Malcolm whooped and shucked his shirt, suspenders, and trousers as he raced back to the river, bounding in with a tremendous splash; the lower half of his union suit, all he was still wearing, became immediately transparent, and I giggled. Sawyer rose more slowly and helped me to my feet. He asked, “Would you care to swim?”
“I think I’ll just watch,” I said. “I haven’t any dry clothes, if I get these wet.”
“Boyd?”
“Hell no, I’m not about to get wet before bed. I’ll just wash up these dishes for y’all ungrateful wretches.”
I sat on the bank with Fannie’s basket situated upon my lap, rummaging within the small linen bags of herbs that she’d labeled with neatly-penciled tags, prepared to continue my sorting. But I watched, absorbedly, as Sawyer stripped his shirt and boots. He directed a smile over his shoulder, surely sensing the ardor of my thoughts, as he waded out to his hips, the sun tinting his skin golden, each muscle along his powerful torso sharply defined in its light. He dove under, surfacing with a roar, and Malcolm jumped immediately upon his back, trying to dunk him under the water. They wrestled and Malcolm coaxed Sawyer into throwing him; Sawyer made a brace with both hands, upon which Malcolm stepped and was subsequently chucked into the air. Malcolm hollered and wind-milled his arms, flying farther each time.
“Well, if there’s any snakes the boy’ll scare ’em away,” Boyd said, finished with the dishes, coming to squat beside me, smoke dangling between his teeth. “What you got there, Lorie-girl?”
“Herbs that Fannie sent along,” I told him. “I wish I knew more about each. They’re labeled so well, but I don’t know the uses of all of them. Ground willowbark, that’s for pain. Chamomile, that’s to encourage good sleep. But what about comfrey?”
“That’s to aid a healing bone,” Boyd said, rooting in the basket, blowing smoke from both nostrils. He lifted out another packet. “Garlic. Mama used it for poultices, bruises an’ the like. Mint tea, as well?”
I nodded. “Fannie made such a fine gift for us.”
Boyd eventually ambled down the bank to smoke and skip rocks across the surface of the water. I set aside the basket after a time, thinking I might bathe in our tent while everyone else was occupied and our clothes were clean, fluttering in a soft breeze as though touched by gentle fingers; an unbidden memory came creeping as I knelt, of Mama straightening a damp, snowy-white underskirt that hung on the clothes line, twitching the material so that it would not dry in a mess of wrinkles.
Lorissa, little one, go and fetch your brothers, I heard her call, just at the edges of my consciousness. I shivered and nearly rose to my feet to do her bidding.
Instead I caught the basin on my hip and dipped it full at the edge of the water, smiling at Sawyer and Malcolm playing in deeper territory. Inside our tent, I stripped my clothes in the dusky glow of late evening and washed my body in increments, all the tub would allow. I reflected that as a child I had hardly bathed more than once a week; it was living at Ginny’s which altered this practice—there, I could scarcely bathe enough to scrub the scent of men from my body.
No, I told myself, with determination. No thoughts of that, not tonight.
I combed out my hair until it was soft as the hide of a newborn foal, and did not bother rebraiding its length. I slipped into my clean shift and wrapped into my shawl, ducking back outside to see Sawyer and Malcolm climbing the bank, both soaked to the skin.
“I’m gonna freeze!” Malcolm gasped, and indeed I could hear his teeth chattering.
“Fire’s hot,” Boyd said. “Boy, get in dry clothes an’ go sit near, before you catch a chill.”
“Thanks, Mama,” Malcolm teased, scurrying into their tent.
“Goddammit, don’t get that bedding wet!” Boyd yelped after him.
“You need to get warm, too,” I told Sawyer, who was wet and shirtless, toweling his hair. He grinned at me, almost devilishly; as though responding to the expression in his eyes, thunder rumbled to the west. There was a sharply-delineated cloud ridge there, pewter-gray, silhouetted against a sky gone nearly ruby with the sunset.
“That I do,” Sawyer said, disappearing into our tent.
Boyd perused the eerie array of clouds. He grumbled, “Let’s hope it runs outta steam before morning. I don’t relish traveling in the rain.”
