by Jo Goodman
She was quiet, thoughtful. Her features relaxed. “You’ve never told me so much about yourself.”
“Hmm. I’m hoping to make you think twice before you try to square any more contradictions.”
“Ah.” She chose a biscuit, sliced it, and drizzled both halves with honey. She held one out to Israel. When he took it, she said, “After hearing all of that, I’m trying to square why you weren’t in jail for murder.”
His mouth was open, prepared to bite into the biscuit, but he stopped short of that. He likely would have choked. “There’s something I hadn’t considered. I don’t see myself being bored with our conversations.” He appreciated that her short laugh was deeply amused. She bit into her biscuit. A bead of honey clung to her lower lip, but before he could do anything about it, and really, there was only one thing he wanted to do, her tongue peeked out to take a swipe at it. “That’s my job,” he said, staring at her mouth.
Willa dabbed at her lips with her fingertips and then examined them. “What is?”
“It was honey, not a crumb, and it’s my job to lick it away, not yours.” She blinked at him and firmly pressed her lips together.
His mouth took on a wry twist. “That’s not quite the response I was hoping for.”
Her lips suddenly parted on a sharply indrawn breath. “Well, it was rather surprising.”
“That I said it?”
“That it’s a job.”
Laughter rumbled in his chest. “As I said, I don’t see myself bored with our conversations.” She rewarded him a smile that settled in her fine, dark eyes. It was more satisfying than the biscuit, and that was very good indeed.
When Israel finished off the last biscuit bite and brushed crumbs from his shirt into his hand and dropped them on the tray, he got up and added a couple of logs to the fire. He poked at them until the flames began to flicker around the bark before he returned to bed. This time he stretched out on his side under the covers and raised himself on one elbow.
Willa finished her biscuit and licked her fingers. When he appeared to be fascinated by her tidiness, she said, “Not your job.”
“It could be.”
“You are incorrigible.”
“So I have been given to believe.”
Willa did not hear any regret in his voice, which she supposed was the point. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep earlier. I must have done it very quickly. I don’t remember anything after . . .”
“After?”
“You know, just after.”
“Uh-huh. It’s all right. You were tired. We both were. I slept some, too.”
“You went out. I heard you come in.”
“Mm. Answering nature’s call. But that was after I nosed around the kitchen looking for food and made the tray. I wasn’t particularly quiet. There were a couple of times I thought I might have woken you, but when I checked, you were still asleep.”
The idea of it prompted Willa to yawn abruptly. She covered her mouth after the fact and smiled a shade guiltily, most of it behind her hand.
Grinning, Israel patted the space beside him. “Lie down. Unless you want something to drink. Do you? I can—”
She placed a finger over his lips before he could finish and shook her head. “You don’t want to spoil me, Israel, at least not all at once. If I’m thirsty, I’ll get a glass of water from the kitchen. On my own. You’ll like me better if I do that.”
“All right,” he said when she removed her finger, “but I might as well tell you, I like you better than fair to middlin’ now.”
Willa slid under the covers. She did not stretch out beside him but lay curled on her side, her knees drawn toward her chest, and a pillow folded thickly under her head. “Is that sweet talk?”
“What do you think?”
“Sounds like it’s skirting the edges. You ought to be careful. If Happy gets wind of it, he’ll be crowing louder than our rooster. He’s already so full of himself about this that he’s likely to burst.”
“You’re peeved at him, aren’t you?”
“Peeved? Yes, some. I don’t like being pushed in a direction I was already going. What did he say to you outside anyway? I couldn’t hear all of it for trying to keep Annalea from hearing any of it.”
Israel cast his mind back to the encounter. “You need to understand I was a tad hard of hearing myself on account of the shotgun leveled at my chest, but the gist of it was that he saw us in the barn, and not when we were engaged in conversation.”
“Well, damn, he lied to me.”
“That’s what you are taking away from what I just told you?”
“I’m ignoring that.” She huffed a little, blowing away a strand of hair that had fallen over her cheek and mouth. “I asked him if he had been out last night. This was after he told me this morning that he’d heard me come in and was questioning my story about John Henry getting out. He told me he hadn’t left the house. In fact, he told me he hadn’t stirred except for when I came in. I can’t say that I like it that he lied to me.”
Israel stared at her, confounded. He did a finger rub behind his ear as he tried to find the logic.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I think you just gave me a concussion.” When she wrinkled her nose at him, clearly not amused, he said, “I’m serious. You hurt my head when you do that. Did you hear yourself? You’re peeved because your father lied to you when you lied to him about John Henry.”
“That wasn’t my lie. That was yours. You told me to say it.”
Israel fell quiet, thinking, then he said, “I am not going to win this argument, am I?”
“Not if you were Daniel Webster.”
After another pause, he said, “All right. I can accept that.”
She chuckled. “You’re good at that,” she said quietly, reaching for his hand. When she found it, she threaded her fingers through his. She saw that he had no idea what she was talking about. “Good at making me laugh. You have a way of taking a jab at me that stings some but doesn’t leave welts. I didn’t expect that you’d be good for me that way, but you are.”
