“It’s all in your imagination,” the doctor had told George over and over again.
He had also told George that it was his guilt over killing so many men, women, and children that made him feel a pain that was not possible.
Suddenly George turned and went back to the colonel. “Let’s get off our asses and get going before I have to admit that I don’t have the strength to go on,” he said dryly. “Once I give in to my pain, that’ll be the end of me. Come on. Let’s get going. Now. Not later.”
“Are you certain this is what you want to do?” Colonel Hawkins asked, his eyes searching George’s. “You aren’t looking so good. You are so pale.”
“Like I said, let’s move on,” George said, turning away. He did not want Colonel Hawkins to see how weak he felt, how difficult it had become to breathe. He started violently when he heard a rustling in the nearby bushes.
His heart skipped a beat when he saw green eyes and heard a small hiss, then a crashing sound as the animal leapt away.
“We’ve just been visited by a panther,” the colonel said as he came to stand beside George. “That might change your mind about going on.”
George turned to the colonel. He glared at him. “Nothing, not even a panther, will stop me from finding my daughter,” he said tightly. “Nothing.”
“All right, then, we’d best get going now,” Colonel Hawkins said. “I’d like to get as much space between us and that damn panther as possible.”
George’s heart thumped wildly inside his chest at the thought of having come so close to such a deadly animal.
He shuddered at the thought of Shoshana not only being at the mercy of a madman scalp hunter and a renegade Apache, but also animals that might enjoy the taste of human flesh.
Chapter Sixteen
I believe love pure and true,
Is to the soul, a sweet immortal dew.
—Mary Ashley Townsend
The aroma of food and a feeling of warmth came to Shoshana as she slowly opened her eyes and found Storm sitting across the fire from her, his midnight-dark eyes gazing back at her.
“Did you sleep the night comfortably enough?” Storm asked as she drew a blanket around her shoulders, then sat up. “Does your head still pound?”
Shoshana reached a hand to her lump and was stunned to find that touching it no longer hurt, nor did it pound any longer.
She no longer had blurred vision. She could see Storm perfectly now.
She had heard about the magic that Apache medicine men could do, and it seemed that this handsome young chief’s shaman had worked magic on her.
“I did sleep the night,” she murmured. She lowered her hand from her brow. “And . . . and . . . like magic, my pain is gone.”
“That is good,” Storm said, leaning to slide a log into the fire. Sparks rose quickly from the flames that soon wrapped their fingers around the log. “It is good that you slept. It is good that you no longer feel pain.”
“But the lump is still there,” Shoshana said, again running her fingers over the injury.
“That, too, will be gone soon,” Storm said.
Shoshana felt a certain tension between them. This man stirred delicious feelings within her that she had never known before.
The sensations seemed to begin down at the very tip of her toes and worked their way up her slender legs to that place at the juncture of her thighs that had never before felt the stirrings of desire.
When she’d first laid eyes upon Storm’s face, it had been as though something began twining between them, like a vine wraps itself around an object, taking possession of it.
She felt this bond with the Apache chief even though she was not sure if he saw her in the same light. At times, though, when he let down his guard, he gazed at her with a soft look that seemed fueled by passion.
Breaking their intense eye contact, Shoshana spotted a black pot hanging on a tripod over the fire. She felt a gnawing at the pit of her stomach and knew it had nothing to do with her infatuation with Chief Storm.
She was hungry.