Lightning sizzled across the western sky, appearing to take giant, crooked-legged leaps along the edge of the massing storm. By the next brilliant pulse, raindrops spattered the ground with a sound like frying bacon, and Boyd hurried to bank the fire.
“I’ll check the horses!” he called. “G’night, Lorie-girl.”
“’Night, Boyd,” I responded.
Within our tent and clad in the bottom half of his dry union suit, Sawyer was shivering a little, his loose hair damp down his naked back. Almost before I realized I had moved I was in his arms, holding him close.
“I’ll warm you,” I whispered, running urgent palms along his chilled skin, gripped by an overpowering urge to grasp his hands and cup them over my breasts. My nipples pushed brazenly outward against the thin fabric of the shift, needing to be touched.
“You’re so warm, sweetheart,” he murmured against my hair. “And so soft.”
Rain sheeted over the canvas and Sawyer moved quickly to secure the laces. We heard Boyd running back, though the driving storm summarily drowned out all sound. Once the entrance was secure Sawyer turned to me and saw something that would not be denied, burning in my eyes. He ordered, low, “Come here.”
We came together at once, kissing deeply, and he lowered me to the bedding. This was more fervency than he had yet allowed, and there was a sense of abandon in these kisses that eradicated any notions I harbored of waiting to be wed before we made love. I shivered as though fevered and bent one leg around his hip, the edge of my shift bunched high upon my legs; I wore no garments beneath. His kisses destroyed all reason, his lips and taste, his stroking tongue that claimed mine as I held fast to his shoulders.
“Lorie,” he whispered, resting his forehead against me, eyes closed as he attempted to catch his breath. He said intently, “I mean to wait…”
I made a sound of immediate disagreement, moving my touch to his collarbones, drawing his lower lip into my mouth, suckling gently, skimming my tongue over the fullness of it. He cupped my breasts, thumbs stroking my nipples, which he had not yet dared, and I moaned, lifting into his broad palms. His hands went heatedly to my thighs, bringing me closer, and I opened my lips upon the planes of his chest, tasting him, our movements urgent and reverent, at once. Thunder exploded amid the restless rain and Sawyer moved suddenly to his back and covered his eyes with a forearm. He said hoarsely, “I promised myself I would wait until we were properly wed.”
He was so honorable; it only served to increase my want, but I drew forth the wherewithal to whisper, “I know…”
“You deserve no less,” he said firmly. I curled my arms tightly around my bent knees; my heart throbbed frantically. The way he was lying flat only served to highlight the evidence of his desire, and it took all of my resolve not to climb atop him and simply put the decision behind us, once and for all. But then I recalled Sawyer’s face as it had looked the night he and Whistler came for me, the night he found me in Sam Rainey’s camp, bruised and bloody, and how I’d been so close to dying without realizing that he was still alive and desperately searching for me. Tenderness flooded my soul, replacing a fraction of the heat, and I lay carefully beside him and rested my head upon his shoulder.
At once he curved protectively, sweetly aligning our bodies. Echoing my thoughts, he said, “I am thinking of how I found you that night, Lorie. I have never known such fear as I rode towards that camp and heard you scream.” His eyes drove into mine as he spoke. “I cannot bear the thought of you hurting. I will cradle you in my arms and protect you, always. And yet here I lay, wanting you so much I feel like an animal. My daddy would strap my hide raw for taking such advantage of you, for letting my own needs
overpower me so.”
“Sawyer,” I scolded, touched to my core at his words. “You mustn’t punish yourself.” I implored, “You are not taking advantage. You don’t think I want you just as fiercely? I can think of nothing else, truly.” Thunder detonated in the sky directly above us, as though in response to my words. I repeated in a whisper, “Truly.”
His lips curved into a half-smile and he said, “I do know that for truth. Your thoughts are so clear to me. That night I pulled the splinter from your foot…”
I smiled, slipping my left leg between both of his, cautiously. He allowed this and I remembered, “You spoke my name for the first time that night, when I crawled over you.”
“I had been lying there dreaming of you and you were suddenly on top of me. Your hair was loose…”
So saying, he reached and curled his fingers into a long strand of my hair, which fell all over the both of us.
