So miserable, she could no longer suffer in silence, Martay, hating herself for having to call on him for anything, softly said his name.
The cigar sailed out the door and Night Sun was beside her in a flash. “What is it?”
“About your grandmother … I … it’s just that there’s something almost eerie about her. She looks at me strangely, as though she is looking right through me.”
Night Sun pushed a lock of damp golden hair from Martay’s moist forehead. “Gentle Deer is blind, Martay. She sees nothing.”
“Blind?” she peered up at him. “I had no idea. But she is so … How did it happen?”
She noted the minute tightening of Night Sun’s hawklike dark face. And he hesitated a second before saying, “A United States Cavalry officer shot her in the head.”
Martay gasped and stared at him. “I don’t believe you! No cavalry officer would shoot a woman. Not even a … a …”
“Not even a squaw?” he said, a hard edge on his voice.
“I wasn’t going to say … I’m sorry about your grandmother and I … Do you think her potions might help the pain in my legs? I feel so terrible.”
“Shall I ask her?”
“Would you?”
Gentle Deer cheerfully returned, bringing with her the magic potion of bitter roots,
sinkpe tawote,
and gunpowder. Martay trustingly swallowed it down, trying very hard not to make a face. She didn’t quite manage, but reasoned it made no difference, since Gentle Deer could not see.
“I know it does not taste good,” said Gentle Deer, “but it will make you feel better. You will rest tonight.”
When Gentle Deer had gone, Night Sun reached immediately for the small gourd his grandmother had brought. The gourd contained a thick white salve to be used externally.
Martay, pale and suffering, opened her eyes when Night Sun knelt beside her and said in a low, soft voice, “Grandmother left something to be rubbed on your arms and legs.”
And she blinked in surprise, but did not protest when he peeled away her covering robes of fur. In too much discomfort to care about modesty, Martay wondered immediately why she hadn’t kicked off the hot fur covers long before now. This was much better. The fact that she was lying before Night Sun in her skimpy satin underthings was the furthest thing from her pain-clouded mind.
“What’s in the mixture?” she asked as she watched Night Sun dab his index finger into the small gourd, remove it, and spread some of the white cream in the palm of his hand.
“Aloe leaves and a half-dozen secret ingredients,” he said, rubbing his lean brown hands together, warming and thinning the salve in his palms. “I’m not sure.”
Eagerly Martay lifted an aching arm. Night Sun took her small hand in both of his and began circular, rubbing motions, moving slowly, methodically, over the fragile bones of her wrist and upward to her forearm. He couldn’t keep from smiling when Martay sighed loudly, a sigh of relief and obvious pleasure. His strong fingers slowly, gently, spread the soothing balm up to her elbow and beyond. “Feel good?”
Eyes again closed, she murmured, “Mmmmm. I’ve dreamed of this. Feels wonderful.” She opened her eyes to look at him when he again dabbed long fingers into the thick cream and warmed it in his palms. Carefully hooking his little finger under the lacy strap of her chemise and urging it off her shoulder, he rubbed the lotion into the curve of her neck and shoulder.
Feeling the knotted muscles and tendons beneath her smooth white skin, he shook his dark head and pushed the other chemise strap down. Then placing both lotion-slick hands atop her bare shoulders, he kneaded and rubbed and worked to ease the punishing tautness from Martay’s neck, shoulders, and upper arms, trying very, very hard not to be distracted by the swell of the lush, full breasts rising dangerously close to the sliding satin chemise’s lacy top-edge.
Swallowing hard, he only nodded when Martay, moaning and sighing, and further showing her gratitude and enjoyment by stretching and inhaling deeply, murmured, “Magic hands, Night Sun.” She closed her eyes and smiled.
Beads of perspiration rapidly dotting his dark hairline, Night Sun closed his eyes as well. But couldn’t resist opening them immediately. Could not keep his gaze from admiring the twin crests of Martay’s soft breasts, so alluringly outlined against the slick satin; and through his mind flashed that day he and she had hidden from the soldiers in a narrow canyon and she had sat opposite him in the soaking-wet chemise. The sleeping nipples he looked upon now had been pebble-hard that afternoon. And doubly tempting.
