Cheyenne Splendor, page 1
SURRENDER
They snuggled down by the fire and pulled the blanket more closely around them. It was snowing steadily now, covering the earth with a white velvet blanket.
Summer felt warm and securely content. They lay like two spoons as he kissed the nape of her neck.
“Dearest,” she whispered, “it wouldn’t hurt anything if you only kissed me a little.”
“No harm in that, Little One.”
He leaned over and kissed her deeply. She felt her pulse quicken. She had not forgotten how his tender touch made her want him beyond reason. She breathed in his warm scent and kissed him back. The fire of desire burned hotter and brighter between them. She wanted more than kisses and caresses. She wanted all he had to give. . . .
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GEORGINA GENTRY
CHEYENNE SPLENDOR
ZEBRA BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
SURRENDER
TODAY’S HOTTEST READS ARE TOMORROW’S SUPERSTARS
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
To My Readers
Copyright Page
For our only son, Sean, who is his father’s pride, his
mother’s joy;
and
For Kris, the lovely Cajun beauty who became our third
daughter through marrying him.
Chapter One
Late November, 1864
He wanted to make love to her. In the glow of their cozy tipi fire, the Cheyenne half-breed, Iron Knife, watched Summer curled asleep in the hollow of his big shoulder. He cuddled her closer and gently brushed a yellow lock of hair from her forehead, studying her heart-shaped face. Summer had grown even prettier and more precious to him in the six years that she had been his woman.
What an unlikely pair, he thought as he leaned over to kiss her lips. That long-ago day when the rich Boston debutante had been stolen from a stagecoach, Iron Knife had fought a fellow dog soldier, Angry Wolf, for possession of the beauty. First, Summer had been Iron Knife’s captive, but gradually, he was the one who became a prisoner . . . of desire.
Summer sighed and smiled in her sleep. Encouraged, he glanced around at their three small children snuggled down in their buffalo robes, safe and warm against the Colorado chill. All their little ones were asleep. The cold wind whipped around his lodge, and he pulled the fur robe up around Summer’s shoulders, enjoying the feel of her soft body against his big one. They both liked the touch of fur against their bare flesh and sleeping naked in each other’s arms. He wanted her, but he had not made love to her for months now. They must not have another child soon. Having her in his arms, yet not being able to possess her completely, made him think of nothing else.
He pulled her naked body against him and began to kiss her lips. They parted slightly, and he caressed them with his tongue, holding her against him so that he could feel her full breasts and the heat of her belly and long legs.
Summer stirred in her sleep, and he leaned over and kissed the tip of her. nose. “Ne-mehotatse,” he whispered. Her pale blue eyes flickered open and she smiled up at him. “Shh! I love you, too, but you’ll wake the children.”
“They’re all sound asleep.” He held her even closer, thinking her eyes were the exact color of a summer sky. He caressed her with the tips of his fingers as he tangled his other hand in her long yellow hair and moved so that he was half on top of her. His pulse began to pound strongly, and he felt his manhood swell with urgency. He wanted her, and he felt her pulse quicken, knew from years of making love to her that she desired him, too. “They’re asleep,” he said more urgently, and kissed her, deeply, thoroughly.
She managed to pull her mouth away. “They won’t be for long if we keep whispering.” She threw one arm across him and laid her face against his brawny chest, feeling warm and safe in his powerful arms. He was a muscular, virile warrior who would kill any man who touched her or even looked at her with lust in his eyes. When Angry Wolf had tried to rape her by a secluded stream, Iron Knife had fought him to the death.
He was kissing her again. She knew she should protest and pull away, but it felt so right; so good to have his mouth tasting hers, his hard, calloused hands stroking her naked skin until she felt her pulse pound and her nipples harden. They used to make love a couple of times a night, she thought with regret, but they must not make another baby yet. It was the Cheyenne custom to nurse a child three years, and with Summer producing three children in four years, hers might have starved if Pretty Flower Woman had not helped. So this time, Summer was determined that until her baby girl, Garnet, was past two, they would not make love completely. To do without Iron Knife’s skillful and gentle lovemaking was creating tremendous strain on both of them, and yet, Iron Knife had vowed he would not take a second wife as most of the Cheyenne warriors did.
