Vows (34 page)

 
She recoiled and cracked her skull against the wall.

 
"No!"

 
"Why not?"

 
"Let go!"

 
"We've both been wondering. It might be our only chance to find out."

 
The anger left her voice, replaced by pleading. "Tom, don't! Oh God, please don't." Frantically, she tried to pry his hand off her ankle, but he pulled relentlessly until she felt herself sliding across the closet floor, still bent at the knee and hip.

 
"If you put up too much of a fight they might guess what's really going on in here."

 
She stopped struggling … with everything except breath. It fought its way up her throat and caught on the lump of foreboding that had risen from her chest.

 
Outside, someone banged on the door, teasing. Emily jumped but Jeffcoat remained unyielding. His hand slid up her calf and came to rest behind her knee. She sat as still as a monument while his other hand searched the dark, found her cheek, then slipped around her nape, pulling, pulling, while she stiffened against it.

 
"I'm scared, too, tomboy, but I mean, by God, to find out. Now come here."

 
His mouth missed hers by an inch. He corrected his course, trailing warm breath while she sat unbending, holding her own breath keeping her lips stiff as frozen persimmons. His first kiss was cautious, a mere resting of his lips on hers. When she remained rigid he backed up—by the feel of his breath she knew he was still dangerously close—then went at it again, scarcely separating his lips to impart a hint of dampness. "Don't," she pleaded softly, plaintively.

 
But he went on as if she hadn't spoken, kissing her compellingly, angling his head, lightly swashing her lips with his tongue, thawing them. "Come on, tomboy, take a stab at it," he encouraged, and took her head in both hands, resting his thumbs beside her unwilling mouth and drawing circles as if to reshape it, rubbing his tongue across her lips persuasively.

 
She swallowed once, with her lips still closed, her heart thundering with an avalanche of forbidden feelings. He was very persistent, very poised, drawing wet figure eights upon her mouth—lightly, lightly—his breath warming her cheek until her own could no longer be contained. It came out in a rush, accompanied by a shudder, and her willpower disappeared like frost from a sun-kissed windowpane. Wilting against him, she lifted her arms and returned his embrace. When she opened her lips his tongue swept inside them at once, hot and inquisitive, inciting hers to do the same. Explorers, they circled, stroked, delved…abashed by their mutual, swift excitement.

 
It grew too intense, too fast.

 
They broke apart, hearts hammering and breaths pelting while he rested his lips against the bridge of her nose.

 
"Emily…" he whispered, and tipped her head back, found her lips again impatiently, as if unwilling to waste one moment of this stolen time. No darkness was dense enough to disguise her acquiescence; none complete enough to hide her pliancy as she drooped against him like table linen slipping to the floor and opened her soft, willing mouth to his.

 
The kiss began with full accord, then ripened with eagerness. A swell of impatience rushed up from Emily's toes, finding her unprepared for its impact. It brought heat and deep quivers and the awful need to press her breasts against him. Yet they could not be pressed firmly enough to ease the sudden ache of arousal. He fed it, kissing her full-mouthed, drawing her across his lap, moving his head to seal their fit just right.

And, oh, it was right. Her mouth seemed designed for his. She coiled around his trunk, drawing her knees up to buffet his ribs, crooking one arm over his shoulder, the other around his side.

 
His wide hand folded around her upraised elbow and rode it tight and smooth down to her armpit and to her breast. She shuddered, then lay motionless, steeping in new sensations. Her bodice fit snugly, enhancing the feeling of his whole hand cupping her, his thumb searching out the warmest, hardest spot. Deep within she felt a glorious spill and drew her knees up tighter while his hand brought a sweet, impelling ache to her breast.

 
He freed a slim breadth of space between their mouths and whispered, "How much time do you think we have?"

 
"I don't know."

 
Their rejoining was greedy: a revelation. She had never kissed so before, not with this abandon, as if to do so were an imperative. She had never given her breasts for fondling, as if to resist were unthinkable. He was more than she had expected, facile, warm-mouthed, her perfect complement.

 
Reality nagged: the closed door … the ticking clock … Charles … Tarsy … the possibility of being discovered.

 
A little longer … only a little…

 
Tom dragged his mouth from Emily's, lightly bit her lips, her chin, and her breast, through her tight bodice, as if to take away as much as possible when leaving this black cubicle. She hadn't a thought of pushing him away; each of his advances felt integral, undeniably necessary. He kissed her mouth again, fondling her breast while a hard knot formed in her belly, woman-low.

 
She was kissing him heedlessly when he clasped her arms and roughly pushed her back. "Emily, we'd better stop."

 
She felt flushed and swollen all over. Prudence took an effort. She still saw nothing but unrelieved blackness, but in it she heard his strident breathing.

 
"He's going to know," she whispered shakily.

 
"Then sit back where you were." He pressed her against her own wall and slid back to his. She drew her knees up to her clubbing heart while Tom let one leg stretch flat, hoping to appear natural when the door opened. But she realized they were about to be given away.

 
"I'll be blushing."

 
"Then tell him I kissed you and I'll apologize to him and say it was the beer."

 
"I can't tell him that!"

