Lisa Plumley - [Crabtree 02]

by The Scoundrel

  Had she succeeded admirably? She sighed, suddenly fearing not. His roguish talk had been so rousing! She didn’t know how she would remain sensible in the face of more of it, if he continued. Likely she would manage somehow. She’d lived with her feelings for him for years, keeping them safe and secret inside her. She didn’t dare let them out fully yet. But if in the meantime Daniel wanted her…

  I would kiss you until you begged me to never stop.

  Oh, yes. He certainly seemed to want her.

  Beset by curiosity, Sarah considered exactly what such a kiss might entail. She couldn’t quite reason it out. She’d experienced kisses before, of course. At the advanced age of twenty-five, she seen her share of masculine advances. She’d even possessed enough scholarly interest to sample one or two kisses. But never once had she felt moved to actually beg anyone. For anything. The very idea seemed preposterous.

  Doubtless, that was only Daniel’s natural arrogance coming to the fore. Likely, he fancied himself a connoisseur of kissing and wanted her to believe the same. Well, Sarah decided magnanimously, she would allow him the opportunity to persuade her. But until that time arrived, she’d retain her skepticism.

  A creak sounded behind her. Music swelled as a door opened. It receded again, replaced by the crunch of heavy footfalls through the iced-over drifts. Sarah stayed beneath her snow-frosted boughs, letting whoever had decided to leave the social pass by her. She wasn’t in the mood for mannered conversation.

  “I warned you already,” came Daniel’s voice. “I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Sarah whirled to face him, ridiculously pleased that he’d sought her out. Deliberately, she made her voice light.

  “An answer to what?”

  He approached purposefully, wearing his coat and flat-brimmed hat, his face shrouded in the moonlight. All around them, the air felt still and crisp. The revelry seemed distant, a mere tune from a tinny music box. All at once, their solitude felt complete. Her heartbeat clip-clopped at a faster pace.

  “To what?” He arched a brow, as though the answer to that should have been obvious. He brought his gloved hands to her cheeks. Briefly, sweetly, his smile flashed. “To this.”

  He lowered his mouth to hers, warming her with his breath in the instant before their lips touched. The world swam beneath Sarah’s suddenly unsteady feet, all her attention centered on the unbelievable event that was occurring. Daniel’s mouth felt good, she observed dizzily. Firmer than hers, and plainly more experienced, but a perfect match between them.

  Uttering a low moan, he angled her head sideways. Her cheek fit in the haven of his palm as though it were meant to be held there. His mouth covered hers again, this time in a kiss more insistent than the last. Eagerly, Sarah puckered back with all her might, letting him know she wanted this…wanted him.

  Their kiss went on and on, surpassingly wonderful and engrossingly right. It was chaste but potent, simple but necessary. It was their much-delayed wedding kiss, she realized with delight, and therefore it was meant to be savored. When it ended, Daniel reared his head back, staring at her.

  Surprise etched itself in the hard angles of his face. His brows lifted. For a moment he looked a stranger, someone both thrilling and darkly dangerous. But then he smiled, and Sarah recognized the devil-may-care slant to his mouth as well as she did her own indrawn breath.

  “I like your kiss,” he announced, looking perplexed.

  “You needn’t sound so astonished. It’s not polite.”

  “I’m not concerned with politeness.”

  To prove it, he pressed another kiss to her waiting mouth, this one with an experimental flavor. Sarah rose on tiptoes to get closer, grabbing fistfuls of Daniel’s coat with both gloved hands. She needed to be next to him, she decided with some urgency. Next to him from knees to forehead. This kissing was remarkable stuff. She wanted it to go on and on and—

  Aaagh. Sarah broke off their kiss, staring at him. “Was that your tongue?”

  He seemed affronted. But humored, too. “You needn’t sound so dismayed. It’s not polite.”

