by Kate Whitsby
Alma patted her bed until she found the upper lip of her quilt. She pulled it down and tucked her legs underneath. “Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s get in bed.”
“Are you sure there’s enough room in there for both of us?” he asked.
“We’ll just have to lie very close together,” Alma remarked.
“Very close together doesn’t even begin to describe it,” Jude muttered. “We’ll be on top of each other.”
Alma didn’t answer. Jude groped around until he felt her leg. His hand squeezed something soft, and then he realized he was massaging her thigh. He yanked his hand back, but he had to feel around until he found it again so he could orient himself to the top of the bed.
In the end, the only way he could find his way under the blankets was to feel and pat and follow the contours of her body up, past her hips and shoulders and arms to the head sticking out of the top.
Alma giggled.
“What’s so funny?” Jude whispered.
“You’re tickling me,” Alma twittered.
“It isn’t funny,” Jude hissed, but he chuckled under his breath anyway.
“Yes, it is,” she replied. “It’s hilarious.”
Jude settled down next to her. He had to press his body tight up against hers to avoid falling off the side of the bed onto the floor. She pressed herself back against him. The comic necessity of the situation prevented either of them from realizing how close they really were.
“Don’t you want to take some of your clothes off?” Alma asked. “You’re not going to sleep in those hard pants, are you?”
“I don’t have anything else to sleep in,” Jude told her. “I don’t have any pyjamas, if that’s what you mean.”
“Maybe I can find or make some for you?” Alma replied. “We have some linen trousers from Turkey in that trunk over by Allegra’s bed. I have to get into the trunk tomorrow to put the wedding dress away. I might find something that would work as bedclothes for you.”
“Don’t bust yourself on my behalf,” Jude told her. “I can sleep in these. I’ve done it many times before.”
“You aren’t on the cattle drive now, you know,” Alma pointed out. “This is your wedding night. You shouldn’t be wearing the same clothes to sleep with your wife that you wear around the campfire. We’ll find something more suitable for you to wear.”
“Thanks,” Jude snapped.
All of a sudden, Alma felt a burning streak of fire shoot through her. It made her want to jump out of her own bed and run for the hills, but instead she shuddered against Jude’s wiry body. It made her jump closer toward him and cling to him for all she was worth
Her reaction startled him, too, so he jumped first away from her and then straight back to get away from the edge of the bed. He held her more tightly than ever to avoid falling backward, and the tighter he held her, the more their two bodies shuddered and shivered. They cleaved to each other for shelter against the very shock of being together.
The convulsions rocked them both without diminishing, until Alma thought she’d go mad. She couldn’t pull back and she couldn’t come any closer to him than she already was. Jude wrapped his arms around her and she nestled her face under the blankets against his cotton shirt.
Her breath warmed both his chest and her face. She rested her cheek against his heartbeat, and he crushed her head against his ribs. One of his hands cupped the back of her neck and the other rubbed down her back. With each stroke, icy sparks cascaded down her sides and along the backs of her arms, sending fresh spasms of shock and awe through her body.
Could her sisters hear the thundering of her heart or the panting of her breath under the quilt? Would she ever be able to sleep again with this lightning bolt in her bed? Their clothes, which seemed so thin a minute ago, now felt many miles too thick, keeping them apart against overwhelming gravitational forces. Nothing could stop them from coming together in the end.
Jude sensed the same thing at the same moment, and they both relaxed into one another. Their breathing lengthened and synchronized. Jude rested his cheek against the top of Alma’s head and took a long inhalation of her earthy scent. Through his shirt, she smelled the salty spice of his sweat as well as something much more primal. It reminded her of the black soil under the trees down by the river, moist and fecund and mysterious.
She didn’t recognize that smell. It must be something uniquely male. The only man she ever really knew was her father, and she never got this close to him. He never embraced her. The most affection he ever showed her was to tussle her hair every now and then.
Her heart cried out in her chest for the things she and her sisters missed from living so far away from other people. They missed the society of other children to grow up with, and now that they were adults, they missed the most basic companionship of their peers, even of other women. Alma couldn’t remember the sound of her own mother’s voice, much less her unique smell.
And the most amazing part was that none of them even knew what they were missing. If Amelia and Allegra remained unmarried, they would never smell this male scent or feel the heat of lying next to him. How poor their lives would be for the loss, but they wouldn’t know they were poor. They would think they’d gotten everything they needed from their sisters.
Could a woman starve to death from the absence of a man in her life? Could she shrivel and blow away in the wind, without the essence of a man to breathe life into the tissues of her body? Alma didn’t intend to find out. She clutched Jude tighter than ever, drinking him into herself.
The elixir of his essence would drive the cattle puncher out of her. He would wash away the stiffened leather from her arms and legs and the gunpowder from her fingers. His very presence would strip the range away and leave the woman in its place.
Chapter 16