Savage Beloved
It had not taken her long to realize, though, that those who had come to her rescue were not there to kill her or take her scalp. She lived now among his people, a part of them.
He had ignored Hawk Woman’s many invitations to join her among her blankets, for there was nothing about her that appealed to him.
But this woman standing before him now?
Everything about her seemed to draw him near. She could change his mind about white women and bedding with them.
He saw her as someone he would enjoy sleeping with, and . . . more.
“What name are you called by?” he asked, his voice tight.
Candy tried to keep her voice from quivering, for thus far she had proven to be strong in the eye of danger, although inside herself she felt like a mass of quivering jelly.
“Candy,” she managed to say in a murmur. “My . . . my . . . name is Candy.”
She did not dare speak her last name to this red man, for surely he had come to the fort to kill her colonel father.
If this warrior knew her true identity, he might snuff out her life in one blink!
She saw how his eyebrows lifted when she said the name Candy.
She had received similar responses many times before when she told someone her name; she understood this Indian’s reaction to it.
Suddenly Two Eagles reached down and whisked Candy up from the ground and onto his horse.
Holding her around the waist before him, he rode away.
Breathless at how quickly he had done this, and stunned to know that her fate surely lay in the hand of this one Indian, Candy felt her fear mount as they rode from the ruined remains of the fort.
Oh, Lord, surely she would die, for why would this Indian spare her life after having taken so many others? She was swept by a stark fear that he would use her sexually, then scalp and kill her.
She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer, then sobbed as she recalled the instant of her father’s death, and then dear Malvina’s.
She was oh, so alone in the world.
She had even lost her beloved pet wolf!
Perhaps dying would not be all that bad if it would save her from the disgrace of being savagely taken by this Indian, and those who rode with him.
She gulped as she looked from side to side, and noticed that some of the warriors were giving her hard stares. The day had turned to night, yet the moon was high and bright enough for her to see everything and everyone around her, and . . . for them to see her.
She closed her eyes, hoping to blank out as much as she could until the moment of decision came . . . whether she lived or died!
Chapter Six
Thy voice, slow rising,
like a spirit, lingers,
O’ershadowing me with soft
and lulling wings.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Trembling, her stomach churning with fear, Candy hugged herself as she sat beside a low-burning fire in the fire pit of a tepee she had just been taken to. The tepee was devoid of furnishings or utensils of any sort. All that was there, on the bulrush mats covering the earthen floor, were blankets rolled up and tied, a few feet from her.
When voices spoke from outside the lodge, she looked quickly at the closed entrance flap. She recognized one of the voices.