by Jo Goodman
Jane also lifted her hand to Walt. When he smiled back at her, she felt a little warmer and better protected from the chill emanating from Morgan. She waited until the wagon was rolling before she spoke. “I wish you would not have been so obviously out of sorts with me in front of Walt. You made him uncomfortable. He does not know you very well. I think you made him worried for me.”
Morgan stared straight ahead. “Are you worried for you?”
“No. I don’t think you are going to beat me.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“I do think you might not tell me why you are upset. You do that, you know. Not tell me things.”
“It’s disturbing to me that you don’t know what’s bothering me.”
“I’m sorry. But I don’t.”
“I left you at the Pennyroyal with Ida Mae. We agreed you would stay with her while I went to the hardware. I expected you to be there when I arrived. You weren’t. You went off on your own like you did that time when I brought you to church. It wasn’t what was supposed to happen, so yes, I’m out of sorts with you. Should I have said all of that in front of Walt?”
Jane’s short sigh was lost in the lift of the wind. A snowflake caught in her eyelashes. She brushed it away. “This is where we differ, Morgan. You think there was agreement because I did not quarrel with you about keeping company with Mrs. Sterling while you went about your business. You took my silence for consent, but to be clear, there was no discussion. When I thought your trip to the hardware store was taking overlong, I decided I would go to Mrs. Garvin’s shop. Had I not been delayed by one of your friends, you still would have been eating Mrs. Sterling’s cookies when I arrived. It was no pleasure seeing you standing on the porch as I crossed the street, not with that severely disapproving look on your face. Please take note, I crossed the street anyway.”
Morgan did not have to look at her. He knew her chin was up. So were her hackles. Absurdly, the first thing he said after taking it all in was, “How did you know I was eating cookies?”
Jane slipped one hand out from under the blanket and touched the corner of his mouth with a gloved fingertip. “Crumbs.” She flicked them away.
He caught her by the wrist, turned her hand, and pressed her knuckles against his lips. He pressed a kiss against them before he released her. “When I bring you to Bitter Springs, Jane, I need to have you at my side or know where you are.”
“Why?”
“Because . . .” He shook his head. “Humor me.” After a moment, he added, “Please.”
Jane did not return her hand to the warmth of the blanket. She slipped it into the crook of Morgan’s arm instead and moved closer. “It was the ‘please’ that decided me. Remember that.”
• • •
Morgan did. That evening, in bed, he did. “Please,” he said. “You say it this time. Say ‘please.’”
Jane’s lips parted around the word she was desperate to say, but he cut her off by nuzzling her mouth with his. She was already maddened by his kisses, teased to the point of near mindlessness, and he was saying “please.”
He growled it in her ear the first time he had said it. His teeth nibbled on her lobe and the huskiness in his voice tickled her. He whispered it against the curve of her neck just before he sipped on her skin, and then later when he was on the point of taking her nipple into his mouth. He rolled it between his lips, flicked it with the damp edge of his tongue. “Humor me,” he said when he placed his mouth against her belly. “Please.” That soft puff of air made her abdomen retract.
His voice was silken against the inside of her elbow and the underside of her wrist. He said the word before he began raising her nightgown, and he said it again when his fingers slipped between her naked thighs.
Sometimes she did things without any encouragement from him. Sometimes anticipation was enough to move her. His mouth circled her navel and then dipped below it. Her thighs parted. She raised her knees and he was lifting them over his shoulders so her calves rested against his back. She could not recall if he had said “please” then. She was beyond caring. She pressed her forearm across her eyes the first time he set his mouth against her warmth and wetness of these other lips. She was all sensation and the darkness helped her seize control of it. She listened to her breathing and the sound of blood thrumming in her ears. She felt her heart beat a rapid tattoo against her chest. Every stroke of his tongue was a lick of fire. Her fingers curled into fists. There was a word lodged in her throat, and when the sharp pleasure of his intimate caress was just this side of bearing, she set it free.
