His blue eyes rounded just a bit. “You know my name? Did you come looking for this village, child?”
She was going to faint. Or scream. Her heart was beating in her ears, making it all but impossible to hear a word he’d said.
“I need to leave,” Wai gasped, backing away from him. Her gaze frantically searched the faces of the crowd assembling around them before returning to the missionary’s. “This isn’t happening!”
“All will be well, child. Please—”
Whatever David Zeisberger had been about to say became a moot point. She took off running toward where the reception center was supposed to be, her arms pumping back and forth as she sped away. One minute there was a packed dirt road and the next there was nothing but thick, green forest. Running away as fast as her feet would carry her, Wai fled into the anonymity of the all-encompassing woodlands.
She told herself this
had
to be a dream.
Deep down inside she feared it wasn’t.
175
Jaid Black
* * * * *
Major Jack Elliot brought his mount to a standstill. He could have sworn he just saw a little Indian girl duck behind some foliage.
Another movement. Caramel skin against bright yellow garment…
His eyes were not deceiving him.
The girl ran to a larger tree and ducked behind it. His blue eyes narrowed. She had to be a Lenape. Whites never dressed like…
that
. The telltale costume was so scant as to be obscene. Embarrassingly enough, he’d gotten an erection from just seeing her bared legs.
“Why are you here?” he murmured to himself. What did she want?
These days, you never could tell which side the Indians were sympathetic to. She could be friend or she could be foe. Hell, for that matter, these days you couldn’t be certain if anybody who lived around these parts was friend or foe. Just like the people who dwelled in Schoenbrunn—many Continental soldiers believed the missionary and his followers to be sympathetic to the British. He sighed, not wanting to think on that right now.
But what about the girl?
Jack didn’t know of any American or King’s sympathizer who would send a young girl near a camp of war-tired, horny soldiers, most of who hadn’t lain with a woman in months—if at all. Especially not David Zeisberger. If there was one thing Jack could be certain of where Zeisberger was concerned, it was that.
Jack cocked his head and watched the girl duck behind yet another tree. She was trying to get as far away from him as possible without being seen. He doubted she was aware she had been spotted—she would have bolted by now if that was true.
Major Elliot had ridden away from camp by himself today. He’d left after telling his men he wanted one more chance to talk to Zeisberger in confidence, to at least attempt to get the old man to take the colonists’ side in the war. It had been Jack’s hope to sway the missionary. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to protect him or his village any longer.
Another movement.
His jaw clenching, Jack prepared to gallop his steed toward the Indian girl. Come hell or high water, he
would
find out just who she was and what she was doing so close to the American fort.
Her teeth chattering, Wai’s heart dropped in her stomach when she spotted the rider on horseback. She’d been alternately running and walking for at least three hours—well away from Schoenbrunn. She had expected to see paved streets and civilization. Instead she had been enveloped by thick, seemingly endless forest.
And now yet another man dressed in period costume. Only this particular man was dressed like a soldier…
176
The Beckoned
A black, triangular hat sat atop a long mane of light brown hair. She couldn’t make out many details of his face from this distance, but his features were very tan. He wore a blue greatcoat adorned with dozens of shiny buttons that fell a bit past the thigh.
Tight brown breeches were worn underneath the coat, black knee-high boots completing the ensemble.
As overly clothed as he was for this time of the year, she had no trouble discerning just how deadly and powerful the musculature beneath that outfit was. His biceps rippled beneath the coat every time he made the slightest movement.
Taking a deep breath, Wai forcibly calmed her raging nerves and chattering teeth.
She didn’t want to deal with the reality of the situation and yet there was no escaping it.
Either Wai had lost her mind altogether, or somehow, defying everything she believed to be credible, she had traveled into Ohio’s war-torn past.
This isn’t happening! I simply can’t believe this is real.
Her breath caught in the back of her throat. She stilled.
The soldier had spotted her, she hysterically thought. He was trying to behave as though nothing was amiss, but she wasn’t so naïve as that. She could tell by the way he’d cocked his head, and then the manner in which his muscles had tensed beneath the tight blue greatcoat he wore.
