Beaudry's Ghost

by Carolan Ivey

  In the next instant, Jared’s strong arms lifted her from the bed, and the light in the room disappeared as she threw her arms around him and buried her face in his chest.

  “Shhhh,” he said softly, his shoulders curved around her protectively. He rocked her until her breathing slowed to somewhat normal. Her spine felt as sturdy as a well-cooked noodle as he set her away from him and set to work on the buttons on the front of the sweater she wore. Her skin ached from the loss of contact. After a lifetime keeping herself separate from the rest of the world, she wanted nothing to more than to stay sheltered in this man’s arms until time ended. Then she glanced down at her right shoulder and grimaced. Blood spotted the peach-colored yarn.

  “Ugh. Lane is going to kill me,” she said as he peeled away the sticky wet sweater from the wound. Dark blood oozed from under the soaked dressing.

  “Then Lane will have to get through me, first.” His concentration was total as he cut the mess away and reached for a handful of fresh dressing sponges. He pressed the wad not ungently onto the wound, but the pain made her sway toward him, naked upper body and all. Modesty deserted her. At this point, she figured he’d already seen all she meagerly had to offer, anyway.

  He supported her with one arm while pressing with the other hand, and dropped small kisses onto the top of her head as she leaned against him. She absorbed his tenderness and let it lay warm in her belly.

  “I have to stop this, Jared.”

  She felt him go still, and dug her fingers into his biceps to stop his automatic withdrawal.

  “I mean, look at me.” Instantly his eyes flicked down then away, his ears going red. She laughed softly. “Then again, don’t look at me. My point is, I’ve barely slept since Troy died. In the past day I’ve been knocked upside the head, threatened with sharp objects, forced to shoot live ammunition at innocent people, and been shot myself. All in the name of having the last word with my dead brother. Maybe you think you triggered this whole thing, Jared, but what if it was me? What if my own selfish need to see Troy at all costs put all my friends—and you—in this terrible situation?”

  Jared took a deep breath. “You didn’t—”

  “No, let me finish, Jared Beaudry, because you’re as bad as I am. Worse. My god, you’ve been hanging around for a long time waiting to take revenge on a man who has already gotten what he deserved. We both have to—”

  He pulled back and regarded her with a closed expression. “Your situation—”

  “I know, I know, it’s completely different from mine. I know the hell you’ve been through, but we’ve both spent too much time looking back for something that can never be, when we should have been moving forward, honoring the memories of those who loved us.”

  He looked as if she had just struck him. Disobeying her own rules, she reached for him, but he ducked away. With an impatient sound, she used her good left hand to snag one of his ears and drag him back to face her.

  “They did love you. And they went on loving you even after you think you were dishonored. No one had to tell them the truth. The only one with any shred of dishonor was the one who put the bullet in your back. Not you.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, his jaw set as if against agonizing pain, his eyes so bright she almost had to look away. Then he very slowly, very deliberately took her hand and laid it in her lap along with her weak right one, and spent the next long minutes in silence working to stem the flow of her blood and redress the wound.

  She sighed in defeat and closed her eyes under his ministrations. And why had she expected any different? She was only now coming to terms with Troy’s death. She had no business thinking herself qualified to help Jared deal with his own losses.

  And now, when she most wanted to throw away a lifetime of restrictions and do nothing but hold him, he was the one pulling back.

  Finished with the first aid supplies, she heard him set them aside. When she would have expected him to leave her in order to find another shirt to cover her, she opened her eyes and found he still knelt between her parted knees. His hands gripped handfuls of blanket on either side of her hips, his head down. Tears threatened and she waited, hollow inside, for him to tell her to mind her own damned business.

  But he lifted his head and touched her with his gaze, and this time no blush reddened his ears. She almost forgot how to breathe as his eyes, alive and restless as the sea outside their door, first traced every contour of her face, then down the long lines of her neck, then finally…

  She gasped softly at the tangible sensation of his eyes trailing over her breasts, moving around each one until centering on her nipples, causing them to contract. It was as if, with just his eyes, he was communicating everything he wanted to do to her with his hands.

