by Nan Ryan
“Let it stir,” he said in a sleep-heavy voice, and his dark hand moved over her.
The lean fingers spread on her bare, quivering belly and slipped down through the triangle of white-blond curls to touch and tease the tiny bud of her desire.
Mary Ellen’s breath came out in a rush, and she wiggled and squirmed and sighed when she felt his powerful erection pulsating against the cleft in her bare buttocks.
“Ohhh,” she murmured anxiously, involuntarily opening her legs and arching her back to afford him entrance. “Ohhhh, yes, yes.” She gasped when she felt the hard, heavy flesh move between her legs and push cautiously up into her.
“Am I hurting you?” he asked, his breath hot and ragged on the nape of her neck.
“N-no…,” she managed, “but I don’t know how…I’ve never…”
“I’ll show you, baby,” he whispered, pressing heated kisses to her ivory shoulders. “Relax against me,” he advised. “Let me do all the work. I’ll go slowly, gently, until you’re…” He thrust a little farther into her as she sighed and settled against him.
His strong but gentle hands guided her movements. He pressed her hips down on him as he thrust up into her. As promised, he was easy with her, pushing cautiously—inch by slow inch—until the full, throbbing length of him was buried in her.
“You all right, Mary?” he asked solicitously.
“Yes,” she whispered, “I…yes…,” she murmured, but she trembled in his embrace.
So he waited, lay there for a time, unmoving, letting her get comfortable with the position, with the feel of him taking her from behind.
One of his hands went between her legs, the other fondled her swelling breasts. Those skilled, eager dark hands labored at further arousing his pale, unsure lover. They worked wonders on her. Lost in the building ecstasy, Mary Ellen began to move seductively against him, and the Captain immediately found and matched her slow, sensual rhythm.
Their bodies joined, their hearts hammering, they moved slowly, perfectly together, the pleasure increasing steadily. At last their movements speeded up, and they surged and met in growing splendor while the strong rays of the rising summer sun spilled into the room and bathed their joined bodies with a warm pink light.
“Ohhhh, Cap…Oh!” Mary gasped as the first wave of her coming climax washed over her.
“Yes, baby, I know. Let it come,” he encouraged hoarsely, knowing his own wrenching climax was close.
In seconds they were in the throes of blinding ecstasy, the incredible tremors of pleasure gripping them, buffeting them, casting them about as if they were a couple of children’s spineless rag dolls. The spasms were so intense, so prolonged, Mary Ellen cried out again and again in her carnal joy as he held her tightly, staying with her, making sure she got as much as she wanted. Then he groaned in his own deep satisfaction.
When finally the extended orgasm had passed, two limp, perspiring lovers sagged into the soft mattress, their bodies still joined, their racing hearts beginning to slow to a more normal beat.
Sated and feeling wonderfully lazy, Mary Ellen wished they didn’t have to get up. She wished they could lie there like this while the sun climbed high into the cloudless sky, reached its zenith, started down again, finally sank below the western horizon, and night settled over them.
The Captain stirred behind her. She felt him pull out of her and sit up. He leaned down, kissed the arch of her hip, and, trailing kisses down to her bent knee, bit her playfully and said, “Meet me in the master suite tonight at seven.”
She hugged her pillow and purred, then argued, “The summer sun’s still up at seven.”
“Yes,” he said, “I know.”
“All right,” she said, giving in happily.
“And Mary…”
“Yes?”
“Don’t let me catch you going out alone at night ever again!”
34
MARY ELLEN AND THE Captain carried on a torrid affair that rivaled the blistering heat of the hot Tennessee summer. Upstairs in the privacy of Longwood’s large second floor, the pair repeatedly made love in the master suite before the French gold-framed mirrors. And in the master suite’s spacious dressing room. In the roomy marble-walled bath. In the bath’s marble tub. In Mary Ellen’s white-and-yellow bedroom. In every single guest room. And even—a time or two—right out in the wide upstairs corridor.
They were insatiable.
