Heaven in His Arms

by Lisa Ann Verge

  “Please …”

  She didn’t know what she was asking for. She didn’t know what she wanted—except that she wanted for him to continue touching her and kissing her, murmuring nonsense in her ear, moving his great, large body over hers, protecting her with his warmth. The stroking of his fingers grew rougher and Genevieve broke away from his kisses, gasping for breath. She found the fringed hem of his shirt and plunged her hands beneath it to feel the warm skin of his back. His tumescence strained against the deerskin of his breechcloth as he pressed urgently against her thigh.

  Then his finger slipped inside her, almost but not quite, breaking the bubble of anticipation that had stretched to unbearable tautness in her body. Genevieve arched up against him and felt his finger slip still deeper. She released a ragged moan.

  “Oh, God, Genevieve …” He spoke against her cheek, his breath coming fast between his lips. “You’re ready for me.”

  Yes.

  Suddenly, the bubble burst. She cried out against his chest, digging her fingers into his lower back, arching up against his hand until the throbbing passed and she was left breathing as heavily as if she had run the length of a rocky portage, pressing her forehead against his soft deerskin shirt.

  ***

  Swine. Andre squeezed his eyes shut. No, he thought, he was lower than swine. He was a snake, slithering around on his belly like the devil in the garden of Eden.

  She trembled in his embrace. Her ragged fingernails still dug into his back, anchored firmly in his flesh, though her body’s intimate throbbing had long faded. He focused on the meager pain and the guilt roaring in his head, for both prevented him from taking what every muscle and every sinew in his body screamed for: final release in the soft, willing moistness of her womanhood now quivering in the palm of his hand.

  His lungs screamed for air. He couldn’t move, because he knew that if he attempted to roll away from her, he would instead roll upon her, push aside her lithe thighs, and thrust into her eager, supple body. He tormented himself with the feel of the silken tresses on his cheek. He wanted this woman as he had wanted no other in a long, long time. Sacre, she was as warm and responsive as a well-trained courtesan, yet as innocent as a lamb, for as he touched her, he had felt the tight restriction of her maidenhead, that thin, fragile piece of flesh that proved to the world she was not yet his wife.

  And she must never be.

  Andre forced himself to think of the consequences. A wife would expect him to buy three by forty arpents of Canadian land for a few coppers and a couple of chickens a year, to give up fur trading and spend his time tilling the rocky soil. A king’s girl would expect him to fill their house with furniture and earthenware and linens imported from the motherland, to drape her in lace from Brussels and silk from Lyon, to clutter his life with more things than any one man could carry. But he had grown up on the edge of the settlements, within easy reach of the bountiful forests, and saw no need to buy a plot of land when the whole uninhabited world stretched westward; he saw no need to fill a house with clutter when all a man needed was a sharp knife, a keen eye, and quick wits to thrive. He’d tried that once.

  Never again. Never.

  Yet he had taunted her, teased her, tempted her with all these things even though he knew he would never have another wife, not even the impetuous, passionate one purring in his arms.

  Damn it, why couldn’t she have been like every other Frenchwoman he had ever known? Why couldn’t she have collapsed in exhaustion before they ever reached Long Sault? Any other Frenchwoman in her situation would be sobbing at the sight of her own ragged dress. Any other Frenchwoman would have demanded to be sent back to Montreal at the first sight of a savage. This one bargained with one for her shoes. This one hunted geese and rabbits. This one grew lean and strong and rosy-cheeked and beautiful from the fresh air and the exertion.

  “Don’t stop, Andre.”

  Her voice, breathless, rose between them. Genevieve looked up at him with eyes as soft as dew. He realized he was still touching her, stroking her gently, and she was waiting for him. Abruptly, he removed his hand from her warmth and jerked her skirts down over her thighs. “We’re finished.”

  Her gaze wandered down to where his passion pressed forcefully against her body, as if she knew, instinctively, what the bulge in his breechcloth indicated. “You said … I was ready for you.”

