Return to Me

by Rosemary Rogers

  She laughed deep in her throat as he swept her into his arms and carried her to the big bed that they had yet to share. Setting her down gently, he stood and slowly began to remove his clothing. His boots. His stockings. His red coat and then the white shirt and cravat.

  Taye watched in fascination, the heat building first in her cheeks, then outward, as he stripped down to bare skin. The pit of her stomach tightened; her pulse seemed to pound in her ears. She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue as his fingers brushed the waistband of his trousers.

  He hesitated.

  Taye lowered her eyelids until her eyes were half closed. “I will see all of you, Falcon. I should inspect the goods,” she purred, “before I make any promises.”

  His low rich laughter was the best balm there could be for her nerves. She watched, unabashed, as he pushed the black trousers over his narrow, sun-bronzed hips.

  Her breath caught ragged in her throat as she saw the dark patch of hair. Then he sprang forth, larger than she expected and not nearly so foreign. She smiled and reached out to him with one hand. “It’s so warm in here,” she whispered, half sitting up. “Help me with this tiresome gown.”

  Never taking his gaze from hers, he slipped off her shoes and then her silk stockings. As he undressed her, he lingered, drawing his warm fingertips over her skin, sending ripples of gooseflesh up her legs. Then he sat on the bed, facing her, and drew her up by her shoulders. He brushed his lips against hers in brief, fleeting butterfly kisses as his fingers found the buttons down the back of her gown.

  “For a man, you are well versed in ladies’ clothing,” she teased huskily as he drew the yards of gown over her head, taking care with the delicate fabric. He took the time to walk to the far chair and drape the gown over the back.

  She watched as he walked toward her, stiff and erect in his maleness. Taye had always known that she would do this with someone, but she had always thought of it as a woman’s duty to her husband. It had never occurred to her until she met Falcon that she would really desire to touch a man, to feel him inside her.

  Falcon sat on the edge of the bed again and helped her out of her corset and shift. Only once she was utterly naked did he stretch out beside her in the big bed and draw down the mosquito netting so that they were enclosed in a magical web.

  “You are more beautiful than I had dreamed,” he breathed in her ear. As he spoke, he dragged one finger between her breasts, over her stomach and upward again in a lazy circle.

  Taye sighed and, without thinking, lifted her hips as his hand drew lower once more. “You dreamed of me?”

  He leaned to press a kiss to the peak of her small, firm breast. “Every night since I found you in the garden. A gift sent to me from the heavens.”

  Her breath caught in her throat as he drew his hand lower on her belly, then, at the last possible moment, upward again.

  Taye rolled toward him and lifted up to catch his mouth with hers. She was trembling from head to toe, aching. She brushed her palm across his cheek and took his mouth hungrily. At the same time, she slid her hand down his leg and, without hesitation, took his hard, hot flesh in her hand.

  Falcon groaned and their kiss deepened.

  Taye was fascinated by his sex, by its shape, by its responsiveness, by the soft texture of his skin. She had always thought a woman’s body was beautiful, a gift of creation by God, but she had never known how glorious a man’s body could be.

  Falcon rolled on top of her and she gave a little cry of protest, not yet ready to release him.

  He drank in her dark eyes as he slid down her body, dragging his hot, wet tongue in a path, lower and lower. He teased her navel with the tip of his tongue and then rested his cheek on her belly.

  Taye could barely catch her breath. Everything was spinning. The room, the bed, her thoughts.

  Falcon grazed the bed of dark curls between her thighs with his skilled fingertips and a cry of relief escaped her lips.

  “Shh,” he murmured. “Slowly. We have all night.”

  She laughed and closed her eyes, trying to catch her breath as she attempted to slow her pounding heart. He waited a moment and then began to touch her again with light strokes.

  Taye raised her hips to meet his hand. Just once he brushed against the swell of pink flesh and she cried aloud with pleasure. He rested his cheek against her belly again, cupping her sex, letting the sweet ripples of pleasure wash over her, drown her.

