“I’m fine, trust me,” he said. I tried to scoot off his lap, but he caught his hands at my hips and held me in place, then he slid a hand up under the buckskin dress the women had given me. Tanned until supple and soft, the dress boasted intricate bead work at the neck, hem, and cuffs. When he pulled me close to him, the dress hiked up to my hips. I panicked when his hand went up under the folds of the dress, because I had no undergarments underneath.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asked, looking me in the eyes again.
My body pulled me to him like a magnet for his touch. It yearned for him, but no other human being had seen my body since I was a child. I rarely paid my body much mind, myself. The thought of being naked in front of Emmett was shocking. Unthinkable. Yet, I remembered the way he’d looked at my body with awe in the bath house at the hideout. The memory made a strange heat bloom in my female parts; a hot want just for him.
“No,” I said. “Only, I’m shy. Nobody’s ever seen me before.”
“I’m honored to have been the first, and hopefully the last,” he said. He placed his hands on the outsides of my thighs and slid them upwards, under the dress, gathering the dress as he went. “I’m going to undress you now.”
I nodded, every muscle tense. Part of me wanted to grab the hem and shove it down, scandalized that I’d even consider allowing him to take the liberties he already had, much less allow him to continue. But part of me wanted to help him, to urge him to go faster so I could be completely exposed to him.
His hands moved slowly, caressing their way over the outsides of my hips, my waist, my ribs, my breasts, and when I raised my arms, all the way up and over. He tossed the dress aside, and I scooped my hair out of my face. My glasses were askew, and I pushed them up on my nose, but he removed those, too. My instinct to cross my arms over myself overwhelmed my boldness.
“Oh, no you don’t,” he said. “I want to see you.”
Slowly, I unfolded my arms and placed my hands on my thighs.
“Look at me, Lydia.”
He had no idea how difficult it was what he asked of me, to bare not just my body for him, but my fears. What if he thought me ugly? What if he didn’t want me after all? What if the sight of me disgusted him? I wouldn’t be able to tolerate the pain of that rejection, not when I’d made myself so vulnerable to him.
Reluctantly, I lifted my gaze to his, and what I saw in his eyes confused me. If I wasn’t mistaken, it appeared to be wonder, but that couldn’t be right.
“What?” I asked.
“Dear God, Lydia, you’re beautiful.”
My skin flushed from my chest, up my neck, and into my cheeks. “No, I’m not,” I said, covering myself again.
He took both my wrists in his hands and pulled my arms away from my chest, and before I knew it, he’d cupped my breasts in his palms.
“Emmett, I don’t…”
But then his thumbs circled my nipples and everything inside me caught fire and melted.
“You were saying?” he asked, a smug little smile on his face.
“That feels really good.”
“So you don’t mind if I keep doing it?”
“No, I suppose it’s okay.”
He chuckled, and caressed my nipples until they’d tightened to hard, sensitive peaks.
Releasing my breasts, he eased me down to my back so I laid out before him. He took a moment to observe me, then in one swift movement he stripped off his shirt to reveal wide shoulders, and a firm chest and belly dusted with dark hair. Something between my legs throbbed in response.
But the bandage around his waist made me pause.
“Are you sure?”
Leaning over me and taking one nipple in his mouth, he tweaked it with his teeth and tongue, while he teased the other with his fingers. He stopped long enough to ask, “What do you think?”
I almost choked on the groan that fought its way out of my throat.
“I take it that feels good, too?”
“Uh huh,” I murmured, drowning in all the new sensations flooding my body.
“Then I’m sure you’ll like this,” he said, bending to take the other nipple in his mouth. His other hand trailed down my belly to my female parts. Before I could voice any objections, his fingers began exploring.
I tensed, mortified at such a personal intrusion, but then he touched a place that shot white hot spasms up inside me. My hips seemed to have a life of their own, lifting from the bedding to meet his fingers, and a strange, needy sound escaped my lips.
