"A person in pants, huh?"
She nodded solemnly. "Talking Raven had me climbing elder trees for berries and cliff tops for eagle feathers. Then I grew up, and Papa made me stay earthbound."
"A man of surpassing wisdom, your father."
She sniffed. "Beastly boring, that's what growing up is. When's the last time you did something outrageous? Something scandalous, just for the fun of it?"
He fought back a grin. Well now, this was a side of Eden he hadn't anticipated.
However, his kid sister's friend—not to mention his kid sister herself—shouldn't be privy to the sorts of skeletons rattling around in his closet: ale-chugging contests in the church chancellory, prize fights he'd won after the women and children had left the county fairgrounds, naked widows he'd romped with through cornfields, the hundreds of times he'd wound up snoring with a bottle of rotgut in the Jade Rose Saloon. In fact, he wasn't sure he wanted anyone to know what he did as "Mick" when he slinked off for another round of Commandment breaking in Whiskey Bend.
"Well, let's see." He rubbed his chin. It was already growing rough with evening stubble. "I hid a dime novel in my prayer book, once."
"And?"
"And Papa was livid."
"That's it?"
He cast her a sideways look. "You've never seen Jedidiah Jones livid."
She wrinkled her nose. "I suppose that's true."
Thanks to the breeze, a tendril of hair kept slithering across her cheek, and while it didn't seem to bother her, it was a sore temptation to him. He had to lean his weight back on his hands just to keep from reaching for her.
"I fell in love with a married man, once," she volunteered.
A bolt of jealousy crackled all the way to his toes.
"Of course, I didn't know he was married at the time," she admitted.
He was relieved to hear that.
"Loving Paul was probably the most wicked thing I've ever done. But I stopped loving him when I realized how he'd lied to me. I don't think there should be any room for lies in love. I mean, if you have to lie, you can't really love the person, can you?"
He squirmed inside. But what if the lie serves that person better than the truth?
"Have you ever been in love?" she ventured.
He dared to meet those ocean-sized eyes and quietly, helplessly, drowned. Even if he could have forced some answer from his collapsed throat, he wasn't sure it would have been coherent.
He managed a weak nod.
"With Bonnie?" she whispered, sounding faintly hurt.
He nodded again, hating himself for the truth. Hating that he'd ever found anything at all appealing in Bonnie's catty, underhanded ways. He'd been so green, even at twenty, thanks to all the garbage he'd digested from Papa's pulpit. Some part of him had wanted to believe Bonnie would see the error of her ways. Just like some part of him had wanted to believe the meek would inherit the earth, that goodness would prevail, that God actually did care about humanity.
But then Gabriel had died. And Michael had wised up in Whiskey Bend.
Eden plucked at her skirt. "Bonnie is very pretty."
"That has nothing to do with it."
He winced. He hadn't meant to sound so harsh.
"What I mean," he said, "is that things were different then. I was preoccupied with school, studying feverishly, reading everything I could get my hands on to save Gabriel..."
His voice trailed as the old grief pushed its way to his throat. All the medical knowledge in the world had been at his disposal, and yet he'd still stood helplessly by, witness to his brother's agonized coughs, watching Gabriel's flesh stretch tighter and tighter over his ribs.
"I'm sure," he said hoarsely, "that Bonnie grew bored waiting for me to notice her. I wasn't much of a beau."
"I'm sorry, Michael," she murmured.
She pulled her feet from the water, and he turned his face away, grateful for the distraction. Was it the wine or the heat that was making him maudlin?
She rose, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze before walking away. He swallowed, wondering why she was leaving him, wondering why the hell he was letting her go. She picked her way across a patch of wildflowers, her damp hem trailing behind her, gathering yellow pollen.
Each time she stopped to bend over a petal or finger a leaf, her hair slipped further out of its knot, cascading in burnished waves over her left shoulder. He could almost imagine that shoulder was bare as he shielded his eyes against the sun, because her bodice was only one shade deeper than the alabaster-cream of her skin. She made an alluring picture against the backdrop of cloudless sky and rainbowed grasses.
