Forever Mine

by Charlene Raddon

Bartholomew lied. He wouldn't bet a broken sea shell on the boy's ability to detect a lie from anyone. Pritchard certainly never recognized his aunt's prevarications. But the play on the boy's ego might defeat this latest attempt of Hester's to prevent tomorrow's wedding.

  Pritchard grinned. "You're right, Uncle Bart. I'll speak to Ariah tonight." He glanced at the floor between his feet as color seeped into his cheeks. "She is beautiful, isn't she? I couldn't be more pleased, really. There's a sort of sweetness about her that makes it difficult to think of her doing anything very improper."

  The idea of Ariah as a prim, decorous maiden might have made Bartholomew smile, if Pritchard's intimate, proprietorial tone hadn't balled his hands into fists. He began the slow ascent up the stairs, his jaw clamped tightly on his temper. But his escape was not to be so easy.

  "Wait, Uncle Bart. I wanted to speak with you about something else."

  Bartholomew closed his eyes and rubbed the back of his head where a headache was brewing. "What is it?"

  Pritchard was on his feet again, nervously pacing the small space between the desk and the door. Panic bolted through Bartholomew as his sixth sense warned him that the boy’s dilemma was extremely personal.

  "I don't know how to say this but—" Pritchard lifted a hand impotently and let the rest out in a rush "—I've never been with a woman, so I need some pointers or . . ."

  Good hell. "Are you saying you don't know how—"

  "Holly Hector, Uncle Bart, I've been around animals and I've heard men talk enough to know how it's done. But how do I approach her? I mean, will she know what to expect, or must I explain it to her first? Should I wear my nightshirt or . . ."

  Bartholomew's heart sank at the thought of his nymph being subjected on her wedding night to the inexperienced gropings and probings of a man who was, thanks to Bartholomew, more innocent than she was herself. For her sake, he must give the boy some guidance, but it would be the most appalling chore he had ever encountered.

  Pritchard chewed on a fingernail, staring at the floor and speaking as if to himself. "I suppose if the light was out, I could get into bed naked. She'll surely wear a nightrobe." Looking up, he added, "Do I take it off of her or does it all have to be done with our nightclothes on? Will it be all right if I touch her?" Pritchard's young face was a mask of confusion and misery. "I don't want to scare her, Uncle Bart, but I've never seen a woman. Naked, I mean. And I want to see her. I want to touch her. She’s so pretty."

  Each word was like a knife paring Bartholomew's heart into pieces. He kept to the shadows, knowing the blood had drained from his face, leaving him as pale as the whitewashed walls around him. Memories flooded his mind: the softness of Ariah's full breasts, the taste of her rosy nipples, the scent of lily of the valley, the sweet heavenly heat between her thighs. Instantly, his body reacted, sending blood rushing to his groin. The image changed to Pritchard, pawing her with clumsy, ignorant hands, Pritchard crawling over her . . .

  Bartholomew shook his head to banish the nightmare images and sucked in a deep breath for control.

  "She'll have some idea what to expect, Pritchard. Simply go slow with her and make certain she's aroused before you—"

  "Make sure she's aroused? But the way I understood it, proper women felt nothing but revulsion when a man took them."

  Bartholomew sighed. "Do you think they're less human than men are? They're capable of the same carnal pleasure as we are. They merely require more attention before they're ready."

  Pritchard frowned, seeming nonplussed. "But how will I know when she's ready?"

  Bartholomew seethed inside at the necessity of having such an intimate discussion with the man destined to be Ariah's husband. If Bartholomew had a son, he would one day be required to have a similar talk, but this was different. And, since he would never have children—something else for which he grieved—he felt no need to practice.

  "You test her with your fingers," he said in a cold quiet tone that might have warned a wiser man that he was nearly out of patience.

  Pritchard's brows rose to his hairline. "You mean . . . feel her? Down there?"

  "Yes, Pritchard, that's exactly what I mean."

  "Feel for what?"

  "The natural lubricating moisture supplied by her body in preparation for mating. If it isn't there, kiss her, pet her more, whisper that she's beautiful. Do what comes naturally. And in future, leave me out of it."

