Amish Heart (Erotic Romance) (Amish Heart Trilogy) (11 page)

It was tomorrow and she was late.  Oh dear God, she was late.  Not late to dinner, not late to work, not even late to Church.  She was
late
.

Rebecca worried her lip, thinking fast while at the same time making change for a customer.  She was normally like a clock but not now. 

She should have been bleeding about the time she and Nick met in the Best Western.  That was two weeks ago.  She had never been off as much as two days before, let alone two weeks.  The entirety of the two weeks her breasts had felt tender as if she would start at any time.  Something had radically changed in her body.  There could be no doubt.

Even though her whole life she knew that it would be her inevitability that she would be a wife and mother she felt little prepared to deal with what she knew was occurring deep within her. 

A baby.  Nick’s baby
. It had to have come from Nick.  As unsophisticated in her understanding as Rebekah was, after the realization occurred to her that she was indubitably pregnant, there could be little to wonder as to exactly what made her that way. 

What will he say?
  He hadn’t seemed to want to get her pregnant.  The fact that she was able to get pregnant without being wed was a revelation.  She thought back to his proposal.  Would he still want her if she were pregnant?

Her hands kept going to her belly, as if somehow mere touch could tell her all she now found she had to know. 

Nick’s baby.
  Would it be a little boy with Nick’s broodily soft brown eyes and his saucy smile or would it be a little girl with Nick’s thick silken chocolate curls?  That the child may look like her never occurred to her at all.  Nick was the man she loved, the love she craved.  Of course their child would look, would be, exactly like him.

That their love could create a new life within her was utterly mysterious, completely staggering, touching on the Divine. 

What do I do now? 

So, I’m asking you to come away with me and be with me.
 
Those had been his words.
 

Her fingers kept feeling the circle of gold he had bestowed on her the other night, too large for her finger, wrapped in a handkerchief and pinned inside her apron pocket.  Now the question wasn’t just about leaving her family and the only way of life she’d ever known to be with Nick.  There was another person involved, a child. 

Our child.
  A child needed family and would grow up needing to know his or her mother and father.  Of course she had to be with Nick.  There was no question.  It didn’t make the decision to become an outcast to her family and her Community any easier.  It only lent clarity to the answer.  She could not stay among her people and be pregnant with Nick’s child.  She and the child would be shunned their entire lives. 

So, it was with an exhilarating mixture of excitement and anxiety that Rebekah awaited Nick’s arrival to share with him the news and tell him of her choice. 

She found herself realizing that, nearly from the beginning, the route of their connection had offered few destinations.  The only other choice she would have had would have been to not speak to the man with the kind eyes at all, an option she wasn’t prepared to deal with the consequences of.  She might be losing her parents and Leah, but she was also avoiding the harsh realities of life with Ezekiel, his children, Polly, and Mother Yoder. 

Her real sorrow was leaving Leah, her best friend, her confidante.  They had always shared secrets, happiness, and worked to ease each other’s burdens.  She would miss out on holding Leah’s newborn due within a month and being mothers together.  She imagined all the calm, sage words of advice Leah would have been able to share.  She had looked forward to a life of their friendship, growing old and watching their grandchildren grow about them.  All the hopes and tender feelings Rebekah would have had for sharing family and a marriage partner, she had transferred to her relationship with her sister.  She couldn’t have imagined sharing any of them with Ezekiel.  Now, she must transfer those feelings to where they needed to be
: the man that would be her love, her husband, and the father of their child, Nick.

Rebekah was guided by Naomi in the book of Ruth,
“Wherever you goest, I shall go . . .Your people shall be my people and your God, my God.”
  Knowing this scripture comforted her as she felt the hand of her God in her love for Nick.

She didn’t have to wait long to see him.  He walked into the store just as the last patron was leaving.

“Hi, Beautiful!”

His calling her that never failed to turn her rosy. 

“So have you thought about what we talked about?  I mean, what I gave you?  You coming with me—”

“Nick, I’m late,” she started off with an explanation for her decision.

