by Linda Hilton
“Good. Now, will you tell me why you came to see me this morning looking happier than I’ve ever seen you and now tonight you act as though the world has come to an end?”
“Because it has!” she wailed suddenly, and the words came in a rush. “When I came to you this morning it was because I wanted to tell you I would refuse to marry Hans if you didn’t want me to. I was hoping you’d say something to put a halt to all the plans, but instead all you did was congratulate me. That was the last thing I wanted!”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“Because you never gave me the chance!”
“But you looked so…so happy! Damn it, Julie, what was I supposed to do? A couple hours after Hans confronted me with the fact of your engagement, you came traipsing up to my back door dressed in that gorgeous blue blouse that Simon had told me was part of your trousseau. You were positively radiant, Julie, the way any woman should be when she’s going to marry a man she loves. And that was exactly what I thought was going on!”
They were shouting at each other in whispers, yet still Julie paused before replying. If she were discovered here—but she could not dwell on that. Not now.
“I don’t love him. I hate him. He beats the girls at Nellie’s and he tried to beat me.”
Morgan was on his feet at once, his hands clenching into fists held tightly to his sides.
“I’ll kill him if he laid a hand on you, Julie. I swear it.”
She could still feel the welts and yet denied them.
“No, he didn’t touch me,” she whispered softly and extended a supplicating hand to bring Morgan beside her again.
They sat in silence for a moment or two, Morgan’s arm finding its niche around Julie’s shoulders and pulling her close.
“Then why did you buy all the dress material?” he asked, resting his cheek against her hair. “Simon said it was for your trousseau.”
“How did you know about that?”
“I was in the store. But that doesn’t answer my question.”
Julie calmed herself and tried to explain without losing her temper.
“My mother told me to do it. She even helped me with the sewing. But I didn’t buy it for a trousseau. I wanted to… to look nice for you.”
“But Simon said you charged it all to your father’s account.”
Her chin trembled with tears she battled to contain.
“I paid him back. With Mr. Burton’s gold piece.”
“What?”
“It was all I had! Or almost all. The rest of it is here in my pocket. Nine dollars and seventy-six cents. Enough to get me to Mesa, maybe.”
“Mesa! What the hell do you want to go all the way to Mesa for?” Morgan thundered.
“Well, what am I supposed to do? Go ahead and marry Hans? My father certainly won’t let me stay at home if I refuse to marry Hans, and even if I did, I’d spend the rest of my life waiting on my mother. She’s taken to her bed again, and I don’t think she’s ever going to get well. Whatever medicine you gave her worked for a while, but after the other night, she’s just as sick as she was when we came here.”
Morgan lowered his voice again, but with an effort he wasn’t sure he could maintain.
“I told you your mother isn’t sick. She’s putting on an act, though I don’t know why. And you said yourself she helped you with the sewing Saturday.” Then remembering her intention to leave Plato, he readdressed the question. “You still haven’t told me what you plan to do in Mesa.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, damn it, it matters! You matter!”
“But I didn’t matter enough this morning. You were going to let me marry Hans.” She regretted the childish petulance in that statement, but she meant it anyway.
“Only because I thought it was what you wanted. I didn’t want it, and if I had known then that you were against it, too, I’d have helped you stop it. Just as I intend to stop you from leaving this town.”
In the breathless pause that followed, he understood what she had so far left unsaid. Perhaps it was just her presence in his house at this ungodly hour that explained her desperation.
“Will you stay if I ask you to?” he asked quietly. “I need you, Julie. Don’t leave me, please.”
If she answered, he didn’t hear. The throbbing of his own pulse drowned out any other sound as he gathered her once more into his arms and crushed her to him. Now the desperation was his. He tried to communicate it to her in the way he held her.
Mouths met hungrily, then parted to gasp for life-giving air. Morgan’s hands found themselves seeking the fine silken tangle of her hair and then he buried his face in it. The fragrance intoxicated him, but unlike the whisky that had deadened his senses for so long, this gentle liqueur aroused him to a feverish delirium of desire. Only one thing was missing, and he knew he could add the single ingredient needed to make the most potent ambrosia in existence.
He kissed her ear, letting his lips tug softly on the lobe until she sighed with mounting passion. He could tell she fought it. There was no reason to delay, to tease, to torment. One more kiss, this time to her jaw, and then he told her.
“I love you, Julie.”
She stiffened in disbelief. He had to believe that, refused to accept any other possible explanation.
“I love you, Julie,” he repeated, no louder, no more insistently.
She opened her eyes and discovered the room had gone dark. Morgan laughed quietly, his breath warm against her neck.
“I was going to fill that lamp. That’s why it was sitting on the table. I think it’s completely empty now, don’t you?”
She shivered.
“Are you afraid?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Of me?”
“Yes, and of myself.”
“Why? Because other men have claimed to love you and didn’t mean it?”
She blushed in the dark at his accurate assessment. He knew her so well.
“Then tell me how I can prove it. Shall I give you the money to get to Mesa? Or anywhere else you’d like to go?” He kissed her again, close to the base of her throat just above the collar of her dress. “You name it, Julie, and I will do it, if it is in my power.”
