Firefly (47 page)

"I'm glad you're here."

Those green eyes took in every detail of her face, the high cheekbones flushed with nervous pink, the brown eyes wide and lustrous, the lips he had kissed so precious few times now parted just enough for her tongue to slip out and moisten them.  His own mouth was dry, inside and out.

"I wanted to see you," she managed to reply.

Searching for words and tripping over every single one he wanted to use, he stumbled until he found level ground.

"I meant to call on your mother today.  How is she?"

"She stayed in bed most of the day.  Papa removed the splint." Feelings she couldn't hide surfaced, and she turned away from him.

He moved behind her, placing one hand on her shoulder as though to turn her around, but he exerted no force.  He didn't need to.  Just his touch seemed to be enough.  She faced him again, her eyes lifting to his.  Now no words were necessary.

His hand slipped from her shoulder to her neck, sliding under a single strand of loose hair.  As his thumb caressed her temple and felt the racing pulse, his fingers cupped the back of her head.  She let his hand take the weight, and his clasp tightened.

"I want to kiss you, Julie, but I'm afraid."

"Afraid?"

"Afraid that it isn't what you want."

She had seen pain in his eyes before, and she had seen him cry, but the agony in his confession struck her with its intensity.  Yet when he tipped her face upward to meet his, his mouth was gentle, touching softly just the fullest part of her lips.  Warm breaths mingled in a single sigh.

His fingers fumbled with the knot of her hair, and sought the pins that held all that silver silk imprisoned.  One by one the tiny shackles clattered to the floor, and one by one the shining strands twisted free.

"So beautiful," he murmured, clasping a long hank to plant a kiss upon it.  A breath of rainwater and Pears soap filled his nostrils.  "Oh, Julie, you shouldn't be here, but I'm so glad you are."

He filled his arms with her, curled a hand to hold her head against his shoulder.  It fit so well there, as though it had been made expressly to lie in the hollow above his breast.  No doubt she heard his heart pounding, her ear pressed so tightly to him that he could feel the delicate whorls through his shirt.

She closed her eyes to hold in the tears.  She felt so safe.  No one could hurt her, neither Wilhelm with his threats and reminders, nor Hans with his hard hands and stinging belt.  If only it could always be this way.

"Are you crying?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

She tasted the words of her answer on the tip of her tongue, but they never went any further, for when she looked up again, he was waiting with an answer of his own.

This time his mouth covered hers possessively, driving all thought from her reeling brain.  When she reached her tongue out in tentative greeting to his, she felt his surprise and immediately withdrew.

"I...I'm sorry," she stammered with a bright blush.  "I thought ..."

"You thought exactly right.  Exactly."

He ran his fingers into her hair to loosen it further and to hold her head while he kissed her a third time, and he did not let her go.  When she responded, more hesitantly even than before, he welcomed her, gently pulling her tongue into his mouth to taste and discover.

He pushed her shawl from her shoulders and let it drop to the floor.  Now he could feel body heat through the soft fabric of her dress, and more.  As he slid his hand down her back, his sensitive fingertips distinguished the upper edge of a camisole, then the drawstring of her pantalettes under the waistband of a petticoat.  And beneath all that, Julie herself.  A Julie who would be warm and passionate and giving, as she always had been.

The hunger grew in him.  Now he tasted fully of her, sliding his tongue past hers to the edge of her teeth and beyond.  Thirstily he drank of the sweetness and craved more.  Her mouth open to him and her body clutched tightly to his were no longer enough to satisfy the long famine.  Starvation flooded his loins with familiar urgency.

He had wanted her before, but never like this.  The wanting was a pain, a fire, a screaming that filled him with emptiness.  Had she stood passive in his embrace, the fire might have remained controllable, but he knew there was frenzy in the way her arms encircled his waist and her fingers clutched at his shirt.  Frenzy, yes, but fear also.

Now it was Morgan who withdrew, though he carefully eased himself just far enough away to break the bond of that kiss.  Her eyes widened, and the tears spilled freely from them.  Tenderly he touched his lips to a salty ribbon on her cheek.

"Please, Julie, tell me why you're crying," he begged.  He had to know if she had come just for comfort or for another reason.  Did she know what she was doing to him?  He could not take advantage of her if she did not, and yet he hoped--almost prayed--that she did.

"No, I won't let you go," he reassured her when she clung even more tightly to him.  "Let's sit down and talk for a minute, all right?"

She nodded and sniffled and finally loosened her hold on his shirt long enough for him to lead her into the parlor, where some light from the kitchen filtered to cast soft shadows.

"If I were still a drinking man, I'd offer you some brandy or even a shot of whisky," he opened once he had her seated on the sofa.  "I don't even have any coffee left from supper."