  When her breath came more regularly for a second time, he began to touch her. He stroked her soft, damp flesh with a gentle hand. He wanted to know what pleased her and that thought made her heart swell with love.

  Love. She did love him. She knew that now. She not only loved Falcon, but she was in love with him. And that was something very different from what she had experienced with Thomas.

  Gradually, Falcon slid down in the bed, kissing a path from her belly downward. The moment she realized what he intended to do, she thought to stop him. But she couldn’t. She simply could not stop the need that now seemed to be instinctive.

  Taye threaded her fingers through Falcon’s thick, black hair, thinking she would permit just one kiss down there. But the moment his tongue brushed the dampness at the apex of her thighs, she was lost in sensation. Just one stroke of his tongue—two—and she was moaning aloud again, writhing beneath him.

  Again he lay still, giving her time to catch her breath. When she could speak, she reached for him. “Falcon—”

  “Shh,” he hushed. “I have waited a long time to touch you, to taste you. Do not stop me now.” And as he spoke, he had already begun to stroke her, exploring in knowing ways she had not explored herself.

  Twice more Taye cried out with satisfaction. At last, when she so tired she could not lift her lashes, Falcon stretched out beside her. He blew out the lamp beside the bed and enveloped her in his arms.

  “I love you, my Taye,” Falcon whispered in her ear. “Tell me that you love me and I will wait for you until the end of my days.”

  “I love you,” she whispered, her eyes closed. “I want to be with you. Always.”

  “Then tomorrow I will send word to Jackson. He will tell us what we must do so that we can be together always.”

  Taye opened her eyes one last time to see Falcon looking down at her and then she drifted off to sleep, content that no matter what happened, she could die a happy woman.

  31

  Cameron stepped onto the paddle wheeler’s deck and took a deep breath of the pungent night air. Heady smells enveloped her, as hot and powerful as moonshine whiskey: rich black soil, verdant walls of vegetation, rotting logs and the eternal river itself, thick and silt-choked, black and smooth as molasses.

  The creaking of boat timbers, the rhythmic slap of the paddles and the swish of the bow parting water drowned out the noises of the river that she could feel all around her. But she could hear them in her mind, and they seemed more real than the notes of the piano or the laughter of passengers from the ship’s main saloon.

  Cameron could imagine the flapping of a night bird’s wing, the croaking of frogs and the splash of fish. She could see the faint flicker of lights from houses along the shore and unconsciously strained her eyes to see the faces and figures of the inhabitants.

  With only a little imagination, Cameron fancied that she heard the clink of a tin cup against a bucket as lovers shared a cool drink of water at a well, the murmur of a sleepy mother crooning a lullaby to her nursing infant, or the squeak of a worn rocking chair.

  “Old Miss,” she murmured. “I do love the river so.” How could Jackson expect her to live in Washington or Maryland, when she was so much a child of the Deep South? War-torn and ragged, this was still her home, and she cherished the land and the people with every fiber of her being.

  Spotting Jackson’s silhouette in the moonlight on the far rail of the ship, she hesitated. Obviously he wanted to be alone, else he wouldn’t have picked such a secluded place on the boat. Did she just retu
rn to her cabin?

  After a moment of indecision, Cameron crossed the deck to join him. She pressed her hands to the painted black wooden rail and took another deep breath, thankful to be out of her stuffy cabin.

  He glanced at her, then out at the dark, rippling water again. He had been in a pensive mood since they’d boarded the Magnolia Queen the previous day in Vicksburg. Before the war, it might have been faster to take the overland route and the train to New Orleans, but like the rest of the South, Louisiana was a wasteland of ruined plantations, fallow fields and destroyed railroads. At the dock where they had boarded, a one-legged corporal, still wearing the tatters of a gray uniform, had told Cameron that one quarter of the males in the South were dead. Three hundred thousand slaves had been set free without work and without a place to rest their heads. When one looked at those statistics, it was no wonder there were not more bands of thieves and murderers like the one preying upon her own hometown right now.

