Chapter 18
The angels not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me.
—EDGAR ALLAN POE
It was way past the midnight hour. Everything was quiet and serene in the Peterson House, yet it thrilled Lauralee to know that just down the hall from where she lay was the sound of someone else’s breathing besides her own and her uncle Abner’s.
Dancing Cloud.
He was in her bed.
She ached to be there with him. Sometime ago she had heard Uncle Abner retire to his own bedroom.
Breathless with anticipation of going to Dancing Cloud, Lauralee slipped from the bed and crept quietly to the door.
She held her breath as she slowly opened it, glad that it made no squeaking sounds that her uncle might hear. If he caught her with Dancing Cloud he would get the wrong impression. She certainly did not intend to have a sexual encounter with Dancing Cloud.
No. She just wanted to cuddle next to her beloved and whisper sweet nothings to him, hopefully erasing all thoughts of Paul from his mind.
Seeing no lamplight spilling beneath her uncle’s closed bedroom door, Lauralee lifted the hem of her frilly silk chemise into her arms. She tiptoed, barefooted, down the carpeted hallway, the light of the moon reflecting through the window at the end of the hall paving her way.
Her pulse racing, she stopped outside her bedroom door and wove her fingers through her hair. She had taken pains tonight with her bath. She had washed her hair with a fragranced piece of soap. Her skin smelled sweetly from the tiny perfumed bath beads that had evaporated into a silky oil through her bath water. She smiled when she smelled the sweetness of the talcum powder that she had patted across her flesh.
Lauralee inhaled a quavering breath, then slowly opened the door and peeked inside.
Her heart melted as her eyes found Dancing Cloud lying on his side, the moonlight shining through the lacy, sheer curtains at her window caressing his long, lean body.
Lauralee’s face flushed crimson when she saw that Dancing Cloud was nude.
Then she recalled her uncle having taken Dancing Cloud’s wet fringed breeches and moccasins, to let them dry on the back porch rail.
Dr. Kemper had sent a young man to the Peterson House with Dancing Cloud’s belongings. Lauralee had, in turn, asked the young man to return the horse that Dancing Cloud had borrowed, glad to be rid of it.
Dancing Cloud’s saddlebag lay on the floor beside the bed. She could see that he had sorted through it. He had taken from it fresh clothes that now lay neatly across the back of a chair.
Her gaze held on a beautifully beaded pair of moccasins beside his bed. They seemed new. Had some pretty Cherokee maiden sewn them for him? she wondered.
That thought sent a painful, jealous ache through her, to think that somewhere in his past were other women with whom he had shared intimate moments.
Brushing the thought aside she stepped into the bedroom. She turned and eased the door closed, then almost screamed with alarm when she felt strong arms encircle her waist.
When she realized whose arms, and whose body was pressing into hers from behind, she closed her eyes with ecstasy.
The frilly chemise was thin enough for her to feel the full outline of his body, especially what was most defined to her at the juncture of his thighs.
He drew her back more securely against him.
Her heart pounded.
She was dizzy with need of him.
Yet she had to force herself to deny this that he might be offering her tonight. She could not be this disrespectful to her aunt and uncle by giving herself fully to a man beneath their roof.
“Dancing Cloud, please,” Lauralee whispered, her voice trembling. When his hands slipped up and cupped her breasts through her chemise, she sucked in a wild breath of pleasure. Her knees almost buckled from the rapture that was taking hold of her senses.
“You said please?” Dancing Cloud whispered into her ear.
“Please don’t,” Lauralee forced out, wishing she did not have to deny him anything, anytime.
Dancing Cloud slipped his hands back down to her waist and drew her around to face him. “You do not wish to make love?” he said, searching her eyes.
“With all of my heart I do,” Lauralee whispered, reaching a hand to his cheek. “But we mustn’t. Darling, you are not well enough. And we must remember where we are. My uncle. He is only across the hall. What if he would discover us . . . ?”
“You are right,” Dancing Cloud said, wincing when straightening his shoulder. “But you came to the room. If not to make love . . .”
She placed a finger to his lips. “Shh,” she whispered. “I came to be with you. To lay beside you. To tell you how much I love you. And to tell you how anxious I am for us to make love again. I have so missed being with you in that way. Am I a hussy for hungering for that part of our relationship? Before I met you I so feared it.”
“You are a woman with womanly needs. Never allow yourself to feel that is wrong,” Dancing Cloud said. He took her by the hand and led her to the bed. “Lie down with me. Let me hold you. Soon we will go farther with our feelings again. It is good to know that your hungers match my own.”
When he stretched out beside Lauralee, she turned to him. She leaned up on her knees and her hair tumbled over her shoulders as she gently kissed him near his wound. She could hear him take a quick intake of breath and could feel his heart throbbing hard as she continued giving him kisses across his massive chest.
When she felt something warm and hard against her thigh she scarcely breathed. It was obvious that she had stirred feelings within him that could hardly be denied.
Dancing Cloud reached his hands to her breasts and stroked them. His thumbs circled her nipples, causing them to harden. He leaned up on an elbow and led one of them between his lips. His tongue swirled around it, his lips nipping.
