Savage Dawn

“Come with me. I shall show you,” Eagle Wolf said, already heading toward a sandstone ridge.

Nicole was always ready and anxious to learn something new.

Tomorrow she would join the women as they worked in the large garden. Last night’s light frost was a reminder that there was not much more time to store food for the long winter ahead.

Tomorrow she would help harvest crops for their winter cook pots, while Eagle Wolf would go with his warriors and hunt to provide meat.

He had lifted his nose into the wind today and told her that he could smell snow in the air. When they looked at the higher elevations of the mountain, they saw a fresh dusting of snow.

Nicole thought the snow was beautiful, but she knew that it could bring devastation to the Navaho if they were not prepared with wood at the sides of their lodges, and with food in their storage bins.

She followed Eagle Wolf as he led her down where willows grew in abundance along a gully.

“Moisture is always dripping here, leaving behind a buildup of salt crystals,” Eagle Wolf said, pointing to where long spikes of alkaline crystals hung like the icicles Nicole remembered hanging from the roof of her parents’ house on the coldest days of winter.

She drew rein as Eagle Wolf brought his horse to a halt. Then she watched while he took a small leather drawstring pouch from his saddlebag and went to where the salt crystals were hanging. With a rock, he easily knocked the salt into his bag.

“Here is all the salt you will need as you learn the art of Navaho cooking,” Eagle Wolf said, closing the drawstring pouch and returning it to his saddlebag.

Nicole felt a hot blush rise to her cheeks. “I do not even know how to boil water,” she confessed. “My mother never taught me how to cook. Both she and my father were more interested in my getting an education than spending time in the kitchen with my mother.”

“You will have a good teacher in Dancing Snow Feather,” Eagle Wolf said, going to Nicole and reaching for her reins.

He took them from her and secured them with his own on the low limb of a cottonwood tree, then lifted his arms up for her.

“Come with me,” he said thickly. “Let us go and sit beside that shallow stream over there. I will bring a blanket for us to sit upon.”

Nicole felt

deliciously warm at the mere touch of this man’s hands as he helped her from her horse. They had not made love yet and she felt embarrassed that she wanted to so badly. She could almost burst from the need that overwhelmed her when she was with Eagle Wolf.

As he held her in his arms now, their lips so close, Nicole felt dizzy from a hunger she had not known of until she met Eagle Wolf.

“I need you,” Eagle Wolf whispered against her lips. “You need me. I can feel it in the way your body quivers and strains against mine. Now is the time, my woman. Now. I want to make love with you.”

“And I want to make love with you, too,” Nicole said in a strangely husky voice.

They kissed passionately, and Nicole felt overwhelmed by the emotions that swept through her. She knew it was right for her to give herself to this man today.

Soon they would speak vows. Theirs was a love that would endure everything and would last an eternity.

Forgetting the blanket, Eagle Wolf swept Nicole fully into his arms and carried her to the soft moss that spread down the embankment, into the water.

Quickly, they undressed each other, and suddenly Nicole realized that she was nude for the first time in the presence of a man. Her cheeks flushed hot when she looked over and saw Eagle Wolf standing beautifully nude before her, everything about him so masterful.

She gasped when she saw that part of him that would soon be inside her, where no man had been before. He was very well endowed there, and she wondered how it was that he could fit inside her.

But the way she was throbbing, she knew it was meant for them to come together as men and women had done from the beginning of time.

She would not allow herself to be afraid of this first time, for she knew the gentle side of this man. She knew that he would treat her with tenderness as he entered her. She would learn from him the wonders of lovemaking.

He wrapped his arms around her and with his body urged her down onto the moss, which felt so soft and wonderful against her back.

He swept his body over hers, and with a knee gently parted her legs so that he could enter her without having to shove so hard.

He wanted the pain that came with the first time to be brief. He wanted her to remember the good of their first joining, not the bad.

Chapter Thirty