by Pamela Morsi
"It's mighty dark this time of night," he said.
"Yes," Althea agreed. "It is very dark. And we're all alone, Jesse."
She watched him swallow nervously.
"Baby-Paisley is just up in the loft," he said.
Althea nodded. "He's a sound sleeper of a night," she told him.
Jesse was clearly ill at ease. Althea didn't feel so confident herself. She was nervous, wary, biting her lip. She'd made her decision. She would have to go through with it. And with a man like Jesse, she'd have to make the first move.
She stopped drying him and hastily hung the towel on the back of one of the ladder back chairs. She reached for his hands and held them in her own.
"Your hands are very big, Jesse," she said.
"I'm big all over," he answered honestly.
"I'd imagine you could hold a lot of things in these hands," she said.
"Yep, sure," he agreed.
Hastily, not giving herself time to give in to cowardice, Althea brought those big masculine hands toward her and laid them against her breasts.
Jesse's sudden intake of breath was telling. He stood there, silently. Her bosom in his hands. He was as still as a stone.
Momentarily Althea panicked. Was she wrong about him? Was he really just a child in a man's body? Was she asking more than he could give her?
"Miss Althea," he said finally, his voice very quiet. "Are you going to slap me?"
She released her breath. She hadn't realized that she had been holding it.
"No, Jesse, I'm not going to slap you."
He nodded slowly. "Then do you mind if I squeeze these instead of just holding 'em?"
She almost laughed, but it was more from nervousness than amusement. "Just don't hurt me, Jesse," she answered.
"I'd never want to hurt you, Miss Althea," he said. "I don't want to hurt nobody, but especially not you."
His huge palms clenched lovingly, tenderly at her soft round orbs.
Althea's heart began to pound. His touch was not tentative or shy as she had expected. He touched her as if he relished it. He touched her as if she were a finely tuned fiddle and he was charged with the task of making music all night long.
Althea had expected it to be pleasant. She had expected to enjoy his attention. She hadn't thought it would set her quaking inside.
Jesse ran his thumbs across her nipples. He pressed them and then squeezed them between his fingers.
"This feels real good," he whispered a little breathlessly. "Are you sure you ain't going to slap me, Miss Althea?"
"No," she answered, finding it difficult to inhale and exhale properly herself. "I'm not going to slap you for anything, Jesse."
"Then I'd like to kiss you," he said. "I'd really like to kiss you real bad."
"Kiss me, Jesse," she said. "Kiss me real bad."
He did.
It was like before when their lips had met, only tonight it was better. His mouth was eager, hot, questing. His hands were strong and sure and exploring her with fervor and pleasure.
"I love the way you kiss me," she whispered into the side of his throat.
"I ain't never kissed no one but you, Miss Althea," he admitted. "Is this for sure the way to do it?"
"Oh, yes, Jesse," she said, bringing her lips back to his own. "I think this is exactly the way to do it."
He deepened the kiss then. Opening his mouth wider as if he wanted to lure her into it. In fact, he was sort of pulling at her, sucking at her lower lip and her tongue. It sent shivers down her neck and arms. Inexplicably she pressed her bosom more firmly into his hands.
"You sure don't need no bust food," he told her.
"What?"
Jesse squeezed her breasts ardently. "I just love your round parts, Miss Althea. They are just about the best things I ever felt in my life."
He proved his enthusiasm for them by kneading, manipulating, and caressing until Althea was standing on her tiptoes, every muscle in her body straining to give him better access.
"Oh, Miss Althea," he said finally, removing his hands from her body. "This is the most fun I ever had in my life."
He was breathing as if he'd just run up the mountain, pulling Granny Piggott on the skid.
"Don't stop," Althea pleaded, having found the activity as pleasurable as he had himself.
Jesse let his hands skim along her back and drop to graze lightly against her buttocks.
"Can I . . ." He hesitated.