  “I’m sorry that I could not acquire more comfortable lodging,” Jackson said, not looking at her. He had been unable to secure them a private berth on such late notice, so Cameron was sharing a tiny cabin with Miss Fanny Motterbee and her great-aunt Frances Motterbee. The two women were chatterboxes, elated to have a woman of not only Mississippi society with them, but of Washington, D.C., society, as well. The fact that Cameron’s husband was a Yankee seemed of little consequence. The two women were more interested in hemlines and the shape of new bonnets than politics. Cameron had come outside to escape their incessant chatter.

  She listened to the hum of the steam engine, which drove the paddlewheel. “The cabin is perfectly adequate.”

  She tried not to think about the fact that since her husband had returned home, they had not slept together. The first night, when the soldiers had come and Taye had run away, Lacy had slept with her. After that, each night Jackson had gone to one of the guest bedchambers and Cameron had slept alone. It wasn’t that she wanted to; she just didn’t know how to ask him to return to her bed. Part of it was that she wanted him to initiate the conversation; she wanted him to want to be with her again.

  “We even have a small window,” she said, making conversation. “How are the men’s quarters?”

  “Crowded.” He glanced sideways at her and she saw his mouth turn up in a half grin. A flicker of the man she had known before the war. “Smoky. Loud.”

  Cameron took a chance and slid her hand over the smooth, polished wood rail to cover his hand. She wanted so desperately to make amends with Jackson, especially now with Taye’s life in jeopardy. She just didn’t know how to breech the chasm. “Perhaps in New Orleans we could share a room, just the two of us, minus Fanny and Frances and your dozen new friends,” she said lightly.

  He turned toward her, and in the moonlight she saw the lines of his face that had not been there before the war. Tenderness washed over her. She wished she could smooth away those lines, smooth away the tragedies he had experienced , of which he rarely spoke. But she knew she couldn’t alter the past; not the war, not the loss of their baby, not the things she had said to him out of anger or pain. All she could do was press forward, try to right what could be righted, and accept what could not.

  Jackson took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips; he stared out at the muddy waters of the Mississippi. “Talk to me,” he said, a catch in his voice. “Tell me what you have been doing to pass the time.”

  “I’ve been reading Papa’s diary.”

  “Still?” He smiled and rubbed her hand against his cheek.

  He had not shaved this evening before supper in the Captain’s cabin, and his skin was pleasantly abrasive. Cameron was afraid to breathe, afraid to break the spell. This was the first real intimacy she’d felt with Jackson in weeks, perhaps months. It was true they had made love the evening he returned, but that had been different. That had been about pent-up desires and release. This was subtler, more lasting.

  “I would have thought you would be done with it by now,” Jackson mused. “I know, had that been my father’s diary, I could not have kept myself from reading until I had read every entry.”

  She leaned against him, pressing her cheek to his shoulder. He smelled so good, so familiar in a comforting way. The scent of the starch of his cravat, the leather of his freshly polished shoes, the faint hint of tobacco and the intrinsic male scent of his skin all combined to send her senses reeling. This was the man she had loved since she was seventeen and barely in her first lady’s corset. Surely such a love could not die so easily; surely, somewhere, there had to be a spark still left unkindled.

  “I’m trying to savor Papa’s words,” she said softly. “As I read, I not only see him, but I see myself.”

  Jackson rested his hands on the ship’s rail again, but held fast to hers. “Tell me what you read today.”

  “It was about my parents’ wedding. You know, it was arranged.”

  He drew his lips back in a sardonic frown. “A good businessman, above all, his father.”

  “Papa wasn’t in love with my mother. He barely knew her. But he did as his father asked and married her anyway.”

  “It’s what Southern men do,” Jackson remarked.

  “But a week before the wedding, he brought Sukey into the house to begin training to become the housekeeper.” She spoke in a soft, conspiratory tone, almost as if she were in on the plan with her father. “He actually openly discussed the matter with his father and gained his permission. The only thing my grandfather stipulated was that Papa be discreet.”