  He suppressed a groan. She was still ready for him, and he couldn’t seem to get the feel of her, hot and inviting and moist, out of his mind.

  “Andre? What is it?” She brushed his beard. “Why have you stopped?”

  “I told you … we’re finished.”

  “We can’t be,” she argued gently, then flushed. “I … know there’s more to ravishing than this.”

  He glared down at her, wondering why he was cursed with an innocent wife who seemed to know most things solely from instinct, and what she didn’t know, she found out by wile. “Are you complaining?”

  “No.” She lifted herself upon her elbows. “I just thought—”

  “Don’t think.”

  “Then show me,” she whispered, brushing her lips against his. “Let me make you feel as you have made me feel.”

  Andre struggled with a fresh surge of desire as her soft, generous lips pressed against his mouth. He throbbed forcefully, and he could tell by her gentle gasp that she felt the motion against her belly. He pulled her head away by her long plait, which had unraveled during their lovemaking, and stared deep into her green eyes.

  “For your own good, Genevieve, don’t tempt me.” “Oh, but I shall tempt you, my husband, for I have been waiting for you to kiss me and touch me like this forever.”

  That damned little smile. He tightened his grip on her hair, forcing himself to ignore those inviting lips, those green eyes that had grown as soft and gleaming as rain-drenched moss. The sight, the smell, the touch of her, was headier than brandy, and he was dangerously close to growing drunk on her. “Listen to me. Do you want to birth your first child here, in the forests?”

  Genevieve blinked, surprised at the change in subject. “I haven’t thought about it.”

  “I have.” Too much, too often, have I thought about filling you with child. “I’ve seen Indian squaws fall back from their tribes and hide in the bushes to give birth, alone, only to follow their tribes when they’re strong enough to do so.” His gaze swept over her frame, the slender wrists, the delicate ankles peeping out beneath her skirts, the aristocratic bones. “If you grow big with child out here, you’ll have no help, no midwife, no doctor. Do you think you’re hardy enough to birth a child like the natives?”

  The seductive light faded from her eyes, replaced by something else, something hard, something contemplative. “There must be some way to prevent me from growing big with child,” she argued, “else you and every other man on this voyage would have a thousand half-breed children running around in these woods.”

  His lips tightened. Andre knew so many ways they could enjoy each other’s bodies without conceiving a child, but thoughts of tasting her, of feeling her; hands on his body, of teaching her all the nuances of lovemaking, were all too powerful for him to bear while his body still strained for her. He pushed them from his mind. He might be a bastard in many ways, I but he knew he had no right to accept a gift that he had no intention of keeping.

  “Don’t play with the bull, Genevieve, and you won’t get caught.”

  Andre removed her hands from beneath his shirt and yanked the fringe over his back. He untangled his limbs from hers and stood up, cursing the misty cold that rushed between their bodies, cursing the day he first lay eyes on her, cursing the unexpected passion that had put him in this situation. He brushed at the mud that clotted on his legs and hips.

  Her voice rose, as soft as the mist that hovered over the river and drifted along the forest floor. “You have secrets, too, my husband.”

  The wind rustled the leaves drying on the boughs overhead, fluttering down a confusion of g
olden leaves. She brushed one off her bare shoulder, where her hair draped and covered one breast. Her bodice gaped open, and her shift drooped over the curve of her bosom.

  Yes, he had secrets, so many secrets: One of them he couldn’t keep from her much longer, for Allumette Island was a day’s ride away. After their intimacy, he’d be a swine of the lowest kind if he held back any more secrets.

  It would make her hate him, he thought. It would stop her from tempting him as she tempted him right now. It would give her a chance to protect herself from him, because he was damned close to letting what little honor he possessed fly to the wind.

  “It’s time to tell you the truth, Genevieve.”

  “Here it is, then.” As if realizing that there would be no more embraces, she shrugged herself more securely into her bodice and rose to her feet, brushing litter off her skirts as they cascaded over her legs. “I knew there had to be a reason why seducing you has become such a Herculean task.”