“Late?  Late for what?”  He furrowed his brow, uncomprehending, at first before insight took over.  His eyes flew open wide.  “Like, for your period?”

“Two weeks.  I’m never late.  I know I’m
preg—”

“Before we get all worked up about this, let’s find out.” 

Worked up?  Who was worked up?

“I’ll get you a pregnancy test.  It’s real easy.  You can do it here by yourself.”

“Okay, but it’s alright. . .”  She searched his eyes. 
It is alright, isn’t it?  You still want me, don’t you?

He kissed her then, softly
, but preoccupied. 

“Of course, but we should know for sure, right?”

She nodded, shining again.  She already knew.  She was never late. 

***

Leah’s clear blues eyes were fixed on her, hurt.

“So you are . . . leaving?” 

“Leah, I have to go with him.  He is the father of my child.”

“But I will never see you again!”  She
was mournful. 

Rebekah, sensing that in some circumstances words
fell deficient, simply reached out where they sat alone in the garden and took her sister’s hand, pressing it to her own cheek, now streaming wet.

“I just don’t understand
.  How can you choose this English, this
outsider
over your family and Community?”

“Leah, I love him
—”

“More than your family?
  More than me?”  She withdrew her hand.

Rebekah hesitated.  “It’s a different kind of love.”

“And you with his child.  Rebekah, it is an abomination!  A sin!  It is evil and corrupt—”

“I don’t believe that.”  She surprised herself with how calm she sounded.

“Scriptures—”

“Scripture also says that ‘God is love’ and that we are to forgive each other and help each other.  I love Nick.  He loves me.  There is no sin in love.”

Her sister’s eyes flared heatedly.  “No sin—”

“There is no sin in love
, only in the lack of love.”

At that point Leah did something Rebekah had never pictured she was even capable of.  She lifted her normally calm, soothing hand and struck her sibling smartly on the cheek.

“You’re only thinking of yourself,” she snapped.  With that, she gathered up her cumbersome body and lumbered into the house, leaving Rebekah to sit stunned and alone.

Leah would never understand.  She might one day forgive, but comprehension was not part of it and never would be. 

***

Re
bekah peed on the second stick.  Nick had brought her two, so there would be no question as to the results.  She sat back on the outhouse seat, inspecting the two blue crosses that brightly displayed in the windows. 

Double pregnant.  I think this means yes
. 

It was bittersweet, because she knew that she could not share this joy with those she loved and expect them to join her in the exultation she now felt.  So
, it was with a mixed spirit that she tucked the sticks into the pocket of her dress to share with Nick when he came by later that morning.

***

It had been a long morning waiting for him to arrive, made longer by the few numbers of customers. While tending to her duties in the store, she had been mentally packing things she would want to take with her: the things from her dowry, of course.  She wanted letters written back and forth between her and other family members and friends.  Not her clothes, she would wear English clothes from now on.
I wonder what that will be like. 

She would tell her parents this evening and leave tonight.

She didn’t expect the conversation to go smoothly with her family.  She earnestly hoped their last words with each other would not be too bitter, but she knew of her father’s dedication to his position in the Community.  Furthermore, she knew that Nick would lose his livelihood, as no Amish would ever hire him to drive for them again.  He would be equally shunned, something that she needed to make sure he understood, not that she expected it to sway him from his earlier proposal. 

She tried to imagine where and how they would live, what they would do.  Learning English ways was going to be a task in itself.  Entering into the English world would be exciting, but fearsome.  She had been warned since birth about the evil ways of the English.  Now she was going to be English.  Or was she?  Wouldn’t her heart always be Amish?  Or was it neither, able to live in either world?

The important thing is that we have each other’s love and that we are good parents to our child
. Again, the thought of being married to Nick and having his child filled her with joy.  After her tasks were done in the store, she impatiently waited his appearance.

Just before the lunch hour, Nick arrived in high spirits, gathering her into his arms and danced around the store
while humming.  Rebekah laughed, pulling away after a few steps of stomping on his feet. 

“Don’t worry.  You’ll get the hang of it.”

“I don’t know, it looks complicated.”

