She would always love him.
She twined her fingers through his long black hair, loving the feel of it against her hand. Then she swept her hands across his muscled back, stopping at his buttocks, where she splayed her fingers across his flesh.
“Your body is so magnificent,” she murmured as he leaned his face away from hers, his eyes gazing intently into hers.
“Your body is more than that,” Eagle Wolf said, laughing huskily. “I cannot keep my hands or lips off you.”
“I am yours, for always,” Nicole murmured, closing her eyes in ecstasy again when he kissed first one breast, and then the other.
They were abruptly startled away from each other when they heard a noise behind them, in the bushes.
All Nicole could think of was Sam Partain!
Had he found his way onto the mountain? Had he observed their lovemaking, only to kill them afterward?
She knew that the knife Eagle Wolf always carried in a sheath at his hip was now with his clothes and hers, too far away for him to grab it.
His rifle was in the gun boot on his horse.
They were defenseless.
Both sat up quickly.
Nicole trembled as she covered her bare breasts with her hands and looked toward the bushes where the noise had come from.
Eagle Wolf sat beside her, his hand inching out toward his sheathed knife. But he realized that it was too far away for him to get it without leaving Nicole’s side. That might give whatever was there time to attack Nicole in his absence.
He could not chance it.
Suddenly they both saw a pair of golden eyes through a break in the bushes. Both recognized those eyes at the same moment.
“The wolf,” Nicole gasped out as Eagle Wolf whispered the same.
“It’s the wolf I’ve seen before,” Nicole said, wondering why the animal continued to stand there. “I recognize it by that large scar.”
“It is the same wolf that I have also seen many times before,” Eagle Wolf said, his eyes looking deeply into the wolf’s. “It is the very one that I saved those many sleeps ago. It has appeared to me since then more than once.”
“Yet…yet…it is not attacking either of us,” Nicole said, her voice trembling with fear.
“We are not what it seeks,” Eagle Wolf said, just as the wolf turned and ran away from them. It was soon lost from sight in the shadows of the aspen forest.
Nicole sighed with relief. She scambled to her feet, went to her clothes and hurried into them while Eagle Wolf did the same.
“You said that you saved the wolf,” Nicole murmured. “How?”
“The wolf came to me that day, injured from a fight. It trusted me enough to allow me to use medicine on it, herbs from the forest that my shaman taught me how to find. Since then it has appeared to me many times, but it’s never come as close to me again as it did on the day that I found it near death.”
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“I saw the wolf when I was all alone on the mountain. I was afraid that it would attack me, yet it didn’t,” Nicole murmured. “It gave me a look that I could not comprehend, and then went on its way. It appeared to me more than that one time. It is so mystical a creature, Eagle Wolf. I just cannot help wondering why it appears, yet never attacks. I see that as a miracle.”
“The miracle is that the wolf survived its wounds,” Eagle Wolf said, taking Nicole by the hand and leading her to her mare. “Although I did what I could for it, I doubted it would survive. It had lost a lot of blood.”
“Yet there it was again today,” Nicole said, mounting her steed while Eagle Wolf went and mounted his own. “It’s quite a mystery.”
“I believe the wolf is on a hunting expedition,” Eagle Wolf said, riding away from the stream at Nicole’s side.
“A hunting expedition?” Nicole repeated. “For food?”