Eden Caruthers never thought the day would come that she’d return home to the beautiful but dangerous Nebraska Territory. Many times, she wanted to but didn’t. While the paralyzing harsh winters and the threat of attack by renegade Indians might have been reason enough, she needed to keep her distance from a cruel father and the man who broke her heart.
Now she was back. Times had changed. Indians had resigned themselves to living on reservations. The 1870s promised a brighter future to those heading westward, in part to the Transcontinental Railroad.
The tedious trip by train and then stagecoach north to the Sweet Grove Trading Post had taken a toll on her strength. Yet she wasted no time in renting a wagon and horse to finish the journey to her home on the prairie.
As the midsummer sun warmed her cheeks, Eden removed her bonnet and glanced at her surroundings. The barn, the woodshed, the house all stood deserted. They appeared as tired as she felt.
She studied her old house. The weathered wood planks of the walls still appeared sound, the structure sturdy. How different a house could look with paint. She thought of her aunt and uncle’s white house with black shutters back in Boston.
The contrast of the two homes she had resided in went beyond appearance. Everything about the people she lived with had drastic effects on her disposition. If not for her aunt and uncle’s generous hospitality and gentle ways, she would never have realized the depths of her father’s meanness.
Slowly she climbed from the wagon seat and glanced at the marker on her father’s grave plot. She thought she might feel sorrow. Instead, her father’s death lifted a weight of fear from her shoulders. He hadn’t been part of her life for nearly five years yet that didn’t stop her from having nightmares of him dragging her back home.
Eden looked up at Charlie, thankful her son never knew an ounce of the mistreatment she bore at the hands of her father.
“Be careful.” She tried not to hover over her four year old as he shrugged off her help and climbed down from the wagon on his own.
Turning her attention from him back to the house, she eyed it for problems that could possibly prevent them from staying in it until she settled her deceased father’s affairs. Some missing wood shakes on the roof meant she might find a few leaks inside when it rained, but nothing that should stop them from being comfortable.
A sudden breeze rattled a shutter and drew her gaze to the window of her room. For a moment, she thought the strangely familiar sound would force her to remember something good about her childhood. Yet, her best recollections always vanished under her worst memories.
“Mama, there’s an Indian riding this way,” Charlie exclaimed.
Eden spun around and looked to where he pointed toward the western horizon. Gusts of wind across the prairie threw dust in her eyes, blinding her from seeing what Charlie did.
The cloudy afternoon, the distant rumble of a storm and the glare from the setting sun made it hard to focus as well. She lifted her hand to shield her eyes and stared at the fast-approaching lone rider.
“Do you think he’s dangerous?” Charlie asked.
Eden didn’t answer—she couldn’t speak. A long-suppressed emotion rose from her heart, choking her voice as she stared at the shadowy image that took form. She placed her hand on the side of the wagon for support. It didn’t stop the trembling in her legs or the shiver of apprehension rolling along her spine.
“Is he going to scalp us?” Charlie moved closer, his hand seeking hers.
Putting her arm around his small shoulders, she mustered up courage she didn’t feel. She tried to keep her voice steady and reassuring when she answered, “No, dear.”
Luckily, Charlie’s fixation on the Indian prevented him from noticing her rattled tone.
“What do you think he wants?” Charlie whispered.
What wouldn’t she do to have a gypsy fortuneteller’s crystal ball to know that answer? Since arriving back in the Nebraska Territory and stepping off the stagecoach at the trading post, she feared only one Indian—Brant Sullette. The Chawi Pawnee half-breed threatened her sanity, not her safety. He had been the one person she had longed to see and at the same time dreaded to face.
A billow of dust swirled around the horse’s legs as Brant reined in the animal. There was no man on Earth who portrayed masculinity the way Brant did. The impressive sight of him made her heart stall. Wide-shouldered with sunbaked skin, his body rippled with muscle. But his stone-like facial features alleged nothing soft about him, not even his heart.
“He doesn’t look very happy,” Charlie remarked.
