Weak Flesh

by Jo Robertson

  Tears clogged her voice, but she knew Gage couldn't hear her. He'd lost consciousness when one logger hoisted him over his shoulder and delivered him to the surprisingly clean and warm shanty nearest the Canal. This particular shack, they informed her with casual aplomb, was used as the surgery for the many accidents that occurred during logging.

  "You stupid idiot," Meghan continued as she struggled to remove Tucker's shirt and unbutton his undershirt.

  She couldn't stop the chastisements that fell from her tongue like tiny vipers. "If the loggers hadn't seen you fall, you'd be dead right now."

  And no wonder, she thought. She further ripped the material around the wound in order to examine the ugly bruising and swelling. Rattlesnake, she knew immediately. Tucker wasn't out of harm's way yet. What a great dolt of a man to wander in the Swamp without proper boots and a large dose of care.

  She daubed at the affected area with soap and warm water heated over the fire. The single room shack was hardly ideal, but at least it had basic medical supplies, and the tick bedding and blankets looked clean. The dirt floor was covered with lumber shavings and a fire burned in the mud-surrounded area in the corner with a vent in the ceiling for smoke. Primitive, but respectable, she thought.

  Fortunately, the river water was remarkably pure, tea-colored and sweet tasting. She knew if the venom didn't kill Tucker first, infection would be the most serious problem. The longer his body resisted, the greater his chances for recovery.

  She'd considered sending someone to fetch her father, but she knew Papa didn't have antivenin in his cache of medical supplies. A French physician had recently experimented with this particular antidote, but her father had never been able to procure the serum.

  In the end, she sent a messenger with word that she and Gage were delayed and would return soon. Vague, but she didn't want Papa to worry.

  Tucker moaned and twisted, but she saw no recognition in the clouded gray eyes, only glazed confusion.

  Chapter 27

  "Tucker, it's Meghan, can you hear me?"

  He groaned again and moved restlessly on the bed. "Cold," he muttered, rolling onto his side.

  She pulled a blanket over his shoulders and with some effort placed several more beneath his head and upper body. She tried to remember what she'd learned from Papa about snake bites. The infected area should remain below the heart to slow down the poison's deadly crawl.

  She stared at her steady hands, wondering why – when she felt so unsure and incompetent – they didn't tremble like leaves in a strong wind. Snake bites were serious, and she knew by the degree of swelling, the pain, and the red streak that gradually inched its way up Tucker's leg that the rattler had struck deeply and viciously.

  Not viciously, she corrected herself.

  Viciousness implied willful intent, like the person who'd murdered Nell. Snakes simply were. They didn't intend harm, but simply retaliated, struck out blindly in defense of themselves and their habitat.

  She remembered the many times she'd assisted her father in his surgery, but she wouldn't allow herself to imagine what might happen to Tucker. She marked the spot where the red line began and noted with apprehension its insistent movement in centimeters as it spread upward.

  She stared at his pale, sweaty face, his damp naked chest, and then looked down at his muddy trousers. That was something within her control – preventing the wound from becoming infected. Unfastening the closure, she tugged his pants along his narrow hips, causing his drawers to drop dangerously close to his groin.

  Supposing her to be Gage's wife, in spite of the absence of rings on their fingers, the loggers had removed his outer clothing, leggings and shoes. He lay naked except for the drawers, now damp with sweat. They ought to come off too, she thought, although she wasn't sure if she were brave enough to go that far.

  Having tended to the snake wound, cleaning and lightly bandaging it, she draped a towel over his loins and began the task of cleaning up the rest of the man. Her hands might remain steady, she reflected, but her heart thumped like a hunted jack rabbit. She felt the warm suffusion of embarrassment creep up her throat to heat her cheeks.

  She obtained clean, warm water from the pot on the hearth and began with his face, every touch of the soaped cloth to his body causing her blush to deepen. The dark stubble of beard shadowed his jaw. By morning he'd likely look like one of the Swamp loggers.

