Having no idea what the girl had given her, Martay popped the tiny seed into her mouth and chewed, making a face at its bitterness. But the bitterness passed and she began to feel even better than before. She felt wonderful; alive and warm and happy. And relaxed; totally, completely relaxed, yet filled with a brand-new kind of excitement and joy.
Night Sun caught himself applauding when Martay began to dance more recklessly, her reserve quickly slipping away. Warmed by the whiskey and the fire and the sight of Martay sensuously swaying before him, he felt his own reserve slipping away, and his judgment with it.
He wanted the beautiful golden-haired white girl.
Had wanted her from the beginning. And he could have taken her any time he chose, but never had. How many nights had he lain there in agony, not touching her, though she slept not twenty feet from him. Why? What for? What difference did it make?
There was no longer any need for rape. He wouldn’t be taking her with force, against her will. He could see in her expressive green eyes that she was his for the taking. So why not take her? After all, it wasn’t as if he would be the first. He had told Windwalker he would return Martay to her people just the way she had come to him. He could do that and still have her. She was no virgin. Others had had her, he had no doubt. She was sister under the skin to the Regina Darlingtons of the world. Beautiful, spoiled, and wanton. Regina, and other rich white women, had given him some pleasant hours in bed and neither he nor they had ever regretted it. It would be the same with Martay Kidd. If they made love tonight, it would be, for them both, enjoyable, erotic, and easily forgotten.
Night Sun took another long pull of whiskey. He lifted the bandoliers up over his head and held them in one hand, idly slapping them against his naked thigh. His flat belly tightening, he dropped the decorative bandoliers to the ground and moved purposely forward, the shell anklets on his feet tinkling as he walked.
Martay, seeing him advancing, stopped dancing. She stood, the gourd rattle lifted over her head, and watched him come to her. Looking brazenly into his flashing black eyes, her whole being, every bone in her body, every hair on her head, was screaming for his touch.
Night Sun reached her.
For a long moment he stood there before her, unashamedly watching the lift and fall of her breasts as she began to slowly, seductively, roll her shoulders, enticing him, inviting him. The breath caught in Martay’s throat when his warm hands spanned her narrow waist, then slid around to lock behind her. Wordlessly, he drew her to him.
“Night Sun,” she said breathlessly, lifting her arms up around his bare, gleaming shoulders, the gourd rattle still clutched tightly in her right hand, “I feel so wonderful. Do you feel wonderful?”
Suddenly happy beyond belief, Night Sun laughed, bent his dark head, and said, “Yes, Martay, I feel wonderful.”
She smiled dreamily. “Only thing is, I’m a little dizzy. Better hold me tightly or I’ll fall.”
His arms tightened around her and he pulled her closer to the heat and strength of his tall, lean body. “I’ve got you.”
She sighed and laid her head on his shoulder. “Never let me go.”
29
T
he night air had chilled, but the blazing fire burned high and fierce. The tom-toms, pounding out a savage beat, reverberated in rhythm with Martay’s wildly drumming heart. She was dizzy and happy and hot, her legs weak from dancing.
For hours she and Night Sun had moved as one in a primitive, pagan dance of growing desire, their gazes locked, their lithe, graceful bodies sliding and swaying and rubbing in sensual, liberated freedom.
Martay leaned back in Night Sun’s long arms and closed her eyes for a moment, finding it suddenly amusing that although her brain was quite foggy, her senses were keenly alert. Smiling dreamily, she thrilled to the myriad of sounds and scents that filled her with incredible pleasure and stirred her blood.
The pounding of the drums. The shouts and laughter of the happy dancers. The smell of wine on Night Sun’s warm breath. The gentle tinkle of shells on Night Sun’s anklets. The scent of Night Sun’s heated, bronzed flesh.
Night Sun! Night Sun! Night Sun!
She opened her eyes, tightened her hold on his strong neck, and gave her gourd rattle a lazy shake. He let his hands slide down to her flaring hips, gripped her securely with long, spread fingers and urged her pelvis more closely to his. Erotically he rocked against her, making slow, lazy circles with his slim hips, undulating rhythmically. Through her soft doeskin dress and his brief breechclout, she could feel his heat and hardness, the physical proof of his desire. A desire for her and no other.
