Savage Courage

broke into song as Storm swept Shoshana into his arms and took her to her steed, then mounted the horse a young brave brought to him.

He gave his people a broad smile, and Shoshana smiled down at her mother. Then they rode away, side by side, until they arrived at a place Shoshana had been told would be readied for her and Storm on their wedding day.

She had been told only today that Storm had slipped away in the middle of the night to prepare a retreat for their honeymoon. He had erected a beautiful snowy white tepee. Its entrance flap was open. There were slow spirals of smoke rising from the smoke hole.

“Here we shall stay two days and two nights,” Storm said, dismounting and then helping Shoshana from her steed.

He tied their reins together and tethered the horses to a low limb, then turned to Shoshana.

“Come and see where we will spend these private moments alone,” he said, again sweeping her into his arms and carrying her to the tepee.

When he took her inside, she gasped in delight at what he had done. Colorful, beautifully scented wildflowers were strewn everywhere, over and beside plush pelts, and food was cooking in a copper pot over the fire, sending off aromas that made Shoshana’s stomach growl.

“You are hungry?” Storm asked, his eyes gleaming into hers.

“Yes, but not for food,” Shoshana said, her own eyes twinkling. “I believe you know what hungers need to be fed.”

“I believe yours match my own,” he said, gently sliding her down to her feet amid the flowers. He framed her face between his hands. “My wife. I can now call you my wife. And you can call me husband.”

“My husband,” Shoshana murmured, everything within her feeling deliciously warmed by his embrace and by the electricity that flowed between them.

“And I believe a husband should undress his bride, do you not think so?” Storm asked, already sliding the dress over her head.

When she was totally nude, he bent low and kissed the nipple of one breast, and then the other, then sucked a nipple between his lips and gently nibbled on it with his teeth as his hands wandered lower and found her wet and ready between her thighs.

“You need to be undressed, too,” Shoshana murmured, though she hated to remove his beautifully beaded buckskin outfit, for she had never seen him as handsome as today.

“Then undress me,” Storm said huskily, holding his arms out on each side.

Soon he was undressed as well.

He twined his arms around her waist and led her down to the plush pelts that he had prepared for them beside the fire. As he covered her with his body, flesh against flesh, his mouth went to hers with a hot and passionate kiss.

Shoshana twined her arms around Storm’s neck and strained her body up against his. The need she felt within her was so strong, she could hardly bear to wait for him to thrust himself inside her. And when he did, she shuddered with the intensity of the feelings that swam through her.

His mouth seared hers, leaving her breathless and shaking. Their bodies moved together rhythmically.

Wondrous, sweet feelings overwhelmed Shoshana.

It was a drugged passion that she felt as his body moved more vigorously against hers. A husky groan of pleasure came from deep within him.

She emitted her own cry of passion and her senses began spinning as her hips strained upward, meeting his every thrust, surrendering herself to the pleasure that he was giving her.

Storm moaned throatily as the fire spread within him, his loins aching for fulfillment. He pressed endlessly deeper, then felt the wondrous drugged pleasure that he sought as her body answered his in a quiet explosion of their love.

Breathless, her head still spinning with the rapture of the moment, Shoshana clung to Storm as he lay atop her.

And then he rose, swept his arms around her, and carried her outside where the sun was lowering in the sky behind the mountain peak. Still carrying Shoshana, he took her to where she could see the waterfall more closely.

The setting sun blazed orange on the treetops, reflecting its last glow in the water as it splashed over the rocks. It made a rainbow of colors, then fell down below into the river.

“The sun wields the greatest power of all,” Storm said, glancing up just in time to see the last of the sun as it crept behind the peaks above them. “Just think what life would be if Father Sun withheld his light from us . . . or how damaging would be the rays of the sun if he let his rays shine day and night without cessation.”

They watched the moon replace the sun, then went inside the tepee and made love again, this time more slowly, more tenderly, as the stars twinkled through the smoke hole above them.

Suddenly all of Shoshana’s past was just a memory that she could let go. She was happy to be making a new life now with Storm, one which she could look back on and smile.

He had given her the Apache life that had been denied her those long years ago. He had given himself to her as her husband!