Vows (64 page)

 
"I want to," she whispered back, and caught up one of his hands to free first a cuff button, then its mate, while he held his wrists at an obliging angle. She had just turned her attention to his collar button when he reached out and, with the backs of four knuckles, brushed the peak of her left breast through its white cotton covering.

 
"I love you, Mrs. Jeffcoat," he whispered, bringing an added glow to her cheeks while continuing his seemingly idle caress, watching as she shyly avoided his eyes. With each successive button she moved slower, until, reaching the bottom one, she gave up her task and closed her eyes while his knuckles went on fluttering over her nipple.

 
"I…" she began, but her whisper faded as she leaned both forearms against his hard plaster cast. For seconds she stood thus, balancing against him, absorbing the grand rush of sensation created by so faint a touch it might have been only the warm chinook fluttering her chemise against her skin. The fluttering stopped and his hands brushed upward between her elbows to free four tiny buttons between her breasts.

 
"You…?" he whispered, studying her closed eyes, reminding her of her unfinished thought.

 
"I…"

 
He spread her chemise wide and slipped both hands inside, laying them flat upon her naked breasts for the first time.

 
She lifted languorous eyes to his and let her body be rocked gently by his caresses, drowning in the deep blue of his eyes, then closing her own as his open mouth descended to hers. With warm tongue and warm hands he stroked her, teaching her open mouth and naked breasts how rapture begins and builds. When she was taut and ruched he removed her chemise and pantaloons, slipped his hands to her back, and caressed it with widespread fingers. He drew her firmly against him, against cold, hard plaster above, and warm, hard man below. Barefoot, she lifted on tiptoe and wrapped her arms about his sturdy neck, lavishing in the play of his hands over her naked skin.

 
Still caressing her back, he leaned away, and searching her eyes, freed his last shirt button with one hand. Following his lead, she divested him of the garment, reaching up to push it from his shoulders with polite decorum that oddly suited the moment—one of her last as an innocent. When she had laid his shirt with great care atop her own fallen dress he captured her wrists, gripping them firmly and skewering a thumb into each of her palms. He kissed the butt of the left … and the right… then laid them on his chest, above the white plaster, teaching her the ways a man likes first.

 
"We're married now … you can do what you like … here…" He played her palms across his firm pectoral muscles. "Or here…" He took them to his waist. "Or here…" He left them at his trouser buttons.

These, too, she freed, slipping her fingers between his waistband and the worn edge of plaster. She did it all, all he bid, self-conscious but willing until both of them were naked, and they walked that way to the side of their bed where he threw back the covers, piled the pillows one atop the other, and lay down first, then reached a hand to her in invitation.

She lay down beside him and suddenly everything was natural—to twine her arms around him and be taken flush against his body, to feel the sole of his foot ride up the back of her calf and follow his lead with her own, to make a place for his knee, which cradled high against her, to feel his hand on her hip, then on her stomach, and his tongue in her mouth while he touched her within for the first time and groaned into her mouth. To feel her own hand guided to his distended flesh and taught a love lesson which she was more than eager to learn. To feel the rivers of her body flood their banks as if the chinooks had melted a winter's snowfall there inside her as it had outside their open window.

 
He touched her in all ways—wondrous, deep strokes, and tender surface petting. He wet her breasts with kisses, and suckled them, and fired her body with befitting want, along with his own. He made her quiver and seek and damn the wrappings around his ribs that robbed her of the flesh that was rightfully hers.

 
"I love you," he told her.

 
"Do," she said when desire had bent her to his every whim but one.

 
"I'm sorry about this damn cast," he said in a gruff, breathless voice.

 
But the cast created no barrier whatsoever as he arched above her and entered her in a long, slow stroke. She closed her eyes and received him, becoming his for life—wife and consort, inseparable. She opened her eyes and looked up into his face as he poised above her, still for the moment, waiting.

 
She whispered three words. "Heart, soul, and senses."

 
And as he began moving they sealed the vow forever.

 
It was a splendid thing, of thrumming hearts, and souls in one accord. And senses—ah, the senses, how they reveled. She closed her eyes and loved the feel of him filling her body, and the sound of his harsh breathing matching her own, and the smell of his hair and skin when he closed the space between them, and as the beat accelerated, his soft throaty grunts and sheer, swift thrusts. Then at her own unexpected spill, a rasping cry—hers—followed in short succession by his deeper, throatier one as he shuddered upon her.

 
Then silence, broken only by their own tired breathing and the caressing scrape of his thumb against her skull going on … and on … and on.

 
She lay upon her side with her mouth at his throat and his heavy hand on her head, the thumb still in motion. She felt beneath her ear his relaxed arm, and upon her knee his heavy enervated leg. She experienced her first total repletion—a wholly unexpected gift—lying there surrounded by his tired limbs.

 
"Mmmmm…" She felt the sleepy syllable vibrate against her lips and pictured his cheek against the pillow above her, his eyes closed, his hair disheveled.

 
She stroked his naked hip—only once; she hadn't the further energy. Her hand fell still and they lay on, drifting in the realm of the blessed. She had not expected the satisfaction. It was a gift as precious and unforeseen as the arrival of the spring winds.

 
When she'd thought him asleep, he spoke in a soft rumble, the words resounding through his arm to her ear. "Heart, soul, and senses."

 
"Yes." She kissed his Adam's apple.

 
He pulled himself from his lethargy to tip his face on the pillow and look down into her eyes.

 
"How are your heart, soul, and senses now?"

 
"Happy."

 
"Mine, too." He touched her nose lovingly and they basked awhile, appreciating each other silently, recounting the last half hour. "Did I bang you up with my cast?"

 
"Only a little."

 
"I'm sorry, tomboy."

 
"Say that again."

 
"Tomboy." He grinned.

 
"The first name you ever called me, and the last before you kissed me."

 
"Did I?"

 
"In the closet. 'Come here, tomboy,' you said."

 
"You remember it very well."

 
"Very well."

 
"Come here, tomboy." He grinned and drew her close to renew old memories.

* * *

Sunset had come and gone, and he had taught her a few ways to avoid being bruised by his cast. She slipped from bed and found in her bureau drawer the postcard with the floral heart and verse and propped it up against the base of the lamp where they could both see it first thing upon waking in the morning.

 
The town was still and the wind had died. At the sill the curtains hung motionless. Emily stood looking through the lace, feeling the air cool toward nighttime. Tom came up behind her and doubled his forearms across her chest. They rocked peacefully.

 
She hooked her hands over his arm and spoke for the first time of those who'd been absent from their wedding ceremony.

 
"I missed them," she said.

 
"So did I," he replied against her hair.

 
"Even Tarsy. I didn't think I had any feelings left for her, but I do."

 
"I don't think she'll come around too quickly, probably never."

 
They ruminated for minutes, staring out the window toward the north, rocking still, before she asked, "Do you think Charles is in Montana by now?"

 
"No, not yet."

 
"Do you think he'll ever come back?"

 
Tom sighed and closed the window, then put an arm around her shoulders and walked her toward the bed. "The world's not perfect, tomboy. Sometimes we have fires and fistfights and lose friends."

 
"I know."

 
They got beneath the covers and snuggled, back to belly, facing her valentine.

 
She found his hand and cupped it upon her breast. She felt his warm breath on the back of her head and asked winsomely, "Is it all right if I keep loving him, just a little?"

 
He kissed the crown of her head and said, "He'll come back someday. With both of us here waiting, he'll come back."

* * * *