  As she wiped his face and neck, moving down to the broad width of his shoulders, she noticed the scars. Good God, there were so many of them! Knowing he was senseless with the venom in his body, she traced the thick welts and thin scars that criss-crossed his chest and back like pale ribbons or tiny white threads.

  Her hands faltering, she glanced up at his pale face at the very moment that Gage opened his eyes. He stared darkly at her for a moment. Heat warmed her body and she blinked furiously as she saw the light of recognition come into those clear gray pools.

  A corner of his lip lifted. "Bailey, are you taking advantage of a sick man?" He closed his eyes and she thought he'd succumbed again to unconsciousness when they fluttered open.

  "All of this is your fault, you know," he muttered. "If I hadn't rushed off into the Swamp to find – "

  He drifted off, his unspoken words lingering in the air. Damn him! He'd rushed into the Swamp, thinking she'd disobeyed him, believing her foolish and heedless. Well, who was the fool now?

  With quick, angry movements, she stripped off his drawers, avoiding the lure of finely muscled flesh and dark forbidden curls now exposed to her view. She finished washing his chest and legs and tucked a warm blanket around him. Then she pulled up the stool in the corner of the room and sat down to watch him as he slept.

  Around midnight the giant logger who'd carried Gage into the medical shack rapped on the door, startling her as she nodded in the chair. "Any better?" he asked, examining her patient with a flat expression.

  "A bit, I think."

  The man touched his hand to Gage's forehead. "If he makes it through the night, he'll be all right." He shrugged and added without sentiment, "Damn rattlers can kill a man. Keep him warm. You'll know soon."

  He pressed a vial into her hand. "For the pain."

  At the door he turned to give a final warning. "Fasten the barricade behind me. There's those out here as wouldn't be gentle with a woman."

  The logger looked meaningfully at Gage's rifle propped by the bed and left without another word. She stared at the bottle in her hands – tincture of opium.

  There'd recently been talk about heavily taxing the substance or banning its use altogether. With good reason Papa hadn't liked to use the drug.

  She latched the cabin door and went back to her silent vigil. Leaning over the bed, she ruffled her fingers through Tucker's thick, silky mane. "Don't you die on me, Tucker Gage," she whispered. "Don't you dare die on me."

  An hour later Gage began thrashing. He threw off the blankets to reveal his skin gleaming slickly with sweat. Muttering words Meghan couldn't understand, he tossed about so violently he was in danger of toppling off the bed.

  She pressed down hard on his shoulders. "Tucker, stop it! Calm down."

  Ranting incomprehensibly, he swung out crazily. Barely in time, she ducked. She'd almost decided to go for help when his body suddenly went slack and he began shivering.

  Sweat and chills would alternate throughout the course of the poison's assault on his body, and there'd surely be more bouts like this one. Uncertain, she darted a glance at the door. Perhaps she should send for her father after all. If Gage became more violent, he might injure himself.

  It couldn't be helped, she told herself. She had to do something to keep him safe. Removing the cap from the tincture of opium, she mixed the drops with water and forced several sips into his mouth.

  After he began to relax and before she could reconsider, she stripped off her clothing down to her chemise and drawers. She slipped out of her shoes and peeled off her stockings.

  Then she crawled i
nto bed beside him, wrapping her arms firmly around his body, holding him as tight as she could while the poison ravaged him. Both of them barely fitted on the narrow cot, but pushed against the wall as it was, she thought she could anchor him between that and her body.

  "I'm here, darling," she whispered against his temple. "You'll be fine. I'm right here." She stroked his hair and drew the blanket over both of them.

  Tucker emitted a long shaky sigh, scooted her body against him, and buried his face in her hair. She felt the weight of one arm draped over her shoulder and the comfort of the other beneath her waist. She burrowed herself into his large warmth.

  He felt so good. She wouldn't think about the right or wrong of her actions. Time enough tomorrow for recriminations and regrets.

  "I'm here," she murmured again as her eyes closed and her mouth pressed against his damp chest.

  #

  Gage was dreaming. Either that or he was quite out of his mind since the wild thoughts plaguing him couldn't possibly be reality. As he wavered between pain and release, the illusion was ... pleasant and strangely comforting.

