A Path Worth Taking

by Mariella Starr

  “I knew I shouldn’t have touched you. I knew it, but I couldn’t stop myself. I told myself what we had was perfect, and it couldn’t be wrong. I think I fell in love with you that night. I never forgot you. Two more years of war, and battles and the nightmares, but I never forgot you or that night.”

  “You said you came for me,” Beth said. “I don’t know why my brother lied to you. I never forgot you either.”

  “Beth, can we start over?” Garret asked. “Can we go forward with a clean slate?”

  “I’m willing, only you haven’t acted as if you want to be my husband since you returned.”

  “If only you knew,” Garret responded with a laugh. “I want you for my wife. I want you real bad.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” he said lowering his head and kissing her. “Do you remember our night together?”

  “Every moment of it,” Beth whispered even as she blushed.

  “Good, we’ll make it happen again and take it a step further,” promised Garret. He pulled her to her feet, and with his arm around her waist, he guided her to the wagon and gave her a boost into it. Once inside, he closed the flaps.

  Beth sat on the edge of the bed, and he came to her. He unbuttoned her blouse slowly, lowered her to the bed, and began to kiss her. He was slow and deliciously gentle as he touched her body. Piece by piece her clothing was removed as he uncovered her. He gave his clothing a careless toss as he pulled them off impatiently.

  “Will you let me?” he asked as he lay beside her.

  Beth could feel his hardness against her, and she felt herself yearning for the forbidden pleasure she had only experienced once before with him. “Please,” she whispered.

  He primed her with his fingers, then he pushed hard against her and into her. There was no resistance and he slid into her tightness, so firm and hot and wet.

  “Oh,” Beth groaned.

  So much for reliving her initiation to sex so many years before. This time, there was no surprise of pain. Garret moved within her in long hard strokes, and she responded by grasping him to her closer. He pulled her legs around his waist and then there was no gentleness, and she did not want there to be. He thrust into her relentlessly, deeper and harder, and when he took one of her breasts into his mouth to tease it with his tongue, she moaned in pleasure.

  It was all the encouragement he needed as he continued his personal quest to satisfy her.

  Beth loved the sensations she was feeling. If this was being a married woman, she liked it very much. She remembered her earlier feelings of being out of control, and the sensations and emotions rushing over her. She wanted to feel them, again. As he thrust into her, she could feel something building inside her body.

  Garret didn’t know how much longer he could hold out. He had not been with a woman in a long time. He was buried deep into the paradise of this woman, and he needed a release. When he felt Beth shudder, he pushed himself harder and faster. When he came, it was heaven. He groaned in those few seconds of release. Dear God, those few seconds were so worth it! He released his seed into her and then lay beside her spent, although he still wanted more of her.

  “Do you feel like a wife now?” he asked.

  “I think so,” Beth whispered, although she felt strangely empty when he removed himself.

  “I’ll have to try harder next time,” Garret chuckled. “After the next time, you will know for sure.”

  Chapter Three

  Garret demonstrated his need for Beth several times during the night and come morning he was raring to go again. They finally left the narrow cot as the sun was rising.

  “Do we have time to heat water for a hand bath?” Beth asked.

  “We can take the time,” Garret said grabbing two buckets and walking to the small stream nearby where he had watered the animals.

  While Beth was heating a kettle of water, Garret hitched the oxen to the wagons and reloaded the wagon with their gear. As he watched her pour the water into a basin and climb into the wagon, he realized he was none too clean himself. He grabbed a bar of soap and headed for the stream. It was freezing cold, but he jumped in, scrubbing the clothes he was still wearing, and then shucking them and washing himself. Grabbing his somewhat cleaner clothing, he rung the water from them and made a dash for the wagon.

  Beth screamed and cowered as Garret burst through the bonnet flaps stark naked.

  “Sorry,” he said, realizing he had scared her.

  She turned away from him. “It’s your wagon.”

  Garret leaned outside the wagon, wrung the water from his union suit, and hung it over the wooden gate to dry. When he turned around, she regarded his nakedness. He took a good long look at her too, although she was not quite as bare as he would have liked.

  “You have goose bumps,” Beth said.

  Garret had not noticed. “I know how to cure them,” he said moving Beth aside so he could climb under the covers on the narrow bed. “Join me, wife,” he said suggestively, lifting the blanket.

  Her eyes widened as she got a closer glimpse of him. He had been all shriveled up from his dunk in the creek when he first entered the wagon. Now he was aroused, hard, and long. She laid her clothes aside and joined him under the blankets.

  Much later, Beth’s eyes widened as her husband slid his length into her yet again.

  “Can you do this all the time?”

  Garret laughed. “No, I’m amazed. I don’t seem to have any problem when I’m around you. We fit together perfectly. I’m going to finish this bit of business and then I’m unhitching the animals. We can afford to take a day to spend with each other. Have you any objections to the idea?”

  Beth shook her head and discovered she had no need for words as she showed Garret how much she liked what he was doing to her.