Eden struggled to breathe. Words wouldn’t come and her thoughts rolled like tumbleweeds in her head. The time away from Sweet Grove had solved some of her problems, but not the one giving her an imposing glare.
Brant’s stillness hinted something was more wrong than her return. She didn’t dare think of why his severe look blended anger and contempt into a neat package. It wasn’t how she had envisioned meeting him again.
She thought back to the long weeks of travel by train and by stagecoach and the most pleasant of her daydreams.
Brant stood at the edge of the pond with his back to her until Eden called his name. Then he turned. His smile made her giddy with delight and she ran to him. Enveloped in his embrace, she hugged him.
“I’ve missed you so much.” He slid his hands over her, magically removing her clothes with the sweep of his fingers. “I have searched for years to find you, to have you naked in my arms.”
“I missed you too and I’ve longed to feel you inside me again.” She unlaced his leather shirt and pressed her palms to his hard-muscled chest. A light sprinkling of hair swirled the center, encircling his nipples and funneling down to his navel. The softness of those fibers attracted her touch.
He slid one hand down her back to her bottom. Grasping her buttocks, he squeezed and pulled her closer. His throbbing maleness pressed her belly as he caught her jaw with his other hand to hold her face and kiss her. Then circling her, he cupped her breast in one hand and slid his other between her legs.
Slowly he rubbed his palm back and forth, stirring the short crop of hairs concealing the slit of her sex. He showed a hunger for kissing her shoulder and neck. His arms binding her tight held her back against his chest.
Eden breathed heavier, aroused and anxious.
When he wiggled a finger between her nether lips, a tingling sensation shot through her. She wanted him to do it again but he passed the sensitive bud of flesh and pressed deeper. He stroked his finger in and out of her. Sometimes slow, sometimes quicker, numbing her until the twinges of stimulation heightened.
She laid her head back on Brant’s shoulder, writhing with the rapture of his manipulative caresses, panting to catch her breath. She twisted her head to the side and looked up into his lust- filled eyes, so intense and determined.
When the uncontrollable spasms seized her, she clutched at his arms for support. The glorious orgasm uplifted her spirit. But when the tension in her muscles subsided and her mind cleared, sadness sank into her heart.
The heartache of him not wanting her brought Eden back to reality. She blinked away the bittersweet fantasy.
Brant’s stare held her captive. She felt the heat of embarrassment rising to her cheeks. She hadn’t lain with any man other than Brant, but it didn’t mean she hadn’t dreamed of all the sexual acts of intimacy that could transpire between them. Would he know why a blush reddened her face? Would he guess the ways she sought sexual relief by touching herself?
“Mama, shouldn’t we say something to him?” Charlie interrupted her reflections. “Indians like it when white people give them stuff.”
She loved that Charlie had a kindness in him like his father. But it saddened her to think she was the reason that what he knew of Indians had come from dime novels her uncle read to him. She should have told him more about his father’s people.
“He’s also not wearing any war paint.” Charlie sighed with more than a small hint of disappointment.
“The Chawi Pawnee won’t attack us, Charlie. They are a peaceful tribe,” she whispered.
Eden swallowed, clearing the dryness from her throat.
“Good afternoon, Brant.” She finally gave him a polite nod, knowing they couldn’t stand there forever eyeing each other like enemies.
Her immediate misgivings waned as his gaze traveled the length of her. His slow inspection made her insides quake. Under her cotton chemise and linen blouse, her nipples hardened. Beneath her blue wool skirt, heat roiled in her belly and her insides twitched.
She tried to think of something else to say yet words would not come.
Once Brant’s assessment stopped, desire and danger sparkled in his brown-eyed stare. Her heart thumped harder. How many times in the past five years had she dreamed about him wanting her?
“You know him?” Charlie loosened his hold.
She tried to answer, except the whimper rising from the excitement in her soul threatened to embarrass her.