  The soft, rounded breasts pushing against his middle, the sweet odor of lemon and honeysuckle, his hands encircling a small waist, his arm resting on a firm thigh, his fingers so close to the warm, wet warmth of –

  Christ! His eyes snapped open and he gazed around the room. Juniper poles for walls, a mud pit where a fire still burned, shavings on the dirt floor. One of the many Swamp shacks that flourished in the Great Dismal Swamp. He took it all in, confused, disoriented, still weak from – from what?

  Then the memory of the experience in the Swamp.

  Recollection of the rattler rushed back. He must've wandered in and out of coherency, but he distinctly remembered being hauled up onto the broad shoulders of a giant of a man with bronzed features and a burly girth.

  Somewhere along the maze leading out of the Swamp, he'd passed out, revived to the lovely face and mocking voice of Meghan Bailey. And more clearly, the feeling of sure, capable hands roaming over his body. Small hands. Not a man's.

  Had he dreamed that? If so, how had he come to be in the Swamp shack? And whose shack? He glanced beneath the blanket. God! He was naked as a blue jay.

  Slanting his gaze toward the sleeping woman beside him, however, he realized the most critical question was not where and who, but how Bailey had wound up in a bed with him. A sudden pain shot through his temples, one that had nothing to do with a snake bite and everything to do with the mountain of trouble Bailey seemed to cause him.

  God, what had they done?

  Swinging his legs off the end of the bed, he half rose to stand, but a wave of weakness gripped him and he fell back onto the rough linen. His entire body ached relentlessly and burned with a hell fire. He bit back a groan and pulled the blanket around his shoulders as he felt another bout of fever and chills coming on.

  Beside him, Meghan still slept as if all was perfectly right with the world. Likely, in her world, it was. He managed a faint smile at the notion.

  He had to get her out of here. In a moment. When he regained his strength. He'd make her see how foolish she was to stay with him like this. After he'd rested a bit more, he'd make her leave.

  Finally, tired beyond belief, he closed his eyes. What had they done, he wondered again as he drifted into unconsciousness?

  He might've slept a while or just drowsed when he felt the faint stirring beside him. He couldn't be sure, but he gauged by the darkness through the walls and the uncanny quietness that morning hadn't yet come.

  A hand flung over his shoulder. He sighed deeply and fell back asleep, warmed by the lush body pressed against him.

  Hours later he woke quietly, feeling stronger, more rested, and turned his head to meet Meghan's wide eyes, dark and unfathomable as a stormy sea at night. Her fingers slipped from his shoulder, caressed his arm, and trembled at his chest. She raised her hand and touched his cheek, gently, wonderingly, he thought, and traced the lines of his lips.

  He couldn't take his eyes off her, so close, so dear, but his body reacted instantly. Groaning, he grabbed her hand. "Meghan, don't." His voice sounded harsh and guttural in the dim room.

  Abruptly, he turned his face from her. "Please, don't."

  Tangling her fingers in his hair, she pulled his face toward her. "Don't what?" she asked as she hoisted herself higher so they were eye to eye.

  "Don't do this?" She pressed her lips to his mouth in tender exploration. "Or this?" She kissed his brow and his cheeks and traced soft, moist kisses down the line of his jaw and throat.

  His heart hammered like runaway horses, his breath hitched with every press of her sweet mouth against his flesh, every trace of her small hands on his body. In her innocence she had no idea what she was doing to him, how hot her caresses made his blood run.

  The softness of her breasts through the thin chemise surprised him. She'd always seemed so ... athletic, small and muscular. He'd never before thought of her in terms of such womanly pulchritude.

  Even as the idea ran through his head, he knew that wasn't true. Some far recess of his mind had always known she would be like this, lush and feminine and utterly erotic beneath the abrasive exterior.

  A shudder ripped through him as her breath trailed along the column of his neck, hot and full of wild promise. "God, Bailey," he groaned. "You don't know what you're doing."

  But the truth was that he didn't know what he was doing. Still feeling weak from the debilitating poison, he couldn't resist her.

