Wild Whispers

His only response was to kiss her.

Then his lips trailed downward, along the vulnerable, sensitive line of her throat, and then to her breasts.

One by one he tasted her nipples with his tongue.

She thrilled with intense, rapturous feelings. But when his lips moved lower and his tongue flicked out and touched that part of her at the juncture of her thighs that was private, she jerked away . . . and awakened.

“It . . . seemed . . . so real,” she whispered, shimmering with ecstasy as she relived the dream in her mind. She placed a finger to her lips. “I can even taste the kiss.”

She ran a hand inside her blouse and touched a breast. She shivered with pleasure as she ran her fingers over its sensitive nipple. “It’s his hands, not mine,” she said, closing her eyes, envisioning him there, loving her.

“Kaylene, darling, did you say something?” her mother shouted back at her.

Her face hot with a blush, and shame of touching herself so intimately, Kaylene jerked her hand from inside her blouse and promptly answered her mother.

“I h-had a d-dream,” she stammered. “That’s all.”

“You’d best get back to sleep,” her mother said. “Tomorrow you can’t perform with dark circles under your eyes.”

“Yes, Mother,” Kaylene said, sighing.

Again she settled in against Midnight. She felt a dejection come over her. So often she felt that her parents thought more of her performances than of her.

She too often felt used, not . . . loved.

Sullenly, she drifted off to sleep, to the rhythm of the wagon wheels, and the night sounds of crickets and frogs croaking in the distance. Not so far away a coyote howled at the moon.

“You have returned to me,” the male voice said, giving Kaylene a start. The dream had returned, as though she had never awakened from it.

She was still nude.

She was still lying within the Indian’s muscled arms.

“Yes, and I would love to stay forever, if you would have me,” she murmured, accepting the bold thrust of his body as he entered her and showed her what, until now, had been a mystery to her.

She smiled in her sleep and trembled sensually.

In the dark, two shadows on horseback moved along a small trail. “White Wolf, I see a light up ahead,” Dawnmarie said, as she squinted in the darkness toward the lamplight flaring from the window of a ranch house. Her gaze shifted. “And I see a barn. Surely the rancher and his wife will allow us to sleep in the barn tonight. Darling, a bed of straw would feel much better than the ground.”

“Then that is what you will have,” White Wolf said, reaching over to gently touch his wife’s ashen face. “Dawnmarie, I fear for you so much. We should not have made this long journey from Wisconsin. It has worn you out.”

“White Wolf, this is something I promised Mother I would do,” Dawnmarie said with a stubborn lift of her chin. “Long ago, I promised her, before she died, that I would find my true people, the Kickapoo. I am a half-breed, bridging two worlds. I must make peace with the Kickapoo side of my heritage before my time comes to enter the afterworld. I must have the permission of the Kickapoo to enter their world. I must prove to my Kickapoo people that, although I had a white father, I am Kickapoo, heart and soul.”

“And I understand and will continue to seek ways to get you

to them,” White Wolf said, sighing heavily. “We know they are in Mexico. We draw closer and closer each day. Surely, before long, you will be among your people.”

“Thank you, darling, for being so understanding,” Dawnmarie said, then became quiet as they passed through a wide gate and they rode onward toward the ranch house.

When they arrived, they did not have to knock on the door. The sound of their horses was enough to bring a man and woman to the porch. The man held high a lit lantern, the light spreading out toward Dawnmarie and White Wolf.

“And who are you? What do you want here?” the man asked, his free hand resting on a holstered pistol.

“Only lodging for the night in your barn if you will be so kind,” White Wolf said. He gestured with a hand toward Dawnmarie. “My wife. She needs a good night of rest. At dawn tomorrow we shall be on our way.”

“I don’t deal much with Indians,” the man said, his eyes narrowing at White Wolf. “You ain’t Comanche, are you?”

“No, I am from the Lac du Flambeau clan of Chippewa,” White Wolf said. “My wife is part white and Kickapoo. We are looking for her people. We have been told they are in Mexico. That is where we are headed.”