“
Naw, it’s easy.  Like falling off a log.  Or,” he moved in to kiss her, “making love.”  Their kiss was soft and syrupy, flowing over and through her, energizing her at the same time making her feel like she had spent too long in the sun. 

“So what did the test say?”  

Rebekah reached into the pocket of her dress to pull out the test sticks, brushing against the weight of the wrapped ring still pinned to her apron pocket.  She saw Nick’s pupils dilate slightly, and felt her own pulse quicken from nervous excitement.  Things, for just that one moment, were exceedingly bright and clear, sharply in focus.  She was aware of the pulsing of Nick’s artery in his neck, curious and beautiful.  The fabric of her dress felt almost sticky beneath her sweaty palms. 

She opened her mouth to speak just as Hannah burst headlong into the store. 

“Come quickly,” she implored them, her chalky face streaky with tears, “Leah is having the baby early and something is terribly wrong!”

Snick!  Snick!  Snick!
  The second hand of the clock on the wall scraped the silence like a blade.  Rebekah tried not to breathe in the cold hospital smell of disinfectant and death, as she worried her fingers together in a heap on her lap, useless. 

Nick and Rebekah had quickly loaded into the van, along with Rebekah’s three younger sisters and parents and sped off to Hezekiah’s house, where the midwife was explaining that Leah was losing blood at an alarming rate and she couldn’t stop the hemorrhaging.  She could still hear the baby’s
faint heartbeat but Leah must be transported at once to the hospital in St. Joseph.

Elder
Bontrager lifted his second daughter’s nearly unconscious body and took her to Nick’s van, putting her in the second seat.  Her mother sat beside her, cradling her head on her shoulder.  Hezekiah sat beside the women.  Rebekah clambered in with the rest of the family, the children sitting on laps as needed to accompany Leah to the hospital. 

They lingered in the family surgery waiting room, with the television turned off, listening only to the click of the clock, reminding Rebekah of her last conversation with Leah.  Conversation?  No, it was an argument, a fight, in which Leah was upset enough with her to strike her. 

You’re only thinking of yourself.
  Those had been Leah’s words.  Would it be the last ones between them? 
Oh dear God, I promise I will do anything you ask of me if you will only let her live.  Please God.

A cup of coffee was pressed into her hands and she took it in a stupor.  It was Nick, bringing Styrofoam cups of coffee to all the adults
and juice to the children.  Sweet Nick, he hadn’t left the family for the five and one half hours that they had been at the hospital.  He offered her a sandwich.  She shook her head, not hungry, not tired, not anything but sorry.  So very sorry. 

Rationally, Rebekah knew that God was not punishing Leah for Rebekah’s sins.  Yet it felt that way.  God was making Leah pay the price for Rebekah’s selfishness and lust.
  She, Rebekah, must do whatever in her power she could do to make it right. 
Oh Dear God, please.  I promise, I promise anything.  Just let me know what You want me to do.  I’ll do it.

No one spoke.  Even the small children grasped the severity of the situation and were unusually sol
emn.  She looked to her parents stoically sitting beside each other; Hezekiah with his mother’s hand on his arm.  Rebekah longed for comfort of her own as well, the only problem is that the person she wanted it from was in the operating room, possibly dying. 

She reached out mentally to communicate with her sister. 
Please, Leah, don’t die.
  Could Leah hear her?

She felt Nick’s eye’s upon her and knew he wanted to console her.  If only he could!  But the thought was almost abhorrent to her.  Being made now to pay dearly for her transgressions, further offenses could be dealt with more rigorously.  Even the memory of her wantonness filled her with a sense of griminess. 

A balding man in spectacles and hospital garb came over to speak to Hezekiah and the whole family gathered around in order to not miss a word.

“—Placenta
Previa.  We finally stopped the bleeding.  However, during the course of the surgery, she suffered heart failure and did not resuscitate for six minutes.  I am afraid that she will experience some brain damage; there is no way of knowing how severe at this time.  She will need help when she does return home. 

