Pamela Morsi

by The Love Charm

  "Waiting doesn't make any sense," she said. "Look at Laron and Helga. They love each other, but they cannot be together. What if something comes along to keep us apart as it has them?"

  "It's not likely."

  "But it could happen. Why . . . why that old skiff could turn over tomorrow and we might be eaten by alligators."

  "Aida—"

  "Oh Armand, if I am to be eaten by alligators tomorrow, I want to be made love to tonight."

  "But—"

  "Hold me," she pleaded. "Please hold me and kiss me and touch me."

  His better judgment had him hesitate one more moment and then he brought his mouth to hers. "All right, my love," he said. "We'll touch each other. Touching is good. We can touch. I'll touch you."

  "Yes, yes, touch me, Armand."

  He fumbled through the layers of the shawl-draped blanket and covered her breast with his hand.

  Aida arched her back, pressing herself more firmly into his hand. He was caressing, kneading, weighing it. When his thumb slid over the hard, erect tip it jolted her.

  "Harder, squeeze it harder," she demanded. "And the other one, too, Armand. Do it to the other one, too."

  The blanket dropped behind her, forgotten, as he used both hands to massage her bosom.

  "Do you remember this morning?" she whispered.

  "This morning they were naked and you kissed them and sucked them. Do you remember that?"

  "Aida, do you think I could ever forget it?"

  He began to jerk determinedly at her laces, pulling at her blouse until one full round breast had escaped its confines.

  "Kiss me, Armand. Kiss me there where I am naked."

  He squatted slightly and wrapped his arms around her hips.

  Aida gave a startled cry as he raised her feet from the ground, holding her high enough off the ground that his mouth found easy access to the soft round flesh that she offered.

  Aida rested her elbows upon his shoulders and restlessly rubbed her cheek against the top of his head as he suckled and teased and nipped at her.

  So naturally her legs wrapped around his chest. She dug her bare heels into his curve of his backside to give her leverage to move her body against him.

  She strained and squirmed. He brought a hand to her backside to assist her.

  In all her life she had never known that the tip of the nipple and the entrance to the womb were so closely linked. Every movement of his mouth on her breast roused an immediate and direct reaction between her thighs. The want, the need that she had experienced this morning was back in raw, profuse abundance. It had to be assuaged.

  "Armand! Please touch me down there. Touch me down there."

  Immediately he slid her down the front of his body. The instant her feet met the sand, his hand met the ache at the crux of her legs.

  The touch of his fingers simultaneously eased her desire and made it worse. She was wet, lavishly wet. She whined and wiggled against the stroke of his hand. When his thumb found the rigid, pulsing nub buried in her curls, she ground out a sound that was animal and pleasurable.

  She could hear him speaking to her; she could hear the passion in his own voice.

  "You're so hot, you want it so much, you want me so much."

  "Please! Please!" Her words of pleading were all she could manage.

  "I'm going to put my finger inside you," he told her. "Just one finger. If it hurts I'll stop."

  "Do it! Do it!"

  A long index finger eased inside her. She gasped.

  "Does it hurt? Have I hurt you?"

  "More! More!" she begged.

  A second finger followed the first, filling her, firing her.

  "You are so tight," Armand whispered against her throat. "You are so hot and so tight."

  "It feels so good."

  "Aida, I'm dying here," he told her.

  "Don't die, don't die now."

  He began to withdraw his fingers. She reached down and grasped his hand.

  "Don't take it out!"

  "Easy, Aida, my sweet, my love," he soothed her. "I'm going to make it better."

  He thrust back inside her, the heel of his hand grinding down on the soft plump flesh of her pubis.

  A startled sound escaped her throat.

  He did it again and again and again.

  She began bucking her hips to meet his rhythm as the feel of it, the rough, spiraling feel of it drew her further and further and further.

  "Let me see it, Aida." Armand's urging penetrated the primal pleasure that enveloped her. "Let me see it, Aida. Let me see you do it. Do it for me. Just for me."

  She did.