Brant showed a powerful agility in his fluid dismount. It put him on the ground in one swift motion. The adorable boy she had fallen in love with had matured into a handsome man. The love she’d kept locked away fought to pour out. All she needed was one sign of welcome. A smile, a kind hello, anything at all and she’d spill her heart of all her closely guarded feelings.
“Hello, sir.” Charlie stepped forward, displaying his courageous and trusting nature.
Eden tried to move. Brant’s spellbinding stare kept her feet fastened to the ground next to her father’s grave. He dropped the reins of his horse and his solemn look lowered to Charlie.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Eden wiped the back of her hand across her cheek, pushing aside the escaping tears.
His gaze lingered on their son. Not saying anything rattled her.
“Brant?”
The muscle in his jaw clenched and his gaze lifted to her. Forced to make the first move, she managed to budge a few inches toward him. She watched for the slightest indication he was happy to see her. One sweet word of encouragement and she’d rush to claim his embrace.
“I have come for the boy.” His statement knocked her back a step.
“My father told you?” She didn’t think her father would ever mention her pregnancy to anyone since he sent her away as if she’d committed the worst sin in the world.
Of course, Brant would want his son. But his words weren’t what she expected to hear. She wanted him to announce he had come for her. On the train, she went over what he’d say. On the stagecoach, she dreamed of their first encounter. She yearned to fling herself into his waiting arms and kiss him a thousand times to make up for every second she had missed with him.
His cold tone dashed away those hopes. What she had clung to over the years became a childish dream.
So Brant knew about Charlie. It actually came as a relief. She had always wanted to tell him he had a son, and yet, she also hated him for breaking her heart enough that she thought she’d never divulge that treasured fact.
Brant came closer. His imposing size made her tremble again.
“You had him for five years.” Brant reached out and grabbed Charlie’s arm. “Now he goes with me.”
“No!” she screamed, horrified by his demand.
“You have no say in this,” he insisted, dragging Charlie away from her.
Eden lifted her skirt and hurried after him. “You can’t take my son.” She positioned herself between Charlie and Brant.
His arm remained stretched passed her, keeping hold of Charlie.
“He doesn’t know you,” she cried, holding his arm as if she had the strength to stop him from doing whatever he wanted to do.
The muscle in his jaw clenched again and his eyes narrowed on her. “And whose fault is that?”
“Brant, please. You can’t just take him from me.” Desperation got the better of her to say anything to stop him. “There are laws. The men in Sweet Grove, the soldiers at the fort will—”
“They’ll not help a half-breed,” he snapped.
Eden’s aunt and uncle never treated her son as a half-breed. To them and to her he was an adorably bright and energetic little boy. But that was Boston and she was in the west where Indians were feared and hated and dealt with as if rabid animals.Brant was right. No one would do anything to help her keep her Indian child.
She had been so naïve years ago. When she was twelve and she befriended Brant, she never believed for a minute the settlers would think of him as a savage. And while they considered him ignorant because of what he was, and not who, she foolishly thought schooling him could change their opinion. Yet, the settlers still called him a heathen. And of all of those narrow-minded people, her father was the worst.
“Brant, please be reasonable.”
“Like you were by keeping him from me?” He pushed her away and dragged Charlie to his horse.
“Mama?” Charlie’s frightened voice compelled her to advance.
Everything she had dreamed crashed into the reality before her. Brant was not the same person she’d given her heart to as a girl.
She grasped the front of his leather vest. “I was hardly more than a child.”
His sudden deep breath coaxed her gaze to where the loose laces let the soft leather part and her fingers touch his bare chest. He grabbed her hand and pulled it free.
She stepped back, alarmed by the violent warning in his eyes.
He turned away and hoisted Charlie onto the saddled horse he had brought. The small horse stood tethered by a lead rope tied to a metal ring on Brant’s saddle.
“Mama?” Charlie’s eyes watered.
Eden knew how he hated to cry. A prideful trait she suspected he inherited from Brant.
“He won’t hurt you, my sweet boy.” She hurried to reassure Charlie, putting her hand on his leg. “He’s your father and he’d never do anything to harm you.”