"You can rub my backside if you want," Althea told him, any earlier shyness disappearing as impulsive amatory need heightened her senses.
"I'd be happy to rub your backside, Miss Althea," he said. "But what I really want is to sort of rub your front side against my front side. I'm as hard as a stump and throbbing and aching like a sore tooth."
"Oh! Oh, all right I—"
He didn't give her time to say more. Jesse clasped her round buttocks in his hands, raised her closer to his height, and pressed hard against her, rubbing from side to side.
Althea gasped.
Jesse moaned.
"This feels so good," he said. "This feels real good."
"Oh, Jesse I ... I ... oh, oh, my—"
He was kissing her again. Kissing and pressing and squeezing all in the same moment. Althea was light headed, she was nearly dazed. It had been so long since she'd felt like this. It had been so very, very long. She realized that she had never really felt like this.
His mouth was everywhere, her lips, her cheeks, her throat, her chin. He seemed to crave the tender flesh on the nape of her neck beneath her ear. The touch of his mouth there seemed to sizzle through her body like recurring bolts of homemade lightning.
* * *
Jesse wasn't satisfied with the pressing of their bodies close together. He grabbed her behind the knee and began to raise her leg as he leaned her back over on the table. It did bring them closer. Intimately closer.
"Not on the table, Jesse," she pleaded as he ran an eager, searching palm up the inside of her leg. “Take me to the bed."
Jesse stopped still as a stone. He reared back slightly to look into her face. His vivid blue eyes were wide and shining in the dim light.
"Miss Althea," he whispered. "If I take you over to that bed, it ain't going to be just for kissing and rubbing. I'm going to want to 'put my best foot forward' as the fellers say. I'll want to be inside you, in between your legs."
"That's what I want, too, Jesse," she answered.
Jesse jerked her up from the table in such a rush that the candle teetered dangerously, making the light flash strangely around the room. In three long strides he had her back to the clover bed tick. He leaned over her, slaunchways on the one-poster.
"If you're going to change your mind, it'd be best to do it now," he warned.
"I'm not changing my mind," she said.
He sighed. It was a sound of both relief and gratitude.
"What you got on under this josie, Miss Althea?" he asked.
"Nothing," she answered.
"I'd like to see that," he said, pulling at the hem of it. "I think I'd really like to see that."
They managed to get it over her head and Jesse threw it, unconcerned, to the floor. In the dim light of the distant candle she was naked and Jesse Best was looking at her like a starving man at a community supper.
"You are beautiful, Miss Althea," he whispered in near reverence. "So beautiful I can hardly look at you."
Jesse ran his big, masculine hand from the curve of her throat, over the gently swelling mound of her breast, down the narrow stretches of her belly, and into the soft curling hair at the juncture of her thighs.
"Jesse!" she squealed, startled at the sensual eruption that he elicited from inside her.
He took her pleasured cry as permission to do as he willed. And his will was to consume her.
With his whole body Jesse began to caress her, his hands, his legs, his knees, his lips. There wasn't a part of her that he didn't want to touch or taste or nuzzle agains
t.
Althea found herself unable to remain ladylike or dignified under this onslaught. She had always allowed Paisley to possess her. With Jesse she squirmed and whimpered and begged for his attention. She was clutching and clinging and urgent against him.
"I think I can't wait," he told her, fumbling at the front of his trousers.
Althea pulled at his buttons herself, managing to grabble through the layers of butternut duckins and ribbed wool.
"My God, you're holding it!" Jesse exclaimed in disbelief.
"Inside me, Jesse," she pleaded. "Let's put it inside me."
He didn't argue.
She led him to the entrance, but as soon as he pushed inside, he took back control. His first thrusts were strong and powerful, pushing her across the bed until her head lolled over the far side. Then as if realizing the error in his ways, he grasped her firmly by the hips. His thrusts remained forceful but she was able to meet him.
