People of the Owl(88)

“I don’t want to marry anyone! I wanted to marry White Bird. I loved him!” Her fists were knotted, her pretty face strained as tears edged her eyes.

“Tell them no.”

“I can’t! My uncle, Clay Fat, has made some kind of agreement with Mud Stalker. The Elder, my grandmother, has agreed.” She shook her head, staring down at the damp carpet of fallen leaves under her small brown feet. “My life is ruined, Mu—Salamander. First the Snapping Turtle Clan took White Bird from me, then the lightning made it final.”

“You’re not the only one who lost him.”

She sniffed and squared her shoulders as she looked at him. “I couldn’t stand it the night he was married.”

“I saw you paddle off in your canoe.”

She nodded. “I went away, out into the swamp. I just wanted to be alone. I stayed away all night, but the cramps started at dawn, so I came back. Announced myself, and Aunt Turtle Mist took me straightaway to the Women’s House until my moon passed. That’s where they told me that I would marry Copperhead. Tonight.”

Salamander shifted uneasily, wondering what to say, what to do to help her. Snakes, a young man didn’t just interfere with another clan’s internal affairs. Worse, when he looked up at her, something deep in his souls was terribly aware of her slim body and the way her woman’s kirtle hung slightly askew below the indent of her navel. Even when he looked away the eyes of his souls retraced her thin waist and shapely stomach. The curve of her firm breasts gleamed in the light.

“I’ll do anything if you’ll go with me.” Her words were spoken softly, and he could sense her presence as she stepped to him. The faint odor of her carried on the warm moist air. His heart began to quicken.

“What?” He looked right up into her large brown eyes. He might have been paralyzed, pinned in place by the mixture of longing and desperation there.

“Anything.” Her fingers were plucking at the knots that held her kirtle in place, and before Salamander could understand, the pale fabric loosened and slipped down the round curve of her hips. “I’m a woman, now. You are a man.”

He caught the falling of his jaw in time to keep from gaping like an idiot, his gaze stopped short on the black triangle of her pubic hair. It glistened, cupped in that Y of soft brown flesh. He found himself unaccountably short of breath.

She began gently stroking the sides of his face, her fingertips dancing lightly on his skin. Had anything ever stoked such a fire within him before? Dream-like, she bent until her face was but a handbreadth from his. His souls were falling into her, drawn into that brown magical stare. Tremors ran down his arms and legs.

“Lie with me, Salamander.” She was pulling him down onto the folds of the kirtle. An excitement, half fear, half anticipation had begun to pound with each beat of his heart. He shivered as her strong fingers pulled the restraining breechcloth away from his hardened penis. A gasp escaped his lips as she wrapped her fingers around his tingling shaft.

She was drawing him onto her as she lay back on the crumpled kirtle and the cushion of leaf mat. A flood of energy bore him along.

He would never know whether it was the sting in his abused chest or the pain deep within her eyes that stopped him. He winced as he pulled back and shook his head. “No.”

She propped herself on her elbows, staring at him like he’d just lost every wit in his body. “What do you mean, no? Do you know how many men would give anything to lie with me?”

Salamander scrambled backward, awkwardly shoving his throbbing penis behind his breechcloth. “It’s not that. I mean, you’re beautiful.”

Her expression collapsed, soft sobs causing her breasts to heave in a way that completely unsettled Salamander. “Then you’ll tell on me?”

“No.” In defeat he rose and walked in an aimless circle, shaking out his arms and hands the way a runner did when he needed to shed excess energy. “Go on, run away. I’ll tell no one where you’re going.”

“Why?” Even wounded she remained suspicious.

“Because I wish I could go with you.”

“Then why don’t you?” she demanded. “That way I wouldn’t have to go alone.”

He closed his eyes, a terrible longing growing inside him. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

He looked at her, still achingly aware of her gorgeous body, so young and bursting with charms. She had been forever beyond him, the woman his brother would marry. “I cannot explain it. I just can’t go with you, that’s all.”

“Afraid?” She cocked her head, those glistening dark eyes trying to read behind his souls.