  With that Bartholomew stomped up the stairs, not waiting to see if the boy had more questions. His footsteps on the metal rungs echoed hollowly in the octagonal tower until the door below slammed shut. He stopped, closed his eyes and prayed for strength.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  When Ariah came out onto the back porch, Pritchard was tossing a baseball straight up in the air and catching it as it came down. The moment he saw her he hurried over, letting the ball thud to the ground and bounce away.

  "Ariah! I was hoping you'd come out."

  She looked at him in surprise. "Of course I came out. You asked me to, remember?"

  "Yes, but . . ." He let the words trail off and feasted his eyes on her delicate face. Then he grabbed her hand and pulled her along with him behind the house. Pushing her up against the woodshed he clamped his mouth hard on hers. Ariah shoved against his chest and twisted her mouth away.

  "Pritchard!"

  "Ah, Ariah, don't scold. I had to. You kissed me that first day so you must like it."

  "I'm not objecting to your kissing me, only to your hurting me."

  "Oh. Sorry. I'll try to be gentler."

  He bent his head as though to kiss her again and she turned aside, her hands still pressing against his chest. "Pritchard, what would your aunt or Bartholomew think if they saw us?"

  "But we'll be married by this time tomorrow."

  "Even married people don't kiss in public."

  He pouted. "We aren't in public. We're behind the house. Our house. Aunt Hester is doing mending, Uncle Bart's on watch at the light and Old Seamus is asleep. There’s no one to see us."

  "That's not the point."

  "Then what is?"

  Ariah wasn't sure how to answer. The reality was that she didn't enjoy his hard, wet kisses, but she didn't want to hurt his feelings by saying so. "As you said, tomorrow we'll be married. Surely you can wait that long."

  "Holly Hector, Ariah, I've waited a lifetime already. Is one kiss so wrong?"

  Ariah heaved a silent sigh. "No, I suppose not. Very well, but let me kiss you so I can show you how I like it."

  He nodded eagerly and bent his head closer, lips slightly puckered, eyes closed. Ariah placed her hands on his shoulders and let him put his at her waist.

  "Open your mouth a little, and let your lips go soft."

  He did. Ariah put her mouth to his. For a single heartbeat it was as though she were kissing Bartholomew. Her pulse skittered into high speed. Her nerves tingled. His breathing was already rapid, but as her tongue dipped into his mouth to taste him, he moaned and pulled her so tightly against him she could feel his arousal through their clothes.

  The taste was wrong. The body wrong. A hand insinuated itself between them and dug painfully into her breast. Ariah's daydream of Bartholomew vanished abruptly. She wrenched her mouth away.

  He was staring at her intently, panting slightly. "You know how to kiss awfully well. How did you learn that?"

  Taken aback, she said, "I merely wanted to see how you tasted."

  "You did?" He moved closer, grinning. "I liked tasting you too."

  He drew her hard against him again and she let him kiss her, hoping he would forget his question about her expertise. Hester's shrill, irascible voice calling her name broke them apart. Reluctantly, he let her go.

  "Aunt Hester must need some help,” he said. “You really should pitch in a little, you know. She says it's a lot more work, having another person in the house, and I don't think she's as well as she pretends to be."

  Ariah's mouth fell open and she stared at him aghast. "Yo
u mean milking cows, churning butter, doing laundry and helping with the cooking isn't enough?"

  "You did all that?"

  "Yes, I did all that, this morning and every other morning since I arrived. I also keep my room clean, wash all the dishes and help with the dusting and sweeping. On top of all I've been doing to ready our personal quarters."

  Pritchard shrugged. "I don't understand. Why would Aunt Hester complain like that if you were helping all along?"

  "Maybe what she truly wants is for me to do all her chores and mine as well."

  "Now, Ariah, don't be like that. Aunt Hester's old, you know, and as I said, I don't think she feels well."

  At Hester's renewed screech, Ariah swallowed the tart answer on her tongue. "I have to go. Goodnight, Pritchard."

  "Can we go for a walk after you see to whatever she wants?" he called as she hurried away.

  She gave no answer. He merely wanted to get her alone and maul her again. Ariah shook her head, scolding herself. He was going to be her husband in less than twenty-four hours. If she couldn't deal with his small intimacies now, what would she do once he got her in bed?