  She collapsed in his arms and together they dropped to their knees as the throbbing succession of clenching spasms drained her. They lay together on the cool sand as she drifted back to earth.

  "Oh Armand, oh Armand," she whispered, nearly breathless. "Is it always like that?"

  "If it's not," he answered, "then it should be."

  She rolled over and pulled him close.

  "My goodness, Armand," she said. "I can feel your . . . your leg now."

  "Please Aida," he answered, his voice strained. "If you even touch me I will go off in my trousers like a green boy."

  "Don't do that, Armand," she said, jerking her skirts up to her waist. "Come inside me, like an experienced husband."

  The wanton invitation silenced his better judgment, but not his need to protect her. He slid one arm under her shoulder and the other beneath her knees and pulled her up into his arms. She was grateful not to have been asked to walk; satisfaction had settled in her legs like jelly and she was not certain that she could.

  He carried her a little away from the shore to where the sand piled up into small dimes. Sea oats grew tall

  and in profusion, forming a private shelter from the cool wind off the water.

  Armand threw down the blanket and then laid her upon it. Hastily he removed his jacket. Aida followed his lead, casting off her remaining clothing, eager to be naked in his arms.

  "Oh my God!" she heard him whisper and she looked up to see him staring at her in awe.

  She was chilled and covered only in goosebumps, but a strange surge of sensual power flooded through her, exhilarating her. She turned on her side and drew up one leg coyly. She touched her bottom lip with one fingernail.

  "Are you cold up there, Monsieur? Perhaps you should lie here next to me. I'm very very warm."

  Armand dropped to his knees beside her, pressed her back to the blanket, and spread her knees, opening her before him.

  He tore the tie of his trousers, but managed to rid himself of them. In the faint gray silver of moonlight, she saw for the first time how God had built a man.

  "Armand, that thing is bigger than you are."

  He scrambled to lie between her spread thighs. "With you Aida, it is bigger than it has ever been before."

  He stroked her and kissed her using the rough edge of his tongue to taste her for the first time. Aida's flesh alternately quivered and sizzled at his touch. She squirmed and wiggled beneath him, eager to please, anxious to get closer.

  He grabbed her bottom in two hands and raised her slightly, positioning her for his entry.

  "Aida," he whispered, snuggling up against her ear. "If I hurt you just tell me and I'll stop."

  She purred and ran her fingernails along the smooth, pale curve of his buttocks. "And if I hurt you, speak up, also," she said.

  Her humor broke some of the tension of the moment. He punished her with a teasing bite against her collarbone.

  Armand was an eager but unselfish lover. He kissed, caressed, encouraged, and soothed as he inched his way inside her.

  Aida reveled in it. She felt wonderful, powerful, beautiful. He was inside her. She wanted him inside her. The pressure and give of her body as he pushed through the thin barrier brought no pain at all, only openness and relief. He invaded her fully until he was buried to the hilt.

  "I love you, Aida," he whispered against her. "
There is no charm that could make me love you as I do this moment."

  "I love you, Armand," she answered. "I always have."

  It was a tender moment, but the heat of desire, the needs of the body, the lure of the flesh were honed too sharply to be denied.

  "Move with me," he ordered. "Meet me and match me."

  She did as he bid, greeting him stroke for stroke, flesh against flesh in an ancient rhythm that was both universally human and peculiarly their very own.

  As they gained confidence in the pairing of their bodies, their tempo increased. Aida felt herself spiraling once more. She urged him on, begging, pleading. He was pounding now, pounding, thrusting. It was wild and rough and sweet, oh so sweet, as her body tightened like a wire. Pulled taut and more and more and more.

  When she flew apart she cried out. And she heard him calling her name as if it were an echo.

  "Felicite, I'm sick," Jean Baptiste told her. "I am sicker than I think I have ever been in my life."

  As if to answer, she bent over nearly double, clutching her distended belly for a long moment.

  "It's coming fast, it's coming very fast, the second pain nearly on top of the first."

  Jean Baptiste's eyes widened in disbelief. " T amie, you can't have the baby tonight. I am sick."

