Tender Ecstasy Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  PASSION’S GAZE

  Other Books By

  Title Page

  Dedtioned

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT TO:

  ECHOES OF YESTERDAY

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Other Books By2

  Copyright

  PASSION’S GAZE

  Rebecca hesitantly waited to discover why Bright Arrow had led her to this secluded spot so far from the Oglala camp. He stepped away from her to allow his gaze to leisurely and thoroughly study her from head to foot. She quietly submitted to this intense scrutiny, trembling at its unsettling effect upon her.

  His gaze riveted to her panicked eyes. He came forward; she backed away, instinctively sensing some vital drama about to unfold. He chuckled mischievously when her back made contact with the rocks, preventing any further retreat from him and the inevitable. She gasped in surprise and swallowed loudly, fearing the bold intentions she was reading within those hypnotic black eyes which roguishly enticed her.

  She held her breath as his hand came forward to stroke her silky hair and satiny skin. His touch was gentle, but disturbing. As if mesmerized, she rigidly watched as his face came toward hers. She trembled and tingled as his mouth claimed hers, tenderly plundering and deftly exploring it as never before…

  MORE BESTSELLING ROMANCE BY JANELLE TAYLOR

  SAVAGE CONQUEST

  (1533, $3.75)

  Having heeded her passionate nature and stolen away to the rugged plains of South Dakota, the Virginia belle Miranda was captured there by a handsome, virile Indian. As her defenses melted with his burning kisses she didn’t know what to fear more: her fate at the hands of the masterful brave, or her own traitorous heart!

  FIRST LOVE, WILD LOVE

  (1431, $3.75)

  Roused from slumber by the most wonderful sensations, Calinda’s pleasure turned to horror when she discovered she was in a stranger’s embrace. Handsome cattle baron Lynx Cardone had assumed she was in his room for his enjoyment, and before Calinda could help herself his sensuous kisses held her under the spell of desire!

  GOLDEN TORMENT

  (1323, $3.75)

  The instant Kathryn saw Landis Jurrell she didn’t know what to fear more: the fierce, aggressive lumberjack or the torrid emotions he ignited in her. She had travelled to the Alaskan wilderness to search for her father, but after one night of sensual pleasure Landis vowed never to let her travel alone!

  LOVE ME WITH FURY

  (1248, $3.75)

  The moment Captain Steele saw golden-haired Alexandria swimming in the hidden pool he vowed to have her—but she was outraged he had intruded on her privacy. But against her will his tingling caresses and intoxicating kisses compelled her to give herself to the ruthless pirate, helplessly murmuring, “LOVE ME WITH FURY!”

  TENDER ECSTASY

  (1212, $3.75)

  Bright Arrow is committed to kill every white he sees—until he sets his eyes on ravishing Rebecca. And fate demands that he capture her, torment her…and soar with her to the dizzying heights of TENDER ECSTASY!

  Available wherever paperbacks are sold, or order direct from the Publisher. Send cover price plus 50¢ per copy for mailing and handling to Zebra Books, Dept. 1212, 475 Park Avenue South, New York, N. Y 10016. DO NOT SEND CASH.

  Tender

  Ecstasy

  BY

  Janelle Taylor

  For Deeny A. and Joyce P., whose echoes of encouragement never fail to inspire me.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT TO:

  Hiram C. Owen of Sisseton, South Dakota for all his help and understanding with the Sioux language and facts about the great and inspiring Sioux Nation.

  Thank you.

  ECHOES OF YESTERDAY

  Hark, what strange madrigal do I hear,

  Chanting loudly with messages to fear,

  Spanning the distance o’er land and time,

  Carrying deadly secrets—both yours and mine.

  Cruelly it plays o’er the landscape of our life,

  Severing our hearts with a two-sided knife,

  Traipsing o’er mountains of fervent emotion,

  Echoing across valleys like a golden ocean.

