Cinderfella

by Linda Winstead Jones

  “I’m quite all right, now,” she whispered.

  “Good.” He didn’t move away, and neither did she.

  A cold wind rushed over and between them, chilling her face and ruffling a strand of hair across Ash’s cheek. Her heart caught in her throat, and she wanted, at that moment, to place her lips against his, to steal a bit of his warmth and comfort. Like a thief, she came up on her toes to bring her mouth closer to his.

  He dipped his head to catch her lips, and the chill went away.

  “How dare you!”

  Verna came storming down the front steps as Ash and Charmaine fell slowly apart.

  “How dare you,” she said again, “threaten my son! You ruffian! I will not allow you to speak in such a manner to either of my children!”

  Ash seemed not to mind her outburst at all. In fact, he smiled. Goodness, he should smile more often. “My wife doesn’t ride in the back of the wagon.”

  Charmaine spun around to grab a parcel from the back of the wagon, and found herself staring into Nathan Sweet’s face. He stood just inside the barn and leaned against the door that was propped open, and was wearing such a smug grin that she was sure he’d seen the kiss. Well, she thought as she stared him down, there was nothing wrong with a little kiss. She and Ash were married, after all.

  Oh, dear.

  She’d never noticed before what a truly gentle man Ash Coleman was. He smiled at Nathan’s stories, which were becoming repetitive for her and so must be for Ash, and he never raised his voice to Verna, no matter how mean and spiteful she was. Any other man would have kicked those lazy stepbrothers out long ago, but not Ash.

  And he’d been good to her, given the circumstances.

  Something in her heart softened as she watched him. The firelight on his face, the cant of his wide shoulders. And he kissed so wonderfully. Was she a fool to ignore what they both obviously wanted? She was, after all, a fully grown woman and Ash was all man. Dangerous thoughts to be having.

  “What about you, Charmaine?” Nathan asked, and she realized she’d missed most of this particular conversation.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I must confess I was about to fall asleep in my chair. It was a busy day.”

  “Your favorite play,” Nathan urged.

  She started to tell him that the theater was frivolous entertainment, but she knew Nathan Sweet well enough to know that the theater was his life. It would hurt his feelings terribly. Besides, she did remember one pleasant outing, before she’d joined Howard in his crusades.

  “The Count of Monte Cristo,” she said, apologetic that it was not Shakespeare. “I saw it performed in Philadelphia a few years ago, when I was visiting Jeanette. It was quite a thrilling performance.” And truthfully, it had been.

  “You haven’t seen my Macbeth,” Nathan said with a challenge in his voice. “Now, that’s thrilling.”

  Oswald jumped in with his own opinion, and Charmaine returned her attention to Ash. He stared into the fire, unaware of her perusal, and that was just as well.

  “Ash,” Verna said sharply. “I didn’t have a chance to wash up the supper dishes. You will finish that chore for me, won’t you?”

  Without a word of protest Ash started to rise. He was much too tired at the end of the day to be taking on Verna’s responsibilities!

  Charmaine started to give Verna a piece of her mind, but of course that would accomplish nothing but to make things unpleasant for everyone. “I’ll do it,” she said instead, waving Ash back to his seat.

  She headed for the kitchen without so much as looking in Verna’s direction.

  She was unbuttoning the cuffs of her shirtwaist and preparing to roll the sleeves up and deal with the stack of dishes by the sink when Ash came into the kitchen.

  “I don’t mind,” he said, heading for the dirty dishes. “Most nights I welcome any opportunity to slip away from Verna’s gossip and Elmo’s whining.” He wore a half-smile as he rolled up his own cuffs.

  She couldn’t very well allow him to think that she was doing something nice for him. “That’s precisely why I volunteered. And I adore Nathan, but he’s beginning to repeat himself. I’ve heard the story about Lily Langtry three times.”

  “I’ll wash, you dry,” he said with a smile.

