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Surely Dancing Cloud would understand if he ever found out!
She continued returning his kiss with a wild abandon....
Chapter 14
Love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mays’t love on through love’s eternity.
—ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
The bed on which Dancing Cloud lay asleep was illumined by a beam of morning sun. Having arrived before dawn, Lauralee sat beside his bed, deep in thought.
The night had been a long and restless one for her. She had not been able to forget how foolish she had been to allow herself to feel anything for Paul Brown. She truly realized now that she had only been swept away by the idea of courting a man like most women whose lives were normal. If she had not been deprived of so many things while growing up in the orphanage she would not be swayed as easily by smooth-talking men today.
On the other hand, there was Dancing Cloud. Although she had been as swept away by him and his night-black eyes and his finely chiseled features, she knew from the depths of her heart that her feelings for him were nothing less than genuine.
And after tossing and turning and thinking the long night through in her soft feather bed at the Peterson House, she now knew for certain that in her heart there was room only for one man.
That man was Dancing Cloud.
She sighed heavily. She now had the unpleasant chore of telling Paul Brown that she could no longer see him. She hoped they might remain friends. He was a sweet man; he would have no trouble finding a woman who would fall under the spell of his deep, mesmerizing blue eyes. Lauralee gazed lovingly at Dancing Cloud. She so badly wanted to wake him up and tell him that she loved him. Although he could not be aware of her one small infidelity to him, she carried the burden for them both. She knew that this burden would not be lifted until she met with Paul and revealed her feelings to him.
“Today,” she whispered to herself. “I must find a way to break away long enough to go to Paul and tell him before tonight.”
When Dancing Cloud stirred in his sleep Lauralee leaned closer to him. She wanted to be the first thing he saw when he awakened. She felt she owed him so much because of her behavior with Paul Brown.
She most definitely owed him a lifetime of loving.
When he did not awaken, Lauralee eased back in the chair. She continued watching him, never getting enough of looking at his lean, bronzed, and handsome face.
Hungering for his kiss, she gazed at his lips.
She shifted her gaze lower and looked at his powerful hands as they rested beside him on the bed, a blanket covering him only past his waist.
She shivered with rapture when she recalled how he knew so well the skills of teasing and stroking the supple lines of her body. When he had touched her that first time between her thighs, everything wonderfully sweet had been awakened inside her.
She was glad that no one else was in the room with her and Dancing Cloud. They would see her blushing while thinking such brazen thoughts so early in the morning at the bedside of a man who had nearly lost his life.
She cleared her throat and squirmed in the seat, then stiffened and again leaned closer to Dancing Cloud. He was not waking up. Instead, he seemed to be dreaming. His closed eyelids were twitching. For a moment he grimaced, then smiled.
Puzzled, Lauralee continued to watch him. She wondered what the dream could be about that it could cause him to react so?
Dancing Cloud felt himself being drawn into a hazy world of white light. As he seemed to float through a long, swirling tunnel of white he heard soft voices on all sides of him, as though whispers in the night.
The farther he traveled into the vastness of the swirling tunnel, as though some unseen force was pulling him, the voices became louder and more distinct. They were familiar voices of his past.
Dancing Cloud realized now that his wound was healed. The bandages were gone!
He reached out his hands in a beckoning gesture. And in a response to the voices, he found himself speaking his mother’s name, then his sister’s and brother’s, and so many more of his loved ones whom had passed on to the afterlife before him.
When he finally reached the end of this strange, misty-white tunnel he found himself in a large meadow of wildflowers. In the distance were a widespread range of mountains. Bordering the mountains were vast forests. Overhead, birds of all kinds soared, their wings shadowing the land beneath them.
The feeling that overcame Dancing Cloud was that of total peace. He no longer felt any pain; only a serenity never known to him before.
And then suddenly before him, in a film of white, glorious light, came his beloved family who had died during the war at the hands of the enemy Yankees.
“E-tsi, Mother?” he said.
