Frail Blood

by Jo Robertson

  He began with her breast, cupping its extraordinary fullness and thumbing the nipple until it peaked in a hard nub beneath his touch. She breathed in on a sigh and then out on a tiny moan. He stroked her thighs, ran his hand over her belly and back, gently caressing skin that was silk beneath his fingers.

  God, he wanted her now! A primitive urge drove him, a relentless desire to bury himself deep inside her, to pummel her mindlessly until she came and he released himself into her body. He jerked himself back from the edge of his lust.

  Slow down, breathe, think.

  Suddenly aware that she'd fully awakened, he ceased the gentle movements of his hand on her body.

  "No, don't stop," she murmured.

  His hand roamed over her belly again and dipped down to explore the curls covering her sex. He made lazy, soft circles with his fingers until he heard the rapid increase of her breath, a tiny gasping of combined pleasure and pain.

  "Do you like that?" he whispered against her ear.

  "Oh, yes," she responded and covered his hand to urge him on.

  He dipped a finger among the curls and felt the sweet, slick wetness. Christ, she was hot and ready for him! Go slowly, slowly, he reminded himself as he drew in a long, ragged breath. He inserted a finger into her opening and felt her inner muscles clench around it. He stroked and rolled his finger inside her, rubbing the tiny nub with his thumb.

  "Malachi," she groaned, "w – what are you doing to me?"

  He laughed softly. "Shall I stop?"

  "Don't you dare." Her breath came in sharp, hard gasps as though she labored to fill her lungs. He sank two fingers inside her and let her ride them until he felt her pleasure begin to peak.

  Then he withdrew and turned her round to face him. "Oh, no, little one, not yet."

  Her eyes were glazed over like a woman drunk, her lips parted. He kissed her thoroughly, invading her mouth and dancing with her tongue in hard, fiery thrusts. She was a heady aphrodisiac and he couldn't taste enough of her.

  He rolled her over on top of him. Her hair dangled onto his chest and her body clung to his in moist, heated spots. The hot core of her inviting him in, he thrust upward slowly in painful pleasure. He held himself back, enticing her with the tip of him, withdrawing and pushing forward again an inch at a time until she was as mindless for him as he was for her.

  "Malachi!"

  Quickly he rolled her over, separated her thighs with his knee, and spread her legs wide. Then slowly he plunged into her until he was hilt deep in the warm, wet slickness of her sex. He held his weight from her body and paused until the primordial urge to take her fast and furiously passed. He began to move in and out of her, pushing until she writhed beneath him, wrapped her legs around his waist, and orgasmed in one long, exquisite shudder.

  The clenching of her inner muscles threatened to bring him to a quick release. He endured the sweet torment as long as he could, allowing her to draw out her satisfaction, until finally he withdrew from her wet and willing body.

  Then he climaxed with his own fierce release, spilling himself into the cloth he'd laid aside beforehand, unwilling to risk the consequences of their lovemaking as they'd done with their first encounter.

  Finally, he collapsed on her and felt her pounding heart echo to the thundering of his own.

  #

  Propped on his elbow, Malachi watched the early morning light slant through the shutters and play across Emma's bare back. She lay on her stomach, her face turned away from him, her glorious hair cascading down her pale, slender back like tendrils of silk. He stroked her hair, drawing his fingers down her back. She began to stir with his caressing.

  He wanted her now. And would yet again, he realized, after he'd slated himself. And before morning fully rose through the woods surrounding his cabin, he'd still desire her. He doubted he'd ever get his fill. What power was it she held over him?

  She turned her face toward him, strands of russet strung across her cheeks and lips like flashes of fire, and smiled lazily. "Good morning."

  "And to you, m'lady," he answered, sweeping the hair from her eyes and scraping the backs of his knuckles over her flushed cheeks. What gift to the gods had she pledged to be rewarded with such loveliness?

  She ran her fingers lightly over his chest and seemed to take the measure of him before speaking at last. "Thank you."

  He raised a brow and smiled as he trailed his fingers across her breasts. "And what great service have I done that warrants such gratitude?"

