Morning Song (26 page)

Jessie lashed out at him, only to have the bridle caught and jerked from her hold. "Oh!"

Stuart tossed the bridle aside. It landed on the floor with a jangle of metal.

"Now what? Are you going to kick me? Slap me? Scratch me?

Hit me where no young lady has any business hitting a man? Or is it finally my turn?" There was something curious in his tone, something that was not anger at all.

"Stuart . . ." Jessie's heart was pounding, whether from fear or something else she didn't know. Her eyes were huge as she looked at him through the darkness. Her hands were suddenly very cold. Moonlight glinted off his eyes as he reached for her, catching her wrist and pulling her toward him. All the fight had left Jessie. Unresisting, she let him draw her forward until a mere hand-breadth of space separated them. His hand circling her 223

wrist was the only part of him that touched her, but every millimeter of her skin was tingling.

"I don't want you marrying that Todd boy." His voice was rough.

"Stuart . . ." Oddly enough, the only word that seemed able to force its way out of her dry throat was his name. He was looming over her, using his sheer size to try to dominate her, to bend her to his will. The hard, muscular strength of him took on a life of its own in the darkness, and she thrilled to it. "You said you loved me."

This time the reminder didn't drive her into a frenzy. This time he wasn't mocking her. His voice was low, his hand on her wrist warm and strong and yet not hurting.

"You can't wed him if you love me."

"Stuart ..." There was an ache in her voice. Her heart was swelling inside her even as her bones were melting. He was barely touching her, but already he was making her his. She was on fire, burning up with love and something more, and he was the only thing on earth that could put out the flames.

"I won't permit you to marry him, do you hear?" He gave her wrist a little shake.

"Stuart." Jessie took a deep breath, then was finally able to talk. She should explain, she knew, about accepting Mitch, but explanations could wait. Everything could wait, except the need that was consuming her alive. "I do love you, Stuart."

"Oh, God!" It was a groan. He might have pulled her to him, or she might have stepped into his arms, she didn't know. But in a fraction of a breath Jessie found herself plastered against him, her arms winding tight around his neck, his arms locking her to him as he bent his head to find her mouth.

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There was nothing at all gentle about this kiss. He kissed her as if he were starving for the taste of her mouth, as if he could never get enough. Jessie met the sweet plunder of his tongue with a wild excitement of her own, straining on tiptoe against him, her nails digging into the vulnerable nape of his neck. He tasted of whiskey, and since it was Stuart who tasted so, she suddenly loved the taste. His jaw was prickly with bristles, but since it was Stuart who scraped her soft skin, she loved the feel of it. His hold on her was tight enough to crack her ribs and deny her breath, but she loved that, too. She loved everything that he was doing to her so much that she was dizzy with it. So much that when she kissed him back she made soft little mewling sounds into his mouth without even being aware that she was doing so. So much that when she felt the rising bulge of him, she pressed herself against it, rubbing, instinctively seeking to ease the ache between her legs.

"Christ, Jessie!" It was a groan as his mouth slid from her lips to her neck, then lower, to find and claim the tip of her breast. As the moist heat of his mouth burned through the cloth, Jessie cried out. Pure fire shot along her nerve endings, and her knees buckled. He caught her up in his arms. For just a moment his head lifted, and he looked around. Then, even as she whimpered a protest, he moved with her, stepping over the grain sacks and saddles to lower her to the floor. Even as he came down beside her, Jessie realized that he had found a haphazard pile of empty grain sacks to use as a bed.

"I've wanted you—how I've wanted you," he whispered hoarsely as he claimed her mouth again. Jessie locked her arms around his neck and was lost. She had no thought of right or wrong, no thought of danger to her person or her heart. All she 225

knew was that this was her man: the man she had longed for and waited for all of her life.

When he yanked the skirts of her nightdress and wrapper up around her waist, she clung to his neck and kissed him with feverish abandon. When he reached down between them to do something to his breeches, she pressed tiny kisses along his cheekbone. When his knees, still encased in cloth, slipped between hers to push them apart, she quivered and arched and cried out against his throat.

His hand was between them again, touching her in that place where no one had ever touched her, the place that was so secret she did not like to touch it herself even when she bathed. But when his hand covered her there, resting atop the soft nest of curls, the aching inside her intensified until she was shuddering with it, her thighs trembling, her body afire for something—

something. . . .

