by Linda Hilton
She sensed, rather than knew, that she was ready for him. She felt the ease with which he slid one finger inside her willing body. The sensation did not startle her, nor did she shy from his careful, gentle probing. When had her legs parted to allow him such entrance? She did not know. But she did know that when he settled his long length between her limbs, she felt somehow secure.
He kissed her other breast, pulling on the nipple that could tighten no tighter.
“Del, please,” she begged, her body seeking his instinctively. At the very threshold he waited. “I can’t bear it any longer.”
Why did he hesitate? She could feel the hard length of him throbbing against her. Afraid that he might leave, she wrapped her legs around his, curling her toes under his ankles to hold him fast.
“Are you sure? Once it’s done, it’s done.”
“I’m sure. Oh, God, I was never more sure of anything in my life! Love me, please, Del, love me.”
At first here was just the fullness of his flesh entering hers, easily, warmly. When he withdrew slightly, she rose with him to keep him within her. The next thrust slid deeper, opening her wider, but still filling her gently. Julie lifted herself to him, seeking the ultimate joining, and it was then that she felt the first twinge.
“No, Julie, don’t hurry it,” Morgan’s voice steadied her. “Slowly, slowly, love, so it doesn’t hurt. I don’t want to hurt you, love. Not even a little. Never, never, not even a tiny bit.”
The rhythm of his words matched the easy persistence of his body. He would not hurt her, not if he could help it. Though he had not really expected to find her intact and regretted the necessity of pain to mar this night, he felt a new surge of emotion at the discovery. Slowly, with each increasingly forceful thrust, he felt the membrane begin to give. And he knew not all the tension of her inner body came from the pain. If somehow he could bring her to her pleasure before his own demanded the satisfaction of full penetration, he might save her the worst.
“Relax, love…relax…it’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”
She was crying, sobbing at the pressure building inside that screamed for release she could not find because she did not know it existed.
“Easy, love, easy. Let me show you, let me love you.”
With a tortured scream, she grabbed for the elusive ecstasy. Arms, fingers, legs, and womb clutched at him seeking it. Unable to wait any longer, Del plunged through the last resistance and let the rapture take them both together.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“Ah, Firefly,” Morgan sighed.
He breathed deeply but easily. It had taken no great physical exertion to achieve this most marvelously satisfying pleasure, and now he lay peacefully content. Holding most of his weight on his elbows to avoid crushing the woman beneath him, he watched while she surrendered to replete exhaustion.
“Can you breathe?” he asked after bestowing a kiss on her sweat-dampened temple.
“Yes. Oh, Del, don’t move.” She flung a limp arm across his shoulders and clasped him tightly with her legs still wrapped around his. “Don’t leave me. Not yet.”
He chuckled.
“I can’t stay there forever.”
She acknowledged that truth only reluctantly. Using muscles she never knew existed until just moments ago, she clung to his relaxing organ even while she wished she could draw a full, deep breath. She wanted to cry, to spill out all the suppressed emotions, and yet she had never in her life experienced such utter contentment. And though she gloried in the passion she had seen satisfied in his green eyes, she worried about the price her own wanton desire must cost.
“If you could, would you?”
“Would I what?”
“Stay there? Forever?”
He laughed, and that did it. Though Julie strained her hips upward, she lost him and cried out at his leaving.
“Yes, I would.” He kissed the side of her neck, just below her ear. “Forever and ever.” She shivered when his lips moved lower, to her shoulder and then her collarbone. “Marry me, Julie, and I’ll prove it.” His teeth grazed the bone beneath the pale skin, and his breath warmed her throat.
“Marry you?” she whispered.
Could he feel her heart leap, then stop, then jump again with a surge of new life? He must have, for he had slid his entire body down the length of hers so that his mouth now rested just between her breasts. As he cupped the satiny mounds closer to his face, Julie felt his lashes flutter on her skin.
“Marry me,” he repeated. Now his tongue flicked sideways, up towards a nipple that had gone as soft as his penis.
“When? How? Oh, Del, stop that, please.”
He trailed the tip of his tongue to the other side, again reaching no more than halfway to the peak. He riffled the tips of his fingers over the little nubbins softly, drawing a moan but no answer from her. He slid further down her length until his chin rested in her navel. He looked up at her, saw her watching him between the firm globes of her breasts.
“Well? Will you marry me? Tomorrow? We can get Wintergarden, I suppose. I confess I don’t know a damn thing about the legal aspects of getting married in the Arizona Territory, but I’m sure the preacher can handle the details.”
While she watched, he dipped his tongue into the shallow depression of her navel.
“Yes, yes, I’ll marry you,” she whispered. “Now, this minute, if you want.”
But when she extended her arms to draw him to her, she found him sliding further out of her reach. She gasped and tried to squirm away, but his weight held her fast.
“What are you doing?”
“Making love to you,” he added quietly, calmly. His hands still curved comfortably around the outer swells of her breasts, but his lips were level with the upper edge of the golden curls between her thighs. “I hurt you a little while ago. Now I want to kiss it and make it feel better.”
