A Promise of Thunder

won’t abide trouble from either you or Storm. I have made my choice. Storm is my wife; please treat her with the respect and courtesy due her.”
    “Bah, a husband does not leave his wife so soon after marriage unless he is not pleased with her. My eyes do not deceive me, Thunder. My heart tells me you are not pleased with your white wife. But I am not greedy. I will be your second wife. I will give you what she does not.”
    “I have chosen to live in the white world, Laughing Brook, and am allowed only one wife by law.” He glanced toward the river, where Storm had fled, his blue eyes hazy with unquenchable heat. When he spoke again there was a gentle softness in his voice that Laughing Brook had never heard before. “Storm is the only wife I want.”
    Her dark eyes flashing defiantly, Laughing Brook turned on her heel and marched back to the cabin. Though Thunder seemed to beobsessed with his wife, she sensed things weren’t as they should be between them. No new bridegroom would leave his bride for two months if he wasn’t desperate to escape an unpleasant marriage. She had no idea what had prompted Thunder to take a white bride, for he was a taciturn man not given to divulging the secrets of his private life, but Laughing Brook wasn’t discouraged. Thunder had brought her to his homestead, hadn’t he?
    Having the love of Little Buffalo gave her a hold on Thunder that his pale wife couldn’t duplicate, Laughing Brook reasoned. And as long as she was in a position to control the child’s mind, she would make certain Little Buffalo and Storm never became close. Already the boy disliked his stepmother because of the seeds of discontent she had planted in his mind.
    The evening meal was a solemn one. Little Buffalo fell asleep at the table and Grady carried him to the pallet of furs and blankets he had fixed on the floor. The boy was to share it with Laughing Brook until Grady could build a separate bedroom for him and Storm. He had voiced his intention earlier to go to Guthrie the next day and buy lumber. Storm wondered if Grady intended to share the bed with her that night with his son and Laughing Brook in the same room. Although they were married, she knew she’d be embarrassed. But knowing Grady she figured it would make little difference who slept in the room.She had heard somewhere that Indian families shared the same tepee.
    After slanting Storm a furious look, Laughing Brook settled down on the pallet beside Little Buffalo. Grady blew out the light and Storm undressed, feeling more nervous than she had the first time Grady had crawled into bed beside her. At least that time they hadn’t had an audience. She didn’t know what she’d do if Grady wanted to make love. Before he returned from the reservation she had decided to be a wife to Grady in every way, but bringing Laughing Brook back with him had made a mockery of that decision.
    The bed sagged beneath Grady’s weight, and Storm tensed when his naked thigh touched hers. When he turned to take her into his arms she went rigid.
    “Are you still determined to keep us apart?” Grady whispered against her ear. “When I kissed you I could have sworn …”
    “We’re not alone,” she hissed.
    “What goes on in the marriage bed is private no matter who is present. When a Lakota warrior makes love to his woman no one else hears. It is the custom.”
    “It may be all right for savages, but it’s not all right with me.”
    Grady went still. So she still thought him a savage, his mind raged. He wanted to show her how much a savage he could be and ravish her until he’d had his fill. But he knew he’d never have his fill of Storm. He could have had hispick of women on the reservation, including Laughing Brook, but he wanted none of them. His one consuming thought was to return with his son to his homestead as quickly as possible and taste Storm’s sweetness once again.
    “Is that your final word?”
    “That’s how it must be as long as Laughing Brook and Little Buffalo are sleeping in the same room with us.”
    Rising from the bed, Grady pulled on his pants and ordered Laughing Brook into bed with Storm. Then he slid down beside Little Buffalo and spent the rest of the night trying to quell his raging hunger for a woman who had no intention of ever being a wife to him. Did she still hold him responsible for her husband’s death?
    Laughing Brook was delighted when Thunder left his wife’s bed. She realized she had been right in