could not see the gunfight that followed less than an hour later, she could hear it. Each new volley of gunfire made her heart seize up. She prayed to God for the safety of the man who would be her husband. Then, not quite certain of Blade's spirituality, she prayed to any gods who would listen and might protect the man she loved.

Dog and his men knew that if they were ever captured, they'd be tried in a court of law and hung. They had nothing to lose by fighting to the bitter end, and that's exactly what they did. To a man, they were buried in that prairie. Sheriff Burns's posse lost two men, and four more were wounded. Blade had been bloodied when a bullet grazed his thigh, and though the wound had caused the loss of quite a bit of blood, it was still only superficial, though Samantha tended to him as though he was sitting on death's door.

* * * *

The snow was falling when Samantha's water broke three weeks before her due date. She was in a tepee, giving grammar lessons to Northern Comanche children. The tribal elders all agreed that she was a wonderful teacher, and that her influence in calming Broken Blade's profligate ways was a blessing from the spirits.

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About the author...

Prior to turning her talents to epublishing, Robin Gideon had a dozen historical romances published through Zebra Books. Her novel “Cheyenne Desire” was named 3rd Best All-time by Amazon.com for Sexy Romances, and given 5 stars out of 5. She was the featured author of the nationally syndicated TV show CBS Sunday Morning in 2006 for her historical romance “Viking Ecstasy.”

Visit Robin at

www.robingideon.com.

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Also available

Improper Nights

by

Leslie Dicken

When Lenora Blakely learns she must marry a man more than twice her age to pay off her father's debts, she doesn't expect his nephew to make her weak at the knees with a brief stroke of his tongue to her palm. Soon, Lord Blackford's flirtations provide her with a means to experience the pleasure of a lover's touch before she marries. But what begins as a tempting challenge quickly leads to a series of improper nights filled with overwhelming passion. As the time for her wedding draws near, will Lenora be able to follow through on her promised duty?

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Chapter One

Lenora Blakely stared at the paper in her hand. It was true. All that Lord Cavanaugh said was true. With her father gone, the debts not repaid, she was forced to marry the earl. A man more than twice her age.

She swallowed the lump in her throat. It all made sense now. Why her father kept her home from the London Seasons after her first one. Why he forced an annulment the day after she'd run off to Gretna Green to wed William.

A shuffle of papers drew her attention. Lord Cavanaugh stood from behind his desk. His dark eyes measured her. “I know about the wedding and annulment. It matters not to me.”

So she could not dissuade him with her unpleasant past. And yet, what other alternative was there to pay off her father's debt? Why would the earl pay for the land when it was owed to him? All he needed to do was marry his debtor's daughter and her property became her husband's.

Lenora bit her lip. Her one and only love affair was crushed before it truly began. And now she was forced to live the rest of her life with a man she barely knew.

“I'll give you a week,” he said, taking the paper her father had signed from her hands. “Gather your belongings, choose a wedding dress if you like. Then this home will be yours as well.”

She glanced at the tall bookcases, all adorned with leather-bound books. Saybrooke manor was large, fully staffed, intricate and ornate. While her own home was nothing paltry, her father's debts had taken away much of the grandeur.

Still, Lenora never wanted to marry the wealthiest member of the ton. She just wanted to feel loved. Cherished. Not a payment. Not a brood mare. Yet, she would submit to her duty.

“I shall make myself ready for next week, my lord.”

He smiled. “It will be a grand party.”

She nodded. Lord Cavanaugh wasn't an unpleasant looking man. He wasn't obscene or grotesque in any sense. His graying temples and slight roundness were common indicators of a man in the second part of his life. But she, at twenty, was less than half his age.

Lenora left the study to find a crowd gathering at the front door. A visitor had arrived, one they knew well obviously as attentions were solely focused on this man.

Young, perhaps in his late twenties, the visitor stood taller than his welcomers. His square jaw and strong nose were perfect matches to the intense pair of vibrant blue eyes turning toward her.

“My nephew,” Lord Cavanaugh whispered at her side. “His visit was planned months ago, but now it appears he will be here to share in our vows.”

Lenora lifted her chin but found she could not reply. The stranger's gaze had not left hers. She was trapped under his predatory spell as when a hunter ensnared its prey. Her pulse drew to a brisk rhythm, dampening her palms, weakening her knees.

“Come.” Lord Cavanaugh tugged at her elbow, and she stepped forward like a dog on a lead. She hoped to be directed out the door and into her carriage, but instead, she was led to the stranger. “May I present Miss Blakely?”

She stepped forward, but his predatory gaze would not let go. Lenora gasped. Her clothes felt instantly too tight, even suffocating. Her mouth watered, forcing her lips to part. A hum throbbed deep in her core.

“Miss Blakely, this is Lord Blackford, my nephew.”

A large hand captured hers and lifted it to his mouth. Full, sensual lips brushed her outer wrist, sending shivers racing to her toes. But instead of quitting the gesture after the proper amount of time, his silky tongue slid discreetly across her skin. Her eyelids drifted partially closed, as if that tongue swept across her aching nipples.

With a whimper, Lenora pulled her hand away.

Like a haughty rake, his lip curled. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Blakely. Will you be staying long?”

Lord Cavanaugh guided her to the front door. “After next week, she will be here permanently. She is to be my bride.”

Lenora glanced over her shoulder for a sign of regret or surprise on Lord Blackford's face but saw nothing except a wider smile. “Until next week then.”

He turned and led the crowd through the long hallway.

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