Dancing Cloud ignored the pain that was gripping his insides, his mind escaping in the pleasure that he was receiving from his o-ge-ye. He made love to Lauralee slowly, in a long and leisurely fashion. His lips brushed her throat, then again went to her lips.
Their embrace was long and sweet as one kiss blended into another, the slow thrusting of his pelvis bringing them closer and closer to that wondrous brink of wild abandon.
Lost in a reverie of need, Lauralee moved her hips with his, her blood quickening. Her senses swam as she felt a drugged passion seize her. She was soon gripped in an intense pleasure that spread through her in a delicious tingling heat. She moaned throatily against his lips, his own groan of pleasure revealing to her that he had reached the same summit of pleasure as she.
Their bodies quaked.
Her hips moved and rocked. Her pelvis was pressed hard against his, gyrating, pulling him even more deeply into the velvet warm walls of her femininity.
And when their bodies subsided, and the pleasure was spent, Dancing Cloud drew away from her. He pushed her hair from her face. Her eyes were sheened by moonlight as she peered with intense love at him.
Then when he grabbed suddenly at his shoulder and rolled quickly onto his back, panting, Lauralee became frightened and moved to her knees beside him. She clearly saw the pain in his eyes as he looked up at her.
“Dancing Cloud, we truly shouldn’t have,” she whispered, her eyes wavering into his. “Oh, darling, look now how you are in pain. It’s all my fault. I should’ve stayed in my bed.”
“I am in your bed,” Dancing Cloud said, taking her hand, drawing her down beside him. “And what a lovely bed and room it is. Are you certain you wish to go and live in a log cabin in the mountains? Will that be enough for you?”
“Wherever you are, that is where I want to be,” Lauralee said, cuddling close. “Whether it is in a cabin, or in a castle, if you are there, that is where you will find me.”
“When I leave Mattoon again I insist that you go with me,” Dancing Cloud said, turning to face her.
“As I plan to do,” she said matter-of-factly. She smiled at him. “Darling, do you think I would let you go on that journey without me after what has happened to you? You might be ambushed again. I want to be there for you.”
“And what if that Yankee should kill us both in the ambush?” Dancing Cloud said thickly.
“Then that is what fate has planned for us,” Lauralee said, moving closer. “Remember how you described being in the spirit world with your family? The next time you go, I want to be there with you, hand in hand.”
“It is destiny for us to be as one with each other,” Dancing Cloud said. He paused, then said, “Tell me again about this man named Paul Brown. I saw you kissing him. Are you certain your feelings are nothing for him?”
“You saw me kissing him because he forced me to,” she murmured. “You were too far away to see me shoving at his chest.”
“Then you have no feelings for the man?”
“How could you ask that? After what we just shared, surely you realize the depths of my feelings for you.”
He placed a finger to her chin and lifted her eyes to him. “We will leave Mattoon as soon as I am able to travel,” he said thickly. “That may take days, perhaps weeks. Will the Petersons tolerate my presence that long? Or should I go in the woods and make camp?”
“Heaven forbid!” Lauralee said, sitting up quickly. “I wouldn’t allow it. The Yankee. He’s surely out there somewhere, just waiting for the next opportunity to shoot you.”
Then she raised an eyebrow. “Except that when my uncle took me to the Byers Hotel with him to check on the man, we found that his clothes and belongings were missing,” she said.
Dancing Cloud moved as quickly to an elbow as his shoulder allowed and stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
She just now remembered that he did not know about what had happened at Dr. Kemper’s, that the Yankee of his past was most surely the same Yankee of hers. Ironic as it may seem, it was no less true.
She told him everything, about all of her discoveries, and about the man trying to abduct her. She could see a seething hatred enter his midnight-dark eyes.
“Please don’t upset yourself,” she begged. “Darling, Clint McCloud must be long gone by now. Surely he fears what my uncle could have done with him should he be caught after having tried to abduct me. A trial would not be wasted on him. He would hang as quickly as one could blink their eye.”
“But he is still out there, somewhere,” Dancing Cloud said. “More the reason you will leave
with me when I leave Mattoon. I want to be the one protecting you from this evil white man.”
Lauralee cuddled closer, her eyes wide. She had never thought that her nightmare when she was five would follow her the rest of her life. She now recalled her uncle having said that Clint McCloud lived in North Carolina. If so, that was perhaps his destination even now.
That was also hers and Dancing Cloud’s destination, where Dancing Cloud made his home in the North Carolina mountains.
That thought totally terrified her.