“You know that I trust you,” she murmured, hoping to sound convincing enough. “And I know that your promises are spoken from the bottom of your heart, as are all of your words spoken to me. I love you, Sage, for loving me so much. I love you for coming after me when I thought that I might never see you again.”
He placed a gentle finger to her lips, silencing further words. “A thank-you is not necessary for everything I do or say.”
“It is that I am just so grateful,” Leonida murmured as his finger slipped from her mouth. Her heart thumped wildly as Sage lowered his lips toward hers. “I do love you so . . .”
Her words faded as his mouth covered hers with a deep kiss. She twined her arms around his neck as he lifted her into his arms and began carrying her out of Runner’s bedroom. She trembled with ecstasy when one of his hands slipped around and cupped her breast. Then she tensed when she suddenly recalled other hands on her breasts, and how she had been forced to spread her legs, unwillingly submitting to Chief Four Fingers’ probing fingers and hands.
Tears swelled in her eyes at these ugly remembrances and she drew her lips from Sage, turning her head away from him, one of her hands brushing his away from her breast. Somehow she could not help but feel contaminated. How could she ever feel the joyous bliss she had felt before with Sage?
Sage’s eyes widened and his insides tightened as he gazed down at her. She was refusing his kiss. She had even brushed his hand from her breast, which she had never done before.
It meant only one thing. The Kiowa had touched her. They had, in a sense, branded her. She might never be the same.
Not wanting to allow these memories to continue, Sage carried Leonida to their sleeping platform and lay her gently on it. He knew the importance of making love to her now. If he waited, she might dwell too much on the ugliness of having been touched wrongly by the Kiowa, and forget the beauty she had shared with her husband.
She had already told him that she had not been raped. In that respect, she was still pure. But it was the touching, the fondling, that he now was almost certain she had been forced to endure at the hands of the Kiowa.
This he must erase from her mind, as though it had never happened.
Sage stood over Leonida and removed his clothes and moccasins. And although she looked wildly up at him and stiffened when he began undressing her, nothing would stop him.
He must make love to her now.
Leonida shivered at the cold air of the hogan against her bare flesh. She hugged herself with her arms, covering her breasts, which seemed lifeless now that she allowed herself to remember that the enemy had touched them. She guardedly watched Sage as he came to the sleeping platform with her, finding it hard to understand why he would force lovemaking on her at such a time. He knew that she did not want to do it. Was he going to force her to scream at him, and tell him why?
“Sage,” she murmured, brushing his hand aside as he placed it on the bare flesh of her hip. “Please don’t. I’m too tired. I . . . I need to rest.”
“My woman, tomorrow might be too late for you,” Sage said, determinedly putting his hand back on her hip, his fingers softly stroking her tender flesh as they moved inch by inch around to where the center of her passion lay. “You must allow me to make love to you tonight so that you can forget that which makes you draw away from me. Tonight my loving you will make tomorrow come with pleasant memories, not those that are soiled by the Kiowa.”
He moved over her, spreading her legs with a knee. His one hand was now stroking her throbbing center, his other gently kneading a breast. He smiled to himself when its nipple hardened and strained against the palm of his hand. She was awakened to her feelings for him again. He was succeeding at arousing her!
Both of his hands cupped her breasts. He leaned lower against her, the touch of her breasts against his chest momentarily stealing his breath away.
Leonida could not fight the euphoria that was claiming her, so glad that her breasts were responding
to the wonders of his touch. When his swollen shaft began probing at the juncture of her thighs, she willingly opened herself to him.
She gasped with pleasure when he lunged his hardness inside her and he began his rhythmic thrusts. Her body responded, as her hips lifted and fell, meeting him stroke by stroke.
She twined her fingers through his thick black hair and urged his lips to hers. When he kissed her, she returned the kiss in a frenzy. Tears of joy streamed from her eyes. She was so glad that the wild splendor was still there while she was being loved by her husband.
Slowly the remembrances of those ugly moments with the Kiowa were fading away.
Pleasure was spreading in warm splashes through Sage. He knew by her response that his plan had worked, and that she was lost in ecstasy now, instead of doubts and fears about being with a man again sexually.
He moved his mouth from her lips and swept his tongue around one of her nipples, drawing a gurgling sound of delight from the depths of her throat.
He suckled the nipple and tongued it again, then lay his cheek on her magnificent bosom, the fire raging higher and higher within his loins. He was near to experiencing the height of pleasure with his woman again, and he felt blessed. The gods were still favoring them as a couple.
Leonida wrapped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles together in an effort to draw him even more deeply into her. She closed her eyes in rapture, feeling how he so wonderfully filled her. In and out he moved, each time reaching more deeply, each time stroking her with more ambition and heat.
She placed her fingers on his buttocks, unknowingly digging her fingernails into his flesh as the pleasure spread . . . and spread . . . and spread.
She tossed her head and moaned as the height of pleasure was finally reached. She clung to his rock hardness as his body shook and quivered into hers, accepting the spilling of his seed as it splashed into the depths of her womanhood.
A child.
She hoped that tonight they had made a child, a brother or sister to Runner.