by Pamela Morsi
She gave a little cry of delight and half sat up, arching her back, meeting his pressure with her own.
With eager, almost desperate hands she cast away her unlaced bodice and jerked her blouse off over her head.
Armand's breath caught in his throat as he gazed at her unadorned breasts above him, like two big luscious peaches hanging just within reach and clearly meant for him. Eagerly he sampled the proffered fruit, tasting the sweet, salty flavor of her skin and worrying the stiffened nipples with his teeth.
Aida buried her hands in his hair and held his head against her, aiding him in his homage to her.
She was squirming again. Squirming and wiggling atop him as if she were riding an untamed horse.
"Oh please, please," she began to whimper. "Oh please Armand, my love, my love."
She begged please, and to please her was what he wanted most in the world. He didn't know where first to touch, where to probe. He wanted to kiss and caress her everywhere, everywhere at once. His mouth on her right breast, his hand on her left. He continued to stroke her bottom, but he was drawn to the hot recesses between her thighs. He slipped his hand through the back of her legs and possessively clutched her intimately. She was damp, eager, and she squirmed against his hand.
Armand was not far from begging himself. His heart was thundering in his chest. His breathing was rapid and labored. And his erection was hard, heavy, and pressing painfully to be free of clothing.
He relinquished her breast to pull at the buttons on his trousers. Aida tried to help, but the touch of her small hand upon him had him calling out in pleasured anguish.
She jerked at her skirts, gathering them about her waist. She was naked against him. Nothing now separated them except the thin layer of cottonade that covered him. Nothing else separated them. Nothing else except vows and honor and holy wedlock.
"Oh no! I can't stop!" The words were screamed in agony and directed at his own conscience. It had gone too far. He had meant for her to fall in love with him, not to make love with him. She was not herself, she was under the effects of the love potion. And he was painfully aroused, living out a dream. He had desired her from afar so long and so secretly, and now she was in his arms, nearly his.
"I can't stop," he moaned again. "I can't stop now."
But he did.
He rolled over and laid her upon the ground. Slipping out of her embrace, he widened the distance between them.
"Armand?" She spoke his name, her voice husky with desire. It was almost his undoing.
"Don't move, Aida," he told her. "Please just lie still a moment; don't speak and don't move."
He sat up, still struggling to catch his breath and slow the beating of his heart. He covered his face with his hands and tried to imagine poling down the river in springtime when the hyacinth were in bloom.
"Armand?"
Her question was plaintive. He ached to press himself against her once more.
"We can't," he told her. "We can't do this, Aida."
"We can," she told him. "I want to."
"It's the charm making you want me this way, think this way," he said. "But the charm will wear off and if we continue, we'll be compromised beyond going back."
"I don't want to go back!" she insisted.
"But you will," he told her. "You'll regret this very much and want to go back."
Her silence condemned him. He opened his eyes and turned to look at her. Her hair was wild, her dress was mussed, she had never been more beautiful.
"Oh Aida," he whispered. "I am so sorry."
"You don't want me," she said. "Not even my body. You don't even want my body."
He could see her lip trembling; her whole body began to shake likewise. He couldn't ignore her, leave her trembling. Armand scooted over to her and enfolded her in his arms.
"Shhh, shhh." He whispered the words as he stroked her back. "I do want you, all of you. How could I not? Shhh, sweet Aida. It will be all right, somehow we will make it all right."
He must hold her like a brother, Armand cautioned himself. If he allowed passion to flare again, perhaps he would not be able to stop it. He must hold her like a brother, a friend. Though she was in his arms, he kept the lower portion of their bodies separated by a distance. He must comfort her but protect her, from the charm and from himself.
"Hold me close, Armand," she pleaded. "Hold me close and kiss me again."
"Keep very still and I will hold you," he promised. "I will hold you until this feeling passes."
She snuggled against him. He steeled himself not to react.
"I love you, Armand," she told him. "I really love you."
The words sounded so sweet, so precious to him, he felt unwelcome tears well up in his eyes. How he wished it could be true. How he secretly longed for those words. But they were false. All of this was false.
"No you don't, Aida. You don't love me," he answered. "It's the charm. Be still now and let this feeling pass. It is just the love charm."
Chapter Fourteen
Helga Shotz and her children worked together gathering fruit into baskets in the brightly colored persimmon woods. Each child gathered what he could reach of the purplish orange fruit known as plaquemines.
"Have we got enough yet, Mama?" Jakob asked her.
"We must fill up all the baskets," she told him. "We'll get everything we can carry."
Helga had not known persimmons until coming to this bayou. And her first experience had not been good. Unripe, the fruit had puckered her lips. It was the most sour and bitter flavor she had ever tasted and had lingered for hours. Miraculously, she discovered, when they ripened, the persimmon was the sweetest fruit ever tasted. Dried and ground with mortar and pestle, it was sprinkled onto sweets and baked into cakes. Although cane grew in grand abundance on plantations down the river, cut and squeezed and cooked into sugar by African slaves, for her children and many others among the prairies, the only sugar was persimmon sugar.
