by Jo Goodman
When he tore his mouth away, it was not lost that she felt, but a loss. She could have found her way back from one, but she grieved the other. Startled into awareness, her eyes opened, and she reached for him.
He had not gone away after all. He was there, looking down at her, searching her face in the lamplight, just as she was searching his in the shadow. Her hands rested on his shoulders; her fingers fluttered once and then were still.
“God.” She heard him say it softly, and even though he professed not to be a godly man, it seemed very much like the beginning of a prayer to her, perhaps thanks, perhaps relief.
Morgan bent his head again, this time with gentle intent. His mouth brushed hers. He nudged her lips carefully, laying down the kiss like a balm. He had inflicted a wound that needed tending.
Jane moved her hands from his shoulders to his elbows. She felt the strength in his arms, the cut and definition of muscles that bunched under her touch. He still held her head in his palms and there was still pressure in his fingertips. His kiss was soft; the way he cradled her head was not.
She wrapped her hands around his wrists and made a pass across the undersides with her thumbs. She stroked lightly. Once. Twice. She felt his fingers open, the pressure ease. It made her smile, and her smile changed the shape of her mouth and the tenor of their kiss.
Morgan teased her now, tasting her mouth in a way he had not done before. He nibbled her lips. Nudged them open. He also nudged her knees apart, found a space between them with one of his. She stretched, arching just a little, and her restlessness allowed him to settle solidly against the curve of her hip. He slipped his tongue between her lips and ran it along the ridge of her teeth. She reciprocated, touching her tongue to his, experimentally at first, and then with more confidence when he hummed his pleasure against her mouth.
He drew away gradually, first kissing the corner of her mouth, then her chin, then trailing kisses along her jaw until he reached her ear. His teeth found her again. He worried her earlobe. His breath was warm against her cheek. When he released her ear, he dragged his mouth along the sensitive cord in her neck to her throat.
Jane swallowed. She lifted her chin, exposing the underside of her jaw. She felt his lips against the hollow in her throat, and he took his time there. He buried his face in her neck and his fingers in her hair, and he breathed in like a man who had been denied air until this very moment.
He used his teeth again, this time to fold back the neckline of her gown and reveal her collarbone. He lifted his head to study it, nodded to himself, and then put his mouth against it in what was the beginning of a journey along its length. Jane felt her breasts swell. They grew heavy. She recalled her dream, the one in which she had awakened with one hand on her breast and the other between her thighs. She wanted his hands in there. In time, perhaps. She would be patient. And then his mouth was covering hers again, and she wondered if she could.
Morgan moved his head, changed the slant of his mouth. She tasted faintly of gingersnaps and tea and innocence, and it was a powerful reminder that he was also inexperienced. There had been no other woman like her in his bed . . . in his life. Jane was not the only one who was anxious. Morgan had to remind himself to breathe.
Their mouths muffled his rough gasp, but Jane understood enough to know pain had prompted that sound, not pleasure. She moved her head sideways. His lips grazed her cheek. She ducked a little, took his face in her hands, and made him lift his head.
“Tell me,” she whispered. “I will know if you lie to me.”
“There’s a stitch in my side.” He dropped a kiss on her mouth. “It’s tolerable.” He brushed his lips against hers again. “And it is not deserving of your attention.” He caught her mouth just as it was parting. It could have been a breath or a word that gave him this small opening, but he wanted to believe it was her anticipating him.
The promise he made to himself that he would go carefully was broken and remade and broken again. That he had not been with any woman for a long time accounted for some of it, and this particular woman accounted for the rest.
He wanted her. He wanted her under him. He wanted her hands on his back, her fingertips white against his flesh, the tips of her nails impressing his skin with pale crescents. He wanted to lie between her thighs, her knees raised on either side of him, and move inside her. He wanted to move her.
So he kissed her again, softly, carefully, and began a second trail of kisses that took him to her breasts. Her fingers wound through his hair and twisted the strands at his nape. They splayed and stiffened over his scalp when he took her nipple into his mouth and sucked. He laved the areola. Her nipple was a little pink bud that he could worry between his lips and flick with the tip of his tongue. He could tease it and hear her breath catch. She made it tempting to linger, but there was her other breast that was equally worthy of notice, and a lovely little valley to explore before he got to it.
Jane wondered if Morgan could feel the steady thrum of her heart. Every beat drove blood to her head. There was a distant roar in her ears that made it hard to hear any sound but her own breathing, and it seemed so loud and discordant that she put the back of one hand over her mouth so Morgan would not hear it, too.
What her movement did, though, was bring his head up. He looked at the hand covering her mouth and then at her eyes, wide and a little wild, above it. His smile was slow in coming. First there was concern and uncertainty and the question of whether it was too much and should he go on, but then she shifted, stretched, and the manner in which she did it told him what he needed to know. That was when he smiled. That was the moment he was sure that it would be all right.
He moved her hand out of the way so he could kiss her on the mouth, but first he whispered, “You shout if you want.” He did not know she couldn’t hear him.