  Its melody beginning so soft and low,

  Rapidly and surely it begins to grow.

  Louder and deadlier its notes begin;

  Where and how will the ominous song end?

  Telling of a love which began in the past;

  It cries out in anguish, Too fragile to last?

  Secrets to unmask, tales to unfold…Destroying

  those lives in its rigid control.

  As closer it dances, its demands shine clearer,

  Deeds of our past reflected in life’s mirror.

  Both friend and foe sing courageously

  And end the drama in tender ecstasy…

  Janelle Taylor

  “What treaty that the white man ever made with us have they kept? Not one. When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world; the sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them? …What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux; because I was born where my father lived; because I would die for my people and my country?”

  —Chief Sitting Bull

  Prologue

  In the spring of 1776, a beautiful and gentle English girl entered the rugged Dakota Territory along with a wagon train led by a white scout, Joe Kenny. The journey was long and arduous, and ended in tragedy for all but the young woman, Alisha Williams, and the daring scout.

  Alisha Williams was caught and enslaved by a powerful warrior who tormented her with his kindness and his brutality. Finally, the indomitable and proud Sioux Indian, Gray Eagle, was able to confess his love to his white slave. Together, they resolved that their forbidden love would somehow overcome all the savagery of the frontier that tried to part them.

  It took over a year of pain and sacrifice for the two young lovers to find happiness together, but the Great Spirit Wakantanka smiled upon the invincible Gray Eagle and his courageous white captive Alisha Williams. With the help of their friend, Joe Kenny, the two lovers were able to settle their differences. The two were able to marry according to Indian tradition and the white bride was accepted as a half-Indian princess, Shalee.

  It was early June of 1777, and Joe was taking his leave of his friends. He grinned in satisfaction as he watched the two lovers embrace, smiling into each other’s eyes. He listened as they told him of their expected child, a child who would embody the best of two worlds. He chuckled mirthfully as he related his own good news to Shalee, “I think you know the girl I’m going to marry as soon as I make it back to St. Louis: Mary O’Hara. She’ll make a fine wife for a man like me. We’ve known each other for years. We talk through that sign language I taught her. Got her waiting for my return. If she wasn’t mute, she’d be singing about now.”

  “No one deserves happiness more than you, dear Joe. You’ve saved my life many times and now you bring great joy and peace into our lives. I’ll never forget you. I hope you and Mary are just as fortunate and happy as we are.” She cast her virile husband a look of smoldering desire and deep love.
<
br />   Gray Eagle returned his wife’s radiant smile as he spoke to his white friend, “I also wish you much happiness, Koda Joe. I owe you much for bringing us such joy and peace. In time our love would have come to view, but only after much more sadness and pain. We endured too much suffering when Shalee lived as Alisha. But the past is dead now. Come and bring your new wife to see our child when he is born, for he will be the best from both our kinds. The blood of the Indian and the white will join within our child. My wife has spoken the truth, for not all whites are bad,” he admitted with a rueful grin as he gazed at Princess Shalee and then at his friend Joe Kenny. “Truce would be easy if all whites were like you two.” They all laughed.

  Joe’s heart sang with joy and relief as he watched the look of love and desire which passed between the English girl and the mighty Sioux warrior. The season for new beginnings had arrived. As Princess Shalee left the two men to return to their tepee, Joe faced his friend to bid him farewell. “This past year has been difficult for many people, Wanmdi Hota. At last the problems between you and Alisha—” he promptly corrected himself, “Princess Shalee have been settled. It’s funny how things work out sometimes. Who would have ever imagined Alisha Williams was a Blackfoot princess who’d been kidnapped as a baby from her people? I’m glad for both of you it worked out this way. She wasn’t ever meant to be a white slave, not even to the awesome Gray Eagle,” he jested, “I’ve never seen any two people love each other more than you two do,” he remarked with sincerity and warmth.