Of course, ripe persimmons were good to eat right off the tree, they dried easily and grew in such abundance that they were used for livestock fodder. But for Helga, one of the best parts of gathering the fruit was the excursions to the persimmon grove. They always took on an almost picnic tone and were much enjoyed by her children. These days joy was something she couldn't offer her little ones much of.
Karl helped his baby brother up on his shoulders so that Jakob could pick "up high," an unceasing ambition of the littlest child. Karl pretended that the weight was too much and feigned staggering with mock danger. Jakob squealed with delight and had all of them laughing together. It was good to hear laughter once more.
Helga knew that she'd done the right thing. She'd had to break it off with Laron. A woman might choose for herself a life of sin, a life beyond the edges of accepted society. But a mother could not, should not, force that life upon her children. Karl did not deserve to cringe with shame hearing his mother's name on another boy's lips. And Elsa was growing up. What chance would she have of finding a nice, kind man to love her if her mother was beyond the pale?
And more than all of that, how could she expect, demand, the upright standards that she knew would make her children's lives better, happier, if her children did not see her, their mother, living that example?
Jakob was whooping now, pulling persimmons from high limbs at a wild hectic pace.
"Don't throw them, my baby," she cautioned. "We don't want them bruised."
She knew that she was doing right. Still, she could not hide the sorrow, the emptiness that filled her since Laron had said goodbye. Each day she told herself that tomorrow it would be better. But day after day the ache, the grief, the hollowness inside her welled up once more.
She tried to recall how she had felt when her husband walked out. She had been frightened. Overwhelmed with the responsibility, uncertain of the future, she had been all those things. But under that, she had been relieved, relieved and even glad.
Helga could not work up any gladness about the
leaving of Laron Boudreau. His absence was like a mortal wound. It continued to bleed strength from her day after day. She needed him so much. She needed just to look at him, to laugh with him. She needed to be enfolded in his arms, garnering strength and sharing sorrow.
She should never have become involved with him. That was what she told herself a dozen times a day. If she'd kept her wits and her morals about her, she'd never have gotten herself in such an unhappy position. But in truth, even in her most self-critical moments she could not wish away the happiness of the last three years. Not for herself and not for her children.
Laron had been a father for them as Helmut had never been. He loved them wholly and unconditionally with a naturalness that even Helga could envy. It was the way that he had been loved by his parents and in honesty, Helga thought it a wonderful legacy, something that she could not help but want for her own children.
And they missed him, too. She'd told herself that they would be fine, that he would slip from their young memories as easily as their father had. But she knew it was not true. The day that he'd shown up at their dock had been the best since he'd left. Jakob had been laughing and happy all the way up to bedtime. And Elsa had not been compelled to argue with her older brother over anything. Only Karl had been silent. But then, only Karl was torn by the knowledge that the two people he loved most, the two people whom he had begun to think of as his parents, were joined in an alliance that was condemned by the church, by the community, and by the very rules that they themselves had taught him to respect and honor.
Karl had begun to feign staggering once more under the tremendous weight of little Jakob. Elsa pretended that she was trying to help, and the three-year-old so high on his brother's shoulders giggled with enthusiasm. Finally Karl gently and conveniently "fell" into a soft patch of grass. The two immediately began to wrestle, Karl pretending that he was furiously angry at losing his balance. He allowed the little fellow to get him in a stranglehold while Elsa cheered them on.
They would be all right, Helga assured herself. They would go on, grow up, and live their lives. They would see Laron from time to time, that was unavoidable, but they would get used to not having him around. Children could get used to anything. She wondered if she would be so lucky.
The excitement of the wrestling match was waning. Helga gave a calculating glance at the location of the sun and decided it was time for luncheon.
"Could I interest anyone in food?" she asked.
Whoops of approval erupted from the three of them and they abandoned their rough-and-tumble play for the food hamper. "Don't let me see one dirty hand sneaking into that basket," she told them.
As one they hurried to the small coulee at the edge of the grove to wash up. Helga finished transferring persimmons from the gathering bins to the carrying baskets before she headed in the same direction. Elsa and Jakob met her coming back.
"Spread out the cloth in that sunny spot," she told Elsa. "And not one bite for either of you until we've said grace."
Jakob moaned and grabbed his belly, pretending that he was near to fainting from hunger. Helga smiled at him, remembering that because of Laron, her youngest had never once known that feeling.
She hurried on to the water to wash up herself. Karl was hesitating there, his mind obviously on neither food nor fun. Helga suffered a momentary twinge of cowardice and wanted to turn and walk the other direction. With her thoughts so much on Laron, the last thing that she was ready for today was a confrontation with her oldest son.
Deliberately she plastered a smile upon her face. "It's a wonderful day for gathering persimmons," she told him.
