“Nice?” He laughed and picked her up in his arms just like she’d mentioned. “That is not the way a man likes to have his best parts described.” He dropped her on the bed flat on her back, adjusted the mosquito netting, then came down next to her, on his side.
He adjusted her the way he wanted. Arms over her head on the pillow, legs slightly parted. For a second, he just looked, relishing the searing joy of anticipation.
“I think you’re amazing,” she said.
“That is certainly better than nice.” He smiled down at her, trying to decide which pleasure he wanted to enjoy first. Kissing her lips. Sucking her nipples. Wetting his fingers in her woman’s dew.
But then she reached over and fondled his “amazingness.” His eyes rolled up in his head at the sheer ecstasy. Still, he removed her hand. “We don’t want a repeat of what happened this afternoon.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Let’s play for a while.”
“Sounds good to me. This is a side of you I never suspected.”
“Why?
“Because you’re so serious all the time. Always scowling.”
He made a tsking sound of disgust. “Scary Larry?”
“Oh, yeah!”
He pinched her belly. “Make me smile, darlin’.”
“As long as you make me scream.”
She did.
And he did.
But he was getting ahead of himself.
He kissed her with a slow seduction while his hands learned all her curves and secrets. The swell and contour of her breasts. The way she inhaled sharply at the mere brush of his fingers over her nipples. The curve of her waist and indentation of her navel. The silken hair below protecting her moistness.
She is wet for me, he exalted. Then, when she attempted to lower her hands to caress him, as well, he murmured against her open mouth, “Not yet. Not yet.”
By the time he was ready to enter her, her hands clutched the wood rails of the headboard, and she was moaning and begging him for release. He was in no better condition. The pleasure was almost painful in its intensity.
He knelt between her thighs, lifted her knees, spread them wide, and then . . . and then . . . thank God and all the saints, he pushed himself inside her, filling her. Then he pushed even more as her inner muscles shifted to accommodate him. For a moment, he was still, enjoying just this completeness.
He raised himself on braced arms and stared down at her. He was slick with perspiration from holding back, but beads of sweat were on her forehead and upper lip, as well. Her honey-colored eyes were glazed with arousal, almost wild with want. Her hair was a mass of tousled curls.
“Please.”
He was happy to comply.
His long, slow strokes were excruciating and soon cut off. He’d waited too long. When he began to pound in her with short, hard plunges, she was keening and arched her hips off the mattress and up against his belly. Inside, her muscles were convulsing with orgasm, clasping and unclasping, attempting to hold him in.
Throwing his head back, he roared out his own completion, then blacked out for a moment as he slumped onto her body. Her hands were caressing his back when he regained consciousness.
He raised himself to look down at her, astonished at the sex act that they’d just engaged in, which was not a sex act at all. It was way more than that, more than could withstand examination at this time. He ran the backs of his fingers over her swollen lips and just stared.
“Can I tell you something, Laurent, without you running away in a panic?”
He could not imagine what that might be. “Of course.”
“I love you. I don’t how or why it happened so quickly, in such odd circumstances. I just know I do. No, don’t say anything. I’m not asking for a reciprocal declaration. I just wanted you to know. I love you.”
“I’m glad,” he said, surprised at himself. He didn’t repeat her words. He couldn’t. Not yet. Maybe never. But he couldn’t deny that her words pleased him and perhaps reflected his feeling that theirs had not been just a sex act.
He grinned then, deciding it was time for more play. “Looks like the South can rise again after all, Scarlett.” He rolled over onto his back and pointed downward.
“Well, fiddle-dee-dee!” She grinned and showed him how modern women played, but to his credit, he also showed her, good and true, that the South was not dead yet.
Two could play this game . . .
Margo wanted to make love with Laurent. Of course she did. But more than that, she wanted to lighten his life, to ease some of the pain and responsibility he faced every day, and she didn’t mean the physical pain of his leg wound.
