Kissing in the Dark (47 page)
Read Kissing in the Dark Online
Authors: Wendy Lindstrom
His groin tightened and his breath hissed out.
She stroked her hands up his chest. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispered, driving him mad with her fondling and teasing. “But I can’t stay away from you any longer. You might have to take a little discomfort with your pleasure.”
“Gladly.” He shook with a need to consume her, and yet he held back and kept the kiss tender. Love wasn’t for the fainthearted. But it was worth the wounds. It was worth every moment of doubt and pain. Because to live and love, one had to be willing to bleed.
“It’s been forever since you’ve kissed me,” she whispered against his mouth.
“I couldn’t kiss you and not make love to you.”
“You can do both now.”
“I will.” He trailed his tongue across her lips and filled his palm with her breast. `All night,” he said, loving how she smelled of blooming flowers and scented oils and the good rich earth that filled her greenhouse.
She gazed up at him, her eyes sparkling in the lantern light. “It could be a long night. I brought some oil.”
“Gads! Not the smelly lavender, I hope.”
“Better than lavender,” she said, in a warm, sexy tone he’d not heard her use before, a tone of openness and confidence and trust. “I mixed up a special combination, just for us.”
“This better not be your sneaky way of treating my shoulder with another one of your concoctions.”
She smiled, the glow of happiness on her face a feast for his eyes, her lush lips a temptation to his mouth. “You know what I thought of the first time you kissed me?” she asked.
“That I was taking advantage of you.”
She shook her head. “I thought I’d kissed the sun. I didn’t want to leave the warmth of your arms or lose the thrilling heat of your mouth on mine.” She stroked his jaw. “I need your light, Duke. I need your love.”
“You have my heart and my soul, sweetheart.”
Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Can I have your body too?”
“Only if you promise to stop your doctoring.”
“Well, I thought I’d stretch your muscles before we—”
“God save me!” He growled and playfully bit her neck. “I can put your lovely hands to better use, sweetheart.”
Her arms circled his waist in invitation, her soft laugh echoing off the stones and into his heart, and love was no longer a mystery out of reach, beyond his wildest dream.
Faith
was love. She brought companionship and passion and meaning to his life. All the struggles and sacrifices and lessons were worthwhile. Their future would be an amazing journey filled with family, laughter, passion. Giving his heart to Faith had changed him, altered his too-rigid way of seeing the world, and taught him what it meant to love, to be a husband, a father, and a better man—a complete man.
And their journey was just beginning.
END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Fredonia residents drilled the nation’s first natural gas well in 1821, and laid pipes to convey the gas to an old hotel and several stores in the tiny New York State village near the shores of Lake Erie.
In 1871 Alva Colburn drilled a gas well on Mill Street (now Norton Place) with the hope of running his first grist mill machinery by gas, but the gas was insufficient. Mr. Colburn built a raceway (a channeled watercourse) from the dam, which was one of the largest along the Canadaway Creek, to his mill. The amount of water in the raceway (referred to as a pond in this story) was controlled by a head gate, allowing Colburn to use a large water wheel as power for grinding grain. Later on a boiler room was added and steam power was used. Mr. Colburn’s sons eventually took over the mill, and a few years later, two of them moved to McPherson, Kansas, to build a flour mill.
To serve my story, I sent all four Colburn brothers to Kansas in 1879, and brought Faith Wilkins to town as the new owner of Colburn’s Grist Mill property, which she promptly turned into a greenhouse.
For the sake of accuracy, Fredonia is a village in the town of Pomfret located in Chautauqua County (despite my loose terminology in this story). The county sheriff in 1879 was Leander S. Phelps, but I invented the details of how a sheriff did his job. Everything about Syracuse, except the name of the city, is fiction.
Japan was a reclusive nation until 1853 when Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States Navy sailed gunships into Tokyo harbor. Japan opened itself up to trade with the U.S., and in 1869, settlers with The Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony were among the first to arrive from Japan. The 1880 Census shows a total of 148 Japanese in the United States. The Japanese geisha I smuggled aboard the Commodore’s ship is a product of my imagination.
The song “Kissing in the Dark” was written by George Cooper (lyrics) and Steven Foster (music) in 1863. Damon’s Band was from Dunkirk, but I don’t know if the band was a string quartet.
Thank you for indulging the small liberties I’ve taken with the setting and history of Fredonia—a wonderfully romantic place for Faith and Duke Grayson to fall in love and live happily ever after.
—W.L.
o0o
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