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“How wonderful it is,” Mariah said, smoothing her forefinger across his full sculptured lips. “That you are mine forever is a miracle.”
He rolled away from her and rose from the bed. Drawing a blanket around his shoulders, he went to the table and eyed the fruit that lay on a platter. He glanced over his shoulder at Mariah.
“Making love makes you hungry, does it not?” he asked, laughing softly as he heard her stomach growling even from this distance. He picked up an apple and took it to Mariah. “We shall share the fruit, like we have shared our bodies.”
He placed the apple to her lips. Leaning up on an elbow, Mariah smiled at him with dancing eyes as she sank her teeth into the apple, taking from it a large hunk. She began to chew, and watched as Echohawk took a bite, chewing also as he gazed at her with his deep black eyes.
Mariah rose suddenly to a sitting position and ran the fingers of a hand over his brow. “Darling, I’m so glad you can see more clearly now,” she said, looking into the depths of his dark eyes.
Echohawk sat down on the bed beside her and looked around the room, having to squint to be able to see the objects in the far, shadowed corners. “Ay-uh, I can see perfectly,” he said, “but when I look into the distance, there is still a slight blur.”
Mariah hopped from the bed, excitement filling her. “That means, Echohawk, that you will surely be able to see one hundred percent soon!” she cried, clasping her hands together before her. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
Seeing her standing there, silkenly, exquisitely nude—the fullness of her breasts, her slimness, the supple broadening into the hips with their central muff of hair, and her long, smooth thighs—made his hunger increase, but not for food. He wanted his No-din again. This was evident in how his manhood had risen into a tight hardness again, the ache the kind that only being with No-din could quell.
Mariah saw the sudden passion filling his eyes, and as he tossed the apple and the bear pelt aside, she felt the heat of desire flood her through and through when she saw his readiness for her.
With a feverish need, she went to him and quivered with ecstasy as he gathered her into his arms and led her back down onto the bed. The sensations were searing within her as his fingers and lips moved purposely slowly over her body, teasingly stroking her flesh.
Her hands sought and found his pulsing hardness and caressed him, making him shiver and groan with the ecstasy. When he leaned away from her and brushed her hand aside, she molded her body up against his as he knelt over her and filled her with his length. She absorbed the bold thrusts with rhythmic upward movements of her hips, his mouth crushing her lips with a fiery kiss, drugging her.
Their bodies strained together hungrily, and then once again their passion was sought and found.
Afterward Mariah nestled close to Echohawk, breathing hard, her loneliness banished forever. When he leaned away from her and looked down at her with adoring love in his eyes, she pulled his head down and kissed him.
She melted into him when once again he entered her with his revived hardness. She shuddered and gripped his buttocks lightly. Her mouth clung to his in a long, blistering kiss. The delicious pleasure filled her again, and her body rocked and swayed in her passion.
She moaned throatily as once again she found that wondrous ecstasy within her lover’s arms....
“How can it be?” she whispered against Echohawk’s perspiration-dampened face afterward. “We have made love three times so quickly. My darling, not long ago I did not even know the ways of making love!”
“In time I shall show you many ways of taking and giving pleasure,” Echohawk said, smoothing dampened strands of hair back from her brow. “Nee-kah was right when she said that you were an astute student. My woman, you have learned already many ways of loving.”
“Only because it was you teaching me,” Mariah said. She sucked in a wild breath as he lowered his head to her nipple and circled it with his tongue, then trailed his lips wetly downward, stopping at the juncture of her thighs. As he thrust his tongue against that part of her that still throbbed from his lovemaking, she closed her eyes and let herself enjoy it all over again.
This man, she marveled to herself. Ah, this delicious, heavenly, wonderful man.
Because of Echohawk, she had been transformed into a woman, and felt blessed that it had not been too late for her.
Chapter 25
A girl with eager eyes . . .
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waits me there . . . Oh heart . . . !
—Browning
Several Days Later
For the first several days the riverboat had moved calmly through the waters of the Mississippi. But on the seventh day, the day planned for the arrival to Saint Louis, snow had begun to fall, the wind blowing with tremendous violence.
Mariah and Echohawk were in their cabin waiting out the storm, uneasy as they could feel the boat pitching to and fro in the water. They could hear the pounding of the waves, beating like thunder against the sides of the boat. The splash of the great paddle wheel seemed puny as it struggled through the fevered water. Oh, how the noise grated against Mariah’s nerves!
“Perhaps we shouldn’t have boarded this . . . this monstrosity,” Mariah said, gladly accepting Echohawk’s arms around her. “At first I thought the boat was beautiful with its lacy latticework trim and fancy spindles, but now I feel as though it is nothing more than a toy.” She clung more strongly to him. “I’m afraid, Echohawk. What if the boat suddenly gets swallowed whole by the angry river?”
“Without people manning the paddles, I do not see how the boat is maneuvered anywhere,” Echohawk grumbled. “It is not at all like the canoes of my people.”