A crushing sense of loneliness seized him. He couldn't bear for her to slip away, to vanish as she had so many times in his dreams. He rose, thinking to follow. He thought he should at least retrieve the shoes and stockings she'd left behind.
Her gasp of excitement stopped him. "Michael, look!"
He did, and his chest constricted. A swallowtail butterfly had fluttered onto her hand. It beat its wings for a moment before launching again for the sky. Laughing, she gave chase, disrupting what he'd thought had been a palette of orange and yellow flowers. Suddenly, she was surrounded by saffron wings. She threw her arms wide, spinning in the golden storm, rousing more butterflies from their slumber.
It was the scene from his dreams. The realization exploded through him with the force of a cannonball. He cursed as his legs failed.
"No, dammit," he panted, groping desperately for the nearest tree trunk. He fell hard to his knees anyway.
"Michael!"
He barely heard her. The weakness had attacked out of nowhere, knocking his legs out from under him as easily as an ax cleaves through kindling. He couldn't feel his feet. The knowledge made his head pound. "Stay back," he choked.
But she didn't. She was kneeling beside him. "What is it?"
He stuttered something nonsensical, pushing feebly at her hands. It did little good. She tugged his cravat loose, ripped unceremoniously through the buttons on his shirt.
"Breathe," she commanded.
He sank earthward, clutching his head; she straddled his hips as if to still his muscular seizure. A sound, some sort of chant he realized dimly, was coming from Eden. Her humming vibrated through him like a gut-deep sigh, loosening the knotted muscles at the base of his skull, dispelling the fear that had locked his limbs. To his amazement, he began to feel his feet again. When he opened his eyes, he was able to discern color and shape.
She slowly swam into focus: the cascade of autumn that was her hair, the luminous emerald that was her eyes, the pale, trembling rose that was her mouth. She clenched her bottom lip between white teeth, and the resonant chanting stopped. He might have been disappointed if she hadn't leaned closer, practically stretching herself on top of him.
"Does it still hurt?"
He swallowed. She'd shifted her hands. One tenderly stroked the damp curls from his forehead; the other nested atop the wiry hairs on his chest, as if to check his heartbeat. He could feel her breath against his chin.
"No," he rasped.
"I can get your doctor's bag—"
"It's in the orphan's tent."
"Oh." Her troubled gaze held his for an uncertain moment. "Was it something you ate?"
He might have laughed at her fear, that he'd been poisoned by her picnic lunch, if he hadn't been so shaken by his seizure.
"No," he murmured, brushing the hair from her cheek. "It wasn't the food." He tried to smile. "I'm better now."
"You're so pale," she whispered. "Like that day in the store."
He drew a shuddering breath. He knew he should sit up. He knew he should find some argument to dispute the evidence she was starting to piece together. But the effort to lift her, to move her, to separate the welcome heat of her thighs from his hips, was gargantuan. Instead, he averted his gaze, watching as his fingers twined one of her satiny curls. "I'll survive."
"That's nothing to joke about," she said tremulously. "I though
t—"
Her voice broke. He spied the track, if not the tear itself, and a humbling sense of awe washed over him.
"You're sick, aren't you?" she whispered hoarsely. "Really sick."
The lump in his throat nearly suffocated him. As hard as he tried, he couldn't lie to her.
"It's not your concern," he forced out.
"It is."
She rocked forward, and his heart skipped a beat. The beams of sunlight that danced behind her head seemed to rush toward him as she lowered her lips. And when her mouth settled over his, he was gifted with the taste of paradise.
He cradled her head, his pulse thundering in his skull. Strangely, the pressure brought him no pain. His awareness telescoped to the moment, to her sweet offering, to the scent of larkspur and lilac that spilled from her like some midsummer bounty. She was the very essence of the season, brimming with life, resplendent in full flower—magical. All his hopes and dreams woven into one ripe and luscious lover.
He cautioned himself to remember her innocence, to enjoy her kiss and nothing more. He was even careful to keep his quaking hands above her shoulders. It was the flavor of her tears that undid him.
"Eden. Honey." He choked. "Don't cry for me."