“I didn’t mean to cause this,” Lauralee whispered, her face blushed hot with want. She held her head back and sighed when she felt his fingers caressing her throbbing center.
When she could take no more, she drew away from him. “We truly mustn’t,” she whispered. “Dancing Cloud, you can’t be strong enough. And my uncle . . .”
He yanked her down beside him and turned to her. His lips sealed any more denials as he kissed her with a frenzy of kisses. His hand led his hardness to where she opened so willingly and quickly to him.
She sank into a chasm of desire, his kiss stealing all quarrel and reason from her.
Feverishly, she raked her fingers down his spine and along his hips. When he entered her she shuddered pleasurably and gripped his hips lightly, abandoning herself to the torrent of feelings that swam through her.
Dancing Cloud ignored the pain that was gripping his insides, his mind escaping in the pleasure that he was receiving from his o-ge-ye. He made love to Lauralee slowly, in a long and leisurely fashion. His lips brushed her throat, then again went to her lips.
Their embrace was long and sweet as one kiss blended into another, the slow thrusting of his pelvis bringing them closer and closer to that wondrous brink of wild abandon.
Lost in a reverie of need, Lauralee moved her hips with his, her blood quickening. Her senses swam as she felt a drugged passion seize her. She was soon gripped in an intense pleasure that spread through her in a delicious tingling heat. She moaned throatily against his lips, his own groan of pleasure revealing to her that he had reached the same summit of pleasure as she.
Their bodies quaked.
Her hips moved and rocked. Her pelvis was pressed hard against his, gyrating, pulling him even more deeply into the velvet warm walls of her femininity.
And when their bodies subsided, and the pleasure was spent, Dancing Cloud drew away from her. He pushed her hair from her face. Her eyes were sheened by moonlight as she peered with intense love at him.
Then when he grabbed suddenly at his shoulder and rolled quickly onto his back, panting, Lauralee became frightened and moved to her knees beside him. She clearly saw the pain in his eyes as he looked up at her.
“Dancing Cloud, we truly shouldn’t have,” she whispered, her eyes wavering into his. “Oh, darling, look now how you are in pain. It’s all my fault. I should’ve stayed in my bed.”
“I am in your bed,” Dancing Cloud said, taking her hand, drawing her down beside him. “And what a lovely bed and room it is. Are you certain you wish to go and live in a log cabin in the mountains? Will that be enough for you?”
“Wherever you are, that is where I want to be,” Lauralee said, cuddling close. “Whether it is in a cabin, or in a castle, if you are there, that is where you will find me.”
“When I leave Mattoon again I insist that you go with me,” Dancing Cloud said, turning to face her.
“As I plan to do,” she said matter-of-factly. She smiled at him. “Darling, do you think I would let you go on that journey without me after what has happened to you? You might be ambushed again. I want to be there for you.”
“And what if that Yankee should kill us both in the ambush?” Dancing Cloud said thickly.
“Then that is what fate has planned for us,” Lauralee said, moving closer. “Remember how you described being in the spirit world with your family? The next time you go, I want to be there with you, hand in hand.”
“It is destiny for us to be as one with each other,” Dancing Cloud said. He paused, then said, “Tell me again about this man named Paul Brown. I saw you kissing him. Are you certain your feelings are nothing for him?”
“You saw me kissing him because he forced me to,” she murmured. “You were too far away to see me shoving at his chest.”
“Then you have no feelings for the man?”
“How could you ask that? After what we just shared, surely you realize the depths of my feelings for you.”
He placed a finger to her chin and lifted her eyes to him. “We will leave Mattoon as soon as I am able to travel,” he said thickly. “That may take days, perhaps weeks. Will the Petersons tolerate my presence that long? Or should I go in the woods and make camp?”
“Heaven forbid!” Lauralee said, sitting up quickly. “I wouldn’t allow it. The Yankee. He’s surely out there somewhere, just waiting for the next opportunity to shoot you.”
Then she raised an eyebrow. “Except that when my uncle took me to the Byers Hotel with him to check on the man, we found that his clothes and belongings were missing,” she said.
Dancing Cloud moved as quickly to an elbow as his shoulder allowed and stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
She just now remembered that he did not know about what had happened at Dr. Kemper’s, that the Yankee of his past was most surely the same Yankee of hers. Ironic as it may seem, it was no less true.
She told him everything, about all of her discoveries, and about the man trying to abduct her. She could see a seething hatred enter his midnight-dark eyes.
“Please don’t upset yourself,” she begged. “Darling, Clint McCloud must be long gone by now. Surely he fears what my uncle could have done with him should he be caught after having tried to abduct me. A trial would not be wasted on him. He would hang as quickly as one could blink their eye.”
“But he is still out there, somewhere,” Dancing Cloud said. “More the reason you will leave with me when I leave Mattoon. I want to be the one protecting you from this evil white man.”
Lauralee cuddled closer, her eyes wide. She had never thought that her nightmare when she was five would follow her the rest of her life. She now recalled her uncle having said that Clint McCloud lived in North Carolina. If so, that was perhaps his destination even now.
That was also hers and Dancing Cloud’s destination, where Dancing Cloud made his home in the North Carolina mountains.
That thought totally terrified her.