Heart's Surrender

by Rosanne Bittner

  It all seemed so natural after that. Two people in love ought to do this, ought to share bodies and enjoy these delightful feelings, ought to please each other this way. A wonderful explosion engulfed her, made his dark form above her seem obscure, like a mist surrounding her with kisses and warmth, enveloping her with warm moistness. She felt him moving on top of her, and now it was too late. She could not close her legs, nor did she want to. She would be Adam Chandler’s woman, no matter what else happened to her for the rest of her life. Never would she belong to another. This was how it must be.

  She gasped, and some of the misty ecstasy was suddenly interrupted by a sharp pain. Her fingers dug into him then, and he uttered something in Cherokee, pushing hard as she cried out.

  “Hang on, Andrea. Do not be afraid,” he groaned, lost in her now, unable to stop it in spite of her sudden tears. He enveloped her in his arms, feeling her sudden fright and knowing she was in pain. He moved rhythmically, automatically, quickly spilling his life into her, unable to hold back for the excitement of it.

  He stayed on top of her then, holding her tightly. She was crying. He rocked her in his arms. “Please don’t cry. I’m sorry, Andrea. I’m sorry. I did not mean to hurt you. It will go away, I promise.”

  “That isn’t…what I’m crying about,” she answered between sobs. “I love you so much, Adam. What will I do if they take you away from me!”

  “No one will take me away from you. Not ever.” He kissed her several times over, slowly moving off her. Then he looked down at himself and saw blood. Yes, she was a virgin; he had been her first. That knowledge brought a burst of manly pride to his soul, and new love to his heart. She belonged to him now. “Lie still, Andrea. I will get some water and help you wash.” He kissed her eyes. “The next time it will be better, until it is as wonderful for you as it was for me.”

  She put a hand to his face. “Was it truly wonderful?”

  He smiled the provocative smile. “What do you think? Look how fast it happened. I could not hold myself back, it felt so good.”

  She reddened some then. “I never…what you did…it made me feel wonderful, too…the way you touched me.”

  He ran a big hand over her belly. “Are you in pain?”

  “Just a little. It will go away, I’m sure.”

  He kissed her lips lightly. “There is blood on me. Don’t be afraid. I have heard sometimes it makes a girl bleed, but it’s just like your time of month. It will stop.”

  She curled up in embarrassment. How did he know all those things? He pulled her dress over her and got up, walking away with the canteen and his clothes. She watched the hard muscle of his thighs and buttocks as he walked. He was all hard power, youthful strength. He was her man now. He returned moments later, dressed. He brought the canteen to her, and a towel. He wet the towel and pulled the dress away. She grasped his wrist.

  “Turn around, Adam, please. I…I’ll wash myself.”

  Their eyes held a moment. He handed the towel to her and rose, walking a few feet away, looking up at the tree. What had he done? Why hadn’t he had more self-control? He’d taken her virginity without any thought to the consequences. And now that it was done, he knew. He’d do it again and again, every time he saw her here alone, for to keep himself from her was like trying not to breathe. But where would it lead them?

  “It’s all right now, Adam,” she finally told him. He turned around to see her buttoning her dress. He hurried over to her side.

  “Are you angry with me?”

  She looked at him with trust and total love, her face almost childlike. “Why should I be angry? I wanted you to do it,” she answered. “I wanted to before this, but I was scared.” She put a hand to her stomach. “I was just surprised…that it hurt that much.”

  He sighed deeply, went to his parfleche and took out another towel. He had his horse with him this time, for he’d not yet returned home after delivering the messages.

  “Let me wash your face,” he told her. “One can tell you have been crying. You’d better brush the tangles from your hair, too. You want to look normal when you get home.”

  Their eyes held in sadness and love as he gently washed her face. Home. She didn’t want to go home. She wanted to stay with him forever, be his wife, go home with Adam Chandler. “Oh, Adam, I don’t want to leave here,” she whimpered. He pulled her into his arms.