  "You know." She blushed prettily, sat up, and drew the sheet around her breasts. "For – for last night."

  "In that case, you're welcome. The pleasure was mine." He reached for the sheet and slowly pulled it from between her fingers. Her breasts, full and ripe, quivered under his gaze. "A pleasure, I might add, I'd very much enjoy again."

  Her chocolate eyes, warm and wide, turned serious. "I – it – w – what we had last night was very important to me. I wanted to experience the same sexual pleasure a man is afforded in our society."

  "But of course," he murmured, wondering where she was going with this conversational direction.

  "After all, men take their pleasure when and where they will. Ought not women be afforded the same right?"

  "I cannot speak of other men and women, Emma, but only of us. And I am glad that you enjoyed pleasure last evening." He dipped his head to place a gentle kiss on her breast and when he heard the low purr of passion in her throat, he took one rosy nipple in his mouth.

  "Shall we repeat the experience," he teased, "to be sure that you indeed are equally satisfied in your pursuit of unbridled passion as the men of your acquaintance?"

  She pushed him away with a playful shove and a frown. "Now you are mocking me."

  He suppressed a laugh. "God, not at all. I am merely eager for a repeat performance. I confess that I am utterly –" He swept his hand over her belly.

  "Completely –" He dipped his fingers lower. "Positively –"

  He watched as she closed her eyes and groaned. "Enchanted – "

  His breath strangled his words and his cock strained against her leg. "Ah, Emma, I just want to make love to you until we are both senseless," he whispered and pushed her onto her back.

  For their second mating, sweet as the first, he drew on all his skill of hands and mouth and fingers until their bodies were slick with sweat and the heady scent of their sex. He exploded so quickly he hardly had time to withdraw before his seed spilled onto her thigh.

  Spent with passion, they rolled onto their backs, arms flung overhead, bodies damp with sweat. He stared at the rough-beamed ceiling as he lay hip to hip with Emma.

  Too close, he thought. He knew better than to rut like a callow youth hot for his first woman. Emma deserved better than such unreliable measures. Tomorrow he would speak to her about a preventive sponge she could employ to thwart any unwanted consequences from their lovemaking.

  He glanced at her. He could not foresee the end of their coupling any time soon. The idea gave him great satisfaction as he pulled her close, pondering what he felt for her.

  Fondness? Affection? Not love, surely.

  He smiled while they both drifted into a light slumber, and when the sun leaked steadily through the windows, he proceeded to show her how soundly he could demonstrate his affection.

  #

  They didn't begin to settle down to the business of the trial until late Saturday night.

  Before they did, Emma had scores of questions she to ask Malachi about the physicality of their lovemaking. Amazed at how sedated she felt while still desiring him, she wanted to pummel him with queries. The dispassionate diagrams and drawings of her art and medical books merged at last with personal experience into a sort of wonderful logic.

  No wonder the girls at Wellesley, the more adventurous ones at any rate, had blathered on about the experience. Nothing in Emma's life had quite prepared her for the magnitude of emotions or the range of sensations during those most intimate moments with Malac
hi.

  She wished to talk to him of it, she truly did, but once satisfied, he seemed eager to move on to another issue – that matter currently being the progress of Alma Bentley's case. But, then often no more than an hour or two later, he fixed his interest upon her again, with apparent desire to repeat the entire experience again.

  With embellishments and intensity!

  And, most surprising of all to her, Emma's own inclinations ran astonishingly parallel to his. After their first disastrous liaison, she'd hardly thought it possible to desire any man, let alone be so eager to couple with Malachi again.

  For the moment, however, they sat at the roughly hewn table which served as both Malachi's dining table and his work place. His case files spread out on the table before them, and he leaned over one particular document, scrutinizing its contents. At the moment the trial occupied his attention, but dressed as scantily as they were, Emma suspected he'd soon disregard the folders in favor of more sensual pursuits.

  "Emma, where are the notes of Sheriff Butler's interview with Mrs. Machado?" He rummaged through the papers, scattering them even more haphazardly across the battered table top.

