Cherished Beginnings

by Pamela Browning

  And then Xan swung her up into his arms, lifting her as though she were feather-light, his eyes exploring the depths of hers. He waded into the ocean deeper, deeper, until the water reached his knees, his hips, and then the waves rose enticingly bit by bit to lap at her body, which was still cradled in his arms.

  "Didn't we forget something?" she murmured against his chest, feeling the salt spray misting against her cheek.

  "Did we?" he said, his lips close to her ear.

  "We didn't take our clothes off," she said, tilting her head so that she could look at him and see the expression on his face.

  Xan was still amused, still enjoying the moment, but there was something deeper in his expression as well. He slowly released her so that her body slid into the water against the long length of his, touching him all the way down as she found her footing on the sand below.

  "No one ever swims fully clothed," he said, his arms flowing out and around her and pulling her tightly against him. Maura could feel him, all of him, the only barrier between their eager bodies layers of wet cloth. The ocean currents swirled around them, unbelievably sensuous in their caress, making her unsteady on her feet. She clutched at him for support, catching her breath for one heart-stopping moment as skin electrified skin.

  Her fingers tugged at the buttons on Xan's shirt. She pushed the first one through its hole, but the undulating motion of the waves made it difficult to unbutton the second. She fumbled for a moment, and he caught her up close to him. They supported each other, swaying against the playful currents as she unbuttoned the third.

  His tongue traced the vulnerable line from her chin to her ear, licking the salt from her skin. She drew in her breath sharply.

  "Let me help," he said, gently covering her fingers with his.

  "No," she whispered. "I want to do this."

  Xan surrendered his clothes to her then, concentrating on pleasuring her with his lips and teeth and tongue on her eyelids, her nose, her ears, and her lips as she carefully undid the buttons of his shirt.

  The sight of his chest, the springy hairs damp and whorled into a new pattern by the waves, took Maura's breath away. He shrugged out of the shirt, and when it slipped through her fingers into the sea, he said, "Let it go."

  Her lips sought his, her arms reaching up, up, until her fingers wove themselves through his hair. "Oh, Maura," he sighed against her lips, and his kiss was excruciatingly sweet as their lips parted, their tongues touched, and she trembled with the joy of it.

  Maura's hands glided to his waist, sliding around the snug wet waistband of his pants. His lips released her even as his eyes imprisoned her in their passion, and they never left hers as she undid the fastener and lowered the zipper slowly and carefully beneath the surface of the dark water. With one quick motion he stepped out of the pants, letting them flow into the current, and she tugged at his underwear until his magnificent body sprang free. She touched him carefully, gently, exploring him in wonder.

  He moaned softly. Her fingers elicited the most delicious sensations, but he couldn't let her go on doing that without doing something for her in return. He slipped his hands around her slender waist and up until her breasts filled his hands. They were so round, so full, and their fullness betrayed her desire. As usual, she wore no bra, and the thought of her beautiful upthrust breasts unbound within his hands excited him so that he slid his hands underneath her top.

  She helped him pull it over her head. His eyes marveled at the newly revealed beauty and perfection of her. Waves licked at the undersides of her breasts, gentling the sensitive bottom curves and sucking into the hollow between them.

  Maura had never known that her body was so full of points of pleasure. Parts of her body that she had never given much heed suddenly became all-important. Her shoulders, where his lips dropped hot kisses. Her ear-lobes, branded by his tongue. Her forehead, pressed tightly against his cheek.

  Maura rejoiced at the titillating sensation of skin against skin, of her moist nipples tipping through his wet body hair. Her whole body ached and glowed and cried out for more.

  His hands feathered down the sides of her breasts and skimmed to her waist, finally reaching the elastic waistband of her pants, where they hesitated. This was the time when, if she wanted to, she could stop him. But she didn't.

  "Shall I?" he said, his breath hot against her forehead.