“How did this happen?” she asked as she ran her fingertips over the livid scar that ran from his knee to his upper thigh.
“Bentonville. I managed to escape with only minor scrapes through five years of the bloody war, then caught a bullet to my shoulder and a saber cut to my leg at the last real Confederate battle of the war. Talk about bad luck!”
She leaned down and kissed the wound, starting at the knee, then moving slowly upward.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he laughed, grabbing her by the shoulders. “That is too close to heaven.”
“I’d like to show you heaven, sweetie.”
Mischief and pleasure danced in his blue gray eyes. “Maybe later, sweetie.”
“Definitely later.”
“By the way, there was something else I dreamed last night, aside from the idiots running and running and running. There were explosions. Lots of them. And weapons that must have been guns but unlike any I’ve seen before. And dead bodies.” He shook his head as if to clear it.
“Larry Wilson was a Navy SEAL. The SEALs are among the toughest fighting men in the world in the war against terrorists . . . I’ll explain terrorism later. The explosions were probably bombs, and the guns very sophisticated technical weaponry.”
“Bad enough I have nightmares about my own war. Now I’ve taken on another man’s war, too.”
She smiled. “If you have a bad dream, just call for me. I’ll come kiss it better.”
He smiled back at her, and, cliché that it was, her heart turned over. “I’ll hold you to that promise.” But then he grew more serious. “Will you be here then? I mean, will you be staying?”
“I think I’ll be here as long as you want me.”
He drew her down to him and kissed her, a gentle thank-you kind of kiss. But then it became something different.
In the midst of it, though, he whispered, “And how long will you want me?”
She didn’t answer, but she knew immediately. Forever.
With his hands holding on to the headboard rails, at her insistence as he’d done with her, she touched and kissed every inch of his delicious body. She loved touching him because he was so sensitive, everywhere. He encouraged her to talk to him, too. To tell him what she liked about what she saw and caressed. To tell him in explicit detail what she planned to do next.
She’d never met a man to be shocked by oral sex, but he was. In truth, she hadn’t done it more than a few times before because, frankly, to her it was the most intimate of acts, both to and from a partner, reserved for special people. People you loved. Or thought you might love.
He bucked so violently when she first put her mouth to him that he almost threw her off the bed, but then he threaded his fingers into her hair holding her in place. When he was approaching his climax, she drew back and climbed up to straddle him. Holding his eyes, which had gone from gray to blue with excitement, she took his erection in hand and impaled herself with him. Her body welcomed him with a little miniorgasm, a flexing and tightening of her inner muscles around him. For a moment, the only sound in the room was that of his panting.
“Sacre bleu!” he said then, sitting up to take over control of the love play. “Let me,” he said huskily and put his hands on her hips, showing her the rhythm he wanted. “Like that, darlin’. No, no, no, slow down.” Then, “
Harder.”
And finally, a long drawn out, “Aaarrgh!”
When they both lay splayed on their backs, fighting to regain their breaths, he turned his head to look at her. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” she countered, also turning just her head.
“I hope my sister didn’t hear us. You were very loud.”
“Hah! You were the one bellowing like an alligator.”
They smiled at each other, and he took her hand, lacing her fingers with his.
“At least we don’t have to worry about me getting pregnant. Not right away anyway.”
He kissed her knuckles. “I didn’t think about that. I should have, for God’s sake! But you made me mindless.”
“I have a monthly packet of birth control pills in my purse. Twenty-five days left.”
“I am not even going to ask what you mean. I can only assume it is good news for both of us.”
“The best.”
“Twenty-five days. Four times a day, maybe five if you are not too weak. I figure we best get to work here, darlin’.” He winked at her.
“I’m game,” she said.
And much to her surprise . . . his, too, probably . . . they did in fact make love five times that night.
Six
There ain’t nothin’ a smart woman can’t do . . .
For the next two weeks life moved on at Rosylyn following a pattern dictated by the sugar crop.
