Claimed on the Frontier (14 page)

He lifted his head and climbed up on the bed next to me, dropping his mouth to my ear.

“I know, darlin’,” he whispered. “But I want you to trust me. You are mine. And your trust pleases me.”

I closed my eyes and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Very good.” Slowly, slowly, he kissed his way back down to my navel, and then lower. I was very familiar at this point with his wicked attention to my most sensitive parts, and my body hummed with the memory of what he could and would do. But I wasn’t prepared for the first thrust of his tongue between my legs. My hips jerked, and he held me down, slowly, purposefully dragging his tongue along my most sensitive parts. The sensation was amazing. I moaned his name and closed my eyes as he held me tightly and continued to lazily lap and suck. I moaned, my arousal mounting until finally, with one last thrust of his tongue, I soared, groaning his name out loud as waves of ecstasy overtook me. I had barely finished when he was atop me, thrusting himself between my legs, and the delicious feeling of being full made me moan again. I built again, until we reached the moment of completion and we were both spent and panting on the bed.

After a moment, he tugged the apron strings and my wrists fell free. Aaron lay on the bed, pulling the layers of blankets up around us, and my naked body pressed up against his. He ran a hand down my head, smoothing out my hair, running his fingers through the thick tresses. We lay that way in silence for a while before I spoke.

“How did you know?” I whispered.

“Know what?” he said groggily, his eyes closed while he continued to stroke my hair.

“Know how to…
do
that to me?”

Though his eyes remained closed, his smile faded. We lay there in the silence for a while, and I wondered if I’d spoken out of turn, asking him. Did
all
men know how to do these wicked, lovely things? Maybe I was the one who was in complete ignorance, and there was some sort of pool of knowledge everyone else had that I didn’t.

But after making love, in the dark of our room, the two of us lying exposed to one another, there was no reason to hide.

“I told you once that there was one I lost,” Aaron began. “She was a woman I loved.”

I hadn’t expected this conversation and I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to hear it, not now, not when we’d just made love and the afterglow of my ecstasy still stained my skin. But I did not interrupt.

“When I was a young man, I fell in love with a woman. A French woman. My parents did not know. She would not have been welcome in our home, and I kept our friendship secret. She was alone, and she was lovely. Funny. Kind. And devastatingly beautiful.” I felt a bit jealous at that, but remained quiet. “She was my first love, and she knew… much. She taught me everything she knew.”

“How did she know so much?” I asked plainly.

“She was decades older in experience. She had the prettiest accent. She was a woman of the night… a lady of the line, so to speak.”

It was a shocking admission.

“What happened to her?” I whispered.

“She died. Taken with consumption, and cold in the ground not twenty-four hours later.”

It felt wrong to be jealous of a woman who’d passed, when I had Aaron, warm and very much alive, right there with me.

I closed my eyes, willing myself to take on the pain he felt, that I could feel he still harbored.

I didn’t contradict him, but allowed him the space to talk freely.

“Her name was Noelle.”

“It’s a lovely name,” I whispered.

“She was lovely,” he agreed, pulling me up closer on his bare chest. The little curls of hair on his chest prickled my naked skin, and I felt my nipples harden against him. Running one warm hand down my back to my bottom, he squeezed and pinched.

“I couldn’t save her,” he said sadly, as he ran his rough hand through the length of my thick hair. The words hung in the air between us as I lay atop him, his heartbeat beneath my cheek, my legs entwined with his. I thought of the night he’d taken me from the Fitzgeralds, and the way he’d covered my hand in the wagon when we came to the wagon train.

Everything began to make sense to me now. I understood now, why he was so serious about my safety, always making sure I was taken care of.

He could not save her.

But he had saved me.

I wondered if I was the woman he needed. I knew little of right from wrong, other than what my heart told me, and now, what Aaron instructed me to do. How could I be the woman he wanted? How could I be a woman of strong moral conviction? How could I possibly turn his head the way the woman he’d loved had? I was just a girl.

Would he ever love me as I loved him?

Chapter Eight: In Trouble

And so our days and nights traipsed on to the cold of winter.

