You Belong to My Heart (7 page)

Mary Ellen didn’t dare open her eyes. She was now totally naked. Her face burned like fire, and she suddenly wondered if he would find her ugly. All the breath left her body when, still on his knees before her, Clay’s arms come around her and he laid his cheek against her bare belly.

Mary Ellen’s eyes flew open. She looked down on the dear dark head bent to her, released a soft whimper of pent-up emotion, grabbed handfuls of his midnight hair, and pressed his handsome face closer.

Once again, for a long silent moment they stayed just as they were. She standing naked in the sunlight, her hands in his hair, her eyes shining with love and excitement. He kneeling before her in his white linen underwear, his hot cheek laid against her flat stomach, the restless flutter of his long thick eyelashes tickling her sensitive flesh.

Young and naive though she was, Mary Ellen knew that right now, right here, this minute, on this sweltering Sunday afternoon, she had measureless power over Clay Knight. For the first time she perceived fully the fierce intensity of his total devotion. With a flash of stunning clarity, she understood that he not only loved and desired her, he idolized her, would do anything for her.

Anything at all.

She knew beyond a doubt that if she commanded him to stay on his knees and worship at her feet, he would do it. She knew as well that if she forbade him to touch her, he would obey. The newfound knowledge filled Mary Ellen with a mixture of great joy and greater fear.

Even naked as she was now, she knew she was as safe as a helpless infant in Clay’s care.

If
she wanted to be safe.

If that safety were forfeited, if Clay made love to her here by the river today, she would have no one to blame but herself. Clay would never take advantage of her; that’s how much he loved her.

As if he knew what was going through her mind, Clay’s dark head slowly lifted. He looked up at her, and there was so much love and tenderness shining from the depths his beautiful silver eyes, she would have given him anything he asked for.

He said softly, “I love you more than anyone or anything on this earth. I want you so much I hurt, but I won’t lay a hand on you if you don’t want me to.”

Trusting him, wanting him, loving him with all her young heart, she said, “Make love to me, Clay.”

“Mary. My sweet Mary,” he murmured. He cupped her hips with his hands and drew her down to kneel before him.

Clay put his arms around her, gathered her into his close embrace, and kissed her. When their lips separated, he said, “I’m a virgin just as you are, sweetheart.”

“I’m glad,” she said, and meant it.

“Me, too. But I don’t know how to love you the way you deserve to be loved.”

“We’ll learn together,” she told him sweetly, “just as we learned to kiss.”

And so they did.

Clay reached around Mary Ellen, tugged the red-and-white tablecloth off the picnic hamper, and spread it out on the grass. They lay down on the cloth. Mary Ellen stretched out on her back, Clay lay on his side, turned to her, his weight supported on an elbow. There in the hot, blinding June sunlight they kissed and touched and murmured sweet words of love.

Neither was quite sure when Clay’s white linen underwear came off; all they knew was that it was twice as thrilling to kiss and hold each other close when he was as naked as she.

As hot and excited as he was, Clay was nervous, anxious. More afraid than he’d ever been in his life. He wanted desperately to please Mary, to give her great pleasure, but he wasn’t at all comfortable that he knew how. He kissed her, and while his lips were on hers, his dark hand cupped a soft pale breast, his fingertips plucked gently at the budding crest.

As unschooled as Mary to the ways of love, he was terrified he would hurt her. At the same time he was so aroused, he felt as if he couldn’t wait another moment to take her completely. Cautioning himself to slow down, to take his time for Mary’s sake, he kept kissing her, caressing her.

Mary Ellen clung to Clay, stirred by his heated kisses, tingling to the gentle touch of his hands, thrilled by the heavy hardness pulsing against her bare belly. She began to undulate against him, and Clay sensed she was as ready as he.

He lifted his dark head, gazed into her passion-bright eyes. “Mary, are you…”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”

Clay kissed her again. And as he kissed her his hand swept down over her stomach, raked softly, gently, through the crisp white-blond curls, and went between her legs. Mary Ellen’s eyes closed when, with only his middle finger, he touched her. Clay’s mouth lifted from hers, and he watched her beautiful face as he caressed her, his finger slipping and sliding easily in the silky wetness flowing from her.

