Wind Song (18 page)

His hand locked on the one with which she still clasped the doorknob. He loomed over her, his eyes glittering in the darkness. His warm breath fanned her face, and the faint scent of whiskey enveloped her, intoxicating her. He pushed the door closed and backed her against it. Nervously she pushed away the hair that had fallen over one temple. “What do you want?” she asked, shamming a poise that had deserted her the minute he touched her.

His eyes narrowed. “What do I want? How can you ask that?  I want you.  I want you any way I can have you, any position, anytime.”

As if fixated, she stood trembling. His hands came up to cup her bare shoulders. “You tell me you don’t want a commitment,” he said in a voice that rasped with whiskey and raw wanting. He shrugged. “But you want me. And I’m here to see that you don’t go without.”

Her heart pounded in her ears like a pneumatic drill. “Not like this,” she whispered. “Not coming like a thief in the night . . . not—”

His mouth crushed down on hers, and her hands came up to push against his chest. “Don’t!” he mumbled against her lips, and subjugated her mouth with his again.

Resisting his strength was pointless anyway. She remained standing passively within the shackle of his arms. Or tried to. But the narcotic smell of the alcohol on his breath, his tongue mating with her tongue, his lips molded against hers— they all had their effect in weakening her resistance. His hands moved down to cup her buttocks and grind her against him. While he was still kissing her, his fingers worked the slinky nightgown up to her hips and slipped beneath her panties to sensuously knead her flesh.

She angled her chin to better answer his kiss. She could hear herself breathing hard and hated her weakness. Yet her hands, caught against his chest, slid inside the open shirt and searched to find the tiny nipples hidden within the nests of curling hair. Her fingernails flicked them to a button hardness.

He groaned. “I’m going to make love to you, Abbie.”

She twisted her mouth free from the domination of his kiss. “No!”

He easily scooped her up against him. “Which way is your bed?”

“Cody, I won’t let you do this.”

He started walking. “Why not? You admit you want me.”

She gasped, but his kiss quieted her protests. His knee found the bed, and he unceremoniously dropped her on the mattress. He stripped his shirt away and kicked off his boots and jeans. She should have moved, but the dim blur of his powerful body transfixed her.

As if he possessed the night vision of a cat, he unerringly reached across the bed to grab one of her ankles and pulled her to the bed’s center. “You wouldn’t!” she whispered.

He laughed. “I shouldn’t.”

Why was she fighting him when she did want him? Slowly, while he watched, her hands inched her lacy bikinis down over legs that she had just that night shaved and lavished with scented cream —for him?

When the bikinis dropped to the floor, his hands captured her ankles and spread them wide. Sinuously he slid up over her thighs and stomach, like a giant python that would crush her within its embrace. He caught her hands and anchored them above her against the headboard. “Abbie . . . Abbie . . . your name plays over and over in my brain like some shaman’s ritualistic litany.”

To her he was a shaman—a shaman who had spread his magical medicine like a net over her, a net she tried one last time to resist. “Cody, please—let me think. People just don’t—”

Gently he kissed each eyelid and pushed the hair off her forehead. “Abbie ... I wouldn’t ever want to hurt you.”

She should have been furious, but her imprisoned position only excited her. Above her his eyes glowed with the same arousal that coursed through her. She tilted her chin, offering him her lips. “Cody
...”

“The sound of your name on my lips is enough.” He took her then with the same fierceness of that first kiss the day of the flash flood.  And as he finally poured into her the powerful essence of his life force, he growled, “You’re physically mine, Abbie . . . and one day I’ll claim your for mine completely.

* * * * *

Her hand groped in the dark on the nightstand for a package of cigarettes. And then she remembered again that she had given up smoking.
Shit
!

She rose up on one elbow and tried to read the digital clock. Almost six. How long had she drifted in that world of semisleep? Beside her Cody’s breathing was even. One of his heavymuscled thighs anchored her calf to the mattress. Her gaze strayed to the fork of his legs, and she had the urge to stroke that cylindrical length of coppery flesh, to bring him once again to the state of blinding excitement in which they had met so often during the night.

She was becoming quite the warrioress, displaying aggressive love- making that seemed in no way to threaten him. At his urging she had become the aggressor, rising above him to take him within her and lead him with her on her wild, exultant ride until she collapsed, her hair tumbling across his face and shoulders. Afterward, he had stroked her hair, whispering words of praise for his warrioress.

He had talked later—in his sleep—and tossed, pushing the sheets from his sweat-soaked body. He had mumbled about a suicide—a showerhead —Indian children caught between two worlds. And she knew what for her was a tragedy was for him a living nightmare.

She knew that she was falling in love with him. He wasn’t an ordinary man. He was stimulating to be with. The quiet, forceful way he spoke, the intent way he listened, the thorough way he made love—gentle yet resourceful. Why couldn’t they have met years ago? He was a man whom she wanted to be with, . . . but could she tie herself to him forever?

Careful not to shift the mattress, she blindly felt about on the floor for her gown and retrieved it.

Stealthily she edged her leg from beneath his. But when she went to rise, his hand entwined in her long hair, forcing her head back.

“You’re still running away, aren’t you?”

“I’ve got to get ready for school.”

He released her hair and rolled to a sitting position, his arm propped on one crooked knee. “You know what I mean, Abbie.”

She sprang from the bed, the gown held protectively in front of her. “What do you want from me?” she asked. He said nothing but regarded her with such a piercing look that she cried out, “I can’t, Cody! Don’t you understand? I’m not Spartan like you. I can’t be content with – ”

“—living like an Indian?” he sneered.

“I want more from life than you do.”

“You’re a coward.”