Again she tried to pull away from him.
“No, Del, don’t. It isn’t—”
“What isn’t it? Right? Decent? Normal? It’s beautiful, Julie. It’s a way of showing love, and that’s what I want to do for you, show you how much I love you.”
So he did, despite her efforts to wriggle free. He plundered her body as he had her mouth, seeking the most sensitive places with his tongue and lips and teeth. He trailed his hands down her sides and around her hips to her buttocks to still her struggles.
He found the source of her passion and touched it, feeling the shudder of sheer pleasure ripple outward from that core to the ends of every nerve in her body. She no longer fought to escape him but to achieve that soul-splitting ecstasy she had so recently discovered.
“No, Del,” she gasped. “Not like this.” She raised her back and shoulders from mattress and reached hungry hands to him. Her fingers twined in his hair and tugged the soft dark curls. “Like before…inside me. Please, Del, please…”
He knew when he poised his body over hers that he had brought her close to the precipice. If he took her too soon, she would plunge over the edge almost instantly, and he didn’t want that. He wanted to draw the pleasure out, extend it to its fullest and then savor the culmination at length.
He licked a nipple, hard now as an unopened rosebud.
“Slowly, love. We have all night.”
He raked his teeth over the other peak.
“All night and all of forever.”
Then her hands, sliding frantically between close pressed bodies, found him and tightened around him. The groan that embrace dragged from him died only when his lips found hers. He devoured her. His tongue slithered to the far corners of her mouth, stroking along the inner surfaces in anticipation of another invasion. Julie met and engaged him in this frenzied duel.
He sheathed himself in her warmth to the hilt with a single thrust. No maidenhead barred him, no pain hindered her, as they joined again. He drove home, and she held him there.
The frenzy, but not the desire, waned. Julie sighed a kind of lazy fulfillment. With his t
umescence securely ensconced, Morgan raised his head and opened his eyes.
“You’re beautiful,” he told her. “Inside and out.” When she reddened and tried to turn away from his slightly lascivious smile, he laughed and kissed her nose. “I didn’t mean it that way. Well, yes, I guess I did. You are beautiful inside, like warm satin all wrapped around me. But I also mean the Julie inside the body. Here.” He pressed his lips to the sun-gilded line along which her hair parted. “And here.” Now they came to rest just above the shadowed valley between her breasts.
Holding him, she could not hold back the tears. As though the love he offered her refused to dwell in a heart filled with pain and sadness, she let it all spew forth.
“Don’t ever let me go,” she wept. “I love you so much, so very much.”
It seemed to take hours to climb that torturous mountain again, yet they treasured every step. Sometimes Julie moved with him, raising her hips when he would have come close to complete withdrawal. Other times she let him pull away and then met his return with her own. Like ballet dancers, they moved in perfect harmony, not always matching steps identically, but preserving the synchronicity. Parting, meeting, circling, pausing, they built toward the swirl of the crescendo.
He plunged deeper because she drove him to it and gave back to him every ounce of wild pleasure. He knew she was closer to this climax than he. He would have let her slake her sexual thirst fully, undisturbed, but he could not, for by the time he felt the tightening that precedes release, he was too near his own to hold back.
The sudden convulsions wracked her whole body, not just the fevered center of her. She cried out with the wondrous delight that seemed unending, as each of Morgan’s final thrusts multiplied the ecstasy. Just when it seemed she could bear no more, he reached the summit. She felt then what she had not felt that first time, the explosion of his body within hers, the pumping of his seed into her womb.
As before, he waited until their bodies were no longer joined, then lifted himself on shaky arms and legs and eased gently away. Lying on his back beside her, he clasped her hand.
“I love you,” Julie sighed raggedly.
“I love you, too.”
*
Julie wakened to darkness. Vaguely aware that it was too early to get up, she sighed and rolled over. She felt uncomfortably cool and groped blindly for a sheet; finding a loose corner, she tugged until she got enough free to cover herself, but in doing so she discovered two very surprising facts. She was stark naked, and every muscle in her body ached.
With a lazy smile that quickly became an even lazier yawn, she remembered. She tucked the sheet under her chin and reached her other hand out for Del.
He was gone, though the space beside her retained a slight warmth. Ignoring the soreness that seemed worse the more she moved, Julie rolled from the bed and shuffled her feet along the floor until she encountered bits and pieces of clothing. She identified her petticoat and dress, but rejected them both and finally found just the camisole and pantalettes. Pulling them on in the dark, she stretched luxuriously and yawned again.
She ran her fingers through her hair to comb out the worst of the tangles while she oriented herself to the room again. She looked to the shuttered window but could see no light even around the edges. Had Del extinguished the lamp, or had it, like the one in the kitchen, burned itself out while they slept? And how long had they slept?
Cautiously avoiding any obstacles in her path, Julie made her way in the general direction of the door. She encountered another garment, which she identified as his shirt, and slipped her arms into it. It was cool from lying on the floor, but soon her body would warm it, and there was something comforting about wrapping herself in it that had nothing to do with warmth. Closer to the door, she could see a slim band of pale light under it and heard the sounds of someone moving around in the kitchen.