“Is that sweet talk?”
She squeezed his fingers. “My idea of it anyway.”
Israel eased his hand from hers and reached above his head to push the tray closer to the fireplace and away from them. “I want you to think about how I plan to use that honey, but for now . . .” He leaned over her, nudged her knees down, and when she was stretched parallel to him, he cupped her buttocks and jerked her close. He guessed that she was expecting it, but her breath hitched anyway, and he liked that he could do that to her.
“Give me your mouth, Wilhelmina.”
A moan slipped past her lips. Her eyelids were heavier than they had been a moment before, and she had no peripheral vision to speak of because Israel was the center of all she could see. She gave him her mouth.
She kissed him, her tongue making a sweep of his upper lip, the lower one, and then slipping deeply inside to meet his. The rhythm of the kiss meant something to her this time because it was the rhythm of their bodies joining, the thrust and parry of battle where the outcome would inevitably be a draw.
His kisses were a narcotic. Willa had no other explanation for the drugging effect of them. Her limbs felt oddly weighted, their movements deliberate but sluggish. It was as if she were underwater, swimming leisurely, but always headed upstream against a slow-moving current.
She quivered.
Israel pulled away long enough to remove his shirt over his head and then remove hers. As a precaution, he toed off the socks and pushed them out of the way. He managed to accomplish this in the moment before she began to rub against his chest and make murmurings that simultaneously hinted of need and promise.
Israel lifted her upper leg and placed it over his. He thrust his hips into the pocket he made for himself. She twisted sinuously
and then they were belly to belly with only his cock between them. He found her hand, took her to it, and held his breath waiting for her fingers to curl around it. She did more than make a fist; she squeezed.
“Ah, um, yes. Like that.”
She did it again. Her hand slipped to the root and she cupped his balls.
Israel closed his eyes and grit his teeth.
She opened her hand, pulled it away. “I’m hurting you.”
“Now you are.” He took her hand and put it where he wanted it. “Go on. I’ll tell you when it’s enough.” He kissed her on the mouth. “More likely, I’ll show you.”
And that’s what he did, eventually sliding into her when she made him so hot, so hard, that it wasn’t a choice but critical to his state of being. He had meant to go carefully, but intention was not enough to make it so, not when his need was greater than his good sense.
She was ready for him, slick and snug, and accommodated his entry with little difficulty this time. He wanted to stay where he was, just like this, breathing her musk and the smell of her sex, their sex, and being aware of nothing so much as the glove-like fit of her around his cock, but then she moved and what he wanted changed. He found her wrists and held them on either side of her head as he toppled her. Her laugh was deep and throaty and he smothered it with his mouth. His lips pressed hard against hers. His hips did the same. She pushed back, squirmed, and finally was able to gasp for breath.
He kissed the corner of her mouth, her temples. He nudged her nose and bit the lobe of her ear. He arched, driving deep, and hearing her whimper, he did not think he could have enough of her. She said his name, and it was as if she had pulled a trigger. As always, her aim was dead on.
He came noisily, and to his mind, clumsily, as he juddered like a wagon on a corduroy road. In quick succession, he lost his grip on her wrists, spilled his seed, and fell heavily against her.
Israel lifted his head, spared a glance for Willa, and then shoved away from her, turning on his back and flinging a forearm over his eyes.
Willa needed to catch her breath because it felt as if Israel had driven the air out of her lungs when he collapsed on her. She turned her head, saw he had his arm across his eyes like a blindfold, and was reminded of coming upon him lying near Potrock Run. He had tried to shut the world out then in just that way.
She looked around for her shirt and saw that he had not flung it far. Stretching, she was able to reach it with her fingertips and drag it toward her. She sat up only long enough to put it on, and in that short of a time, she began to shiver.
She would have welcomed Israel’s body heat, but he did not invite her to share, and she did not believe he would appreciate the intrusion. She clamped her teeth to stop the chitter and lay as still as she was able, staring at the ceiling. It did no good to wonder what he was thinking; she had no idea, and since it was her strongly held opinion that he should say something first, she cast her mind elsewhere.
Of all the things she might have chosen to think about, her thoughts settled first on her lips. They were slightly tender, a little swollen, but in a pleasant sort of way. She touched them tentatively with the tip of her tongue, and confirmed that his kisses had changed the shape of her mouth, at least for now. Her breasts were similarly tender, but she gradually became aware that there was also an ache, not in any way painful, but niggling nonetheless. That ache made her want to touch her breasts, to cup them in her hands in the same manner he had. It was not fair that he had left her with this ache, this need, not after he had shown her there could be something more.
Willa suppressed the urge to tell him so. She would not make herself ridiculous in his eyes or her own. Instead, she wondered what the dark stubble on his jaw had done to her skin. He had probably brushed pink color into her everywhere his mouth had grazed, and the thought of it, just the thought of it, put heat into her flesh and brushed her a deeper shade of rose.
