If Wishes Were Kisses: Six Beloved Americana Romances, a Collection (Small Town Swains)

by Pamela Morsi

  "Where is he?" he barked after a hasty survey of the dimly lit room revealed Pru as being alone.

  She was startled, puzzled, curious.

  "He's not here yet," she said. "What do you want with him?"

  "It's not what I want with him," Gidry said furiously. "It's what I don't want with him. I don't want you with him."

  Pru was momentarily stunned. Had Gidry discovered the truth at last? Or was he admitting that he had known all along?

  She raised her chin defiantly, ready for a fight.

  "Whatever it is you have to say, Gidry Chavis," she challenged, "say it in plain English and say it now, or just get out of my sight."

  Her words seemed to knock some of the fury out of him.

  He stared at her for a moment, his brow furrowed and his expression pained. He sat wearily in the little chair next to the table and threw his head back as if to steel himself against the wounds that plagued him.

  "I... I need you, Pru," he whispered at last. "I need your strength and your warmth. I need your love. Please, please just hold me."

  His words, so unexpected, so sincere, so full of agony, melted the strength of her outrage like ice chips on brick pavement in July.

  She dropped to her knees in front of his chair and wound her arms around his waist, pressing her face against his chest.

  "I am so sorry, Gidry," she whispered. "I am so very sorry."

  She didn't know if she was speaking about his father or about Sharpy, but whichever it was, she knew at that moment if it hurt Gidry Chavis, she was sorry about it.

  He wrapped his strong, thick arms around her tightly as if he could not bear to let her go. He buried his face in the top of her hair. The way his body quaked and trembled, she knew that he was at last allowing himself the tears that he would show to no one else.

  She held him, caressed him, ached for him. His heart was her own, and it was broken.

  "All I wanted as a boy was to be like Peer Chavis," Gidry ground out hoarsely. "But I never even had time to really know the man. I never really even knew him."

  Pru ran her hand lovingly along his cheek. "You knew him," she said with certainty. "In your heart you knew him better than your mind ever could."

  "Oh Pru, my sweet Pru," he whispered. "You always know how to make it better."

  Gidry, apparently not content with the barest distance between them leaned down to the floor where she knelt and lifted her in his arms to sit upon his lap. She could see his face now, clearly, his dark eyes red-rimmed and bright with tears.

  He clutched her to him, and she buried her face in the muscled curve of his throat. She ran her hands along the length of his strong back, coaxing and comforting.

  She was still tight against him as his chin began to nuzzle at her throat. It was a sweet, loving gesture as she pulled back slightly, his lips were there, meeting hers.

  It was not a kiss of teasing fire, like the one they'd shared in the gin, nor was it like the one she received upon her garden bench eight years ago. It was a light touch of flesh to flesh that spoke volumes of honesty and of love.

  Their mouths parted, but their faces were intimately close.

  "Comfort me, Pru," he whispered. "Give me comfort."

  She turned her head slightly and opened her mouth more fully and kissed him again. This time there was passion, fire.

  Pru had never explored a man's mouth with her own. She had never ventured into that realm of pleasure. She did so now with the highest of motivations, to comfort the man that she loved.

  Gidry's need for her was almost mindless, desperate. It was as if he could not get enough of the taste of her mouth or the feel of her skin.

  "Let me love you," he pleaded with her. "Let me ... be inside you. I need you."

  "All right." Her own voice sounded breathless to her. "Yes," she said with more certainty. 'Yes, Gid, please, I want you inside me."

  Pulling her snugly into his arms, he carried her to the small narrow bunk and laid her down upon it. His face was flushed, his breathing rapid.

  Pru was trembling, now anxious, eager. She wanted to comfort him, she needed to comfort him, but she did not know how. Her only experience had been in his arms, and she had been innocent and passive. She wanted now to touch him, urge him, but she did not know how.

  Gidry showed no evidence that he required any skills or found her lacking in any way. He made no attempt to so much as undo her collar button. He rucked up her skirts and pulled the drawstring on her drawers and drew them down over her stockings and shoes to push them on the floor.

