Wild Splendor

“Sage, it’s so cold,” Leonida said, the crisp air brushing against her body.

“The water is warm in comparison,” Sage said, quickly sweeping her up into his arms. “You will welcome its caress on your body.”

Leonida’s eyes widened as she looked from Sage down to the water, then up at Sage again. “Please don’t,” she said, clinging to his neck. “I don’t want to . . .”

Again her pleas fell on deaf ears. She choked back a scream as he let her ever so casually roll out of his arms. She kicked frantically and swung her arms in the air as she plummeted downward.

As she entered the water, she stiffened her legs and closed her eyes and felt herself plunging deeper and deeper. Then when she began paddling her feet, she stopped her descent and pushed herself back to the surface.

Infuriated, coughing, and wiping her drenched, clinging hair out of her eyes, Leonida glared at Sage. When he dived into the river, she made a quick turn and began swimming in the opposite direction. Her petticoat kept getting tangled around her legs, making it impossible to pick up speed, and then her breath caught in her throat when something else became even more of a threat. She began battling the motion of a whirlpool that was sucking her beneath the great splash of the waterfall.

Floundering, fighting to keep her head above the water, Leonida screamed between swallowing great gulps of water. “Help me!” she cried as her head went under. Then she bobbed back up to the surface, which took all the effort she could muster. “Sage, help . . . me . . . !”

She saw a great blur of black as another vicious spin of the whirlpool pulled her under. Leonida stared with wide eyes through the hazy water at the fish swimming past, and then . . . and then . . .

She breathed in a great gust of air as Sage grabbed her by the waist and tugged her upward. Surfacing beside her, he drew her into his embrace and held her there until she was breathing more easily, then swam her to safety on a ledge hidden behind the falls.

Shivering and coughing, her eyes and throat burning from the water, Leonida welcomed his comforting arms around her as he held her close. She lay her head on his chest, still heaving from exhaustion. “Uke-he, thank you,” she murmured, twining an arm around his neck. “For a moment I thought . . . I thought that I was going to drown.”

“Not with Sage so close,” he said thickly, leaning her partially away from him, weaving his fingers through her thick golden hair, spreading it away from her entrancing face. “Never would I let anything happen to you. Surely you know that.”

“Yet you take me captive so easily?” Leonida murmured, searching his eyes, melting inside from his closeness.

“Do you think I knew you were aboard that stagecoach?” he said, tracing her chin with a fingertip. “Do you think I would have ambushed it had I known I was placing you in danger?”

“You should not have placed anyone’s life in danger,” Leonida fussed, now knowing for certain that he had not planned just to steal her away. She was torn in her feelings about that. She had felt honored, in a way, that he might have cared enough for her to go to any lengths to stop her flight from Fort Defiance, and him.

“The white leaders should not have placed the Navahos’ lives in danger,” Sage said, slowly drawing her into his embrace again. “Then not everyone’s life would have been altered. Yet weren’t our lives altered the moment we spoke that first word to one another? Did you not feel the magic being spun between us? Did you not feel the energy flowing between us, as though we were one heartbeat—one soul? Let us explore those feelings. Let me

show you the extent of mine for you. Show me the extent of yours for Sage.”

Leonida drew in a ragged breath as he gently framed her face between his hands and lifted her lips to his. Her whole world seemed to begin spinning as his mouth bore down upon hers, so hungry, so demanding, awakening her to an ecstasy she had never experienced before. The first kiss they had shared had been filled with wonder and rapture, but it had been too short-lived.

This time she could not pull away. She had dreamed of this moment, of the thrill of being held and kissed by him again. She would not deny herself the pleasure anymore than she would stop herself from breathing.

Sweet currents of warmth spread through her, and she twined her arms around his neck and clung to him as he lowered her to the shelf of rock beneath the falls, ignoring the occasional sprays of water and the coldness of the rock pressing on her back.

Sage leaned over her, his mouth never leaving her lips, and she shivered with passion when she felt his hand cup one of her breasts through the clinging wet material of her petticoat. She moaned and leaned into his hand as he began kneading her breast, the nipple hardening from the fires that his fingers seemed to be igniting. The heat spread as Sage’s hand trailed downward, soon gathering the petticoat between his fingers and shifting the wet garment upward . . . upward . . . upward.

Leonida sucked in a wild gasp of pleasure when she felt his first touch at the center of her passion. She drew her lips away and closed her eyes in ecstasy as his fingers began caressing her, arousing her to blissful feelings.

When his mouth found her lips again and his tongue flicked between them, tongues meeting, tip to tip, she began running her hands over his bare flesh, thrilling at the feel of his taut muscles, and then dared to move her fingers lower, breathless at the thought of touching his manhood. Could she give him the same sort of pleasure that he was giving her by the mere caress of her fingers?

Then she drew her head away and closed her eyes, shame filling her at where her thoughts had taken her. She began shoving at Sage’s chest, but he grabbed her wrists and held them as he began caressing her passion’s center with his manhood, his eyes dark and passion-filled as he gazed down at her.

Leonida’s eyes widened as she felt his manhood begin to twitch and grow against her flesh. Her heart was thundering wildly from these feelings that she seemed to have no control over.

“Sage, please . . .” Leonida said with her last trace of reason. “Let’s stop now, or . . .”

“Or else Sage might take you to paradise and back?” he said huskily. “Or Sage might prove to you the extent of your love for this Navaho chief?”

“I’m so confused,” Leonida murmured. “I want you, yet I do not want to be forced. I want it to be beautiful, Sage.”

He released her wrists and held his hands out away from her. “You are no longer being forced to do anything,” he said. “Rise and leave if you wish. Sage will even give you a horse to return to Fort Defiance. You are captive no more. In truth, Sage is the captive—to your heart. I will love you always, even if only in my midnight dreams.”

Leonida scarcely breathed, understanding what he was doing and why. She had just won her freedom. Yet she could not find it in her heart to leave. She saw no future now without Sage, and she would have to come to terms, somehow, with what he had done. The ambush had been wrong, yet . . . She suddenly realized that had she been in his place, she would more than likely have taken the same road as he.

“You are free to leave,” Sage said, moving away from her.