  “And I don’t want to let you go. But I must, for now. You can’t come Saturday if Ruth is at your house. Meet me Monday morning.” He kissed her hair, running his hands over her back and hips. “I will worry about you. I hope I did not harm you. It is not good that you have to ride that pony home. You should lie and rest.”

  “I can’t. I’ve been here too long already.” She raised her eyes to meet his. “I’ll be all right, Adam. If anything goes wrong, my mother will just think I’m having my”—she looked down—“my time.”

  He took her chin and raised her face to his. “I am your man now. You do not need to be afraid to talk of those things around me. Someday you will be my wife. No one will stop us.” He kissed her lips lightly. “I will think hard on all of this for a while. I will meet you Monday and we will talk.” Already he wanted her again. “And we will do this thing again. Do not be afraid, Andrea. Nothing will keep us apart.”

  She looked up at the oak tree. It seemed that as long as she stood here beneath it, all was well. She didn’t want to leave it. She felt alone and vulnerable away from the tree, away from Adam. “Be sure to tell Ruth not to say too much to my father,” she warned him. “Does…does she know about us?”

  “No. She is too young to understand. Only my father knows for now. Do not tell her. And I am sure my father will warn her not to say too much.” He kissed her then, a long, hard kiss of good-bye, the urgency in it telling her already that he was ready to mate with her again. She had never dreamed it could be this wonderful, this beautiful. Why had her mother chosen to sleep apart from her father? If she were Adam’s wife, she would never leave his bed, never tire of sleeping in his arms.

  He walked her to her pony then, and lifted her up onto it as though she weighed nothing at all. “I still don’t like you riding.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Their eyes held and he clasped her hand.

  “God be with you, Andrea. I love you. I will be waiting for you here Monday at the same time. It will not be easy to wait.”

  “Oh, Adam, it doesn’t seem right…to do what we just did and then just…just tell each other good-bye.”

  “I know. I would stay here forever with you if I could. I don’t like it either. If I were your husband, I would put you in a nice hot bath and then put you to bed and sleep with my arms around you all night. And in my mind and heart I am your husband, Andrea. I truly am, the Cherokee way. I have claimed you as my own. Nothing can change that now.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Oh, Adam, I don’t want to go.”

  He pulled away, walking over to gather up his blanket. He rolled the towels into it and tied it onto his horse, hanging the canteen over his saddle horn. Then he pulled on his boots and mounted up. “We have no choice,” he told her. Riding up beside her, he leaned over and kissed her again. “My loves goes with you until the next time, agiya.”

  “And mine with you, asgaya.”

  He turned his horse. “Go now. And be careful.”

  She studied him a moment longer, wanting to remember everything about him. Was it true that this handsome, wonderful Cherokee man had just made her his woman? It didn’t seem right to be riding away from him now. She should stay and sleep in his arms. How much longer could she stand this torture? “Good-bye,” she choked out. She turned her pony. How would she hide her red, swollen eyes when she got home? She must stop crying. She must. She breathed deeply. Refusing to turn back and look at him again, she then headed down the ridge, toward a place she didn’t want to be, to a people she no longer felt a part of. She belonged someplace else now, on the other side of the ridge, to another people. Somehow, some
day, that was where she would be. Whether or not her parents approved no longer mattered.

  Chapter Six

  Andrea polished a glass until all the water spots were gone, then picked up another to dry it, rubbing it also to get off all the water spots.

  “Andrea, the glass is surely dry.” Her mother was watching her closely. “Why do you keep rubbing it?”

  The girl held the glass up to the light. “I want it to be perfect—no water spots.” She set the glass down. “Oh, and I cleaned my room, Mother, and I dusted everything, and—”

  “Andrea, why are you going to all this fuss for an Indian girl?”

  Andrea frowned, turning to look at her mother. “They have a beautiful home, Mother, and servants and everything. I just…I want everything to be as nice as it can be.”

