The Endless Forest (46 page)

She heard herself sigh.

“That bad?” He was smiling, but there was a wariness about it.

What an odd thing marriage was. Two people who could—by laws of man and God both—do what they pleased together, who liked and even believed that they loved each other, though those words hadn’t been spoken out loud. Who had spent a good part of the previous day wrapped together on a settle, trying to stop doing what they now could not start.

She said the first thing that came to mind. “This butter is very good.”

“It is,” he agreed. And then: “But you’re meant to eat it, you know. It won’t do much as a face cream.”

And before she could raise a hand to her face, he leaned toward her and licked the corner of her mouth clean. Just that simply every muscle in her body flexed toward him, and her mouth opened on a silent sigh.

For a long time they kissed in that awkward position. Plates on their laps, side by side, his body turned toward hers and his head canted. Daniel smiled against her mouth and broke away to take the plates and put them aside. Then in one fluid movement he turned back to her and took her down onto the bed.

And this was what she had hoped for. Kissing Daniel was something wondrous and strange; serious business, certainly, but not a humorless one. Even now his smile drew her in, and she caught herself laughing.

At one point he left her for what could have been no more than three seconds, long enough for her to take stock of the way her body was reacting to him; the heavy thud of her pulse in her wrists and throat; her mouth, already swollen, and most disconcerting, how damp she was in places that had never perspired before. Then he was back, two fingers thick with butter.

“What—” she said, but he had already smeared it over her lower lip and down her neck to the base of her throat. When he kissed her this time his tongue touched hers and the bright taste of new butter blossomed between them.

He worked his way down and down, nipping and licking and drawing her flesh into his mouth. His amazing mouth, so warm and tender and fierce. It robbed her of her ability to draw a breath. She moved to push him away—just for a moment, just for the chance to let her mind catch up to her body—and then froze when her right hand encountered the jut of a shoulder beneath the sling he wore to protect his ruined arm.

She looked into his eyes and for that moment the playfulness was gone. He said, “As long as I don’t put weight on it or lift anything heavy I should be equal to—this.”

“I should hope so,” Martha said, and then blushed and blushed again when he laughed. He rubbed his face against her breast, and why did it seem so natural? If anyone had described such a thing to her she would have been—

Intrigued.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t look away. You never need apologize to me. I like that you’re curious. Do you want to touch my arm? You can, you know. You can touch me anywhere.”

It was something he wanted her to do, and so Martha ran her fingers lightly from elbow to wrist, tracing the shape inside the sling. “That doesn’t hurt?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “You couldn’t hurt me, not like that.”

Impulsively she bowed her head to kiss the injured hand. Then Daniel pulled her back up so they were face-to-face.

The next kiss was so deep that Martha thought she might melt into a puddle. The soft, often washed cotton of her night rail felt like sackcloth
against her skin, so that it seemed the most natural and important thing in the world to rid herself of it. Daniel helped her, nudged her this way and that until he could lift the gown up over her head and raised arms.

“You have beautiful breasts.” He used the tips of his fingers to trace around a nipple in a hypnotic circle that made her arch toward him.

“I have freckles,” she said, breathlessly.

“And I intend to make myself familiar with every one of them. For example, right here.”

Oh, the things he did with his mouth. The licking and tugging and soft suckling went on and on until she gasped and would have turned away, except he had spread his hand on her back to hold her there, where he wanted her. She was the sole object of Daniel’s attention, and she burned with it.

Martha found herself lifting her hips, something that surely must mark her for a wanton. Except he liked her like this; he had said so. She needn’t pretend.

The feel of him, the rough beard and the calluses on his fingertips and the muscles that clenched and rolled under his skin, the expanse of his back, these things wound her up in a fog that she might get lost in. And still she wanted more. She wanted everything.

“Come,” he whispered against her mouth. “Will you come to me now?”