Eden pressed her fingers to her lips to quell the quivering.
Brant had hardened into a man she didn’t understand.
“This isn’t right,” she pleaded. “You were never one to be cruel. Charlie doesn’t deserve to be punished for my mistake. Please. I’m begging you not to do this to him.”
Brant’s hand covered hers. She assumed to stop her from jerking Charlie off the horse, but she’d not play a tugging game with her child.
Then it became obvious Brant’s intentions were not as she believed.
For a moment, seemingly lost in thought, he rubbed her knuckles. He stood close. The scent of him surrounded her. His breath passed along her cheek, heating her skin. She turned slowly as his other hand skimmed upward, over her hip to her side. Her clothing did nothing to hinder the brief but scorching caress of his fingers. The steady glide stopped as she faced him. His thumb rested against the underside of her breast and then swirled circles upward, coming to a halt just before skimming over her aching nipple.
Desiring his attention, she slid a foot forward, drawn to him. He bowed his head and stared at her mouth. She tensed with anticipation of his kiss, imagining it before it could happen.
“Are you really my father?” Charlie asked, breaking the spellbinding moment that had captured Eden’s thoughts.
“Yes,” Brant answered, letting go of her.
“He’s only four, Brant. Can’t you let him stay here at the house with me?” she pleaded with a compromise. “You can come visit, get to know him and then maybe—”
Though she had only come to settle her father’s affairs, knowing it wasn’t safe for her to live alone on the prairie, she had always hoped Brant would want her.
A loud drum of thunder interrupted her. She never liked storms. Her mother had died in one when she was little. They had been picking blackberries when the sudden tempest came upon them. Her mother had rushed them under a tree just as lightning struck.
Eden had laughed from the tingling sensation that stood her hair on end, but her mother had fallen to the ground in silence and didn’t get up. It was years before Eden had understood what had happened, and she had been haunted by that event ever since.
Brant knew her fears. He put his hands on her shoulders with the kind of weight she imagined him using to lay claim to her. To have him offer a sympathetic squeeze to her arms displayed a thread of his gentleness. She accepted the sign as the goodness in him she recalled from years ago and it renewed her hope in reasoning with him.
“Please.” She tried not to sound like a whimpering child or a sniveling woman as she moved toward Charlie. She needed to remain calm and clear-thinking for him, even though his full attention was on the well-trained horse patiently standing still.
“And then, when I am not looking, you will get on a train and disappear again?” Brant accused, withdrawing from her.
She spun around, facing him. From his quick, sharp tone, she became aware his hurt ran deep in regards to not having his son for four years. She sympathized for that kind of anguish and touched his arm, stroking the short fibers of black hair with a soothing glide of her hand. How often had Charlie required her to comfort him when troubled? Father and son, so much alike.
“I didn’t disappear.” Looking back at Charlie, she was glad to see the horse had overtaken her son’s interest instead of their predicament.
He had always wanted a horse, but in the city it wasn’t a practical animal to keep. Though she had let friends lead him around on theirs when they came visiting.
Slipping her fingers over the warmth of Brant’s forearm, putting her other hand against the center of his chest, she pushed him back from Charlie’s hearing range. “Don’t do this to me—to him.” She bowed her head. “I’m begging you not to take the only thing I have left in my life.” She kept her gaze down, afraid if she looked into Brant’s eyes, she’d lose the fight to keep hidden her deepest feelings for him.
His silence kept her talking, explaining.
“You stopped coming to visit me, Brant. For days, I sat waiting in the apple grove down by the pond and you never showed up. I thought you must have already known I was carrying your child and hated me for it. Feeling abandoned and frightened, I had to tell someone. My condition left me little choice. I had to tell my father.”
Eden paused and took a slow, deep breath to keep from crying. Brant’s desertion had crushed her spirit. The baby coming had been her salvation from falling into the permanent despair she had suffered.
