A Certain Kind of Hero (20 page)

“Let me drive you,” he said gently, working hard to keep his twice-rejected hand from reaching for a third rebuff.

“No. I'll be fine.” She took a deep breath. “There. I'm fine. It's important never never to lose your head, you see.” She smiled weakly. “I'll be fine.”

“I'm not letting you go like this.”

“How
will
you let me go, then? The last time it was to your brother.”

“He turned out to be the right man for you.”

“And when did you decide that?” She wrapped her arms around her middle, steadying herself, setting her chin.

She was winding up to tell him off, he thought. He could feel it coming.

“You found a wife for your brother, and then you gave us a child,” she clipped. “Quite a remarkable piece of work, Gideon. And now that you're a tribal leader, you're making big changes around here. If you can get this treaty thing through, I think a movie would be in order.” Bolstered by an infusion of flippancy, she managed a stiff-lipped smile. “With somebody
like Charlton Heston playing you. Gideon Defender, the leader, the prophet, the right hand of God.”

“Cut it out, Raina.” His befuddled gaze sharpened. “I'm just trying to get by, that's all. To work things out the best way I—”

“
Your
way. Which is to avoid making commitments.”

“That's a damn lie!”

“You ‘work things out' for everyone around you, while you manage to—”

“What do you mean, avoid commitments?” He grabbed her shoulders. “I just asked you to marry me, for God's sake.”

She lifted her pretty, aristocratic chin. “You proposed an
arrangement,
not a marriage.”

“I offered a solution to a problem. I knew damn well what kind of a response I'd get.” Gradually he drew her closer, noting an unmistakable flicker in her eyes as he slid first one arm around her, then the other. His lips were a scant inch from hers, and his eyes glowed with a complacent smile. “But I know how to get a different kind of response from you, don't I?”

“Gideon, this isn't—” She closed her eyes. He splayed his hands over the swell of her hips and pressed her firmly against him. Her complaint turned soft, and he used it, molded her to his hardness. “It isn't fair.”

“It isn't a game. There are no referees to decide what's fair—”

“And what's foul?” she challenged breathlessly, her chest heaving involuntarily against him.

He nuzzled her hair back from her temple and whispered, “It's up to us.”

“We have to be sensible.” It sounded like the hazy echo of some old, dusty advice.

“Why?” he breathed against the side of her neck. “I got a
lousy response to my proposal, but how about this?” He took her earlobe between his teeth, gently sawing on it, tormenting her with his flickering tongue as he deftly unzipped the back of her skirt. He tucked his hand into her cotton panties and stroked her bottom, drawing her up to him and holding her tight against his hard member. “How will you respond to this, hmm?”

She whispered his name so softly that it felt like a caress, and he hungered after her mouth, demanding more of the same. Her lips parted on a jagged sigh, welcoming his questing tongue. It was a hot, wet, seductive kiss, at once promising and postulating. His lips nipped, then sipped, then devoured, while his tongue made love to her mouth. He rubbed his hands teasingly over the warm curve of her hips, pushing her clothing down, but just a little.

“Yes or no?” He licked her lower lip, then nipped it as he rocked his hips against hers, whispering hotly, “Yes or no, Raina?”

“Yes.” Her body listed, yearning for his. She gripped his shoulders. “Yes, yes.”

“Yes, what?”

She loosened the first two buttons on her blouse, then looked up at him shyly. “Yes, make love to me.”

“Yes, who?” he demanded, finishing the job she'd started as he lowered one knee to the floor. “Who do you want to—”

He tasted her nipple, tonguing and suckling until it hardened. She slid her fingers into his hair and cuddled him at her breast, whispering, “Gideon. I want you, Gideon.”

The magic words. The words that turned him from mere man into hunter, warrior, prince, king. Words that compelled him to sweep her into his arms and carry her to his bed, to finish undressing her and to worship every sensitive part of her body with coddling hands and adoring lips. She pulled
his shirt open and lifted her head, straining to touch the small nubbin of his nipple with the tip of her tongue. He played a little keep-away, enjoying the sweet shiver it gave him to let her touch and glide away.