  She moaned and shook her head. "As if your will alone should stop it!" she told him. "Go get Madame Landry, go get me some help."

  She doubled over in pain once more. Jean Baptiste shot outside as if the demons of hell were after him.

  He made it all the way to the porch steps before another wave of nausea overtook him. He hesitated, praying that the ensuing weakness would pass. An instant later, everything went black.

  "Jean Baptiste, Jean Baptiste." „

  He awakened to find her nudging him awake. She was holding on to the porch rail and prodding him with her bare foot.

  "Wake up!" she demanded. "You have to wake up, I need you."

  "I'm awake, Felicite," he said, moving slowly as he made his way to a sitting position. "I'm awake, and I'll get to the boat. I know I can get to the boat."

  "There is no time for the boat now," she said. "There is no time for anything. Come into the house, Jean Baptiste. You are going to have to help me have this baby."

  As if to emphasize her words another pain went through her and her step faltered. For an instant Jean Baptiste thought that she might fall from the step and shot to his feet, hurrying to steady her.

  She didn't fall, but he nearly did as lightheadedness assailed him once more. The smell of his own sickness and the vile bitter taste in his mouth was abhorrent. As he helped her back into the house, he began to explain his predicament.

  "I think I can make it to the boat and even if I pass out there, it will drift downstream," he said. "I don't think that I can pole to Tante Celeste's for Madame Landry. But I can get some woman, somewhere surely."

  "There is no time for you to go out looking for some woman," she said firmly. "This baby is going to be here very soon."

  "It can't be this soon," he told her. "The other babies took hours and hours. Why, the day Marie was born Armand and I managed to put up the whole west fence while we were waiting."

  Felicite moaned again and leaned heavily against him. Jean Baptiste held her, worried. Felicite had to be wrong. A baby shouldn't come this fast. If it did, something might be wrong. And whether there was something wrong or not, he absolutely, positively could not help her have a baby.

  Once the contraction passed, she seemed exhausted.

  "You'd better lie down," he said.

  "Not yet, no not yet, it helps to walk. Help me walk." They began to move across the room.

  "Jean Baptiste you are going to have to help me bring this child into the world," she said.

  He shook his head. "I can't," he told her simply. "I haven't the vaguest idea of what to do."

  They reached the far corner of the room and turned, heading back the way they came.

  "I think I know what to do," she said. "I've had three, remember, this one can't be that different than those. Of course, Madame Landry said that each one is different."

  Jean Baptiste's queasy stomach was beginning to trouble him again.

  "That old witch!" he proclaimed angrily. She'd not only left his wife alone while she was in labor, she'd poisoned him as well.

  "You'll need to put some water on to boil," she said. "In that basket near the bed I've been saving rags. Put that old oilcloth table cover over the bed, then cover it with a sheet. I don't mind a big pile of laundry, but I don't want to lose that bed tick. That old one was never the same after I spilled all over it with Gaston."

  Jean Baptiste was going to vomit again. He knew that there could be nothing left in his stomach to heave, but he was going to have to heave it anyway. As he moved to run outside, Felicite gasped as the next contraction overtook her. It was much stronger than the last and she cried out loud.

  She had clutched her belly and through the layers of clothing, Jean Baptiste could see the coursing wavelike movements.

  "Sacre!" he whispered breathlessly to himself. He was holding her entire body weight in his arms and he felt as if his weak legs would give out from under him at any moment.

  He tamped down determinedly on the nausea rising in his stomach. He was not about to throw up on his wife in labor.

  The long agonizing pain passed and she straightened.

  Immediately Jean Baptiste raced out to the porch and threw up the last bit of bitter brown bile in his craw. He was weak, weak and sick. He couldn't possibly do this. He should get on the pirogue and get Felicite some help. That's what he should do.

  "Jean Baptiste!" she called out. "Come here, I need you."

  He hurried back inside the house.

  His wife was walking and moaning. She'd gathered up the harness straps for the bed and an old metal dishpan.