Karl nodded, but his brow was still furrowed. He looked so German when he worried, Helga thought. He looked so much like her brother, lost to her so long ago.
"Mama," he said. "There is something that I think that I should tell you."
Helga almost sighed aloud in exasperation. She wanted to pretend everything was all right, if only for the children's sake and if only for one day. Apparently Karl was not going to let her do that.
She squatted before the coulee and began to wash her hands. "What must you tell me, Karl?" she asked, purposely keeping her eyes averted.
"It may be of no importance," the boy said. "It may be something that I should keep to myself." He hesitated thoughtfully a moment before continuing. "But I told him that I would tell you, so I suppose I must keep my word."
I told him that I would tell you. The words echoed in her head. It had to be Laron. The other day when he'd been there on the dock, he'd talked to Karl. There had been some message for her? Her son had said nothing. In some part of her heart, she wished that his silence would continue.
"If you promised to tell me," she said, "then you must. A man always keeps his word, Karl."
She turned to look at him then and her son nodded.
"It wasn't that I was trying to keep anything from you, Mama," he said.
Helga nodded.
"I just hate to see you cry," the boy admitted.
"I haven't been crying," Helga insisted.
Karl looked at her and shook his head. "Not in front of us, Mama," he agreed. "But don't you think we know why you go off by yourself so much and why your eyes look so red and sad?"
Helga's eyes welled at that very moment. She bit down on her lip to control the emotion.
"I'm getting better," she said. "Please try not to worry about me. I'll be fine, my darling."
"I do worry," her son said. "I know it's all my fault that he went away."
"No, it was not," Helga said. "You know that we . . . we were living in sin.. We were wrong to do that and once you were old enough to understand, we could not continue."
Karl looked down at the ground and then up at her. His own eyes were glistening with moisture. "I like him so much, Mama. And he likes me, too. It's not pretend with him, he really likes me."
"Monsieur Boudreau loves you, Karl," she said. "And he always will. Nothing that has happened between him and me will change how he feels about you and the children."
Her son nodded, acknowledging the truth.
"What he told me to tell you," he continued. "Mama, I want to believe it, but I just don't know how."
"What did he tell you?"
"He said that he was going to make it all right," Karl said. "He said for once and all time he was going to make it all right."
Helga's brow furrowed as she stared at her son, trying to comprehend his words. How could Laron make it right? How could he make it right for them to be together for all time?
In memory she saw once more the group of people drinking coffee. The old woman with two little children beside her in the pirogue. The shortish young man who was, she knew, Laron's best friend, stood poling the craft from shore. And the lovely woman who had been his intended called out to her where Laron had gone.
The German coast.
Helga's eyes widened in horror.
"Oh my God!"
"What Mama?" Karl's tone reflected the terror in her own.
"Get the children," she ordered. "We must get help to stop him."
Aida didn't know whether to scream or cry. She lay in Armand's arms but the true distance between them yawned like an unbridgeable chasm. She had retrieved her blouse to cover herself, but had yet to bother with the lacings of her corset vest. Modesty seemed a little enough concern at this point.
He desired her. That she knew at least. With the help of a love charm and every feminine wile she possessed, he desired her. It was a start, she argued to herself. At least it was a start. But she was not sure that the young man's honor would even allow him to pursue the direction.
His honor. That was what a judge was called. And with Armand it was an apt description. If only they'd gone just a little further. If only they'd managed to get past the point of no return. His honor would have compelled him to marry her. And dishonorably, she wanted nothing else more.
"Are you all right, Aida?" he whispered close to her ear.
"I cannot . . . cannot begin to apologize enough for what I've done to you," he said. "I can only be grateful that some last shred of sanity we possessed prevented us from going further."
He hesitated as if waiting for her to agree with him. Aida couldn't find her voice to do so.
"I can promise you," he continued finally. "That no word of this will ever be spoken."
She believed him. He would never say a word. He would probably forget the incident completely. But she, Aida knew, would remember him for her whole life long.
"We both were out of our heads," he went on. "The charm made us behave as we never would have. It made us say and do things that we would never otherwise."
That was true, Aida realized. For him at least, it must have been true. In fact, she had not felt any strange effects of the charm. She had wanted him, certainly. But she knew that there was always a strange weightiness of the effects of drug and herb. There had been none of that for her. He must have gotten all the charm and she none. Because she knew that what she felt for him was real and true and from the heart.
"Speak to me, Aida," Armand pleaded. "Are you truly all right?"
She turned in his arms then and looked straight at him. Those wonderful blue eyes, so precious and familiar to her, were dark with worry. In a few moments they would sit up and then stand up and then walk away from this place. And she knew that once they did so, she would never be this close to him again. If only they had not been able to stop. If only—
A wave of sheer slyness settled over her and gave her voice at last.
"You must marry me," she said.
"What?"
He sat up immediately and brought her with him.
"You must marry me," she insisted once more.
He gave her a long look and then glanced away, clearly ill-at-ease.
"There is no need for that," he said.