A sob shuddered through her anyway. His own emotions dangerously close to the surface, he clasped her length, rolling her to her side. She clung to him as if the ground were spinning and he were her only anchor. He tried to soothe her with his hands, to murmur consolations.
She pulled him closer. A muffled warning knelled in his brain, but he was too busy needing, wanting, feeling for the first time in forever, to heed the alarm. He thought only that holding her was better than his dreams. And he didn't want to let go.
His hands took on a will of their own. He wasn't sure how her gown slipped off her shoulders. Or how his shirt wound up crushed on the grass beneath her. He delighted in the feel of her skin, peach velvet. She tasted as sweet as she smelled. She groaned when his mouth steamed through her chemise; he took the sound as permission to continue, to slip the straps and bare her breasts to his tongue.
She arched, gasping. Her naked calf somehow brushed his arm; he recalled the vision of elfin feet kicking up butterflies, and he couldn't deny himself the pleasure of exploring that coltish limb: pearl-shaped toes, exquisite ankles, bashful knees... bloomers.
The unmentionables should have come as a white flag. They didn't. When her fingers roamed lower, kneading the musculature of his spine, his hands trembled, pushing higher. To his visceral satisfaction, he found the slit in her bloomers. She wore nothing else beneath the cotton. She squirmed as he touched the silken down that shielded her innocence. His mouth swooped, sealing off her moan.
She was all woman now, fiery moist, riding the instinct of her own pleasure. As he petted her, it thrilled him to realize she would take as much as she gave, that she would be a lover who reveled in the unleashed power of her own femininity. He was a man who needed such a lover, a woman unfettered by the chains of a guilt-ridden upbringing or the religious beliefs that would make her view the most sacred act of love as something dark and twisted.
She thrust her tongue into his mouth, and a low, needy growl welled up from the most primal part of his being. He blamed the sound for deafening him to the world beyond Eden. In that moment, there was only her heart drumming time with his, her panting echoing his labored breaths, her body singing the same siren's song that shrieked through his veins.
Something wooden creaked. Vaguely, he heard a horse's snort. He forgot them instantly, swept away by the rhythm of Eden's hips against his hand, knowing she was close, so close to her first avalanche of desire. It was the light, airy sound of female laughter that finally punctured the fog in his brain.
Eden sucked in her breath. Somebody emitted a strangled gasp. Long-legged shadows obliterated the sun from the sky.
"Merciful God," came Henry Prescott's unmistakable baritone.
Another male coughed. Eden turned to petrified wood. Half dazed by unslaked desire, Michael let instinct prevail. He grabbed his shirt, shielding her naked breasts from the voyeurs who'd stumbled across their fevered petting. Somehow, he marshaled his nerve, rallying thirty-one years of repressed antagonism toward the Almighty.
Rolling over, he tossed the hair from his eyes, prepared to defend Eden from the neighbors who loomed over them like God's own jury.
That's when he spied his kid sister, her blue eyes wider than the whole damned sky above the hand she'd pressed to her mouth.
"M-Michael," she stammered.
Shame splashed like ice water against his loins.
Bonnie was standing with Luke Frothingale, the mayor's son and the town's attorney. She looked ready to lunge at Eden's throat. Luke fidgeted, staring uncomfortably at Bonnie's picnic hamper in his fist.
Claudia elbowed her way forward with Abner Buckbee, who toted her hamper like a man dragging leg irons. Prescott, meanwhile, had waxed a cherry shade of righteous. He dropped Sera's basket with a clatter.
"May God have mercy on your soul, Eden Mallory," the young cleric sputtered, doing his best to cover Sera's eyes with his hat.
Claudia harrumphed, thumping her gunstock on the ground as she halted to stare down at her niece's dishabille and her niece's debaucher.
"Hallelujah's more in order, preacher." Claudia smirked, and Michael's humiliation burned as her cagey gaze fastened appreciatively on his bare torso. "Looks like these two young 'uns are gonna have one heck of a weddin' night."