  “I’ll wash, you dry,” she countered. “I still don’t know where everything goes, and I swear if there’s so much as a cup out of place, Verna pitches a fit.”

  “Does she give you a hard time when I’m not here?” Ash’s smile faded.

  “Not really,” she said quickly. “She’s just her normal self, which isn’t very pleasant. Goodness, Ash,” she said as he set a pan of water on the stove to warm. “You shouldn’t let her talk to you the way she does.” Charmaine lowered her voice. “She’s an ungrateful, tyrannical, and thoroughly unpleasant woman.”

  “Yes, she is,” he agreed as he turned to face her.

  “Why on earth did your father marry her? He was such a fine man, funny and always smiling and with a kind word for everyone, why would he marry a woman like that?”

  Ash didn’t answer right away. He shifted his weight from one foot to another and gave her question serious thought. “He was lonely. Mom had been gone nine years. . . . ”

  “He had you.”

  That got another small smile out of him. “Anyway, he met Verna and she evidently did everything right. She was sweet as honey when they met, timid and agreeable. He told me that much. He didn’t meet the boys until after he’d brought her home.”

  They washed and dried the dishes, taking their time, standing side by side and talking about Ash’s father and the people they’d gone to school with who had moved on. Ash knew the whereabouts of several of those old friends who were now far from Salley Creek.

  She told him a little about Boston, very carefully avoiding any mention of Howard and his seminars and manuals.

  It was in the midst of a description of her trip to the seaside that he reached out and touched her neck, there beneath her ear. It was a soft brush of his fingers, but was enough to send her reeling backwards.

  “Sorry,” he said, returning his attention to the dishes that were piling up. “You had a little smudge of dirt there. I thought I could just. . . . ”

  “I do?” She raised a hand to her neck and covered the spot Ash had touched.

  “I think I got it.” He turned his back on her to take a stack of plates to the cupboard.

  “Oh.” She returned to the pan of dishes, and noted with a touch of disappointment that there wasn’t much left to do. Talking to Ash over dirty dishes was much more pleasant than an evening with the family. “Sorry I jumped so. You just surprised me a little.”

  “I should’ve warned you.”

  She still tingled where he had touched her. A simple brush of another human being’s hand, and her heart was beating as rapidly as it had as she’d danced at that wonderful, disastrous masked ball. It was ridiculous! She understood what was happening here. Simple human attraction, the physical response of one human to another. She could touch Ash innocently without being assaulted by these improper sensations . . . couldn’t she?

  When he was back beside her, drying a tin cup, she reached past him. Her arm brushed his. “It looks like I missed a spot on this one,” she said, wiping at a nonexistent spot on the cup. That one instant had answered her question. Apparently she couldn’t touch Ash without awakening something inside her. Something she was certain was best kept unexplored.

  When he’d seen the wagon coming and been presented with the familiar picture of Verna and Elmo and Oswald side by side and chattering away, something in him died a little. He’d known Charmaine wouldn’t come back, so why did it hurt?

  And then she’d risen from the back of the wagon like something out of a dream, a little unsteady and the most wonderful sight he’d ever seen.

  He’d been drawn to her then, and had ended up standing before her trying to decide if she would run if he tried to kiss her. She came to him on
her own, lifting up and slowly bringing her lips to his.

  And then in the kitchen, when he’d brushed that speck of dirt from her neck, she’d jumped back like she’d been burned. He hadn’t understood why, until she’d leaned across and against him for a cup that wasn’t quite clean.

  It was a cold, clear night. Winter wasn’t here yet, but it was coming. Tonight’s cold snap was just a promise of what was yet to come.

  Moonlight shone through the window and touched a sleeping Charmaine. She was under two quilts, and still she shivered on occasion. Ash scooped his blanket from the floor and gently added it to the bedding. He wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight anyway.

  He was quiet and cautious, but her eyes fluttered open. “Ash, what are you doing up?” she asked dreamily.

  “Can’t sleep.”

  She murmured sleepily, rolled on one shoulder, and then fixed her eyes on him. “What time is it?”