Then he rose a little above her, holding his weight from her with his elbow, while he probed at the quivering, burning softness of her with that huge hot man-thing she had felt but never seen. It seemed as though there was an opening in her flesh, because he was wedging himself inside. . . .

Jessie gasped, part in fear and part in ecstasy, and his mouth claimed hers again with sudden fierce ardor. His back arched, and the man-thing shoved up against a barrier inside her. Was this what men did to women, put their man-things inside them until they touched the barrier? It hardly seemed worth all the fuss. But no, he didn't seem content with that. He was pushing . .

. pushing. . . .

Some of the ecstasy that had been carrying her away abruptly took wing. He was hurting her. . . .

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"Stuart, don't!"

But her protest was swallowed up by his mouth. Even as she tried to turn her head away, tried again to tell him that this was going beyond the bounds of what was pleasing, he gave a mighty thrust that rent her in two.

XXXII

A single tear trickled down Jessie's face, which she immediately wiped away with an unsteady finger. She was lying on her back with Stuart sprawled atop her, his man-thing still wedged inside her, although minutes before he had finished the dreadful business of fornicating with a mighty groan. After that he had collapsed, pinning her down, his face buried in her neck as he drew in great, gasping breaths.

Jessie wished she could take some of those breaths herself, but his weight on her rib cage precluded any such luxury. The man weighed a ton. He was sweaty and stank of whiskey—had she really thought she liked the smell only a quarter of an hour before?— and from the feel of things between her aching thighs, he had gotten man juice all over her.

The very idea was disgusting. The thing he had just done to her was disgusting.
He
was disgusting.

And she hurt.

"Get off me!" Jessie finally found the strength to shove at his shoulder.

That, at least, had the effect of making him raise his head. 227

"Get off you?" There was a curious note to his voice, almost as if he didn't quite believe what he was hearing.

"Yes," she hissed, "get off me!" Stuart obligingly rolled onto his side. Propping himself up on one elbow, he watched as she jack-knifed upright. To Jessie's horror, the moonlight spilling through the small window provided sufficient illumination to reveal that she was naked from the waist down. Her belly and legs gleamed palely in the darkness, punctuated by the dark triangle between her thighs. Flushing, she yanked at her nightdress and wrapper, which had twisted around her waist, and finally succeeded in making herself decent. Then, despite her unsteady knees and her thighs that felt as if they'd been turned to jelly, she tried to get to her feet.

"Whoa, there!"

Stuart stopped her by catching her around the waist with his arm. He hauled her back down, then sat up himself to peer into her face. Angrily Jessie averted her face from him. Long fingers slid beneath her chin and tugged it toward him again.

"Don't touch me!"

With a petulant slap she knocked his hand away. Instants later one long finger was back, probing at her cheek, tracing the damp trail left by that telltale tear.

"I said don't touch me!"

"I hurt you." It was said in such a quiet voice that Jessie barely heard it. He sounded penitent, but she was in no mood to care if he was remorseful now or not. She had given herself to him without reservation, and he had caused her physical pain! The place between her legs still throbbed!

"Yes, you hurt me! Of course you hurt me! You— you put that—that
thing
in me!"

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Through the darkness she caught the faintest glimmer of a smile. Then it vanished. Stuart caught her hand and raised it to his lips. Although Jessie tried to pull away, he wouldn't release it.

"Jess. Jessie." He pressed her palm to his lips, then gently kissed each knuckle. Jessie was too mentally and physically exhausted to engage in the combat she guessed it would take to get her hand returned to her. So she sat glowering at him as he played with her fingers.

"Will it help at all if I say I'm sorry?"

"No!"

"I didn't think so."

Stuart sighed. Releasing her hand, he fastened his breeches, then scooted backward until he was sitting with his back against the wall. Then, before Jessie realized what he was about, he caught her around the waist and pulled her onto his lap.

"Let me go!"

"Presently. Sit still, Jessie. I'm not going to hurt you."

"A trifle late to be promising that, isn't it?" The fine art of sneering was coming more and more easily to her.

"Will you let me explain?"

"What is there to explain? You—we—fornicated, and now it's over, and I want to go inside."

