Cerise DeLand: History Nut or Why I Like Comanches!
Say what?
Yes, living in Texas and being a history nut, I have read a lot of the State’s history. Anglo women were often stolen by the Comanche Indians and taken as hostages, prisoners and sometimes kept and made their wives.
Many Anglo children were captured by the local natives who became furious at the intrusion of the white man into his hunting and burial grounds. Then when cholera afflicted so many Indians and when measles and mumps felled thousands more, the natives stole children to replace the ones who had died. Many times, young women were abducted and taken to replace the wives the Indians had lost to death and disease.
In 1836, Cynthia Anne Parker, a 9 year old Anglo girl who grew up to marry a chief and bear him four sons and a daughter, was the first of these Anglos stolen. Texas Rangers, sheriffs and many local posses searched for the child for years. Not until she was an adult did her uncle take her back to her family. But once among them, she disliked the life and ran away. Yes, she returned to her Comanche husband.
Why did she return?
I venture to say she returned because she had been nurtured in that native environment and she felt out of place among her Anglo family and neighbors. Stories abound of white women and men who had been taken by Indians and returned, but were then shunned by their families and friends for their association.
Could she have loved her Comanche husband? Yes, she could have. We love what we know and what we revere. We also come to love the characteristics of a person, seeing beyond a person’s race or color or ethnicity.
But I will say that life among the Comanche was far from romantic. In my newest EC release, coming soon, STEAL ME AWAY, (no cover, no release date yet) I tell the story of an Anglo woman, Fancy Turner, stolen by a Comanche chieftain in the Hill Country of Texas in 1866. Fancy knows Bull Elk because she has seen him at powwows among the Comanche and the settlers. She likes him for his willingness to come to a powwow. He speaks English and a bit of Spanish, as many did because they had to do so to get along with the Anglo and Tejano settlers.
He understands many of the Anglo customs and so he does not insist that Fancy have her blonde hair coated with bear grease on their wedding night. He is distressed for her when she cannot easily digest their meat-based diet. When she asks him to get peaches for her from the German farmers near Fredericksburg, he tells her he will have to steal them. Conflicted that he must take from her friends to help her, nonetheless she doesn’t stop him. She needs to eat fruit.
Yes, I have written a romance—an erotic one at that. I did make Bull Elk an Alpha male worthy of a woman who adores him. But he is also of his own culture.
And he is very heavily researched!
I hope you like him when he appears on the digital bookshelves. He is a good man, albeit not one of our time or our culture. He stole his wife, made her love him and kept her with the power of that.
We can forgive the man we love for many acts. Including stealing us from our pre-conceived notions of who we can and cannot love.
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Fancy Turner knows it isn’t wise to hunger for the touch of the virile Comanche chief, Bull Elk. She should catch a husband from among the few men who returned to Texas after the Civil War. But tall, bronze Bull Elk, in his feathers and buckskin, is so handsome—and forbidden.
When Bull Elk charges onto the ranch one morning and catches Fancy up in his arms, he knows he risks the anger of his own braves and the fury of the long knives to have her. He’ll risk everything to twist her golden hair in his fist, to caress the pale swell of her breast as no man has before him. He’ll have Fancy as his wife even if he has to fight his own people to make it so.
Thrust into a world she doesn’t understand, Fancy expects Bull Elk to take her. But never in her darkest fantasies does she expect to enjoy it so much. Bull Elk’s touch is possession, his kiss a brand, and to her shock Fancy finds that the only future she wants is the one she imagines in his arms.
Copyright, Cerise DeLand 2013, All rights reserved.
Excerpt:
She was mine. Only one other man, my younger brother, would ever be allowed to touch her again. And only if I gave him permission. As I sat there with her in my lap, testing my patience as my cock grew twice its normal size, I took my time caring for her. I kneaded her aching limbs and demonstrated how I would protect her, even from the likes of Knows Brown Bear. He deserved to die by my knife for his audacity to fuck her. That upstart had been an animal himself, having taken my happy youngest sister when she was only twelve to his tipi. There he had plunged his rod inside her so violently, she had bled and died days after. Now Knows Brown Bear was dead at my hand for daring to touch the woman who would be my wife, my Shining Moon.