  A sense of heaviness came over her such as she'd felt only once before in her life—the day Uncle Lou told her that her father was gone and she didn't dare go home for fear Uncle Xenos might find her. She had pushed the heaviness aside by thinking of the adventure ahead of her, traveling clear across the country, seeing new things and living in a new place. Now the adventure was over. At least here she would be near Bartholomew. She couldn't embrace him, or feel the wondrous sensation of his hands moving magically over her body, but she could talk with him, see him. And in time, surely she would learn to enjoy Pritchard's kisses, Pritchard's hands on her.

  A sudden urge to weep came over her.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  "T'will be rainin' 'fore daylight," Seamus said as he entered the lighthouse. He hung up his coat, took his pipe from his pocket and prepared to light it. "Wind's in the south."

  Bartholomew didn't need to hear the rest of the saying: 'When the wind's in the south, the rain's in its mouth'. Nor could he argue the matter. Seamus was right. Tomorrow would be cold and wet. Not the best portent for Ariah's wedding day.

  "Think it'll blow hard?" he asked as he finished a notation in his logbook.

  Seamus went to the barometer hanging on the wall. "'When the glass falls low, prepare for a blow. When it rises high, let all your kites fly'." He took the corncob pipe from his mouth and tapped the stem against the glass of the barometer. "Says here 'twill be a kite day."

  Bartholomew smiled. "Except for the rain, you mean."

  The stooped old man answered with a noncommittal grunt. The sweet scent of tobacco filled the air. Bartholomew returned his pen to the inkwell, blotted the page he'd been working on and shut the book. Seamus began his watch the same way every day; hang up his coat, light his pipe, check the barometer. Yet if there was a person alive who needed no instrument for predicting weather, it was this thin, bent old man with baggy pants and a corncob pipe sticking out from under a ragged mustache.

  "Well," Bartholomew said, rising from the desk, "it's been a quiet night so far."

  Another grunt came from Old Seamus as he shuffled up the stairs to check the kerosene level and adjust the appropriate weights, even though he knew it was the last thing Bartholomew did before signing out at the end of a watch, and therefore didn't need doing. Bartholomew took no offense; it was the same way he started out his own watch each day.

  A damp, gentle breeze kissed Bartholomew's cheeks as he stepped from the lighthouse and stood looking at the moonlit sea. The stars were few and scattered, hiding like naughty children behind nearly invisible clouds in the dark sky. He breathed deeply of the tangy air and listened to the steady roar of the waves pounding the bluff two hundred feet below, letting the sea's timeless serenity wash over him. He turned and climbed the slick wooden stairs to the top of the bluff.

  He had traversed nearly half the thousand foot distance that separated the light from the two keeper's houses when he became aware of something moving toward him in the darkness. He thought he detected the faint rustle of fabric. Halting, he waited, holding his breath. His heart beat erratically inside his breast while adrenalin pumped through his veins. He was afraid to hope what he suspected might be true; he wanted it too badly. The beam of the light swung past and in its glow, he saw her pale face framed by the dark hood of her cloak. His heart soared.

  Ariah stopped an arm's length away, her lush mouth slightly parted as she gazed up at him. He waited for her to speak but she remained silent, only the expressiveness of her beautiful blue eyes telling him that she had been waiting for him.

  "Tomorrow . . ." she began, and let it trail away. The word and all it implied hung between them like a hangman's noose, ominous and deadly. "I had to see you."

  Common sense and need warred within him. If he so much as touched her, he would be lost. And yet, wasn't he lost already? Hadn't he been lost since the first moment he'd laid eyes on her? "Come here," he said in a low, sensuous growl.

  She rushed straight into his arms. Minutes passed while they embraced, content merely to bask in one another's warmth and closeness, to know their hearts beat as one, their souls enmeshed in the same heated emotions that had been shared by men and women since time immemorial.

  Eventually, Ariah lifted her face to gaze up at him. Her hood fell back and the moon streaked her pale hair with silver and gold. She was so beautiful Bartholomew's chest constricted. And suddenly, holding her was no longer enough.