  Pru's eyes widened as he undid his trousers, but he didn't remove them or even take off his shirt. He lay down upon her on the cot. The weight of him was warm and welcome. He eased his thigh into the apex of her own, the sensation took her breath away. Gidry's mouth was on hers once more, kissing, coaxing.

  "I need you," he whispered desperately against her throat. "Forgive me, Pru. I need you."

  Then he was pressing his way inside her.

  Pru steeled herself as best she could. Biting her lip against the discomfort and willing herself not to cry out or push him away. He needed her. He needed this. It was her gift of comfort, and she would not stint in giving it.

  When he was finally buried deep inside her, there was a sense of lightness and a sense of being whole. It was not pleasure exactly, but it was no longer pain.

  When she thought he was going to withdraw, she clutched at his shoulders, not quite ready to give him up yet. But she had been mistaken in his intentions. He began to move in and out inside her in an increasingly rapid pace.

  He clasped her by the inside of her knees and raised her legs higher so that he could bury himself more solidly within her.

  The tiny cot was rocking precariously, and the rhythmic weight of his body atop her own was having a strange effect upon her. It was almost as if she were becoming light headed. Her heart beat rapidly. Her breathing increased. Her skin was suddenly alive and sensitive. And the feeling between her legs had gone from discomfort to not quite pleasurable to strangely urgent.

  Faster and faster and faster until her vision was hazy.

  Then Gidry stopped still, every muscle in his body taut with expectation.

  "Pru!" he cried out her name.

  She felt the hot flood of his seed inside her before he collapsed upon her, relaxed and spent.

  She lay there beneath him feeling strangely bereft and slightly cheated. Of what she did not know. But there was no anger in her thought. And there was no regret. She loved him. He needed her this way. She had given herself to him as a gift.

  He was so large and so wonderfully warm upon her. Is this what married women had that she did not?

  A man to love and lie upon your body was not a totally unpleasant thing, she concluded.

  Gidry's face was buried in the nape of her neck and his dark hair tickled her nose. It was nice, she decided. Holding him this way. It was really quite nice.

  He startled awake; pushing up on his elbows, he looked down at her.

  "I thought I was dreaming," he said.

  "You weren't dreaming."

  He lowered himself to her lips tenderly.

  "Oh yes I was," he told her. "It was a dream come true."

  She smiled up at him, warmed by his sweet words.

  "I'm too heavy to lie on you like this," he said, easing off of her, and kneeling beside the cot.

  "You're not too heavy," she assured him, trying discreetly to wiggle back into her underdrawers, which had been scandalously hanging from her right ankle.

  Gidry assisted her in getting her drawers back in place, but when she would have pushed her skirts back down, he simply laid his arm across them, impeding her progress.

  He shook his head. "I'm a heavy brute and lout, sweetheart, but I'm going to make it up to you."

  She stared at him, puzzled at his meaning.

  "I'm sure you don't need to make anything up to me," she said.

  "I was completely selfish," he
admitted. "I just... I just needed you so much. I apologize."

  “You didn't seem selfish to me," she told him.

  His eyes widened in disbelief.

  "I didn't?"

  "No," she assured him.

  His expression was incredulous.

  “Then I can only think that I must have saved you from a worse cad than myself."

  She had no idea as to his meaning, and it was on the tip of her tongue to ask. His next words, however struck her mute.

  "Let me help you get out of these clothes," he said.

  Stunned, she abruptly sat up on the couch.

  "Good idea," he said. "We'll begin at the beginning."

  "I thought that we were finished," she said.

  "You must not think very well of me, if you think I would leave you unsatisfied," Gidry said.

  He kissed her again, his mouth sucking ever so gently at her own. Pru loved the sensation.

  He undid the buttons on her shirtwaist and laid her back on the cot once more. He leaned over her and set his open mouth upon the taut flesh of her bosom covered only by a thin sheath of fine lawn chemise.