If she had traveled into the past, she’d picked a hell of a time to land! This man, a soldier, would undoubtedly kill her. Especially when he realized she was an Indian.
Her heart racing, Wai dashed back in the direction she’d first run from. She tried to ignore the frightening sound of the soldier’s “hiya!” and the equally terrifying sound of his horse galloping straight towards her.
Run faster, Wai! Mooooove!
Braving a quick glance over her shoulder, her face paled when she saw the rider’s determined features. From his tense muscles, to his steeled jaw, to his narrowed blue eyes, she knew she was a goner.
Wrenching her neck forward, Wai’s eyes widened as she realized she was about to run smack-dab into a tree. Worse yet, she was moving too fast to avoid it. She cried out as she hit it, then gasped as she fell to the ground.
Nauseated and dizzy, she knew she was about to pass out. The last thing Wai saw before succumbing to the blinding pain was an all too familiar face hovering over her.
Oh. My. God.
“Jack?” she whispered, her last bit of adrenaline rushing through her.
He stilled. In recognition? From shock that she knew his name?
She wasn’t given time to find out the answer. Bright white light stung her eyes before blackness engulfed her.
177
Jaid Black
After checking for a steady pulse, Jack picked up the Lenape girl and stared down into her unconscious face. He sucked in a deep tug of air, feeling as though the wind had been knocked clean out of him. The girl—she was…
Her.
The woman he’d spent years fantasizing about. The woman he’d believed was nothing more than a figment of his hungry sexual imagination. He’d know this face, this body, this scent, anywhere.
Memories assaulted him, overwhelmed him. Her lusciously rounded bottom. Her light brown eyes framed by inky black eyelashes. The way she gasped in his nighttime fantasies as he thrust inside her tight, wet, sticky—
Jack’s nostrils flared. He closed his eyes briefly, reminding himself that this was not the time or place for sinful, carnal thoughts. She’s taken a severe hit to the head; she needed his help.
Quickly realizing that the nearest village, Schoenbrunn, was a goodly ride away, and that getting the Indian girl there while unconscious was next to impossible without causing her further injury, he decided to set up a makeshift camp. There was no way he would ride back to the fort and subjugate her to the lust of a hundred soldiers and there was no way he could ride so far as Schoenbrunn while she was injured. He would tend to her wounds himself.
And then he would find out, once and for all, just who she was and what the hell was going on.
178
The Beckoned
Chapter Five
She’d been mostly asleep for three days now, but Jack had been around wounded soldiers long enough to realize that his gorgeous little Indian captive was on the mend.
She’d had a conscious moment every once in a while—a good sign. Smiling up at him through those sexy almond-shaped eyes, she’d stare at him for a few moments and whisper to him in a throaty accent before, eyelids batting, she fell back into a deep sleep.
Those moments were getting closer and closer together. She didn’t seem lucid half the time and yet Jack had still managed to glean information out of her. Unfortunately, much of it didn’t make sense. He recalled a bizarre conversation they’d had early this morning, a conversation she probably wouldn’t even recall when she finally came to.
“Who are you?” Jack murmured, his eyes blazing down into her face, over her barely
covered breasts, and back. “What is your name?”
“You know my name is Puawai, but I prefer Wai.” She smiled. “Oh Jack…” She reached up
to his face, ran a hand over his stubbled jaw. “Are you real?” she asked, her voice breathy.
Silence.
“How do you know my name?” he rasped.
“Jack,” she whispered, “I had the strangest dream. I traveled back in time over two hundred
years.” Her voice grew distant, faint, as her eyes slowly closed. “I was at your grave. I left the
twenty-first century to find you in the eighteenth…”
He blinked, coming back to the moment. Her words made no sense and yet, nonetheless, they had sent a chill of premonition coursing down his spine.
Traveled through time? Was it possible? Or was she just mumbling incoherent nonsense?