  “I’m not dismayed.” In truth, she was. A little. She didn’t want to seem unsophisticated, but the shock of finding another person’s tongue inside a different person’s mouth would have that effect on the heartiest individual, she suspected. “I’m merely—” She hesitated, contemplating it. “Uncertain.”

  “Uncertain?”

  “Whether I like it. Perhaps I need more experience.”

  He watched her, not complying. Why did he look so amused?

  “You’ll need to cooperate,” she instructed with some impatience. “I already know what my own tongue feels like, and it’s fairly unspectacular.”

  At that, he actually laughed. The scoundrel.

  Sarah crossed her arms. “Stop it. You are ruining the magic of the moment. Hurry up and kiss me again, or the wonder of it will be lost forever.”

  “The ‘wonder’?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Oh! And use your tongue again.”

  “All that?”

  “Faster.”

  “I cannot believe you lecture me on propriety.”

  She felt a smile coming on. “Please.”

  Ahhh. She’d always known that word was magic. At her very utterance of it, Daniel moved closer again. He lost the irksome grin on his face and regarded her seriously.

  “All right. But lean against that tree behind you. I don’t want you to swoon.”

  Was he delaying again? “You’re overly concerned with my potential daintiness. I never swoon.”

  “You will before I’m done with you.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  “Have it your way.”

  His mouth descended over hers again. Just when she reckoned he would swoop in with another tonguelike surprise, though, Daniel defeated her expectations. He offered up a series of gentle kisses, each one sweeter than the last. He covered her mouth from corner to corner, trailing those kisses along sensitive places she hadn’t known she possessed.

  She squirmed. “You’re not doing it properly.”

  Fractionally, he raised his head. “You don’t like it?”

  “I may,” she hedged. She did. So much so that it left her breathless. “If I ever receive a proper sampling.”

  Rising to the challenge, Daniel pressed still nearer. In the shadows of the snow-shrouded pine boughs, he held her with one arm round her middle. With his free hand, he thumbed up her chin. “If you swoon, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

  “Psha—”

  The sound was stolen from her by his next kiss. This kiss was different from the others. More purposeful, more exciting, more…more. Light-headed beneath its influence, Sarah swayed and clung to him. She offered herself up for another, and this time when Daniel urged her to open her mouth beneath his, she did so knowingly. Curiously. Enthusiastically.

  The invasion of his tongue still felt strange, but a part of her liked it. The wicked part, most probably. Her toes curled inside her boots, and Sarah leaned all the way against Daniel, proving she didn’t need a silly tree. She didn’t need anything except him.

  Wholeheartedly, she gave herself over to kissing her husband. I love you, she thought before kissing him again. I love you, love you. She caressed his broad shoulders, his sturdy jaw, everywhere she could reach. It was all a part of loving him…making sure he knew she appreciated every part of him, every muscle, every inch. It was the least she could do. After all, he made her feel special merely with the touch of his lips.

  Too soon, their mouths parted.

  She couldn’t seem to catch her breath. Daniel was similarly afflicted. He stared at her with eyes gone dark and mysterious, his whole body hardened beneath her hands.

  “You,” he said, “are never what I expect.”

  Absurdly pleased, Sarah smiled. “I hope I never am.”

  At that, he rolled his eyes. “God help me. I didn’t know you were doing it apurpose. That explains a great deal.” />
  “It does not explain why you’ve suddenly decided to kiss me,” she mused, but then another thought struck her. “Although perhaps this owes itself to the social. Perhaps you are a secret romantic at heart. Just like m—”

  “Stop talking. I need to think.”

  Daniel’s brow furrowed. The fervor of their kiss had knocked his hat askew, and its angle made him look like one of the clowns from the traveling circus. She considered telling him so, then decided against it. His arrogance wouldn’t have survived it.

  He examined her, toes to nose, as though trying to reason out some blacksmith’s device or a tricky repair. “You do look beautiful. Maybe that’s it.”

  His statement confused her. “You said so already.”

  She knew, because it had been a moment she would cherish forever. Your beauty puts them all to shame.