  "Yes, Xan," she murmured, shaken by her own desire. She closed her eyes, wishing he'd hurry. If he hadn't supported her with one hand against the steady billowing of the waves, Maura would surely have fallen. Then she was stepping out of the last bits of clothing between them.

  His hands curved around her hips, drawing her closer until she felt the magnitude of his desire surging against her belly. She could never have imagined such eroticism as she felt now with Xan, naked against him beneath the waves. He pulled her close and held her as their hearts synchronized. He was supporting her, loving her, infusing her with longing.

  "My darling Maura," he said softly into the damp swirling cloud of her hair. "I love you so much. I've never loved anyone like this. Never."

  Her arms slid up around him in silent surrender, and her body rocked against his with an awareness that was pure instinct.

  He knelt before her in the water, his head barely above the glassy surface, his mouth suckling at one breast until she sighed, almost a moan. One hand around her hips pressed her to him, and always there was the susurrus of the sea, swelling and ebbing in the small space between them. She wrapped one leg around his body for support, and then he stood in one fluid motion, water streaming off him in star-spun rivulets, and there were no waves between them at all.

  His body throbbed against her, and he commanded, "Put your other leg around me."

  She did, and then was amazed that his seeking fingers were so gentle and so knowing in her warm secret places. "Oh," she cried out, her cry wafted away on the sea wind. "Oh, Xan, I love you. Love me. Love me." And her plea was almost a sob.

  "You're a passionate woman, Maura." He had meant to love her here for only a little while, a fervent and romantic starlit prelude to their tumultuous coupling later in his big, high bed. But she was clearly longing for fulfillment, and he had waited so long that he was frantic with need.

  He lifted her hips to settle her upon him, the water providing its own sensuous caress. Gently he probed her moist tightness, holding back his passion, wanting to be careful with her, wanting to bring her maximum pleasure. He could not believe it when he met resistance.

  "Maura?" he whispered, leaning back to look at her face. Her eyes met his, and in them was the truth. The knowledge staggered him. He could not believe she had never made love before.

  "Please, Xan," she whispered urgently, "I want you to."

  "But you've never..."

  She hid her face in his shoulder and clung to him with all her might.

  "Oh, my darling," he said quietly. "You should have told me." His arms enfolded her, pressed her to him. He felt strong and sturdy and utterly supportive. She began to shiver, holding fast to his strength.

  Holding her, his mind racing, wondering how she could still be untouched when he was almost certain she'd had an unhappy love affair, Xan's desire faded. Tenderness took its place. Carefully, so that she would know he was not rejecting her, he let her go. Her feet found their place on the sand, but no sooner had they settled there than he was lifting her in his arms.

  "What are you doing?" she said, her voice shaking. Had she disappointed him? What had she done wrong?

  "I'm taking you into the house," he said firmly, striding out of the ocean, the seawater sluicing from their bodies in streams.

  The beach was deserted, and there was no one to mark their passing. He kicked open a door, refusing to put her down, and he marched, both of them still naked and dripping, up the stairs to the second floor. He strode to the bedroom, where he laid her gently on the coverlet of the bed that had bred generations of Copelands. And then he laid himself on top of
her, covering her body with his own so that she wouldn't be cold.

  "Xan?" she said, searching his face for whatever emotions—disgust, disappointment, anger—he was feeling.

  "My sweet, lovely Maura," he said, securing her head between his two hands so that she couldn't move it, and then his lips descended upon hers.

  When he had finished kissing her, Maura opened her eyes to see his face limned in the moon glow filtering through the narrow wooden blinds. "You're not taking birth control pills? You're not protected?" he asked.

  Birth control pills?

  "No, I—" she said, realizing that she should have anticipated this.

  "Don't worry," he said gently. "I'll take care of it."

  She pulled his head to her breast, stroking his hair softly, her fingers lightly caressing the pulse point at his temple. His body no longer felt alien to her or strange. It seemed right, now, that it finally be a part of her.

  He looked down at her in wondering adoration. "If it's your first time, darling, I want you to feel it in a special way. I want you to be satisfied. Are you afraid?"