“No more than you. At least I don’t hide out from the world. Walking on the perimeters of society, afraid to get involved. At least I’m trying to find my place.”

“And what is your place? Are you nothing but a pretentious socialite who takes but cannot give?”

“Damn it!” she cried. “That’s all I’ve done is give, give and give and give.” Her fists clenched at her sides; the gown slithered down about her ankles. Tears spiked her lashes. “It’s my turn now!”

“Giving and taking can’t be done by turns.”

“You ought to know—I’d be willing to bet that Emily DuMonde does a lot of giving.”

He arched one brow. His smile when it came was scintillating. “Perhaps she’s more of a woman than you are.”

Her hand arced back to slap him. “Don’t try it,” he ordered. “I’ll only end up making love to you again.”

“You don’t know what making love is!”

“And you do?”

His thrust hit home, pierced through to her core. “Get out!”

In one fluid movement Cody rose from the bed and scooped up his jeans. Proudly unashamed of his nakedness, he stood before her and snapped them on. “I’m finished trying to find the real Abbie Dennis.” He tossed his shirt over one shoulder. He paused at the bedroom door. “When you find her, let me know.”

* * * * *

This time Abbie was careful to obtain permission for the Flagstaff field trip from the BIA in Gallop through the principal’s office. Without being told, she knew that she was on parole, that it would take just one more incident, even a minor one, and she would be denied the oppotunity to renew the final year’s portion of her two-year contract.

“And just how do you propose to finance such an outing?” the principal demanded.

“Remember the beads the children made? We had them sold in Tuba City.”

Miss Halliburton drummed her pen against the desk. “Did you look into all the ramifications of such—”

“I took care of everything,” Abbie hastened to reassure her, fearing that the older woman would refuse permission for the field trip.

“Frankly, the best thing that could happen for everyone around here would be for you to quit, Mrs. Dennis.”

“But I won’t.”

Miss Halliburton looked down her romanesque nose at Abbie. “I’m beginning to realize that that’s one of your most noticeable characteristics —indomitability. A dangerous thing.”

“And you wouldn’t say that you also share that trait, Miss Halliburton?”

The principal’s eyes narrowed. “Yes. But I was intelligent enough—or perhaps I should say humble enough—not to come out to Kaibeto trying to change things to my way of thinking. It just so happens that the teachers who came before us might have known something more than we do.”

Forgoing the issue, Abbie reverted to the original subject. “The sale of the necklaces raised enough money for the field trip. If I can find enough teachers and aides to volunteer to supervise the children
...”

“And what about transportation?”

“I thought I would see if we could borrow the Red Lake Boarding School’s two buses. We could make it to Flagstaff and back in one day.”

“You realize that I’m almost hoping something goes awry?”

“Yes.”

* * * * *

Dear Lord, please don’t let Robert run off again, Abbie prayed.

She considered leaving the boy behind, but rejected the idea. He would probably choose just that time to run away from the school. Why had she had to end up with Robert? Ever since his father had failed to show up at Christmas, the boy had refused to participate in class. No longer would he even draw his pictures of Navajo Mountain. He simply stared out the window at February’s denuded trees and bleak, barren landscape. Why couldn’t he have picked on another teacher?

She would just have to keep a hawk’s eye on him, which didn’t present that much difficulty in the end. The boy sat stolidly in the bus while the other children squealed and bounced and touched everything with curious fingers. Dalah and Becky, who hoped to see her lumberjack, had volunteered to help patrol the children. Even Marshall, when Miss Halliburton submitted Abbie’s proposed itinerary to his office, had elected to go along.

Abbie, Becky, Dalah, Marshall—it seemed that they laughed with true enjoyment for the entire trip. They laughed at the Flagstaff Depot, when the train whistled in and the children hid their faces from the fire-breathing monster; they laughed at the supermarket, where the children made faces in the mirror over the vegetable bins; they even laughed on the paved streets, where the concrete gutters banked the curbs and the children got down on their knees, looking to see how deep the drainage holes were and yelling in to hear their echoes.

“I can’t remember when I’ve had so much fun,” Marshall said on the return trip.

Becky sat on the seat next to him, wiping the tears of laughter from her cheeks. Abbie, who sat with her across the aisle from Dalah and Marshall, caught the way the young Indian girl watched Marshall as he talked, and something in Dalah’s gaze made Abbie wonder. Could it possibly be Marshall whom Dalah cared for?

Despite the merriment, Abbie returned from the excursion worn out and feeling lousy. Aspirin wasn’t the answer, and she made her way to the trading post just before closing time. “I don’t know what it is,” she told Orville, “but being corralled with thirty-four screaming children on a bus would drive even a saint to drink.”

“I’ve got just the thing,” Orville assured her and groped beneath the counter. “Left over from our last bout at Cody’s house.”

“Oh, no. A drink right now would wrap my intestines in a Gordian knot.”

Besides, just the mention of Cody’s name reminded her of that first night she had spent with him at his house—-that was when her troubles had really started. That was when she had become preoccupied with Cody Strawhand to the exclusion of all else. The way he looked at her; the way he touched her. Brad had never made her feel like Cody did. Cody made her feel like a complete woman. Like the
kachina
doll when it was finally painted.

She tried to tell herself that she was merely reliving her high school infatuation days all over again. Still, the bottom of her stomach felt like it dropped out when, at the next moment, the bell tingled on the trading post door and Cody walked in. He seemed to fill the dim room, large though it was. His father had that same presence, a charisma that had taken Chase Strawhand all the way to the governor’s mansion in Santa Fe.

Cody’s eyes foraged over her, taking in the suede sheath that hugged her svelte figure; then it was as though he looked right through her, as if she weren’t even there. It was a terrible feeling, being reduced to insignificance. Never had that happened to her.