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“Do I mind that you are here?” White Fire said, holding back from reaching to touch her face, to draw the combs from her hair so that he could see it flutter down across her shoulders. “No.” He chuckled softly. “But I must admit, I’m somewhat surprised.”
“I had a dream last night,” she murmured. “In it, we . . . you . . . you and I . . .”
Finding it hard to be this bold, this daring, she could not say the words.
Instead, she turned and went into his kitchen and grabbed the coffeepot.
Then she went to the fireplace, to place the pot in the hot coals. She sighed heavily and gave him a forlorn look over her shoulder. “There is no fire,” she said softly.
“I shall remedy that,” he said, rushing to the fireplace. He bent down and placed kindling, small logs, then larger logs across the grate. In a matter of moments, there was a large enough fire with which to brew coffee.
After the pot was sitting at the edge of the flames, White Fire took Flame by the hand and pulled her down on the floor onto a soft cushion of blankets. It had always been his favorite place to lie in the evenings when the fire was cozy and warm.
“Your cabin is nice,” Flame said, looking slowly around her, ignoring the cobwebs in the corners of the open-beamed ceiling.
White Fire drew his legs up to his chest and circled his arms around them. He slowly looked around the room, then gazed into the fire. “Everything you see, the curtains, the furniture, the kitchenware, was of my wife’s choosing,” he said thickly. “When I returned home after my captivity, it was all covered with spiderwebs and dust. I only last night worked hard at getting it back in order.”
“Before or after the ball?” Flame asked softly.
White Fire turned quick eyes her way. “After,” he said, his eyes locked with hers. “When I first went to bed, I found it hard to sleep. I chose to clean house instead.”
“What caused your inability to sleep?” Flame dared to ask, her pulse racing to think she might have been the cause.
“Because of the Sioux, there are many things that are not as they should be in my life,” White Fire said solemnly. “They the same as killed my Mary.”
“Mary?” Flame said softly. “That was your wife’s name?”
He sighed. He gazed into the fire again. “Yes, an angel if I ever saw one,” he said, his voice breaking.
“You loved her dearly?” Flame asked, trying not to be jealous of her ghost.
White Fire knew what she was trying to get from him, and understood. He already knew that she loved him. It was in their kiss last night. It was in her persistence to be with him.
“Our love was different than most who are married,” he said, turning a slow gaze to Flame. “Mary had an abusive marriage with a French voyager. I found out from Colonel Snelling that he beat her into obedience. He died in a boating accident. She was lonely and scared. I married her.”
“You didn’t marry her out of love?” Flame asked. “It was out of pity?”
“I would not exactly call it pity,” White Fire said, combing his fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his brow. “She was alone. I was alone. Marrying her seemed the thing to do.”
He reached a hand out and gently touched Flame’s face. “I never felt half as much for her as I do you, and you are but a stranger,” he said thickly. “I never truly loved her. I just sort of quietly worshipped her sweetness, her compassion for life. And she gave me the greatest gift of all—a son. Michael. Ah, how I miss my Michael.”
“I would love knowing Michael,” Flame said, shivering sensually when his hand slid down from her cheek and across her long neck, then down to a breast, where he gently cupped it through her cotton blouse.
She closed her eyes and sighed. “I so badly wish to know you—everything about you,” she said, her voice filled with deep emotion.
Then her eyes sprang open quickly and she brushed his hand from her breast. “You must think me shameful,” she blurted out. “If you compare me with your Mary, I imagine you see me as too forward—as too shameful—ever to truly love as you surely wish to love a woman.”
“I love everything about you,” White Fire said. He gently took her by the wrists and slowly laid her down on the blankets. He knelt over her, his lips brushing against her mouth. “I think I fell in love with you all those many years ago, Flame, when you flirted with me with those deliciously green eyes and wondrous smile. Yet you were but a mere child. I
placed you from my mind until the day you arrived at Fort Snelling on the riverboat. When I saw you, I knew I could never truly love anyone but you.”
He kissed her with a meltingly hot passion, his hands releasing her blouse from inside the waist of her skirt. He could feel her shudder of ecstasy as he slid his hands inside the blouse. Their flesh seemed to fuse in the heat ignited between them.
Flame had not expected to go this far when she had come to him this morning, fresh from sensual, sweet dreams of him. Yet she could not stop what was starting now. Never in her life had she been so brazen with a man as now.
Loving him so much, she could not fight this hungry need that overwhelmed any thoughts that might stop her.
But when he suddenly rose from her and stood over the fire, his back to her, she came out of her passionate reverie and tucked her blouse hurriedly back inside her skirt.