“However, she is currently conscious and wanting to see you.”  The doctor
put on a stern face and held up three warning fingers, “Three minutes.  That’s all.”  Almost as an afterthought he added, “The baby is fine.  We got him out in time.  A healthy boy.”

Hezekiah says it will be a boy
.  Leah had known.  Hezekiah had known.  His name, as Hezekiah had wanted, would be Eli. 

“Not all of you,” the nurse balked, seeing the entire family file into Leah’s room. 
Reluctantly, Hezekiah’s mother took the children out, leaving twelve adults in the small hospital room.  The nurse looked in again in exasperation but held her tongue.             

Leah lay in the bed, tubes running into her nose and wires to her chest and arms.  A pouch of what appeared to be blood was perched above her, running by the tube into her arm through an angry looking needle.  She was ghostly gray and her eyes, usually so bright and blue, were colorless.

Hezekiah approached his wife.  “How are you feeling?”  She attempted a wan smile but it was obvious she had but little strength. 
She was dead and God brought her back because of my prayer
.  Rebekah knew she had to keep her side of the bargain, whatever that was, or Leah could die again and not be able to be resuscitated once more.

As if in answer
Leah looked directly at Rebekah and said in slurred speech with all the piteous stamina that she possessed, “Don’t leave me. “

“Of course
we aren’t going to leave you!” Rebekah’s mother exclaimed. 

“What would make you think we would?  We are staying right here,” came a chorus of reassurances. 

Leah repeated, her clouded eyes never leaving her sister, “Rebekah, don’t leave me.”

God had spoken, as Rebekah had begged Him to do.  He had spared Leah and told her what she needed to do.  Reflexively, she fingered the ring weighing now heavily in her apron pocket and, in four
agonized words answered God and Leah both:  “I won’t leave you.”  They were the hardest words she could ever utter.

One minute later, the family was once more in a waiting room, drinking coffee and eating the now cold sandwiches Nick had bought them.  They would wait there for the next day, some waiting there for several days, and some until Leah got to come home. 

Nick brought her a fresh cup of coffee which she gratefully accepted. 

“Is she going to be okay?”

“She will have some brain damage, but she can talk some.”

“Oh, no!  I am so sorry.  How can I help?”

Sweet Nick, helpful Nick.  Poor Nick.  Poor her, now she had to tell him that they couldn’t be together. Rebekah could guarantee he would never fathom the reason behind it.

Without answering, she excused herself and walked down the hallway to the restroom.  It was a single room, and as she was going in, she felt Nick’s hand on her shoulder.  She shrugged it off.  Grabbing the door, he opened it a bit wider, bumped her inside and followed her in, locking the door behind him.

“Are you crazy?”  She was incredulous.

“What is wrong with you?  I’m really sorry about your sister, but why are you treating me this way?”

“Nick, I can’t—”

“We’ve
gotta talk—”

“No, we don’t
—”

“Oh, yes, we do.”  His eyes flashed darkly.  “What is going on?  Are you mad at me?  What happened with the test?”

The test.  Holy shit, the test.  No, I can’t tell him about that.  Then, he will not only never understand, he’ll never go away and I won’t be able to keep my promise.

To steady herself as much as him, she took his hand.  She expected herself to be mourning him at that moment
.  She thought she would have been unable to act due to remorse for what had happened to Leah and anguish about what was about to happen to her and Nick.  Instead, a placidness eased into her, a strength she didn’t know she possessed overtook her.  She looked at this man she loved and knew that she must tell him goodbye, but knew that she could not do it heartlessly.

Dropping to her knees, she swiftly unzipped his jeans, pulling his flaccid cock to freedom.  Without asking for
accordance, she immediately put the whole member in her mouth, sucking hard.  Nick grunted in surprise and pleasure, allowing her to pull his pants down around his feet.  Within seconds, he was fully engorged.  Trying to relax her throat as much as possible, she took him far into her mouth, sliding her lips and tongue up and down on his inflamed shaft, fucking him hotly with her mouth.  She was making her mouth another pussy, another way to squeeze him tight as she fondled his balls. 

Then she allowed her mouth to become loose and pliant, enticingly surrounding him with the velvet of her inner cheeks and lips, while fondly caressing him with her tongue. 