More than six years had passed since that day she had been kidnapped from a stagecoach, then turning her back on the life of a prominent Boston society girl and becoming the dog soldier’s woman. The fine white leather dress with the one thousand elks’ teeth that she had worn in the ceremony was safely tucked away. She only wished they could be married in the custom of her people, too. She smiled up at him, not wanting to think about the stress their relationship had been placed under by the renewed trouble between the whites and Indians —and their abstaining from lovemaking.
“I am lucky to have you,” he murmured and held her close against him.
She looked up at him in the glow of the tipi fire. Even with a broken nose and battle-scarred face, he was handsome. His raven black hair was pulled into a braid on the left side, and he wore a big brass button from a dead cavalry officer’s uniform as an earring in his right ear. He was naked except for the eagle bone whistle he wore around his neck in the manner of all dog soldiers.
She felt the hardness of his manhood pressing against her body. Iron Knife was a virile man and needed a woman often. He was skillful with his lovemaking and had taught her passion that, as a staid Boston debutante, she had not realized she was capable of. That was part of the problem, she thought regretfully, as she ran her fingertips over the sun dance scars on his naked, sinewy chest and looked up into his handsome, scarred face. Iron Knife could make her forget that they shouldn’t make love. When he took her in his arms and began to kiss her, she lost all resolve and all reason. Summer took a deep breath and managed to pull back. “Pretty Flower says you should take a second wife the way most other Cheyenne do.”
“Would you like that? It would keep me from rubbing all over you like some aroused stallion, wouldn’t it?”
“You know that’s not what I meant.” The thought of him touching another woman made her wince. Many Cheyenne warriors had a second wife for that reason. However, she and Iron Knife had too big a passion for each other not to lose control, so besides their oldest, Lance, there was his younger brother, Storm Gathering, and the baby, Garnet.
Each time, Pretty Flower Woman, cousin Two Arrows’ wife, had helped Summer nurse the children when Summer’s milk began to dry up. Garnet was almost two years old now, and the thought of doing without Iron Knife’s lovemaking for another year was almost unbearable. More unbearable was the thought of him making love to another woman while Summer lay in the same lodge, pretending to sleep while he mated with a Cheyenne wife or a captive Indian girl. “Have you—have you been looking at some of those captives? I’ve seen the way they look at you.”
“It won’t happen,” he reassured her. “I love only you, and you know it, Little One.” He combed his fingers through her yellow hair; then his hand came down and cupped her breast.
He breathed heavier, and his palm felt like fire against her nipple. It didn’t seem fair that he had taught her passion and now they must do without. It was the custom among his people to take the first wife’s younger sister as a second, but of course, among the whites, that was a scandalous idea. Summer reached up and traced her finger across the hard planes of his dear, dark face. She knew every inch of his virile, muscular body from his whip-scarred back to the sun dance scars on his broad chest. He was powerful and dangerous, but with her, he was always tender and gentle.
“I want you,” he whispered urgently against her ear.
“You can only kiss me,” she whispered.
“I want more than that.” His voice was husky with its urgency, and his hands shook as he pulled at the drawstrings of her doeskin bodice.
“We’ve been through this before and you know the answer.” Was she almost angry with him because he was so insistent or was it only because she wanted him so much? She ought to turn over and stop this right now, and yet she actually ached for his touch. His big hands squeezed her breasts up to two points, and then his mouth claimed them, teasing her nipples with his tongue as his hand stroked its way down her belly. Her loins felt on fire, and she had never wanted him as badly as she wanted him at this moment. She must not let this go any further, and yet she had seen the way pretty Cheyenne girls and captives from other tribes had looked at him, running their tongues along their lips, thrusting out their bosoms so that he would notice. If she didn’t satisfy him, some other woman might.
She let her thighs fall apart and reached to touch his big manhood. It was rigid and throbbing with unspent seed. He groaned at the touch of her hand.
“You hot little vixen,” he said against her ear, “you make me want to forget everything, fall on you and mate with you like a bitch in heat.”
In her mind, she imagined him taking that passion to another woman, his lean hips driving deep as he mounted some willing girl. The thought of his taking a second wife and sharing his love drove her crazy with jealousy. She dug her nails into his wide shoulders and kissed his mouth, running her pink tongue deep into his throat, teasing him into sucking it still deeper. He kissed his way down between her breasts and concentrated on her belly, kissing and blowing his warm breath on her pale skin, running his tongue around her navel until she shook with the wanting of him. “Please. . . .”