  “I will never have a wife. Never.”

  Again.

  She planted her hands on her hips. “If you haven’t noticed, you already have one.”

  “You’re not my wife until this marriage is consummated.”

  “After this”—she gestured to the muddied piece of linen on the ground, twisted in the imprints of their entwined bodies—“I thought it was.”

  “As pleasurable as that was, I didn’t finish what I started.” The ache in his loins testified to that. “I won’t take you to my bed, Genevieve.”

  “What’s this foolishness?” Her brows knit together. “How can you touch me like that and then tell me you’ll never make me your wife?”

  “I was forced into this marriage; I wanted none of it.” The words seethed like acid on his tongue. What had begun as a joke to be played upon a willful aristocrat had turned into an ugly betrayal of trust upon a woman whose stubborn resourcefulness he had grown to admire. “There was no other way to get a’ trading license.”

  “I know that well enough. So you have your trading license and you have a wife,” she retorted. “What difference does it make if you sleep with the unwanted baggage?”

  “Christ.” He glared at her, standing erect in the clearing, her bosom heaving beneath an open bodice. “I’m doing this for your own good.”

  “Well, thank you very much, but I shall decide myself what’s for my own good.”

  “Do you have any idea,” he growled, daring to move closer to her flashing eyes … eyes that grew more fiery by the minute, “what kind of husband I’d make?”

  “One who doesn’t know his own mind, obviously.”

  “An absent one,” he retorted. “The kind of husband who disappears for seasons, for years.” The kind of husband who won’t see to his responsibilities at home because his heart, body, and soul are always somewhere else. “There’s more to this journey than a trading license. I spent three years in France, for God’s sake, in a crowded city, fighting with fools to get my inheritance so I could return here and do exactly what I’m doing now. Do you really think I’m out here to collect beaver pelts?”

  “I don’t care if you’re out here hiding from the king’s judgment.” She jerked the ties of her bodice closed with shaking hands. “I’m out here because I’m your wife and I intend to remain so, and by the way you behaved today, it looks like it won’t be too difficult a task .”

  “There’s a whole world out there.” He pointed to some distant wilderness. “A world no white man has explored—yet. My home is right here. Here, where there are no walls, no roof, no land to till, no taxes , no pay. No responsibilities—to man or woman. I’ll never return to civilization. This is where I will always live.”

  “Even out here, you need a place to sleep and shelter for the winter,” she retorted, her white hands fluttering in agitation. “That home is mine as well. …”

  “That home will be nothing but a temporary little hut that I abandon every spring.” He resisted the urge to grip her shoulders, to shake the truth into her. “You need a husband who will stay with you in the safety of the settlements, who will provide for you, and who will give you the home you want—not a bare, empty bark hut in the midst of the woods.”

  A lock of her hair fell over her furrowed brow. “A bare, empty bark hut is better than nothing at all.”

  “Don’t be a fool.” Was it his imagination, or had he heard a plaintive tremor in her voice, a soft yearning? “You can’t come with me into the unknown, year after year after year hauling loads on your back like some Indian squaw,” he argued, dismissing the thought as soon as it came. “And if I were to keep you as my wife and leave you in Quebec, you’d give me horns. Obviously,” he growled, glancing at their imprints in the mud, “you need a man who’ll love you, often and good.”

  “But not you.”

  Green eyes, steady and hard, pinned him to the spot. He shook his head once. “Come spring, you and I are returning to the settlements to annul this marriage.”

  “Liar.” She curled her hands into her hair, tearing the matted length into sections. “In Montreal, you said we’d see about—”

  “I know what I said in Montreal. I know every lie I told you—from the day you walked into my room to only moments ago, when I made you think that I would make love to you and make you my wife. In Montreal, you were fool enough to threaten to go to the governor and have our marriage annulled in my absence. If you’d done that, my trading license would have been revoked and all I had worked for destroyed. Did you think I was going to let a single woman ruin everything on the eve of my departure?” He jabbed a finger in her direction. “You were supposed to be screaming to be sent back to Montreal by now.”