Chapter 9
Michael's bedroom clock knelled the eleventh hour as Eden paced the wedge of moonlight that splashed the hand-loomed rug. How she'd managed to survive her hasty wedding ceremony and the ten hours since she'd been labeled the town whore was a mystery, although she suspected Aunt Claudia's wine had helped.
On second thought, maybe the wine had been to blame.
Her stomach churned.
Beyond the open window, crickets chirped raucously, making the utter stillness of the house feel like a tomb. The sticky summer air begged for a breeze, but Eden shivered anyway, hugging her arms to her chest. Her new lace and cotton nightdress had sat on Claudia's store shelves for weeks because no woman in town had dared to purchase an unmentionable that everyone else had fingered or seen.
Bonnie had snidely suggested it was the perfect gift for Eden's wedding night. Claudia had told Bonnie to dunk her head in the pickle barrel, but she'd given the gown to Eden anyway with an awkward pat and the disgruntled promise that they'd round up a proper trunk of "girlie things" the next time they visited Louisville.
Sera had been only slightly more enthusiastic. After her initial shock, she managed to generate a spark of excitement for the scandal-steeped marriage.
"I guess this makes us sisters now. I always wanted a sister, you know, so... here. It was Mama's ring. A bride should have a ring on her wedding day, and I know Michael didn't, um, have time to buy you one."
Eden's hand shook as she stared down at the battered gold band that branded her a Jones. Eden Jones. Michael's wife.
She wondered if her husband hated her.
The lamp flickered in the sconce on the wall, chasing voluminous shadows across the Spartan, hand-hewn bed. No posts adorned the pine headboard, although a pair of scratches, like a dog's claws, marred the footboard. The quilt bore faded blue chintz squares, patched with an occasional piece of denim or gingham. It was so tightly tucked around the straw-filled mattress, she could have bounced a marble off it. Above the headboard, across the sun-faded wheat sheaves that papered the wall, a discoloration clearly marked the space where a cross had once hung.
No other signs of deity were visible in this room that, she was certain, had once belonged to Jedidiah and Catriona Jones. She wondered if Michael had changed anything else to make the space his own. The window seat was bare of cushions. The shaving stand was topped by plain white porcelain. The chest of drawers was little more than a giant box with black knobs. The Michael he liked to show the worl
d, the brooding cynic who rarely smiled, haunted this space. But not the Michael from the animal orphanage. Not the Michael from the swimming hole... nor even Michael from the church chancellory.
Her heart quickened as she remembered him standing in the rainbowed hues that splattered the stone floor in a cross-shaped pattern. The stained glass had seemed so small and narrow to make such an impact upon the room—upon Michael himself. Facing that window, he'd awaited her arrival like a man bound for execution, his shoulders squared, his hands clasped at his spine. He'd changed from his rumpled gray suit into his habitual black broadcloth, and her heart bled to see the pallor beneath his newly formed tan.
"Please sit down," he'd said as she fidgeted on the threshold, uncertain whether to join him or flee on the first westbound stage. She'd been entertaining the notion of flight all the way from the swimming hole back to town. After all, Talking Raven had never married Papa. And Claudia had never married Henry Lucas. Eden reasoned she didn't have to marry Michael just because everyone expected it. Or because some preacher thought she was going to hell.
In fact, she'd been prepared to tell Michael the very same thing. Claudia had already said she'd stand behind whatever decision Eden made, even if it meant "losing the best dang store help I ever had."
In truth, Eden had seen no choice but to leave Blue Thunder: She'd realized she couldn't bear to live in Michael's hometown if she had to watch him hang his head each time he was forced to share a sidewalk with her.
But when he'd turned from the stained glass cross to face her, his eyes had blazed blue fire, and her nerve had vanished in a puff of smoke. She'd practically tiptoed across the chamber to take the seat he'd offered.
Even if she didn't think she was going to hell, Michael most assuredly did.
"Eden."
She swallowed as he came to stand before her, as solemn as a hanging judge. He must have intuited the uneasiness his mood was breeding in her, because he did try to smile. He even knelt on one knee, clasping her right hand tightly between both of his. She could see the effort he was making to remain calm while his world imploded.
His Wicked Dream (Velvet Lies, Book 2) Page 19