Hilary Clinton may have coined the phrase, “it takes a village,” but, truly, Southern plantations put it to work, even those that no longer had slaves. Everybody had a job, even the little ones. Since it was mid-July and the sugar cane wouldn’t be harvested until October, there was a minimal amount of field work required every day, usually only a few hours in the early morning, but the other work went on. Massive amounts of it. Vegetable gardening, which was mostly supervised by Lettie—the flower gardens had been left to go wild long ago, not having the required labor, although Clarence did his best with his one arm to keep it tamed. Clothes made. Fruits and vegetables preserved. Laundry. Planting rice and hay for the horse, mules, and two cows. Even the legless Jonas had jobs to do, like butter churning and sharpening tools.
To her surprise, Margo seemed to fit in, helping wherever she could, whether with cooking or whatever job she was assigned. Her cheesecake had been a flop as a first try, but it had still been delicious scooped into little dishes like a pudding and topped with fresh whipped cream.
She’d even taught Fleur how to use the tube of makeup she’d found in her purse to cover her scar, and now Clarence was acting very interested in her. Apparently when Fleur had been only seventeen, her mother, a free black, had taken her to one of the Quadroon Balls in New Orleans where wealthy men came to buy mistresses. Fleur’s protector had been abusive, almost killing her before she’d escaped. Her mother had refused to take her in.
At night Margo became Laurent’s and he became hers, whether it be in his bed, her bed, the storeroom, a stall in the barn, or in the creek one moonlit night. She told him repeatedly that she loved him. Although he didn’t return the sentiment, she knew he loved her, too. It was there in his blue gray eyes and in his lovemaking.
She felt as if they were in a holding pattern, waiting for something to happen, which she hated. She’d always been a person who took charge and made things happen, whether it was her escape from the projects or her rise in the business world.
Right now, she was raking rows in the vegetable garden next to Lettie. Delilah, who was still giving Ivory the cold shoulder, had just taken a basket of harvested vegetables up to the kitchen. The poverty at Rosylyn troubled Margo deeply, and she wanted to help, but they had already sold everything of value . . . paintings, silver, even fine clothing. “There sure is a lot of okra here,” Margo remarked. “And beets.”
“Way more than we can use, even after preserving,” Lettie said.
“Can’t you sell the excess at the market?”
Lettie shrugged. “You saw how many vegetables there were there. I doubt it would be worth the trouble.”
Margo thought about her own business and how she’d taken an existing concept . . . dating agency . . . and turned it on its head. What Rosylyn needed was a new concept. “Why not use what you have and make it into something more marketable? Okra, for example. What else could you do with it? Okra jelly? Okra cake? Okra tea?”
Lettie turned up her nose.
Suddenly Margo got an idea. “How about okra wine? They say you can make wine out of anything. Even dandelion wine. We probably have the ingredients here. Of course we wouldn’t have time to age it, but maybe that’s okay. Betcha there’s no okra wine for sale in New Orleans.”
“My grandpa used to make wine. There are lots of bottle and jugs in the storeroom.”
“See. It was meant to be.”
Lettie just rolled her eyes at that.
“And as for the beets, how about we mix the juice with lard and make a kind of rouge?”
“Laurent would never allow it.”
“Laurent doesn’t have to know.”
Lettie giggled. “How could we hide what we’re doing?”
“We’ll only work when Laurent is away from the house, and we’ll swear everyone to secrecy.”
They looked at each other and smiled.
“It’s a deal then,” Margo said.
Lettie nodded, but still she exclaimed, “Lawd-a-mercy!”
“Another thing . . .”
Lettie groaned.
“. . . I’ve got to find a way of utilizing my matchmaking skills here for profit. I bet there are lots of single men and women who don’t know about each other because their homes and plantations are so far from each other. Like you, Lettie. You’re too pretty and nice to not find a man to love. Yes, we can go into the matchmaking business, for a fee, of course.”