  And more than that, the irrational part of his brain had taken over and he didn't want to resist her. All he knew was that he felt Bailey deep down in some part of his soul that had been destroyed, dead, and long forgotten.

  Chapter 28

  Gage stopped fighting his urges and gave in. The heady power of her mouth drove him nearly mad with desire. Those small, neat hands wrapped around his neck, bringing his head down so that he could feel her warm sweet breath on his lips.

  Then he stopped thinking as well as fighting and lost himself in the moment. Her groan into his mouth fueled his desire like wood to a hot flame. His hands roamed over her – her cheeks, her slender neck, the gentle hollow near her collarbone – all so incredibly smooth and silken and firm to his touch.

  Her hands slid down the back of his neck and over his shoulders, round to his chest where she twirled her fingers around his nipples. He felt as if he'd burn alive. His erection jutted aggressively at her stomach as he gripped her buttocks through the loose drawers.

  He threw a leg over her, shifted and landed in the cradle of her sex. He pushed her legs apart and held himself up on his elbows so that his huge weight wouldn't crush her while he ravished her neck and shoulders. He felt like a starving man who couldn't taste enough of her.

  In her eagerness to touch him, her urgent fingers fumbled at his groin. "Wait, Bailey, wait." He rested his forehead against hers and panted heavily. "Let me think."

  There'd been no thought at all between them tonight, merely mindless passion. While his heart thundered as if it would burst from his chest, he felt the answering thud of hers beneath him.

  "Don't think," she whispered. "Don't think at all. Just touch me."

  She took his hand and placed it over one breast. He kneaded that tender flesh, astonished anew at the ripe fullness of a body he'd always thought of as boyish. Her slim curves spoke of luscious womanhood, nothing else.

  As she lifted her arms and drew her chemise over her head, her breasts tormented his vision and then his flesh. A ripple of shock ran through him at the contact of silken skin against his chest, igniting his blood to the boiling point.

  Slowly he traced his fingers down the smooth, pale flesh from neck to navel. Even lying down as she was, her breasts were full and shapely. He ran his fingertips over the swell and curve of her, circling the pale pink nipples and gently squeezing.

  She moaned and crushed his hand to her breast. Her body undulated beneath him. "Oh, God, Tucke
r, yes."

  He knew then he couldn't stop even if he wanted to. He pushed the thin, white cotton of her drawers to her hips and trailed his fingers down her torso, around the smooth hip bones and across the low part of her belly.

  She gasped aloud and squeezed her eyes shut as she bit his shoulder. He urged her hips upward and then slid the drawers to her ankles. Both garments fell to the dirt floor.

  Gage threw off the weight of the blankets, never taking his eyes from hers. His cock sprang free, hard and thick and jutting. It gleamed like a burnished sword in the faint light now coming through the narrow slats of the room.

  "Oh," she said on a gasp, taking in the length of him as he knelt above her.

  He lowered himself and covered her body with his own, lying between her spread legs. Catching her face between the palms of his hands, he stared into her dazed eyes, afraid to ask the question that burned on his tongue. God help him if she retreated now, but he'd have her clear consent.

  "Touch me." Her voice was low with urgency and desire.

  He reached between their bodies to feel her readiness, heard her gasp as his fingers touched the wet, slick core of her. The first time would be painful for her, he remembered, and drew back.

  "Wh – what? Oh, God – no, don't stop," she commanded and arched her back to bring her sex closer to his hand. "Tucker Gage," she panted, "don't you dare stop."

  He circled his thumb around the nub of her sex as she squirmed in response. His cock hardened painfully and tried to breach her as if it had a mind of its own. Christ, he was so close to the edge.

  Tamping down his hunger, he continued rubbing her until he felt the moisture from her inner folds gush onto his finger, and then he slipped first one, then two fingers into her. She was unbelievably tight and he felt the momentary resistance to his prodding.

  He stretched her back and forth, in and out, until she gasped loudly. He pressed his mouth against her lips so that her cries couldn't be heard through the flimsy juniper walls.