Loving Nick in this manner did not seem like a sin; on the contrary, to dispassionately say goodbye to the man whose child she carried within her would have been the true sin.  She had to love him one last time and, should she be fully honest with herself, she needed to love him again for herself. 

Nick stumbled backward against the wall of the small room, moaning.  Sucking hard once again, Rebekah grasped the lower part of his cock and, squeezing it, moved her hands up and down, turning her hands and mouth into a tight, virginal vagina to fuck him in yet another new way. 

She felt him growing larger in her mouth and, teasingly, abruptly pulled away.  Stripping her bloomers off, she looked at him, his need fueling the growing demand inside her.

Shameless, she sat on the edge of the sink and spread her thighs wide apart. 

“Take me.”

Sighing almost magically, he came to her and clutching her buttocks in his long slender hands, brought his cock to her waiting, moist feminine folds and poised there.

“I’m going to try to make this last, but no promises.” 

She lifted her hips up as a further invitation.

He did not disappoint her.  Penetration was deep and full upon first stroke.  He held purchase to her hips tightly, balancing them both, making it possible to touch her in her nethermost regions.  He vacated her slowly, and thrust in full again only to pull out once more.  Streams of electricity soared through her.

Then his pushes came faster and more energetic, drilling her further to her
center with every propulsion inward.  Encircling his arms around her, he advanced ever forward, boring into her.  He was assaulting her with his love, and euphoric tears streamed from her eyes. 

She encompassed his wildly thrashing hips with her legs, hooking her ankles together behind his lower back. 
Inflamed, he picked her up off of the sink and, still holding her around his middle, moved her up and down on his cock.  She reached behind him and slapped his beautiful rounded ass, kissing him beseechingly on the mouth. 
Fuck me.  Fuck me harder
.

With a mighty growl, he flung the two of them around and backed Rebekah up against the wall of the bathroom, pinning her to the wall with his impulsion of ravenous hunger.  It was as if he too knew somehow it was over and this would be all that they would have forever. 

He stroked the place where he entered her and then, reached underneath her to stick two fingers inside her ass while still pushing inward and retreating, over and again punching inside and seceding. 

Into her depths his throbbing cock hammered her. 
In and out.  In and out.  He waggled the fingers he had up her hot, tight ass and pumped even harder.  His movements caused her thick, hot pool of desire to rise molten to the surface.

As she started to come, he took the hand not inside her ass and shoved it over her mouth and nose, cutting off her voice and her air.  She could have removed his hand but instead dug her fingers into his hair and pulled straight out as the lightening surmounted her, lifting her higher and higher with each additional drive of his cock,  each additional  wriggle of his fingers as her consciousness shattered.  Without waiting for her to slow down he withdrew from her completely, and bent her forward over the sink, standing her on her tiptoes so she was staring at her reddened face in the mirror as he again took possession of her body, filling her and receding faster and over and again until he, in an effort not to cry out, bit her shoulder through her dress as he spasmed out each drop of his ejaculation.  

He held her tightly, hunched over the sink for what seemed to be the longest time. 
This is the last,
she thought. 
Our last embrace.
After replacing clothing, she switched around to face him.  Unpinning the ring he had given her that night seemingly so long ago, she handed it to him.

“Goodbye Nick.”

“What???”

“I promised God I’d stay with Leah.  She needs me.”

“You can’t do this.”

“I have to.”

“But you love me.  I love you—”

“Nick, don’t
—”

He knelt on the floor of the bathroom before her, clenching her hand.  His voice was raw with emotion.  “Rebekah
Bontrager, I love you.  Marry me.  Marry me, please.”

Tears clouded Rebekah’s eyes.

“Don’t ask me for something I can’t give you.”

“But you love me.” 
Yes Nick, I love you with every shred of my being.
“And I love you.”  Nick beseeched her.
But I made a covenant with God
.  He wasn’t going to understand
.

“Don’t ask me for something I just can’t give you.”

She caressed his face for one last time and exited the bathroom, leaving Nick kneeling on the floor.