  He looked at the clock that was sitting on the dresser. The moonlight lit the face. “Almost midnight.”

  She was slowly waking up, her eyes becoming brighter, her voice clearer. “Aren’t you cold?”

  “Yes.” Freezing, and that was just as well.

  She looked down at the blanket he’d added to her bed. “It’s bad enough that I’ve taken your bed, you can’t part with your only blanket as well.” She took the edge of the blanket, wrapped her pale, slender finger around the edge, and then she was still.

  If she had any idea how much he wanted to crawl beneath that blanket with her, she’d no doubt give him another lecture on marital continence.

  “Well,” she said primly. “This is ridiculous.” She scooted to the opposite side of the bed and held back the covers as if inviting him into the bed.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s cold, we’re reasonable adults, and we are married after all.” Her voice was soft and very calm. “There’s no reason why we can’t share a bed on a cold night like tonight.”

  He should argue with her and tell her exactly why they couldn’t share a bed. Didn’t she understand? Didn’t she know? Maybe she did. Maybe this was Charmaine’s way of telling him she’d changed her mind about their pure marriage.

  And then again, maybe she was just being considerate.

  He climbed beneath the layers of covers. The warmth was heavenly, as he welcomed the heat from Charmaine’s body that had been absorbed into the bedding. She had scooted all the way to the other edge of the bed, and lay perfectly still.

  “Now, isn’t that better?” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you can sleep now.”

  Not likely. “Maybe.”

  They were both silent for a few minutes. He could hear the ticking of the clock, Charmaine’s breathing, and his own. There was nothing else.

  “I saw my mother this afternoon,” Charmaine blurted. “She was behaving so oddly.”

  “She’s married to Stuart Haley,” Ash grumbled. “I’m surprised she’s not a raving lunatic.”

  He expected Charmaine to be insulted, but she laughed lightly. “That’s true enough.”

  A simple conversation to take their minds off the fact that they shared a bed, that’s what they needed.

  “Who else did you see?”

  “Delia and Eula. We had tea in the office of the mercantile while Winston ran the store for a few minutes.” There was a hint of frustration in her voice. “We tried to have a civilized visit, but Sarah Elizabeth has recently added curse words to her vocabulary and she was quite disruptive.”

  He laughed. “A few months back she decided to decorate my boots with licorice that had come right out of her mouth. Hell, I didn’t even know she was there until I moved away and damn near stepped on her.”

  “That’s terrible,” Charmaine said, but she laughed lightly.

  She squirmed, just a little, and her foot brushed his. “Goodness, you are cold,” she said as she drew her foot away.

  “You think that’s cold. . . . ” Ash reached out and touched her neck with his cold fingers, and she squealed softly, drawing away and pulling the blanket to her throat.

  “Your hands are like ice,” she said, and she reached out to take one hand between her own. Two warm small hands covered the hand he’d teased her with, and he drank in her heat the way a starving man would take in food.

  She moved her palms slowly over his hand, until it was no longer cold, and then she reached for the other hand, lifting up slightly and leaning over his body. Did she have any idea what she was doing to him?

  As Charmaine warmed his hand, he reached out to touch her cheek with newly warmed fingers.

  “See?” she said. “That’s much better. A minute ago those fingers were like ice.”

  Those warm fingers slipped from her cheek to her hair, where they disappeared into the golden strands, and she was suddenly still.

  “There’s no reason, I suppose,” she whispered, “that we can’t kiss for a little while. That will warm you up, I’m sure.”

  She brought her face to his for a sweet kiss, a brushing of her mouth against his and nothing more. It was torture. It was wonderful. She kissed him again, harder this time, and she pressed her chest to his. All that came between them was the thin night rail she wore, a gauzy bit of linen that did nothing to disguise the softness or the heat of her breasts.

  He slipped his tongue inside her mouth, and she gasped. That little sound was almost more than he could bear, and he deepened the kiss. Charmaine tasted of passion and surrender, and she was his — at least for now.

