"But you have . . . planted seeds with other women, haven't you?"
"I am married, Ariah."
"Besides her, I mean."
He sighed, seeing that she was serious. Yet he was pleased by her jealousy. "There were other women before my marriage, yes, but none that meant anything to me."
"Do I mean something to you?"
"Oh, Ariah. Sweet, innocent Ariah." He rested his forehead against hers, wondering how to answer without making things worse between them. "Don't ask that. Not because you mean nothing to me—that's not true—but because neither of us is in a position to allow the other to be more than a friend."
Ariah twined her arms around his neck. "But you're already more than a friend to me, Bartholomew. I love you."
Bartholomew groaned. Her words were like a killing shaft of sunshine, driving deep inside him and making his heart sing even while it sank beneath a weight of fear for what the future would bring them.
"Don't say that, Ariah. I'm the first man you've ever really known. You might want to take your words back someday."
"Never. Love me, Bartholomew. Show me the pleasure you promised." Her voice vibrated with emotion. "For this one night, let's pretend tomorrow doesn't exist."
With gladness tinged with guilt, he acquiesced, kissing her eyes and tasting their saltiness. He returned his fingers to her moist femininity. She gasped and writhed against him.
"'Let us roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball'," he whispered, "'and tear our pleasures with rough strife thorough the iron gates of life. Thus, though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run'."
And with that, and a flick of his fingertips against her most sensitive spot, he sent her flying to heaven.
Chapter Twelve
To Bartholomew, the feel of Ariah’s supple body pressed against his was more beautiful than the sea with the waves whipped high by the wind, and more intoxicating than wine. He had been wrong when he’d decided years ago that hell and life on earth were the same thing; there was a Heaven, after all.
Ariah’s thoughts were not so precise, but she would have agreed that this was indeed Heaven.
For long moments, simply the embrace was enough. Then Bartholomew’s hands began to move in slow, indolent circles over her supple body. His fingers traced the tapering line of her back to the flare of her hips, climbed the stair-step of her spine to gently massage her slender shoulders and arms. They explored the swell of her breasts where her body was compressed against his, then moved lower to find matching dimples above the firm roundness of her buttocks.
Ariah had no such freedom to investigate his body, her arms trapped by his, but her awareness heightened with each passing moment. An awareness of heat, of hard corded muscles, of strength, power . . . and herself pinned beneath it all. It occurred to her that she should feel crushed. Instead, she felt like a gosling tucked beneath its mother’s protective wing—secure, sheltered, cherished.
Bartholomew shifted to the side and renewed his titillating caresses. Ariah daringly began her own explorations. She adored the way the dark hair on his arms tickled her palms, and longed to see if the thick wedge on his chest would do the same, but gladly settled for the bliss of feeling that rough texture gently abrading her breasts. The bunching of his powerful muscles beneath her hands as he moved over her—his lips following the trail his hands had blazed—sent butterflies flitting through her veins. She became lost in a hurricane of sensation that swept everything else aside and made rational thought impossible.
Bartholomew’s hands and lips were everywhere, burning her even while they worshiped her. Her heart rose into her throat, its staccato rhythm thunder in her ears. Her body ebbed and flowed at his touch, responding eagerly to his every entreaty, whispered or implied. Ariah’s senses spiraled upward, higher and higher, until she thought she would disintegrate. She resisted, in the same instant, grabbing for more. Her blood pumped as hotly and as fiercely as his.
Bartholomew hadn’t known it would be so difficult to hold back. To give without taking. He trembled with the effort. Her ardent, guileless responses were more seductive than the most erotic performance of a master courtesan. With Ariah there was spontaneity. Shared rapture, mutual bliss. He took none of it for granted. Though his body demanded release, he refused to give in its pleas. His pleasure would have to lie in the knowledge that he had given her all she could endure. There would be no other joy for him. And he would keep driving her higher, farther, closer to the edge, until she screamed for mercy.