In the next few seconds, his brain amazed him with the dozens of demands it imagined she could make on him. Money. Security from her family. Marriage, which he would gladly have given. Julie was a woman who had known too little love, and certainly not of the kind he was prepared to give her. He waited, strengthening himself for the abstinence he knew she would expect and which he must respect. He had, after all, offered to do whatever she asked.
She took a deep breath, and he was not unaware of the way her breasts pressed against him.
“Del?”
It was the first time she had used his name. She found the sensation queerly exhilarating.
“Yes?”
“Make love to me.”
He must have misunderstood her. Of all the things she could have demanded as proof of his declaration, this was one he had never expected. Never. He had to be sure.
“What?”
“I knew it.” She sighed, fighting tears of unspeakable humiliation. If Morgan hadn’t been sitting on her skirt, she would have escaped, though she couldn’t have gotten far in the dark without falling over or into something. And if he hadn’t been taken so completely by surprise, he might have let her go.
“Knew what?” he asked, taking hold of her arm.
“You’re still in love with Amy, so much so that you won’t break your marriage vows with her even now. I…I don’t know what made me ask that. I’m terribly sorry.”
“Oh, Julie, nothing would make me happier than to make love with you, right now,” he crooned when he had her once again within his embrace. “I just can’t quite believe that’s what you want. Are you sure?”
“More sure than I’ve ever been of anything in my life. But…but what about Amy?”
He laughed and kissed the top of her hea
d. Tall as she was, he still topped her enough that this caress was easy.
“Amy and I discussed it at length some time ago, and I assure you, we have her enthusiastic approval. However, I am not quite sure I’m ready to give in to your demands without some assurances that you aren’t trifling with my emotions.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
His hands encircled her face and angled it slightly upward, and though she couldn’t see his eyes, she felt him studying her, searching her soul for something.
“Do you love me, Julie?”
The words seemed confused, like birds that have been caged so long they become afraid to fly. She had to nudge them past the open door, off the end of her tongue until they spread their wings and soared.
“Yes, I love you,” she breathed joyously.
*
As he led her through the dark to the stairs and up to the second floor hallway, Morgan wondered, and almost voiced his thoughts aloud, why he was going through with it. If he had any sense at all, especially a sense of decency, he would not take advantage of her while she was in this kind of emotional state. God knew he wanted her badly enough, but that was hardly a good reason. And though she had blatantly begged him, he was sure she would regret her wanton behavior soon enough. Yet he was equally sure that he could not deny her.
He held her hand and guided her into the bedroom, not the one he normally occupied, but the one that contained the beautifully carved bed he had shared with his wife. He searched his heart for feelings of guilt and found none.
“Would you like me to light the lamp?” he asked. “Or do you prefer darkness?”
“I…I don’t know. Which do you prefer?”
“This time I’d like to be able to see, but if you think you’ll be too embarrassed, I won’t mind.”
It was a shrewd calculation intended to assure her of his desire for her and her alone. In the dark, she might convince herself that he was pretending she was someone else. But calculated or not, he meant what he said. He wanted to make love to Julie Hollstrom, not some invisible being, no matter how willing and passionate and responsive.
“Then light the lamp.”
He turned the flame as low as he dared before replacing the chimney and then turned to face Julie. In the weak light, she looked exceptionally fragile, exceptionally beautiful. He touched her hair first, sliding his fingers into it and combing out the little tangles.
“I never imagined you had all this tucked into that little knot on the back of your head,” he said with a smile. “But you were right to hide it. Hair like this is enough to drive a man wild.”
He liked the way she blushed and tried to hide a smile of her own.
“Shall I leave the room and let you, uh, get comfortable in the bed?” he asked.
She blushed again, deeper this time.
“I don’t know. Is that the way it’s done?”
“Sometimes. Some people leave their clothes on, too.” Her helpless confusion touched him then, and he gently turned her around so he had access to the buttons down her back. “But I like it better this way, with just us and no clothes to get in the way. Is it all right if I undress you, Julie?”
She could only nod her head. The touch of his fingers at the back of her neck sent shivers down her skin and fire through her veins. Perhaps he would find her undesirable, but she had to know. There may never be another chance.
With every button, he planted a kiss down her back, even when he came to the two just above her waist that were left undone because she hadn’t been able to reach them herself. On the bare skin above her camisole, his lips left little tingles; through the thin cotton of the undergarment his kisses were gently warm.
When he had finished with the fastenings, he did not immediately slide the dress off, but took his time. He bared first one shoulder to lavish it with kisses, letting his tongue taste her skin and make it quiver with strange, delightful new sensations. Then he lifted her hair and draped it over his head as he pushed the dark, unbecoming calico off her other shoulder. Now his kisses drew little sounds from her throat, nothing more than soft sighs yet, but still the beginnings of passion.
He tugged the cuffs of the sleeves over her hands and then let the dress slither its own way to the floor. When it lay in a dark blue heap around the hem of her petticoat, Morgan moved to stand in front of her. He curled an index finger under her chin and tilted it up a fraction of an inch.
