“My lady,” he said, as he held the motel room door open for her. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes,” she said with as much prim and proper British diplomacy as she could fabricate. “I would find it most desirable if you would remove your hat, kind sir. Oh, you don’t have one? Then, my dear Lord James Melbourne, since you have no hat, you will instead be obligated to remove all of your other attire, one piece at a time…starting with your shirt. You see, you are in need of a thorough inspection to make sure you have all the bits and pieces required to become a worthy husband and father, in that order. Please, do proceed.”
“Well, if you insist,” James replied playfully with a lisp and a curtsey. He dipped his head to unfasten his top button, then looked up coyly to watch her watch him begin his striptease. But what he saw was not what he had expected or even hoped for. Leah was stone-faced. He stood up straight and got out of character, too. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“I have to know. Are you or aren’t you?” she asked flatly, barely short of being cold.
Of course, he knew what she meant, but didn’t want to acknowledge it. He had been dreading this conversation since the first day—no, make that since the first few hours—he had known her.
“I am me,” he declared. “However you want to parse, dissect, or analyze it: I am me—no more, no less. Will that be enough for you? I hope so, because that’s all there is—me.”
“You know what I mean,” she said, and gave him a playful evil eye.
Well, that’s a start; at least she isn’t glaring at me or throwing rocks. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “Just me,” he reiterated.
Leah walked over to the bed and grabbed a pillow, recalling their first night together and the pillow fight. She was sure then that he was gay. If she hadn’t believed it, she wouldn’t have spent the night in the same bed with him. She fluffed the pillow, turned it around and fluffed it some more, then quickly tossed it at his head. “Are you gay?” she asked, trying to bring back that playful first encounter.
James grabbed the pillow before it caught him in the head. He did a quick pirouette, tossed it back at her chest, and declared, “No.” Hopefully she wouldn’t blow up at his answer, but she had finally asked it of him as a direct question. His answer couldn’t be any more exact or precise, either.
Leah’s face looked almost like an old cel-frame animated cartoon playing in slow motion. Her expressions were transitioning from ecstasy to happy to sad to angry, all within the space of three seconds. Unfortunately, it froze at angry.
He had to say something before she did. All he could think of was, “Don’t ask, don’t tell. Doesn’t that work both ways here in the US?”
“You lied to me!” she hissed, then threw the pillow back, trying for a slam shot to his face.
He intercepted it and held it like an ancient talking stick—he had the right to speak since he had the pillow. “I didn’t lie to you, ever,” he said. “You assumed. I never said I was gay, and heck, up until the sixth, I was still married.” He kept hold of the pillow, hoping she’d calm down and accept his explanation. He puffed and snorted. He wanted to say more, but didn’t know how to phrase his feelings.
“Being married doesn’t mean you’re a heterosexual,” she said coldly, without benefit of holding the talking pillow.
“You read those trashy stories that were out three months ago, didn’t you? Damn, nothing dies on the internet!” James snorted, then breathed deeply, practically panting in a vain effort to try and compose himself.
Leah reached out and grabbed the pillow from him—it was her turn to speak. “Yeah, well, gay guys get married all the time. And from what I read, that’s why she divorced you—because you were gay!” This time she held the pillow tight, clutching it to her chest so he couldn’t do the same snatch and grab that she had just accomplished.
“That’s what who says—her, the liar and thief?” He growled in disgust as he moved in as close as he could to her, to share in the grasp of the pillow. “No, not gay. That was just her excuse to get out of the marriage. All she wanted was the money. I could have been that Joe Stud you spoke of, and she still would have made the same accusation. It was the only honorable way for the tramp to get out of the marriage contract and keep all the money. Oh, and you must not have read far enough to see the retractions that were printed later.”
He let go of the pillow and turned away, anger still rumbling in his gut. He had divorced the bitch, got by without losing the Melbourne family fortune, but she was still running—no, that would be ruining—his life.
He spun on his heel, facing Leah again, not wanting the conversation to end this way. He had put her on the defensive, and that wasn’t what he meant to do. He had to let her know how he really felt. He swallowed his Melbourne pride and confessed his infatuation to her.
“Do you know how hard…er, difficult, it has been for me to be around you, to not just gather you up in my arms and smother you with kisses, and…and… Ergh! I had to whack off every morning in the shower just to keep my sanity and restrain the urge to jump…um, have my way with you.” He was huffing and puffing with embarrassment and shame, but she had the right to know how strong his passion was for her.
She didn’t take his revelation very well, though.
She snorted back, but didn’t speak. Her anger wasn’t directed at him, but he probably couldn’t tell that. Now she was mad at herself for believing those trashy tabloid stories rather than asking him who he really was. He was still a great guy, but he had let her believe he was gay. He had to have known that she believed he had no sexual interest in her or any other females. And that playful limp wrist and lisping act… Shoot, she even shared the same bed with him because she was sure he was gay!
They faced each other, both furious either from being deceived or having to be the deceiver. Eye to eye, they glared and huffed and snorted, like a couple of bulls vying for the toreador. Leah backed down first. Her anger melted suddenly into compassion as she realized what he had just said to her.
