Wild Abandon Page 6

“I never thought to worry about that,” Lauralee said, sending a wary glance over her shoulder as she followed Dancing Cloud from the road. In many ways, living in the orphanage had not prepared her for life anywhere but there. She had much to learn.

  “The war left many men scarred, and not only physically, but mentally, as well,” Dancing Cloud explained. “That is why it is important that no woman travels alone.”

  “Yes, I now see the importance of having an escort,” she said quickly. “Sometimes one tends to forget how ruthless and brutal men can be to defenseless women. Yet I don’t see how I could ever forget.”

  Dancing Cloud cast her a quick glance. He wanted to ask her what she was referring to. Had she been treated brutally? Was she scarred by it?

  But he could see by the wavering of her eyes that she was uncomfortable over having revealed too many of her feelings to him. There would come a time when he would know all of her hidden secrets. He would draw them from deeply within her. Once spoken, perhaps they then could be forgotten.

  They traveled onward through tall, green grass, until they came to a stream that trailed, snakelike, through the groves of oak and cottonwood trees. When the bushes and trees became too thick and impassable, Dancing Cloud drew a tight rein and dismounted.

  After securing his horse’s reins to a tree limb, he went to Lauralee and placed his hands at her waist to help her from her buggy. He could feel her become tense beneath his fingers.

  Their eyes met.

  His were full of questions.

  Hers were full of apology for having shown even the slightest fear of him being so close to her, actually touching her.

  She had fought off dreams of him being so close, of their lips coming together in a soft kiss. She could not help but be afraid of what this kiss might lead to. She was not sure if she could ever allow a man to take her sexually.

  Not while in her mind’s eye she could so quickly replay her mother’s rape.

  “Thank you,” she murmured. She held onto her hat as he lifted her to the ground. “But please don’t feel that it is necessary for you to see to my every need. I have learned to take care of myself far more than most women my age.”

  She knew that most women her age were married and already had children. She had shunned all men as though they were the plague. She had wanted a nursing career, only. She wanted to be there for others, herself finding much comfort in helping the needy.

  Now, for the first time in her life, she wanted more.

  “Perhaps it is time for you to allow someone to make life easier for you,” Dancing Cloud said, easing his hands away from her. “There is no harm in accepting help, especially from someone who willingly gives it.”

  “I never want to feel obligated to anyone again,” Lauralee said, lifting her hat from her head. “I paid my debt to the orphanage for caring for me through the years. I gave them half of my inheritance. That should help pay for many of the meals they fed me. The clothes I wore? They were donated to the orphanage. Most of the time those clothes were perhaps a size too small, or too big. But at least I was warmed by them. That was all that mattered.”

  She went to the back of her buggy and placed her hat in a box. She then lifted an embroidered travel bag from her belongings and went back to Dancing Cloud. She turned soft eyes up at him.

  “I truly won’t be obligated to you, either,” she said, her voice drawn. “I will see to it that you are paid well for your inconvenience. You refused money from father. But I will make sure you take what I offer you.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “You see, I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Dancing Cloud responded only with a slow smile. This woman’s show of independence was attractive to him. He could tell that she had much spirit and pride, none of which had been beaten out of her during her time without parents.

  He had to be sure that nothing robbed her of those traits now. Not only because she was Boyd’s daughter, but also because she was the first woman who Dancing Cloud had ever allowed himself to love.

  And he did love her.

  He loved her with all of his heart and soul.

  He would chance even losing his rights to chieftainship to be with her for eternity.

  He was afraid that the big fight would come when he tried to prove to her that she belonged to him, not the Petersons of Mattoon, Illinois.

  Somehow he would convince her that she would receive much more in life by being his wife, than by being Abner and Nancy Petersons’ daughter.

  He feared that the true, main obstacle to his plans might not be Lauralee at all, but instead the Petersons. Judge Abner Peterson had fought for the Union during the Civil War. He might not want anyone near him or Lauralee who had fought for the Confederacy cause, especially a Confederate Cherokee.

  But Dancing Cloud had several days to gain not only Lauralee’s love, but total trust. Then the Petersons would not have a say in the matter. Lauralee was old enough to make up her own mind about things, even about loving a Confederate Cherokee.

  When Dancing Cloud showed no signs of arguing the point of money with her, Lauralee became unnerved. “Dancing Cloud, the money that you earn by escorting me to Mattoon is money that will buy many seeds and garden supplies for your people’s planting season,” she said quickly. “Isn’t corn your people’s staple food? The money could also buy clothes for the children of your village.”

  Her gaze went to his buckskins, then she looked up at him again. “Or do your women still only make clothes from the skins of deers?” she said softly. “I know the buffalo are gone. Surely that has made a hardship on your people.”

  “I hope to show you one day how my people do live. Then you will see that our lives do not vary much from the white man’s.”

  Lauralee’s eyes widened with that remark. She started to make a comment, but he turned from her and went to his horse and removed his saddlebags.