“Yes,” I said, my voice breathy in my ears. “That’s very nice.”
“I’m going to finish undressing now. You remember the other night when you wanted to touch me?”
I opened my eyes and met his gaze. “Yes.”
“You can feel free to do that now.”
When he pulled back, the cool air washed over my abandoned body, raising gooseflesh. I tried not to wiggle, or beg him to hurry, but I’d never felt so alive, pulsing with the energy of life. I didn’t want to have to wait for his touch. But then he removed his pants and my attention was redirected.
He stood before me, his penis seemingly defying gravity as it rose toward his belly. I shifted to my knees and reached out a tentative hand to touch it. At first, I just stroked it with a finger, tracing a prominent vein. The muscles in his thighs twitched in response.
I pulled my hand away. “Am I hurting you?”
“Jesus,” he groaned. “No, you’re not hurting me.” He sank to his knees. “Just the opposite.”
“It feels good when I touch you? Like when you touch me?”
“Yes.”
I took the whole thing in my hand, wrapping my fingers around it and stroking it from base to tip and back again.
“It’s hard and soft at the same time.”
He grunted and thrust his hips into my hand. “You’re killing me, Lydia.”
I jerked my hand away again. “I am?”
“No, not really, but it feels like it. The anticipation is killing me.”
“It’s so huge,” I said, grasping it again. “You want to put it inside me?”
“More than anything.”
“Is it going to hurt?”
He opened his eyes and took my hand off of him, lifting it to his lips to kiss my fingers, one at a time. “The first time for you, it may hurt a little, but I’ll do my best to make it a good hurt.”
His eyes were dark with desire, and the fact that he desired me was the most amazing turn of events I could imagine. He’d been gentle and sweet with me so far, making my body tremble in anticipation of whatever he’d do next.
“I trust you,” I said.
He eased me down to my back again and kissed my forehead, my cheeks, down my neck, and then my lips again. He returned to my breasts, kissing, licking, and biting until I though I might writhe right out from under him. I’d never experienced anything like how my body responded to his touch—part of me was horrified at my wanton behavior, while the rest of me just wanted him to do whatever my body seemed to be waiting for so impatiently. I suspected that thing it wanted was for him to put his penis inside me, and I wondered how that would assuage the frenzy of need.
Just when I thought I’d reached my limit, he slipped his fingers down between us and found that spot between my legs. When he touched it, it tore a moan from my throat. My back arched and my fingers fisted the furs beneath me. He’d found the one place on my body that gave him control of the whole. I had no say in the matter, nor did I think I wanted any. The more he rubbed that spot, the more everything throbbed, until my knees fell to the sides and my most private spaces were open for him.
He shifted and seated himself between my legs. He continued to work that wonderful spot, but he also caressed my thigh, sliding the fingers of his other hand up and inside me. I popped my eyes open to watch him.
“Oh,” I said.
His penis was huge and hard, and ridged with veins. It twitched when I looked at it, as if it sensed my gaze. I
glanced up at Emmett. He grinned and waggled his eyebrows at me.
“Still feel good?”
“So good,” I moaned. “What happens next?”
In answer to my question, he moved his fingers faster and harder, and a new fire lit deeper inside me, like a gathering storm, everything dashing together ready to explode—and then it did, like a tidal wave crashing to shore and draining the entire ocean.
I screamed his name, and at that moment, his fingers disappeared, replaced by something much larger pushing inside me. Following a brief bit of pressure, he filled me and everything gathered and erupted one more time. He pulled back and thrust into me again, and I couldn’t think why anyone would consider this a bad thing. It felt so completely right that I never wanted it to end.
Another thrust, and another, and he tensed and groaned, and collapsed on top of me.
“Is it over?” I asked, knowing the answer, but wishing otherwise. My body still tingled, muscles still fluttered, and I floated on a cloud of contentment. “When can we do it again?”