  Namely, to touch her. Everywhere.

  She wanted, suddenly and with every cell of her body, for him to do exactly that. With her good hand, she reached down and tried to pry his hand away from its mooring, but it was like trying to move a stone pillar with a butter knife.

  “I would hurt you.” His voice was hoarse with restraint, his eyes still locked on her swelling breasts. Her lower body throbbed as if waves, slow and hot, crashed in her groin, lapping against the small spot that rubbed against the seam of her jeans.

  “I’m already hurting.” She looked down where only a few inches of space separated their bodies. Even through the loose fabric of his borrowed jeans, his arousal was easy to see. A slight scoot forward, a small arch of her back, and she knew she could be pressed fully against him. Adrenaline flooded her tired body at the mental picture.

  “Oh, lord, Miss Taylor, don’t look at me like that,” he pleaded through clenched teeth.

  The last of her reason left her as she arched her back, offering herself precisely at the same moment he lowered his head.

  His groan of surprise mingled with her gasp of pleasure as his mouth collided with the tip of her breast, and he decided his mind must be altogether too easy to read. At last he let himself release the blanket and slid his hands around the smooth warm skin of her torso to knead the flexing muscles of her back. His hands burned as sensations a hundred years denied poured through his starved nerve endings and crashed into his brain, blanking out all rational thought. Any idea that he should not be touching her this way, should not be subjecting her weakened body and spirit to his lust, vanished when she cried out, pulled his head closer and pressed her lower body against his raging erection.

  Lord above, she did want him! Her fingers tangled fiercely in his hair, but the discomfort only drove him to drag his mouth across her skin to the other nipple, hard and pink as a tiny seashell and tasting of slightly salty cream when he pulled it into his mouth, using his teeth and tongue on the sweet bud until she moaned and rocked against him.

  Her breath came in tortured gasps as he felt the fingers of her weaker hand trying to find their way under the shirt he wore, which she had called a sweat shirt. Appropriate name, he thought now, feeling his skin heat and go slick under the soft material. Breaking contact with her breast, he leaned back, disengaged her other hand from his hair, and in a second had the shirt off and pitched behind him. She reached for him with both arms, but he captured the weaker one before she could possibly reopen the wound on her shoulder. Breathing hard, he gently lay the limb straight down beside her.

  “I think we’d better—”

  “Oh, God, Jared, if you start thinking now—” she angled her head and searched for his mouth with hers.

  “—be more careful with that,” he finished a split second before her urgent kiss took his breath right from his lungs. Without breaking contact with her sweet mouth, he rose off the floor and pushed her backward until she lay on her back, her feet still on the floor and her knees parted as he loomed over her, supporting himself on his hands as their kiss grew wild and she groaned and arched toward him.

  “I want to touch you, Miss Taylor,” he said against her lips. He had memories, becoming dimmer by the second, of other wom
en he’d had during his lifetime. He didn’t remember, however, ever wanting to touch any of them the way he wanted to touch this woman right now. With his hands. His mouth. Body. Heart. Soul.

  “Can I do that? Can you…will it…?”

  “I don’t know what will happen. I don’t care.” She wrapped her good arm around his shoulders and pulled him down until the tips of her breasts brushed against his chest. He groaned and threw his head back as she moved against his hot skin. “All I know is I want you right now before…before I lose…”

  He stopped her train of thought with another kiss, his tongue slashing into her mouth with unleashed passion. She cried out into his mouth, her fingers clutching at his slick back and one leg curling around his thigh.

  His erection was going to bust right through that contraption she had called a zipper, he was sure of it. He trailed his mouth down the side of her throat, smelled traces of soap on her skin that mingled with the scent of her arousal as he kissed his way through the dip at the base of her neck and down between her breasts. He wanted to fill his palms with them, but his hands felt big and clumsy against her delicate skin. He wasn’t sure she wouldn’t just break apart in his hands if he touched her the way his body demanded.