  "Not afraid," she told him, her words a mere whisper. "Worried that I won't please you."

  He kissed her nose, her chin, the hollow of her throat. "I won't hurt you," he promised. "And you'll please me. But this won't be the only time, you know. So don't try too hard. Just let it happen."

  His words eased her apprehension. "I didn't want you to know I've never done this before," she confessed, her eyes dark with love. "I wanted you to think I was just like everyone else. That I knew all the things..."

  He trailed a long feathery string of kisses down her neck, her chest, her breast until she trembled with need of him. He stopped to circle her nipple gently with his tongue, and she felt the sensation deep inside her, and with it came the joy that her emptiness was finally going to be filled.

  "You do know all the things," he told her. "With you, it will be natural and real and right," and his arms clasped her to him and he held her for a long time, silently communicating the depth of his happiness until his body began to pulse with desire.

  "Oh, Xan," she said, overwhelmed with her certain love for him as his hands began again to explore her intimate crevices with the most tantalizing languor. "I was meant for this moment."

  "You were meant to be mine," he said unsteadily, and then, slowly and reverently and with more love than lust, he set about making her really and truly his in body as well as in spirit.

  * * *

  Later Xan watched Maura as she slept, her hair cascading over the pillowcase like a spill of bright rubies, and he wondered how it was that he, that very night, had been the first man in her life.

  Twenty-eight. She was twenty-eight years old. And the pain in her eyes when she spoke of her previous life in California had been real. She must have had someone. She was too beautiful and too passionate to have remained alone all this time. But then how...?

  He wouldn't ask her about it, that was for sure. He wanted her to trust him enough to tell him everything. He'd work on that trust, and when she felt wrapped securely in their love for each other, she'd talk to him. Why bring up the past if it would only cause her mental anguish? They loved each other, that was all that mattered. He could wait until she was ready to tell him all the secrets she held in her heart.

  He drew her close to him, and she stirred in her sleep with a contented sigh and nestled her head more comfortably on his shoulder. He gently rearranged her hair so that it spread across his chest like a silken coverlet. Then he kissed her once very lightly on the forehead, buried his face in her fragrant hair, and fell asleep.

  Early in the morning, just as the sun's first opal rays burst from the horizon, his phone rang. Xan managed to grab it on the first ring.

  "Mrs. Jameson? All right. Sure. I'll be right there."

  Maura groped for him, touched his chest. He hung up and lifted her hand to his lips, kissing the tips of her fingers one by one. Then he swung his feet around and sat on the edge of the bed. "Nancy Jameson is about to deliver. I need to hurry over to the hospital," he told her, smoothing his hand along her flat abdomen and touching her lightly on the breast.

  Her eyes opened and she smiled. Then she removed his hand from her breast. "Babies don't wait," she said. "Loving does."

  He laughed and headed for the shower. Before he left, she was sound asleep again.

  When he returned, he slipped quickly out of his clothes and into bed beside her. He didn't mean to awaken her, but she opened her eyes and smiled. "Again," was all she said, and this time their mating was as wild and as passionate as the sea in a storm.

  Afterward she said, "Am I getting the hang of it?"

  "You're doing fine," he said. "Although, as they say, practice makes perfect." He was just moving his hand upward along the inside of her thigh when they heard the ring tone of Maura's cell phone. She rolled over in bed and dug it out of her purse.

  It was Golden for whom she'd earlier left a message in case of an emergency. "Maura, I thought you should know. Ginny Matthews has started her labor. It's two weeks short of her due date."

  "I'll be at her house in twenty minutes." Maura sat up, clutching the sheet around her.

  "I need to get to the Matthews's house as quickly as possible," she told Xan. "I have a feeling that it's going to be a long labor." The sheet fell away from her breasts, still tender and sensitive from their long session of lovemaking.

  "And you have to be there to hold Ginny Matthews's hand," he said. "Oh, well... it was nice while it lasted." He smiled and kissed her shoulder.