Again and again he pushed inside her. In the beginning it was all hot passion and no cadence. Then, from nowhere, the two found a mutual rhythm and moved in sensual, spiraling intensity.
"Oh, Jesse! Oh, Jesse! Oh, Jesse!"
Her voice got louder and louder as she approached the precipice. As they plunged over, he muffled her cry with his kiss and buried his own inside her as the essence of his passion pumped into her like a teeming flood of liquid fire and steam.
It was several minutes afterward before either could speak. Althea still lay across the bed, her head hanging off in thin air. Jesse at last noticed her uncomfortable position and pulled her back onto the bed and into a sitting position in his lap, her knees on either side of his hips, their bodies still connected.
She sighed against him, laying a hand lovingly upon his chest. They kissed. Not passionately now but playfully. He bounced her teasingly on his half flaccid staff inside her. Althea gave him a playful bite on his neck. He reciprocated with one on the peak of her breast.
She squealed. They laughed. They looked into each other's eyes.
"I love you, Miss Althea," he said. His words sobered the tone of the moment.
She sought to get the lightness back.
"You didn't take your clothes off, Jesse," she commented. "That's downright rude with me here naked as the day I was born."
He shrugged. "I was so busy, I forgot," he admitted.
She started to tease him again, but he held her shoulders and looked at her solemnly. There were words that had to be said. And he was not going to wait to say them.
"Miss Althea," he began. "I know you're going to marry up with Eben or Oather tomorrow. Everybody on the mountain knows that. I ain't a great friend to either of them. But truth to tell, we done wronged them here."
"Do you think so?" she asked.
Jesse nodded with regret. "If I was one of them and thought you'd spent this night, this last night of your widowhood, bouncing the bed with another man, Miss Althea, I wouldn't be happy about that at all."
"You wouldn't?" she asked, feigning surprise.
"No, I sure wouldn't."
"You'd be jealous, then?"
"Well, sure I would," Jesse said. "But that ain't the half of it. Miss Althea, I ain't never done this before and don't know much about it. But I don't think a woman, nor a man neither, should . . . well I don't think that folks should do this with different people. There's something special about it. Something that sort of makes the two doing it mean more to each other afterward."
Althea smiled at him and tenderly pushed a lock of tousled blond hair out of his face. "I think you may be right about that," she said. "I think you mean more to me every minute, Jesse Best."
"So what I'm thinking," Jesse continued, "is since we done did this, and either of them two fellers are sure to be derned unhappy about it if they were to know, well,
maybe you should just marry up with me. 'Cause I ain't unhappy about it a'tall."
"Are you asking me to marry you, Jesse?"
His face was solemn and serious.
"I know I ain't smart, Miss Althea. I don't pretend to be. It's something a feller can't lie about. But I can be a good husband to you, I know it in my heart. I got a good strong back. I can get you game. I can keep up this farm. And I care about your boy. I care about him a lot. But I'd never get between the two of you. Miss Althea, if you'll marry up with me, I promise to listen to you in the things I don't know about. Work for you 'til my back is broke and my fingers is down to the bone. And love and care for you until the day I die."
"Oh, Jesse, that's the most beautiful marriage proposal I've ever heard in my life," Althea whispered.
"But there is one thing," he said.
"What?"
"I can't promise not to do this with you. Now that I done it, well, I like it even more than I thought I would. So there might be more babies, Miss Althea. Unless there's some other way to stop them, there might be just a whole lot of babies."
"Jesse," she said. "Can you promise me to always love Baby-Paisley and treat him equal to any child of your own that I might have?"
"Well, sure I can. That ain't much to promise."
"It's a lot, Jesse. You don't know how much. And I know that you always keep your promises."
"Then you'll marry me?"
"Yes, Jesse, you're the one that I chose. I decided the other day when you brought Baby-Paisley home from that hunting trip. You're the only man that I'll ever love. You're the man that I want to marry."
