Free Judith E. French by Moon Dancer Page B

clipped. “You were cold unto death. I warmed your body with my own—nothing more.”
    “You expect me to believe that?”
    “Your clothes were wet—as were mine. I’m not such a fool as to try and dry your thick English clothes with my skin.”
    “How ... how dare you?” Her words sounded idiotic as they fell from her lips. He didn’t expect her to believe he’d stripped her naked and lain with her for her health’s sake, did he? How could he think she would be so gullible?
    He shrugged. He snatched up his drying loincloth and wrapped it around his hips, covering his genitals. “We did not join.” His gaze raked her insolently. “If I had shared pleasures with you, Irish Fiona, you’d not have had to ask. You would know you had been loved by a man.”
    “And that—” She pointed to the bulge in his loincloth. “Do you take me for a lackwit? I know when a man is ... is sexually excited. You meant to take advantage of me. You—”
    “Cease your caterwauling, woman. I am not made of stone. You are soft, and your scent is sweet. If my body reacts as any man’s would, I am not to blame.”
    “You shame me,” she cried.
    “You shame yourself.” He picked up her damp shift and threw it across the fire at her. “Cover yourself if it makes you feel safer. But do not blame me if you die of lung fever.”
    “I never get sick. I won’t get sick now,” she flung back defiantly.
    “Then what happened to you on the stream bank?”
    “It was the cold. No one could stand in that icy water without suffering a chill—no human could. I don’t know about demons. Are you a warlock that you don’t feel as other men do?”
    “I thought we were just discussing my human feelings.” He turned away from her and donned a sleeveless vest. “Cold water is nothing to me. It is the practice of my people to bathe summer and winter. Even Shawnee children break ice to swam.”
    Fiona jerked the shift over her head, then wrapped herself again in the tawny fur. As angry as she was with Wolf Shadow, she still craved the heat of his fire. Keeping her eyes on him, she wiggled her bare toes closer to the coals. She couldn’t see a thing beyond the circle of firelight, so she assumed it was night.
    She still felt weak and drowsy. Saint Bridget be thanked that she’d awakened when she had—before he’d had his way with her. Her hand clutched the fur at her throat, and for the first time since she could remember, she didn’t feel the familiar weight of the Eye of Mist. Frantically, she searched for it. “My necklace,” she cried. “Where’s my necklace? I must have—”
    “Calm yourself,” Wolf Shadow soothed. “What you seek is here and safe. It is not the Shawnee way to speak of mesawmi, the spirit medicine of another, but I am a shaman, and what is forbidden some is different for me. When you shook with cold and would not wake, I feared the power had departed your amulet.”
    “Where is it? Give it back to me,” she demanded.
    He nodded and walked to the shadows. “I never meant to keep it from you.” He returned at once with a tightly woven bark basket, no larger than a man’s fist. Taking a forked stick from the edge of the fire, he secured the necklace without touching it and passed it over the flames to her.
    Fiona grasped her amulet in surprise. It was no longer covered with black paint. Instead the beauty of the ancient goldwork gleamed as though it were newly forged from the artist’s hand. “Oh.” The charm seemed to pulse with life in her hand. She slipped it around her neck. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I . . .” She fingered the necklace, her heart thudding. “You had no right to take it in the first place,” she reminded him.
    “Perhaps,” he replied, “but it was wrong to cover it so. Spirit medicine needs the light of the sun and the touch of your flesh. You dull the power when you hide it from the Creator.”
    “My mother painted the necklace to keep it from being stolen by some