Free Witch Dance by Peggy Webb Page B

ancient traditions of my people, there is a ceremony lovers use so that they may know each other.” He traced her lips with the tips of his fingers.
    She closed her eyes, breathing in the dark, musky scent of him. Behind her, the mountains cast giant shadows while the river murmured its timeless song.
    When Eagle withdrew his hands, she leaned toward him and raked the tips of her nails down his chest. “In the tradition of my people . . . we would long since have been joined together, panting on this blanket.”
    “Patience, Wictonaye .” Smiling, he touched her breasts. “See what the waiting does.” Her nipples, already peaked, turned hard as diamonds in his skilled hands.
    He withdrew his touch once more. She was almost screaming with need.
    “I’ve never had patience.” She ran her hands over his chest. “If I had a weapon, I would take you at gunpoint.”
    “Will this do?” He pulled a lethal-looking knife from his belt and held it toward her, hilt first, the blade gleaming in the moonlight.
    She traced the flat side of the blade, shivering at the feel of the cold, deadly steel. Then, setting the knife aside, she scooted close to him, close enough so that their bodies touched from chest to knee. Lacing her arms around his neck, she bent down and slowly traced his lips with her tongue.
    She felt the shiver run through him, then leaned back, smiling.
    “So . . . mighty warrior. Teach me patience.”
    “We will begin” —he took a deep shuddering breath, then reached for her right hand— “like this.” Slowly he laced their fingers together. His palm was warm and strong. “And then you will touch yourself” —he grazed her breasts with his fingertips— “like so, to indicate what you like.”
    “And you?”
    “I will do likewise.” He pressed his hand against the flat of his belly and ran it downward.  Breathless, she watched. “It is the mirror dance . . . an ancient and time-honored prelude to love.”
    With her eyes holding his, she touched herself, touched herself in all the places she wanted his hands, his lips, his tongue. She imagined him sliding through her slick, satiny passages, imagined the hard, heavy feel of him, the blessed friction that would both soothe and excite. Her breath sawed through her lungs, and her head fell back on a neck too limp to support its weight.
    Her right hand clenched, tightened, and Eagle felt the shudder that racked her. His blood roared in his ears. She was ready for him now, ready for the final dance that would send them flying to the skies.
    He loosened his hold on her hand, and slid his fingers slowly up the length of her arm, across the path of moonlight that gleamed on her bare shoulder and over her tender, blue-veined throat.
    “Fly with me, Wictonaye ,”
    “Yes . . . oh, yes,” she whispered, reaching for him.
    She was a lily stretched upon his Indian blanket, a fallen flower offering her nectar to him. And he took it, took all of it, searing her with fingers and tongue until she was thrumming with need.
    Humming low in her throat, a sound both musical and passionate, she rose from the blanket and bent over him. Her tongue made fire in his blood as her hair fell in a bright curtain across his belly.
    And Eagle knew that her hair was the thing he would remember most about this night, her shining hair strewn across his dark skin like blood.
    All the poetry in his soul spilled forth, and he whispered praises in the ancient tongue of his people, praises to her bright hair and her skin that was white as the wings of doves. Lowering her to the blanket, he covered her and together they soared.
    Eagle and his Wictonaye .

 
     
    Chapter 8
    She was totally without shame, lying on the Indian blanket in broad daylight, tangled with her lover. A pale pinkish glow lay on the land as the sun peeked over the mountain. In the early morning light his skin glowed, smooth and earth-colored. She knew how every inch of it looked, felt, tasted.
    Kate bent down and