“You have to know how hard that was for me, knowing how my father felt about you. I was sixteen, unmarried and terrified. After he took a willow switch to me, he sent me back east to live with his sister in Boston. They fabricated a lie, telling their friends that my husband died of a fever. I hated leaving you but going meant our child would be safe from him.”
She glanced at Charlie, hoping her whispered tones kept him from hearing the heart-wrenching story she’d never told anyone.
Brant’s silence distressed her. What was he thinking? Why wasn’t he responding?
She continued blurting out facts to make him understand. “I trusted you to be there for me and you weren’t. I went away to have a baby, Brant. I stayed away so my father couldn’t abuse him.”
Brant lifted a hand, touching her side and she pushed away from him. The feelings she had buried long ago rose with a resentment she hadn’t wanted to face.
“I had to do what was best for me and Charlie. You have no right to treat me as if you were wronged more than I was.”
“He is mine and I want him.” Brant declared as if she hadn’t spilled her soul to him.
“Then take me too.” She lifted her face and looked straight at him, fighting to not lose her son but also seizing the chance to have Brant in her life. “I’ll do anything you ask, anything at all, I promise.”
A glimmer, a tiny trace of agreement flickered in Brant’s brown eyes. It gave her hope. Maybe she’d been wrong to think he no longer cared for her. After her initial fear she had done something to upset him, she had created a slew of plausible excuses as to why he had stopped coming to see her.
His father wouldn’t let him take a white girl for a wife.
His mother worried he’d be hurt or killed by white men for touching a white girl.
He got sick—terribly ill so that it prevented him from visiting her.
She had lengthened the list with every passing month until Charlie’s birth. Then the illogical explanations for his disappearance took over again. Most importantly, he had never loved her.
“You would live in my village with me?” His tone softened, hinting at vulnerability.
“Yes.” Her mind soared with the prospect of what he suggested.
He lifted his hand too quickly near her face and she flinched. She hated she had no control of the reaction. Years of abuse by her father had left her scarred in a way no one could see.
Brant dropped his arm back down. “I will be in charge of his teachings from now on.”
Eden nodded quickly. He made his intentions clear. Agreeing to be with him under any terms filled some of her needs. For Charlie, she’d save her arguments for battles she could win.
Brant stared at her as if he reconsidered the hasty arrangement. Did he fear she’d be trouble? His expression gave away nothing about his decisions. Then he slowly lifted his hand to her face again. He lightly touched her cheek and slid one finger along her jaw.
“You will do as I say?” He gripped her chin and leaned closer.
“Yes,” she answered gently, seeing desire in his eyes more than danger.
He let go of her face, but he didn’t withdraw from being close. His gaze moved over her face in a searching manner. Did he look for telltale signs of her lying? She closed her eyes as a memory flooded her thoughts.
Sitting between his legs, Eden leaned back against Brant and watched the ripples in the pond from the gentle breeze. She shivered each time he swept his fingers across her belly or brought his hands up to cup her breasts.
It seems as if hours had gone by since they had undressed, yet minutes since Brant bedded her right there in the soft patch of grass and clover.
“Will you come into me again?” she asked, more nervous than the first time since she knew there was pain.
“I want to.” His pushed his hand down her belly and fingered the patch of hair covering her sex. “But I do not want to make you cry any more.”
“They were tears of joy, Brant. You made me a woman, your woman.” Her breath came quicker as Brant’s fingering moved into her.
“I will be patient, my Eden.”
“Why?” She panted, laying her head back against his shoulder.
“So you do not tire of me coming into you.”
“Why would you think I would tire of having you so close that we are practically one?”
“I have heard talk in my village, women complaining of their husband’s appetite for sex.”
Eden’s quick, short gasps prevented her from speaking. She swung her head back and forth and writhed with delight at the sensations Brant created inside her.
When they subsided, he pulled his fingers out and licked them. Then he twisted her face up and kissed her. The fervent passion of his mouth moving on hers and his hands squeezing her breasts continued. Then he pulled his mouth from hers.
“I will never tire of you wanting me, Brant. Never.” She twisted in his embrace.