  “We aren’t inviting her here to make a fancy impression, Andrea, nor is it important to us what she thinks of our home. She is an Indian. You act as though she were the President’s daughter. Now stop polishing every glass so hard and finish the dishes.”

  The woman went back to rolling out pie crust, and Andrea picked up another dish. She still hurt some inside, but the memory of Adam Chandler taking her virginity was worth it. The bleeding had almost stopped already. Still, she longed to talk to someone about it. But there was no one. Was she a sinful girl? Would she go to hell? Her mother would certainly tell her so. It was torture knowing her parents hated the Cherokee, when she herself was in love with one, had given herself to a Cherokee man freely and willingly.

  Adam! Oh, how it hurt not to be able to tell the whole world. How awful it was to be afraid to tell anyone, to wonder if the day would ever come when they could be husband and wife, and she could stay in his arms forever. Adam! Adam! Adam! Everything was Adam—every thought, every dream, every waking moment. He had seen her naked, had touched her, done wonderful things to her, invaded her, claimed her. She was his woman, and he was her man. What a terribly exciting, wonderful yet sometimes terrifying, secret it was. If only her parents could see things differently. Weren’t they ever truly in love? Had her mother ever given herself to her father with the same sweet, wonderful abandon that Andrea had given herself to Adam? And how could that possibly be wrong and sinful when they loved each other so much?

  “Why haven’t you been eating lately, Andrea?” her mother asked. “You go about the house as though you’re in a daze half the time.”

  The girl reddened a little and looked away. “I…I just have to get used to our new place, new friends and all. I’m wondering about school, meeting new kids and everything.”

  The woman eyed her closely. “Is that all? Have you been sick?”

  Andrea shook her head, turned her back to her mother. “No.”

  “Well, I think I should take you to a doctor.”

  “No!” The girl turned and begged with her eyes. A doctor might be able to tell! Doctors knew everything! He’d take one look at her and know she wasn’t a virgin anymore! She reddened more when she saw the stern and discerning look on her mother’s face, prompted by her quick and almost impudent reply.

  “I beg your pardon!” the woman said slowly.

  Andrea swallowed. “I…I’m sorry, Mother. But I don’t like doctors, and here I’d have to go to a new one, that’s all. I…I don’t need a doctor. I’m not sick.”

  The woman sighed deeply. “If you don’t start eating better, you’ll see a doctor.”

  “I’ll eat better. I promise.” How could she eat when her heart was so full of Adam and her body was in a state of constant ecstasy?

  “See that you do.” The woman put a piece of pie crust into a pie tin. “I hope you aren’t mooning over some worthless boy, Andrea. At your age you should not even be thinking about boys.”

  Andrea turned around, a lump swelling in her throat. She picked up another plate. “There aren’t any boys around here to moon over. I haven’t been to school yet to meet any…and the only one around is Douglas Means. He’s gone now, and I hate him anyway.”

  Her mother poured some berries into the pie crust. “Why should you hate Douglas Means?”

  “Because he fits his name,” the girl said glumly. “He’s mean. I’m glad he’s gone.”

  “Well, don’t be telling Mary or her parents that. Douglas seems like a fine boy, but a little immature. I’m sure service in the Georgia Militia will straighten him out. But that is beside the point. He’s too old for you, and you’re too young for any boy at this time. Fact of the matter is, you’d be better off never thinking about men. It’s too bad we can’t have children without them, but such is our fate.”

  Andrea set down the dish towel and studied her mother. “Don’t you…don’t you love Father?”