“You mean you…you thought about me like that in the shower. Every day?” she asked meekly, surprisingly flattered by his passion for her.
“Well, every day since I met you,” he said, uncomfortable in his own skin, embarrassed at the revelation. “I didn’t do it before I met you—think about you and well, you know. It would have been impossible since I didn’t even know who you were.”
Leah cast her eyes down and asked sheepishly, “Did you used to do it every day, thinking about someone else—anyone else—before me, I mean?”
James tilted his head, trying to figure out what she was talking about. “What?” He shook his head quickly, “No!” he replied sharply when he realized what she was asking. “No, there hasn’t been anyone around to motivate me for a long time—well, ever, before you, I guess. Geez, now I find someone who really motivates me, and she thinks I’m gay and have no interest in her.”
“No, that’s not right. I knew you were interested in me, but I thought it was only because of my mother and your grand…uh…father and us going back together.
James approached her. “But now you know I love you and want to marry you because of you and only you, right?” He was now nose to nose with her and going cross-eyed as a result. He pulled back so he could focus. “Right?” he repeated.
Leah wiggled a little bit, not sure whether she wanted to move away from her newly discovered available man—and to smack him for letting her think he was gay—or jump his bones and not let him up for air until he begged for mercy.
“Right,” she whispered softly, as she ran her hands up his shirt. “And someone owes me a strip down for an up close and very personal examination.”
“I’m ready when you are, darlin’,” he purred, “very ready.”
**40 Handfast
August 12, 2013
“Here, let me help,” Leah said seductively, as she snuggled up to her fiancé, her fingers working the top button of hi
s oxford shirt. “We’ll start with these, and then we can work down to,” she pushed her hips up to his in a very familiar, but gentle, bump and grind, “the other buttons.”
James inhaled sharply. He wasn’t going to correct her—these were zippered trousers and only had one button. Instead, his whole upper body gyrated, making her move with his as she teased the buttons out of the buttonholes in his light blue cotton shirt. “Hmm,” he moaned in enjoyment. This was the shirt Pierce’s brother said the ladies found irresistible. The lad was sure right about that one!
James tugged up his shirttail, pulled it out of his waistband, and purred at the feel of the cool air rushing in on his sweaty back. He stroked the side of Leah’s hair, moving the thick dark tresses from her shoulder to her back with one hand, while he unbuttoned the bottom of his shirt with the other. He straightened up suddenly at the touch of her cool hands moving across his belly.
“I’m sorry, are they too cold?” Leah asked, looking up with a stifled grin. “I’m sure they’ll get warmed up in a hurry.”
“No, just a little shocked, I guess. I mean, I’ve been imagining your hands on me for so long—well, only a week—that when I felt them truly touching me, it was reality shock, if there is such a term.”
She smiled at his revelation and continued exploring his torso, both of them purring at the tactile pleasuring. She moved from the dip of his navel up the centerline ridge of his smooth dark belly hairs to his chest, feeling the firmness of his sparsely furred pectorals with her thumbs, intentionally avoiding his nipples.
James resisted the urge to move her hands so she would touch him there. Be patient, Melbourne, let her explore you the way she wants. This will be her only opportunity for a first time with you.
Her hands slipped down his sides—no spare tire on this body, he grinned with pride—then skin-surfed around his waist to settle on his backbone, her fingertips settling in the divots on either side of one vertebrae, completing his nervous system. It felt as if she was part of him now. And soon they really would truly be joined as one…
“Yeah, well, I have a little confession,” Leah whimpered playfully, as she brought her hands back around to the front of his pants. She fiddled with the button, but really wasn’t ready yet. She had to tell him.
James dipped his head down to hers, tapping hairlines then backing off so he could focus. “Yesss,” he drawled.
“I, um, thought about you, too, in the shower,” she murmured. She quickly amended her admission in a rationalizing tone, “But only the last two days. I knew you were gay, but I couldn’t believe it. It’s hard,” she chuckled at the word—she could tell that he was currently in that condition—“well, it’s difficult to explain. It was almost as if I wanted you to be straight,” she coughed and choked down another giggle at the descriptive word, then forced herself to continue. “I wanted you to be mine, and believe it or not, I was wishing it so strongly that I just about believed that if you were gay—yes, I did have doubts later,” she smiled then licked her lips, “I was wishing and hoping and, gee, I guess I was even praying, that you’d be a heterosexual man.” Leah snorted at the end of her little dissertation, proud that she had been brave enough to finish her revelation.
James opened his mouth to speak then stopped. Her hand was up asking him to wait. “I take that back,” she amended. “I wanted you to be my heterosexual man. Okay, now what were you going to say?”
“So you wished and hoped and prayed that I would be your heterosexual lover, but you never wished or hoped or prayed that Billy would be?”
Leah shook her head back and forth slowly. “No, it never even crossed my mind.”