In her mind, Ariah was already crying out for release. She simply didn’t know how to put her need into words.
Every pulse point in her body throbbed. In her temples. In the lips he had suckled and nipped and kissed until they felt bruised. At the base of her throat. In the breasts he had fondled, laved and nursed to hard, pulsating tips. Even behind her knees. And between her legs. Especially between her legs, in that dark, humid, secret grotto which his wondrously clever hand was, at that very moment, stalking.
The fingers delving into her heat, seeking out her core, were feverishly hot, but not as hot as Ariah. With a wordless whimper, heedless of her actions, of anything and everything except the need sweeping her on toward a misty, rainbow horizon, she arched against him. Instinctively, her legs parted and when he found her, she closed around him like a clam, as though frightened he would steal whatever pearl she might have to offer and run away, leaving her in empty agony.
But Bartholomew stole nothing and gave everything. Like the sail of a ship he hoisted her up and up, until at last she reached the tip of the tallest mast.
Her cries found voice, ragged, strangled words of wonder and joy that set the blood in his loins throbbing, hot and heavy, with each triumphant beat of his heart, nearly taking him over the edge with her. As her body spasmed beneath him, plummeting her over the peak, he murmured throaty reassurances and approval.
Her eyes flew open, wide with astonishment, twilight dark with the last dregs of passion ruthlessly wrung from her. Watching, Bartholomew smiled from a mask of restraint that stretched his lips taut across his teeth in a grimace that might have frightened her if she hadn’t been too lost in his spell to grasp the reality of what she was seeing.
He saw her eyes glaze, saw the lashed lids drift shut, heard her sigh of repletion. Burrowing his face in her hair below her ear, he drank in the scent of her passion, acute, pungent, arousing, and he groaned with the torment of having to deny his own raging need.
For a long time, Ariah floated on a velvet sea, riding the gentle waves like a gull, sated and sluggish after a feast.
Nothing in her life had prepared her for what she had experienced moments before. Lost in a world of fantasy and confusion, she ignored the questions stirring sleepily in her mind, giving herself up instead to the call for rest. Curling herself tighter into the warmth of Bartholomew’s body, she slept.
♥ ♥ ♥
The first golden fingers of dawn pierced the lace curtains at the window like crystallized needles of light as Ariah awoke. The pillow under her head was rock hard, yet amazingly warm. Experimentally, she moved her hand from beneath her cheek out over the odd surface, marveling at its downy surface. Velvet encased stone. Through the blur of her sleepy gaze she saw a forest of dark hair on a gently rolling plain that pulsed with a beat similar to that of her heart. Her fingers tunneled into the forest, finding it pleasantly ticklish and surprisingly soft. Memory stirred, but she made no effort to catch it.
Then she became aware that her entire body was wrapped around the same velvet stone on which her head lay. And she was shockingly naked.
Slowly she brought up her knee, tracking a landscape of heat and hardness. When her leg encountered a particularly hot and rigid protuberance, it moved beneath her, startling her. Someone groaned and she lifted her head.
Only inches away, Bartholomew Noon stared back at her, his eyes dark with indecipherable emotions, his mouth a tight slash across his bristle
d face.
“Oh!” Ariah’s eyes opened wide.
“Good morning,” he said, the slant of his mouth crooking up at one corner.
At once she realized that she laid in the bed, curled about him, his body as shamelessly naked as hers. Memory crashed over her like a tidal wave, and she blushed to her toes. When she tried to extricate herself, his arm tightened around her.
“Too late to run,” he teased.
She stared at him, noting the purplish blue tinge beneath tired eyes and the taut flesh stretched across his forehead and over his firm jaw. Obviously, while she slept the night away—done in by the incredible experience he had given her—he had lain awake, holding her and…and what?
“You haven’t slept,” she said. “Are you upset? Are you wishing that I…that I’d stayed in the loft?”
The dark eyes closed. “No, I wasn’t wishing you’d stayed away.” His voice was a hoarse whisper, tight, hinting of pain. “Only that I had found you seven years sooner.”
