by Tracy Sumner
"Just," he sighed into her ear, adding something else too low for her to hear, ".... keep up if you can."
Hooking her legs more securely around his, she grabbed his hips, making bloody sure she kept up. Push. Pull. Lift. Lower. Clench. Release. It all seemed rather elemental. And animalistic as they whispered battle calls and challenges, tangling the sheets around their ankles and edging across the bed. The sharp prick of discomfort passed quickly, as did the feeling of being torn in half from the groin up. Ever considerate, Zach felt her flinch and leaned in to kiss away her hesitation.
He seemed obsessed with her breasts—or more specifically, and to her delight, her nipples—and a nib of skin between her legs that she had until this moment found no use for. He found it, teased it, circling repeatedly while telling her what he was going to do to her, tossing her in over her head in less than a minute.
The orgasm—she believed that was the word for it—ripped through her, a violent burst she felt from her scalp to the tips of her toes.
Had she cried out? Screamed?
Opening her eyes, she found Zach staring at her as if she'd certainly done something.
"Did I..." She licked her lips and swallowed. "Did I make a noise?"
He smiled, pausing on the upswing. "Oh, yeah."
She could feel him pulsing inside her. As she watched, he pressed to the hilt, then retreated until she thought he would pop out. Again, the gradual charge. And again. Her vision blurred. White. A burst of blue.
Gray, like his eyes.
"I'm embarrassed," she panted, clutching his shoulders and lifting to meet each plunge.
He withdrew. "Never, Irish. Never hold back with me."
A deep thrust followed his appeal. Arching her back, she surrendered. She felt his release of control. In his reckless kiss. In the trembling hands that cupped her face. In his labored breaths and the words he spoke. Meaningless phrases, low curses. Smoky eyes fixed on her, then closed tight in ecstasy.
"You there, Irish?" His voice sounded raw, tense. Hip to hip, he urged her to follow him.
"Yes," she whispered, unsure what he asked for. "Right here."
He suckled one nipple, rolling the bud beneath his tongue. When he bit gently, she couldn't contain her choking moan.
"Come on, come with me." His breath washed across her breast, urgent, fervent.
She hummed low in her throat, her body lifting, stretching.
If this truly was another orgasm creeping up on her, it felt wildly different from the first one. Her body flushed and she whimpered, flexing her bottom, her hips, clutching him to her.
He had quit worrying about her pain or his direction and pounded into her, bumping them to the edge of the bed. Her head slipped over, and he reached, cradling it in his big hands, not pausing for a second.
"Zachariah?" Her body quivered, sizzling ripples spreading from her furrowed brow to the heels of her feet. The colors had returned to tint her vision.
"Right here, Irish." She felt him brace his elbows on the edge of the mattress and dig them in deep, slowing his movement until he rested against her. She wanted to shout in fury, ask him what in Eve's ghost he was doing. The feelings were fading fast, her vision returning. Then he shifted his hips from side to side, rubbing. Rubbing. The same spot, that useless nub of skin he had introduced her to before. Better than his finger.
Oh, yes.
This was perfection.
She focused on the expansive feeling of penetration. His rasping exhalations hitting her cheek. The snap of the curtain in the breeze. Rain plinking against glass, and the scent of their bodies thick in the air. She tried not to get attached to the idea of experiencing this too often, because when it hit her this time, she nearly fainted. Blood pounding in her ears, her harsh cry just after, her skin prickling, every place he touched almost painfully sensitive.
Wave after wave until she fought to catch her breath. Her wits.
The arms holding her trembled, squeezed tight.
She drifted back, blinking. With a final, consuming thrust, Zach jerked and rose to his knees, cursing softly. Lines bracketed his mouth; groves swept from the corners of his eyes.
He dropped his head to his hands and released a harsh breath through his fingers. His shoulders shuddered.
Lifting to her elbow, she swayed, swirling black dots making the room go dark. Admitting defeat, she flopped back, throwing her arm over her eyes. "I feel... shaky all of the sudden. Dizzy." Complete. Resplendent. Satisfied.