“Aren’t you going to look at me?” he asked. “If you’re afraid, or just want to change your mind and stop, say so. I won’t force you, Julie. Not ever.”
She couldn’t speak, so she answered him by lifting her eyes to his and then reaching to unbutton his shirt. If her hands were not as steady and sure as his had been, she still managed to accomplish the same feat, including the trail of kisses in the wake of the opened buttons. Down the shallow valley of his sternum to the carved hollow where his ribs met, she pressed her lips to his chest and gloried in the way his breath caught and held.
The hair on the taut skin of his chest and belly tickled her nose. Her nostrils flared and drank the scent of him in massive gulps. While her hands clutched the front edges of his shirt, she buried her face against him, her lips murmuring some quivering silence against his flesh.
“Don’t be ashamed,” he chided quietly as she sank to the floor between his slightly spraddled feet and hung her head. “You’ve asked me to prove my love, and I will, but only if you are not afraid of showing yours. Let this be between us a thing shared, not merely given or taken.”
He pulled her to her feet once more and lifted her shy hands to the collar of his open shirt. Where he had rolled up the sleeves, she had some difficulty sliding them down his arms; but soon, with no more encouragement, she had the garment off him and on the floor.
There was no spare fat on Morgan’s torso, from the broad browned shoulders to the flat-muscled abdomen she had so hungrily tasted. Though Julie felt a flush of innocent shyness creep up her throat to her cheeks, she could not turn her admiring eyes from him. Why did the sight of his naked chest, with its dark, shiny hairs and puckered nipples, stir her to a smile? She had seen many male bodies in the past few weeks, and a few of them might even have been called attractive. But she had not wanted to be held tightly to any of them. Her fingertips had never ached to touch the little nubbins of darker flesh on a man’s breast. It was only Del Morgan’s body that she wanted to know so completely.
Her eyes moved to his hands as he lifted the hem of her camisole. With the same sureness of purpose he showed in surgery, he raised the flimsy garment over her head. The soft friction of cotton fabric sent an electric charge through her own nipples, and she looked down to find them crinkled and hard.
Still steady, Morgan’s hands molded themselves around the creamy flesh. One by one his thumbs touched the miniature erections, elongating them and drawing Julie’s passion closer to the surface.
“How long,” he wondered aloud as he let the current sing along his nerves, “have we tormented ourselves? Why did we deny this when we both wanted it so badly?”
Julie heard him, and her brain registered his question, but she had no control over her answer. Like molten honey, the words oozed from her slowly, matching the flow of warmth that spread outward from his touch.
“I didn’t know,” she sighed. “So many things that I didn’t know. Ah, God, Del, please.”
Her head fell back, limp on the sculptured alabaster of her neck, and yet her hands found sudden strength. They tugged blindly at his belt, undeterred even when his lips and tongue and teeth made a fresh assault on her throat. He could feel the vibrations of her moans, the tensing of tendons in the throes of delightful new experiences, as clearly as he felt the searching of her fingers for buttons and buttonholes.
He had wanted every single detail perfect, from that first instant when he saw her approaching his house to the imagined conclusion of this first physical celebration. But perfection required time, more time than ei
ther of them wanted to spend. As he pulled loose the knots that held the last of Julie’s underclothes and kicked himself free of his own, Morgan regretted the spoiling of his dream. Yet slightly flawed reality was still better than unattainable perfection. He slid one arm behind her knees and lifted her naked into his arms to carry her to the bed.
And he was pleased to note that when she lay there, with her hair fanned out behind her head in a silver shower, she smiled at him.
There was time yet. If not for the perfect fulfillment of all his dreams, at least enough to satisfy the most urgent. Even before he lay beside her on the wide, comfortable bed, he began a slow exploration of all her body. Her breasts were high and full, the engorged nipples dark against ivory skin. At his touch, she shivered and sighed and her eyelids fluttered down involuntarily, only to open quickly.
“You aren’t afraid to look?” he asked.
“I’m more afraid that when I open my eyes you’ll be gone, and this will all be some dream I’m waking from.” His hand slid lower, from her breast to the wavelets of her ribs and on to the flat stomach. “I want to see and to remember everything.”
“Then I must give you plenty to remember.”
It wasn’t enough that his hand moved lower still, his fingers combing into the curls of richly golden hair shrouding her femininity. That alone sent such a ripple of shock through her that her back arched up from the mattress and a slow wail fluttered tremulously from her throat. But that combined with the wet warmth of his tongue on a swollen breast drove her almost to tears. The wail became a series of cries as frayed and soft as an old satin ribbon. He suckled one tumescent peak, drawing his teeth gently along its length, while his finger found another, warmer, wetter, more secret.
Words, singly and in short, incoherent phrases, mingled with the moans. Julie’s fingers threaded themselves of their own volition into the dark curls on Morgan’s head, but she could not tell if she wanted to pull him up so that she could kiss him or if she wanted to hold him to her breast where his mouth was doing such incredible things to her body. Nothing seemed real, nothing seemed controllable, though part of her remained fully and clearly conscious. The man she loved was loving her, driving her insane with passion she had never known and did not understand.