  She made the decision for him by grasping his wrist and bringing his hand up to cover one breast, the one bruised by the kick of her Enfield. He watched his own hand alternately cup it and run circles around its nipple until she arched and twisted in a dance of need.

  He drew back, one knee on the bed, one bare foot still on the cool wood floor as he reached for the button and zipper of her jeans. She watched him, her eyes dark as a night forest beneath half-closed lids. She lifted her hips to help him slide the fabric over her hips, down her endless legs and off to the floor. Only a small scrap of white material—much too small and tight to be called pantaloons—remained clinging to her firmly rounded hips. Her legs lay open on the bed on either side of his knees, the inner thighs smooth and creamy white, begging to be touched, tasted. He swallowed hard.

  He considered confessing that he had never in his life actually seen a woman completely naked. That his few encounters had involved women who didn’t think it necessary to go to the inconvenience of removing every layer of their clothing. But as he watched Taylor watching him fumble with his own zipper, he decided it was a dead issue.

  All he wanted was to get his hands back on her as soon as possible, and discover, in her, everything he had thankfully missed. But the way she looked at him made his fingers clumsy as a child’s.

  Her breathing staggered as she locked eyes with him; her skin radiated heat he could feel even from here. Her fingers opened and closed spasmodically as if she couldn’t wait to get her hands back on him, either. God, he thought, those hands, those slender, strong hands that had forced her to see and feel too much in such a short time.

  Finally free of the jeans, he let the loose fabric drop easily from his hips. He kicked them aside and heard her soft intake of breath, felt her gaze snag on his erection where it sprang from between his legs.

  Bowing under the sensual caress of her eyes, he groaned and dropped to his knees beside the bed, grasped her hips and pulled her toward him. He reached up and covered her breasts with his hands, and her hands, cool and soft, covered his as he dropped his head to kiss her smooth belly.

  A few minutes ago his last rational wish had been to do nothing more than touch this woman, touch every inch of her body. Only now, kneeling between her legs, her belly muscles contracting beneath his lips, did he realize the full extent of that vague wish. Leaving his fingers to roll and pull at her nipples, he kissed his way lower on her belly until he encountered the stretchy waistband of her undergarment. Kissing her through the thin cotton, he found the place where the fabric was hot and damp. She gasped out his name, spreading her thighs wider apart as he grasped her hips and pulled her to his mouth.

  He had never done this for any other woman, had never wanted to, until this woman had taken total control of his instincts. The mad cadence of her pulse beat beneath his lips as she convulsed against him. Her fingers sank into his hair as her body drew into a tense, vibrating bow, her head thrown back and mouth wide open on a soundless scream.

  His own body, so long denied contact of any kind, took control. A windstorm of need blew away all notion of going slow, of being nothing but tender with this fragile, brave, wounded woman. As he stood and ripped the last scrap of material from her body, one last fleeting thought pricked his conscience—that the body he was about to use to take her didn’t belong to him. That he probably didn’t have a right to use it this way.

  Then her hand, trembling and clearly inexperienced, skittered down his abdomen and closed around his erection. He went still and forcibly refocused, forced himself to forget everything except how to be careful with her. Trembling with restraint, he gently lifted her, sliding her across the bed so she lay with her head on a pillow. Her hand never left him. As he braced himself above her, her strokes grew bolder and she caressed him until he was nearly blind, his hips thrusting helplessly against her hand. Lowering himself beside her, he took her maddening hand away and laid it on his waist, then kissed her deep and hard as he let his hands drink in the varying textures of her skin. Finally his hand trailed down between her legs. Her moan blended with his as he slid his fingers through her wet, springy curls, parted her and pushed two of them inside. Her muscles clamped so hard around them he almost lost himself right there.