James was glowing with the intimacy of her touches and the promise of what was to come. He didn’t think he could possibly be happier, but he was. Now it was his turn to share more about himself with her. “Well, I told you earlier that I knew in the first 24 hours of meeting you that you were for me.” Leah grinned and nodded at the recollection of his bent kneed proposal in front of the church. “But what I didn’t tell you was that it was really more like the first five minutes.”
Leah chuckled, “And maybe I was supposed to fall in love with you, even if I didn’t want to, just because you wanted me so badly? Yeah, right. Just for your information, I thought you were hot the first time I laid eyes on you.” She brought up both of her hands and stroked down the sides of his face, bringing her hands to rest on the back of his neck. “But I never thought that we were in the same league. I mean, we were from different worlds—different continents, even—with all of the culture stuff that goes with it. I never considered the two of us as a possible couple. You were just a good-looking, considerate man who was very unavailable.”
James winced at the reference to her initial certainty that he was gay. “But I am very available, at least to you, and,” he reached up and put his hands on top of hers and gently guided them back to their previous position on his pants button, “here we are.”
Rather than unbutton the pants, Leah used her grip to guide him to the bed. “Lie down,” she commanded.
James obliged her and even pulled his arms out of his shirtsleeves on the way. She climbed next to him and threw one leg over to straddle him, her knees near his waist. She crossed her arms in front of herself, elbows out, and grasped her sundress. She gave a little wiggle, then tossed it toward the table, hitting the back of the chair. “Two,” she shouted, as she called off the points for making the imaginary basket. She faced him again, this time both hands behind her back, grasping the hooks of her bra.
James inhaled deeply, so much so that his back arched and lifted her body up, lurching her forward. “Oops, sorry,” he whispered, as she put out one hand to catch herself. She brought herself back up to her man-riding position and continued her tease.
He realized that he was staring at her bra-covered breasts, then looked up into her eyes. “Down here,” she said, bringing his focus back to where it had been.
His hands raised by themselves, ready to caress her breasts as soon as they were bared. Leah took his hands and set them on her white-cotton contained bosoms, a human male support system for her mammary ducts. Her eyes shifted suddenly, as if she had just remembered that she had left the car lights on. She leaned sideways and brought her leg over and away from him. She sat down beside him, crossed her arms in front of her bra, and snorted, “I hate this!” with blatant self-disgust. Her face froze into a scowl. The hot woman had suddenly become a cold granite slab.
“What?” James exclaimed. How could this be? Was he marrying a woman who hated sex?
“Not sex,” Leah explained apologetically, answering his unspoken inference. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that, and I probably scared the sh…the…the—I probably upset you.”
James nodded. “Scared the shit out of me is the right phrase, all right.” He stilled, his eyes wide with shock, and barely moved—even to breathe—waiting for her to explain.
Leah grimaced and tucked her chin down in shame. The tension was high. James didn’t want to intrude on her thought process or seem impatient, but he was. He bit the inside of his bottom lip—anything he said was sure to be wrong.
“I just wanted to come to my, my husband pure and not polluted.” Leah burst out crying, her sobs barely controlled, the tears free flowing.
James heard the stumble on the word husband and curled forward like he had been punched in the gut. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said, and sat up and gathered her into his arms. “First off, there is nothing in my head and,” he tapped hers, “there should be nothing in yours that even remotely suggests that there is anything polluted about you, okay?”
Leah nodded and grabbed the pillow, wiping first her tears, and then her nose on the inside of the pillowcase. “And, if we were keeping count,” he continued, “which, by the way, we are not—then you and I have both had two bad experiences. That doesn’t change who we are, though. Unless, of course, you want to consider that we’re both wiser and stronger
as a result. Okay?”
Leah nodded again. A hint of a smile began to appear on her face—he was saying the right words. “But I almost made a big mistake here, and I’m glad you stopped us before we went any further.”
Leah’s face fell. “I’m sorry. I really do want to marry you, and I’m sure, absolutely positive, that the sex will be great and…and,” Leah stopped babbling when she saw James raise his hand.
“I do believe marriage is a sacred bond, and I don’t want you to think that I don’t respect you and your body, because I do. And, since the hour is a little late and we didn’t—or I didn’t—think far enough ahead to get a license, a preacher, and our family for witnesses… Well, what I’m trying to ask is if you’ll accept being married by the rite of handfast until we can be legally wed. I mean, it’s a Scottish tradition and valid for a year and a day as a moral marriage—I guess that’s what you’d call it. But we won’t have to wait the year—hopefully, only the day.”
“Wow! Yes, I mean, I think that would be wonderful. So, will you be mine? Leah asked, “forever and ever, to love and hold and cherish, in sickness, health, poverty and abundance?” She knew all about the tradition from the later ‘Lost’ novels and marveled at how romantic his gesture was.
“I will. And will you, Leah Madigan, be mine—forever and ever, to love and hold and cherish, in sickness, health, poverty and abundance, no matter what time era or country we’re in?”
“You betcha!” Leah exclaimed, and pushed James down on his back and rolled over on top of him. “You’re mine! Lock, stock, and more than ample shotgun barrel.”
**41 A Good Morning
August 13, 2013, 7:00 AM
Aye, I am a Fairy Page 31
