Savage Abandon

She sighed in her sleep, but her eyes remained closed. Oh, how he was tempted to touch the fullness of her breast, but he knew he must keep his desires reined in for now. Carefully, he withdrew his hand from beneath the gown.

He sprinkled some of the mixture on the top of her head, and some beneath her nose so that she would smell it upon awakening. Then he put everything away so that once she was awake she would not see the pot or question him about its contents.

Smiling, oh, so loving her, Wolf Hawk went back to her and knelt at her side.

He bent low and brushed a soft kiss across her lips. He could smell the scent of the mixture that he had placed just beneath her nose.

Mia awakened with a start, then smiled when she saw Wolf Hawk sitting beside her.

“I had a strange dream,” she murmured as she leaned up on an elbow. She scratched idly at the skin just above her lips. “But now I cannot remember what it was, or even what it was about.”

She blushed as she lowered her lashes, then gazed at Wolf Hawk again. “Did you awaken me with a kiss or was I also dreaming that?” she asked, searching his eyes.

“The kiss was real,” Wolf Hawk said, then reached for her and drew her up against his warm body. “Do you wish for another?”

Mia nodded, then melted inside when his lips came down on hers in an all-consuming kiss.

She clung to him and crawled onto his lap, oh, so ready for whatever he wished to do to her this morning.

It seemed magical, somehow, that he was there with her today, his kisses awakening everything sensual within her. She knew that were he to ask, she would even surrender her virginity to him.

She ached strangely for him.

She felt as though she couldn’t go any longer without knowing the true joy of making love with this man…the man she would forever adore.

“I need you,” Wolf Hawk whispered against her lips, so happy that the magic potion had worked.

Chapter Twenty-three

Let wish and magic

Work at will in you.

—Driscoll

Seeing things in visions that no one else could see, Talking Bird always paid heed to his dreams. The night before he’d dreamt of two men approaching the land of the Winnebago. Talking Bird knew them to be the trappers who were responsible for the two young braves’ deaths.

Deep down inside himself he had known these men would return. How could they not? They had left many valuable furs behind.

Talking Bird smiled at his grandson’s cleverness in commanding his warriors to take the pelts from their hiding place and bring them to their village.

He knew that the men had many miles yet to travel on the Rush River before arriving back at the fort, where they thought their pelts were still hidden. Talking Bird had plenty of time to pray to the Earthmaker. He had his own way of dealing with whites who foolishly came on the land of the Winnebago.

The white-skinned woman with whom his grandson was infatuated was different. Although Talking Bird would have rathered his grandson took a Winnebago woman as his wife, it was not Talking Bird’s place to interfere or tell his chieftain grandson his opinion about such things.

Wolf Hawk was a grown man, a great leader, and a man of much intelligence. If his heart told him that he loved a woman with white skin, so be it.

But Talking Bird would not allow anyone else with white skin to interfere in his people’s lives. The woman was an exception. She was all alone in the world. No one would come to his people’s village to search for her.

She was now Wolf Hawk’s woman, no one else’s, and Talking Bird would give his grandson his blessings, soon.

The sun spiraled down through the smokehole onto Talking Bird as he prepared to pray.

Today his thick white hair was worn in a long, lone braid down his back. The tunic had designs of nature embroidered on it, which had been sewn there by several women of his village who were skilled at beadwork.

His moccasins were also beaded, as was the medicine bundle in which he kept his sacred pipe.

The beads were of beautiful colors. Red like the cardinals that flitted through the air, blue like the sky over Shadow Island, and green like the cool, soft grass upon which he walked.