The Endearment (47 page)

"Anna," he said against her, "I have loved you longer than you know."

She leaned her head back and her eyes slid closed as he cradled his head against her and held her with one arm while he ran a hand warmly, firmly, possessively, from the hollow of her back to the hollows behind her knees, then up again.

"How long, Karl?" she asked greedily, drifting in sensuousness while his hands played over her. "Tell me ... Tell me everything you dreamed of telling me long before I came to you." Her voice was a joy-wracked whisper as his hands continued their reacquaintance with her curves.

"I have loved you when I did not know you existed, Anna. I have loved the dream of you. I have begun loving you before I left my mother's arms. I have loved you while I find this land to which I would bring you and while I cut its timbers to build this home for you and while I reap my grains for you and build my fire for you ... I know all my life you are waiting somewhere for me."

"Karl, stand up," she whispered, she begged. "I have been waiting so long to feel you against me again."

He rose to his full height, running his hands up her legs, up her hips, up her ribs. She was waiting with seeking mouth for his return.

Together they clung and touched: faces, hair, shoulders, breasts, tongues, hips. Even the hollow of his spine was hers at last as she ran her hand down inside the back of his pants. "I can't believe you are letting me touch you at last," she said breathily, her voice a strange thing in both their ears: aroused, eager, throaty.

"Never ask. You never have to ...
 
 
Never, Anna." His eyes were closed, his breathing strained.

"Karl, how I used to watch you when you would lean to build the fire, and think of running my hands over you this way."

"And I watched you in those britches and wanted to put my hands here ..." He fondled her breast, her stomach, "and here ... and here ..."

"You never have to ask either, Karl," she whispered, while his hands made free with her.

"Anna, I want to build a fire now. Do you want to watch me lean to build a fire?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"Always have I dreamed of a fire."

"Yes ... yes ..." she whispered, the waiting now a joyous agony.

"But I do not want you to ask anything while I do it."

"I won't ask, Karl," she whispered against his lips. "Go build your fire for me, but if I cannot ask, you cannot either."

"Only one thing, Anna, but now ..."

Instead of asking what, she moved sinuously against him, blending her curves against his while her body promised what her words did not.

"Pull in our latchstring, Anna, and close our curtains that I did not think we needed."

He had to put her from him, turning her toward the door while he went to the fireplace and knelt before it. He shaved golden curls from the hardwood logs. And he heard the swish of one curtain after another whispering upon their willow withe curtain rods. He leaned to touch steel to flint and heard the gentle rap of the hazelnut swinging upon its string against the sturdy oak panels of his door. Keeping his face to the hearth he laid kindling to the growing flame, hearing the rustle of cornhusks behind him, then a strange brushing sound that whispered along the floor. But he gazed into the fire, kneeling upon one knee until her hand slid slowly down from his neck onto his shoulder, then down, down across his back and into the back of his pants to pull his shirttail up. She caressed his warm skin there, fanning her fingers upon him until he closed his eyes to the fire, basking instead in the heat of her touch.

"How I watched these shoulders in the sun," she whispered, raising his shirt as high as it would go, riding her hands up his back, then lowering her lips to the warm skin near a shoulder blade. Hunkered there on one knee, an arm cast out loosely, he dropped his forehead onto his biceps as she touched her tongue to his exposed back. "How I watched them, you'll never know."

He pivoted to face her then, finding her on both knees behind him, kneeling upon the heavy buffalo robe she had dragged over from the bed.

His hands moved onto her hips, pressing seductively. "Did you watch them like I watched these hips, bending over in those britches?" Now his hands swam upward along her ribs to her breasts again. "And how I wondered if I was mistaken about what was inside that shirt of your brother's."

She pressed against his palm, heat rising everywhere through her body now. "Were you mistaken?" she asked.

He had a handful of her firm breast, yet he answered, "There is only one way to find out when memory is dim."

He teased her buttons while she took lipfuls of his mouth, nipping gently at his lower lip.

"Memory can't recall what the eyes haven't seen, Karl," she whispered, braving a hand upon the inside of his knee as he knelt before her.

"But you have worked so hard on your pretty gingham dress. It is a shame it got so little use." Buttons came open one by breathtaking one.

"It would rather lie peacefully on the floor than get wrinkled and crushed," she whispered against his lips.

"Would it?" he asked through his kiss.

"You said no questions, Karl."

"These are not questions, Anna, these are answers."

Then Karl's hand found the warmth of her breast and followed the valley between her ribs to the warm, low place that hungered for his touch.

Her eyes blinked once, slowly, as the contact of his hand swept the breath from her. Open-eyed again, she moved her hand to cup him, taking her turn at answers.

They leaned into each other's hands. Karl's moved exploringly. Anna's followed suit. They kissed, touching, learning each other, asking questions with only their hands.

"Warm ..." Karl murmured in her ear.

"Hard ..." Anna murmured in answer.

"Beautiful ..." he said, knowing before he saw.

"Beautiful ..." she answered, knowing, too.

They lost their balance and clung. They regained it and separated, looking deeply into each other's faces by the fire that blazed. And then there were only vivid sensations.

Light and heat accompanying his hands as they moved down the remaining dress buttons, then fell away in invitation as he knelt with knees slightly apart before her. Heat and light on the movement of her fingers as they opened the line of his shirt buttons, then dropped obediently to her sides to wait. Gilded shoulder as he pushed the dress back and the fireplay danced along one side of her body. Golden skin as she answered by taking his shirt in her hands and wresting it from his shrug. Adoring eyes as he took the hem of her shift in both hands and pulled it upward until she raised her arms. Roving glances as they knelt, resplendent in the fire's light, letting the goodness build. Time holding its breath as he slowly plied her last barrier, curving his palms to the shape of her hips as he rustled her naked. Time beating at her breast as he dropped his hands to his thighs again, kneeling before her expectantly, waiting in the gold hue of the burning logs. The force of a long summer's love, moving her to reach out to this man and free him from the last restraint of woven threads.