  Garret’s self-proclaimed day of rest was interrupted occasionally, as it was not feasible for him to make love to his wife all day long. In between bouts of making love, there were chores to be done. While he filled the water barrels, Beth took their clothing to the small stream and washed it as best she could. She sorted through the things the women had gifted to her and found another dress close to her size. It and the one she’d been wearing before were all she had. The dress she’d been wearing that night had been ripped and torn. She could probably have mended it, but when she was given another to wear, she burned it instead. She wanted no reminders of that night.

  There were no undergarments among the giveaways and hers were wet. When she bemoaned the fact to Garret, he laughed. He turned her around, raised her skirts, and fondled her while standing there out in the open. Beth was scandalized. She glanced around nervously while her husband laughed and told her it was unlikely anyone else would come along. Her blushes only turned him on more and led to him having her again. He lifted her onto the tailgate and without any foreplay thrust into her.

  Beth was surprised by her husband’s insatiable need. It was exciting to know he wanted her so much, it made her want him too, although she hadn’t had the nerve to tell him so. Sometimes, he seemed in a hurry, desperate for relief, other times he was slow and made her body respond before he finished himself.

  When she asked Garret if what they were doing was how all married couples behaved together, he smiled and told her he hoped so.

  He dug through his meager clothing to find his spare union suit for her to use, although he asked her not to put it on until they were ready to leave, and he winked.

  Despite the chores and knowing their day of rest would soon end, and the journey would begin again, the time was worth it. They lay in each other’s arms enjoying the passionate feelings that arose between them again and again.

  They also took the time to talk. They spoke of most of the things couples would usually know about each other before they married. They spoke of their families or rather the lack of relatives between them.

  Influenza had taken Garret’s father, mother, and sister when he was fifteen. His only remaining family, a distant
uncle, had put him in a workhouse school. He had hated it and ran away. Several months later he had signed on with a wagon train as a cook’s helper. Several trips across the Oregon and California Trails had provided him with the knowledge to hire on as a scout. Opportunity had given him a land stake after a plague of grasshoppers swept across the high plains of the South Platte River area and left devastation in its wake. Purchasing his property for pennies on the dollar of what it was worth only weeks before, Garret had thought it was time for him to start thinking about finding a wife.

  His plans had been derailed when he left his newly purchased, although mostly worthless, ranchland behind and enlisted to defend the union cause he believed in and to carry out his duty as a man.

  Beth had lost her mother to childbirth when she was nine. Her growing up years on their family farm had been ideal, as her father was a successful businessman running the farm and the orchards. She and Nate were admittedly spoiled. She had ignored the tensions and the discourse in her home state, whose proximity to the nation's capital pulled it into the war. She personally had only known a few families in the area who believed in slavery and had owned slaves. With her father and grandfather’s help, those few had found their way north to freedom.

  “Everyone has heard of the Underground Railroad,” Garret said approvingly. “Your family was a part of it. You should be proud of your father and grandfather.”

  “I am very proud of them.”

  “You also used those passageways to hide from the soldiers and the fighting.”

  “We were living in them about half the time toward the end,” she admitted. “It was horrible and safe at the same time. Jacob was killed in the skirmish on our land, and we buried him in the family plot. Lettie disappeared, and I don’t know what happened to her. I still worry about her. I hate to believe she was killed, too.”

  “As pretty as you are, why didn’t you marry, Beth?”

  “Before the war, I was a silly child only concerned with coming out parties. Leland Haywood proposed when I was sixteen, although he was only seventeen himself. He didn’t join the Union Army because his father believed the war would be over in a couple of months. He was conscripted when the Confederates seized control of the area for a few weeks. I think it was more of a kidnapping, as he was pro-union. I never saw him again. His parents told me he died in battle at some place called Beaver Dam Creek, in Virginia.

  “Did you love him?” Garret asked.

  Beth shook her head back and forth. “My father approved of him before Leland was taken off to fight on the Confederate side. After Papa discovered he was fighting with the rebels, he said I couldn’t have anything to do with him. He was a nice boy, too young to go to war. A lot of girls my age were marrying boys and sending them off to war to become soldiers. A lot of them were left widows, some with babies.”

  “Why hasn’t some good looking man offered to marry you since then?”

  Beth leaned closer to kiss Garret. “One did, and one good man is all any woman has a right to hope for.”

  “Let’s go inside the wagon,” Garret suggested.

  “Again, already?”

  “With you, I’m ready all the time,” he said taking her hand.

  ***

  “You want me to do what?” Beth exclaimed in indignation as she scrambled from the bed and wrapped a blanket around her.

  Garret was laughing at her reaction, which made her angry.

  “Women do it, Beth,” Garret assured her. “Women do what pleases their husbands. Come to bed.”

  “I have never heard of such a thing! It’s disgusting!”

  “Have you had many frank discussions about sex?” Garret asked.

  She shook her head and whispered. “Sex isn’t a proper subject of conversation for a lady.”

  “Come to bed and we’ll play around a bit until you feel comfortable with the idea.”

