I feel…at peace here. At home. I belong, even though I shouldn’t.”
He nodded. “You belong,” he said, and there was a note in his deep voice that she hadn’t heard before.
Unexpectedly he caught her small chin and turned her face up to his. He searched her eyes until she felt as if her heart might explode from the excitement of the way he was looking at her. His thumb whispered up to the soft bow of her mouth with its light covering of pale pink lipstick. He caressed the lower lip away from her teeth and scowled as if the feel of it made some sort of confusion in him.
He looked straight into her eyes. The moment was almost intimate, and she couldn’t break it. Her lips parted and his thumb pressed against them, hard.
“Now, isn’t that interesting?” he said to himself in a low, deep whisper.
“Wh…what?” she stammered.
His eyes were on her bare throat, where her pulse was hammering wildly. His hand moved down, and he pressed his thumb to the visible throb of the artery there. He could feel himself going taut at the unexpected reaction. It was Oklahoma all over again, when he’d promised himself he wouldn’t ever touch her again. Impulses, he told himself firmly, were stupid and sometimes dangerous. And Cecily was off-limits. Period.
He pulled his hand back and stood up, grateful that the loose fit of his buckskins hid his physical reaction to her.
“Mother’s won a prize,” he said. His voice sounded oddly strained. He forced a nonchalant smile and turned to Cecily. She was visibly shaken. He shouldn’t have looked at her. Her reactions kindled new fires in him.
He reached down suddenly and caught her arms, pulling her up with him, deliberately closer than he needed to. He drew her a step closer, so that he could feel the whip of her excited breath against his throat. His fingers tightened on her arms, almost bruising them. Time seemed to stop for a space of seconds. He didn’t even hear the drums or the chants or the murmur of conversation around them. For the first time in memory, he wanted to crush Cecily down the length of his body and grind his mouth into hers. The thought shocked him so badly that he let her go all at once, turned and walked toward the circle without even looking back.
Cecily stared after him and her legs shook. She must have dreamed what just happened, she told herself. It was years of hunger for Tate that had made her mind snap. Besides, he wasn’t even attracted to her. Yes, she thought, moving toward Leta like a sleepwalker, it had only been a dream. Only another hopeless waking dream.
Cecily had planned to stay overnight and fly out the next morning, but when she and Leta went back to the small frame house in the headquarters village where Leta lived, Tate was sprawled in the easy chair watching the color television he’d given Leta last Christmas. She had good furniture and propane gas heat, one of the few houses to boast such luxuries. Tate made sure Leta lacked for nothing. It was a different story elsewhere, with elderly people trying to keep warm in fifty-below-zero temperatures with woodstoves in houses that were never tight enough to keep in the heat. The reservation was small and poor, despite the efforts of various missionary groups and some government assistance. Education, Cecily thought, was certainly the key to prosperity, but that was another difficulty that needed to be overcome. Native American colleges were springing up these days when funding could be had, places where the people could keep their traditions and their culture alive while learning the skills that would give them good jobs. It was one of Leta’s dreams to have such a place on the Wapiti Ridge.
“You still here?” Leta asked her son with a broad grin.
“I thought I’d stay until tomorrow,” he replied without looking at Cecily.
“I have to get to the airport,” Cecily remarked cheerfully, her eyes cautioning Leta not to contradict her. “I’m due back at work Monday morning.”
She and Leta knew that wasn’t true, but Cecily couldn’t imagine staying under the same roof with Tate. Not now.
“How about some coffee?” Tate asked his mother as he rose from the chair and turned off the television.
“I’ll make it,” Leta volunteered and hurried to the small kitchen to hide her glee.
Tate moved close to Cecily, an unusual thing for him to do. He never liked her closer than arm’s length. Having him so close now made her nervous.
“There’s a dance tonight,” he told her. “We’re going.”
“I think Leta’s had enough dancing,” she began.
He shook his head. “You and I are going.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “I wasn’t asked.”
Without counting the cost, he framed her face in his lean, warm hands and brought his mouth down gently on her shocked lips.
She made a sound that aroused and delighted him. He gathered her in, riveting her to the length of him while the kiss suddenly became hungry, demanding, intimate.
It was like falling. It was like having every single dream of her adult life come true. His mouth was hard and slow and exquisitely sensuous. She didn’t like knowing how he’d gotten the experience that made him such a tender lover, but the wonder of it erased the jealousy. She held to his hard arms to keep from falling down and tried to respond enthusiastically, if a little inexperienced. He tasted of heaven. She opened her lips a little more to tempt him, and her hands tightened on the hard muscles of his arms, trying to hold him where he was. Years of dreaming of this, waiting, hoping, and it was actually happening! He was kissing her as if he loved her mouth…
His head lifted. His black eyes told her nothing as they searched her face intently. His hands on her arms were bruising. “We’ll have supper before we go to the dance,” he said, his voice a little strained.
“What do you want to eat?” Leta called suddenly from the kitchen.
“Sandwiches,” he called back. “Okay?”
“Okay! I’ll make some.”
Tate’s eyes went back to Cecily. She was looking at him as if he were the very secret of life. He was in over his head already, he reasoned. He might as well go the rest of the way. His body throbbed all over with just that one small taste of her. He had to have more. He had to, and damn the consequences!
He bent, lifting her in his arms like precious treasure, and carried her back to the armchair with his heart threatening to push through his chest. He settled down in it, his hand pressing her cheek to his buckskin-clad shoulder as he bent again to her mouth before she could speak.
The seconds lengthened, sweetened. Cecily’s hands explored his long hair, his cheeks, his eyebrows, his nose as if she’d never touched a man in her life. It was delicious, taboo, forbidden. It was exquisite. She moaned softly, unable to contain the sheer joy of being in Tate’s arms at last. He heard the tiny sound and his mouth suddenly became demanding, insistent.
Kissing was suddenly no longer enough. His lean hand went to her rib cage and slowly worked its way up over one of her small, firm breasts. He lifted his head to search her eyes as he touched the hardness there, because this was difficult territory for her, with her memories of her stepfather. The man had all but raped her. Even therapy hadn’t completely healed her fears of intimacy after eight years.
She