“But I was only a child then.”
“Yes, I suppose you were.”
His large hand pressed her knee firmly down on his hot flesh. His eyes squeezed shut; his expression became one of near rapture. Then he nudged her leg lower down his body. When his eyes opened, their ebony depths reflected regret. Suddenly she knew exactly on what her knee had resided. With a small gasp she turned a bright shade of rose. “Oh! I-I didn’t mean to…,” she stammered in embarrassment. “I didn’t realize what—”
Bartholomew gave a husky laugh and hugged her tightly. “I didn’t mind, believe me.”
Concern darkened her blue eyes. “But you looked in pain”
“It’s one I’m well accustomed to.” He sobered.
“Why? What causes it?”
He glanced at her in surprise, smiled and shook his head. “I keep forgetting how innocent you are.”
“Not as innocent as yesterday.”
He chuckled. “No, you’ll never be that innocent again.”
“I’m glad.” She peered at him from beneath lowered lashes, shyly, but with a saucy tilt to her smile. “I enjoyed last night.”
With a finger under her chin he lifted her face for a kiss. “For that, I’m glad.”
“But did you? Enjoy last night, I mean?”
“Yes, nymph, I enjoyed it more than anything in my whole life.”
“Even though you planted no seeds?”
His chuckled was brief and terse “Even though.”
Silence stretched between them like a drawn bow, while Ariah idly combed her fingers through the hair on his chest.
“What is it, little Nereid? I hear the whir of unasked questions spinning in your brain.”
She cleared her voice and let several seconds pass before speaking. “I was only wondering . . .”
“Wondering what?”
“If you felt everything I did last night.”
His hand stroked her cheek as he gazed into her curious eyes. “The purpose of last night was to show you a bit of what happens between a man and a woman in the marriage bed. What I felt doesn’t signify.”
“But—”
He cut her off by covering her mouth with his, brushing his lips over hers, once, twice, then returning to deepen the contact. With his tongue, he traced the generous curves of her mouth, teasing the corners and the tiny mole on her upper lip until she opened to him. When her tongue darted out to spar with his, desired ripped through him in a hot, searing flash that brought a groan from deep in his throat. His breath came out in a ragged sigh.
Ariah squirmed closer, loving the feel of his body against hers. Her knee rose higher. Only when Bartholomew’s hand blocked her movement did she realize what she had been about to come in contact with—that hot, firm intriguing protuberance she had encountered before.
“If you want to kill me,” he whispered against her mouth, “it would be kinder to use a knife.”
Her eyes widened. “My knee hurt you that badly?”
“No, but that kind of touch incites the wolf chewing at my innards because it can’t get at you.”
“A wolf?” Her brow puckered with confusion. “I don’t understand, Bartholomew.”
He laughed. “Of course you don’t. Never mind.”
He tried to bring her face back for another kiss. She jerked away.
“Don’t be condescending, Bartholomew. You’re suffering for some reason, something to do with me, with what we did last night, and I need to know why.”
Bartholomew nodded solemnly. “There is some . . . discomfort for a man when he becomes fully aroused and is denied release. Don’t worry about it, nymph. It’s all right.”
“What do you mean . . . release?”
“It’s what happened to you last night, when your pleasure became so intense it bordered on pain, and then gave way. For a man, it’s at that point that his seed is released into the woman’s body.”
“Oh, I understand. You weren’t inside me, so you couldn’t plant your seed. Your body—the wolf—was primed and now it’s punishing you for cheating it.”
His chuckle was dry, hollow. “A very apt description.”Ariah levered herself onto an elbow. Staring down at him, she stroked his bristled face with her hand. “I don’t want you to suffer because of me, Bartholomew.”
Gently, he ran a fingertip along the well-defined contours of her full mouth. “It was worth it.”
“But isn’t there some way—”
His hand moved quickly to the back of her head, pulling her down for a kiss and effectively cutting off her words. “We already discussed this,” he said against her lips. “I won’t take your innocence and ruin you for marriage, Ariah.”