He pulled her close and kissed her. Happiness and joy settled around them like a warm cloak. And gentleness spurred passion. His kiss deepened and a soft, low moan eased out of his throat.
He wiggled on the bed beneath her, letting her feel the resurgence of his passion inside her.
"I'm ready to do it again," he said plainly.
"You can't do it twice," she answered, giggling.
"Why not?"
"You just can't," Althea told him. "Men do it one time and then they rest up for a day or two."
"I think I'm rested up enough," he told her.
"Jesse, I know what I'm talking about," she said with confidence. "I was married for over two years. And I know all about it. You can't be ready to do it again."
He proved her wrong.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Pastor Jay was the first person at the Marrying Stone that Christmas morning. He'd had a dream about an angel visiting the night before and he knew there was to be a wedding. He'd dressed in his black frock coat and even combed his long gray beard. There was going to be a very special wedding and he wanted to be there to perform it.
The Broody twins arrived next pulling Granny Piggott on the skid. She was heavily bundled in her lap robe against the cold bite of the wind. The old woman wouldn't have missed the outcome of the kangaroo court for anything.
Neighbors, friends of the principles, and the merely curious poured into the snowy clearing around the Marrying Stone.
Beulah and Orv Winsloe arrived, with Tom McNees in tow.
Pastor Jay had busied himself cleaning the snow off the stone.
"What are you doing here?" McNees asked the old man.
"I'm here to perform a wedding," he answered.
"No, Pastor Jay," Tom told him with just a hint of exasperation. "I'll be doing the ceremony. I don't know how you even heard about it."
"Angels told me," Pastor Jay answered.
Tom McNees glanced back at his sister. Beulah rolled her eyes.
"I even know who's marrying up," the old man said. "And a finer match, I ain't never seen."
"Eben and Althea will be a good pair all right," Tom admitted.
"Oh, it ain't Eben," Pastor Jay informed him.
Tom shook his head. "Oather's done left the mountain," he answered. "Now why don't you see if those Broody boys can find room for you on Granny's skid. We don't want you catching a fever on a frozen morning like this."
The Bests arrived shortly thereafter. Some people were surprised to see them. They weren't directly involv
ed and Onery rarely ventured out in the cold weather with his bad leg.
In truth, the family wasn't sure what they were doing there either. Jesse had sneaked back in the house before dawn. Little Edith was sleeping like the baby she was. And Onery had been snoring loudly. Roe and Meggie were awake, but they were making so much noise of their own, they didn't hear Jesse's furtive movements.
With none the wiser, Jesse had risen for breakfast with the rest of them and announced that the entire family would attend Miss Althea's wedding. He refused to explain, or to hear any protests. Curious, but trusting, the family made their way to the Marrying Stone.
Gid Weston arrived with several of his boys; they were half drunk already with the holiday celebration. Laughing and happy, they were ready for a wedding.
Pigg Broody was there, too, but he was a lot less pleased about it. He roundly cursed the cold weather and suggested to Granny that most folks married in the springtime for good reason.
Eben Baxley arrived and stood on the edge of the crowd. Lots of attention was focused in his direction, lots of speculation about what he might be thinking. But no one came up and spoke to him, not even Beulah Winsloe, who was just about to bust her buttons with pleasure over the apparent success of her well-laid plans.
The Phillips family was not there and was almost conspicuous by their absence. Some speculated that Buell was a sore loser. Those more kindly disposed thought the family might still be sorrowing from Oather's leave-taking and uninterested in the happy festivities.
Althea Winsloe, Baby-Paisley at her side, was the last one to arrive. The little boy was all bright cheeks and exuberant smiles as he sported his new blue and white voyageur's cap.
Eagerly he pulled away from his mother and rushed through the crowd searching and finding Jesse.
"Santy Claus come," he said excitedly. "I checked the chimley, just like you said. They was soot marks on it. Somebody'd been climbing there for sure."