Her teeth grazed him as she fumbled with his belt buckle, and he groaned. “How long will you respond this way, Raina?” He eased his thigh between hers, prodding her to ride it. When she did, he whispered, “Is this a yes?”

The buckle came loose with a soft clink. She tore at the snap on his jeans. “Yessss…”

He lowered his pants, lowered his hips, applied his rigid, needy probe to the private entrance to her body. He found her moist and ready for him. “And this? Is this a yes?”

“Yes, Gideon, yes.”

He took pains to protect her, just as he took care to prepare her. She filled her hands with his hard, warm buttocks and urged him to come to her, arched to receive the full measure of his initial thrust and draw him deep, deep down into her inner self. He drew back slowly, like a bowman taking scrupulous aim at a very small target. But he was loath to let fly his arrow now that it was so sweetly notched. He set a slow, undulating rhythm, reaching ever closer to the target, attuning himself to her gradual need for a quicker pace.

“How long?” he whispered, then flicked his tongue over her temple, sipping her saltiness. “How long can you stay with me? I can keep this up all night.”

“Then do it!” She pressed her cheek against his shoulder and wrapped him with arms and legs and earnest desire. “Oh, Gideon, yes, do it…do it.”

He had no choice but to oblige with all his considerable skill, not to mention his heart and soul.

And later, when again she said, “Oh, Gideon,” he knew he'd done it right. Her soft sigh poured over him like warm,
cleansing water, and her intimate touch convinced him that he belonged to her and always would, whether she stayed or left him.

“You'll have to play yourself in the movie,” she decided out of the clear blue.

“Why?”

“Because there's no one else like you.” She propped herself up on her elbows and looked down at him. The shift gave him a nice view of her lovely bare breasts, but it took her hand away from him. “You're beautiful,” she said, her voice filled with wonder.

“Don't stop touching me, Raina.” He drew her back into the cradle of his arm, in one fluid move reclaiming her hand and placing it low on his flat belly. “Please. I've never…”

“Never what?”

“Felt this good.” He'd dreamed of making love to her, and the dream was always good. But he'd never dreamed that she would come willingly to his bed. He closed his eyes, turned his lips to her hair and whispered, “I always knew we'd be good together.”

She sighed. For a long, quiet moment neither of them moved. But when he nuzzled the fine wisp of hair at her temple, something cool and wet slid over the tip of his nose. It felt suspiciously like a tear—a tender, frightening, feminine thing with which he had precious little experience.

He whispered her name.

She stiffened. “I have to go.”

“Go where?” He caught her and held her, searching her eyes for some explanation. All he found was a troubling semblance of the evening shadows that surrounded them. “This is the only place you need to be right now,” he told her solemnly. “Stay with me.”

“Gideon, I can't think.” She took a quick swipe at the corner
of her eye with the heel of her hand. “I have to go back to my room and try to sort things out. Try to—”

“You need sleep, Raina.”

She closed her eyes, but she said, “I can't sleep.”

“What is it?” He caught her face in his hands. “Tell me what's wrong.”

She was trying, albeit feebly, to push herself away from him, but he was having none of it. He massaged her temples with his thumbs until, muscle by muscle, she relaxed her body against his, giving in, letting him take the pressure away. “Even when I'm exhausted, it's very hard for me to fall asleep.”

“That's because you're trying too hard. You think too much. You always did.” He stuffed an extra pillow behind his neck and settled her in his arms, pressing her head into the pocket of his shoulder. “I can help you sleep.”

“Gideon—”

“Shhh, Raina. Which sounds of nature would you like to hear? I can do loons if you like. Or wolves, or…”

He started humming. She tipped her chin up, and he saw the surprise in her eyes. He touched his finger to his lips, then with one hand stroked her brow, gently coaxing her eyelids closed as he sang to her softly in Chippewa, words he remembered from his boyhood when
nookomis,
his grandmother, had sung them to him. Shortest boyhood on record, as he recalled. And it had been such a long, long time ago.

