Wild Whispers

She was not that familiar with the male anatomy, except what she had imagined it might be.

Yet she knew enough to realize that there was something long and hard pressing against the inside of Fire Thunder’s breeches against her thighs, that she had not been aware of before.

“I need you,” Fire Thunder whispered against her parted lips. “I am sorry that I placed you in the cage. I had hoped to teach you something by it. Now . . . I . . . regret it.”

His words broke the spell that had begun to weave between him and Kaylene.

Kaylene slapped his hand away from her breast. She shoved him away from her.

“Teach?” she said, eyes wide. “You placed me in that hideous cage to teach me a lesson? Don’t you know that I already knew the horrors of your sister having been placed in such a cage? Why would you think I needed to experience it to know the horrors of it?”

Stung by her words, and how easily she slipped into her hateful personality after she had been so sweet and gentle, Fire Thunder rose quickly from the bed and stared down at her.

“Don’t look at me like it was I who committed a sin,” Kaylene said, her breast still throbbing sensually from his touch, her lips still burning from his kiss.

She yanked the blanket up to her chin and sat up against the iron headboard of the bed. “I never placed your sister in the cage,” she said bitterly. “I even fought for her release. So I was punished wrongly, wouldn’t you say?”

“I wanted you to see the depths of the humiliation of it, so that you would see the evil of your father and not always speak up in his behalf as though he were a moral man,” Fire Thunder said, sighing heavily. He hung his head. “But this is not the time for any of this. I feel responsible for Good Bear’s death. The child killed himself over Little Sparrow. Had I not expected the young lad to be as strong willed and as responsible as an adult, he would be alive today.”

His pain, his anguish, his torment, reached inside Kaylene’s heart, mellowing her once again toward him. “He killed himself?” she murmured, ashen at the thought of a young child being that desperate.

Fire Thunder started to walk away.

Kaylene moved from the bed.

Even though her shoulder pained her miserably, she caught Fire Thunder and took him by the hand.

“You are not to blame,” she murmured, as he turned and gazed down at her. “As I am not to blame for what happened to your sister. We are both blameless. Why can’t you see that?”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him, then recoiled when she saw an instant anger leap into his eyes.

She took a step away from him as he turned and left the room.

Kaylene’s heart sank, thinking that now she may never reach him. He was a complex man with many moods.

But she was so glad that he was not a rogue, but instead, deep down, a caring, gentle man.

Fire Thunder went and stood over the fire. Resting his arm on the mantel, he stared at the dancing flames, his heart thumping.

He was torn with how to feel. He had wanted to teach Kaylene to love him, and felt that just perhaps he might have succeeded at doing that: by the way she had kissed him, by the way she had pleaded with him not to feel guilty.

Did that not prove that she did have warm, honest, sensual feelings for him?

But now, so close to possibly having her, he was afraid. He did not want to feel anything for this woman. She was no good for him. She was born of an evil father, which meant that she had had blood running through her veins.

Then his eyes widened as a thought sprang into his mind.

Was she John Shelton’s daughter?

Could she have been stolen as a child . . . ?

He turned and found Kaylene standing

behind him, her eyes pleading up at him.

He placed a gentle hand to her cheek. He so badly wanted to find a way to allow himself to love her.

Perhaps he had found a way to make her want to stay with him forever.