It had seemed like such a grand idea at first. Tingling in anticipation of coming here to the lodge, to her, he had tried and failed to sleep. He listened to the rhythm of her quiet breathing, trying to convince himself he had come only to assure himself she was safe here in her blankets.
Earlier that evening he had fed the two women at his private table. Eating as though they hadn’t been fed for days, both had devoured every scrap of turkey and venison set before them. Afterward they had sipped steaming coffee while distant chants of the Osage scouts drifted up from the riverside victory dance.
Using a candle lantern, Custer had led the women back to the compound where the captives were kept under guard. Mahwissa disappeared toward the closest of those little fires surrounded day and night by women and children. Instead of following, Monaseetah had turned, gazing fully into the very pit of him. She signed to him that she wanted to sleep in the lodge he had brought from the camp of Black Kettle. He asked her why she would prefer to sleep alone in that cold lodge when she could stay here to sleep warm among her people. Monaseetah let him know she couldn’t be warm in those tents of the white man. No fire pit. Better to sleep in the lodge, where she could build a fire that would warm the frost from the robes before she slipped between them to sleep.
“I have no blankets or robes in the lodge,” he signed.
Monaseetah had gone off toward the prisoner tents. In a few minutes she trudged back, dragging behind her a bulky pair of buffalo robes encircling four army blankets. These, she signed, along with the red wool blanket she had worn from the battlefield—they would keep her warm on the coldest winter night.
Dragging firewood to the lodge, Custer realized he felt about as nervous as he had that first day at Bull Run seven long years ago. Green—right out of the Academy. In that awkward silence, she intimidated him from across the first dancing flames with those sinful black-cherry eyes of hers.
He had struggled to his feet and hobbled stiff-legged to the doorway. She caught him before he could duck out.
For the first time she reached out to touch the back of his hand. A shudder coursed through him like a bolt of spring lightning flaring across the prairie. She slipped her fingers into his palm, nestling his hand gently between the two of hers, then brought it to her cheek. Monaseetah closed her eyes, kissing the soldier’s freckled, callused hand. Repeatedly she murmured the word in Cheyenne before realizing he didn’t understand her tongue.
She made the sign: “Husband.”
Custer gulped. He listened to dry limbs crackling in the fire pit. Above it all, he heard the labored racing of his eager heart pounding in his ears.
At last he signed that he could not be her husband. “I have a wife. Among the white men, one wife is all a man must have.”
“Why is your wife not here? Among the Cheyenne, a woman journeys with her husband.”
“When I fight, my wife does not travel at my side.” He refused to look into those dangerous eyes of hers again.
“Yellow Hair, I am your wife for here … for now.”
It was all he could do to shut his eyes and grope his way blindly out the door into the numbing, forgiving darkness. He had cursed himself—because George Armstrong Custer had never retreated.
Never had he confronted an enemy so powerful. An enemy who wielded such a magnetic hold on him. Except Libbie.
Sweet love of heaven, how he had tossed in his blankets! the delicious, exquisite temptation of Monaseetah’s taunting him. Its fire smoldered along his limbs. He struggled to put her out of his mind, to escape into the numbing anesthesia of sleep.
But Custer had been unable to forget her. His mind conjured a vision of her with the gentle kiss of slumber caressing her copper face. So he arose and went to her lodge again.
In the aching silence of the lodge, he heard her rustle in her sleeping robes at the back of the lodge. Custer realized he wasn’t dreaming anymore.
Her coppery, fire-lit skin slid free of the black-brown fur. Custer’s nostrils flared involuntarily. He smelled her presence even before he saw the woman slipping toward him.
Now Monaseetah came into him, naked. Stripped of everything but her newfound desire for the soldier chief.
She tugged aside the flaps of his buffalo coat, slipping inside its warmth with him, snaking her arms around his waist. She buried her cheek against the warm, itchy wool of his blue tunic and sighed.
Custer shuddered involuntarily, more frightened than he had ever been—
Custer found his hands at her shoulders, his fingers moving along her soft, fragrant flesh burnished bright copper in the firelight. He pulled her to him hungrily. Monaseetah’s firmness met him, startling him, her breasts exciting him all the more.
Placing his hands on either side of her hips, Custer caressed their round, sensual fullness. With the appetite of an animal caged too long, Custer drank in the scent of her hair. His fingers traced the firm roundness of her belly.
Monaseetah moaned, whimpering with a primitive animal cry captive within her.
Suddenly, as if shot, Custer jerked back.
She drew away, to her bed at the back of the lodge. Monaseetah drew the favored red blanket about her shoulders, covering her slim body.
She called his name.
He could not face her.
He took a step toward her and gazed down at her copper face. “I don’t know Cheyenne,” he replied helplessly. Then remembered to form the words in sign.
She chose her words carefully, hands dancing before her, symbols coming together that allowed her to talk with the man who had captured her heart.
“No!” he shouted, then used his hands. “I am not your husband. I have a wife waiting for me many miles away.”
“But you came here to sleep in my robes tonight—”
Custer shook his head, turned away. To look upon her was to cause madness, to invite a consuming passion that knew no satisfaction. He shuddered with the lie of it in his soul even as the words formed in his hands.
“I do not want another man’s wife. You carry another man’s child.”
Tears gathered in her eyes, tumbling uncontrollably, cascading down her cheeks.
“I have no husband, Soldier Chief. This one who forced his bitter seed into my belly—a cruel man.”
“Monaseetah, I told you—I have a wife.”
“This wife of yours, does she lie with you?” She pressed her warmth against him. “Does she give you pleasure and happiness?”
The musk of her invaded every blood vessel within him. Custer turned away, staring at that black hole of the doorway. Then he looked again at the girl.
She sat up and the robe fell away from her dusky breasts. Her eyes as warm as coals, she signed to him. “I am a part of you now,
As suddenly as she had signed her words, he was gone.
Custer ducked his head, savagely tearing aside the door flap, exploding from the lodge. He was several steps away from that dark cone punching a coal-black hole in the starry sky before he drew another frosty breath.
“Damn her!” he rasped.
