Chapter Eleven
Mackenzie ripped off her linen shirt and threw it on the floor. It was so hot that she couldn't think; she couldn't breathe. Still fuming, she stepped out of her sprigged calico skirt. She kicked off her boots and peeled off her yarn stockings. That was better. Wearing nothing but her sleeveless cotton shift, she could at least breathe a little easier.
She stepped over her boots in the middle of the floor and paced. She couldn't beleive her father had done this to her. He'd locked her up as if she were a madwoman when all she'd done was try to defend the man she suspected . . . no, the man she knew she loved.
The thought of Fire Dancer brought tears to her eyes. How could Harry have allowed the soldiers to treat him so cruelly? She had always had such a great respect for Harry and that respect was gone. How could men be so brutal to other human beings just because their skin color was different? Even her father and Joshua had stood there and permitted the beating to take place without offering a word of protest.
Mackenzie impatiently wiped her tears away. Crying would do neither her nor Fire Dancer any good. If she was to help him, she'd have to come up with a plan—and quickly. Her father insisted they were leaving in the morning, and from the look in his eyes, she knew she wouldn't be able to stall him even a few hours.
"Oh, Fire Dancer," she whispered to the hot room. "I'm so sorry this had to happen. I'm so sorry I didn't make love with you when I had the chance."
Just thinking about the way he had kissed her at the stream today, about the way he had touched her, made her warm and queasy in the pit of her stomach. So this was what desire is , she thought. But it wasn't just desire. It was love she felt for the man so different from herself. A true love that didn't recognize those differences. She walked to her camp cot and knelt. From beneath the bed she slid out the painting of Fire Dancer. It was nearly done and ready to have the background painted in. It was the most perfect piece of work she had ever done in her life. It was the piece artists waited for an entire lifetime to achieve.
With a bittersweet smile, she traced the outline of his face with her finger. The oil paint was still tacky in places. Closing her eyes, she could see his face laughing, smiling, teasing.
"I have to get out of here. I have to set you free," she said aloud. She dropped the portrait on the bed. As she rose off the floor she glanced at the window. Of course! Fire Dancer had slipped in and out of the window many times. She was the same size as he. Surely she could—
Mackenzie heard a sound outside the window and froze. Was someone outside? Could it be . . . No, impossible, and yet . . .
Mackenzie bounced up onto the cot. As an afterthought, she tossed the corner of the counterpane over the portrait. She yanked the shutter open, trying not to make any noise. Joshua slept on the other side of the door. She had heard his snoring earlier. She pressed her face to the open window. "Fire Dancer?"
"Mack-en-zie?"
Mackenzie put her hand to her heart. "Oh, thank God, you're safe," she whispered. "Where are you? I can't see you."
His face appeared before hers. In the darkness she couldn't really see him, but she knew it was him. She recognized the scent of his hair and skin, the sound of his voice, the feel of his breath on her cheek.
"Let this man in," he said softly. "There is not much time, woman of my heart."
Mackenzie backed off the bed and watched Fire Dancer miraculously appear through the window. He tumbled onto her bed and she flung herself into his arms.
"Oh, Fire Dancer, I was so afraid for you. I—" She stopped in mid-sentence, horrified by what she saw. It was Fire Dancer, and yet it was not. His face had been beaten so brutally that it was misshapen. His lips were swollen and split in several places. He was covered with blood, in his hair, on his face, down his arms.
"Oh," she whispered, smoothing his tangled, blood-sticky, hair. "Oh, what have they done to you?"
"Shhh," he murmured. He pulled her into his arms on the bed. "It's all right, kitehi." He kissed her forehead. "It is not so bad as it looks."
She touched his face gently with her hands. She feared she would hurt him, but she needed to prove to herself that it really was him. She stared into his black eyes, eyes that said he loved her. "How did you get away?" she whispered. "Why are you here? You have to go! You have to run! If they catch you—"
He pressed his finger to her lips. "Shhhhh, my heart. There is probably a soldier outside your door. We must speak softly."
She nodded, her face only inches from his. "My father left Joshua to guard my door, but he's asleep." She went on faster than before. "They've locked me in. We leave in the morning. My father wants to take me far from here, but I don't want to go." She was crying again. "I don't want to leave you, even though I know I must."
He caught one of her tears with his fingertip. "Do not cry, Mack-en-zie. I came only to say good-bye, not to make you cry."
She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. "You didn't tell me how you got away."
"Tall Moccasin."
She pulled back a little. "Tall Moccasin?"
"The soldiers had tied me to a pole inside the shed where your father keeps his supplies. My cousin, Okonsa, had been stealing from him through a hole he cut in the wall."
Mackenzie wasn't surprised, so she said nothing, letting him go on.
"Tall Moccasin came through the hole in the wall and set me free. He was very brave. He waits for me now in the forest." Fire Dancer added gently, "This man must go."