We spent a blissful three days in our lodge, exploring each others’ bodies, pausing every now and then to rest. Yellow Hair Woman and Little Feathers stopped by once a day to leave us food, and so Little Feathers could check my wound.
On the third day, she removed the bandage completely and pronounced me well on my way to recovery.
“Sex is good for healing,” she said, through Yellow Hair Woman, and winked as they left.
Lydia giggled, and then we worked on my healing some more.
But I woke from a nightmare on the morning of the fourth day. There were cannon shells and gunfire, severed limbs, men screaming, and so much blood.
I finally sensed Lydia shaking me and calling my name. It was a blessed lifeline out of the fog of the dream, so I grabbed it and allowed her to pull me back to consciousness.
I opened my eyes to find her worried face hovering over me. “Are you awake?” she asked.
“I am now.”
She watched me for a moment, as if unsure what to expect from me. “That must have been a very bad dream,” she said.
“It was.”
I didn’t want to talk about it, but the look on her face said she wanted to, she just wanted to choose her questions carefully. I wished she wouldn’t. The last thing she needed to hear were my war stories.
“You were yelling something about someone named Jenkins…”
I closed my eyes again. I had no idea I spoke aloud in my nightmares. What if that wasn’t all? “Just talking?”
“You were restless.” Her left hand went to her right arm, covering a place near her shoulder.
I sat up and pulled her hand away. Underneath her fingers I saw a red mark. “Did I do that?”
She waved a dismissive hand. “It was my fault. You were thrashing, and I tried to grab your arm to calm you. I got in the way.”
I scrubbed my hands down my face. “I’m so sorry, Lydia. You know I would never purposely hurt you.”
“Of course, I know that. It was a nightmare. You had no way of knowing what you were doing.”
I needed fresh air, even freezing air. We hadn’t left the lodge for a couple of days and after that dream, the walls suddenly seemed far too close. I swiped my shirt from the floor and wrestled myself into it.
“I need air,” I said, heading for the door flap.
She stood, wrapping a blanket around herself. “Are you okay?”
Standing there rumpled and vulnerable, all I wanted to do was surround myself with her and let out all the pain and poison of the past. I needed to share it with her if I was ever to free myself from Randall, but the coward in my reared his ugly head.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
I had my hand on the flap, pushing it aside.
“Who was Jenkins?” she asked.
An image came to mind of Jenkins lying bloody on my table in a tent full of bloody tables and bloody patients. I hung my head. “Nobody,” I said.
“He had to be somebody if you were having a nightmare about him.”
I turned to face her. “I said, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I think you should.”
She’d put her glasses on, and crossed her arms under her breasts so they pushed up and threatened to spill over the top of the blanket. When she tapped her little bare foot on the furs we’d been sleeping on, even with her disheveled hair and naked state, she pulled off the cross schoolteacher. The effect disturbed me: it put me on guard, but after three days of sex with her it made me want her again, too.
“You’re very stubborn, you know,” I said.
“So I’ve been told.”
I dropped the tent flap and took a few steps closer to her. “It’s not important, Lydia. You think it is, but it isn’t. It’s all years in the past. It’s pointless to talk about.”
“If it was in the past and pointless, it wouldn’t be invading your dreams.”
Of course she was right, so I tried another tack. “The war was ugly. I want to spare you hearing about all that unpleasantness.”
Her lips thinned and she cocked an eyebrow at me. I bit my lip and looked away to keep from smiling.
“Emmett Wilder, don’t you dare dismiss me like some fragile female prone to vapors or spells. I may be quiet and studious, but I’m a survivor.”
“A survivor? Of what?”
She waggled a finger at me. “Oh no you don’t. We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. Are you going to tell me about Jenkins?”
I joined her and took her face in my hands, looking into her hazel eyes, trying to find answers in their depths. “Why?” I asked.
“Why what?”
“Why is it so important for you to know about Jenkins?”
“Because you’re my husband now, and because if Jenkins—or anything else—is causing you pain, I want to help fix it.”