She nodded, though the truth was she was sad to have the kissing part over so quickly. Men didn’t much like kissing, her newly married friend Sally Roth had told her. Oh, they would kiss if that’s what it took to put a wife in a receptive mood, Sally said. But once that goal was achieved there would be no more kisses until he wanted to start over again.

“Like a highway toll,” said Sally. “One he will shirk if he can.”

Daniel pulled away suddenly and looked her in the face.

“Where is your mind?” he asked. “You went away there suddenly.”

So she told him about Sally and Sally’s pronouncements on the proclivities of men.

Daniel laughed out loud.

“It’s not true, then?” Martha said. She was embarrassed to sound so eager for an answer.

“It’s not true,” he said. “Or maybe it’s true for some men, but not for me. I like kissing. Or better said, I like kissing you. A lot.”

“Oh,” Martha said. “Good.”

His mouth twitched as though the effort not to laugh cost him dearly. “While we’re talking,” he said, “are there other mysteries you’d like cleared up?”

“Dozens of them,” Martha said. “But I’m happy to wait and see if I find the answers on my own. I’ll let you know if I run into any difficulties.”

She shrieked when he grabbed her and pulled her up against his chest, both of them kneeling now in the middle of the bed. She was entirely naked but he still had his breeches on, though they had slid down his hips. That was her last observation for a good while, because he seemed intent on demonstrating to her how very seriously he took this kissing business.

Poor Sally, who had married her father’s law clerk for his reliable ways and calm good sense.

“You’re thinking again,” he said. And: “I can fix that.”

He moved her on the bed, nudging gently as he tasted and rubbed and suckled, her flesh pebbling and flushing hot with his attention. Then oddly enough she was lying crosswise on the bed with her legs dangling over the side, pillows under her head and shoulders. Daniel stood before her and, bending at the waist, he covered her. Hip to breast she felt him hovering there, with his weight on his feet. It left his good arm free for things other than holding himself over her.

And he made excellent use of that good right arm and hand and every finger on it. Except he hadn’t yet touched her where the ache was worst. She was wondering if she dare ask him for such a thing when his hand moved up her thigh into the soft folds of her sex. At the same moment he drew her nipple into his mouth and suckled so hard that something deep in her belly flexed and began to flow. The sound she made shocked her but she could no more be silent than she could stop breathing.

There was no place to put her legs; she drew her knees up and then dropped them, ran her heels down his thighs rock hard with tensed muscle and she realized first, that he had lost his breeches somewhere along the way and second, that she had wrapped her legs around him and his sex was pressed up against hers.

At that moment he let her nipple go with a soft plop and she saw
down the length of her body to his. Her new husband, naked and fully aroused. Clearly what they were about to do must be possible, but now the mechanics struck her as absurd.

“Dear Lord.” She put her head back and closed her eyes. Then Daniel was beside her, flat on his back.

“I meant to distract you,” he said.

She burped a small laugh. “I have this image in mind, of somebody trying to put a cucumber through a buttonhole.”

She pressed a hand to her mouth, and giggled anyway.

Daniel lifted himself up over her on his good arm, his expression blank. Then his mouth twitched and they were laughing, both of them, like loons.

She said, “Is it hopeless, do you think?”

Daniel cupped her face. His smile was so open and sincere she had to love him just for that. He said, “I’ll do my best to get you ready.”

She wanted to ask what he meant, how it was possible to make her ready and what that had to do with the pain she knew was coming. But then they had talked enough, and Daniel’s expression was so focused and intent that she was drawn in and curious and eager, less worried about pain than she was fearful of disappointing him.

At first the lightest of touches, nothing more than the brushing of his mouth against her neck and cheek and brow. Then his teeth nipped at her earlobe, worried her lower lip. Before she realized what she was about, she reached up, grabbed one earlobe, and brought his mouth to hers so she could kiss him properly, a tender kiss that made her whole body soften and open to him.

Because she did want him; that was the simplest truth.