Anytime one of them caught the other upstairs, a heated session of lovemaking ensued. Mary Ellen no longer made any pretense of not wanting him as much as he wanted her. She couldn’t get enough. She surrendered willingly, again and again, to the burning passion he evoked. Succumbed enthusiastically, despite his curious insistence—every time they came together—on making certain she clearly understood that the fever-hot lovemaking meant nothing to him.
She meant nothing to him.
His unkind words hurt, cut her to the quick. She hated him for his cruelty, but she responded in kind. She assured him passionately that they were of the same mind. It was a relationship of convenience, grounded solely on physical, not emotional, need. So he needn’t concern himself that she might learn to care for him. That would never happen. The only thing she wanted from him was just what he was giving her.
Nothing more.
When they were not upstairs making love, they might have been strangers. Whether alone or in the company of others, they never acknowledged each other. They never talked. They never dined together. They never went out together. Neither paid the other any attention.
They were lovers by night, enemies by day.
Until, curiously, Captain Knight abruptly stopped pursuing Mary Ellen. The first time it happened, Mary Ellen was at a complete loss. Around nine on a rainy August night, she had glimpsed the uniformed Captain smoking alone in her father’s study.
When she walked by, he had glanced up. She knew he saw her. So Mary Ellen had gone straight up to bed to wait for him, leaving her bedroom door wide open.
She’d bathed, brushed out her long hair, and slipped into a never-before-worn champagne satin nightgown left over from her trousseau.
Impatient to be in the Captain’s arms, she paced restlessly about, moving back and forth between her white-and-yellow bedroom and the mirrored master suite. She was in the wide upstairs hall when finally she caught sight of him. He stepped into the downstairs corridor and approached the grand staircase. He paused for a moment with a hand on the polished railing, a booted foot on the bottom step.
Then he started up the stairs.
Smiling, Mary Ellen shivered with anticipation and hurried back into her room. She leapt up onto the turned-down bed and positioned herself provocatively against a bunch of lace-trimmed pillows piled up against the headboard. She wet her lips and smoothed her flowing blond hair back off her face. She eased the long satin shirt of her champagne nightgown up her pale thighs and eased one side of the low-cut lace bodice off her shoulder.
Anxiously she waited.
And waited.
Long minutes passed, and Captain Knight didn’t walk through her bedroom door. Finally Mary Ellen got out of bed. She went out into the hall. The door of the master suite was now closed.
Mary Ellen moved swiftly to the closed door and lifted her hand, then lowered it without knocking. Baffled and incensed, she turned and went back to her own room, slamming the door.
The affair had ended.
It was over.
And Mary Ellen was relieved. She was sick of feeling guilty, dirty, as if she were as immoral as one of the paid strumpets down at Antole’s. The dark, sensual Captain had brought out the very worst in her. She had been his convenient prostitute, engaging in any and every shameful act he suggested.
She was glad it was finally over.
She was also puzzled.
Mary Ellen saw less and less of Captain Knight. Suddenly he was rarely at Longwood. He left the mansion each evening before sunset, and he didn’t return until late at night. Days passe
d without Mary Ellen even seeing him. And, perversely, that bothered her.
Night after sweltering night she lay awake in her lonely bed, imagining the handsome Captain in the arms of another woman. She tormented herself by wondering who had captured his fleeting attention. And she tortured herself by envisioning him doing to some other woman all the delightfully forbidden things he’d done to her.
Mary Ellen reminded herself repeatedly that she didn’t care what he did or with whom. What difference did it make? None. None whatsoever. She was grateful he’d finally gone elsewhere in search of diversion. He had tired of her? Well, she had tired of him, too!
Mary Ellen was in just such a mood one hot August evening when she decided she’d walk down River Road to the old Templeton mansion and visit Leah Thompson. It was nearing sunset. Huge black clouds that had been boiling up in the summer sky all afternoon were now threatening rain.
But Mary Ellen chose to ignore the possibility of rain as well as the stern warnings of Captain Knight.
Don’t let me catch you going out alone at night ever again! That was what he had said the night she’d found him sleeping in her bed.