On silent feet she wandered down the stairs and through the parlor, aware now that Morgan was busy starting a fire in the stove. When she entered the kitchen she found him on his knees, blowing gently on the kindling, his own bare feet curled beneath the seat of his dungarees. He wore no shirt, and his hair looked as though he had combed it backwards with a pine cone.
He was absolutely the most beautiful creature she had ever seen.
Not knowing if he had heard her approach or was merely ignoring her while he built the fire, Julie stole up behind him and, dropping to her knees, wrapped her arms around his waist. She kissed the smooth cool skin of his shoulder and whispered, “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” he greeted in the same quiet kind of voice. “Want some coffee?”
He got to his feet, bringing her with him, and then turned in her loose embrace to face her. A light kiss seemed inevitable.
“I suppose so. What time is it?”
“About quarter to four. Did I wake you? I didn’t mean to let the door slam when I filled the coffee pot.”
“It doesn’t matter. Something woke me, but I don’t know what. And I needed to get up anyway.”
She rested her cheek against his chest and closed her eyes. Never in her life had she felt so perfectly at home as in this man’s arms. He held her gently, comfortably, and propped his chin on the top of her head.
“You don’t need to do any such thing,” he scolded lightly. “Today’s your wedding day.”
Now she tilted her head to look at him, to study the green eyes closely. He didn’t blink under her scrutiny.
“You meant it?”
“Of course I did. I don’t make marriage proposals I don’t mean.” Seeing the beginning of a tear in the corner of her eye, he squeezed her a little more tightly. “Did you think I was the type who made promises in order to seduce innocent maidens?”
“No, I would never think that of you,” she confessed honestly. “I just thought maybe I had dreamt it. I still can’t quite believe it’s true.”
“You do still want to marry me, don’t you?”
“Of course I do!”
“Good. As soon as it’s relatively decent to do so, I’ll go wake up Reverend Wintergarden and find out just exactly what formalities we have to go through. By the time I open the office this afternoon, I expect to have our relationship fully legal.”
There it was, the guilt she had waited for. It welled up from some hidden spring inside her.
“Are you…ashamed of last night?” she asked in a whimper.
“Ashamed? God, no! Oh, Julie, how can I be ashamed?” Then, realizing he had not quite understood her correctly, Morgan lifted his hands to encircle her face and hold it still while he spoke. His words were stern, but his voice overflowed with the love he had never thought he could feel again. “And I am not ashamed of you, either. Julie, Julie, please, believe me. What we did last night we did out of love. It was beautiful, the way it should be, and I refuse to let you feel guilty about it. Is it because we weren’t married first?”
She couldn’t nod, but he understood the slight lowering of her lashes.
“What if you had been married to Hans? Would that then have made it right? If he beat you and hurt you and never made you feel the way you felt last night, would it still be all right just because he was your husband?”
Her lips, trembling, formed the word no, but she could make no sound.
“I love you, Julie. I love you because you are kind and intelligent and loyal and gentle and beautiful, and what Reverend Wintergarden or a justice of the peace has to say about it isn’t going to change my feelings at all. The only thing I’m ashamed of is that I didn’t realize it all sooner, and I let you go through so much suffering when I could have stopped it. For that I’m sorry, but not for what we had last night. Never for that.”
She clung to him, her arms tight around his waist, and there were no tears. Only relief and contentment. He turned her face up for another kiss, softer than any other he had given her and yet more filled with his love.
“Now, let’s have some coffee, all right?” he suggested.
“My shirt looks much better on you,” Del teased, blowing on the coffee to cool it a little. “Every time you lean over it gaps open and I can see all the way down to your belly button.”
She blushed and clutched the garment more tightly around her.
“Now, Julie, you know you could have gotten dressed before you came down here and you didn’t. I think you like letting me see you.”
“I do. I mean, I did,” she admitted shyly, “but when you talk about it so easily over a cup of coffee, well, it isn’t quite the same as…as last night.”
“Then let’s finish the damn coffee and go back upstairs. Wintergarden won’t be awake for hours yet.”
“No, Del, I can’t. I have to go home.”
“Home?” he snorted. “What the hell for? This is your home now. There’s nothing over there you need that I can’t give you. You even told me you brought all your money.”
“It isn’t that. Oh, I have a few things, like my new clothes, and the aprons I made for work, and some other small personal things, but I need to go tell them.”
“I can do that. Julie, I don’t want you going there any more. Not alone, at any rate.”
She shook her head, and he saw a strange determination stamp itself firmly on her features.
“I can’t explain it, but I need to go there and tell them. I…I won’t tell them everything, though I doubt I’d even need to, but I want to do it on my own.”
It was more than determination. Pride lifted her chin and made her cheeks glow. It straightened her shoulders under the loose-fitting shirt. After all the years of shame, she felt pride again, and he knew he had to let her have it. And the fact that she took her pride from him sent a fresh thrill of love through him. She had brought him back from a living hell, but she took no credit for herself. She was proud of him, and that meant everything.