The mattress dipped as he dropped upon it. "That makes two of us." His voice sounded like glass being ground beneath a boot heel.
"Why did"—she flipped her hand in a droopy circle—"you, um, disengage? Did I do something wrong?"
He sighed, looping his arm around her waist and dragging her into the crook between his armpit and ribs. Her head found a perfect resting place.
His heartbeat skittered beneath her ear, his pleased laugh a distant rumble in his chest. "Jesus, no. No." He yawned, his hold relaxing, fingers splaying across her stomach. "Everything right." He kissed the top of her head, saying, "I withdrew for protection." A whisper of air ruffling her hair. "Yours. And mine."
Savannah lay in the warm cocoon of Zach's embrace, their bodies twisted in a moist tangle. She glanced at his stunning features serene in slumber, lit by a moonlight flood, and deemed her first sexual experience a rousing success.
Yet for all she was grateful that Zachariah Garrett was the man she had chosen, she felt strangely bereft.
"Are you sure no one's up?" Savannah asked, glancing anxiously at the star-filled sky, judging sunrise to be less than two hours away. Her body felt boneless, her mind dazed. It was a wonder she had been able to make it down the coach house stairs. "At the oyster factory or on the docks?"
Unsuccessfully trying to hide a smile at her state of bewilderment, Zach offered his hand to assist her across the wooden walking bridge and onto the narrow strip of shoreline tucked away in a secreted corner of the wharf. "On Sunday morning? No, ma'am. Preaching doesn't start until ten. Businesses open after that if at all. Folks don't rise until, oh, eight or so usually. This is a day of rest."
She didn't know about the "folks" of Pilot Isle, but she didn't feel rested. She felt grumpy and sticky and disheveled. It would take an hour to untangle her hair. And her clothes? A rip in her skirt and a button missing from her shirtwaist.
She looked a fright while he looked as tidy as a trolley car first thing in the morning. Gritting her teeth, she wondered how men managed to do that. Have stubble on their face and wrinkled clothes on their body and still look... good.
She threw the man beside her a covert glance. Good enough to eat, in fact.
Bringing their clasped hands to his lips, he pressed a kiss to her knuckle. "Now, don't pout."
She kicked at the sand, a wave rolling in and washing against her ankle. "I'm not pouting." Not really, not when he held her hand so tenderly. She had not held hands with a man before that she could recall, certainly not without gloves serving as chaperone. "Really."
He smiled, a flash of white teeth. "I've practically raised three boys. I know pouting when I see it."
"Well," she said, shrugging, "we had time." Now they were frittering it away walking on the beach.
Arm snaking around her waist, he hugged her to him, laughing against her neck. "Wasn't twice enough? Next time"—he nibbled on her jaw, her cheek—"I'll make sure I haven't spent the entire night before patrolling the beach and getting maybe an hour's sleep."
For a long moment, she let her cheek rest on his chest, listening to the sea slapping the shore and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. Lukewarm gusts of air pummeled her back, salt spray coating each exposed piece of skin. She denied the desire to curl into Zach's body, seeking shelter. Take what he so proficiently gave. Dependence of that magnitude was simply not to be born. Not for Savannah Connor, visionary, social reformer. However, didn't a woman reside inside her?
And when would her time come?
>
With a nod of acceptance for what simply was, and what was not, she stepped back, walking to the water's edge to avoid his perceptive gaze.
This would be the hardest part of their association she suspected.
The time after.
When her body thrummed from lovemaking, and half her mind and a sliver of her heart, lay in his hands. It wasn't love, this intense longing she felt in the pit of her stomach, but she believed a woman had to give part of herself to do what she and Zachariah had spent the night doing. How could she shed her clothing and her inhibitions, her autonomy and her virginity, without part of her heart being involved?
Zach came to stand beside her, his shirttail whipping against his lean stomach, his gaze fixed on the twilight blue horizon. She had kissed him there, explored each rib and hollow, run her tongue around his navel before he pulled her atop him.