  Pru gasped aloud at the wave of pure physical reaction that coursed through her. The pent up desires that often troubled her sleep surged through her— hot, fiery, destructive, shattering the guarded reserve and inflaming the long dormant passions of a fully mature woman.

  "Oh my!"

  She was shocked at her own reaction.

  The unfamiliar contact set off surprising reactions at pulse points in unexpected locations on her body. She stiffened her legs together tightly and buried her fingers in his hair.

  Gidry moaned low in the back of his throat as if tasting a delicious treat. The slight vibration the sound made against the sensitive flesh of her breast had her biting her lip. It was not uncomfortable as the mating had been, but in its own way it was an extremely disconcerting sensation.

  His tongue and teeth worried her nipple.

  Pru moaned, reveling in the feeling, yet horrified that such a sound escaped her own lips. But she could not seem to help herself. She threw her head back and arched her body, begging for his continued attention.

  "Mmm, so you like that, sweetheart," he said languorously. "I'm so pleased that you like that."

  Once his mouth was drawn away, the dampness of her thin chemise clung with diaphanous clarity to the turgid nubs. The contrast of her heated flesh chilling her in the night air was almost more thrilling than she could bear.

  "Don't stop," she pleaded.

  Gidry grinned down at her.

  "Oh no, sweetheart," he said. "I promise I will not stop. Help me get you out of this chemise."

  His words momentarily startled her. But she dutifully raised her arms as he pulled the chemise up overhead and cast it aside.

  Pru tried to cover herself with her arms, but Gidry determinedly held them to her sides. She watched his eyes as he looked at her. Without the added effects of corseting she was not nearly so well endowed as current fashion dictated a lady should be. And her bosoms had the strange nature of always seeming to tilt upward. Certainly that was some inexplicable bodily deformity.

  "Oh my Pru, who ever imagined you were this beautiful."

  His words were an awestruck whisper.

  She had hardly a moment to savor the sweetness of his judgment before he lowered his mouth to each in turn, kissing and sucking until Pru was gasping for breath, unable to hold herself still.

  "Oh my heavens!" she exclaimed as the pleasure of it became increasingly unfathomable.

  Gidry was not in any way passive. His mouth was urgent and questing upon her. And his hands were never still, stroking her back, her shoulders, her arms.

  "I'm going to make it so good for you," he promised hotly against her skin as he kissed his way down toward her navel. "I will make it good for you, I'll make it right with you, I'll see you never come to regret loving me, sweetheart. You'll never regret it again."

  Pru hardly noted his words. Her whole body seemed to be almost twitching with need.

  He ran a loving hand down the length of her leg, then back up to deftly draw the hem of her skirts around her waist.

  He was looking at her down there now. The confidence of moments before was fading rapidly as she perceived him becoming the aggressor. She trembled nervously under his gaze. Her knee length drawers were sufficient covering that she need not feel embarrassed, she assured herself. She was so grateful that she'd put them back on.

  "Are you on your courses?" he asked.

  "What?"

  "Are you having your monthly? You have some blood here."

  When he touched her intimately she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  "No, no," she assured him, trying to pull away. "It is not my time of the mouth."

  His expression was sorrowful.

  "Then I must have hurt you," he said. "I am so sorry."

  "It was nothing," she said.

  His sad face slowly faded into a sly grin.

  "Let me kiss it and make it better."

  Gidry bent forward and placed a kiss so tenderly at the apex of her thighs. It was a sensation so unimaginable that she cried out.

  "No!"

  Gidry stopped immediately, looking thoroughly chastised.

  "No?" he asked.

  "No to that," she said. "Not... not no to the rest only ... no don't kiss me there."

  He relaxed slightly and nodded. Leaning back upon his heels and began discarding his shirt.

  "All right," he said. "If you don't want me to kiss you there, I won't."

  Pru sighed gratefully.

  "Thank you."

  "Can I touch you there?" he asked, as he allowed his hand to do just that.

