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It was then that she got her first look at the nets that stretched across this narrow span of the river, as if a monstrous spider had spun a web.
A tremor coursed through Elizabeth, seeing how completely the waters were covered by the vast nets. There were nets crisscrossing the water, her father and Morris having evidently not taken any chance that should one net fail to stop the salmon, the others wouldn’t.
Knives flashed in the moonlight as the braves left their canoes and ran toward the nets. Elizabeth followed Strong Heart, slipping her own knife from a sheath that she had tied on her leg beneath the skirt of her dress—a knife that Many Stars had lent her.
With eager fingers and a building rage against her father, Elizabeth waded into knee-high water, and stood at Strong Heart’s side as they quickly began cutting the nets to shreds. She was so determined to make things right for Strong Heart and his people, she didn’t even notice how numbing cold the water was. The only thing that was important to her now was to help Strong Heart destroy the nets. Any day now the salmon would be appearing in hordes in these very waters.
They must become the harvest of the Suquamish, not her father and Morris Murdoch!
Just as the dark began to dispell with the sun’s rising, the last net was cut loose. And with the same silence that had brought them there, the Suquamish braves entered their canoes and shoved off into the water. Only when they got several miles up the river did they let out shouts and whoops of victory, Strong Heart and Four Winds’s the loudest of them all.
When Strong Heart turned to Elizabeth and motioned with a hand for her to come and sit beside him, she moved quickly to his side and snuggled against him.
“This thing that you have done for my people will never be forgotten,” he said feelingly. “And that you brought Four Winds, so that he could prove his worth again to the Suquamish, and his devotion as a friend to me, warms my heart, my la-daila.”
“I‘m so happy that everything turned out all right,” Elizabeth said, her eyes shining at his. “I even feel important now. Even your braves look at me with a different look in their eyes, as though . . . as though I now belong.”
“You do, and you always have,” Strong Heart said, never missing a stroke with his oar. “Have you returned to stay with me now, to be my wife?”
“Ah-hah,” Elizabeth murmured. “My life with my father as I have known it is now a thing of the past. I could not bear to even face him now, knowing what he is capable of.”
“My la-daila, forget your bad feelings,” Strong Heart softly encouraged. “Let us live for tomorrow. Today and forever throw all bad thoughts away!”
“I shall try,” Elizabeth said, badly wanting to, but knowing that it would not be as easy practiced as spoken.
* * *
The sky was dark again when Elizabeth woke up beside Strong Heart in his longhouse. She had drifted asleep in his canoe again, and had not even been aware of when they had arrived at his village, nor of being carried to shore to his longhouse.
Now, as she awakened she felt a warm body lying behind hers. Strong Heart’s nakedness against her own made a thrill shoot through her, for it seemed so long since they had been together intimately.
Elizabeth drew in a breath of joy and closed her eyes when she felt Strong Heart’s hands moving over her back, down to cup her buttocks. Then they moved lower still, around to caress her at the juncture of her thighs where her heart seemed centered in its wild beatings. As one of his hands caressed her there, the other moved onto one of her breasts, pinching the nipple to a tight peak. Elizabeth’s breath became short and raspy. Then his powerful hands were at her waist, turning her around to face him.
The fire’s glow revealed that his eyes were heavy with passion. He reached for her hair and began slowly unbraiding it. She took this opportunity to run her own hands down the magnificence of his body—long, lithe, and aroused.
Her hair, now free of its plaits, drifted across the sleeping platform. Strong Heart moved to his knees and straddled her. She gazed up at his lean, bronze face, and touched one of his cheeks almost meditatively as she felt the strength of his manhood probing where she so unmercifully throbbed.
Filled with an overwhelming longing and need that felt like exquisite pain, she opened herself up to him and locked her legs around his waist and drew him deeply into her.
With a groan, Strong Heart pressed deeper. He circled his arms around her and lifted her closer to him, his mouth lowering toward her lips, kissing her urgently, eagerly, drugging her. Her own kisses were desperate and hungry.
His tongue sought through her lips until he touched her tongue. His hands were on her breasts, feverishly fondling her, as she wriggled her body against his in response to his wonderful ways of pleasuring her.
Again they kissed. Strong Heart’s desire was a sharp, hot pain in his loins, surges of heat welling up in him, filling him, threatening to spill over.
His hips moved masterfully, faster and deeper. Feeling release so near, and wanting to postpone it because that would bring their lovemaking too quickly to a close, Elizabeth caught her breath, not daring to breathe, or to feel.
But the attempt to not give in to the ecstasy was in vain, because one more deep thrust within her, and one more flick of his tongue through her lips, and she was gone. Surges of euphoria flooded her through and through, making her feel as if for a moment she was spinning, deliciously spinning.
She clung tightly to Strong Heart as his body momentarily stiffened, and then he plunged one last time into her. Then he held her tightly to him as his body quivered and jolted against hers, his moans of pleasure mingling with her own as their lips slowl
y drifted apart.
Afterward, Strong Heart rolled away, and lay on his side, facing her. “Have I told you before that you are more beautiful than all the skies?” he said softly, placing a gentle hand to her cheek. “After the salmon harvest, we will be two hearts becoming one life, one flow. Ours will be a love everlasting.”
Elizabeth nestled closer to him, as he moved his hands around to her back, caressing her. “Each moment with you is sweeter than the last,” she whispered, sighing when his hand went to the most delicately tender spot at the meeting of her thighs, smoothing his fingers slowly back and forth, arousing passion inside her again.
“Perhaps Four Winds and this white woman named Maysie can find the same peace? The same paradise as we?” Strong Heart said, drawing his hands back up her body, now pressing her breasts. “This woman. She is surely the cause of Four Winds rethinking his future, and the direction that he was taking with his life. If she is at all like you, he is blessed—doubly blessed.”