 

She slept well in Gideon's arms that night. She slept soundly, even when he slipped away early in the morning. It was when he phoned from the office that she finally woke. He told her that he'd checked on the status of her application for a teaching position, and she was in. Despite the bright lilt in
the voice that delivered the news, and even though it was the answer she'd hoped for, the news was somehow disquieting.

It was decided, then. All the staid, comfortable, routine aspects of her life were about to change. It occurred to her that if she examined the great changes in her life too closely, she would find that one man had somehow played a major role in many of them. And she was lying in his bed right now, between sheets that smelled deliciously of his body. In bed,
where he'd always known they would be good together.
And that was not enough.

“Why so quiet?” asked the voice on the phone. The same voice she'd heard in the dark last night. The same voice that had sent shivers scurrying down her spine. “Isn't that what you wanted to hear?”

“Yes,” she said, but her tone was flat. “It really is. I'll need a place to live. Any suggestions?”

“How fancy?”

“Two bedrooms. Beyond that, the basics would be nice.”

Seated at his desk, Gideon tapped the eraser end of a pencil on a pile of letters, many of them written essentially to curse him and all his ancestors. He shoved the tedious rancor aside.

Two bedrooms, plus the basics. Hell, he could offer her that much. In fact, he had offered her that and more. But he wasn't going to beg.

“What are you going to do with your house?” he asked.

“Sell it. It's too much house for the two of us, anyway. It's time I unloaded it. I have a friend who sells real estate. I'll call her today.” She paused, then added quietly, “It's time I made some changes.”

“Right.”
Choose your own time, choose your own brand, sweetheart.
“Well, you don't qualify for tribal housing, but
there are always a few winterized lake cabins available for rent in the off-season.”

“I'll start looking into that today.” She sighed. “This is going to be so hard for Peter.”

“We're remodeling the high school,” he reported buoyantly. “Adding a swimming pool and a bunch of space for new programs. Putting the casino profits to good use, just like the judge said. And if things keep going the way they are, we'll be able to pay for college for any of our kids who want to go.”

“
Our
kids?”

“Pine Lake Chippewa kids.” Elbow propped on the desk, he rested his brow in one large hand and rubbed his temples. “Raina…somehow I think Peter's going to be our kid—yours and mine. Maybe if you'd try to look at it that way…”

“Like joint custody? Isn't that the usual fallout from a divorce?” She gave a little tsk. “The pain of a divorce without the legalities. How ironic.”

“Yeah.” He lifted his face to the morning sun and the breeze wafting through an open window. “Ironic as hell.”

“It's going to be hard for Peter to look at it the way you're suggesting.”

“I have a feeling Arlen's going to help us out with that. I mean, I think he's willing to let me, uh…”

“Take your rightful place?”

“They're concerned about Peter's place, not mine. They want him to be part of the tribe.”

Absently he moved an official-looking piece of paper from one side of his desk to the other. “I was served with a court order for a paternity test this morning. The judge walked across the street and handed it to me personally.” He gave a dry chuckle as he snatched a pencil from the howling coyote mug that Rosie had given him in honor of some holiday he'd
hardly known existed. “As if he thought I might try to duck out on it or something. So I'm going over to the clinic before I head up to Arlen's this afternoon. I want the three of us to do a sweat, like Arlen said.”

“What about me?”

“You're his mooring, Raina. He was already straining against the bonds before any of this other stuff cropped up. Now he's got a whole new cause, but he was gonna test out the big waters, anyway.”

“He's too young.”

“No, he's not.” With one hand he snapped the pencil in half. “Look, he thinks he hates my guts right now. That's something we need to deal with.”

“Thinks?”

“Okay, so maybe he does,” he admitted, his exasperation level rising. “Maybe he always will. Maybe he'll let it fester and eat away at his insides until—”

“Gideon, please.” Her voice sounded thready and distant. “It's just that I'm feeling rather shut out of all this.”