  Lauralee followed him through a thick cluster of bushes, wincing when the thorns of a blackberry bush ripped the skirt of her black dress. She shielded her face with one of her arms as she bent beneath low tree limbs. She was relieved when they came to a clearing where Dancing Cloud lay his saddlebags.

  When he started to walk back to his horse, to get his buckskin travel bag, she was surprised when he took a wide step around a vine of poison ivy, addressing it as he would a friend at the same time that he was avoiding it.

  She realized then just how much he was a man of total mystery to her. His customs and his way of living differed so from that which she had ever known.

  Yet she could not help from loving him, this man whose dark, midnight eyes sent her into a tailspin of rapture.

  She worked with him to get the campsite ready. When a half-moon spilled its silver light over the sky she had already bathed in a private cove in the river and had shared a meal of roasted rabbit with him that he had cooked over a fire that was only now shimmering its faint light into the darkness.

  She now lay huddled between blankets beneath the stars. She was bone-weary from the journey and felt emotionally washed out from the loss of her father.

  Yet sleep would not come to her.

  Perhaps she was too tired, she argued to herself.

  Or perhaps being alone with Dancing Cloud was the cause.

  Besides the priest who had escorted her to the orphanage, and her beloved father, she had never been alone with a man since her mother’s rape. She knew that Dancing Cloud could be trusted, but she could not relax enough in his presence to go to sleep.

  Deep down inside herself she knew that lack of trust was far from the reality of why she could not sleep. It was, in truth, because she wanted to snuggle into Dancing Cloud’s arms. She wanted to take his offer of protection to the limits. She wanted him not only to hold her within his embrace. She wanted him to kiss her and give her the experience of wild bliss for the first time in her life.

  Until she had met Dancing Cloud she had never thought it possible to have the need of a man. Now she wanted nothing
less than to experience what her mother had felt when she had been held within the protective arms of Lauralee’s father. Their love had been sweet and special. It had been picture-perfect.

  Lauralee now saw that it was possible for her to have the same sort of sensual relationship with a man.

  When Dancing Cloud rolled over on his blanket and gazed her way, Lauralee’s insides melted.

  She turned her back to him when she suddenly recalled her mother’s rape.

  How could she truly be free to love Dancing Cloud when there were so many bad memories that would not allow it? she despaired to herself.

  Tears streamed from her eyes.

  She closed them and stifled a sob behind a hand.

  Then it was as though the arms of her father were there, enveloping her within them, whispering comforting words to her as he had done so often when she had been a child.

  She recalled Dancing Cloud saying that her father’s spirit would be with them always.

  She smiled.

  He was there now.

  She could almost feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek, but realized that it was just the warmth coming from the embers of the fire.

  She turned to her side and drew her legs up in a comfortable position. Finally she felt as though she could drift to sleep. She welcomed the peace that came with it.

  Dancing Cloud watched Lauralee until she was asleep. Then he left his bed of blankets and went to sit by the river. As the moon spilled its light into the water his thoughts again became filled with Lauralee. It was hard to keep his feelings for her at bay, and the journey had just begun. He knew that going to sleep would not stop his thoughts. She was with him now, bonded like a second skin.

  Sighing heavily, he left the river and went and stood over Lauralee. Her coppery-red hair was spread out over the blanket in a satin sheen, tempting him to run his fingers through it. Her lashes were closed over her pale cheeks like black veils, and her perfectly shaped lips were just barely parted, her breathing soft and even.

  He knelt on one knee beside her and dared touch her cheek, and then her lips. Almost reverently, absolutely cautiously, he bent over and kissed her lips, then drew away when she inhaled a deep breath and flipped over to her other side.

  When she turned over, the blanket was kicked away. Dancing Cloud could not help but look at the swell of her breasts that pressed against the inside of her simple cotton dress.

  His gaze moved lower. Her dress was hiked up way past her knees, revealing to him the sensuous curve of her thighs.

  His heart almost pounding out of control, he rose quickly away from her and returned to his blanket.

  But even that did not keep him from looking at her. He would never get enough of her. She was food for his soul, this woman whose very presence threatened his future as a leader of his people!

  Chapter 6

  What are these kissings worth,

  If thou kiss not me?

  —PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

  The sound of a loud splash in water awakened Lauralee with a start. She bolted to a sitting position and looked wildly around her.

  At first she was frightened.

  She then sighed when she recalled where she was, how she had gotten there, and with whom.

  She peered toward the river. When she saw Dancing Cloud’s clothes and his rifle laying on the riverbank she concluded that he was taking an early-morning swim before resuming their journey to Mattoon.

  Lauralee glanced up at the sky. Night was changing into day. A glorious color of orange suffused the heavens as the sun rose slowly from beyond the beckoning horizon.

  Thoughts of her father being alone on the hillside that overlooked the Mississippi River in Missouri sent a keen melancholia through Lauralee. She shivered from loneliness for her father.

  But knowing that she must move on with her life she started to leave her bed of blankets, but stopped. A thrill shot through her when she noticed how considerate Dancing Cloud continued to be. While she had slept he had covered her with a warm buffalo robe. He had placed fresh wood on the fire, which had revived the flames and now swept around the logs like orange, caressing fingers. A large bowl of delicious-looking, plump purple grapes for her breakfast sat nearby.