  He led her to a patch of salal bushes that would shield them from view as the light's beam passed over them. He spread her cloak over the damp grass and lay down beside her. Their first kiss was light and tender, the second long and greedy. Her hands pulled at his clothes, while he caressed her breast through the thin muslin of her nightrobe and kissed the hollow at the base of her throat as though it held the very nectar of life in its shallow depths.

  She unfastened his coat and shoved it off his shoulders. His shirt followed. While he worked at the tiny buttons down her bodice, she buried her face in the curly hair on his chest. Her tongue dipped to taste his skin. She nipped at a small masculine nipple with her teeth.

  Bartholomew abandoned his effort to unfasten her gown and yanked it off over her head. The cool night air on her bared breasts puckered the nipples. He warmed them with his hot breath until they were as hard and swollen as a certain part of his own anatomy, one Ariah was at that very instant trying to free with small, inexperienced hands.

  The feel of his feverish body pressed to hers, bare flesh to bare flesh, brought a moan of pleasure from her throat that seemed to scald his groin with fire.

  His brain cried warnings. His conscience pleaded for control. But his body demanded gratification.

  Ariah couldn't get close enough. She wanted to crawl inside his skin, where she would be warm and safe, where no one could ever dislodge her. Once, he had worshipped her with his hands, with his mouth. Now Ariah felt an overwhelming desire to do the same for him.

  Bartholomew groaned. His entire body trembled. The pleasure of her innocent touch was so intense he feared he would lose control then and there. When he could bear no more without exploding, he took her hands, kissed each palm, and rolled her onto her back. With her arms stretched out to the sides, giving him complete access to all her riches, he once again paid homage to her beauty, and to the passion she roused in him.

  Too soon, they both spiraled into the heavens, lost to the joy they gave each other.

  "Please," she whispered huskily, "I want to feel it all. I want you inside me as you should be."

  Dear Lord, how he wanted that, too. She felt so good; hot, wet, eager. Nothing in his life had prepared him for the intensity of his desire for her, of his love for her. A love too strong to allow him to ruin her, to deprive her of her honor on her wedding night. Lord knew, he had taken too much already.

  Go ahead. Ruin her. That
way she'll be yours, for no one else will want her.

  Conscience warred with desire. He could have what he wanted, what they both wanted, and let Pritchard marry her. The boy was so innocent he'd never know, but Bartholomew would. His conscience would haunt him forever. Worse, once he had made her his, he couldn't bear to let another man touch her.

  "Bartholomew?"

  The urgency in her voice brought him back to himself in time to feel the first quivers of her release. Almost frantic in her efforts to become one with him, she spread her legs and dug her nails into his buttocks, trying to pull him into her. Her cheeks glistened with wetness and her voice shook with silent sobs.

  "Please, Bartholomew. Show me how, help me."

  "No, sweet nymph. This isn't the way. Trust me."

  Gently, he closed his teeth over a turgid nipple and drew it into his mouth. Ariah writhed as he suckled her, her hands kneading the strong muscles of his shoulders, her low throaty whisper calling his name over and over. The storm swept her up in its maelstrom, as wild and powerful as the first time he had shown her this path to rapture. Bartholomew explored and teased and tasted and stroked until she was a mindless mass of seething emotion.

  When he felt her stiffen and give in to the sweet spasms of final rapture, he groaned, gritting his teeth against the overwhelming urge to sink himself into her moist heat and find his own much-needed release. No sooner had her body gone limp in his arms than he felt her hands burrow between them to fondle his fevered flesh. His entire body stiffened and he sucked in air with a loud hiss.

  "God, nymph, don't." His hand closed over hers.

  "Let me, Bartholomew. I want to give you the same pleasure you gave me."

  He moaned, sorely tempted. Although he had stopped her from caressing him, he was still much too aware of her small, soft hands cradling him. His voice was hoarse, his breathing ragged. "Any more pleasure and I'll explode right in your hands, little Nereid."

  "Would that be bad?"

  He tried to chuckle but the sound was tortured. "Not for me, but you might find it a bit messy and unpleasant."

  "Nothing connected with loving you could be unpleasant. Let me love you the way you loved me."