Jane nodded because she read his lips. He made her feel as if nothing she did was wrong. He made her want to do more. So when he kissed her this time, she held nothing back. There was no lead for him to take. She met him as a partner, a friend, a lover.
She slid her hands between their bodies and found the buttons on his union suit. She unfastened three, parted the flannel, and slipped her palms inside. She had touched his chest before, but determining the extent of his injuries and seeing to his comfort were not uppermost in her mind now. She did not proceed cautiously. His skin was warmer than her palms and she wanted that heat under her skin. She opened the last two buttons and tugged on the sleeves to lay his shoulders bare. He did the rest, yanking and twisting until the top of the suit rode low on his hips.
It was not for very much longer that his drawers were any kind of impediment. When the suit was bunched at his feet, he kicked it out of bed, and then he was lying back, not naked precisely, because what he was wearing was Jane.
She moved over him. Wherever her cotton shift covered her, it covered him. It felt as thin as a membrane, as insubstantial as gossamer. It existed to frustrate. It existed to excite. Neither of them tried to strip it away.
Jane remembered all the things he had done to her. She cradled his head in her hands, communicated her intent with a smile that came and went so quickly it left only an impression of wickedness. She nudged open his lips, tasted them with the tip of a darting, flicking tongue. She kissed the corner of his mouth, his chin. The ginger stubble on his jaw tickled her lips. She nibbled on his earlobe and blew ever so lightly in his ear. She buried her face in his neck and nipped his skin with her teeth. She laughed when he growled. The sound of it rumbling in his throat vibrated against her mouth. She knew where she found the courage to sip his skin and leave her own mark. He gave it to her.
She felt his hands moving up and down her back, drifting lower with each pass, sliding over her hips once, then again, and finally palming her bottom and urging her to ride up just a little. He was hot and hard against her belly, and when her thighs parted, she felt the wetness between them.
Between the kisses, the long ones that made her heart pound,
and the short ones that made it stutter, she finally understood the purpose of her body’s response. She was being made ready for him.
Good. She wanted to be ready.
Jane knew the time had come when Morgan caught her by the elbows and turned her on her back. He followed, his mouth not much more than a hairsbreadth from hers, and when he raised his head, his eyes had lost their vaguely slumberous look. They were watchful, alert.
“Raise your knees,” he said.
She did. She would have done it regardless of his direction. Some instinct made her want to cradle him. Jane pressed her heels into the mattress, and she was already lifting her buttocks when he rose to his knees and his hands slid under her bottom. She looked down at herself and then at him. It was too late to ask him to extinguish her reading lamp, and she wasn’t sure that’s what she wanted anyway.
He was startlingly beautiful to her. She could see the runnels her fingers had made in his thick hair. The color of it was strangely darker in the lamplight, no longer orange, but coppery instead. His eyes, though, seemed greener. They did not stray. His features were somehow more defined, and she had the sense that he was exercising restraint. She did not know why; she only knew that it was unnecessary.
“Please,” she said. And it was enough.
Morgan angled his hips and pushed into her. She was slick and tight and warm, a dewy sleeve around his cock. He watched her press her lips tightly together, but there was no help for that except for him to wait it out with her. He knew how to do that. He had been taught how to do that.
He felt her begin to accommodate his entry. It occurred in slow degrees. Her fingers uncurled where she gripped his shoulders, then she sucked in a little breath and let it sigh out of her. Her knees relaxed. The cradle she made for him was softer. And where she held him most intimately, the contraction eased.
There was still tension, but it was meant to be exploited, to be endured. Morgan knew how to do that. He had been taught how to do that.
He withdrew. Thrust again. He moved slowly, deliberately, watching her. Always watching her.
Jane closed her eyes. She could not look at him any longer. What he was doing to her, what he was making her feel, made her only want to look inside herself. In her mind’s eye she thought she could see the inception of pleasure, and although it was white-hot, she could not look away.
Her hips moved. They rose and fell. She responded to a rhythm that she only heard distantly but was deeply felt. It was something that he did to her and she accepted it, not out of any sense of duty, but because it was what she wanted.
She felt as if she were being lifted, as if she were coming out of herself, out of her skin, when in reality, she was only coming. She was a single nerve, taut and twisted and trembling. Her eyes flew open and she saw Morgan’s face above her. She threw her head back. She dug in her heels. Between those two points, the entire length of her body bowed like an electrical arc.
Jane gasped. She might have said something in that moment, but if she did, it was unintelligible and unimportant. She shuddered, shuddered hard, and then she was still. The lightness that had lifted her vanished but not the awareness that Morgan was still moving inside her. It was only a short time before he was not.
He did not gasp. He groaned. Jane heard the sound as something that was in response to both relief and suffering. She did not mind his weight on her. They were joined in their lethargy. She put her arms around him and stroked his back. She combed her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. She rubbed his calf with the sole of her foot.