  Her good hand roamed rapidly over his skin, touching him everywhere she could reach without straining her bad shoulder, her palm warm and her nails lightly scraping over his heated flesh. She thrust her hips strongly against the heel of his hand, her cries sweet and strident in his mouth as she sought release.

  She broke their kiss with a gasp. “Please, Jared. Please now.”

  He was already moving before the words were out of her mouth, stretching himself out over her long, sweat-damp body and blindly lifting hips. Without any conscious help from him, his erection found her slick opening. He closed his eyes, knowing he would be lost if he gazed at her passion-strained face one moment longer. In one long thrust he buried himself within her.

  And held perfectly still, afraid. Afraid his arms would collapse and send him crashing down onto her wounded shoulder. Afraid if he moved even an inch, he would spill himself and leave her gasping for release he could not give her.

  Afraid, for the very first time, for his immortal soul when he would be forced to leave her.

  Trembling, his breath sticking in his chest, he opened his eyes. Her head tossed restlessly on the pillow, her eyes misted over and running with tears as she tried to pull him down to her. She moaned his name as she looked down between them to the place they were joined. Still watching, she lifted her legs, wrapped them around his hips, and raised her hips in one slow, hard thrust against him.

  “Taylor…”

  Her breath hissed from between her teeth as she did it again.

  “Don’t…”

  “Then come down here to me,” she ground out, “I need to feel you.”

  “Your shoulder…and your second sight… God, honey, I don’t want to hurt you.”

  The fingers of her weaker hand wrapped around a piece of the brass headboard while her other hand wrapped itself in his hair, forcing his head down so see what she was seeing. Another slow thrust, his erection disappearing deep inside her body as she moved up against him once again.

  His muscles gathered of their own accord, then suddenly he found himself pressed against her, their bodies in full, hot, sliding contact as he buried his face in her neck and let the red haze dim his vision. He had never felt anything like this. Like her. She burned beneath him with a clean, white-hot flame that imprinted her into his skin. He slid one hand under her hips and pulled her tighter to him, thrust mindlessly as she let out a sharp, guttural cry and went so taut he thought dimly she would break herself in half.

  He held on by his fingernails as he
r internal muscles stroked him hard, each spasm joined by her short, strident cries that rang in his ears and lashed him toward completion. He heard someone else cry out, but didn’t recognize the voice, didn’t care as his orgasm grabbed him by the base of the spine and exploded. Everything he had been, and was now, poured out of him and into her, taking with it every last piece of his heart.

  As he slowly collapsed on top of her, he knew that where he was going, he wasn’t going to need it anyway. It would be safe with her.

  *

  He didn’t know when he’d moved, but when Jared opened his eyes, he found Taylor clinging to him like seaweed wrapped around driftwood. A strange sound had awakened him. A harsh sound that didn’t belong in the peace they had created in this room.

  Taylor’s chest heaved as if fighting for air. Quickly he raised up onto one elbow and, to his horror, found Taylor staring sightlessly into space, her breath ragged. Her eyes moved this way and that, a scene playing out before her mind’s eye that only she could see.

  He had done this to her. She had opened herself completely to him, and he had neglected to keep his own mind, his own memories, closed off from her. Damn it, he should have thought! He should have protected her!

  “Taylor. Taylor, honey, come back to me. Please, come back.”

  Taylor struggled to turn away from the sights, the sounds, the smells of the battlefield. She thought she recognized it as Manassas, but the scene she waded through was no neat, clean re-enactment. Everywhere she turned, the ground was awash in blood and gore. She thought she heard a voice calling to her from somewhere underneath the din of guns, cannons, screaming horses and shouting men, dying men. She wanted to run from this place, but there was no unbloodied space to place her feet, no piece of ground that wasn’t blocked by the body of a horse or a man. A Minié ball whined past her head and she dropped to a crouch, using a dead horse and another man’s body for cover. Desperately she ran her hands over the blood-soaked grass, trying to find the box of cartridges she had dropped. The guns roared again, and she covered her ears with blood-smeared palms and screamed.