  The woman’s dark eyes flashed her a warning look. “A girl your age has no right getting personal with her parents,” she chided. She began rolling out another piece of dough. “The fact of the matter is, Andrea, our marriage was arranged, by our parents. It was always understood that I would marry Morgan. Love is a frivolous feeling, here today and gone tomorrow. A woman who thinks she loves a man only gets used by him. A practical and honorable marriage is the best, choosing a man or woman for their strength and the way they work, and nothing more. Then, once you marry, you do what a woman is designed to do—give a man children, at least one anyway. You suffer indignities and pain to give him that child, and then you get on with household things and he gets on with his man’s work. Once you’ve suffered the man’s invasion of your personals long enough to realize you’ll have no more children, then those things stop and you simply become a housekeeper and mother. Men have certain…animal desires, Andrea—desires that a proper woman does not satisfy if she has any honor. She allows a man his pleasures only for the sake of having children and for no other reason. If he continues to have uncontrollable desires after that, the woman looks the other way when she sees him riding off to town to visit the kind of women who get paid to give men their pleasure. It is a weakness men have that a woman sometimes has to overlook, as long as her husband is a good provider, a hard-working man, and one who is there when she needs him. Your father is that kind of a man.”

  She put the pie dough into a second pan, and Andrea stared at her dumbfounded. Surely it didn’t have to be that way. Adam’s parents still slept together. And the way she felt about Adam, the way she’d wanted him, enjoyed pleasing him…Something was wrong about her mother’s thinking, wasn’t it? It couldn’t be true that all marriages were loveless and that all women slept with their men simply out of duty, that to do so willingly and joyfully was a sin. Why had God designed men and women the way He did, if He didn’t mean for them to be together in that way out of love?

  “Now, I’ve told you everything you need to know—and more than I should have,” her mother said curtly. “I just want to warn you against having feelings for a boy. It’s wrong and sinful and lustful, and leads only to disaster. When you are old enough, your father and I will choose a husband for you, a man of property and honor.”

  Andrea’s heart hurt so bad she wondered if it would burst. Her last hope of ever discussing Adam with her parents was gone, and now a new fear had begun to build in her soul. What if they picked out someone and forced her to marry him? No! She would never do it!

  “I’m going to my room to change,” she told her mother. She hurried out of the room, feeling suddenly smothered. She refused to believe marriage had to be the way her mother described it. She almost felt sorry for her mother, who had never felt about a man the way Andrea felt about Adam. She refused to believe such feelings were wrong. What better reason to marry than to feel as though you could never live without the other, to want to die for the other, to want to spend the rest of your life in the arms of the other—to want to touch him, sleep with him, make him happy. Something that beautiful and wonderful had to be right.

  She went to her room and flung herself on her bed, crying into the pillow. Never had she been so confused, so sick with love, so lonely. Adam! Ho
w could she ever really have him? If she ran away with him, it might bring a lot of trouble to his people. Her head ached. There was so much to think about. She couldn’t wait to see him again on Monday so they could talk about it. She hugged her pillow tightly. Wrong as it was, she knew that when she saw him again they would lie naked together, share bodies, touch and kiss and do all those wonderful things that made her shiver with love for him.

  She got up then, and washed her face. Ruth would arrive soon. Andrea changed into a clean dress and brushed out her hair, then heard a carriage coming. She put a hand to her stomach. Would Adam bring her? She hurried to the window to see the carriage approaching. Adam’s father drove it. His father! She had not seen the man since Adam had talked with him. Now he knew! What if he?…No, surely he wouldn’t say anything to her parents, not yet. Her chest hurt as she hurried down the stairs and to the door. Her father was far out in the fields, unable to come and greet them, and her mother was still busy with pies. Andrea walked out onto the porch as Jonas Chandler helped his daughter down and walked her up to Andrea.

  Their eyes held for a moment, and then Jonas bowed. When he rose he smiled, and in his dark eyes, Andrea saw the same kindness that shone in Adam’s. “Good morning, Miss Sanders,” he told her.

  She swallowed. “Hello, Mr. Chandler.”

  “I have brought Ruth to accept your kind invitation to stay the weekend.”

  Ruth spoke up. “I brought four of my dolls, Andrea!” She hurried to the carriage to get them from where they sat in the back seat. Never had dolls seemed more juvenile to Andrea than they did now. She’d been with a man. There was no more room for dolls in her life, but she must act as though there were.