He moved, his mouth sliding down her chest, back to her breasts where he lingered until she was gasping, and down farther and farther until he was kneeling on the floor, his head buried between her legs.

Her breath hitched and caught as he spread her flesh with two curious fingers and then kissed her, hot and openmouthed, where she had been expecting an invasion of another kind.

Martha moved under his touch, twisted and opened, wrapped herself around him.

She was trying to catch her breath when he got to his feet to stand between her legs and press himself against her. Arched over her, he
whispered into her ear, his voice deep and sweet, every word as powerful as his touch. He told her things she never realized she wanted to hear, about her own body and the feel of her skin and the taste of her. Salty sweet, like the sea.

She said, “I’m ready now. I think I’m ready.” That she could blush in this situation was a mystery, but she felt her color climbing.

He said, “I’ll be the judge of that.” And he went back to his work, though she was already dissolving like sugar in hot water.

And when it was time, when the urge to lift her hips to welcome him was irresistible, then he came to her. Sealed their marriage by penetrating her body with his own, stretched her to the bursting point and filled her to overflowing.

The pain was sharp, upward-spiraling, all-consuming, and then it fell away to a throbbing ache. He inhaled her cry and spoke to her, his voice reedy with the strain, and breathless.
Hold
and
wait
and
feel me. Feel me inside you
.

With his forehead pressed to hers she could not hide what she was feeling, or ignore the things she saw in his face. Concern, worry, and a flickering of pleasure that caught and flared. His whole body trembled but he held himself still while she shifted and adjusted herself around him. He throbbed within her like a heart grown suddenly too large.

When the pain began to fade Martha let a long hitching breath go. She realized then that his hand was on her breast, cupping it as gently as an egg. One finger traced the lower curve and then he opened his hand and touched her nipple with his palm. A strange sound came from her own throat and he dropped his head and drew that nipple into his mouth. Her muscles began to twitch and spasm around him and her hips rose of their own volition as if to ask for more.

He pressed deeper and deeper still and Martha cried out not in pain so much as welcome.

He moved inside her, and the dance began.

When the clock struck eleven Martha startled awake. Daniel, sitting cross-legged beside her on the bed, watched it happen.

His own sleep had lasted maybe a quarter hour, and then the pain had roused him as effectively as a sharp stick to the ribs. It was the way of
things, and any vague idea that this time might be different had to be put away.

While he waited for Martha to wake he tried to sort through the logistics of getting back to Paradise and the problem of the weather, what the best way would be to come face-to-face with Jemima, where they would live, if Martha would want to be so far from the village. These things occupied his mind but it was the sight of Martha asleep that eased him as the pain ebbed.

Her plait had come undone and her hair was spread around her and over one breast. The rise and fall of her breathing was enough to make his flesh stir, impervious, apparently, to both pain and common sense. At least when it came to Martha.

He had had many years’ practice subduing his natural urges and he drew on that now. It would be brutish to expect more of her, as tender as she must be. Hours in the saddle would only make that worse. It might be days before he could touch her again. Long after they were back in Paradise and had taken up housekeeping.

When he woke in the morning she would be there, and when he came through the door at the end of the day, she would be there. For as long as they lived they would sleep in the same bed and eat together at the same table.

On the long ride to Johnstown Daniel had asked himself if he was sure about what he was doing. If maybe he had a picture of Martha in his mind that had nothing to do with the truth, out of loneliness and the need to have a woman in his bed. But then, he knew where to find companionship when the need was unmanageable. Twice a year, at most, he had sought that kind of release. At Good Pasture there was a woman who welcomed him warmly, a woman he liked, but one he rarely thought about in the long months between visits. The time they spent together had never been anything like the last few hours with Martha, who was unschooled and anxious but who came to him without hesitation. She had been through a lot in the past weeks, but she always held tight to her courage and her wit.

A cucumber through a buttonhole.

He pressed his mouth hard, determined not to wake her by laughing.