 
"Then slap me." A swift motion, and suddenly he was on all fours before her, groping for her hand, kissing it fast before putting it on his rough cheek. "Quick! Haul off and give it to me good so it'll leave a mark."

 
"Oh, Tom, I can't—"

 
"Quick! Now!"

 
"But—"

 
"Now!"

 
She slapped him so hard he plunked backward and yowled, "Ouch!" just as the door flew open. He looked up into the inquisitive faces of Tarsy, Charles, and the others. Emily's face was buried in her arms, but Tom had the presence of mind to spring immediately from the closet into the light where the stinging shape of her slap glowed on his cheek. Nursing it, he growled, "That's what comes of trying to make friends with your competitors." Clumping away without offering a hand to help Emily up, he groused to Charles, "You can have her. Bliss!"

 
Emily was no good at duplicity; she had to get out of Tom's house immediately or give herself away. She begged off with an early-morning veterinary call and Charles left with her within minutes after the episode in the closet.

 
Once out in the cold night she could breathe again but her voice sounded strained, even to her own ears.

 
"Charles, I don't want to go to any more of those parties."

 
"But they're only innocent fun."

 
"I hate them!"

 
"I think it's Tom Jeffcoat you hate."

 
"Charles, he kissed me in that closet. He kissed me!"

 
"I know. He apologized to me for it, and said he'd had a couple too many beers."

 
"Don't you
care
?" she demanded exasperatedly.

 
"Care?" He took her arm and stopped her in the middle of the street. "Emily, it was just a game. A silly game. I thought if you two spent five minutes in that dark closet you might come out laughing at yourselves and the way you've been acting ever since he got to town, setting sparks off one another."

 
Oh, they'd set sparks off one another, all right, but Charles was too trusting to see it. To him it had been just a game, but to Emily it had been much more. It had been a threat and a thrill and a myriad of forbidden feelings so new they left her stunned.

 
By the time they reached her home she was not only shaken, but angry.

 
"What kind of a man lets his best friend kiss his fiancée and laughs it off?"

 
"This kind." Charles grabbed her arm, spun her against himself, and kissed her as forcefully as Tom had. Releasing her, he said throatily, "I love you, Emily, in spite of the fact that you can't treat my best friend civilly."

 
Minutes later Emily slipped into bed beside Fannie and lay like a fresh-hewn plank, staring up at the ceiling with the quilt edge coiled in both fists beneath her chin. She closed her eyes and saw what she had seen in the closet: nothing. Only blackness, which heightened all her other senses. She had felt him, tasted him, smelled him. Oh, his smell!

 
She released the quilt and pressed both palms to her nose and sucked in any lingering trace of him that might remain on her skin. Even now on her palms, she recognized it. It was no scent and all scent—clothing, hair, hay, leather, and man in potpourri. Funny, she could not remember what Charles smelled like. But Tom…

 
She rolled to her belly, cupping her breasts in an effort to stop them from aching.

 
He touched you here and you came alive.

 
Only because it was dark and forbidden.

 
It was what you've wanted since that day on the turntable.

 
No.

 
And the night he found you crying.

 
No.

 
Yes.

 
I never intended to kiss him. Not even when I walked into that closet. I only wanted to prove I was no prude.

 
And you did, didn't you?

 
I never meant to cheat Charles.

 
You didn't cheat Charles. You only found out what was lacking between the two of you.

 
The terrifying thought kept Emily awake most of the night.

Chapter 12

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T
he following morning Emily awakened as she had slept—troubled. When she was troubled she wanted to be in only one place: with the animals. She dressed in woolen britches, jacket, and bobcap and slipped from the house before anyone else was up. A new snow had begun falling, brittle and icy. Flat-footed, she skated through it, head hanging, hands buried in her rib pockets.

 
Inside, the stable was warm, pleasant. Familiarities soothed—the fecund smell, the morning routine, the greetings of the horses, who turned their great heads as she spoke inanities and bumped past their broad bellies while feeding and watering them.

 
Edwin came at his usual time.

 
"Up early," he observed.

 
"Yes," she replied spiritlessly, avoiding his gaze.

 
"Got the chores done already."

 
"Yes."

 
"Anything wrong?"

 
"Oh, Papa…" She went into his arms, closed her eyes, and gulped at the lump of apprehension in her throat. "I love you."

 
He drew back and held her by both arms. "Do you want to talk to your old papa about it?"

 
She gazed into his caring eyes, tempted. But maybe she had blown last night out of proportion. Maybe it was nothing more than a kiss in a closet, a silly game already forgotten by Tom Jeffcoat. Though her father's invitation was sincere, in the end she shook her head.

 
To his credit, Edwin asked no questions. He left Emily to herself and stayed out of the office, where she holed up with her books. But
The People's Home Library
lay between her elbows as she stared unseeingly at the overflowing pigeonholes of the scarred desk, her thumbs pressed against her chin … thinking … thinking … tangled with emotions.

 
A murky dawn had scarcely grayed the windows when the inset door opened and Tom Jeffcoat marched into the office in lengthy strides, a man with an objective. He spun Emily's chair and pulled her from it straight into his arms.

 
"Tom, I've—"

 
He stopped her protest with a kiss. Unapologetically. Blatantly. Without hiding in anyone's closet.