"Good, I will play often for you then."
"Why?" she blurted.
"Because you enjoy it." He smiled.
She turned her head in question, "When you love, you want to please the one you love. Is that not so?"
"It is so." He smiled.
"I will remember this."
The next morning he was gone, but he came back soon.
"Where did you go?"
"I have killed a deer. You said you like the deer meat in stew. I will dress it out for you, and you can cook it your way tonight, and tomorrow I will cook it outside on a fire."
"Sounds good." She smiled. "You must be a very good hunter to bring back a deer so soon."
"I hunt regularly."
He brought her the meat and she began cooking it. He finished up with the deer and gave some of their guards the rest that they would not need. His men were glad to get it and took it to their homes.
The next day he showed her where she could bathe. She waited until he went back to the tepee to get in the water, and she spent some time there, enjoying the warm temperature of the water.
When she came back, her hair was still wet, and he took a towel and began drying it for her. She'd never had a man do anything like that for her and it surprised her.
She turned to stare into his face, and his expression mesmerized her.
"You have beautiful hair, Sasha." He said rather raspy.
"I am not used to so many compliments. Why do you bother with them?"
He turned her around, "Do you not know how beautiful you are?"
"Beautiful, you keep using that word. I am ordinary, and not endowed like many of the other women."
"You must understand Sasha. All men see beauty differently. Some like bigger women, some like small." He looked her up and down slowly. "You are small, but you are very lovely."
"I am not used to hearing such words." She told him. "And you don't have to keep complimenting me. I don't expect it."
"Then I must tell you often, so you believe it."
She glanced skeptically at him.
"I am glad I please you."
"Sasha," he murmured just before he took her into his arms and kissed her softly, then raised his head and looked into her warm brown eyes. "You please me very much." He whispered.
"I-I am glad." Her lips still trembled from the sweet kiss. The way he looked at her now, made a strange sensation sweep over her entire body. It was more the slow way he looked at every inch of her.
She felt warm, and weak and the urges running through her body made her confused. How could she feel these things for a man she barely knew? She'd never felt like this around Big Knife. No, Big Knife had been a safe love. But he could not make her tremble with needs of her own that she didn't understand. Why was this man so different?
Perhaps if she'd made love with Big Knife, he might have really loved her. But he never stirred the passions inside her, and he knew better than to try to take her against her will.
How could it be that this particular man stirred her?
Hadn't she loved Big Knife? Her reactions were making her doubt everything.