  This was something that Xan of all people understood. Just as she had understood when he'd left to deliver Nancy Jameson's baby.

  She looked at him, sharing that understanding, and then suddenly her expression changed from tender to one so comical that he almost laughed.

  "What," she said, "am I going to wear?"

  "Since your clothes have probably washed halfway to the Canary Islands with the tide, that's a good question."

  "I have clothes in my car," said Maura. "I keep them there for times when I'm officiating at long or difficult birthings. But I can hardly go outside like this."

  Xan looked her nude body over judiciously, taking in her smooth skin and her flowing hair coppery in the early-morning sunbeams slanting through the blinds. "You'd certainly add your own brand of exoticism to the neighborhood. Old Frank Stanley would suddenly find a number of plants to water in his yard, and as for Minerva Stanley, she'd think the worst of me. Which she already does, I'm afraid."

  "She knows you, uh, entertain women here, I suppose."

  Something flared in Xan's eyes, and he pulled her to him so fiercely that she almost cried out in alarm. "No," he said, his voice grating against her ear, "there have been no other women in this house since the day I met you. Nor will there be."

  Reluctantly his hands fell away and he stepped down from the bed via the footstool with its needlepoint treads bearing the Copeland family crest. His naked body as he stood momentarily before her was beautiful to her, even more so now that she knew every inch of it intimately.

  "I'll get your clothes," he said, after which he pulled on a pair of shorts and hurried from the room. Lying back against the soft pillows in the high four-poster bed, she smiled as she heard him singing on his way down the stairs.

  * * *

  "You know," she said later, as she was dressing, "you could come with me to Ginny's."

  He looked up from checking his phone messages. In the sudden stillness, he measured her sincerity.

  "Do you want me to?" he asked.

  "If you'd like," she said. Both of them were thinking of the fiasco when she'd observed him in the delivery room at Quinby. And both of them knew that more rode on his decision than on the birthing of Ginny Matthews's baby.

  He thought for a moment before saying quietly, "I'd like to go with you." After last night, he wanted to be with her.

  They drove up to the Matthews's house i
n Maura's minivan. Ginny's husband met them on the front porch. "Xan, this is Joe Matthews," Maura said. The two men shook hands. They all moved into the house, a white clapboard bungalow flanked by carefully tended beds of nasturtiums. Xan was surprised to find that Ginny Matthews was up and moving around. From a tape player in the living room wafted gentle music, something by Brahms.

  Maura took time to spend with Ginny, palpating her abdomen, taking her blood pressure, checking the fetal heart rate before preparing the bedroom where the baby would be born. "You'll know instinctively when to move around, when to be still," she told Ginny. "Let yourself flow with the experience. A relaxed body and mind are the best way to an easy labor." Then, tranquilly humming along with the music, Maura busied herself with preparations.

  Joe remained with Ginny, massaging her back or feet when she requested it, sitting beside her on the bed when her labor deepened. The couple's two children wandered in and out, very much a part of the proceedings, very interested in the progress of the birth of their new brother or sister. There was a lot of laughing and joking between Ginny and Joe, a camaraderie that reached out to include Xan and Maura in their family's joy. And through it all there was Maura, encouraging, lending her vital energy, reacting with concern and love to her patient's needs.

  Maura found herself renewed and refreshed after the night with Xan, and she felt so filled with love that she could feel the healing energy of that emotion as she guided Ginny and Joe and their family toward the big moment. When the baby was born, she encouraged Joe to catch his new daughter, her eyes meeting Xan's at that special moment, and she felt herself fusing with him in a spirit of love and happiness that shook both of them to their souls.

  Xan felt it, too. And his only thought was I never knew it could be like this. He was well aware that he was thinking not only of his love for Maura but of his own enlightenment about childbirth, which had never seemed so beautiful to him as when Maura conducted a birthing. The emotional flow, the insight and above all the peace he shared with Maura in that moment of birth combined in a revelatory moment that Xan Copeland would never forget.