I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against hers. “It’s a pretty sentiment, but I don’t think I’m fixable.”
“Every problem has a solution,” she said. “All you have to do is find it.”
She made it sound so easy. “I’ve been trying to fix my problems for a long time without much success.”
“Maybe you just need a new perspective.”
I opened my eyes and watched her watch me, her face so hopeful and waiting for me to share. I took a deep breath and let it out. I’d already shared my body with her, and she’d already captured my heart, but did I have the courage to spill the horrors I’d been shoving down for so long? I had no desire to rehash those memories. They certainly weren’t for the faint of heart. But if I wanted our relationship to survive, to flourish, I needed to be honest with her. I’d known couples who lived separate lives, coming together only for the mechanical sex required to reproduce, to share a meal once a day, and to sleep at night, but who shared no real warmth or friendship between them. I didn’t want that kind of marriage. I wanted a partnership with love and respect. Which meant I needed to have the courage to trust her.
Jenkins and the war caused me nightmares and painful memories, but they weren’t the crux of my issue with Randall. They did, however, lead in that direction. Maybe I could start with Jenkins and gauge her reaction from there.
“Jenkins was a patient. A soldier,” I said, kneeling to nudge the fire back to life.
She sat beside me. “You were a surgeon in the war?”
My laugh came out as a humorless grunt. “Nothing we did resembled surgery. Mostly we hacked off limbs and cauterized the stumps. There was a lot of crude digging inside wounds to remove bullets, and thousands of hasty, inexpert sutures. But no real surgery.”
“What happened with Jenkins?”
I dug my fingers through my hair, and sat there, remembering Jenkins. “We’d mustered in at the same time from the same town. Our families knew each other. I was twenty-three, he was sixteen. I’d only been practicing medicine for a short time. He was a small man, but strong and quick.�
��
“Where’d you muster in from?”
“Pittsburgh. I lived in a small town several miles away.” I paused, struck by a thought. “I have no idea where you’re from, other than Palmer.”
Her brows knit in a scowl before she looked away. “I was born in Ohio, but we travelled a lot with Father.”
I wanted to hear that story. It was only fair that if I had to share the uncomfortable stories of my life, so did she.
“In any case,” I said, wanting to get past this particular story. “I’d seen Jenkins several times over the course of the war and treated his wounds. But the last time…” I took a deep breath and let it out, plunging on with the story. “It was near the end of the war, only months away, but of course we didn’t know it at the time. Jenkins was one of those men who seemed charmed. He’d been through all the battles, loved the fight—at least at first—and survived with minor injuries. But at the Battle of Franklin, he was hit.”
We’d set up the medical tent at the rear of the battle, where it was loud and especially busy. So many injured men. “I lost track of how long I was on my feet or how many men I’d seen. After a while I worked in a fog, not looking at faces.” I looked up at her face. “It’s easier to cut off a man’s leg or arm if you don’t look him in the eyes.”
She cringed, but didn’t swoon. “How many years did you serve?”
“All of them. From beginning to end.”
“Oh my.”
“That much brutality leaves a mark on a man,” I said, clearing my throat. It was a gross understatement, but short of walking her through the entire experience in detail, it was better left at that. “Jenkins had taken shots in both legs; one above the knee, one below. I had to take both legs. When I told him, he begged me just to kill him. He said he’d be better off dead.”
“What did you do?”
“He was right. What kind of life could he have with no legs? No woman would want him, he couldn’t farm, he couldn’t do anything but beg, and no man wants to be reduced to that kind of life.”
Lydia was rapt. If it weren’t one of the worst stories of my life, I’d be proud I could so completely hold the attention of a woman who clearly valued storytelling. But I could tell from her wide eyes and that she dreaded hearing what I did. I didn’t want to tell her, but I’d started so I couldn’t stop now.
Depending on the Doctor (Nevada Bounty Book 2) Page 17
