Free Witch Dance by Peggy Webb

and rider so clearly outlined on the hillside.
    Could it be an intruder come back to wreck the clinic once more?
    “Over my dead body,” she muttered.
    Moving quickly, Kate pulled on a pair of jogging shorts; then she raced through the house, her bare feet scarcely touching the smooth wooden floors.
    She’d been a long distance runner in her high school and college days. During her years in medical school she’d often relieved the tedium and stress by racing on the nearest track.
    On her way out the back door she grabbed the first weapon she could get her hands on, the string mop hanging on a nail, still damp from scrubbing the kitchen floor. The Lord only knew what she would do with the mop, but she wasn’t about to sit idly by while someone destroyed her work again.
    Hiding wasn’t her style.
     o0o
    Eagle saw her coming, her red hair as bright as a beacon. He’d expected the intruders, but he’d never expected Kate Malone, brandishing a mop.
    She was as noisy as a freight train, roaring through the night with the mop held aloft. Fearless, she stormed through the clinic.
    Eagle watched her, amused. She was in no danger, for he’d kept watch all night. The clinic was empty.
    He knew the art of stillness. The years away from Witch Dance had not taken it from him, nor the ability to blend with the night, to be a part of it.
    Kate passed so close, he could have reached out and touched her. Eagle stayed his hand. The touching would come. For now, watching was enough.
    “Come out,” she said. “I know you’re in here.”
    She poked the mop behind a stack of lumber and jabbed it into dark corners.
    “Come out with your hands up and I might be generous.”
    Leaning forward with the moon impossibly bright upon her hair and on the whiteness of her shirt, she shaded her eyes, trying to see into the darkness.
    The wanting of her pierced him like arrows, and watching, he knew it would always be so. She was in his blood, and the mere sight of her stirred him beyond imagining.
    He stepped from the shadows, so close his thigh touched hers. She spun around, dropping the mop, her mouth round with surprise. The knowledge of what they were to each other and what they would be sparked in their eyes.
    “Be generous, Kate,” he said, reaching for her.
    She hesitated only a moment, then, surrendering, she wrapped herself around him, her arms circling his shoulders, her hands woven in his hair, her left leg pressed against his groin and her right curved around his leg.
    “Where have you been?” she whispered.
    He cupped her face. “Waiting for this.”
    Her sigh was as soft as prairie grasses bending before the wind.
    Even before his lips touched hers he knew the honeyed taste of her, the warm, musky scent of her. It filled his nostrils and the pores of his skin. It raced through bone and sinew and blood, pounding with the insistent beat of war drums.
    There was no need for words. Mouths joined, skin touching skin, they sank to their knees, weak and dying of the love-lust that consumed them. His hands were under her shirt, on her soft breasts, and hers massaged him through his well-worn jeans.
    She made a soft, keening sound, like a wounded animal, and Eagle scooped her into his arms. He whistled once, twice. Out of the darkness came his black stallion. Kate was no burden to him as he mounted.
    “I will not submit to these barbaric ways,” Kate said even as she wrapped her arms around his chest.
    “Submissive women bore me, Wictonaye .” He bent close, his eyes challenging hers. Kate held his stare while night winds soughed softly about them. From far away came the cry of a coyote.
    Still holding his gaze, Kate unlaced the leather thongs at the neck of his shirt, wet the tip of her finger with her tongue, then slowly traced his nipple.
    “I will never submit,” she whispered.
    Smiling, Eagle dug his heels into the stallion’s flanks.
    Thundering across the prairie with the wind in her hair, Kate existed in a state of being