  “What of you, Koda Joe? You will soon join a woman. Do you not feel these same fires of love?” Gray Eagle teased his companion, dismissing the reality of his wife’s white blood for all time. No one would ever learn the truth of how Alisha was accepted. Alisha was now viewed and accepted as Princess Shalee; and from this moon forward, she would cease to be Alisha Williams.

  “It’s different between me and Mary,” Joe confessed. He explained his hasty and unexpected marriage to the powerful warrior beside him, “Mary O’Hara’s only seventeen and she can’t speak, but she’s a good and gentle creature, Wanmdi Hota. I’ve known her for years. She’s had a hard life in Jamie’s roadhouse; she’s like a white slave to that evil uncle of hers. She’s in deep trouble right now; she’s pregnant. The man she loved was killed before he could marry her. Watching you and Shalee, I’ve learned what I’ve been missing all these years alone. I think it’s about time I settle down.”

  “You could accept the child of another man as your own?” the warrior asked in surprise. “What of her remaining love for this dead man?”

  “In time, I’m hoping she’ll forget him. But I can’t allow her and her child to suffer for a foolish mistake.”

  “Love is a powerful force,” Gray Eagle said. “But often it does not die as easily or quickly as a man. It will be harder for you to forget his ghost if you knew him.”

  “Yep, I knew him all right,” he admitted sullenly. “You did, too,” he added before thinking.

  “How is it possible I knew him?” Gray Eagle asked.

  Joe hesitated and shifted apprehensively. “I don’t think we should discuss him.”

  Gray Eagle eyed his friend pensively. “I do not understand. A koda can trust another koda with the truth and with his life.”

  “The girl I’m marrying carries the child of Powchutu,” he reluctantly informed the stalwart man beside him. “Before you say anything, let me explain,” he hastily continued at the look of rage and hostility which stormed across the handsome features of Gray Eagle. Powchutu was the half-breed who had left Gray Eagle for dead in order to keep Alisha for himself. “Mary met Powchutu while he was pretending to be Alisha’s brother. When Alisha refused to marry him, he turned to Mary. Of all people, you know how cunning and persuasive he was. She’s young and innocent; she honestly loved him. From what I’ve learned, he was actually going to marry her. But he was killed before he learned about the baby. Mary has enough troubles being in the hands of that evil O’Hara and being unable to talk; she doesn’t need to add another problem with a fatherless child. As far as anyone will know, the child will be mine.”

  “What about Shalee? Does she know of this unborn child of Powchutu’s?” the warrior demanded, envisioning that half-breed scout who had nearly destroyed his love.

  “No. And I don’t think she ever should. He was like a brother to her, no matter the suffering he brought into her life with his obsessive love. Powchutu’s dead; the child will be mine,” Joe firmly declared.

  “As you say, Koda Joe. This will remain a secret from my wife. I do not wish her to ever hear his name again. If he still lived, I would slay him myself!”

  Many months passed. During February of 1778 in the domain of the Eagle, the Great Spirit delivered a son to the famed warrior Gray Eagle and Princess Shalee. As the illustrious warrior leaned over to kiss the moist brow of his beloved wife, he stated in a clear voice laced with love and pride, “We shall call him Bright Arrow, Grass Eyes. He will grow straight and fly true like his name; he will be the shining light which will lead the Oglala to greatness after I am no longer chief.”

  During August of that same year, far to the East in the wilderness near the central section of the Missouri Territory, Joe Kenny and Mary O’Hara Kenny delighted in the birth of their daughter Rebecca. Mary lovingly observed her rugged husband as he held his daughter for the first time, laying to rest the bittersweet memories of the half-breed scout who had once controlled her life. For one last time, she grieved over her two dead loves and for what was never meant to be. This tiny Rebecca would reveal the love and loyalty she owed this gentle man whom she had wisely married last July. It was over now; she would never visit those two graves again.