  Beth slowly moved to join her husband in bed again. They had been making love when he asked her to do something… so horrible it shocked her. She liked it when Garret scooted down in the bed and took her private parts in his mouth. It was a wonderful feeling. Then he had asked her to take him in her mouth. She didn’t think she could do it. He was too big, she would choke, or if he wiggled in her mouth she knew she would throw up!”

  It took some coaxing, and gentle teasing and instruction, before Beth would even attempt to touch his organ. Once she did, she found it was not so different from his fingers, except it was bigger and seemed to have a mind of its own and jump around a bit which was unnerving. He said he couldn’t control it.

  The look of pleasure on Garret’s face when she finally worked her nerve up enough to put her mouth around it was almost comical. Beth realized something else while she was twirling her tongue around what he called his head. Sex was a powerful tool in a woman’s pocket. Momentarily, her husband was at her mercy. She already knew he was not one to consider only his pleasure. Then, he pulled her into a position on top of him, so they were topsy-turvy, and he buried his mouth in her sex as she was giving him what he had explained was oral sex. It was such an intimate and uninhibited experience she had blushed with embarrassment the entire time.

  “Oh, my darling Beth,” Garret teased her. “We’re going to have so much fun!”

  ***

  The Denver Road as it was called, barely qualified as a trail. There had been no improvements since the last time Garret had used it. The settlement of Denver was not a popular destination, mostly because not much was there. A gold rush built Denver, but then it had petered out years before. Now, it wasn’t much more than trading post mostly populated by miners, who would not give up on the idea of a next big strike. It was also a place of entertainment for trappers who found abundant animal life in the mountains. The town had been built and rebuilt several times, as fire and floods and leveled it repeatedly.

  Denver was in the Territory of Colorado, although it had originally been part of the Kansas Territory. Colorado had been left behind when Congress declared Kansas a free state. The Colorado part of the territory had not impressed the Federal Government enough for it to be ratified as a state. Loosely organized and hard to get to, Denver was considered barely inhabitable by many.

  Garret didn’t much care for what other people thought about the high plains. He owned property there and it there he was going to build a ranch. The fertile soil and plentiful rainfall made for good crops, and the hilly countryside was good for raising cattle. He would get the beauty of the Rocky Mountains to the west without a large portion of the snow. On the high plains, the Chinook winds blew warm enabling farmers to grow more than one cycle of crops during the warm seasons. Not many people had taken to the area, and he was glad to settle there. The whole western country was filling up with people who had lost everything in the war and needed a new start.

  Garret had no issue with anyone wanting a better life so long as they were willing to work for it. He personally wanted peace and quiet. He would stop in Denver only long enough to get supplies. It was a rough place and he didn’t want Beth exposed to the unruliness of the frontier town. They would get their supplies quickly and continue their journey. Forty miles west of Denver was where they would settle in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

  A week away, by wagon, from the nearest mercantile, he and Beth spent much of their traveling time making a supply list.

  Garret was finding marriage to Beth a fine thing. She was a companionable woman, a good cook, and if his sex life was any indication of what other married men enjoyed, he wondered why he had waited so long to get hitched. He was a walking testament to the benefits of being a husband.

  During their journey on the Denver Trail, Beth was beginning to have nagging second thoughts about being taken into the wilderness by her new husband. When they arrived at what Garret called a town of Denver, she found it disappointing. Many of the buildings were only remnants of a fire, burnt out and vacant. As they drove further, there were maybe twenty-five brick buildings in
total. Garret told her fires had wiped out the entire settlement several times, and floods had done their damage, too. The founders of Denver had passed a law requiring all new buildings to be built of brick, hoping the town would be less vulnerable to the elements. Beth counted six saloons, five of them with brazen signs out front advertising “women for hire.” She had no doubt as to what type of work those women would be doing.

  “It will probably be late summer before we come back for winter provisions,” Garret told Beth at the mercantile. “Look around and see if we have forgotten anything from our list.”

  “May I use the money returned to me for burning my wagon and supplies,” Beth asked. “I would like to get a few dress goods to make a new dress and undergarments. The dress Mrs. Walsh gave me doesn’t fit very well.”

  “It’s your money, honey. I won’t say how you should spend it unless you show yourself to be frivolous. On the other hand, if you need dress goods, add them to my list. Buying my wife’s clothing is my responsibility. In fact, I want to buy whatever you need to replace what was destroyed.”

  Beth nodded, although she had no intention of spending Garret’s earnings. She went to the cloth goods counter where an older woman greeted her with a smile.

  “Hello, I’m Mrs. Augusta Johnson. I don’t see many young women coming through here, at least not decent ones. Horace has high hopes Denver will be a great city someday, as big as San Francisco.”

  “It has a ways to go,” Beth observed.

  Mrs. Johnson laughed. “Indeed, it does! How can I help you?”

  “I lost my clothing in a wagon fire,” Beth explained. “The women on our train were generous, but I need to replace my…” she glanced around before whispering across the counter, “I need to replace my underpinnings. I would also like to buy a dress length of fabric and perhaps some muslin to make an apron.”