And then there were only two lovers, kneeling in the glow that limned their bodies in fireshine, that splashed a half of each with orange, that picked the radiance from one pair of eyes and sent it dancing to another, eyes that wandered and worshiped, widened and wondered.

When Karl at last raised his eyes to Anna's, he beheld there a breathless wonder to match his own. Moved by it he forgot himself and spoke to her in Swedish. The lifting mellifluousness fell from his tongue as a song in Anna's ears, although she did not know what he said.

How ever could she have taunted him for this mellow, musical richness? It was, she knew now, a part of Karl she loved as much as his muscled body, his golden face, his patience and inherent goodness. She suddenly wished to understand the songful words he spoke to her in such a reverent tone.

"What did you say, Karl?" she asked, her misty eyes lifting to his.
    

Running a finger beneath her jaw, down the rim of light that gilded her chin, neck, breast, stomach, thigh and knee, he spoke this time in English. "Anna, you are beautiful."

"No, say it in Swedish. Teach me to say it in Swedish."

She watched his lips form the strange sounds. He had beautiful, bowed lips, a little full, very sensual now as he repeated, "Du ar vacker, Anna."

Touching his lips, searching his face, she repeated, "Du ar vacker, Karl."

With her fingertips still touching his skin, he said, "Jag alskar dig." The way his eyes closed when the words were gone, the way he pursed his lips and cupped her palm hard against his mouth, she knew even before he repeated it, what it meant.

"Jag alskar dig, Anna," he said, the beautiful pronunciation, Onnuh, making her heart dance crazily.

"Jag alskar dig," Anna said softly, her Swedish sounding Yankee, but the meaning ringing forth, no matter what the language. "What did I say, Karl?" she asked in a

whisper.

"You said that you love me."

She took his face between her hands to kiss it. "Jag alskar dig," she repeated, "Jag alskar dig, Jag alskar dig, Karl," planting fevered kisses across his skin until she again forced his eyes closed.

Their warm flesh met. He took her tumbling down and over, until she felt soft fur below, firm flesh above, sandwiched between the two textures.

He clasped her, caressed her, kissing, learning what pleasured her when she smiled and nuzzled, then arched and moaned. With hands and tongue he brought her to a precipice where she trembled, waiting for the plunge that would carry her over. But the low sounds from her throat told him then to play her more slowly, extending the pleasure they found, each in the other.

He rolled over onto his back and stretched, taking every touch she gave, savoring the feel of her hands and lips becoming intimate with his honed body.

And then Anna slipped down and lay atop him, pressing warm and firm against him with breasts, belly, hips. Her braids had fallen down, the strands of her hair like filaments of the fire itself, surrounding her girlish face. He found a loose end, his fingers working it looser while she lay above him, kissing his neck and chest, meandering downward, downward. Soon he forgot her braids.

The two of them curled their bodies together, changed directions, kissing, tasting, trying to get enough, unable to. They gave each part of themselves freely, letting their senses expand beneath the joy. And when they hovered near their climaxes, righted again, shivering with anticipation, he made her say it one more time to compound his joy.

"Tell me again, Anna," he uttered fiercely, one hand twined in her hair, the other touching her depths as she moved rhythmically against it. "Tell me you love me like I love you."

"Jag alskar dig. I love you, Karl," she said, almost savagely, underlining the meaning of this act they now shared.

Once again they found the remembered magnificence from their first time, the grace in the blending of their bodies as he entered her, the litheness of movement as they flowed into a rhythm of mutual thrust and ebb.

They passed the bounds of language, creating a new one of their own, built of lovesounds--wordless murmurs, racked breathing, throbbing silences, pleasured moans. When their strength and suppleness brought them to the limits of fulfillment, they spoke the universal language: the deep, masculine shudder and groan, the strangled female response. Then together they collapsed, spent, in sated silence, with only the pop and titter of the fire sharing their communion.

He rested in her, at peace after all this time. She stroked the damp hair at the nape of his neck. His shoulders were drying now, beneath the touch of her fingers and the fire. His mouth rested in the depth of her neck.

When they had rested so for a long time, she spoke to the ceiling where the shadows danced. "Karl, do you know what you are like?"

He spoke to her neck. "What am I like?"

She wondered if she dared tell him, yet it was there on her mind, had been there since she first touched him, since before she had first touched him.

"You're like your axe handle when you have just laid it down." He braced himself up to look into her face. "Like my axe handle?" he asked, puzzled.

"Smooth, warm, long, hard, curved ... and like you once said, springy."

"Not any more, I am not," he said smiling.

"I knew you would tease me if I told you."

"Yes," he said, kissing her nose. "From now on I shall tease my Anna so she will never forget the feel of an axe handle."

"Oh, Karl ..." But her laugh came splashing.

"How I have missed that laugh," he said.

"How I've missed your teasing."

They smiled into each other's faces.

"Oh, Anna, you are something," he said, gloriously happy. He let his eyes wander all over her face and hair.

"What am I?" she probed.

But he could not liken her to anything he knew. Nothing else was as good as she. "I do not know what you are. I only know what you are not. You are not Swedish, and so you must not put these awful braids in that Irish hair of yours ever again. I tried to get them out, but I have only made them worse."