“For the first time in my life, I feel whole,” he whispered.
“Sawyer,” I whispered, my ring catching the flicker from the candle flame as I held his face, and in that moment I refused to leave our lives to chance, to wait until we happened to come across a preacher to speak the words over us. The notion struck me so strongly I could not believe I hadn’t considered it before.
I said, “We will handfast.”
His eyes burned into mine.
“I will wait no longer,” I said, quiet and adamant. “In my heart, I am already yours. Nothing else matters to me, not a document, or the words of a stranger.”
Tears glinted in his eyes as he whispered, “I’ve told you of how my grandparents were handfast.”
“You have, love. And that they chose to be wed that way is more meaningful than any wedding in any church.”
“Tomorrow,” he said, taking my hands and kissing them, and there was such anticipation in his voice that I laughed, even as tears streaked over my cheeks. He said, “I would join our hands and bind us, this very second, but there is ceremony to the process. And I believe I can say with certainty that Boyd and Malcolm would be out of sorts if they were not allowed involvement.”
“Tomorrow,” I agreed, and I would not fear my abounding happiness.
But Sawyer was far too sharp-eyed, far too adept at reading my thoughts, and he caught the flicker, asking at once, “What is it?”
I whispered, “There is such joy within me, but I won’t fear it. I will not.”
His eyes were deep with understanding, though I thought of something else then.
“Tell me,” he said.
Recalling how he had so carefully cleaned the blood from my thighs that night on the prairie in Missouri, in that miserable camp, I whispered, “I wish your first sight of my body could have been less…gruesome.”
“Never think that,” Sawyer insisted, almost severely. “Lorie, never. You couldn’t be more precious to me, or know how it feels for me to look upon you.” His eyes flashed with determination and he said, “I would look upon you now, mo mhuirnín milis. Let me,” he whispered, shifting us so that he knelt before me. Lightning backlit the walls of the tent as he took my knees into his warm, strong hands. “I love you so, let me look upon you. I would see for myself that you are no longer hurting.”
I trembled with emotion as I nodded, and he kept his eyes upon mine. His bare chest rose and fell as he drew my knees carefully around his hips. The lantern light danced golden over us as he smoothed the shift slowly upwards; I lifted to my elbows to watch him, overcome at the sight of him between my legs. His lashes swept low as he trailed his touch deliberately and with utmost gentleness to the skin between my legs, my lower body bared before him.
He said, “You are the most beautiful sight I have ever beheld. Jesus, Lorie, sweet Jesus, you are beautiful.”
He touched me, his face stern in its emotional intensity, fingertips resting upon the center of me. I could not help the small sounds that escaped my lips, closing my eyes, head falling back as he traced along my flesh. He groaned softly, his hand stilling its tender motion, cupping me.
I opened my eyes. Sweat was trickling over his temples, his eyes blazing so intensely with heat that every nerve between my legs tightened, sensation jolting swiftly enough to startle me.
“I would that no one had ever touched me there but you,” I whispered.
“No one will, ever again. You are mine,” he said, and bent forward between my legs, palms curving under my backside as he kissed me just where his hand had been.
No one had ever before put their lips upon me so; it was the Frenchy sex that Ginny had always disdained and would not allow in her whorehouse. Though in the next second the shock of it was swept away, Sawyer banishing all else from my senses but him, his kisses and his stroking tongue, the immediacy and intensity of him. My neck arched and I cried out as he opened his lips upon me, holding me close. Within my body was a river, suddenly undammed, a flowing heat that burst amidst my blood, my nerves. I had never experienced such a thing. The force of it overtook me, shook me in its jaws, so that gasping cries broke free from my throat. It built, and built, as he continued his passionate ministrations, with each thrust of my throbbing heart, and swelled until the final pulsation shattered over me.
Afterwards I lay wilted and replete, my cheek turned to the rumpled bedding. I was too spent to allow for movement; Sawyer was breathing as though he’d just run miles upon miles, unabatedly. He collapsed against me, grasping my hips. He rested his forehead on my belly, his shoulders arched over my thighs. I wanted to touch his hair, his mouth, convey to him that he had brought me more physical pleasure than I’d even known existed, but my hands rested limply on either side of my face, the undersides of my wrists tinted a pale cream in the lantern light. The skin between my legs pulsed, slippery with warmth.