“Please!”
He pushed her over the precipice and she was grateful for the long fall and the soft landing. Her body shuddered, every contraction a sweet one. Pleasure lingered. It seemed to Jane it filled her very pores. A sigh hummed through her as Morgan stirred.
Jane uncovered her eyes in time to see him emerge from under the covers, his thick ginger hair endearingly mussed, a cunning and vaguely smug grin on his face. “You are a wicked man, Morgan Longstreet.” She noticed that he was not offended. If anything, it became more evident that his smile was smug. Except to lay her hands on his shoulders, Jane barely moved as he entered her. She waited until he was seated and then she contracted around him, folding like the petals of a flower around a drop of dew.
He hardly moved as she did the work of tightening around him. Her legs. Her arms. And especially there, in her warm, wet center. Neither of them spoke. What they communicated was done with touch. Her fingers in his hair, ruffling the ends. His hand on her breast, the thumb tracing the areola. They might have been resting except for the savoring. The sole of her foot rubbed the back of his calf. His mouth brushed her shoulder.
She moved, then he did, or it might have been the other way around. It did not matter. His penetration was deep, full, and the sensation of his erection pressing against her walls made her want to grip him more tightly. He groaned, closed his eyes. The pleasure of withdrawing was intense, the return even more so. He made himself go slowly, as much for his pleasure as hers. Watching her face, the darkening of her eyes, the presence of the tip of her tongue against her upper lip, that was a source of pleasure, too.
Jane did not close her eyes now. She watched him as intently as he watched her, glad for the muted glow from the bedside lamp that put his face in sharp relief. She fancied that she was reflected in his eyes. The black centers were like dark mirrors. She could not penetrate the depths of them, and yet they did not make her afraid.
Once again she found herself skimming the surface of pleasure. Like moonlight glancing off a pool of water, she thought she would never go deeper, that here was a gentle ripple, satisfying in its own right, and she would simply ride it out. It was that gentle vision that she had in her mind when Morgan dragged her under.
Jane sucked in a breath, and it seemed forever before she could take another. There was no shuddering. What he did to her did not make her shudder. She shattered. If he were not holding her, keeping her secure in his embrace, Jane thought she would never find the pieces of herself. She recognized it as a physical experience, but understood it was not only that. It was spiritual, a state of being so light that she felt as if she were floating, drifting, and then falling into herself once again.
Morgan came moments later. He rocked them both so hard the bed frame juddered. His skin flushed. His spine curved as he lifted his shoulders and pushed into her. Tension pulled his shoulders taut. At some point he had grasped her by the wrists, and he held them on either side of her head as his orgasm pumped his seed into her. Outside, the wind howled, but it may as well have been the sound of his release. It soughed through him, taking his breath and then giving it back.
He collapsed on his back and said the only thing that occurred to him. “Please.”
Jane chuckled softly because this time when the word crossed his lips, it sounded like surrender. She drew the covers closer with no thought to searching for her nightgown. She needed to get up and
go outside to relieve herself, or use the pot in the washroom’s commode, but moving was not what she wanted to do yet. She waited for Morgan to go first.
What he did was fall asleep, and deeply. Smiling, she nudged him on his side when his breathing became a soft snore. She still did not leave the bed, choosing to lie beside him awhile longer and lightly rub his back. He did not wake. It was a guilty pleasure to touch him in this manner. His skin was warm and smooth under her palm. She felt for tension between his shoulder blades with her fingertips. Exhaustion had erased those taut lines, and she was glad for it. Sometimes she thought that peace did not come easily to him. She breathed deeply, letting the scent of him fill her nostrils and then her lungs. The heady, heavy fragrance of sweat, sex, and man made her womb contract. She pressed her thighs together and immediately felt a stir of lingering pleasure. A lovely little shiver went through her, and when it passed, she leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his shoulder.
Then she climbed out of bed.