“Please yes or please no?” He was trembling, his manhood hard as stone. She wanted him on her and in her, thrusting hard into her very core. She wanted to claw his back and lock him in her legs, pull him down on top of her for a passionate ride.
“We—we mustn’t.” Was she reminding him or herself?
She reached up to bite his nipples, and he gasped aloud. “Don’t do that, Summer, you’ll make me lose control. . . .”
She was frustrated and angry that she couldn’t have him, that he could only tease her with his kisses and hands. She held her breath and felt his mouth warm and wet on her belly, then on her thighs. Was he going to kiss her there?
Almost in answer, he commanded, “Let your thighs fall apart, I’m going to pleasure you, Little One.”
He was arrogant and confident, all male; yet he adored her now with his lips. It was the supreme compliment, she knew. His seeking mouth was hot, his tongue thrusting and wet. She tangled her fingers in his dark hair. “N—no, don’t do that.”
“You like it and you’re mine.”
Waves of white-hot ecstasy began to sweep over her as he loved her with his mouth. She pulled his dark face against her body, arched her back, breathed heavily through her mouth and convulsed with passion. “No, don’t . . . don’t stop!”
She didn’t care about anything else as long as she could get his pulsating manhood in her. She was struggling to pull him on top of her when she climaxed from his deep kisses.
When she came to, he was looking down into her face intently, breathing hard. “How I want you!” He sounded frustrated and angry.
She lay there looking up into his passionate, dark eyes, feeling guilty because he had pleasured her and there were so many women he could use to satisfy his body in this camp. “I’m sorry, dearest.”
“It isn’t your fault, you little she-cat, that I want you so. You’d keep me drained of seed and your belly swollen continually if I loved you as much as I wanted.”
She reached out and clasped his rigid manhood in her hand, and he gasped. His mouth covered hers again, and she tasted the essence of herself on his lips. “I—I’m only human, Little One, don’t do that.”
She stroked him instead.
He moaned. “I have to fight to keep from taking you every night when I am lying here with you in my arms, feeling your breasts all swollen with milk, your small body burning hot.”
She rubbed her nipples against his chest, teased his big manhood with her fingertips. “Iron Knife; you’re aptly named.”
“Stop that or I’ll lose control,” he protested.
She didn’t stop; she kept teasing him with her hand until he began to rut against her belly.
Iron Knife felt the rising surge as he rammed against her until he couldn’t hold back any longer and wasted his virile seed against her abdomen. Then he lay next to her, shaking, a bit angry, his desire still not completely satisfied. For a split second, he had been tempted to grab her, thrust his manhood deep inside her where it belonged. He had struggled with that overpowering temptation and finally regained control at the last moment. Summer Sky was his woman and he wanted her a dozen times a day, but he must not dry up her milk again with little Garnet needing it.
Out on the war trail, they occasionally captured a pretty enemy Crow, Ute or Pawnee girl who knew she was expected to let the braves pleasure themselves with her ripe body. If she pleased one enough, she might be chosen as a second wife. Only a few suns ago, Iron Knife had watched a hunting party taking turns on a big-breasted Pawnee captive, and she had invited him with her dark eyes to lie between her thighs. Oh, he had been tempted. His manhood ached as he watched the other warriors rutting on the girl, and they urged him to enjoy her, too. He almost succumbed to the overpowering need and lust of mating, but he loved Summer Sky too much. Yet this abstinence kept him as short-tempered as a deprived buffalo bull.
He glanced down at the beautiful blonde in his arms. Summer was already asleep. He held her very close, pulled the buffalo robe over them both and kissed her cheek. She was his mate, and he would protect her and love her until the day he died. His once in a lifetime love. Summer had given up wealth and an aristocratic fiance to share a half-breed’s life of hardships. He wondered now if she regretted the choice she had made. Nothing, not torture, death or injury frightened him. He was a carrier of the Hotamtsit, the ceremonial rope carried by only four of the bravest dog soldiers; the ones expected to sacrifice their lives in a brave gesture if need be.