“Thank you,” I managed to whisper. “Thank you…for that.”
“Lorie,” he murmured, his voice muffled against my flesh. It tickled but I had not the energy to move. He placed a tender kiss upon my pelvis and whispered, “My beautiful, beautiful woman. You are so very welcome.”
“I’ve never…no one has ever…” I desperately wanted him to know what was in my heart.
He trailed warm kisses upward along my belly. As his nose encountered the material that still covered my breasts, he paused and grinned at me, asking sweetly in his husky voice, “May I, darlin’?”
At my breathless nod, he bared them and opened his lips over my nipple, which swelled against his tongue; I should have known that of course he would call forth such unfathomable and blissful response. I clutched his hair and held him. He groaned and cradled my other breast, full and heavy in his tender grasp, before shifting his mouth there, taking me into its incredible warmth. He caressed gently between my legs, gliding his knowing fingers over the sensitive flesh, sparking afresh the quivering sensation that lingered in the wake of his kisses.
“Sawyer,” I gasped repeatedly, my breath emerging in bursts, as though I was being pummeled. It seemed I could only call forth his name; I could scarcely recall my own. I felt him smile against my skin, tongue still upon me; my nipples gleamed wetly. I begged, “Don’t stop, please…don’t stop…”
Rain pelted our small shelter, thunder colliding upon itself in the sky just above. A small, rational part of my mind was grateful for this noise, as perhaps it muffled my cries; I was not being particularly quiet. Sawyer gently rubbed his chin, prickly from two days without shaving, between my breasts, simultaneously pressing the base of his palm against the juncture of my legs; I shivered delightedly. He murmured, “I will never stop loving you and never stop bringing you pleasure.” He grinned, almost wickedly, so handsome that my entire body seemed to hum, as strings would when skimmed by a bow. He said, “I do so hope to bring you pleasure, my Lorie.”
My every nerve sparked as the ends of matches when struck to life. A flush bloomed all along my bare skin. I whispered, “You bring me pleasure as I have never known.” I smiled almost shyly as I borrowed his words, “
In case you hadn’t gathered.”
His grin broadened and he said, his deep voice soft, “I gathered.”
- 9 -
You two have that look about you,” Boyd said in the fair morning light, squinting one eye at us, before concentrating on lighting his first smoke of the day. The storm had passed over, leaving the world refreshed in its wake.
My cheeks grew hot. Sawyer told Boyd, “Perhaps it’s because Lorie and I are to be wed today.”
Boyd crouched beside the fire and at his knowing smile, my cheeks blazed even hotter; I could not deny there was an insistent, driving ache within me by dawn’s fairy light that I found rather alarming. I wanted more of what Sawyer had shown me last night. So much more that I felt moon-eyed and faint, by turns, my stomach light as a boll of cotton.
“Well, that explains them stars in your eyes, Lorie-girl,” Boyd teased. “Though, I don’t recall seeing a preacher in these parts. You got one hog-tied in your tent? Not that I’d blame y’all.”
“No, we’ll be handfast,” Sawyer explained, just the slightest catch in his voice, reflecting the depth of his feelings.
Boyd said, “Just like your grandfolks. I’ll be.”
“We hoped that you’d play us a waltz or two,” I said.
Boyd’s eyes grew soft with fondness as he said, “Of course I shall.”
Malcolm bounded from their tent, crying, “Can we have us a wedding feast an’ the like?” He dropped to his knees near where I sat and his countenance changed markedly. He uttered, “Lorie, wait!”
I lifted my eyebrows at the alarm in his tone.
“You ain’t got a wedding dress,” he said, so clearly dismayed that I couldn’t help but smile.
“No matter,” I assured him. “I don’t need—”
“Now, hold up,” Boyd said, lifting one hand. “That ain’t so.”
“Mama’s!” Malcolm realized joyfully. “Mama’s dress is in the trunk.” He bounced with glee. “You’ll wear it, of course. Mama wouldn’t have it no other way.”
Soul of a Crow Page 12