  Both children grew and learned under the guidance and influence of their parents and peoples. During the next seventeen years, many changes took place in the frontier and in the lives of those two children, children from different worlds. At fifteen, Rebecca Kenny’s world was torn assunder by the tragic deaths of her parents from cholera. In a near daze, she was taken to live with her great-uncle in St. Louis, helplessly following in the footsteps of her mother as a scorned free laborer to Jamie O’Hara. But far away to the west, the son of Gray Eagle and Shalee grew tall and strong, a vital and happy child. Chief Running Wolf died, making Gray Eagle chief of the mighty Oglala Sioux, placing Bright Arrow next in line for that powerful rank.

  Over this span of years, a massive surge of white settlers and soldiers flooded the Indian territories. Atrocities and hatred increased; the racial war seemed endless. Great Britain, Alisha Williams’s motherland, had been defeated by the American Colonies and had granted them independence. This truce opened the path for numerous white settlers to spread westward. The hard journey created a new type of American settler: one who was as daring and defiant as the intrepid Sioux whom he boldly and recklessly confronted. A bitter clash resulted from the head-on confrontation between these two powerful forces. Tragic defeat was inevitable for one side or the other.

  In the spring of 1796, Princess Shalee is thirty-seven years old. Even so, her beauty seems to increase with the passage of time. At forty-three, Gray Eagle is still an indomitable warrior. He is on constant guard against those evil white forces which could take his lands and slay those he loves. How he wishes the days were as peaceful as they were before this heavy influx of whites and Bluecoats. But he knows times will never be that way again. But neither can there be truce and safety. He longs for other children which Shalee has been unable to give him. Each time his only son Bright Arrow faces grave danger, he fears what life would be without him; and fear is a repulsive sign of weakness in a brave.

  Bright Arrow has gradually and inevitably become a noted warrior whose courage almost matches that of his legendary father. At eighteen, he is very much a man: virile, handsome, powerful, and self-assured. At his father’s side, they fiercely struggle to withhold their lands from the rapidly advancing white man. Unaware of his mother’s real identity, he believ
es his beloved mother is the half-breed daughter of Chief Black Cloud. He has never questioned the fluent English which his father and mother have taught him, a cunning weapon to be used against his white enemies.

  In May of this portentous year, another wagon train heads westward toward the Dakota Territory from St. Louis. The seventeen-yearold Rebecca Kenny is forced to accompany her cruel and deceitful great uncle on this fated journey to establish a new roadhouse and trading post at Pierre. The golden-skinned, auburn-haired, tawny-eyed beauty finds herself at the mercy of her cruel kinsman. Orphaned and penniless, she plots to escape his evil plans for her as their perilous trek into the wilderness continues.

  As if foreseeing the deadly fate in store for both the white man and the Indian, an ominous song imperceptibly sings above the cries of pain and the shouts of hostility, a mesmeric chant which calls both friend and foe into a new and fatal drama. Spanning time and distance, the mystic melody begins its ominous notes, ever increasing its volume. Its sound reverberates across the savage frontier. Its echoes of hatred and revenge are heard throughout the forests and prairies, threatening this new generation of forbidden lovers and challenging the two hearts whose love has surpassed all difficulties these past eighteen years…

  Chapter One

  “Weren’t you warned not to stray so far from camp?” Captain Jake Selby’s voice cut into Rebecca’s thoughts. “If you can’t obey orders, then I’ll confine you to camp!”

  She whirled to face him, anger and resentment sparkling vividly in her eyes. “Then order your men to stop gaping at me!” she protested in annoyance, the soldiers’ offensive behavior pushing her beyond control.

  Amused chuckles greeted her ears and grated upon her already frayed nerves. “You can hardly blame them for admiring a beautiful woman,” he playfully chided her, his own eyes branded with undisguised lust as they surveyed her from auburn head to dainty foot. “It gets mighty lonesome out here,” he murmured in a suggestive tone, a lecherous grin tugging at the corners of his wide mouth.