During the day, I learned how to keep house. It was almost fun, at first. I enjoyed preparing meals for Aaron, humming to myself as I fried his eggs or stirred his porridge in the pot over the open flame. I was becoming quite adept at cooking over the hearth, and Aaron had rigged it so that my setup was quite manageable. Still, I did watch wistfully as Geraldine or ma cooked over their stoves, and wished for one of my own.

I wasn’t the only one who wished for a stove. Part of my problem was that I was so intent on getting everything done quickly that I didn’t always pay attention to what I was doing. And not paying attention when cooking over an open hearth could yield devastating results. The hearth was extremely hot, fiery, and dangerous, and I’d been warned clearly to exercise caution.

Aaron had punished me a few times, and he’d threatened to do so a few more times. His ever-present authority over me was very real. I respected him. In the evenings by the fire, when I mended his socks or worked on my knitting, he would say in his low voice, “Time for bed, Pearl.” I always obeyed him, then, as there was something comforting about his insistence in bringing me to bed. On days when I was tired from having worked long hours, it was not uncommon for him to say, “Time for me to put you to bed, little one.” It did not make me feel like a child. No. I felt cared for when he spoke to me that way.

And when he chided me for acting impulsively, or raised a brow because of my rude tone or for speaking out of turn, I quieted and obeyed him. It wasn’t because I was a passive or meek woman. I was hardly a meek little angel. It was because I yearned so to please him.

But I had a lot to learn.

One morning, I woke later than I intended. I’d slept poorly and rose in a bad temper. Aaron was already dressed and heading out, and I hurried to warm my frigid hands by the fire he’d started. My fingers were so cold I could barely button my dress, and by the time I went to the fire, I was irritable. My apron strings were hanging loosely about me as I scurried about the kitchen. Geraldine and ma were coming to visit, and I needed to prepare our little home for their coming. I pulled out the flour and milk, prepared to make biscuits, and I was moving so quickly, the heel of my boot caught on my petticoats. I heard a
rip
and I nearly tumbled straight into Aaron.

“Easy, now, Pearl,” he said, catching me in his strong arms and setting me upright. “What’s got you rushing about so?”

“Oh, your mother and that… that good-for-nothing nitwit are coming to visit today!” I said. His eyes widened.

“Pearl!”

I sighed. “Oh, Aaron, she’s so mean and spiteful.
Must
I have her visit?”

He frowned. “Well, no. What’s she done that’s got you so worked up?”

I hung my head as I continued my breakfast preparations.

“She told me yesterday my knitting looked like it’d been drug around by the barn cat, and that my hair was as wild as a mountain lion’s.” My hair
was
wild and I knew it, so long and thick I would tame it daily into braids I twisted at the nape of my neck, but the pesky curls would tug free, forming a veritable halo around my head later in the day. It was inevitable.

Aaron frowned. “Phillip should take a hand to that girl’s backside,” he muttered.

“Hmmph,” I replied. “Wouldn’t I like to see that!”

He grinned. “No sympathy for little girls being put in their place, is it?”

I shook my head. “None!”

He sat down on the chair by the table, tugging on one of his worn boots. “Now, you don’t need to have her come here. I’ve no doubt ma would love to visit, and I’m not sure how you can keep Geraldine away. If she were mine, I’d have a thing or two to say, but it’s difficult for me to tell her she’s not welcome here because she made an offhand comment about your knittin’ and hair.” He pulled the other boot on. “Seems to me that’d make you seem like you were childish or bitter. Better for you to be the bigger person and ignore such comments.”

“Ignore her!” I protested. He paused in his dressing and focused a stern eye upon me.

“Are you talkin’ back to me, little girl?”

Usually, an admonition from Aaron was enough to make me behave myself. But I was angry at him. I’d taken his comment to mean that he didn’t much care about the way she treated me, and it wasn’t fair. He thought I was being childish and overreacting. That hurt. Still, I well knew the warning was for my own good, and landing belly-down over his thighs for a paddling before our day had even begun was not how I wanted the morning to go.

I sighed. “No, sir.” But, still angry and irritable, I turned to the stove, hiking up my skirts so the torn petticoat wouldn’t trip me. It took a long time to get the water boiling in the lidded pot deep in the embers, and I’d become quite adept at stoking the fire and cooking efficiently.

“Girl, you change out of that torn dress before you trip and fall into those flames,” he scolded.