  “Yes, I know. But tonight you look…uncommonly so. I wonder…?” Daniel gathered her hair in one of his big hands. His knuckles brushed her nape as he bundled her curls behind her head in a style more similar to her everyday chignon. With a determined expression, he surveyed the effect. He shook his head. “No. Even that doesn’t change it.”

  Her hair swung back in place. “Change what?”

  “My feelings about…kissing with tongues.”

  She had the sense he wasn’t telling her the entire truth. Still, his lighter demeanor relieved her. “Mine are beginning to be revolutionized, though. Let’s try it again. I do believe I am getting the knack of it.”

  “It is not supposed to be this way.”

  “What way?” A thought struck her. “Look. I’m leaning against the tree. See?”

  Sarah offered what she hoped was an alluring pose.

  Daniel glanced at her. His gaze meandered to her hips, then her lips. He seemed bedeviled all over again. “Stop it! I can’t think when you’re doing that.”

  Deflated, she straightened. Perhaps “alluring” simply wasn’t in her repertoire. To be sure, “fanciful” was. Also “ridiculously hopeful.” More than likely, asking the magic of this night to continue was simply too much to wish for.

  A moment passed while Sarah officially allowed him time to “think.” In the meanwhile, the wind whispered through the pine trees, shaking loose the snow on the boughs. It drifted down upon them like fairy dust, enchanting their hiding place.

  “We’re going home,” Daniel announced.

  Something inside her dwindled. Possibly it was her hope this night would change something between them.

  “But I want to stay here.” When he didn’t reply, Sarah repeated herself. “I insist upon staying here.”

  He groaned. “Damnation. It’s not working at all!”

  Which seemed a fairly mysterious thing to say.

  “What’s not working?”

  “Nothing.” Grimly, Daniel straightened his hat. “’Tis only a matter of time before it does. I know it.”

  He held out his hand. Sarah took it. After a backward glance at the lights gleaming from the social, she permitted him to walk her toward their neighbors’. Eli was being cared for there, along with the smallest Morrow Creek children.

  “That kiss,” she mused as they passed the darkened mercantile building. “Was that the one meant to make me beg?”

  Her inquiry elicited a grunt. Perhaps he didn’t understand what she meant.

  “To beg you to never stop, I mean,” she clarified.

  The only sound was the muffled thump of his boots. Then, “No. When I give you that kiss, you’ll know it.”

  “Oh.” Somehow, she doubted it. He could be frustratingly cryptic at times. “That’s good to know, then.”

  She still felt disappointed, though. Also, alive with interest. What would that never-ending kiss feel like?

  A few more steps. “How will I know it?”

  “Sarah, enough.”

  “Will I be able to make you beg, too?”

  He exhaled. “Yes. I beg you to stop chattering.”

  Fine. Hurt, Sarah shut her mouth. She walked faster, daring him to keep up with her strides. If he wanted silence, she would give him silence. Loads upon loads of absolute quiet. Stillness so complete it would make his ears ache for a whisper. Soon Daniel would beseech her to speak to him, to utter the merest peep in his direction.

  Or not. Because as they strode past her father’s Pioneer Press offices, another troubling thought occurred to her. Sarah could not contain it. Even as the snow squeaked beneath their boots, she dared another look at Daniel’s thoughtful face.

  “Daniel? Are you disappointed with my kissing? Is that what’s bothering you? Are you imagining a lifetime of inadequate marital relations? Are you contemplating methods of tutoring me? Or perhaps you mean never to try again?”

  Fearfully, she watched him. If he said he was disappointed in her, she didn’t know what she would do. Search for an instructional manual on the topic of marital kissing, perhaps. Ask Molly or her mother for advice. Or even, heaven forbid, inquire anonymously within one of the etiquette columns so popular these days. The one in Beadle’s Magazine, perhaps.

  “No.”

  She waited. He couldn’t seriously mean to leave it at that. A single syllable did not form a proper response.

  She told him so.

