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Alanna relaxed against him. "We'll have to make love very quietly then."
Hunter bent down slightly to kiss her. He wondered how many men he was going to have to fight for the right to call her his wife. The number didn't really matter. He would gladly battle anyone who objected to their being together, even if he had to fight every last man on earth.
The urgency of Hunter's kiss failed to ease Alanna's lingering sense of sorrow, but she understood his need, and shared it. She prayed they would have many other days in which their happiness would be complete, but knew they would never have a greater need for the physical reassurance each craved now. When Hunter pulled off his shirt, she spread eager kisses across his chest, and gave his nipples a playful swipe. He turned away to douse the lamp, but she caught his arm.
"No, I want to look at you," she argued. "You're so handsome." She slid her palm down the front of his breechcloth, outlining his hardened manhood, and he released his belt.
"Touch me now," he begged in a husky whisper. He pulled her hand inside his loosened buckskins, and following his lead, her caress was steady and sure. He soon kicked off his moccasins, and she helped him peel off the last of his clothes. He then pulled her down with him on the bed.
Still dressed, Alanna slid her hands up the firm muscles of his thighs. The scar from the wound she had feared might cost him his life would remain with him always, and she leaned down to kiss it, memorizing the narrow ridge with the tip of her tongue. When Hunter moaned appreciatively, she wondered aloud if she could draw him across the threshold of ecstasy, as he did her, with intimate kisses.
Hunter raised up slightly to look down at her. "Take off your dress, and then do it," he urged.
Alanna reached for the buttons. Earlier that evening, she had had to endure a frightful confrontation with her family, but the shameful scene was forgotten as she returned Hunter's smile. All she saw was the man she adored, and when he was near, all other concerns faded into insignificance. She had long since lost her shyness around him, and with but a few sly, suggestive hints from him, she swiftly discovered what pleased him most.
Her tawny tresses brushed across his stomach, creating a teasing breeze that warmed him clear through. With a reflex he couldn't subdue, Hunter tightened the already taut muscles of his belly. He had longed to teach Alanna how to pleasure him in this way, but he had waited, impatiently, until she chose it of her own accord. It had been worth the wait, and the warm, sweet wetness of her mouth lured him ever deeper into the heart and soul of passion.
Wanting her to share in that bliss, when the rapture fueled by her eager kisses threatened to overwhelm him, he pulled her up into his arms and then pinned her beneath him. He entered her with a hungry, driving thrust, but then lay still until the urgency of his need could again be controlled. He moved up, molding his body to hers, carefully positioning himself so that with each forward lunge, he would press against the swollen nub that would soon shower her with pleasure.
Deliberately coaxing that rapture, his enticing moves raised their souls aloft, and transported them both into the realm of love's wildest dreams. Blinded by a tumultuous release, they shuddered, and at last lay still. Lost in the quest for shared joy, they had forgotten the need for discretion, and their soft cries of surrender had echoed down the hall. Their fears of the future drowned in a perfect peace, they fell asle
ep locked in each other's arms, while Randolph O'Neil sat on the side of his bed, alone, and ached for the affectionate young woman who would never be his.
* * *
Alanna had been too nervous to eat any breakfast, and now as she stood poised to knock on Charity Wade's door, her courage nearly deserted her. Seeing the tremor in her hand as she raised it, Hunter reached around her to rap on the door himself. "I'm sorry," she murmured.
"No, I'm the one who's sorry. I thought you had more confidence in me."
Alanna had all the confidence in the world in her husband, when it came to any area not dealing with his son. Where Christian was concerned, however, she did not know what to expect, and was completely unnerved by dread. He hadn't spoken a word on their walk from Randolph's house, and with every step she had expected him to turn back. He had come the whole way though, but he still didn't seem to be truly with her.
"Please, let's not discuss anything in front of Charity."
"Agreed."
Charity answered the door with Christian in her arms, and her own children clustered around her. Nearly six months old, the handsome little boy had thick black hair and enormous brown eyes. He recognized Alanna and, with a gleeful whoop, reached out his chubby arms for her. Equally delighted to see her, Charity dropped him into Alanna's waiting embrace.
"He's really missed you, Miss Barclay."
Alanna hastened to introduce Hunter as her husband, before she stepped into the small dwelling and turned to show off her cousin's child. She then couldn't decide which of them wore the most startled expression. Charity hadn't been expecting her to appear with a husband, let alone an Indian brave. That Christian bore such a striking resemblance to the man only served to increase the wet nurse's dismay. Her children, terrified by the sight of an Indian in their home, shoved and pushed as they scrambled for the best place to hide.
As for Hunter, he'd been frowning slightly as he stepped through the doorway, but his first glimpse of Christian left him staring agape at a little face that closely mirrored his own in childhood. Alanna had told him Christian favored him rather than Melissa, but he had not really believed her. Now he could see that only the boy's pale golden skin gave any hint that he might not be a full-blooded Seneca, like his father.
Despite never having been introduced to any strangers, Christian was thrilled to see a man whose coloring matched his own. Dislodging Alanna's cap, he grabbed a clump of her hair with one hand, but leaned out toward Hunter with the other. Smiling widely, he called to him in a babbling stream of syllables which held meaning only for him.
When Hunter hung back rather than take a step closer, Alanna moved nearer to him. She placed Christian's hand on his buckskin shirt, and patted it lightly. "What do you think of Hunter's shirt, Christian? Doesn't it feel good?"
With a wild swing, Christian grabbed a handful of fringe on Hunter's sleeve and gave it a fierce yank. When he tried to put the ends in his mouth, Alanna pried them from his little fist. "He seems to have your strength as well as your looks," Alanna said. "Do you want to hold him?"
Grasping each other tightly, the loving bond between Alanna and Christian was so plain, looking at them made Hunter's heart ache. They made him feel separate, apart, more lonely than he had ever felt, and he had to swallow hard before he spoke. "No. Stay and play with him as long as you like. I have to go."
"But Hunter—"
Hunter just shook his head. He nodded toward Charity, and then hurried out her door. He had no destination in mind, but he had to get away. It was not only the love which flowed so easily between Christian and Alanna that caused him pain. Seeing his son had conjured up images of Melissa that were so vivid, he couldn't stand to be with anyone else. Sickened by the memories he wanted forgotten, he strode back toward Randolph's house, bent on leaving town.
Charity closed the door and, after shooing her children into the bedroom to play, she gestured for Alanna to sit down. She had never been told the exact circumstances surrounding Christian's birth, but after Ian Scott had carried the newborn from her home, she had understood the babe's father was most definitely not his mother's husband. An apparent scandal in a fine family didn't concern her, but her charge's welfare most certainly did.
"Wasn't that Christian's father?" she asked in a tone that discouraged equivocation.