  Pru managed to keep a squeak from escaping her throat.

  "Yes... ah yes, you may touch me there, but not too much," she told him. "For some reason I am ... I am very sensitive there."

  Gidry raised an eyebrow, chuckled and gave her a long look. "I do hope, ma'am, that I am the reason."

  Gidry discarded his shirt on the floor and then sat down to take off his boots.

  "Should I remove my shoes and stockings as well?" she asked him.

  He did not answer immediately. When he was finally barefoot he reached over and ran his hand along the leather of her brown glove-grain button tops and whistled appreciatively.

  "Definitely leave on the stockings," he said. "And the shoes would be all right with me, too."

  Prudence gazed at him curiously, until he rose to his feet and began to shuck his trousers. Then she tried not to look in his direction at all. The exposure of skin in the light of the lantern inevitably drew her eyes.

  "Scoot over, sweetheart," he told her. "It's not much of a bed, but it's all we've got."

  Disconcerted, Pru eased over. It was strange to be mostly dressed but be so exposed. It was even stranger to be mostly dressed and lying next to a man who was naked.

  He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her closer, firmly wedging his thigh between her legs.

  "Does that feel better against your sensitive place?" he asked.

  His grin suggested that he was making a joke, but Pru could not quite imagine what it might be.

  "It's not truly uncomfortable," she admitted.

  Gidry chuckled delightedly and kissed her, sweetly, tenderly. He trailed a line of tiny kisses along her cheek to her ear and down her neck. When he got to the base of her throat he made a deep bass growling sound and, to Pru's shock, nipped at her with his teeth.

  "What are you doing?"

  “Just a little love bite, sweetheart," he said, healing the minor injury with a gentle kiss. "Do you like bites, sweetheart?"

  His whisper against her heated skin raised goose flesh upon the curve of her shoulders and her naked bosom.

  "I don't know if I like it," Pru answered. She was finding it

  increasingly difficult to catch her breath.

  Gidry ran his hand down her back and grasped her bottom. H
olding her firmly, he adjusted the thick muscled thigh that was pressed so tightly to her body's apex. The more he moved against her, the more she wanted him to move against her.

  "You do like that, don't you, sweetheart?" he asked.

  Aching, straining against him, she was hardly capable of reply. The need to be close to him, very close to him, intimately close to him, overrode any other considerations.

  With his hands at her waist and his thigh between hers, Gidry actually lifted her slightly and pushed her back until her buttocks were tightly flush against the wall. He continued to grind his thigh into her with pleasing effects. His hands moved back up to her breasts. Her nipples were stiff and raised as if to implore attention.

  He gladly gave it, with his hands, his lips, his teeth, his tongue, the fine graze of beard along his jaw.

  Pru was no longer capable of rational thought. She pressed his face more firmly to her bosom and desperately squirmed and wiggled against his thigh.

  "Oh my. Oh my! OH MY!"

  Gidry pulled away from her. She made a cry of objection and reached out for him. But he knew exactly what he was doing.

  He grabbed her at the hips and turned her onto her back. He was already between her legs, and the change of position widened her before him. He grasped her booted ankles and raised her feet to his shoulders.

  With his eyes upon her face, he kissed the glove grain leather and rubbed his cheek against it. He kissed her again near the top of the boot. And then higher upon her black cotton stocking. The touch of his lips proceeded up the inside of her thigh with purposeful intent. A haze of lusty desire clouded Pru's vision and a mewling, begging sound issued from her throat.

  Gidry was at the top of her hose now and nipped her again in the fine, pale flesh exposed above it. He buried his hands under her bottom and dragged down her fine lawn drawers, pulling with his hands from behind and with his teeth in front until her most private parts were exposed to his gaze.

  His mouth was now poised above her thatch of damp brown curls. She was quaking, twitching, unable to hold herself completely still. He began to lower his head, then stopped abruptly and raised his eyes to hers.

  "May I kiss your sensitive place, Miss Pru?" he asked politely.