  "He's already started to roll inside me," she said. "You'd best get the bed ready. We're going to need it soon, very soon."

  Jean Baptiste ran a nervous hand through his hair. "Felicite, T amie, I can't do this."

  She turned to stare at him.

  "I simply can't. It is ... I just cannot. Perhaps if I felt better I would try to . . ."

  He watched his wife's face as it changed, as it changed very drastically. Her brow drew down, her jaw tightened, her eyes narrowed. Without further warning she hurled the dishpan at his head. Her aim was nearly true and she caught him smartly on the shoulder.

  "You lousy, no-account, worthless swamp leech!" she screamed. "Just get out of this house, get out of my life and stay out of my bed. You can't do this, you can't do this!" she mocked his words. "Do you think that I can do this? Do you think I want to? I'll tell you what I want to do. If I could I'd go back to nine months ago. And when you pulled that big thing out of your pants, I'd beat you both senseless with an ax handle before I'd let it near me!"

  She was crying now, yelling and crying.

  "It's so easy for you," she told him. "You just put the baby in my belly and then get out of the way. Oh, you ask me if I'm fine and you tell me not to work too hard. But do you massage my back and rub my feet at night? Do you take on any of the work that is so hard for me? Do you just snuggle in bed and hold me close and kiss me without trying to get that thing inside again? No, you don't, Jean Baptiste, you never have and I guess I know that you never will. You lie up in that loft, dreaming of being a free man, dreaming of other women."

  "I have never been unfaithful," he declared.

  "Oh no, you wouldn't do that," she growled back. "You wouldn't openly bring shame upon me or lower yourself to indecency. But what you do is just as evil. You are irresolute in your heart."

  "Felicite, I love you. I have always loved you."

  She shook her head, but her tone softened. "You married me to be my lover. Having a lover is a great pleasure, but it is not a necessity. A woman doesn't need a lover, but a woman needs a husband. I need a husband. I need a husband this nigh
t and if you can't be one ... If you can't ..." Another pain commenced and it brought her to her knees.

  "Oh God!"

  Jean Baptiste ran to her rescue. He squatted on the floor with her, holding her in his arms. She was screaming as he rubbed the spasms in her belly and whispered words of comfort.

  "It will be fine," he heard himself whispering to her. "We ... we can do this, we will do this and we will have a beautiful, beautiful baby. We love babies, Felicite. Remember how they are, T amie, they are so tiny and helpless and just so sweet that you can't look away from them. All this pain is going to bring us a sweet little baby."

  As the pain passed, he helped her to her feet, still whispering words of comfort and kissing her brow tenderly.

  "Can you stand right here?" he asked her, propping her up in the doorframe. "Or would you rather sit?"

  "I'll stand."

  "Let me get the bed made up. Where is that oilcloth table cover?"

  "In the cedar chest," she answered.

  Jean Baptiste hurried to it and opened the lid. When he bent over to search it out, his stomach revolted once more and he had to race to the window. He did a half-dozen wrenching dry heaves before his insides settled once more. Little stars spangled around the edges of his vision but he didn't believe that he was going to faint again. He returned to the chest to find the table cover.

  "You're so pale, Jean Baptiste," Felicite said. He noted that she was not looking quite herself either.

  "Just something I ate," he told her, smiling more bravely than he felt.

  He immediately began to work, trying to do those things that had to be done. He had not, in his lifetime, ever made up the bed and had to learn the mystery of it as he went along. Once he got the oilcloth securely tucked in, he turned with some pride to his wife, only to realize that she was beginning another contraction. He rushed to take her in his arms. He held and stroked her and encouraged her. She gnashed her teeth together and screamed.

  "It's coming, Jean Baptiste," she told him, even before the spasm was completely past. "It's coming now."

  He helped her remove her skirts and get into the bed. Her body looked huge, distended without its modest covering. The reality of what her body was capable of somehow became more real to him than ever before.

  Quickly he harnessed the straps as she directed, one to the head and one to the foot of the bed. She would need them to pull against as she delivered.