"We made love," he corrected her quietly.

Jessie snorted. Stuart shrugged. She could feel the movement of his shoulders with her back muscles, snuggled up against his chest as she was. Her now decently covered bottom was nestled against that part of him that had hurt her, and her legs were draped over his. It would have been a cozy posture—if he had 229

not had to hold her in place with his hands clamped around her wrists so that her arms formed an X across her chest.

"Maybe you fornicated," he said in her ear.
"I
made love."

"Love!" The single word was scoffing.

"Love. I love you, Jessie."

"Hah!"

There was a moment of silence. Then, astonishingly, Stuart chuckled. The sound was wry, but still it was, unmistakably, a chuckle.

"Do you know how many women—full-grown, sophisticated, very beautiful women—would have given their eyeteeth to hear me say that? But I bare my soul for the first time in my life to a wet-behind-the-ears miss, and what does the object of my passion say? 'Hah!' "

"I don't believe you!"

"Why would I lie?"

"To get me to—to—you know—again."

This time he laughed out loud. Despite her imprisoned wrists, Jessie managed to reward that infuriating chortle with an elbow to his ribs.

"Ow!"

"Stop laughing!"

"Oh, Jessie, I'm not laughing. At least, not at you. Would you please, for just a moment, use that very admirable brain you possess and answer me this: if all I wanted was to—fornicate, to use your word for it—do you really think I'd have trouble finding willing partners? You're more than lovely, darling, but ordinarily my taste does not run to just-hatched chicks."

"I am not a just-hatched chick!"

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"Were you lying when you told me you loved me? Maybe you just wanted to use me for—you know."

He was teasing her now. How could he laugh after what he had done? "That isn't funny!"

"This whole damned mess isn't funny. Jessie, you told me you love me. Did you mean it?"

Every traumatized nerve ending in her body screamed at her to say no, but Jessie found that, cuddled on his lap as she was with his voice warm and disturbing in her ear, she could not quite bring herself to lie about something as important as that.

"Yes!" The word emerged through gritted teeth.

"If you love me, why don't you believe me when I say I love you?" He sounded genuinely curious. Jessie shifted impatiently in his lap, only to find herself held tight. For a minute she had almost forgotten that he held her prisoner, so comfortable was she.

"Because you're so—so ..." Jessie's voice trailed off. It was impossible to put into words all the things Stuart was.

"So what?" He was not going to leave it alone. All right. She would tell him. She would spell the whole thing out for him, and let him maintain then that he loved her. For all he called her a just-hatched chick, she was not naive enough to believe that a man like Stuart could actually fall in love with the Yazoo Valley wild child. No doubt his disgusting male urges had driven him to fornicate with her, and he was seeking to ease her distress by dressing up in pretty words what had happened between them.

It was unnecessary. However unpleasant it might be, she would rather hear the truth than soothing lies.

"So handsome, and so smart, and so—so charming, and . . ." 231

"Stop, Jessie, you'll unman me." Despite the jesting note in his voice, she had the feeling that he meant it. Then he continued.

"Even if all that is true, why could I not love you?" Jessie chewed her lower lip. Her shortcomings were many, and always before in her life they had been used as ammunition to wound her. But this was Stuart. He had hurt her physically, but still she loved him more than anyone in the world. He must not pretend to love her if he didn't. It was important that there be truth between them, however bitter she might find it.

"Because I'm—I'm well enough, I suppose, but certainly no match for you when it comes to looks, and I've never been anywhere farther than Jackson, and I—I like dogs and horses better than people, and I don't know how to dress, or do my hair, or dance, or anything."

"Darling, did it never occur to you that you are seeing yourself through a mirror fashioned by your stepmother's spite?" The notion startled Jessie. She started to say something, but Stuart silenced her with a gesture. When he continued, his voice was very soft. "Shall I tell you what I see when I look at you? I see a young lady with hair the color of polished mahogany, masses of hair so thick that she could ride through the streets like Lady Godiva with her modesty intact. I see porcelain skin, big, innocent cocoa-brown eyes, and a face that's as delicate of feature as a cameo. I see gorgeous shoulders, breasts that are luscious enough to make any man worthy of the name lick his lips, and a waist—"