With his hands atop her shoulders, thumbs pressing just below her collarbone, Night Sun experienced an almost overwhelming urge to move his thumbs just a little lower; to brush them back and forth across those soft nipples until they peaked from his touch.
Martay’s eyes came open. She caught the intense expression in Night Sun’s black eyes and felt a strange rush of excitement herself. Wordlessly he moved his hands and the tension was gone. Abruptly, he moved down to her feet. He sat flat and, lifting her left foot onto his lap, began spreading the warmed thick lotion over arch and sole, pressing this thumb in the same pleasing circular patterns atop her high instep.
Martay softly giggled when his long fingers spread the aloe lotion between her toes.
Night Sun grinned, relieved that the tension of a moment ago had been broken. His grin broadened when she continued to laugh as he worked on both small feet. She was still smiling when he flexed and rubbed a slender ankle and began working his way up to the calf of her leg. But her smile became a nervous one when those long, bronzed fingers reached her dimpled knee and continued to climb.
She glanced at Night Sun. His copper face gleamed with perspiration and his chest, where the buckskin shirt was parted, was slick.
“It’s warm tonight,” he said suddenly and, draping Martay’s lotion-slickened leg atop his bent thigh, reached behind his head and pulled his heavy shirt up and off, tossing it aside.
“Better?” she asked softly.
“Better,” he said, and his hands were back on her.
But it wasn’t better. Not for him it wasn’t. Night Sun continued to spread the soothing lotion on pale, bare flesh so warm and silky to the touch, he couldn’t help feeling his blood stir. He couldn’t keep from wanting her, no matter how out of place and futile his sudden hunger was. And he reasoned that no healthy male—white or red—could let his hands caress the luscious insides of this lovely woman’s pale thighs and not want to sweep away the covering satin and explore the concealed feminine sweetness beneath.
Though he didn’t know it, Night Sun was not the only one affected. Martay, half drowsy now from the potion she had drunk, and further relaxed by Night Sun’s massaging hands, felt a sweet yet disturbing lassitude envelop her. Senses at once dulled, yet heightened, she was suddenly aware yet unashamed that she was lying practically naked, with a bare-chested Indian, allowing his strong bronzed hands to massage areas of her body that no man had ever seen or touched. And she was liking it.
Stealing glances at Night Sun from beneath lowered lashes, Martay noted that the sculpted copper shoulders were glistening with sweat, and realized she, too, was perspiring. She was warm, far too warm, and it seemed to her that his firm fingers were spreading added heat with every bold stroke, with each manipulation of her muscles. Muscles that no longer ached.
That realization swept over her. She was not hurting anymore. Her arms and legs no longer ached. Night Sun had rubbed away the pain. She should tell him so; should let him know he could stop now.
“Night Sun,” she said softly.
“Yes?” His black eyes lifted and met hers even as his hands continued to spread lotion and heat upward between her parted legs.
“N-nothing,” said Martay, reluctant, however selfish and unfair, to have those magical hands leave her tingling flesh.
His gaze held hers for a second longer, and the dark, lean fingers that were skimming just under the lacy hem of her underpants, abruptly paused. It was, for each of them, the first moment they had become alarmingly aware of their intimate position. Night Sun honestly had no idea when he had moved, but he was no longer holding Martay’s legs atop his lap. He was, instead, sitting on his heels between Martay’s parted legs, his hands moving up her bared thighs as though he were her lover, poised to ready her for lovemaking.
Quickly he moved and at the same time commanded harshly, “Turn over.”
Martay turned onto her stomach, and for her, the intimacy, the urgency, was gone. No longer looking at him, she relaxed completely as his hands were again spreading the lotion with its wonderful soothing balm.
“Hmmmm,” she murmured, “cool. The aloe leaves make the lotion feel cool to the skin. So cool.”
“Yes, cool,” he said, feeling anything but, as he spread the slick liquid over the backs of her legs, his heated eyes devouring the rounded swell of her tight little bottom.
The massage continued until Martay’s suffering had been completely stroked away and she fell blissfully asleep there on her stomach while Night Sun’s hands worked on her bare, silky back.
Night Sun knew, by her deep, slow breathing, that she had fallen asleep. It was ironic. He had ended her suffering, and caused his own. Dark fingers skimming down her fragile spine, he drew a labored breath and allowed his hand to move down and fleetingly cup the curve of her soft bottom for one heartbeat.