  He sighed. For a heartbeat, the old Daniel returned, with his friendly eyes and familiar smile.

  “You’re already launching plans and schemes, aren’t you? I can see the machinations in your head. If I say ‘yes,’ that I am disappointed, then you’ll waylay me at every turn for practice. Practice, practice, practice.”

  She thought about it. Nodded. “Probably.”

  “Then my answer,” he said with a newly determined grin, “is definitely yes.”

  Over the next several days, Daniel applied himself diligently to the matter of seducing Sarah. He made himself lie abed beside her in the mornings, enjoying the kind of warm togetherness he knew she liked. He made himself kiss her hello and goodbye, observing the husbandly duties he knew she liked. He even made himself court her, talking and laughing with a flirtatious tone he knew she liked.

  The devil of it was, he liked it, too.

  He liked finding her in his arms. He liked seeing her smile. He liked viewing her, after all these years, as a woman—a woman both desirable and confounding. Sarah had a well-developed sense of wit, he discovered, along with a hearty enthusiasm for kissing and a pert backside made just right for squeezing. She squealed when he did that, but her blush told him she liked it. Daniel would have had to have been much less of a man not to have felt the same.

  He took every opportunity to touch her. When they passed in the hallway, he made sure their bodies met in the middle. When he pulled down a heavy tin of beans from the pantry for her, he stole a kiss at the same time. When they tucked Eli in bed each night, he blew out the lantern and then drew Sarah into his arms for some of that dancing she liked, humming a tune himself. And all the while…he liked it, too.

  The fact of that worried him. Was he developing feelings for Sarah? Falling in “love” with his wife would not do. Daniel knew he had to hold fast to his convictions and merely seduce her instead. Otherwise, there was no telling the dangers that awaited them both.

  Just look at what had happened to Lillian.

  It was worth the risk, though. Daniel knew he must be making progress, must be close to achieving a proper husbandly influence over Sarah. She had not yet resumed doing his washing or his cooking or his mending, but she had resumed laughing with him. That made him feel better than any clean shirt ever could. It gave him hope, as well.

  Aside from seducing her, there was still the matter of needing her help with his household. Daniel pondered on that for a while, then remembered what Sarah had said to him. It’s difficult for me to get to all the housework, given my duties at the schoolhouse. If I had a spare pair of hands, maybe…

  Privately, he paid a visit to the school board. Its members were his friends in the community, people who brought h
im their sleigh runners and skillets for repair, who brought him their horses to be shod. Daniel figured they would listen to him when he explained about Sarah’s heavy duties—when he asked that they hire an assistant schoolteacher for her. Getting help with her schoolteacher’s work would lighten her load overall, and it would make her happier, too.

  Although he did not receive an answer right away, he left with the feeling that he’d done his wife a favor. She would be pleased and surprised when his request came to fruition. And she would have all the more vigor for their kissing practice, too.

  Indulging in that last was badly done of him, he knew. Just carrying on with “practicing” lent proof to the idea there was something lacking in her kiss, when Daniel knew nothing was further from the truth. But after their encounter outside the winter social, Sarah had insisted she needed “practice.” Who better than himself, he reasoned, to provide it?

  “Just hold still,” he told her, late of a night when Eli was sleeping. Their bedroom was quiet and cozy and lamp-lit, perfect for the things he had in mind. “This is an advanced technique. You’d better let me demonstrate first.”

  Eyes wide and beautifully blue, Sarah nodded. “All right.”

  Clad only in his britches, partially buttoned shirt and braces, Daniel sat beside her on their bed. The mattress dipped beneath his weight, then settled. He arranged himself so that he faced her. In the lamplight, Sarah’s unbound hair fell over her shoulders, making her look young and trusting and pretty.

  Strange, that the notion of a “pretty” Sarah did not take him aback these days. Likely, that was the result of his seduction techniques, Daniel told himself. He’d bewitched himself, plainly enough, even if not her. Not entirely.