  She was so touched by his thoughtfulness she wanted to thank him now. Not later, after he returned from his early swim.

  Scampering to her bare feet, and ignoring her wrinkled dress and tangled hair, she ran to the riverbank. She looked for Dancing Cloud.

  Just as she found him making a bend in the river, his powerfully muscled strokes taking him swiftly through the water, her voice froze in her throat. A water moccasin was slithering its way through the water toward him. Lauralee could tell that he was unaware of the snake!

  Instead, he had just caught sight of Lauralee standing there.

  He smiled, then stopped with a start and eyed her with a strange wonder as he stared at the rifle that she had grabbed up from the ground and seemed to be aiming at him.

  Many thoughts ran through his mind in a matter of seconds.

  He knew that she had not wanted an escort to Mattoon.

  But he had thought that she had accepted the fact that she would be better off in the company of a man who could offer protection.

  Had he been wrong?

  Did she, in truth, resent his presence so much that she would shoot him to rid herself of him?

  He had even thought there was a bond, even a mutual attraction that had formed between them.

  How could he have been so wrong about so many things? he despaired.

  Dancing Cloud started to make a deep dive to get away from the bullets she might fire at him.

  But he was not quick enough.

  He heard the report of the gun.

  As though in a daze, thinking that he would feel the sting of the bullet at any moment now, Dancing Cloud continued to gaze up at Lauralee.

  As far as he knew, she would be the last thing that he would see before dying....

  Then his gaze shifted just as the bullet made a splash in the water on his right side. His insides grew cold when he now realized what she had been truly shooting at.

  A water moccasin!

  And she had missed!

  The snake was still making its way toward him.

  “Dancing Cloud!” Lauralee cried, her heart skipping a beat when she realized that her aim had not been accurate enough.

  And how could she have thought that it would be?

  She was not at all familiar with firearms. The people in charge of the orphanage certainly did not take the time to teach their children such things.

  Dancing Cloud was filled with many emotions. Relief that Lauralee had tried to save his life, and fear that he might not be quicker than the snake this time. Often he had grabbed a snake around its head before it had struck with its fangs.

  But this time he was in water.

  He had nothing on which to anchor himself.

  Where he was treading water the river was deeper than his height.

  The only way to possibly save himself was to take a deep dive, them come up behind the creature.

  Without further thought he dove deeply into the water and swam a short distance.

  Just as he surfaced the snake turned and faced him.

  Dancing Cloud made another deep dive and this time came up behind the water moccasin. With the speed that might be compared to a lightning strike he grabbed the snake around the scaly flesh of its neck and held onto it as it struggled to get free. He did not want to kill the creature. He just wanted it out of his way, and Lauralee’s.

  With the snake still struggling within the powerful grip of Dancing Cloud’s hand, he swam with one arm to the opposite shore from where Lauralee awaited him.

  When he reached the shore and was able to place his feet on the pebbled bottom of the river, he took a mighty swing with his arm and tossed the snake as far as he could onto the land.

  Knowing that the snake might be dazed only for a mom
ent, then might return to the river, Dancing Cloud turned and swam quickly to the other side.

  When he pulled himself out of the water only then did he remember that he was nude. Lauralee’s eyes were wide as she stared at him. Then she dropped his rifle to the ground and turned and ran away from him, screaming.

  When Lauralee reached the campsite she struggled to regain her normal breathing. She tremored and hugged herself as she stood over the fire, staring into the dancing flames. Seeing Dancing Cloud standing there nude had sent hideous remembrances of the soldier standing nude before her mother . . . of the soldier throwing her mother to the ground . . . of the soldier mounting her mother, her mother’s screams even now echoing over and over again within Lauralee’s memory.

  Warm hands gripping her shoulders made Lauralee come back to reality. Dancing Cloud turned her to face him. She was glad that he had taken the time to get dressed. Now she was a little more relaxed.

  But if today was an example of how she would behave in the presence of a nude man, then her future with any man, even Dancing Cloud was bleak.

  While working in the hospital, helping men who were ill, she had not reacted so strangely to their nudity. But a man who had his full strength and faculties was a different matter!

  “You saved my life and then ran from me as though frightened of me,” Dancing Cloud said, his voice drawn. “Did my nudity frighten you? I was so anxious to thank you for what you did that I forgot I had no clothes on.”

  His dark eyes searched hers. “Was my body so ugly to you?” he asked sullenly. “Is that why you reacted so strangely to it? Or is it something else? You can confide in me.”

  Whispers and sighs of the wind feathered through the trees. Birds were awakening with their cheerful chatter. Squirrels were scampering overhead on limbs.

  Everything was beautiful and innocent this morning, except for Lauralee’s memories, which clung to her like glue.

  Always the steel-blue eyes of her mother’s rapist appeared, reminding her of what men could do to women.

  It was hard to replace in her heart those moments when she had witnessed such a sweet loving between her parents when her father had held her mother in his arms, and how he kissed her so gently.