His gentle hands found her breasts, his mouth drawing her nipple into its warmth.
Taking a deep breath, she did what she had never willingly done with a man. She reached down, grasping his shaft, tightening her grip.
This should have been mine.
Her first surprise was the anticipation in her loins, the building tingle that brewed deep in her pelvis. She tried to pull him to her, but he resisted, his hands smoothing her skin, tracing lightly over the narrow curve of her waist, around the swell of her hips. His hot breath purled along her centerline to her navel while his hands followed the length of her thighs.
She squirmed as his warm mouth pressed into the hollow above her pubic hair. Then his fingertips stroked up the insides of her thighs. A strangled groan filled her throat.
She was panting, heart racing, as his body slid up hers. She pulled her knees up, reaching down to open herself. A sigh slipped past her lips as he slid smoothly into her sheath.
For the moment they lay there, and she savored the sensation of him deep inside her. He began gently, the barest movement of his hips. She wrapped her arms around him, seeking to pull the whole of him inside her, to wrap her souls around him, and hold him there for all eternity.
I never knew. . . . I never knew. . . .
The final surprise began when the movement of his hard shaft inside her stoked an ever-growing tingle. It built, expanding, swelling around the slick sides of her sheath to burst through her hips and pulse up her spine. She fought the urge to cry out, gasping for air, her hips bucking and rolling under him.
In the pulsating afterglow, her sheath tightened around the hard length of him. She matched his desperate thrusts; then he tensed, his muscles bunched. Her loins exploded again, each tingling burst timed to the jetting of his seed. Even after, as she felt him soften, she continued to milk mewing sounds from both of them.
They lay panting, his hands cupped around her shoulders. She marveled under his weight, oddly touched that he didn’t just slump heavily atop her like some somnolent log.
“I never knew,” she whispered.
“We have to be quiet.”
“Who would have thought a woman would make noise like that?” she complained.
“You’ve never had the pleasure?”
“Not with a man.”
He chuckled at some private joke.
“Do other women do this?”
“I may be wrong, but I think all women do.”
She drew a breath. “Gods, until the day I die, I will remember this night. For that, I thank you.”
“Well . . . wait.”
“What?”
“Let’s take a moment, and then we’ll do it again.”
She frowned, thinking of Smoke Shield. After the man jammed his spear into her, grunted, and collapsed, he rolled over and went straight to sleep.
Breath Giver? Please, let this night last forever!
The night’s chill ate into Heron Wing’s skin as she walked slowly up to her ramada and leaned against one of the poles. She drew the rich wet scent of the city into her lungs, her eyes on the graying sky to the east. Equinox was coming; Father Sun was rising nearly due east.
She glanced to the south, knowing that Pale Cat was awake, standing on the east side of the Panther Clan palace, aligning his sticks and strings, measuring the sun’s slow path to the north.
The Chahta are coming just after equinox. The thought was discordant compared to the honey-warm memories she had just spun in Green Snake’s bed.
At just the thought of it, she felt her loins freshen. She crossed her legs and tilted her head against the polished wood. What if she threw herself at his feet and begged him to run away with her? They could hold each other forever, night after night, and without complications. She was a married woman—among a people who prided themselves on fidelity.
What have you just done?
How many times had she herself lectured her clans-women about indiscretion?
Divorce was Smoke Shield’s option. It was the Sky Hand way. Not for the first time did she long for the freedom her sisters among the Chahta, Ockmulgee, and Yuchi had. There it was just a matter of sending notice to the husband. If the house belonged to the maternal clan, the man’s possessions were simply set outside.
“But we are Sky Hand,” she softly said to the glowing sky. “We have always prided ourselves on being different.”
Things wouldn’t change. It was ingrained in them, sucked up as surely as mother’s milk. She had steadfastly hammered it into Stone’s head, just as the teachings had been hammered into hers.
The last of the distant clouds began to glow with deep purple light.
“No matter how good that was, I can never do it again. Not while Smoke Shield is my husband.”
She closed her eyes, a single hot tear breaking free to streak down her cheek.