Annoyed with herself for that train of thought, she deliberately took another tack.
Her wrists were vaguely sore. She did not think he realized how firm the grip was that he’d had on her. She had not minded in those first moments, but then he hadn’t released her, and she could own that that had made her struggle in earnest, not in play. She acquitted him of not knowing that either. How would he guess at that when there were so many things he didn’t know? She could own that, too. She had not been any more forthcoming about her past than he had been, perhaps even less.
Under the covers, Willa absently rubbed her wrists.
Israel lifted his forearm and then he lifted the blankets. The fire cast light under them, enough for him to glimpse Willa massaging her wrists. She had already stopped by the time he lowered the blankets. He did not hide behind his arm again, but he did swear under his breath. In the quiet of the room it was as if a gun had gone off.
He turned on his side, supporting himself on an elbow. “Let me see them.” When she merely angled her head in his direction, he added, “Please.”
“There is nothing to see.”
“How do you know? You haven’t looked at them.”
“I just know,” she whispered, shrugging.
Israel waited. Sometimes he could wait longer than she could, and this was one of those times. After a long minute that the mantel clock obligingly ticked off, she slid her hands from under the covers and raised them enough for him to see her wrists. It still was not sufficient for him, even when she twisted them in the firelight to improve his view. He put out a hand but stopped short of circling one of her wrists. “May I?”
“They’re not bruised,” she said. “They are not even chafed.”
Israel did not withdraw his hand. He left it there, hovering.
“Very well,” she said, and sighed.
His fingers curled around her forearm, not her wrist, and brought it closer to him for inspection. She was right. Her skin was neither bruised nor chafed, but that did not mean it wouldn’t be tomorrow. He gave her back her hand and examined the other one. It was also unmarked.
He said, “If there is a bruise tomorrow, I want to know.” He tucked her hand back under the covers.
“Why? Why would you want to?”
“I just do. I’ve never . . .” He stopped, searched her face. He could see that her question was sincere, but that did not mean he understood it or could answer it. “I just do.”
His words simply hung there, hovering much as his hand had done earlier.
Willa finally addressed the silence. “Do you believe you hurt me?”
“I know I did.”
“Am I permitted to have an opinion about that?” When he did not respond, she went on. “It’s true that you surprised me, not so much when you took me by my wrists, but when you held me down. I wasn’t, um, I wasn’t prepared for that. I didn’t realize it could be part of . . . part of, um, what we were doing. I might have struggled some. All right, I did struggle, but that was because I wanted you to let me go, not because I didn’t want you.”
Israel shut his eyes briefly. “Jesus.” He actually flinched when Willa touched his face, and she had merely laid her hand against his cheek.
“Look at me,” she said.
When Israel opened his eyes and met hers, she greeted him with a smile that he could only describe as bittersweet. It made him ache some to look at it; it was that beautiful.
“You didn’t know,” she told him, withdrawing her hand. “And I didn’t tell you. I should have done that. I should have done more than say your name.”
“You should not have had to. I was rough. I was . . . clumsy.”
“Were you? I thought you were, um, enthusiastic.”
In spite of himself, a chuckle briefly vibrated in his throat. “Well, there’s a word for it.”
Willa took a deep breath and spoke as she exhaled. “It’s occurred to me that because of your incarceration, it’s
likely been a long time since you had a woman under you.”
The chuckle that was still tickling the back of his throat froze into a tangible lump that nearly choked him. He managed to swallow it, but only barely. He said wryly, “What took place a couple of hours earlier notwithstanding.”
“I hadn’t forgotten,” she said primly.
“And again, I am damned with faint praise.”
“Will you let me finish?”
There were a number of ways he could have responded to that, but he let them all pass and merely nodded instead.
“So I was thinking that it must have placed a great burden on you to behave with such restraint the first time you, um, you—”
“Had a woman under me?”
“Hmm, yes.” She pressed her lips together, musing. “So I don’t think you should be so troubled about losing yourself like that the second time.”
“And that’s what you think I did? Lost myself?”
“It seemed so.”
“What if I told you that I lost myself in you?”
“Well, if it’s true, then you will have reason to regret that you convinced me you are a liar, because I wouldn’t believe you.”
“Huh.”
She nodded, repeated the word softly, “Huh.”
Israel observed her shiver as a ripple in the blankets. “Do you want me to make a bigger fire?” he asked.
“Only if you intend to burn down the house. I want you to move closer. You’re a furnace. I’m not.”
He obliged her, inching toward her until she took him by the hand and pulled his arm across her waist. Accepting the invitation, he fit himself neatly against the contour of her slender frame, and when he thought he could not get any closer, she did. “You are cold. Maybe some more clothes?”
“No. My shirt’s enough now that you’re here. Anyway, you’d probably just take them off again.”
“Probably,” he said with a wry smile, “being as it’s been so long since I—”
She stopped him with three fingers placed over his lips. “I know it amuses you to say it again, but restrain yourself or find other words.”