  She leaned across the table and plucked the precise file from the bottom of the pile, her décolletage gaping as she did so. "Here," she said, handing it over.

  Emma followed his gaze as it lowered to her chest, smiling at the glint in his eye. Suddenly she was eager for him again and when he reached for her without a word, she readily succumbed to his ardor.

  Work appeared destined to play second fiddle to their insatiable need for one another. Was such intensity normal? Would it continue or would they eventually become sated with one another's bodies? And what did it mean, she wondered, that they craved each other so much?

  An hour later, breathless and sweaty, she believed they'd finally reached a saturation level.

  "Now we really must work, Emma," Malachi said sternly, all the while tracing lazy circles around her thigh as it draped across his leg.

  She snuggled her face into his neck, inhaling the spicy, dusty smell of him. "I am more than willing to investigate," she said, her voice muffled in the delicious spot between his neck and shoulder. "Simply clarify what you wish me to ... investigate."

  She trailed her hand down the flat planes of his stomach.

  “You minx,” he groaned. "You she-devil." He flipped her over and delayed their work for yet another hour.

  #

  When Emma finally returned home, Sarah refused to stray far from her charge's side. Uncle Stephen and Malachi had joined her for a brief, uncomfortable Sunday dinner during which Emma flushed under her uncle's scrutiny. Now her uncle had left and Malachi and she set to work once more on Alma's defense.

  "There is something strange about the Machado family," Malachi said between hardy bites of the sandwiches Sarah had provided. "Something more than the quarrel between the elder son and the parents."

  "I, for one, don't believe Joseph was alone the night he died," Emma said. "Alma was convincing in her tale of a woman's footsteps sounding from above the kitchen."

  "Hmm, perhaps, but why would either Phoebe or her mother lie about a fact so easily corroborated?"

  Emma swallowed a large draught of milk before answering. "Likely whoever it was panicked and spun a tale for fear of discovery."

  "Still, it doesn't mean the woman in question killed Joseph Machado."

  She banged her cup down on the wooden table. "Are you suggesting that you no longer believe in Alma's innocence?"

  Malachi paused, his sandwich halfway to his mouth, and stared at her. "What makes you think I ever believed Alma was innocent?"

  "But surely, with this new evidence ... "

  He scoffed and pushed his plate away. "What new evidence, Emma? Nothing we've discovered exonerates Alma in any way." He softened his voice. "I'm sorry, but early next week I must give my closing remarks."

  "But everything has changed!" Emma suddenly understood that for Malachi nothing was different.

  "Not at all, but even if it had, I will not veer from the defense I originally intended to use."

  "That Alma is guilty, but should be exonerated because she is weak, helpless, and inferior?" Emma asked mulishly.

  Malachi nodded, only the mere tightening of his jaw betraying his reaction to the barbed scorn in her voice. "That has never changed. It is her only hope of acquittal."

  Determined not to resurrect the old argument, she ploughed on. "Then we must discover who really killed Joseph Machado."

  "And where do you propose we start?" He spoke with the studied patience of an adult indulging a child.

  "With Mrs. Henderson, the midwife Thomas spoke of," she replied immediately. "She is someone who will know if there are dark secrets in the Machado household, something 'strange,' as you say."

  She felt the stiltedness in her voice and face, but she could not help hating the way he must defend Alma, destroying her spirit in order to save her life.

  Malachi stood and rounded the end of the table where she sat opposite him. "I'm sorry, Emma. I wish there was another way."

  She merely nodded. On this point she suspected they would never agree, but she was more determined than ever to discover the true culprit in this murderous affair.

  "See if you can learn anything from Mrs. Henderson," he said at last. "I will ask Nathan Butler to question the Machado women again. If one of them is lying, he will discover to what end, and if their lying means anything. It may signify nothing, you know."

  She propped her chin on her hand. "Yes."

  "There may be a perfectly innocent reason why one of the women lied, if indeed she did, that has nothing at all to do with Joseph's murder."

  "I know," she murmured, although she didn't really. In her heart she believed Alma heard someone walking around upstairs the night Joseph died, and that person came down the stairs after hearing the shot and seized the opportunity to kill him for her own nefarious purposes.