"No." She choked back a sob. She had never been the hysterical type, but she felt as if her world was coming to an end. She knew he couldn't stay. She knew she couldn't go. The tragedy of their situation made her heartsick.
"This man is sorry, but I must go. If the soldiers find me, they will not give me a chance to escape again."
"I know," she whispered as she stared into his eyes. "At least let me wash the blood from your face. Will you allow me to do that?"
Fire Dancer glanced at the window as if it beckoned. "Mack-en-zie . . ."
"Please." She jumped up off the bed and ran to the water bucket. She hurried back to him with fresh water and a small, clean linen towel. She knelt in front of him on the floor. "Just a few more minutes."
He trapped her between his knees. "Just a few more moments," he agreed, brushing a stray lock of hair off her cheek.
Mackenzie procured the washrag from the bucket and squeezed it. Water ran between her fingers. As gently as she could, she dabbed at the blood-encrusted gouge that ran from the center of his forehead to his right temple.
Fire Dancer's eyes drifted shut and he rested his hands on her hips.
She rinsed the bloody rag again and again, wiping away the blood and perhaps a little of the sting of his wounds. As she washed his face and neck, and bare shoulders, his hand drifted over her body, caressing her through the sheer cotton of her shift.
"Mack-en-zie," he whispered, his eyes still closed.
"Fire Dancer." She kissed him gently on his mouth that was still damp from the washrag.
"This man will never forget you." He kissed her back, harder, and pulled her closer.
"Never," she answered, lost in the moment.
He drew her onto his lap and slipped his hand beneath her shift. She made no protest. All she wanted was him. In the desperation of the moment, she wanted nothing but to touch him, to be touched.
They kissed again and again. Her hot tears mingled with the water on his face. He laid her back on her bed and she sighed and moaned with pleasure, reveling in the feel of his body pressed against hers. Their mouths met; their tongues twisted in one last, hopeless union.
His hands burned a path on her bare skin.
Somehow her shift became rolled up around her waist, but she didn't care. Any sense of modesty she might have felt in the past was gone. All that mattered was Fire Dancer and the pulses of pleasure that surged through her veins.
Fire Dancer kissed the valley between her breasts and pushed her shift up farther. Mackenzie guided his head with her hands. She needed to feel the touch of his mouth on her breast. She groaned with pleasure when his tongue skimmed over her puckered nipple. Instinctively, she arched her back and pressed her hips to his. With nothing but his leather loinskin between his body and hers, she felt his heat as he lowered over her. His hands touched her; his mouth taunted her.
He kissed her breasts. He sucked with his mouth and licked with his tongue. Her breasts swelled and tingled as her nipples grew harder and more sensitive. Between her thighs she ached. When he lowered his hand over her belly to the bed of red curls, she jerked in surprise.
"Shhh," he whispered in her ear. "This is what you want, heart of my heart?"
"Yes, yes," she whispered. She took his hand and guided it back to the damp place. "It's what I want." She opened her eyes, staring into his. "I'll never love another like this. It's my gift to you. All I have to give."
He kissed her tenderly, the kiss not of a lover, but of a beloved. Then he lowered his body over hers. He pressed flesh against flesh, his hard muscles against her soft, feminine curves.
He stroked between her thighs with his experienced hand. Instinctively, she moved against his fingers. She rubbed and twisted. He brought his mouth to hers and their tongues twisted in an ancient dance of love. At some point he had removed his loin cloth so that she felt his manhood hard and stiff against her bare thigh. She caressed his back and his firm, bare buttocks.
Oddly, Mackenzie was not afraid. Even though she knew little more than the basic mechanics of joining, she felt no hesitation. This was what she wanted. She kissed him again and again, breathless, feeling so hopeless and yet so joyful with each stroke, each caress.
I'll never love again like this , she kept saying over and over in her head.
She parted her thighs. The ache inside her had grown so strong that she could think of nothing but release. She wasn't even sure how she would find that release; all she knew was that she needed him inside her.
"Mack-en-zie . . ." He whispered her name in that way that only he spoke it.
She felt him probing and she lifted her hips. With the aid of one hand, he slipped slowly inside her.
Mackenzie moaned. It felt so good. The word sin bounced around in her head. To fornicate with an Indian—she would be tainted forever if anyone ever found out. But how could anything that felt so right, so loving, be a sin?
She parted her thighs further and he slipped in deeper. This was so different than she had been lead to believe. There was no pain, only a sense of relief . . . and perfect pleasure. So perfect.
Inside her, he began to move. He seemed to know just what she wanted, needed, even when she herself didn't understand.
His strokes came faster . . . harder. She panted, lifting her hips to meet his in a rhythm she instinctively matched.
Perspiration covered her. She could smell the scent of their lovemaking in the close room.
She increased the pace of the stroke. There was something she reached for, something—
Without warning, her world exploded in a surge of unbelievable pleasure and contracting muscles. "Oh," she moaned. "Oh . . ."
