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She looked straight ahead again and saw nothing but the banks of the river. At last, she felt secure enough to undress.
She pulled her dress over her head and shook her moccasins from her feet. Only then was she aware how cool it had grown now that the sun was only a vague, purplish shadow along the horizon.
She hugged herself as she ran into the water, glad that it still held the warmth of a long day of being bathed in sunlight.
Joylynn dove into the water and began swimming. It gave her such a free feeling, something she had so enjoyed as a teenager. The water felt delicious on her body. She giggled when a tiny fish came up and nibbled on her leg.
She watched it swim away, probably disappointed that it had not found something to eat.
Joylynn resumed swimming, then suddenly realized how far she had traveled. She was far away from where she had left her clothes, and the sky would soon lose its light altogether.
She started to turn around and swim back to where she had entered the water, then stopped when she caught the scent of smoke. A thin spiral rose from a spot up ahead where there was a bend in the river.
Curious, yet knowing there could be danger so far from the village, she swam quietly onward to the bend in the river. When she reached it and could see where the smoke came from, she gasped and stopped, standing on the sandy river bottom.
It was a small frame lodge made of willows. Outside the entrance of the lodge, past the buffalo robe that was being used as an entrance flap, was a fire built in a circle of smooth, round rocks.
Her eyebrows rose when she saw a large rock in the center of the fire, glowing red from the heat.
She searched further and saw a clump of clothes and moccasins lying near the small lodge. Someone was there.
“A man’s clothes,” she whispered to herself, knowing now that she should turn around and swim quickly away, for where there was a man, a stranger, there might be trouble for her, a woman alone.
But just as she started to swim away, she stopped. She heard a voice singing something soft and low, as though in meditation, or prayer.
And then the voice was stilled and in its place came the sweet sound of what she thought might be a flute. Its melody was haunting and beautiful, making Joylynn believe that surely no one evil could play such enchanting music.
Her curiosity growing, Joylynn fought off the voice speaking in her head that said, “Go now, leave.” And then she was glad that she had ignored it, for she saw with whom she shared this beautiful early evening. Her heart leapt inside her chest when High Hawk crawled out of the lodge.
Joylynn felt a strange, sensual melting inside when High Hawk stood up and the sunset’s glow fell on his naked, copper body.
She watched him stretch his arms above his head, making even more of him accessible to Joylynn’s feasting eyes.
She saw the rippling of his muscles, from his head to his toes. The way his hair fell down his back as he gazed heavenward made her long to run to him and run her fingers through it. She loved his hair, every inch of it!
She even saw that part of a man she thought she would always fear after being raped so viciously.
But seeing High Hawk’s full anatomy only awoke a strange hunger inside her heart, a hunger only he could fill.
She looked suddenly away from that part of him and again gazed at his sculpted face. How on earth could he be so handsome? So alluring? Such a wonderful specimen of a man?
She had seen many a man in her time, especially when she was a Pony Express rider, but none could compare with High Hawk.
So far he had not spotted her, for she was standing in the shadow of a low-hanging willow tree. She wasn’t sure what she should do. He had come to this secluded spot for privacy and prayers; wouldn’t he see her as an interference?
But if he was finished praying, and had come out to dress for his return home, perhaps he would welcome her.
Suddenly her heart seemed to drop to her toes when High Hawk broke into a run and dove into the water and began swimming in her direction.
He seemed so intent on his swim, he had yet to realize that he was not alone in the river.
As he grew closer to Joylynn, she wasn’t sure what to do.
Allow him to see her?
Or go farther back into the shadows of the tree, then swim hurriedly around the bend that would take her from his view?
Might he not like it that she had come to his private place?
