Shawnee Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

stroke of fingers on a harp. “Look up.”
    Clarissa’s mouth formed a silent “Oh” as her eyelids fluttered open. She was gazing upward at the ring of cliffs that surrounded the pool. Cascading ferns and mosses, beaded with moisture, festooned the rocky ledges. Sprays of tiny white flowers nestled among them like bunched lace. High above, the great golden orb of the moon glowed against the inky velvet of the sky.
    “The Shawnee believe the moon is the home of Kokomthena, our grandmother, who made all living things.” Wolf Heart’s voice, blending with the sounds of darkness, had taken on a mystical quality. “She made the deer and the bear and the panther. She made fish and birds and insects—and people. First the Delaware, then, when she’d had more practice, the Shawnee.”
    “And do you believe that, too?” Clarissa asked, still lost in floating.
    “Why not? It makes as much sense as anything I ever heard in church.”
    “But do you really believe it?” she persisted, suddenly aware that his hand was no longer supporting her back.
    “I choose to believe it, as I choose to be Shawnee.”
    Clarissa struggled to keep her calm balance in the water even as she struggled with the paradox of this man who so stubbornly declared himself to be what he was not.
    “And did your grandmother make white people, too?” she asked, chipping away at the edges of his maddening logic.
    Wolf Heart’s pensive silence darkened as the seconds passed. “Our grandmother was wise,” he said at last. “She knew the Shawnee would need enemies to fight. Otherwise they would grow weak and lazy. So she made the Iroquois. But the whites came from far away, long after the old stories were set for telling.”
    “So your grandmother didn’t make them?”
    “Kokomthena’s grandchildren follow her laws.” A bitter edge had crept into his voice. “They don’t ravage the land or claim to own it as white people do. Why would she make such selfish, wasteful creatures?”
    “But you are white!” Clarissa was becoming agitated now, losing her equilibrium in the water. “You’re no more Shawnee than I am Chinese—”
    She went under, righted herself and came up facing him, thrashing and spitting. “I know what you’re trying to do!” She flung the words at him. “But it won’t work, Seth Johnson, so you may as well give up! You’ll never succeed in making me over into a hide-scraping, buckskin-wearing, moon-worshiping Shawnee squaw!”
    His eyes narrowed sharply. Then, with a suddenness that made her gasp, his powerful hands caught her elbows and snatched her out of the water, lifting her up until her gaze was level with his own. His face was a stone-cold mask, devoid of expression. Only his cobalt eyes, striking flinty sparks that turned moonlight to fire, betrayed the heat of his fury. At that moment he looked all savage in his terrible beauty. He looked, she thought, as if he could kill her.
    Wolf Heart! Clarissa’s throat moved, but no sound emerged. She hung suspended between his massive arms, her heart pounding like thunder.
    “Don’t, Clarissa,” he said in a low, flat voice. “Don’t—”
    “Wolf Heart.” She found her voice, the name emerging in labored syllables. Tears welled in her eyes, one salty drop spilling over to trickle down her scarred cheek. “Please,” she whispered, not even sure of what she wanted from him. “Please…”
    A shudder passed through his body as he caught her hard against him. She felt the crush of his enfolding arms. Then his cool, firm lips covered hers, devouring, possessing, sweeping away her resistance as a flooded river sweeps away a child’s dam of twigs.
    In an explosion of long-denied hunger, Clarissa’s mouth molded to his. Her jaw slackened, leaving her open to the thrusting ravishment of his tongue. The taste of him was smoke and wild honey, laced with the mossy freshness of the pool. She could not get enough. She licked and nibbled wantonly, needing more, needing