Mary Ellen’s back arched. She gasped and squirmed with pleasure, her eyes shut tightly, her face aflame. And she wondered if it would feel as good to him if she touched him the way he was touching her.

Her eyes opened and she looked up at Clay. She said, “I want to touch you, Clay.”

Afraid he would explode in involuntary climax if she touched him, he said, “No, Mary, I—”

“Yes,” she insisted, pushed his hand away, and rolled to a sitting position. “I want to make you feel good.”

Clay gave in, stretched out on his back, and watched with in-held breath as Mary shyly wrapped her fingers around his thrusting masculinity. She held him very gently, as if afraid she would break him. Awed by the feel, the size, of him, she quickly warmed to this new exercise in lovemaking, letting her fingers slide slowly up and down the length of him.

Clay suffered silently in sweet agony.

His heart hammered, and beads of perspiration dotted his lip and hairline and pooled in the hollow of his throat. He wanted to give her ample opportunity to explore and play to her heart’s content, but his body couldn’t stand it. Abruptly he tore her hand away, rolled up from the ground, and pressed her onto her back.

Anxiously he moved between her pale thighs and urged her legs wider apart. Then, murmuring, “I love you, Mary,” he thrust swiftly into her. She winced in shock and pain. He felt the tearing, the tightness, and knew he was hurting her. Yet he couldn’t stop, no matter how badly he wanted to.

It was as if the hard, throbbing flesh he’d buried deep inside her had a mind all its own. It completely ignored the tears spilling from Mary’s eyes and her obvious torture. It ignored his own silent commands to pull out and inflict no more pain on her. It would
not
listen. Controlling him completely, it kept pounding swiftly, deeply, into her soft wet warmth until a great explosion of heat ended its forceful aggression.

Clay groaned loudly in his ecstasy, and Mary Ellen, watching his dark, contorted face, wondered if she were hurting him.

He collapsed atop her and immediately began telling her how sorry he was he’d hurt her, how he’d make it up to her.

“In time I’ll be a better lover,” he told her. “I’ll learn how to give you the kind of joy you gave to me.

“Lying here in your arms is joy enough,” she said, stroking his damp silky hair, his smooth shoulders, his perspiration-streaked back.

When he calmed they went into the water, and Clay carefully, patiently, bathed Mary Ellen, his dark face a study in loving concern. When both were clean and she assured him that there was no lingering pain, they began to play the way they had when they were children.

They raced each other across the sheltered inlet, then dove under the surface and did all sorts of underwater acrobatics. Out in the center of the pool they surfaced, coughing and laughing and spitting water.

Mary Ellen squealed loudly when Clay caught her by her hair as it lay spread out on the water’s surface like a shimmering golden fan. She slapped his hand away and twisted free, then lunged forward, put her hands atop his dark head, and dunked him, laughing. He tugged on her waist and drew her under the water with him. He pulled her all the way down to the sandy bottom. And kissed her. Both got water in their mouths.

They shot to the surface and kissed again. Mary Ellen looped her arms around Clay’s neck. He drew her slender legs around his waist and clasped his wrists beneath her bottom.

When they got out of the water, they hurried to the spread red-and-white cloth and flung themselves onto their backs. Holding hands, they lay there and let the hot June sun dry their dripping wet bodies.

They stayed all afternoon in their private little hideaway. They sampled the array of foods from the wicker basket, laughing as they fed each other figs and grapes and sugared strawberries. Full and happy, they napped in the sunny peaceful silence of that golden summer day, two beautiful, healthy young animals, naked and unashamed in paradise.

Everything was perfect.

But while they slept the sky above them changed.

Dark clouds formed in the clear blue heavens, and the hot sun disappeared.

Clay awakened with a start as an ominous chill skipped down his naked spine.

“What is it?” Mary Ellen asked, roused by the shuddering of his slim brown body against hers.

Clay didn’t answer. Trembling, he wrapped his arms around her extra tightly, feeling strangely uneasy. He was frightened and didn’t know why or what of. He crushed Mary Ellen to him as if she might somehow be torn from his arms.

“What is it, Clay?” she asked, feeling his heart race against her bare breasts. “Tell me.”

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just I love you so much it scares me.”

