Outlander aka Cross Stitch

by Diana Gabaldon

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “That sound that ye made. The little squeak.”

  It wasn’t possible to blush; my skin was already as flushed as it could get. I let my hair swing forward to cover my face, the curls relaxing as they dragged the surface of the water.

  “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to be noisy.”

  He laughed, the deep sound echoing softly in the columns of the roof.

  “I said I like it. And I do. It’s one of the things I like the best about bedding ye, Sassenach, the small noises that ye make.”

  He pulled me closer, so my forehead rested against his neck. Moisture sprang up at once between us, slick as the sulfur-laden water. He made a slight movement with his hips, and I drew in my breath in a half-stifled gasp.

  “Yes, like that,” he said softly. “Or… like that?”

  “Urk,” I said. He laughed again, but kept doing it.

  “That’s what I thought most about,” he said, drawing his hands slowly up and down my back, cupping, curving, tracing the swell of my hips. “In prison at night, chained in a room with a dozen other men, listening to the snoring and farting and groaning. I thought of those small tender sounds that ye make when I love you, and I could feel ye there next to me in the dark, breathing soft and then faster, and the little grunt that ye give when I first take you, as though ye were settling yourself to your job.”

  My breathing was definitely coming faster. Supported by the dense, mineral-saturated water, I was buoyant as an oiled feather, kept from floating away only by my grip on the curved muscles of his shoulders, and the snug, firm clasp I kept of him lower down.

  “Even better,” his voice was a hot murmur in my ear, “when I come to ye fierce and wanting, and ye whimper under me, and struggle as though you wanted to get away, and I know it’s only that you’re struggling to come closer, and I’m fighting the same fight.”

  His hands were exploring, gently, slowly as tickling a trout, sliding deep into the rift of my buttocks, gliding lower, groping, caressing the stretched and yearning point of our joining. I quivered and the breath went from me in an unwilled gasp.

  “Or when I come to you needing, and ye take me into you with a sigh and that quiet hum like a hive of bees in the sun, and ye carry me wi’ you into peace with a little moaning sound.”

  “Jamie,” I said hoarsely, my voice echoing off the water. “Jamie, please.”

  “Not yet, mo duinne.” His hands came hard around my waist, settling and slowing me, pressing me down until I did groan.

  “Not yet. We’ve time. And I mean to hear ye groan like that again. And to moan and sob, even though you dinna wish to, for ye canna help it. I mean to make you sigh as though your heart would break, and scream with the wanting, and at last to cry out in my arms, and I shall know that I’ve served ye well.”

  The rush began between my thighs, shooting like a dart into the depths of my belly, loosening my joints so that my hands slipped limp and helpless off his shoulders. My back arched and the slippery firm roundness of my breasts pressed flat against his chest. I shuddered in hot darkness, Jamie’s steadying hands all that kept me from drowning.

  Resting against him, I felt boneless as a jellyfish. I didn’t know – or care – what sort of sounds I had been making, but I felt incapable of coherent speech. Until he began to move again, strong as a shark under the dark water.

  “No,” I said. “Jamie, no. I can’t bear it like that again.” The blood was still pounding in my fingertips and his movement within me was an exquisite torture.

  “You can, for I love ye.” His voice was half-muffled in my soaking hair. “And you will, for I want ye. But this time, I go wi’ you.”

  He held my hips firm against him, carrying me beyond myself with the force of an undertow. I crashed formless against him, like breakers on a rock, and he met me with the brutal force of granite, my anchor in the pounding chaos.

  Boneless and liquid as the water around us, contained only by the frame of his hands, I cried out, the soft, bubbling half-choked cry of a sailor sucked beneath the waves. And heard his own cry, helpless in return, and knew I had served him well.

  We struggled upward, out of the womb of the world, damp and steaming, rubber-limbed with wine and heat. I fell to my knees at the first landing, and Jamie, trying to help me, fell down next to me in an untidy heap of robes and bare legs. Giggling helplessly, drunk more with love than with wine, we made our way side by side, on hands and knees up the second flight of steps, hindering each other more than helping, jostling and caroming softly off each other in the narrow space, until we collapsed at last in each other’s arms on the second landing.

  Here an ancient oriel window opened glassless to the sky, and the light of the hunter’s moon washed us in silver. We lay clasped together, damp skins cooling in the winter air, waiting for our racing hearts to slow and breath to return to our heaving bodies.

  The moon above was a Christmas moon, so large as almost to fill the empty window. It seemed no wonder that the tides of sea and woman should be subject to the pull of that stately orb, so close and so commanding.

  But my own tides moved no longer to that chaste and sterile summons, and the knowledge of my freedom raced like danger through my blood.

  “I have a gift for you too,” I said suddenly to Jamie. He turned toward me and his hand slid, large and sure, over the plane of my still-flat stomach.

  “Have you, now?” he said.

  And the world was all around us, new with possibility.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author would like to thank:

  Jackie Cantor, Editor par excellence, whose consistent enthusiasm had so much to do with getting this story between covers; Perry Knowlton, Agent of impeccable judgment, who said, “Go ahead and tell the story the way it should be told; we’ll worry about cutting it later;” my husband, Doug Watkins, who, despite occasionally standing behind my chair, saying, “If it’s set in Scotland, why doesn’t anybody say ‘Hoot, mon?’ ” also spent a good deal of time chasing children and saying “Mommy is writing! Leave her alone!”; my daughter Laura, for loftily informing a friend, “My mother writes books!”; my son Samuel, who, when asked what Mommy does for a living, replied cautiously, “Well, she watches her computer a lot;” my daughter Jennifer, who says, “Move over, Mommy; it’s my turn to type!”; Jerry O’Neill, First Reader and Head Cheerleader, and the rest of my personal Gang of Four – Janet McConnaughey, Margaret J. Campbell, and John L. Myers – who read everything I write, and thereby keep me writing; Dr. Gary Hoff, for verifying the medical details and kindly explaining the proper way to reset a dislocated shoulder; T. Lawrence Tuohy, for details of military history and costuming; Robert Riffle, for explaining the difference between betony and bryony, listing every kind of forget-me-not known to man, and verifying that aspens really do grow in Scotland; Virginia Kidd, for reading early parts of the manuscript and encouraging me to go on with it; Alex Krislov, for co-hosting with other systems operators the most extraordinary electronic literary cocktail-party-cum-writer’s-incubator in the world, the CompuServe Literary Forum; and the many members of LitForum – John Stith, John Simpson, John L. Myers, Judson Jerome, Angelia Dorman, Zilgia Quafay, and the rest – for Scottish folk songs, Latin love poetry, and for laughing (and crying) in the right places.

  Diana Gabaldon

  Diana Gabaldon is the author of the international bestsellers CROSS STITCH, DRAGONFLY IN AMBER, VOYAGER, DRUMS OF AUTUMN and THE FIERY CROSS – all featuring Claire and Jamie Fraser. Although American by birth, Diana has become fascinated by the history of Scotland, England, France and the USA in the mid-18th century when the struggles that would determine the shape of the modern world were taking place. She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with her husband and their children.

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