He covered his mouth with hers so that her cries of ecstasy were only murmurs. He moved once more inside her, twice, as she rode the last waves of fulfillment. He thrust once more, hard. She took him deeply. He moaned and fell against her.
After a moment Fire Dancer rolled off her, onto his side on the edge of the bed and cradled her in his arm. He was still panting. "This man . . . is . . . sorry," he whispered, kissing her damp temple.
Her eyes fluttered open. Her heart still pounded. Her breath still came in short bursts. "Sorry? Sorry for what?" she whispered, amazed that the sounds of their lovemaking had not brought down the entire fort.
"Sorry that this man did not last longer." He had an embarrassed grin on his face. "I was in too great a hurry. I did not see to your pleasure as a lover should."
She giggled and pressed her lips to his bruised ones. "Didn't see to my pleasure? I've never felt anything so wonderful! No one ever told me there was any pleasure for a woman." She slid her hand over his side. "Because my mother was dead, my father had our cook tell me of the relations between a man and a woman. Mostly she mumbled about bees pollinating. All I really got was that it was a wife's duty to her husband. Something to be tolerated." She smiled wickedly. "She said nothing to prepare me for the pleasure I felt, I can assure you."
He smoothed her damp hair with the palm of his hand. "Among my people, a man is expected to pleasure his woman more than once in a night. To do less would shame him."
Mackenzie laid her head back on his shoulder, closing her eyes. Her body still pulsed with tiny shivers of pleasure. She knew Fire Dancer had to leave her, but she was satisfied that at least once in her life she had experienced real love. That it had been Fire Dancer who gave it to her. She wanted to savor every second of the feeling. She wanted to carry it with her forever.
"Fire Dancer," she whispered. She didn't know exactly what she wanted to say, but she wanted him to know how she felt about him. What he meant to her in her heart. "I—"
"Shhhh. Do not speak of what there are no words for. This man must return to his people. You must go home with your father where you will be safe—" He stretched out his leg on the bed and struck something hard. "Ouch. What trap do you lay for me on your sleeping mat, woman?"
In an instant Mackenzie realized what he had hit. It was the portrait! She had completely forgotten about it. She'd left it on the bed and they'd made love with it at their feet.
She remember an instant too late.
He sat up and reached beneath the twisted counterpane.
Mackenzie rose on her knees, shoving her shift down over her bare hips.
Fire Dancer gazed at his portrait and his face turned black with rage. "What is this?" he demanded.
"Shhhhh." She tried to snatch the portrait from him. "You'll wake Joshua and then we'll both be done for!"
He leapt from the bed, naked. He stared at the small painting. "I told you, you could not paint me."
"I'm sorry." She started to cry. "I . . . I meant no harm to you. I only—"
"Silence!" he hissed. "Don't you understand what you've done?"
She rose off the bed, shocked that Fire Dancer could be so angry with her. For heaven's sake, he'd just made love with her. How could he—
"Do you understand?" he repeated through clenched teeth.
The look on his face, the fury in his black eyes, made her realize that she did not understand. "No. No, I don't." She fought back a sob. She truly was sorry.
"You captured a part of my soul, white woman. You have taken a part of me."
"No. I haven't. That's ridiculous." She tried to grasp the painting but she couldn't get it from him.
"You painted my likeness and you took a part of me. You captured my heart falsely."
"I didn't. That's absurd. But . . . but we . . . we can just destroy it. Burn it."
"No!" He ground his teeth. "We cannot destroy it without destroying the one called Fire Dancer of the Thunder Sky." Tucking the painting beneath his arm, he jerked his loin skin off the floor and tied it on, quickly adding the knife and sheath. "Clothe yourself! You go with me."
Mackenzie was terrified. This man who shouted at her and talked of captured souls was not the gentle man she had fallen in love with. She began to back up toward the door. This man . . . this man was a stranger. This man was some kind of beast. A savage. And she was afraid.
With a scream, Mackenzie threw herself against the door. "Josh! Josh!" she hollered.
"Are you mad?" Fire Dancer grabbed her roughly by the arm and dragged her toward the bed.
He was serious. He meant to take her away. To kidnap her.
"Mackenzie !" Josh Watkins shouted in panic from the other side of the door. He rattled the bar that locked her in.
"Josh! Josh, help me. He's kidnapping me."
"Mackenzie?" Josh flung open the door and stumbled inside. He tried to take aim with his musket.
Fire Dancer took one look at Joshua and let go of Mackenzie, flinging her backwards. She fell back onto the bed just as Josh raised his weapon.
"No!" Mackenzie screamed. She didn't want Fire Dancer to kidnap her, but she didn't want him dead, either. Without thought of her own well-being, she hurled herself in front of the man she had just made love with. At the same instant Josh's musket exploded with sound and smoke.