• • •
Morgan dreamed of Zetta Lee. Her hands. Her mouth. She whispered in his ear, “My boy. My sweet boy. Yes. Like that.” She sat astride him, her eyes dark and slumberous, her smile languid. She manipulated his cock while he lay perfectly still, his hands at his sides. He was not allowed to touch her. He could watch. She wanted him to watch. In the beginning, and sometimes afterward, that was all he was allowed to do. She lifted her hips and guided him into her. She took her seat slowly. “Don’t come,” she told him. “It will be very bad for you if you come. Do you understand?”
Beads of perspiration dotted his upper lip. He did not know if he was allowed to nod his head. He did not know if he was allowed to speak. She expected him to know, and if he got it wrong she would punish him. He could not predict the form that her punishment would take. It might be days or weeks before she invited him to her bed again, and he did not think he could bear that. Or she might set him up for a series of humiliations that would bring him to the attention of his brothers. She never struck him. That was what she did to Gideon and Jack when they were out of her graces, and they, in turn, did the same to him.
Morgan nodded and knew he had responded correctly this time when her lazy smile deepened and she began to roll her hips.
“My ginger pie.” Her voice was a husky contralto. The pitch set his nerve endings tingling. “My sweet ginger pie is a man now, aren’t you?”
Was he?
He was twelve.
Zetta Lee Welling had been his lover for a year.
Morgan said nothing. Even in his dream, he knew when to remain silent.
“Morgan?” Jane placed her hand on his shoulder and gently shook him. “Morgan. Wake up.”
He turned on her so suddenly that she had no time to cry out. It was no less than an attack, and Jane struggled as Morgan lay heavily on top of her and his cock pressed hard against her flat belly. She sucked in a breath in the moment before his hands circled her throat and his thumbs began crushing her windpipe.
Curling her fingers like talons, Jane clawed at his hands. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him to stop. She abandoned trying to remove his hands and struck at his head with her fists. It took one solid blow to his temple to knock daylight into him.
Morgan blinked. The bedroom was dark, but he knew it was Jane under him, not Zetta Lee. He knew it was Jane’s slim neck he held in his hands, her throat that he was closing off with his thumbs. Morgan reared back. He had no idea that he left her almost as violently as he had turned on her. He threw off the covers as he rolled away. He could not leave the bed fast enough. Jane was coughing, trying to clear her throat. The sound of her labored breathing made him sick to his stomach.
He disappeared into the washroom and braced his arms on either side of the basin. He tasted bile at the back of his throat. His stomach roiled. Waves of nausea came and went. His hands curled into fists.
He was peripherally aware of light coming from the bedroom and realized Jane must have lit a lamp. He could hear her moving around. He imagined she was looking for her nightgown. He pushed away from the washstand long enough to find a towel and hitch it around his waist. She was holding the lamp in one hand when she came to the doorway, and he was leaning over the basin again.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He laughed, albeit without humor. “That’s the question I should be asking you.”
“Then let me answer it. I am fine. You frightened me, but I am fine. Look.” She parted the neckline of her gown to reveal all of her throat. “See? I looked in my hand mirror. There is not a single mark.”
He did not turn his head. “Show me tomorrow.”
Jane closed her gown. “It does not matter if my throat is purple tomorrow. You were dreaming. You did not know what you were doing.”
“I did know,” he said. “But I wasn’t doing it to you.”
“Morgan,” she said, her tone gently admonishing. “I never thought you were. It happened very quickly. You were talking in your sleep. It woke me, and then I tried to wake you. Perhaps I should not have done. I think I precipitated what followed.”
“It’s not your fault.” He closed his eyes tightly, trying to make sense of what he had been dreaming. It was already vague in his mind, disjointed in the way his dreams often were. He did not know that he talked in his sleep. “What was I saying?”