  “But I haven’t, and I won’t.” She slapped one section of hair over another, then jerked the plait tight. “You’re trapped in a situation of your own making, husband. For the winter, at least, we will live in your house in that chewywagon place. Nine months is a long time for a man and woman to be alone in the woods.… ’”

  “If you survive.” He thought of the voyage ahead: the Joachim Rapids; the Mattawa River with its eleven rocky portages; the dark waters of Lake Nipissing; the boiling rapids of the French River; the dangerous, rocky channels of the Lake of the Hurons; and finally,

  Lake Superior, the inland sea. Though she had made it this far, the worst was yet to come, and he didn’t want to find her lying bleeding on a portage path, mauled by a bear or broken and drowned on the shores of a river.

  “I’ll survive, Andre.” Genevieve tossed back her long, loose plait and something hard glinted in her eyes. “I will survive … I always have.”

  He looked at her face, at the tip-tilted nose with the spray of freckles across the bridge, the generous lower lip, the glittering green eyes, the tendrils of claret-colored hair that flew like wisps about her face, and the rain of autumn leaves between them. Then he walked away, so his back was to her, so he wouldn’t have to face her.

  “No, Taouistaouisse. My mistake, thinking you’d never make it this far, thinking you’d weaken and beg to be left behind. Now, you’ve forced my hand.” He gazed through the trees, toward the river he could barely hear gurgling beyond. You’ll be safe. Safe from the rigors of the journey, safe from the Iroquois, safe from danger. Safe from me. “There’s an island a day’s ride from here, Allumette Island. An Algonquin tribe winters upon it, as well as a handful of Jesuits. Wapishka’s wife and children are there.” He waited for something, for anything, for the feel of her nails in his back, for the pounding of her fists, for the shrieking sound of her defiance. “You will be well cared for. Come spring, I’ll return by this route and pick you up. When we get to Montreal, we’ll annul this marriage.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Andre turned and looked at her, bright-eyed, incredulous, still disheveled from their aborted lovemaking. His stomach twisted into a knot. He had looked upon another woman in such a way before; he’d seen those same eyes bruised with confusion and misplaced trust, and he’d
said much the same thing.

  Cursed, he was, cursed to relive the past. He’d done everything in his power to avoid this, yet now it looked as if God himself had reached his hand down from the heavens and brought him back to that place, to that moment, to that very same situation, then leaned back to see if Andre would act in the same way.

  Andre swallowed the acid that rose to his throat. This time he knew the consequences, but it made no difference. A man could not change his own nature.

  “I’m going on to Chequamegon Bay.” His throat parched with self-loathing. “But you, my wife, are staying behind, at Allumette Island.”

  Chapter 11

  Genevieve sucked in air but her lungs would not fill, for the air had thickened and solidified, and the river mist that swirled around her calves anchored her to the ground more firmly than irons.

  Tomorrow, I’m leaving you on Allumette Island.

  She waited for him to explain. He couldn’t possibly mean it. Not after all the wonderful things he had said. Not after the way he had kissed her. Not after touching her so intimately….. Her body, still warm from his embrace, trembled with the memory, but the trembling grew frigid. She had surrendered herself to him, wantonly, opening her heart and her soul and inviting him in, and they had shared a strange, glorious experience. Yet, now he stood before her, insanely insisting on leaving her on some wild island with strange savages.

  Genevieve willed him to retract his words, to explain this madness. He cursed beneath his breath, slapped his hands onto his hips, and swiveled away from her gaze. There was more to this than he was telling her; she sensed it. He was not this cold-blooded despite all his bluster. Moments ago, he had wanted to merge fiercely with her body; she had wanted the same. Men never denied their own lust, weak-willed creatures that they were, and never with a woman as willing and eager as she. There was something more, some undercurrent, some secret… . She could think of no other reason why he would insist so suddenly on thrusting her out of his life.