She could feel his body stiffening with his building pleasure. And when he reached down and moved her hand away from his throbbing hardness, and once again buried himself deeply within her, she tossed her head in excitement. Then the thrashing stopped when he caught her face between his hands and he kissed her.
Strong Heart was no longer aware of the lightning, the thunder, nor the torrents of rain that were falling just outside the entrance of the cave. All he could concentrate on was this vision that lay beneath him, her lovely red hair spilling away from her face, spread out beneath her like a fiery halo. Her flawless features were vibrant and glowing, her slim, white thighs now clutching to him as she locked her legs around him.
His hands framed her face as he smiled down at her, feeling he was drowning in passion, hardly able to hold back any longer.
His lips brushed the smooth, satin skin of her breast, and then again he kissed her lips.
As he thrust his tongue teasingly into her mouth, so did he press his manhood endlessly deeper within her moist channel. He could tell by her harsher breathing that she, too, was ready to ascend that same plateau as he, where a joyous bliss was awaiting them. He could feel the excitement growing, growing, growing.
And then his body jolted and quivered as for a moment he lost all sense of time, place, or even of being. All that mattered was that wave that rose through his whole body, making it fluid with fire.
Elizabeth sucked in a wild breath of air, then let herself go, to experience the ecstasy. It flooded through her, it seemed, with sweet agony.
Afterward, they lay together, their bodies still throbbing with the afterglow of love.
Then Strong Heart rolled away from her and drew the blanket over them again. “You are no longer cold?” he asked, his eyes smiling into hers.
“No,” Elizabeth said, softly giggling. “I feel as though I’m burning up inside.”
“It is a good feeling?” he asked, flicking his tongue across one of her breasts as he bent beneath the blanket.
Elizabeth closed her eyes and shivered. “Yes, a good feeling,” she whispered. “As is what you are doing right now.” She placed a hand to his head and urged his mouth even more closely to her breast. “My darling, how wonderful you make me feel, always.”
He moved his lips back to her mouth, yet did not kiss her—only whispered against it. “Remember what you just said, that when you reach Seattle and are tempted to stay behind, to live the life that you are more familiar with,” he said huskily. “Remember that, my la-daila, always remember that.”
“Always,” she whispered. “How could I ever forget how you make me feel? I could never live without you, Strong Heart. You are my very reason for breathing—for getting up each morning. It is you I wish to see upon my first awakening. Only you.”
“That is kloshe, good,” he whispered back against her lips. “That is very good.”
He kissed her softly, his hands plumping her breasts.
She slung a leg over him and trembled with pleasure as his manhood found her open and ready for him again.
* * *
Earl was cursing as he yanked off his wet clothes. “This damn weather,” he grumbled. Members of the posse stood around the campfire in the cave, also taking off their drenched clothes. “I’ve never seen anything like the weather here. Why does it have to rain so often?”
“We’re lucky we found this cave,” one of the men said, totally naked and drying himself off with a blanket before the campfire. “So quit grumblin’, Earl.”
Another of the men came up next to Earl—a Suquamish Indian who had taken more to the life of the whites’, than the Indians’. “You have angered the mountain spirits by traveling too far into land that one time only knew the footsteps of the Suquamish,” Joe Feather grumbled, squeezing water out of his waist-length black hair. “That is also why your horse took a spill, and even now limps on its lamed leg. It would be better if you would shoot the horse. If you continue riding him, your journey back to Seattle will be slowed, and then you will have to shoot him anyway.”
“We don’t have any spare horses and I’m a damn sight better off riding my own steed, than saddling up with someone else,” Earl snarled. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a dry change of clothes. “And don’t fill my head with any more nonsense about the mountain spirits. I’ve had enough of your mumbo jumbo for one day. If you still believe in so many of the Suquamish customs, why the hell are you riding with the white men, as though you’re one of them? Or don’t you know where you fit in best? Huh?”
Joe Feather frowned at Earl as he stepped out of his fringed breeches, and then into dry buckskin. “A lot of me is still Suquamish,” he said, his voice void of emotion. “That part of me speaks of spirits whenever it seems fit to do so. And tonight, when the storm warriors are throwing their lightning sticks to earth, I remember my beliefs.”
“Save me from a lecture about Indians,” Earl retorted, even though he wished that he knew of a secret potion that he could use on Chief Moon Elk, to sway him over to his plans. “I’ve got one Indian on my mind
tonight. That’s enough.”
Earl buttoned his fresh, dry shirt, then stepped into his breeches and fastened them. Disconsolately, he sat down on a blanket close to the fire, wondering where Elizabeth was.
The search was going badly.
And now, with his hobbled horse, it would take him much longer to return home to see if any word had arrived there about her whereabouts.
Joe Feather sat down beside Earl. He drew his knees to his chest and hugged his legs. “There are many beliefs about why there are fierce storms,” he said, ignoring Earl’s agitated sigh. “One belief is that there are warriors who live in the sky who dash about on their painted ponies as they battle one another. Lightning and thunder result from the clash of their lances. This is the story mothers tell their little ones, but if the children become frightened by the roar of the storm, the mothers place soothing bay leaves on the fire, and the danger is soon forgotten.”
Earl turned angry eyes to Joe Feather. “Will you just shut up?” he growled.