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“Adam!” Pure Blossom shouted as she ran toward him. She waved her arms over her head in a greeting. “Darling. Yaa-eh-t-eeh. I did not think you were coming! What took so long? Were you and Runner having too good a time to leave one another? I would think that is wonderful, Adam. I so badly want you and my brother to be friends.”
Adam’s heart sank. He had forgotten that he had told Pure Blossom he was going to meet with Runner today. Now he would have no choice but to tell her the truth, or come up quickly with a clever lie.
The lie would at least get him through the awkward evening. He would leave the dirty work to Runner.
Adam wheeled his horse to a halt when Pure Blossom reached him. The moment she got a good look at him beneath the splash of the moon’s glow she saw his battered face.
Although his knees were weak, and he knew they would just scarcely hold him up, Adam slid from the saddle and reached his arms out for Pure Blossom, who looked as though she might faint.
She gave no thought to leaning her cheek against his bloody shirt. His embrace was all that she wanted. She twined her arms around his chest and hugged him to her.
“You have been beaten severely,” she murmured, her voice breaking. She clung to him. “How did it happen? Who did this to you?”
Adam stiffened. When she leaned away from him and gazed into his swollen eyes, he reached a hand to her silkenly smooth copper cheek. “I got in a fight at the ‘Big Tent,’ he said, shrugging. “That’s all.”
“My brother?” Pure Blossom asked softly. “Did you fight with my brother?”
Adam’s eyes wavered. He felt the coil of deceit tightening in his chest, then loosening the more she gazed so wide-eyed and innocently up at him.
He knew that he could not lie to her. Not now, or ever.
“Yes,” he said thickly. “It was your brother. We got into a fight.”
Pure Blossom heaved a heavy, weary sigh. “I hoped for so much more,” she murmured. “But it will never be, will it, Adam? It is impossible for you and Runner to be friends again.”
“Never,” Adam said, wincing when she placed a gentle finger to one of his eyes.
“I did not know that my brother had so much hate locked within him,” Pure Blossom said, drawing her hand quickly away when she saw the pain that Adam felt. “But it dwells within many of the People’s hearts. White men—if they could only be as decent and sweet as you. My people would never have cause to hate again.”
The knot of deceit began tightening again inside Adam’s chest. He avoided her eyes as he took his horse’s reins in one hand, and one of her hands in the other, and walked slowly toward the river. Each step that he took pained him severely. He now felt that he might even have a broken rib.
Even the more reason to hate Runner, he thought bitterly to himself.
When they reached the campsite, where a fire burned warm and cozy just inside the cove, Adam tethered his horse to a low tree limb, then turned to Pure Blossom. “Help me undress,” he said, his voice drawn.
Pure Blossom gave him a shocked look. “But, Adam, surely you do not wish to make love in your condition,” she said. “And I understand. Tonight we will just sit by the fire. After I see to your wounds, I will sing to you.”
“That sounds very inviting,” Adam said. “But, Pure Blossom, still, help me undress.”
She smiled into his swollen eyes. “Whatever you want, I will do,” she said, her slim fingers moving to the buttons of his shirt.
When his shirt was tossed aside and Pure Blossom saw the bruises on Adam’s chest, she gasped anew. “Runner is someone I do not know,” she said, her voice drawn. “My own brother? How could he do this?”
“Darling Pure Blossom, don’t you know that I got in a few of my own blows?” Adam said, wanting to defend his virtue. “So don’t think so badly of Runner. We men all have our own degrees of anger we must sometimes act upon.”
After Adam was fully unclothed, he eyed the river, then Pure Blossom. “Will you go in the water with me?” he asked solemnly. “I doubt if I have the strength to bathe the blood from my body by myself.”
Pure Blossom’s eyes wavered as she glanced down at the river, realizing how cold the water must be and fearing it. Her joints already ached. If she was exposed to those colder temperatures, who was to say how much more severe the pain would get? Yet she knew that Adam’s pain needed to be tended to now. She must forget her own.
“Yes, I will go with you,” she murmured, already unfastening her colorful skirt.
Soon they walked hand in hand into the water. Pure Blossom shivered as the chill crept into her bones, yet she held onto Adam with one hand, while her other splashed and caressed and cleansed his face and body, until all that was left were the bruises that would take time to heal.
With her body so temptingly close in the water, and wanting her so bad, Adam’s blood was on fire with need. He circled her waist with his arms and drew her against his body. Hurting from head to toe, and covered in cold water, he did not see how it was possible, but he could feel his manhood growing against her thigh. It was throbbing more intensely than his battered face.
“Adam?” Pure Blossom whispered, kissing him gently. “Do you truly think we should? Would it not cause you too much pain?”
“The true pain is in wanting you,” Adam said, anchoring himself solidly against the rocky bottom in a more shallow part of the river. He lifted her so that he could impale her with his manhood. Instinctively, she wrapped her legs around him.