Her mouth thinned, but she said nothing. After a moment she drew away, rolled to the edge of the bed and sat up. Reluctantly, he let her go, watching as she rose to her feet.
Her body was even more beautiful in the light of early morning than in last night’s darkness. Her back was straight, the spine gracefully curved. From her shoulders her form narrowed in a vee to her tiny waist, then flared gently into femininely rounded hips and firm buttocks. She slipped her gown on over her head, obstructing his view. But the damage had already been done. Hot blood shot through him to pool between his thighs. He gritted his teeth against the need to pull her back down on the bed, to sheath himself in her tight heat and know the joy of loving her, a joy he knew would surpass anything he had ever experienced before. His hands coiled into claws and his body tensed, ready to spring like the ravenous wolf gnawing inside him.
Caging the wolf of his own sensuality was more difficult than he had ever imagined as he lay there watching her slip from the room, leaving behind a void larger than the bottomless sewage pit in which he had been accustomed to living. When she was gone, he buried his head beneath his crossed arms and struggled to find some island of peace in the chaos of his brain, an oasis in which to take refuge until he could rebuild the walls of blessed apathy that had protected him for years and kept the wolf in a harmless stupor, before Ariah Scott came to set it free.
Ariah opened the cabin door onto a world of blue skies and fleecy white clouds. In the east the sun shone round and yellow as a new gold coin. Chirping sparrows skipped about in the frosted grass searching for seeds, and the cheerful song of an American goldfinch drifted on a gentle breeze to her ears.
“Bartholomew,” she called urgently. “Bartholomew, hurry, come look.”
Alarm sent adrenaline pumping into his heart. He leaped from bed, yanked on his trousers and arrived at the door, barefoot and shirtless.
Ariah stood on the porch, beaming up at him.
“Look, isn’t it beautiful?” She lifted her face to the sun, eyes closed, nostrils flaring as she inhaled the fresh brisk air. “I can almost fancy that I smell the sea.”
Bartholomew smiled, unable to resist her contagious joy, in spite of the fact that the sun’s warmth was minimal, the earth was still slick with frosted mud, and she had yet to realize the consequences of
the change in weather. He knew though, and inside, a part of him died.
“But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.”
Chapter Thirteen
Bartholomew pulled the wagon off the road onto a grassy meadow and brought the horses to a halt. He made no move to get down, merely sat there staring at the reins in his hands as though he didn't recognize the narrow strips of rawhide or know what to do with them.
Ariah put a hand on his arm. "Bartholomew, are you all right? Why have we stopped?"
He shifted the reins to one hand and put the freed one over hers. Ever since they had left John Upham's place, shortly before dawn, they had been taking advantage of every excuse they could find to touch each other.
With the arrival two days ago of sunny weather, Bartholomew had spent the days helping to construct a new bridge. When he returned that first night, he brought with him three young men who had been waiting at a very crowded Summit House which was already full with stage passengers and other travelers eager for the bridge to open. Since the oldest of the men was the cousin of an old friend in Tillamook, Bartholomew felt obliged to offer them lodging. He saw it as a wise move because, in spite of his reluctance to give up his time alone with Ariah, he knew the danger they courted was too serious to ignore. With the men there, he had to keep his hands off of her, and that was as it should be.
Yesterday, Bartholomew had come home alone; the bridge was finished and the three young men had gone on to Tillamook. Alone again, Ariah and Bartholomew felt awkward with each other, haunted by guilt over what they had done together even though they had not yet completed the love act, and torn by the desire to do it again. Supper that evening was quiet and strained. Bartholomew was washing the last of the dishes and trying to convince himself he preferred to sleep alone that night, when a wagon pulled into the yard. The door burst open and John Upham bustled inside, carrying his son whose leg was in a plaster cast.
"I knew you'd be here, Bart. Damn glad to see you," John had said setting the boy down.
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