His hands, sliding lower, expertly guided her, lifting, lowering, moving her closer, urging her back, and she was helpless against such power and passion. He was, she realized, making love to her there in the blazing firelight while all the others danced around them, but she didn’t care. She was hot and excited and oblivious to anyone save this dark god of love for whom she would do anything, anytime, anyplace.
Her clutching fingers slid on Night Sun’s neck and she became aware, for the first time, that his chest and back and shoulders were slippery with perspiration. Bringing a hand down from his shoulder, she spread her fingers across his chest and blotted at the glistening beads of sweat covering him. Her hand was wet when she turned it over and stared at it.
“I’m hot too,” she murmured, and directing his attention to the open throat of her dress, she put her wet hand inside, placed it atop the gleaming swell of her left breast, and lovingly rubbed his sweat on her heated skin. “I wish,” she went on, “we could just pull our clothes off and dance naked.”
Raising a dark hand, he placed long fingers on the pounding pulse point in her gleaming throat, then captured the tiny beads of moisture resting in its delicate hollow, and pointedly spread them on his lips. And licked them off.
“We will,” he said, and the next thing Martay knew, he was leading her through the frenzied dancers. Caught up in their own wild enjoyment, the others never noticed. But silently observing from his solitary vantage point above, a stoic Windwalker’s dark eyes narrowed as they followed the departing couple hurrying in the moonlight along the path toward Night Sun’s lodge.
The Mystic Warrior shook his graying head.
Night Sun and Martay never knew. And had they known, they wouldn’t have cared. The drums, the wine, the peyote, the weeks of fierce longing and painful self-denial had all converged to hurl them, at long last, on this special night of nights, into each other’s arms.
They didn’t speak on the way to Night Sun’s tipi. Martay, hurrying to keep up with Night Sun’s long, supple strides, clung tightly to his hand, as anxious as he to reach the privacy of their lodge.
When they ducked inside, Night Sun at last released Martay. It was dark inside; no fire was burning in the center; the only light was the wedge of moonlight coming through the open flap.
“I want to see you as well as feel you,” he said, moving from her to readjust the smoke hole at the tipi’s top, folding back the skins above until the tipi’s interior was flooded with an abundance of bright, silvery moonlight. Then he crossed before her and, going down on one knee, pulled down the entrance flap and fastened it securely so that no one could enter.
He rose then and stood looking at her. Martay trembled when he moved, catlike, and came to stand before her. He was all Indian this night, from the top of his noble head to the soles of his bare feet. The burnished skin, the chiseled features, the awesomely black glittering eyes. Shadows played beneath his high, slanting cheekbones, and his mouth looked hard and determined and dangerous.
And Martay couldn’t wait to feel that dangerous mouth on hers.
Night Sun lifted a hand to her hair. Cupping the back of her small, well-shaped head, he applied gentle pressure, urging her up onto her toes, even as he slowly bent his dark head to her. He leaned down and kissed her with a quick, feathery touch of his lips on hers, and Martay heard the brushing of seeds in her gourd rattle as it touched Night Sun’s bare thigh.
He lifted his head, smiled at her, and took the rattle from her. Giving it one last playful shake, he tossed it across the tipi. His hands went immediately to the concho belt tied at Martay’s narrow waist. Swiftly he untied it and stood for a second with it in his hands, folding it neatly, the sound of the silver disks clinking together loudly in the quietness.
Night Sun dropped the belt and put his hands on Martay’s hips. While she looked up at him, unafraid, he pulled the soft doeskin dress up to her waist, paused, and said, “Lift your arms for me, sweetheart.”
The endearment, coming from him, filled Martay with unbelievable happiness. She would have done anything for him. Trembling slightly, she obeyed him, and feeling the soft dress come up over her head and off, she threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin.
And then it was Night Sun who trembled.
She stood there in the moonlight wearing only the soft doeskin underwear and the knee-high moccasins, and she was even more beautiful, more desirable, than he had hoped or imagined. The skimpy doeskin underpants rode low atop her hipbones and stopped high upon her pale thighs. Her breasts, completely bare, were full and high and stood out from her delicate ribs in proud, perfect mounds of creamy flesh topped with large pink-satin nipples that were, before his eyes, tightening into darkening buds of sweetness that tempted him to bend his head immediately and taste.
