The Lover by Genell Dellin

her blood pulsing faster in her veins. He was silly and funny and he did impulsive things,like buying Adams’s horses, and he was not half serious enough about life in general, but she’d known from the moment she’d laid eyes on him, from the moment she’d known he was honest, that whoever he was, Eagle Jack Sixkiller was a dangerous man.
    The moonlight fell across his face. It lit the fierce curve of his nose and the sharpness of his cheekbone. It shone off his hair, long and black, spread underneath his shoulder.
    It could have been paint, streaking across his copper skin as a declaration of war. She could just see him, naked and astride a barebacked horse, fitting a flaming arrow into his bow, riding at the head of a band of Cherokee warriors.
    He was a big man, and, dear Lord help her, a handsome man. Maynell had reason to be besotted.
    It was just a good thing that she, Susanna, was a much more practical, no-nonsense woman, a woman who’d had all the experiences with men that she ever wanted and more. Any entanglement with a man was a recipe for trouble. That was a lesson she’d learned at a very young age. She would never forget it.
    She had just turned fifteen back in the mountains of her native Tennessee, when Mathias Hawthorne started hanging around while she did her outside chores at Uncle Job’s place. He helped her chop the wood and carry water up from theriver when the well went dry. They talked about running away to Chattanooga together.
    He even kissed her on the mouth, so she really thought he loved her. She really thought he would take her away from there.
    But the first time Uncle Job caught him carrying the water buckets and her walking alongside, talking and laughing, Mathias got so scared he set the buckets down and ran. He never looked back. He never came back.
    Mathias turned out to be the biggest coward in the county. Mathias didn’t love her and he never had.
    And then, of course, there was Everett. Everett, who was older, Everett, who already had saved up a hundred dollars. Everett, who was talking about going to Texas.
    He had gone right up to Uncle Job the second time he had seen Susanna at the general store and asked for permission to come calling on her. The third time he came to the house and sat on the porch with her, he had asked Uncle Job for her hand.
    Susanna had felt a terrible disappointment that he hadn’t asked her first, but she was desperate by then. Everett treated her well enough, she supposed, and he could get her out of there. He could take her away from being the poor orphaned relation with no home.
    At least he wanted her to go with him to Texas.No one else had ever wanted her to go anywhere or to do anything except the hard work.
    It hadn’t been three days on the road until she knew that Everett wanted her for that same reason. She could do the hard work. And besides that, she could cook his meals and keep his bed warm.
    Everett had done more than kiss her on the mouth, but he hadn’t loved her, either.
    Her arms tightened around the feather pillow.
    She didn’t want to get tangled up with any man, ever again, but she did want to try to make Eagle Jack more comfortable. He had a bad headache and he needed this pillow.
    When she put it under his head, she would have to touch him. She wanted to touch him.
    The moonlight moved then, danced gently across his face as the branches of the big live oak tree moved outside the window. The breeze, cool and sweet, drifted into the room and brought the night with it to fill her senses.
    No, her senses were already filled with Eagle Jack. He had washed up but the smells of horse and dust were still on him and she could also catch the scent that was uniquely his. She couldn’t look at anything else but his face in the moonlight.
    His breathing was so close, so intimate, that the sounds of the cattle and the nightbirds seemed far, far away.
    He turned then, shifted onto his side and toward