He lowered her to the ground and rose over her as he had before. His elegant body pressed to hers as they came together.
Brant’s touch startled her from the reverie of how he once enveloped her in the warmth of his adoration.
With his grip on her elbow, he led her to his horse.
“Can we get our things from the wagon?” She glanced in that direction.
“I will provide for you.” Heat radiated from his palm against her back.
While she’d eventually miss some items from her luggage, like her shell hair combs and her lilac water, she trusted Brant to provide all she’d really ever need.
“What about the horse. You can’t leave him hitched to the buggy.”
He walked to it, flipped the brake off and hooked the reins over the harness. “He will return to the trading post.” He slapped the horse’s rump and sent it trotting off.
She watched her possessions roll away with the horse. “Someone will come looking for me.”
“But they won’t find you.”
She didn’t like the prospect of what the people at the trading post might do if she was missing, but she couldn’t think of that now. She’d not let Brant leave her behind.
“Can I ride with Charlie, then?” She watched her son petting the horse he sat on.
“The boy is old enough to sit a horse alone.” Brant gripped her by the waist.
For one long minute, she and Brant stood as they had many times before. His gaze traveling to her face, the expression suggesting he also recalled the past. How many times had he set her on his horse? His gentle manners always impressed her.
Placing her hands on his shoulders, she readied for him to lift her to sit sideways on the saddle. “His name is Charlie,” she reminded him as he made picking her up seem easy. “I don’t see why I can’t ride with him. You and I both know you could catch us if I tried to escape.”
“The boy does not need his mother holding him.” He swung up behind her.
She looked back at her son. He appeared so small on the horse. “Hold on tight, Charlie, just like I taught you.”
“He will be all right.”
“Fine, but could you please not scare him?”
Brant gave her a grunt as an answer. His rigid body pressed against her back. One arm circled her waist, the other hung midair where he held the reins. When his long fingers tensed, she wondered if holding her wasn’t his real reason for not letting her ride with Charlie.
“Is the lead rope to Charlie’s horse secure?” Eden peered around Brant’s arm to check on Charlie again. “In Boston, we rode in carriages. Sometimes I led him around on a horse, but he’s never ridden one so you can’t let the rope go free.”
Brant glanced at Charlie first and then to the rope tied in the ring.
Eden noted the hint of worry in his eyes and rubbed his arm in understanding. “You will teach him.”
A magic spell couldn’t have captured her any better than the movement of Brant’s fingers digging into her side, latching on as if she’d get away.
“He will learn everything there is to know about a horse,” he whispered hoarsely over her head. “He will learn to be a brave warrior like his people.”
“His people are mostly white. The only Indian blood in him is the half from your father.” She reminded him, looking back to see Charlie’s horse still calm and safely hitched to Brant’s saddle. “He’s been raised white and you can’t take that from him.”
“The boy will learn to be Pawnee.”
“I see your stubbornness hasn’t changed.” She turned her head and stared at the strong line to his jaw, the determined set to his mouth. “You can’t undo his life up until now.”
Brant’s gaze drifted from her eyes to her mouth. He swept loose wisps of her hair back from her face. “I do what I want,” he answered.
If that included kissing her, she was prepared. She had longed for the day Brant’s passion spilled over her again. Leaning on his rock-solid chest, she waited for him to bow his head and press his lips to hers. She tipped her head back, ready to find out if her memory was different from reality.
Then he spoke, “You will have no say over what I do with him.”
Anger swept away the idyllic opportunity of her boldly taking charge of the moment and kissing him.
“I’ll agree to let you teach him things I never could, except know this, Brant Sullette, he’s a child raised on my love alone. If you ever do anything to hurt me I’ll make him hate you.” She didn’t know why she chose then to challenge his authority, especially when he could dump her on the ground and ride off with Charlie. But years on her own had toughened her against domineering men.
“You rely on the fact he would know of such matters between us.” Brant retaliated. “Remember you are only coming with us because I allow it.”