  He was hard and aching to be inside her, but for now they kissed, and kissed, and kissed some more. A few minutes ago he’d been freezing, and now he was hot. His blood, his flesh, his soul.

  With one hand at the back of Ash’s head, Charmaine tried to pull him closer, tried to pull his mouth ever tighter against her own. Her heart pounded, her blood roared, and she couldn’t get enough of this. Of him.

  She lifted her leg and hooked it over his hip and felt the startling evidence of his own desire, the hardened manhood, press against her leg. She hesitated, stilling her lips. What was she doing? How had she come so far so fast?

  “Ash?” she whispered his name against his mouth, unable and unwilling to pull away.

  His lips danced gently over hers. “Yes?”

  It was on her lips to tell him to stop, that this was wrong, that this was not what she’d had in mind when she’d offered to share the warm bed. They’d come close before, danced to the edge of something tempting and unknown, and she’d always been able to pull away before they went too far. But tonight her body ached, and sang, and hungered.

  My wife. He’d said the words just that afternoon with such possession and fire. She was his wife, for better or for worse. Perhaps it was true that neither of them had wanted this marriage, and maybe the wedding had been unusual, and she had been so angry . . . but right now her body was telling her that there was more.

  He waited. Maybe he expected her to tell him to stop. Maybe he was prepared to spend another long cold night looking out the window.

  “I don’t know what to do next,” she whispered, and his lips began to move again. He kissed her until she lost all reason, touched her breasts gently through the nightdress until she wanted to cry, it was so wonderful.

  Ash moved to tower above her, and while he removed his trousers and hiked up her nightdress, his lips never left hers. He was cradled between her spread legs, his long, hard body stretched out and tense, and she waited. She’d never thought to crave something this way, to want his body inside hers — but she did. More than that, she needed it.

  He touched her, his hot, hard manhood teasing the entrance to her body. It was marvelous, but she wanted more. A gentle push, and she began to open for him. She felt it, the welcoming of her body to his, the response that would allow him access. Another push, and she could feel him inside her, stretching her surely to the limit. He began to withdraw, and then plunged deep, breaking past the
barrier of her maidenhead and burying himself deep inside.

  It was a shocking invasion, painful and brutal and oddly beautiful. Ash began to move above her, his body rocking in a primal rhythm she could feel to her bones. He moved within her, he moved over her, he kissed her again. Her hips rose and fell of their own volition, searching for perfection, searching for . . . something.

  Ash began to move faster, his breathing came heavy, and he was hot — so very hot. She opened her eyes to see the gleam of sweat on his face and his broad chest. His eyes were locked on hers, his firm jaw was tensed, and in the moonlight he was beautiful.

  He plunged deep and stayed there, whispered her name softly and quaked and emptied his seed into her. And then he melted around her, covering her body with his and laying his lips on her neck and her cheek and her lips.

  “That was incredible,” he whispered breathlessly.

  “It was?”

  He lifted his head to look down at her, and he smiled. “We need a little practice, maybe,” he admitted.

  “Practice?”

  “Well, we’re both. . . . ” he shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “We’re both what?”

  He rolled over and brought her with him. “Today when I came back to the house and found that you’d gone to town with Verna, I didn’t think you’d come back. I thought you’d be well on your way to Boston by now.”

  It was her plan, still. Wasn’t it? She wasn’t a farmer’s wife, she was a modern woman. Suddenly she remembered the look on Ash’s face when he’d seen her that afternoon. “So I gave you quite a start when I popped up out of the back of that wagon.”

  “Yes.”

  “Disappointed?”

  He held her close and seemed to give the question serious thought. “No,” he finally whispered.

  Goodness, what was she going to do now?

  “We’re both what?” she asked to change the subject.

  “Beginners,” he admitted softly.

  “Do you mean to tell me,” she said softly, “that you’ve never done this before either?”

  He shook his head slowly.