Then shot to his feet, went for a cigar and match, and rushed outside, where he stayed for a long, troubled time, smoking in the darkness.
Under Gentle Deer’s watchful, unseeing eyes and patient care, Martay quickly began to recover, and no one could have been more relieved than Night Sun. With the return of her health, Martay was once again herself, in every annoying way, and any tenderness and regard she had evoked in him went the way of her illness.
Back to being her spoiled, demanding self, Martay wasted no time insisting on privacy; she wanted a tipi of her own. She was, she haughtily reminded him, a lady. If he thought, for one minute, she was going to live in such close quarters with him, sleep in the same lodge, well he had another think coming!
“I gather,” said Night Sun, pointedly, “your definition of a lady differs from mine.”
Hands on hips, she asked, “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what I said. You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
“Look, half-breed”—she stepped closer, her chin lifted defiantly—“I really don’t care what your opinion of me is. I’m telling you, I want my own place to live before another night falls!”
She got it.
And Martay, lying wide-awake that night on a soft fur bed in the tipi Night Sun had obligingly moved her to, wondered if she might have acted too hastily. The tipi, she was told, belonged to Little Coyote, a man who, like her, valued his privacy. The lodge was quite spacious and remarkably clean, but like Night Sun’s, it was set apart from the rest of the camp. Now, lying there alone on that hot moonless night in the silence, she felt uneasy and found she couldn’t sleep. She started at the least little sound, eyes wide, heart thumping. And wished, though she would cut out her tongue before she would have told him so, that Night Sun was sleeping just across the tipi from her. That she could glance over now and see the dark head, the bare, wide shoulders, gleaming in the firelight.
The man with the dark head and bare shoulders was also having trouble resting. He had told himself he couldn’t wait to get Martay out of his tipi, out of his hair, out of his sight. She got on his nerves as no woman ever had. She sassed him constantly and complained and never, it seemed to him, shut her mouth. She asked endless probing questions, as no Lakota woman would have dared, and then griped loudly because he refused to supply the answers she sought.
Now he could relax. Now he could sleep without clothes again, as he had always done. Now he could have his old warrior friends in to visit and talk and laugh far into the night, just as in the old days. Now his large, comfortable tipi was his private domain again, all traces of the sharp-tongued, exasperating woman gone.
Naked, Night Sun lay atop his fur bed, arms folded beneath his head. He stretched his long, bare body out full-length and yawned. And slowly turned his head to look across the tipi to that other bed, the empty one, where, until tonight, tousled blond hair had spilled about slender ivory shoulders.
Night Sun felt the muscles in his bare belly tighten and he ground his even, white teeth. Arms came from behind his head and a long-fingered dark hand swept down over his hairless chest and across his stomach as his black eyes closed in self-disgust.
Jerking there on his naked belly, swollen and rigid and aching, was a part of him he could not control. Lying alone in the hot stillness of the dark night, he fought the desire that blazed at the mere recollection of her face and hair and pale, pale skin. It was not the first time his body had responded to the worrisome temptress.
Suddenly it was stifling hot inside his dark, close tipi. Night Sun rose from his bed, slipped into his tight buckskin pants, stepped into his moccasins, and ducked outside, drawing in a long, deep breath of fresh air, relieved to feel the cooling breezes on his face, his bare chest, his swollen groin.
His physical problem soon, if temporarily, solved, Night Sun went for a walk in the darkness, leisurely circling the perimeter of the sleeping camp, winding up very near to the isolated lodge where Martay slept. He stood, unmoving, for a long time and watched the cone-shaped dwelling.
He smiled ruefully in the darkness.
How out of place she was here. A rich, pampered white woman who had lived all her life in a fully staffed mansion, now sleeping alone in a tipi made of buffalo hides decorated with horses and coyotes and scenes of battles painted on its sides. Shaking his dark head, he turned and walked back to his tipi.
A little more relaxed after his walk, Night Sun stepped out of his moccasins and was unlacing his buckskins when he heard it. A loud, shrill scream. Coming from the direction of Martay’s lodge.
Forgetting his half-unlaced pants, he grabbed up his Winchester and, barefooted, raced to her, his heart thundering in his naked chest. He reached her in minutes and found her cowering against the far wall, screaming hysterically.