That had been an interesting lesson.
He bent over, picked up a rock, and, with a torque of his upper body, skipped it across the waves. Helpless, her gaze recorded each flexing muscle.
"How many lovers have you taken, Constable?" She swallowed, coughed lightly into her fist. "It seems like you... well, like it's an adequate amount."
He tilted his head, gray eyes glowing with what one could only label masculine satisfaction.
My, she had done something this evening to please him.
Stooping, he selected another gleaming rock and let it fly. Three, four, five skips before he answered. "I don't know."
Wiggling her toes in the damp sand, she tangled her fingers in her skirt. "Don't know number-wise, or don't know, didn't keep count?"
Crouching on one knee, he glanced up, his hair falling across his brow. He knocked it aside, but it blew right back into his face. "The last one. I didn't want to count."
"Because you had a woman waiting here for you?" Savannah knew from some tale she'd heard in town that Zach had met his wife when they were children, then had gone off to seek his fortune as a pilot before coming back to a dying mother, two soon-to-be orphaned brothers, and a woman expecting him to make her his wife.
Another rock when flying, his aim not as good from his hunched position. "Not so much. Not entirely."
Deciding she wasn't preserving her dignity by standing, Savannah dropped to the sand, a wave instantly rushing in, soaking through cloth to chill her bottom. "I don't understand."
He shot her a bemused look that said, why do you have to understand?
She shook her head, shrugged.
Anchoring his hand in the sand, he angled in beside her, crossing his legs Indian-style.
They sat in silence, watching flashes of light in the distance from a thunderstorm at sea. "I didn't count," he finally said, "not so much out of guilt but because"—he sighed—"she knew."
Savannah inhaled gustily. "You told her?"
Zach's shocked gaze flew to her. "No, I didn't tell her." Looking away, he drew a vicious circle in the sand. "But she knew. I was four years older and a lot wilder. I sailed away when she was no more than a child. And no, Miss Nosy Britches, she never asked when I got back. We just got married... and didn't talk about things like that. Ever. We didn't talk about relations." He struggled, his circles in the sand getting bigger. "Hannah was so sweet and delicate. Gentle. If you've ever seen a doe in the woods on a snowy day—I saw one once hunting in the mountains when I was a kid—she was like that. She never raised her voice or stomped her foot. I don't think I ever remember her yelling at me or the boy."
Savannah felt her heart sink but pasted on a plucky smile. "She sounds perfect."
Zach reached for a firefly as it floated by, blinking madly. "She wasn't. She was good and kind, but she wasn't made to be a wife, I don't think. Birthing Rory was hard on her, terribly hard. And she didn't really seem to like living away from home, from the comfort of her family. Our entire marriage, she spent half her time there, coming back to my house when it made her happy to do it. Or made me happy, I reckon. I didn't complain. How could I when she was so naïve, so innocent? I think Rory even understood from the time he was a baby that his mother wasn't as strong as some of the other mothers in town."
Savannah stopped herself from touching him when he was talking about Hannah. So she nodded in lieu of a reply.
"Even when she was older than you are right now, she seemed"—he shrugged a broad shoulder—"young. But I was young once, too. When I left. Seventeen to her thirteen. And I was full of passion for life, excited by every blessed thing. I guess I couldn't help myself: the women, the drinking. I knew the sea so well it attracted all sorts. Hell, I was a kid. What did I know? Though I didn't ever do anything to my knowledge that hurt her or my family. It just never seemed to be like that between me and Hannah. Like the two people, rowdy Zach and kind Zach, weren't connected, and she only knew the one."
"You did an excellent job sheltering her from the wicked truth. Trust me."
"Yeah, maybe. But I failed her in the long run."