  She lifted her head from his shoulder to gaze up at him. She had his full attention for once and he was listening, as fascinated by the story as she was. “Papa and my mother married and Grant was born less than a year later.” She smiled, remembering her father’s words. “He said,” she quoted from memory, “Katherine bore a small but healthy son at dawn with little fuss. Both are hearty. I was hoping for a red-haired girl to bounce on my knee, but there will be other children.”

  “And then you came along. The daughter every man secretly wishes for.”

  She smiled to herself, a sadness coming over her. She wondered if Jackson had wished their child had been a boy, as most men wished for, or if he, too, had hoped for a red-haired daughter.

  She turned to him. “Jackson—”

  He crushed her mouth with his, taking her by surprise, silencing her words. Turning her in his arms, he trapped her between himself and the rail and kissed her deeply, his tongue delving into her mouth to possess her.

  The flames of her need quickly fanned and Cameron slid her palms beneath his coat and up over his chest. In the hot, humid night air, the fabric of his cotton shirt was damp beneath her fingertips.

  Jackson took her breath away with his kiss and then drew his mouth down over her chin. She stretched her neck to bare the length of her creamy skin, and a shiver of pleasure rippled through her.

  As Jackson pressed fiery, fleeting kisses over the swell of her breasts, she slid her leg between his and brought her knee up to caress him.

  Jackson groaned. “Damn, I wish I could have gotten a cabin for us.”

  Cameron arched her back and felt the hard wooden rail press into her flesh, but she didn’t care. His mouth felt too good on her breasts. His hand that caressed her through her gown and underclothing was far too delightful.

  Their mouths met again, the fevered pitch of their need increasing with every hot, wet kiss.

  Jackson caught the hem of her lavender silk evening gown, pressing her back farther against the boat’s rail. Cameron laughed, her voice husky in her own ears, and pushed his hand away playfully.

  “Jackson,” she murmured. “We’re in a public place. Someone might see us.”

  “And what would they see?” he murmured, his breath warm in her ear. He tongue darted out to tease her lobe. “A man holding a woman in his arms? What harm is there in that? You are my wife. It is my duty to show you such affections.”

  Again she laughed. She’d be m
ortified if someone came upon them, but in truth, he was right. Though they were out on the open deck, it was a secluded spot, and there was no one about. Everyone still awake on the boat was busy drinking and gambling.

  Jackson grasped her hand and drew it down over the front of his trousers. “You see? I’m in desperate need of you, Cam.”

  She stroked the bulge of his trousers, sorely tempted. Surely a woman of her age should not be frolicking on a ship’s deck, but as Jackson pointed out, they were an old married couple.

  “If we get caught,” she threatened, a thrill running through her at the thought of doing something so daring, “I swear I’ll throw you overboard.”

  He laughed and kissed her again as she reached down to work the buttons of his trousers. His kiss was long and deep and left her breathless again, wanting him as much as he obviously wanted her.

  Jackson groaned, resting his chin on her shoulder as she stroked his hard, hot flesh. Then she astonished even herself by grasping her skirts and lowering herself to her knees.

  “Cameron,” Jackson protested. “You don’t have to—”

  “Shh,” she soothed. “Don’t tell me you don’t like this.”

  He massaged her shoulders. “If someone were to come—”

  “No one will see us and if they do,” she whispered, “I’ve dropped my glove and am simply trying to retrieve it from the deck.”

  “Cam, you can’t—”

  She drew her tongue up the silky skin of his shaft, silencing him until no sound escaped his lips but a guttural moan.

  “Sweet God,” he muttered.

  Cameron’s own pulse quickened as she taunted him with the flicker of her tongue here…there. She lifted the soft sacks of his flesh and caressed them gently.

  Jackson panted, clutching her shoulders harder, and as his desire rose, so did her own. She caressed with her hand and her mouth, teasing him to the point of breaking, only to back down until his breath eased again.