  Chapter 22

  "O most pernicious woman! O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!" – Hamlet

  Monday came far too early for Emma. She lay in her own bed, thinking of the events of the weekend and the direction of Alma Bentley's case. A second later she groaned and rolled over in bed to cover her eyes as Sarah briskly and somewhat annoyingly jerked the curtains apart to allow the sharp morning light to pierce her pleasant reverie.

  "I've brought you some juice, Miss Emma." Sarah approached the bed and Emma opened one eye to see her cook bearing a tray with a tall glass of hideous red fluid.

  Emma sat up and fluffed her pillows before reaching for the drink. She sniffed and then wrinkled her nose. "Good God, what is it?"

  "Cranberry juice. Drink up."

  "You well know that I hate the damned vile-tasting stuff!"

  "Quit profaning, Miss Emma."

  "Please bring me a glass of orange juice instead."

  Sarah set the tray down on the nightstand and turned away, picking up clothes and straightening the items on the dresser. When she spoke, her voice brooked no argument. "Many a bride's come home from a honeymoon with an infection. The cranberry juice will stave it off. Drink it."

  "Brides? Infection? What has that to do with me?"

  "I may be old, Miss Emma, but I'm not stupid. You've spent the weekend behaving like a bride. Even if you are not one," she added grimly. "If you play at house, you must expect the consequences."

  "Ah, so this is about Mr. Rivers."

  "No, it is about you. And your conduct. And owning up to your responsibilities." Sarah sat at the edge of the bed and gave her charge a mournful look. "I didn't raise you to behave so wantonly."

  "You didn't raise me at all!" Emma tossed back. "And Mr. Rivers and I have behaved with the utmost propriety." That, at least, was true of this weekend. "I'm sorry if I've upset you, Sarah. But life is not what it was when you were a girl."

  The woman was far more than her cook and she had reared Emma. She hated to disappoint the
person who'd been much more a mother to her than her own.

  Sarah softened a bit and patted Emma on the knee. "Drink the cranberry juice," she instructed. "That one thing hasn't changed."

  #

  Mrs. Henderson, the aging nurse, lived alone in a small cottage at the edge of town. A chatty woman who seemed eager for company, she readily welcomed her unexpected visitor.

  After settling Emma down in her cramped sitting room and preparing a tray of tea and biscuits, Elizabeth Henderson got a devilish glint in her eye as she tried to recall the gossip surrounding the Machado family.

  "Let's see, m'dear," the older woman said, munching on one of the large sweet biscuits. "I believe the older boy – well, he's not a boy any more, is he now? – Aaron was his name, yes, well, Aaron left about ten or twelve years ago."

  "How old was he then?"

  "Hmmm, a young man, maybe twenty-one or so. The girl Phoebe was about four or five years younger. Now that girl, she was a handful!"

  "Really? How do you mean?"

  "Always giving Mr. and Mrs. Machado some kind of grief. She ran off once when she was younger, about eleven as I remember, said she wanted to join the circus of all things." The woman took a great gulp of her tea and added another lump of sweetener.

  "And smoking! Phoebe took up smoking those filthy cigarettes like some kind of loose woman. Mrs. Machado almost had a stroke!" She shifted her weight in the brightly-colored chair and sighed. "Such a shame too, Phoebe was a sweet little thing when she was little. I delivered her, you know."

  "Why do you suppose she changed so?"

  "Oh, law, I don't know." Mrs. Henderson heaved her considerable bulk up from the arm chair and reached for another biscuit. "She was a wonderful girl until she reached thirteen. Then everything went to hell in a hand basket, if you'll pardon the expression."

  Emma was glad for the woman's frankness. Information was remarkably easy to pry from her. "Do you suppose something happened at home to make Phoebe turn so wild?"

  "Well, you know, at the time, I thought there was something fiercely wrong in that family. Mrs. Machado was always sick, lying abed most of the day with her headaches and her spells. Mr. Machado watching over his fruit farms and the like, always off somewhere."