Savannah peeked at him, his windblown beauty affecting her like a blow to the head. She wanted to lighten his mood, steer him away from distressing memories. Even though curiosity ate at her, she didn't want to cause him more pain. "The entire town thinks you're a saint. I'm ill from hearing everyone lionize you. I'm sure Hannah felt the same." She rested her head on her drawn knees, releasing a gust of laughter. "And Elle thinks you were a virgin when you got married."
"Jesus Christ," he said, disgusted, stabbing his finger in the sand. "You must be joking."
She shook her head, her shoulders shaking. Her eyes pricked with tears as she gasped, trying to regain control. After all the things Zach had shown her, and his huskily murmured promises to show her more, she couldn't imagine thinking the man had no experience. Truly, it was preposterous. One hot look, and she had known. How could another woman fail to see it?
"I almost wish you'd told her what we were planning now. All the nasty details." He cleaned his hand on his trousers with a vicious swipe. "What man spends five years sailing in and out of every port in the Carolinas, washing away his loneliness with cheap ale and whatever friends he can find, and doesn't lose his virginity?"
"Zachariah Garrett, humanitarian, town constable, and all-around nice guy, that's who."
With a rueful smile, he rested on his elbows, studying her with his penetrating charcoal gaze. She felt a nagging lick of desire in the pit of her stomach but squashed it. Obviously, he felt two times was enough.
That she thought it wasn't was consistent with a lifetime of unladylike behavior.
"Is that all Miss Ellie had to say, Irish?"
Deciding to see if he was as steady as he appeared, Savannah swiveled around on her wet bottom and drew her skirt to her knees. Her boots and undergarments were in a pile by the bridge. Heaven help her if anyone came along and found them.
Feeling wicked, she propped her bare foot on his stomach and wiggled her toes. Because she was looking closely, she caught the slight narrowing of his eyes, his fingers clenching in the sand.
"Maybe that's not all she had to say," she replied with an airy wave.
Licking his thumb, he leaned in, rubbing hard on her chin. "Care to enlighten me? That word should be big enough to spark your interest."
She wiped her chin, forcing back the rising tide in her mind, in her body. The tide telling her to crawl over there and climb on top of him, appease every impulse still standing.
"A dab of paint," he said in reply to his touch. Casually, as if he didn't need to touch her again, he lay back. But after a moment, his hand circled her ankle, his thumb caressing a particularly responsive spot. "What else?" When she didn't answer, he tugged, bringing her bumping against his side.
She dug her heel deeper in the sand and contemplated him across the short distance, shifting only when a shrieking gull flew past, signaling the approach of daybreak.
The end of their night together.
She drew a breath of air so thick it felt hard to swallow. Her heart ached for a
split second before she regained control of it. "Elle told me to take it easy," she blurted before she had the chance to ask any foolhardy questions or make any impetuous statements. If she pushed Zachariah Garrett for promises he could not, in all honestly and with noble intent keep, he would put an end to their affair.
"She said you were rusty," she finally said.
He dropped his head back, laughing. "Rusty? I'll be damned. That much is"—he squeezed her ankle again—"was true. Other than that, I think they have the wrong fella."
She flopped to the sand, relaxing into his touch, her clothes thoroughly ruined now. A thousand stars twinkled from black velvet folds, more than you could ever see in a city sky. "Yes, it appears most don't know you at all. You're a shrewdly intelligent, very cunning diplomat who is seen by everyone in this town as a priest without the appropriate neckwear. An angel without detectable wings. They're as blind as bats, the lot of them."
"So you're not falling for that angel business, huh?"
She closed her eyes, the night mist cooling her overheated skin. Zach's hand had worked its way to her thigh. "No. I'm afraid I've... seen the light."
And everything else he had to offer.
Sand squeaked; then she felt him flooding over her body like a wave, knee to knee, hip to hip, chest to chest. Hands cradling her head, his lips found hers, the urgency in the kiss warming her insides like a shot of spiced whiskey.
"I've decided two wasn't enough," he said, and set about proving how far from an angel he was.
10
No matter how hard a man may labor, some woman is always in the background of his mind.
~Gertrude Franklin Atherton
