She gazed toward the riverbank and saw a lot of beavers and their lodges, and the sharp spikes of the aspens and jack pines that they had gnawed off.
Elsewhere, three otters were standing up on their hind legs, chattering adorably.
She sighed with pleasure and lifted her paddle up from the water. She had never seen such a lavender-pink sunset as was mirrored on the glassy surface of the river.
And just as she noticed it, she realized that High Hawk had turned the bow of the canoe landward.
She looked ahead and was struck almost speechless when her gaze fell upon a pure white tepee standing a short distance from the riverbank. Outside, a fire was already burning. No doubt High Hawk had instructed someone to start it.
She looked on both sides of the tepee and into the forest of pines and aspens that stood statuesquely behind it and saw no one. Surely whoever had come had traveled by horse and was now headed back for the village.
Ho, she could feel no one’s presence except their own. Her heart raced in anticipation of the moments that lay ahead as High Hawk landed the canoe.
She smiled up at him as he came to the side of the canoe and lifted her into his arms.
“My wife, tonight is ours alone,” he said, his voice husky. “Come. See what I have prepared for you.”
“You?” Joylynn said, clinging to his neck. “You built the tepee? When? And how could you have started the fire when I have been with you so much of the day?”
“The tepee was built by my own hands, but Three Bears came and prepared the rest for his chief and his bride,” High Hawk said. He took her inside the tepee, where more red rose petals were strewn over blankets and pelts that had been spread thickly on the earthen floor.
“It is all so beautiful,” Joylynn sighed. Her heart pounded when he brushed her lips with his, then laid her gently on the thick bear pelts.
As the sun cast its lavender glow down the smoke hole overhead, and the outdoor fire made of cottonwood logs sent wisps of soft fragrance into the open entrance flap, High Hawk slowly, almost meditatively, removed Joylynn’s clothes.
Feeling drugged with passion, she lay there and watched as he removed his own clothes, even tossed aside his headdress of fox skin, until he was kneeling perfectly nude over her, his knees straddling her tiny form.
As they lay on the plush furs with the crackling fire so close outside the entranceway, the clear, liquid fluting of a hermit thrush hidden in the nearby trees pierced the gathering dusk. To that sweet music, High Hawk and Joylynn slowly ran their hands over each other’s flesh.
The song of the bird was of the most exquisite purity, embroidered with brilliantly improvised rising and falling arpeggios.
It filled the tepee with its loveliness as High Hawk rolled Joylynn’s nipples with his tongue, awakening a raging hunger inside her that she had only known since she had made love that first time with High Hawk.
She gave herself up to the rapture, then sighed with wonder as he kissed her with a lazy warmth that left her weak.
She quivered with passion when she felt his manhood touching and softly probing her hot, moist entrance.
“I love you so,” she groaned against his lips, sighing with intense pleasure when he thrust himself deep within her. He began moving slowly inside her, then faster with quick, sure movements that blocked out everything but the rapture that was blossoming in Joylynn’s heart.
“As I love you,” he whispered against her lips. “Forever and ever, my woman, my wife.”
She tried to draw air into her lungs, to respond in kind, but could only tremble as the rhythmic pressure of his heat within her created a euphoria that was almost more than she could bear.
As his steely arms enfolded her, she again felt his hunger in the hard, seeking pressure of his lips. He kissed her as his body continued to move within her.
“Feel how I want you,” he whispered against her parted lips as he gazed into her passion-clouded eyes. “I shall always want you as much.”
“As . . . I . . . want and . . . need . . . you,” Joylynn managed to whisper, although she felt almost mindless now with the building pleasure within her.
She couldn’t think any more, could only feel. She gasped when he swirled his tongue across her breasts, sucking her nipples, one at a time, into his mouth, his teeth gently nipping each.
Her fingers bit into his shoulders and she closed her eyes as the ecstasy spread within her. His hands were all over her body now, touching, moving, dancing.
High Hawk was trying to hold off the inevitable for as long as he could, for he wanted his wife to feel pleasure such as she had never known until tonight.
But it was hard not to let it all go, to feel the utmost of pleasure a man could feel while with the woman he loved. His need was so great, he could hardly fight off the hot, white flames that seemed to be roaring in his ears.
He could not get enough of her soft flesh as his tongue and lips moved over her body, especially her breasts. He again licked one nipple and then the other, yet not missing a stroke within her. He knew she was building now to the highest pleasure a man and woman could give one another.