“Well, don’t worry, Captain. You won’t catch me,” she said aloud now as she came out of her room. “How could you when you’re never here!”
Mary Ellen skipped down the stairs and plucked a pink parasol from the umbrella stand in the foyer. Disregarding the usual looks of inquiry and interest she drew from the sailors filling her parlor and front porch, she left.
Once at the Templeton mansion with the ever-cheerful Leah and her four spirited children, Mary Ellen immediately began to feel better. Leah had received a long letter from her husband, William, in Vicksburg, so she was in an exceptionally good mood. It rubbed off on Mary Ellen. Her sagging spirits lifting, she was soon laughing and enjoying herself. Leah cut a freshly baked chocolate cake and loudly cursed the Yankees because there was no coffee to go with it.
Mary Ellen, Leah, and the children gathered around the kitchen table just as a flash of heat lightning struck close by. Leah squealed and jumped. All four of her children giggled and teased her about being an old scaredy-cat.
With an echoing boom of thunder the rain started, coming out of the south, and Leah ordered everyone—including Mary Ellen—to start shutting windows. Laughing, they all raced about closing windows as the rain became a deluge, pouring down in blinding sheets. The windows closed, they returned to the kitchen. Gathered around the table, they enjoyed the chocolate cake as the torrential rains beat down loudly on the steep roof and lashed the lush river bluffs below.
The rain, coupled with the pleasure of being with the friendly, fun-loving Thompsons, caused Mary Ellen to stay longer than intended. It was after ten when finally she said she’d better leave, should have left an hour ago.
Even then Leah followed her to the door, saying, “You can’t walk home in the rain. Stay and I’ll send these wild Indian children of mine off to bed so we can talk.”
“The rain’s almost stopped,” Mary Ellen told her. “I really need to get home. When you write William, tell him he’s in my prayers. And thanks so much for the cake and the company.”
“Anytime. You be careful now.”
“I will.”
Mary Ellen opened the pink parasol and stepped out into the gently falling rain. She walked rapidly, eager to reach the security of home. Blinking, peering ahead into the misty darkness, she saw no one on the road and credited the summer storm. Even the Yankees had enough sense to get in out of the rain.
Mary Ellen had gone less than a hundred yards down River Road when a drunken Union soldier leapt out of the bushes and grabbed her. The pink parasol flew out of her hand and she screamed in shocked surprise. The Yankee’s large hand swiftly clamped over her mouth, and Mary Ellen felt herself being dragged backward into the rain-drenched trees and wet undergrowth.
She was roughly slammed down onto her back and temporarily lost her breath. Gasping, fighting for air, she regained her lost breath as the powerfully built soldier crawled atop her. Mary Ellen kicked and bit him and thrashed about, but she couldn’t escape. Trapped beneath his huge, heavy body, she struggled impotently to rise. Frantic, she screamed and pleaded with him and knew it would do no good. She whipped her head about so violently her hair came undone, fell into her frightened face.
She wanted to die when the sweating, grunting drunk braced a muscular arm across her shoulders and chest and shoved up her skirts. Raindrops pelted her face as his big hand slid roughly up her thigh. She shuddered when he tore her pantalets and she felt the rain peppering her bared flesh. The big man began unbuttoning his uniform trousers, and Mary Ellen felt bile rise in her throat. The arm across her chest lifted. He grabbed her unbound hair and lowered his ugly face to hers.
Unable to move, Mary Ellen closed her eyes in horror as her heart tried to beat its way out of her chest. Body tensed, bracing for the pain to come, she was saved from a fate worse than death when the soldier’s heavy weight abruptly left her. His blunt fingers pulled painfully at her tangled hair and then released it.
Mary Ellen’s frightened eyes opened to see Captain Knight above her in the rain, his hand gripping the drunk’s collar, pulling the grunting beast off her. Then the brutal slam of the Captain’s fist against the man’s startled face sounded like a pistol shot. The swift, powerful force of the blow knocked the soldier out cold, and Mary Ellen whimpered in stunned relief.
She was sitting up, smoothing down her damp, dirty skirts, when the Captain pulled her to her feet and put his arms around her.
