She began speaking again, hesitantly, then quickly. “I’m sorry as well that you had no idea…that you were forced into this without even knowledge of it. I?—”
“Skylar, stop.”
“But I?—”
“Skylar, it’s all right.”
“Is it?”
“Skylar, I am completely resigned?—”
“Ah, yes. You like the nights.”
He managed to focus on her eyes, arching a brow. “Indeed!” he whispered huskily. “I like the nights!” In a fluid movement, he brushed the fall of her hair from her breast, his palm sliding over the nipple before he brushed it with his tongue and teeth, sucked it with his mouth. She shuddered, her fingers digging into his hair. Passion, satiation, and desire were so strange. He had just made love to her. With vehemence, hunger, and energy. Touched a shattering peak. Drifted from it. He should have been satisfied. But the slightest movement of her flesh beneath him seemed to awaken him. The simple scent of her, the taste of her aroused him anew. The least shift of the silk of her hair against his flesh…
He moved his caress down the length of her body, but her fingers tugged tightly into his hair, drawing him up. She came to her knees, meeting him thus before the fire. She captured his face between her palms, found his lips, kissed him. Her tongue skimmed over his lips, slipped between them, sent wildly lapping flames down to a pit deep within his loins, sent those flames shooting out into his limbs, his sex.
He crushed her against him. Again, every little touch, brush, caress, seemed magnified. He ached for her lips to fall against his shoulders. They did. He hungered to feel her wrap her fingers around him. She did. He threaded his fingers through her hair, drew back her head, kissed and caressed her throat, her breasts, the valley between them, the expanse of abdomen below them. Fire played. Their flesh grew slick and glistened with the rise of heat and desire. He lowered her. Licked her, stroked her. Aroused her, awoke her. Shuddered violently with the vivid feel of her fingers, her hands upon him in return. Her lips, teeth, tongue, rhythm, caress. He met the misted, shimmering silver of her eyes.
“I like the nights,” he whispered softly. Then lowering his lips against her ear, he told her what it was he liked about the night, each word erotically graphic, bringing a fresh crimson glow to her cheeks and the ivory silk of her supple form. He turned her, kissed her nape, her shoulders, her spine. This vertebra, the next…the next. She trembled, whispered unintelligible things in return. His arms swept around her, drawing her against him, impaling her with the one movement.
The fire glowed. They whispered, cried out. Stars rode the night sky.
Climax burst upon them, shattering, dazzling like the stars.
Beyond the soft crimson glow that danced in light and shadow in the tipi, the moon began to hide her face as the sunsent its first slim rays peeking out from the eastern horizon. They slept.
Skylar woke again very slowly. She was exhausted, bone weary. Sore. Yet she felt delicious. Cherished. The Sioux cherished their wives, he had told her. Last night, he had made her feel that way.
She opened her eyes fully, then realized that Hawk was awake at her side. The fire had died, but the sun’s light was so strong beyond the tipi walls that even though the flapped doorway was closed, there was plenty of light within. She couldn’t help noticing how the muscle rippled cleanly within the lines of his handsomely developed chest and shoulders, along the flat line of his abdomen…hips, thighs. He was beautifully formed and perfectly honed. She was coming to know him so well. The feel of his face, his hair. His mouth. What she feared and resented, she now longed for. He angered her so quickly but compelled her so completely…it was so dangerous!
He was her husband, she reminded herself, and the thought made her tremble.
A husband who hadn’t wanted a wife.
He was staring at her, she realized. She prayed he wasn’t reading her thoughts. He drew a line down the length of her cheek with his thumb, drew another across her lower lip.
“It’s late, isn’t it?” she asked.
“In the morning, yes.”
He still watched her very intently. Then he smiled. A satyr’s smile. She understood its meaning almost instantly, but by then, she was drawn against him. He was atop her and all too quickly eliciting a response from her, so easily did she surrender to his desire.
And her own.
Afterward, as he lay beside her, Skylar closed her eyes, succumbing to exhaustion. She could have slept so easily then.She’d never felt so sated in all her life. So filled, so a part of another, and oddly, glad of it. So very much that was wrong lay between them. Yet the distance that stretched between their hearts and minds seemed to be shortening. She’d never imagined such an intrusion as this man in her life. Yet he was her life. Waking, sleeping, and in between. He was her life.
She opened her eyes, only to find him staring at her intently once again. Something about his gaze caused her to ask, “What is it?”
He shrugged, smiling slightly. “Nothing, my love. I just discovered something new, that is all.”
“And what is it that you’ve discovered?”
“I like the days as well,” he told her. Then he rolled away from her and rose, drawing up one of the massive robes from the ground and slipping into it. He left the tipi, and she smiled, hugging her arms tightly around her chest as she closed her eyes once again.
Indeed.
She liked the days, too.