Instead he asked, very courteously, if he could unbraid her hair. Gentle Deer’s words came rushing back: “If he wants to take down your hair, let him.”
“Yes, if you like it better that way.”
“I do,” he said, and turning her away from him, unwound the beaded black velvet adornment from the long braid, slipped it around the slender column of her neck, and tied it into a perfect bow at the side of her throat, then went about gently pulling the three large sections of hair apart. When at last it was undone, he combed his long fingers through the gleaming tresses and smoothed it down her delicate back. It fell almost to her waist, and the sight of it, shimmering there in the moonlight on her pale, bare skin, filled Night Sun with joy.
Impulsively he parted the long, silky hair down the middle of her head and swept it over her shoulders, then turned her to face him. The pale hair was very bewitching, spilling over her torso, but it partially hid her bare, beautiful breasts, so he impatiently swept it once more over her shoulders and released it, letting it fall down her back.
He said, “Dance with me, Martay?”
She said, “Yes. Oh, yes.”
Night Sun put a long arm around her. His fingers moved slowly, enticingly, up her bare back, beneath the flowing hair that spilled over his arm. Gently he pulled her into his embrace and Martay trembled violently. Not with fear or apprehension or doubt. She trembled with the joy of being in his arms, of feeling the smooth hot flesh of his broad, hairless chest pressing against her sensitive nipples; his lean, hair-dusted thighs brushing abrasively against hers; his flat, sweat-dampened abdomen sliding sensuously on her own.
They danced there in the moonlight, the two of them. She in her doeskin underpants and knee-high moccasins, he in his brief breechclout, shell anklets, copper bracelets, and red headband. They could still hear the sounds of the tom-toms from the village, but they moved to a slower, more sensual tempo, finding their own pleasing, provocative rhythm.
Lost in wonder, Martay blinked when Night Sun’s feet stopped moving. Questioningly, she looked up at him.
He put a hand on her bare shoulder and kissed her for the second time. For a breathless moment—so brief it seemed to her like a mere dreamlike flash—his lips moved ardently on hers, then released them.
“Martay, I want you naked. Take off your underwear,” he said, his voice as warm and caressing as a summer breeze.
“No,” she murmured, toying with the gleaming copper bracelets wrapped around his biceps, “you take off my underwear.”
His heart hammering, his hands were at her waist by the time the last word left her mouth. He peeled the skimpy doeskin undergarment slowly down over her flared hips and released it. It whispered to the floor, pooling there around her moccasined feet. She kicked it aside.
Night Sun, stepping back, felt the blood rush to his already swollen groin as he admired the unclothed beauty standing before him. Her belly was so flat, it appeared concave; shadows played in the delicate hollows beside her rising hipbones. Her thighs were firm and gently curved, the legs long and slender. Her flesh was pale, its texture pearlized by the moonlight; and between her thighs, thick, shimmering golden curls, forming a perfect symmetrical triangle, gleamed silver in the night.
It was there that Night Sun’s heated gaze lingered. A muscle jerking furiously in his jaw, he reached out and reverently swept long, dark fingers gently through those soft angel-curls, and he said, “It’s this I want to feel against me when we dance.”
Martay thought she would burst into flame as his hand possessively closed over her, the heel resting lightly atop her pelvis, the long, dark fingers caressingly cupping her, his black eyes lifting to hers.
She drew a shallow, much needed breath and said, “Night Sun, I want you naked. Take off your breechclout.”
Recognizing his own words being recited back to him, he smiled and said, “No.” Reluctantly moving his hand from her, he added, “You take off my breechclout.”
He stood there then, unmoving, feet apart. Would she actually do it?
She did.
Unsure exactly how to go about it, Martay quickly found where the leather thong was tied atop his left hip, holding the strange garment in place. With shaking hands she untied the stubborn knot and pulled the breechclout away from his body. Fingers still clutching the soft rawhide covering, she stared with wide eyes at what she had undraped.
Rising there from swirls of thick blue-black hair was that pulsing, awesome maleness she had felt burning her through their clothing. Freed from its restraints, it sprang proudly up and out, a huge naked shaft of flesh like nothing she could have imagined. Never had she seen a man naked, and she was at once shocked and fascinated. His tall, bare body, to her, was beautiful, and this erect thrusting symbol of his masculinity was no exception.