I ran my hands over Fancy’s injured foot and knew she had twisted her muscles. To cure this, rest was best but we were far from our new camp. To marry me with a light heart, Shining Moon must learn that in addition to being her protector, I was kind. And so I tried the Anglos’ way to win a woman’s love.
I seized a crystal length of her hair and wound it round my wrist. I smiled while I drew her mouth to mine. She gazed upon my lips too long to be uninterested. That she was intrigued swelled my pride and my cock. I had much to show her about how a Comanche loved his wife and I would begin with this command. “Kiss me again, my moon.”
She jerked away. “I am surprised that you know how to kiss.”
I gave her the distance her shock and her pride demanded while I stared into her glorious blue eyes. “I do know very well,” I said with humor.
She did not smile. “You know much about us. And you speak English very well.”
I nodded. I was calm. Why not? Her flight from me was unnecessary. “Thank you.”
She shivered beneath my hands but her words were quick and bold. “How did you learn?”
“My father’s brother took an Anglo woman to wife.”
Those large, expressive blue-bonnet eyes widened in shock. “Took her?”
I would tell her what was necessary to show we were not evil and that if she opened her mind, she could learn to love us. And me. “She never returned to you. She never wished to go.”
Shining Moon swallowed hard, her nostrils flaring as she considered that. The idea that an Anglo woman would accept a Comanche stung her, but clearly it did not appall her. That confirmed for me that she was a smart woman, able to learn new ways without regret. “What is her name?”
“Bird Sings.”
“But…her white name. What was it?”
I shook my head. “This I do not know. You may ask her. She taught her language to me, my young brother, White Hawk and my sister, Willow Talks.”
“That’s how you can talk so easily with Herr Mannheim and the MacRaes at the powwows,” she said with some awe.
I agreed. “We make peace.”
She grabbed my hand and beseeched me with passion swimming in her eyes. “Oh, but Bull Elk you must realize that this capture will end the peace.”
I hoped not. Yet I had not watched my father and his father lead our people against the settlers all my life without the understanding that they were eager to ride off and kill others. My decision to take Shining Moon as my bride had been a heavy burden upon my mind for many months. Despite the cost to peace in these hills, I had seized her. Even the Great Spirit had confirmed for me in a dream that her men would not find her until she fled a fireball. I would keep her from any such conflagration and firmly in my bed, her legs spread wide for me to pleasure her. “I will have you.”
Her back stiffened, straight as an arrow. “They will come for me. Send out war parties. Hunt you down.”
“I do not fear.” And this was true. My mind was quiet. “Your men are few. Brother has killed brother in your war for many years.”
“Yes, even Sheriff MacRae and his older brother, the Ranger fought each other. But those two are strong and can gather many men from Austin and San Antonio.”
“No.”
“But—”
“No,” I said with more compassion, then I spread my fingers and ran them through her hair. Her curls felt thick and heavy, soft as the down of one of their lambs. With unrelenting power, I drew her lips to mine and spoke upon her flesh. “I am stronger and I will keep you.”
I kissed her then, her mouth all mine. Her will, floating into mine. Her body, pressing against mine. The persuasion she did not like. But at the feel of my tongue at the seam of her lips, she sighed and opened for my invasion. My tongue sank deeply into her cavern. As I predicted she would be, she was eager for me. And warm. And wet.
As her pussy would be for me tonight.
She broke our kiss. Her body heaving with outrage that she met my desire with her own. She pushed the flat of her hand against my chest and the tattoo I had the medicine man make for the sign of our coming union. “I will not be your slave. I would die first. I would find a way to—”
“Do not die.” I covered her hand with my own and ground her palm against my aching nipple. “Live with me.”
She struggled to wrench away.
I would not let her go. With a grunt, I shoved my hand between her legs, she wore no covering to her cat. That I liked and grinned at her, sweet woman that she was. Beneath my fingers, she grew hot and I was tempted to lift her skirts and stroke her juicy flesh. She would admit tonight that she belonged to me. I would show her how well my lance would fill her. This plump gatto, I would tame and pet and suck. “I am yours and soon, you will be mine and no other’s.”