Lettie groaned again, longer this time, but Margo couldn’t help but catch the hopeful expression on her face. “How could you . . . we manage it? I mean, would you set up an office here in the front parlor or buy a space in the city?”
“No, Laurent would find out. Imagination, that’s all we need here. I know . . . oh, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier.”
Lettie waited expectedly for her big announcement.
“We’re going to have a speed-dating party, 1870s Southern style.”
“What kind of party?” Laurent asked, coming up behind them from the edge of the sugar fields, where he, Ivory, and Cordell had been clearing more drainage ditches. He was covered with sweat, which dampened his shirt and trousers, and, frankly, he smelled of perspiration, this being predeodorant days, but he looked downright irresistible, and he would bathe later. He was especially attractive when he flashed her a knowing smile, which Lettie saw, and glanced repeatedly between them.
“The party?” Margo said. “Oh, Lettie and I were talking about setting up a garden party here.”
“What garden? We don’t have a garden. Oh, you mean here in the vegetable patch?” He laughed.
“Don’t be silly, Laurent. We’ll clear out Mama’s flower garden, or else we’ll just have it indoors.”
“I am not getting involved in a garden party.”
“That’s the best part, Laurent,” Margo said. “We’ll do it someday when you have to be away from Rosylyn.”
He shook his head at what he perceived to be their foolishness and walked off up to the house.
She and Lettie exchanged glances, then burst out with laughter.
“I am so glad you came here,” Lettie said, giving her a hug.
“No more than me,” Margo replied, but she was thinking of Laurent and a new idea she’d just had for what they could do tonight. It didn’t involve vegetables, but it did involve another crop.
Sugar cane. Specifically, the tassels.
Hope floats . . . or something . . .
There was something strange going on.
Laurent wasn’t sure what it was, but every time he ente
red a room, it suddenly went silent. And some of the men were staring at him kind of funny, as if they knew something he didn’t.
Plus, the smell. “What is that god-awful smell?” he’d bellowed this noontime.
“I was boilin’ dirty socks in here this mornin’,” Lettie had said, chin held high with belligerence. She’d been lying, clear as daylight.
“Margo?” he’d asked then.
“Sorry. Gotta go. Delilah’s waiting for me to help hang laundry.”
“What’s that you’re doin’?” he now asked Jonas, who was strapped to a chair on the back loggia whittling.
“Nothin’,” Jonas replied as he jumped as far as he could within his restraints and dropped the object he’d been working on into a burlap bag. Instead, he picked up another piece of wood and showed it to him. It was a deer, complete with antlers. The detail was remarkable. But Jonas was hiding something from him. He couldn’t imagine what it might be.
Then there was Clarence who was spending an inordinate amount of time in the flower garden, gathering plants with his one arm but had nothing to show for it in terms of weeding or pruning. “Uh, what are doing, Clarence?”
Clarence, too, about jumped out of his skin. “Lookin’ fer herbs?”
“Herbs? Since when did Mama grow herbs in her flower beds?”
“Flower herbs.” Clarence raised his chin belligerently, too, daring him to disagree.
Laurent couldn’t be too upset over any of this. He had Margo in his bed and in his life these last six weeks. They’d long since run out of her birth control pills, but he could not worry about that, either. If she became pregnant, he knew what he would do. Maybe he would do it anyhow.
He couldn’t believe what a difference she made for him . . . for all of them, actually. Suddenly, they had hope. Hell, if a woman could travel through time, anything was possible, even surviving these harsh financial conditions, which Margo called a “freakin’ bump in the road.” Some bump! While Rosylyn was easily self-sufficient in terms of feeding and housing everyone, it wasn’t bringing in any hard cash. And the tax man did not take sugar or eggs, which Margo had actually suggested.
Ladies Prefer Rogues: Four Novellas of Time-Travel Passion Page 14