“It’s not my dress that’s torn,” I muttered, low enough that I doubt he heard me. What did menfolk know of such things, anyway? “Doesn’t even know the difference between a dress and a petticoat,” I nearly whispered to myself. Mending my torn petticoat would take time, much longer than I had when I needed to get breakfast going before my visitors arrived. I’d planned to bake a cake to have for tea when they came.

“What’s that?” he said, his hand on the latch to the door before he left.

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled. I couldn’t even bring myself to turn and look at him. I heard the door open and close.

“Crickets and cattails,” I fumed. “First, I’ve got to open my door to that
cow
. Then I’ve got to get breakfast going. And now he wants me to change out of my petticoat? As if I have time?” Quickly, stepping around the tear so that I could splash buttermilk on my biscuit dough, I began preparing breakfast. My plan
was to hightail it to my bedroom and pin up my petticoat before he returned for breakfast. But I forgot. I’d merely tucked it up and moved along with my hasty preparations.

I don’t know how it happened. One minute, I was stirring the porridge, enjoying the warmth of the embers on my cold hands, and the next, I was turning, about to stand, when the toe of my boot went straight through the tear in my petticoat, and I lost my footing. I’d have fallen straight into the flame and no help for it, if I hadn’t caught the toe of my boot on the bellows and stick I’d laid carelessly in front of the hearth.

I’d never heard the door of the cabin open, and didn’t know Aaron was there. I heard him shout and I closed my eyes, bracing myself for the inevitable. I was going to fall into the fire. I was going to be burned, badly. In the split-second interval between falling and Aaron catching me, I prepared myself for the worst, but fell at an awkward angle and near enough to Aaron that only the very edge of my petticoat grazed the fire.

Aaron yanked me to him, stomping on the flames, pulling me away from the danger and into the middle of the room. I huddled against his chest, sure now that I would not be harmed by the fire, but certain of his wrath. I was not mistaken in my expectation.

“Pearl!” he shouted, both hands on my shoulders, shaking me, not roughly, but none too gently either. “What on earth were you thinkin’!” He never raised his voice to me, but now he positively bellowed. I felt tears come to my eyes as I shook my head.

“I wasn’t thinking,” I said. “I was careless. I’m so sorry.”

He pulled me into his arms as he sat cross-legged straight on the floor, inspecting me all over to make sure that I was indeed unharmed. He kissed the top of my head fiercely as he rocked me, and I could feel the pounding of his own heart.

“How did that happen? What caused you to fall?”

My stomach sank and I could not bring myself to look at him. I buried my head on his chest.

“Pearl,” he warned. I swallowed, but as I lifted my face to speak to him, his eyes fell on the torn petticoat. His eyes narrowed, his lips thinning, his puckered brow so foreboding my breath caught in my throat. I’d not incurred the wrath of my husband so since the time he’d rescued me from drowning. And I knew in my heart this would be a very similar situation. When he spoke, his voice was calm and controlled, but deadly quiet.

“Didn’t I tell you to change?” he asked. “Didn’t I tell you not to go near the fire with a torn dress?”

I decided it was not time to correct him and point out that it wasn’t my dress, but the petticoat.

“Yes, sir,” I whispered.

“And did you not tell me you would?”

I nodded and cast my eyes down. I couldn’t look at him. Would he pull me over his lap right there in the kitchen? My heart was thundering in my chest. The only sounds in the cabin were my labored breathing and the crackle of the fire several yards away. Finally, he stood and pulled me along with him. I could hardly keep up with his long strides.

“You go to our bedroom,” he said in a low voice. “You will strip off your clothing, and lay yourself belly down on our bed. You will wear nothing but your chemise. Am I clear?”

My eyes widened as I looked up at my furious husband. I could hardly breathe. I merely nodded, hung my head, and walked to our bedroom.

I told myself that a warmed bottom, which I was certain to receive, was certainly preferable to having been burned badly by the fire. I’d heard tell of a young child, several years younger than Matthew, who’d fallen headfirst into the flames of the open hearth and suffered crippling injuries. A man nearby caught his whole cabin in fire, burning it to the ground. Devastating accidents, damage to the home, and death were not unheard of when it came to open fires. The hearths were our source of life and our bane.