His jaw tense, Jack stripped himself and his unconscious Indian captive of all clothing and waded both of them into the Tuscawaras River. He told himself the bath would be good for helping her heal, not wanting to deal with the fact that he just wanted to see her naked. All of these years he’d dreamt of what she looked like—now he was finding out firsthand.
Floating her on her back in the cool water, Jack drew in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Her breasts were as large, round, and soft as he’d dreamt them to be, her nipples a stiff brown that poked up off soft, lighter brown pads, all but begging for his lusty attention.
179
Jaid Black
His gaze trailed further down. First to a slightly fleshy belly that looked as wanton as it did adorable, and then onward to a triangular-shaped patch of black curls that appeared soft to the touch.
He decided to find out.
His cock so hard it ached, Jack gritted his teeth as he ran a sweet-smelling bar of bayberry soap along Wai’s breasts and belly. After working up a good lather, he threw the bar of soap over his shoulder and massaged the lather into her breasts.
His jugular bulged at the feel of her ripe nipples stabbing against the palm of his calloused hand. He all but came right there in the river as he worked his hand lower, running soapy fingers through the triangle of black curls that was every bit as silky as it looked. She moaned a little bit, a soft, breathy sound, as his fingers slid between her thighs and rubbed against the tiny bud of flesh there.
This
was what he wanted.
This
was what his mind had been telling him he needed for years. He was weary of war, tired of fighting against the dominion of one country in order to gain independence for another country whose morals he didn’t even know if he shared. He’d spent the majority of his adult life pitted in battle, the pacifist value system he’d been raised to believe in not in line with either nation’s.
But Jack had done his duty. A duty his own father didn’t even believe in.
He rubbed her clit harder, more vigorously, watching through heavy eyelids as her nipples grew plumper and stiffer. His cock got harder with each of her breathy moans, the desire to mate with her all but killing him.
Jack blew out a breath. He needed to get her washed off and back into the animal-skin tent before he ended up taking her. He couldn’t live with himself if he forced himself upon any woman, let alone an unconscious one.
“Jack,” Wai whispered. Her eyelids slowly fluttered open. “Oh God,
Jack
… I’ve waited so long for you.”
His breathing was so heavy he was surprised he could talk. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he hoarsely managed. “You’re ill.”
Her arms wound around his neck, clinging onto him, as she took to two unsteady feet. “I turned away all other men. I never wanted to be with any man but you.”
Sweet lord.
The woman who’d haunted his dreams for more years than he could count was a virgin. He didn’t know how much more torture he could endure. One more submissive gesture on her part and she’d be his—irrevocably.
“Jack,” she murmured. Her pink tongue darted out, sought out his welcoming mouth. “
Mmmmm.
”
He needed no further encouragement. One second Wai was kissing him sweetly and the next his mouth was coming down on hers hard, hungry, years worth of unrequited wanting in the heated, sensuous kiss. His fingers glided through her wet, black hair, holding her face steady for his invasion. His cock throbbed between them, poking at her belly.
180
The Beckoned
“Jack,” she breathed out, ripping her mouth away from his. Her breathing was as labored as his own. “Make love to me.
Please
.”
Jesus H. Christ.
“I’ve held back as long as I can,” he said thickly, wading toward shore. He gently took her down to where mud met water. “I need to be inside you.”
Jack palmed her huge, soft breasts as he settled himself between her thighs. A light brown gaze clashed with a fiery blue one.
“This isn’t really happening,” Wai gasped as he ran his thumbs over her distended nipples. “But I wish it was. I’ve been in love with you my entire life.”
His nostrils flared. He knew how she felt. Right now this all seemed a dream.
Poising the head of his cock at her tight, wet opening, he surged inside of her in one powerful thrust. She cried out, her eyes widening, but didn’t shrink away from him.
“I’ll make it feel good in a minute,” he rasped. He’d never been so fucking hard in his entire life. “Just lie still until your body can handle my possession.”
It felt half a lifetime before her muscles went slack, the tension draining out of them.