“‘No,’” she said. “You were saying ‘no.’ I don’t know how many times you said it before the sound of your voice woke me. I could tell you were troubled. I think you might have been frightened. You said it louder. I thought you would wake yourself. When you didn’t, I tried.”
Morgan nodded slowly. It was coming back to him. Scenes from his life appeared randomly, the years folding back on themselves. “She’s still alive,” he said, straightening. There was enough light from Jane’s lamp for Morgan to see his reflection in the mirror above the basin. He looked weary, he thought, and older than his twenty-nine years. His shoulders were hunched from the weight of the secrets he kept. His own and Zetta Lee’s. He bore them like a punishment, the consequence of being made Zetta Lee’s ginger pie man at eleven.
“The last I knew,” he said, looking at Jane and no longer at himself, “she was still alive.”
“She?”
“The woman I was choking. She liked that sometimes. She would tell me to put my hands around her neck and squeeze while I was fucking her. She’d say ‘harder,’ but she wasn’t talking about the fucking. She was talking about my hands, and I would have to tighten my fingers, press harder with my thumbs, and she would buck and arch like a feral mare that I was trying to ride for the first time. I could barely keep my seat, but I never—” He stopped, put up a hand as the lamp Jane was holding started to waver. “You told me you were strong, Jane. You have to show me now. Do you have the stomach for this or not, because I’m not sure I do. You say you want me to tell you things, and this is it. This is what I want to tell you, and most of what’s inside of me is rotten ugly.”
Jane stared at him. She held the lamp as steady as she held her gaze. “Go on,” she said.
Her calm was no salve for his open wound, but oddly, it gave him the confidence that she would not allow him to bleed to death. The urge to say it all at once had passed, and he spoke quietly, gravely. “I never let go until she told me I could. That was her hold on me. Everything was the opposite of how it looked. No one knew. I never once tried to kill her. She gave me so many opportunities, almost dared me, I think now, and I never took her up on it. Tonight, though, dreaming about her the way I was, I was doing what I couldn’t when I was lying with her. Tonight, I was going to kill her. She had me so twisted up inside, I was finally going to kill her.”
He saw Jane swallow. He gave her full marks for not putting a hand to her throat. She had to be thinking that he could have strangled her, so he said it aloud. “I could have killed you tonight, Jane.”
Jane shook her head. “Who is she?”
“Zetta Lee Welling,”
he said after a long moment. “The woman who called herself my mother.”
“Of course,” Jane said. Her voice was no more than a whisper. “That’s why you sounded so young.”
Morgan watched her set the lamp on the seat of the chair. He knew what she would do. “Stay there, Jane. Stay where you are.” She came to him anyway. She was fearless. He had been right about her, had always been right about her, and he had been right to be afraid.
He did not know what to do when she put her arms around him. His hands remained at his sides. She pressed her face into the curve of his neck and held on. She was the only person who ever held him in just that way, giving comfort but also finding it. He could hardly bear it that she was touching him, and he thought he would die if she stopped.
He did not know he was crying until she laid her fingertips against his cheek and wiped his tears away. He put his arms around her then and rested his damp cheek against her hair. They did not move until she took his hand and led him to bed.
Jane returned the lamp to the table. “Dark?” she asked.
“No. Let it burn.”
She left the wick as it was and slipped into bed but did not draw the covers up until he was beside her.
“Did you think I was going to run?” he asked.
“I think you still might.”
Morgan lay back and made a cradle for her head with the crook of his shoulder. She did not hesitate to pin him in place. “Better?” he asked when she was done burrowing.
“Yes. For you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you might insist on sleeping in the other room.”
“It occurred to me.”
“But you decided against it.”
“Because I figured you wouldn’t let me sleep there alone, and if you were going to be wherever I was, what would have been the point? Was I right?”
“Yes. I am not worried that you’ll try to hurt me again.”
“I was never trying to hurt you.”
“I know.” She laid her hand on his chest. “Where is she, Morgan? Lander?”