“Are you all right?” he asked anxiously, his shaky voice betraying the depth of his concern. “Mary, did he hurt you?…Did he…?”
“No,” she murmured, trembling like a leaf in the wind. She clung to him, burying her face in the curve of his neck and shoulder while the gentle rain pelted them. “No, you got here in time, Clay. Oh, Clay, Clay,” she said, then choked, crying now.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered against her wet, tangled hair, realizing that she had called him Clay instead of Captain. She hadn’t called him Clay since they were children. “I’ve got you, Mary. No one can hurt you now. Shhh, don’t cry. Shhh.”
The tall Captain stood there in the falling rain, holding Mary Ellen close, comforting her, soothing her, murmuring her name over and over again in a tone of voice she hadn’t heard before.
The moment of tenderness passed.
Captain Knight set her back and scowled at her, a muscle spasming his cheek. Nobody else on earth could give him such a scare. Damn her for frightening him so badly.
Mary Ellen stood before him, shivering with emotion. She looked young and vulnerable and incredibly desirable. Her face was wet with rain and tears, her hair dirty and tangled, her dress damp and clinging to her slender, shaking body.
Tense, angry, Captain Knight whistled for his well-trained black stallion, and the big beast came to him immediately. The Captain turned to the horse and swiftly unstrapped his rolled-up black slicker from behind the cantle. He shook out the slicker, draped it around Mary Ellen’s shoulders, and drew her to him.
He raised a hand, swept a damp, dirty lock of hair from her cheek, and spontaneously lowered his mouth to her wet, trembling lips.
But he caught himself in time. He was an inch away from kissing her when he abruptly came to his senses, raised his dark head. Teeth gritted, he lifted Mary Ellen into the saddle. His silver eyes narrowed, he cast one quick glance at the unconscious soldier, vowing he’d deal with the drunken bastard later. He turned away angrily, leaving the soldier lying in the rain.
The Captain swung up behind Mary Ellen. He was stiff and silent as they rode to Longwood in the falling rain. But Mary Ellen was so grateful he had saved her and so happy to be enclosed inside his strong arms, she sighed and leaned back against his hard chest, laying her damp head on his shoulder.
She stole glances at his rain-wet profile outlined against the night sky, some features clearly defined, the
others in deep shadow. His raven hair was wet and plastered to his well-shaped head, and diamond beads of rain clung to his long, sweeping eyelashes.
He looked like a dark god to her, and Mary Ellen could hardly wait to get home to Longwood. If what he was feeling was anything like what she was feeling, he would take her straight upstairs to his suite. Together they would strip and bathe away the rain and the dirt, and then they would get into that seven-and-a-half-foot-wide mahogany bed and make love while the rain peppered the balcony outside the open French doors.
As they rode up the pebbled drive of Longwood, Mary Ellen smiled contentedly.
But she blinked in disbelief when the Captain remained mounted, plucked her from the stallion’s back, and deposited her at the front gate.
Then, without so much as a by-your-leave, he wheeled the big stallion about and rode off into the rainy night.
35
CAPTAIN KNIGHT RODE AWAY from Longwood the minute he’d lowered Mary to her feet. It was one of the hardest things he had ever done. It took all his strong will and practiced self-control to leave her standing in the rain.
But he had to do it.
His dark face set, his gray eyes narrowed, Captain Knight dug his heels into the black stallion’s flanks. The surprised creature neighed loudly but immediately went into a ground-eating gallop. Gravel crunched and flew beneath the black’s striking hooves as he carried his troubled master swiftly down the pebbled drive.
The Captain had forced himself to stay away from Mary.
He had stopped making love to her when he found himself starting to fall in love with her all over again. He couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t. She wouldn’t get a second crack at him. Not this boy.
At River Road the determined Captain turned his mount toward South Memphis. His blood up, wanting Mary, wanting to not want Mary, he headed for the city’s most famous brothel.
He had not yet paid a visit to the plush sporting house, but he’d heard from fellow officers that the women were extraordinarily beautiful and more than competent at their craft.