When he hoisted himself up, Jane did not try to stop him. He rolled away and collapsed onto his back. She turned just enough to see him put his forearm over his eyes. She was becoming familiar with that posture. He did it when he was looking into himself, evaluating, reflecting. He did it when he found that even the flickering light of a lamp was too distracting.
Jane quieted her breathing, said nothing, and waited.
“Do you regret becoming my wife?”
When he finally spoke, Jane only wondered why she was not more surprised by his question. “I was your wife before tonight,” she said. “At least it seemed so to me.”
“And tonight?”
Jane refused to answer. Instead, she said, “Tell me what there is to regret.”
“The absence of love, perhaps.”
That pricked her heart, but she knew it was true. Under the covers, she found his hand and took it. He did not try to pull away as she thought he might, even when she squeezed it. “You will never convince me that of the pair of us, you are not the more romantic.” He snorted, which made her chuckle. “I saved all your letters. Sometimes I reread them.”
“Do you? Why?”
“Because sometimes, like now, you can’t help but hold on to a dark thing so tightly it swallows your joy, and those letters remind me that there is light in you. You would not have named this place Morning Star if that were not true.”
He did not lift his forearm. Under his breath, he said, “Jesus.”
Jane let it be. She moved his hand to his chest and inched closer before she released it. “Is it proper to tell you that you made me happy tonight?”
“I don’t know. Does it seem proper?”
“Yes. Yes, it does.”
“Then it probably is.” He finally removed his arm and looked at her sideways. “I trust your sense of what’s fitting. You have my men saying grace before meals.”
“This is a little different from that.”
“Hmm.” He crooked his finger at her and pointed to his shoulder. She put her cheek against the spot he intended for her. “I don’t want to sleep in the other room tonight. Or any night from now on.”
“I am not asking you to.” When he was quiet, she lifted her head and looked at him. “Did you think I was going to argue?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m still working out how marriage changes things. No woman’s ever let me stay in her bed.”
Jane blinked. She was quite certain it had required considerable effort for him to squeeze out these last words. “You mean I will be the first woman you’ve slept with?”
“Once we actually go to sleep, yes.”
Jane’s head dropped back to his shoulder. “I feel as if the appropriate response here is ‘I’ll be damned,’ but I defer to you on matters of blasphemous phraseology.”
Morgan gave a shout of laughter, turned, and pressed Jane’s shoulders into the mattress. “That mouth of yours,” he said, and then he brought his down on it and kissed her long and hard and deeply.
When he eventually let her go, Jane lay there, stunned into silence. After a moment, she carefully touched her lips with the back of her fingertips. It had been a very thorough kiss, and her mouth felt a bit tender and her lips still tingled. She wanted to hold on to the sensation awhile longer. Morgan, she noticed, was looking rather pleased with himself, and she bathed in the light that finally shone through his eyes.
“My parents slept together,” she said. “I remember that. In India, the accommodations were often cramped, and sometimes I shared a room with them. Sometimes a bed. What about your parents?”
“I don’t know.”
Jane let that pass. “Mr. Ewing and Cousin Frances had separate bedrooms. They did not even adjoin, but I have no idea who insisted on that arrangement. I suppose that means people can do as they like. You might discover you are not comfortable sleeping with me. I could jab you in the ribs or kick you. Steal the blankets. Rub my cold feet against your legs. I might talk in my sleep.”
“It would still be a respite from how much you talk when you’re awake.”
Jane poked him in the ribs with an elbow. “I might snore.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know.”
Morgan yawned in dramatic fashion. “I am not opposed to finding out.”
Jane turned so she was held in the crook of his arm again. “I like you, Morgan. I do.”
Morgan reached for
the lamp and extinguished the light. He set his mouth at the crown of her head and whispered against her hair, “I’ll be damned.”
• • •
Jane heard Morgan get up in the middle of the night, but she let him go. The back door opened and closed. She did not remember him coming back to bed, but he was there when she woke. She carefully removed his arm from around her waist and slipped out of bed without disturbing him. In fact, she managed all of her morning rituals while he slept.
It was the aroma of coffee that brought him out to the kitchen. He stood directly behind Jane at the stove, peering over her shoulder as she poured. His hands rested at her waist. To keep her steady, he said, and she did not disagree. She needed a little steadiness this morning, especially when he put his lips to her ear.
Jem and Max came in the back door, each of them carrying a tin cup of coffee from the bunkhouse. They stopped so abruptly that coffee splashed the backs of their hands.
“This, uh, this a bad time?” Jem looked at Max, eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline. He mouthed the words “say something.” When Max just jerked his head toward the door, Jem cleared his throat. “We will, uh, that is, we’ll just show ourselves out, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Stay,” Jane said.
“Go,” Morgan said.
Max started to back up, but Jem pulled out a chair and sat down.
Morgan changed his mind about what he was going to whisper in Jane’s ear, and said, “We’ll talk about what you’ve done to Jem later.” He backed away, cup of hot, black coffee in hand, and took a chair himself. He waved Max over. “Jessop and Jake out already?”