"It's all right.  I don't need anything."

There, she was calmer now.  She displayed lingering agitation by twisting a fold of her skirt around her finger and by lowering her eyes, but the desperation seemed to have left her.

"Good.  Now, will you tell me why you came to see me this morning looking happier than I've ever seen you and now tonight you act as though the world has come to an end?"

"Because it has!" she wailed suddenly, and the words came in a rush.  "When I came to you this morning it was because I wanted to tell you I would refuse to marry Hans if you didn't want me to.  I was hoping you'd say something to put a halt to all the plans, but instead all you did was congratulate me.  That was the
last
thing I wanted!"

"Why didn't you say so?"

"Because you never gave me the chance!"

"But you looked so...so happy!  Damn it, Julie, what was I supposed to do?  A couple hours after Hans confronted me with the fact of your engagement, you came traipsing up to my back door dressed in that gorgeous blue blouse that Simon had told me was part of your trousseau.  You were positively radiant, Julie, the way any woman should be when she's going to marry a man she loves.  And that was exactly what I thought was going on!"

They were shouting at each other in whispers, yet still Julie paused before replying.  If she were discovered here--but she could not dwell on that.  Not now.

"I don't love him.  I hate him.  He beats the girls at Nellie's and he tried to beat me."

Morgan was on his feet at once, his hands clenching into fists held tightly to his sides.

"I'll kill him if he laid a hand on you, Julie.  I swear it."

She could still feel the welts and yet denied them.

"No, he didn't touch me," she whispered softly and extended a supplicating hand to bring Morgan beside her again.

They sat in silence for a moment or two, Morgan's arm finding its niche around Julie's shoulders and pulling her close.

"Then why did you buy all the dress material?" he asked, resting his cheek against her hair.  "Simon said it was for your trousseau."

"How did you know about that?"

"I was in the store.  But that doesn't answer my question."

Julie calmed herself and tried to explain without losing her temper.

"My mother told me to do it.  She even helped me with the sewing.  But I didn't buy it for a trousseau.  I wanted to... to look nice for you."

"But Simon said you charged it all to your father's account."

Her chin trembled with tears she battled to contain.

"I paid him back.  With Mr. Burton's gold piece."

"What?"

"It was all I had!  Or almost all.  The rest of it is here in my pocket.  Nine dollars and seventy-six cents.  Enough to get me to Mesa, maybe."

"Mesa!  What the hell do you want to go all the way to Mesa for?" Morgan thundered.

"Well, what am I supposed to do?  Go ahead and marry Hans?  My father certainly won't let me stay at home if I refuse to marry Hans, and even if I did, I'd spend the rest of my life waiting on my mother.  She's taken to her bed again, and I don't think she's ever going to get well.  Whatever medicine you gave her worked for a while, but after the other night, she's just as sick as she was when we came here."

Morgan lowered his voice again, but with an effort he wasn't sure he could maintain.

"I told you your mother isn't sick.  She's putting on an act, though I don't know why.  And you said yourself she helped you with the sewing Saturday."  Then remembering her intention to leave Plato, he readdressed the question.  "You still haven't told me what you plan to do in Mesa."

"Does it matter?"

"Yes, damn it, it matters!
You
matter!"

"But I didn't matter enough this morning.  You were going to let me marry Hans." She regretted the childish petulance in that statement, but she meant it anyway.

"Only because I thought it was what
you
wanted. 
I
didn't want it, and if I had known then that you were against it, too, I'd have helped you stop it.  Just as I intend to stop you from leaving this town."

In the breathless pause that followed, he understood what she had so far left unsaid.  Perhaps it was just her presence in his house at this ungodly hour that explained her desperation.

"Will you stay if I ask you to?" he asked quietly.  "I need you, Julie.  Don't leave me, please."

If she answered, he didn't hear.  The throbbing of his own pulse drowned out any other sound as he gathered her once more into his arms and crushed her to him.  Now the desperation was his.  He tried to communicate it to her in the way he held her.

Mouths met hungrily, then parted to gasp for life-giving air.  Morgan's hands found themselves seeking the fine silken tangle of her hair and then he buried his face in it.  The fragrance intoxicated him, but unlike the whisky that had deadened his senses for so long, this gentle liqueur aroused him to a feverish delirium of desire.  Only one thing was missing, and he knew he could add the single ingredient needed to make the most potent ambrosia in existence.

He kissed her ear, letting his lips tug softly on the lobe until she sighed with mounting passion.  He could tell she fought it.  There was no reason to delay, to tease, to torment.  One more kiss, this time to her jaw, and then he told her.

"I love you, Julie."

She stiffened in disbelief.  He had to believe that, refused to accept any other possible explanation.