I
T ARRIVED THE VERY
next day.

Overnight, the dispatch came upriver. Shortly before sunrise on Monday morning, a messenger knocked loudly on the front door of the frame house where Clay and his mother, Anna, lived.

Clay awoke immediately. He lunged out of bed and pulled on his trousers anxiously, his heart hammering in his naked chest. Running a hand through his dark, disheveled hair, he grabbed a shirt and hurried into the parlor.

Anna Knight, tying the sash of her peach dressing robe, was there ahead of him. They exchanged worried looks. She brushed her long braid of hair over her shoulder, drew a breath, and opened the front door.

The messenger nodded, handed her the envelope, and departed. The envelope was addressed to her: Mrs. Anna Tigart Knight. She handed it to her tall son. Clay ripped it open and read aloud:

Mrs. Knight:

Regret to inform that your beloved father, Commodore Clayton L. Tigart, died peacefully in his sleep at nine o’clock this evening. Admiral Tigart suffered a fatal…

Clay handed the message to his mother and slowly shook his dark head. The passing of his maternal grandfather was no great tragedy in and of itself. The commodore had reached his eighty-third birthday. The old gentleman had remained alert and independent to the end. He had insisted on staying on in the Pass Christian Seaman’s Boarding House he’d called home for the last decade, refusing repeated offers to come to Memphis and live with his only daughter and grandson.

The real tragedy of the old man’s death, Clay thought guiltily, was that his own only hope of an appointment to the Naval Academy died with his grandfather.

Tears filling her pale eyes, Anna Knight put a hand on her son’s shoulder. “Clay, I’m so sorry. I’ve prayed every night that Papa would live long enough to help get you an appointment to Annapolis.”

“It’s all right, Mother,” Clay said, patting her hand. “Really it is.” He kissed her temple. “You start packing. I’ll go down to the levee and see about booking passage on a southbound steamer.”

Nodding, she said hopefully, “There’s still Professor McDaniels. He’ll help you all he can. I know he will. Maybe there’s still hope, maybe there’s some way you can get into the academy.”

“Yes, Mother,” he said, heartsick, knowing it would take nothing short of a miracle to realize his long-cherished dream now.

Fortunately Mary Ellen, Clay’s other “long-cherished dream,” made it easier to bear his anguish over the lost opportunity for an appointment to the academy. Mary Ellen kissed away the hurt and sympathized and swore she believed that where there was a will, there was always a way. He’d get his appointment. She knew he would. Why, wouldn’t Professor McDaniels do everything he could to help? Write letters on Clay’s behalf and assure the academy that Clay made the highest marks of anyone in school?

“You’ll still get go to the academy,” she told Clay confidently. “I just know you will. It wouldn’t be fair if you didn’t. Not when you want it above all else.”

“You
are what I want above all else,” Clay corrected her. “I can stand it if I don’t get to go to Annapolis, so long as I have you.”

And it was true.

When Mary was in his arms, nothing else mattered much. And she was in his arms often during that long, sultry summer.

After their initial intimacy, Clay and Mary Ellen could hardly keep their hands off each other. They employed every possible excuse to be alone. And the moment they were alone, they sought the privacy of their secret river cove or the deep dense woods or an old abandoned building. Anywhere they could safely be together. They made love at every possible opportunity, day or night, unable to get enough of each other.

It was the most wonderful summer of their lives.

Even the torture of not being able to touch, to kiss, when in the company of others was strangely enjoyable, exciting for them both. Mary Ellen found it incredibly stirring to steal glances at Clay as he sat in the front parlor of Longwood or at the dining table, talking, making conversation with her parents. Ever polite, he answered her father’s many questions about school and his work at the cotton mill. When John Thomas mentioned—and it was not the first time—the possibility of Clay attending the Naval Academy, Clay again confessed that with his grandfather’s death he had little chance of gaining an appointment to Annapolis. Purposely, Clay paid Mary Ellen little or no attention.

More than one leisurely evening meal in the candlelit dining room, Mary Ellen watched as Clay’s tanned fingers curled caressingly around a crystal tumbler of iced tea and felt a delicious thrill surge through her. His beautiful, artistic hands would be caressing her before the evening ended.