Chapter Ten
“OH, FOR GOD’S SAKE!” Cal muttered as he knelt to support Nora’s sagging body in her chair while she struggled back to consciousness.
She could barely breathe for the corset. How she hated the old-fashioned contraption!
“It’s this damned thing, isn’t it?” he murmured, plucking at the corset under her dress. “It can’t be good for the baby, Nora.”
He’d used her nickname, and tenderly. If she hadn’t been so faint, she might have enjoyed hearing it in his deep, slow voice. She pulled herself up by the edge of the table and leaned her head forward, trying to get blood back into her head. The nausea that came with it was the worst.
“Speaking of things that are not good for the baby, I would number among them telling me that I shall have to kill a turkey!” she said angrily.
“I’ll wear a gag,” he said irritably. “If the mere mention of preparing food disturbs you, we will probably both starve to death.”
He sounded so male that she began to laugh. His temper wasn’t frightening like her father’s. Sometimes it was even amusing.
“There, you sound more chipper,” he said, relaxing a little. He rubbed her hands, bringing circulation to them. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “It’s the heat, I think, as much as anything,” she said.
“This nice cool place?” he burst out.
She remembered East Texas and how hot it had been during her visit. But it was November now. Surely…
His face told the story. “East Texas has very mild winters,” he said gently. “And it doesn’t get very cold.”
“Well…that might not be so bad.”
“It’s almost time for the train, and you have eaten nothing. I’ll have them pack the sandwiches. We can eat them on the way.”
She laid a hand on his sleeve. “I can’t.”
He clasped her fingers gently. “You shall,” he said softly, “if I have to feed you every bite myself.” She colored prettily and his eyes twinkled. “Oh, you like that idea, do you? Is it romantic, do you think, to have your husband put tiny bits of food into your mouth?”
She colored even more. “Stop!”
He chuckled. “In some ways, you are far younger than you look. Wait here.”
She loved him when he was protective and gentle with her. It was such a change from his usual mocking way. Of course, she mustn’t allow herself to become dependent on him. And as for the future…well, that would have to be taken one day at a time. Her aunt Helen had adapted to a wild, rough life. Perhaps Nora could, too. She still worried about the reception they would get when they arrived.
“Have you cabled them that we’re coming?” she asked uneasily, once they were in the private compartment Cal had arranged for them. The train went all the way to St. Louis, so they didn’t have to change until then. She worried aloud at the cost, but he had waved away her comment.
“Of course I cabled them,” he said. “I work for your uncle, remember?” he added deliberately.
She flushed. “I could hardly forget.” She shifted uncomfortably. The sun was setting and she felt sleepy.
“Why not lie down, Nora?” he invited. “I can turn down the berth for you.”
She looked at him blankly. It would mean getting undressed, of course, and they would be sleeping in the same room. Would he want… Would he expect…?
Her wide eyes and flushed cheeks told him what she was thinking.
It irritated him. “You are in a weakened condition and ill,” he bit off. “Do you really think that I would consider insisting on my conjugal rights now?”
She linked her hands together tightly. “Forgive me,” she said unsteadily. “I am… I am tired and not thinking clearly. Of course you would not.”
He moved her gently aside and prepared the berth for her, right down to turning down the sheets. He closed the blinds as well, shutting out the sparse traffic down the hall.
“I’ll go to the smoking car while you change into your night things,” he volunteered before she asked. “Take off that damned corset, will you?” he added irritably. “It’s insane to expect a woman carrying a child to wear such a torturous garment!”
She wasn’t used to men making such intimate comments about her apparel. But he was her husband.
“I cannot go without it,” she began.
“You certainly can,” he retorted. “You can wear a suit coat tomorrow. No one will notice.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “It is indecent.”
He took her by the shoulders and held her in front of him. She had forgotten how tall and strong he was until he came close. She smelled the faint scent of cologne and wondered at how neat he looked. Even his fingernails were immaculate.
“Indecent, but comfortable,” he said. His eyes searched hers quietly. “How do you feel about the baby?”
The question caught her off guard. She was lost in his eyes, in the touch of him. “Joyful,” she whispered.
He hadn’t expected the answer. His chest rose and fell roughly. “Joyful,” he repeated, as if he didn’t understand or believe the word. His eyes fell to her slender body and then lifted to her face. He was confused about the emotions she raised in him. He was a stranger to love, although not to women. But this one made him feel warm inside. She gave him peace. They were odd sensations, and he was also aware of a swelling in his lower body, a tightness that presaged needs she could not, in her condition, satisfy. The urge had been conspicuous by its absence since he had last seen her. How odd that he hadn’t realized it.
Nora sighed softly, afraid to break the spell. “And you?” she asked. “Are you sorry about the child?”
His broad shoulders moved under his buckskin jacket, disturbing the long fringe and making it sway. “No,” he said briefly.
“But…not glad?”
He looked troubled. His hands contracted. “I am thirty-two years old, and I have lived rough. I still do. I hadn’t thought of settling down yet, much less of a family. I will…adjust. But it needs a little time, Nora.”
“I see.” Her disappointed eyes fell to his jacket. She liked the soft feel of it under her splayed hands.
His own big hand spread against her cheek and tipped her sad eyes up to his. He didn’t like that sadness. He bent slowly and drew his lips over hers with exquisite tenderness. He wanted just to offer comfort. But then he felt her tremble and heard her breath catch. He felt her fingers turn down against his coat. His head lifted and he looked into a face that displayed embarrassment and longing in equal proportions.
She was a puzzle. So haughty until he touched her, and then so responsive that she sent the blood raging through his body.
“The smoking car,” she prompted unsteadily.
He frowned slightly. “Does it embarrass you so to want my kisses?” he asked gently. “For I assure you, it delights me to have a wife who cannot hide her pleasure in my touch.”
“It…does?”
He found her shy smile fascinating. He returned it. His thumb tugged at her lower lip and he bent his head again, fitting her lips exactly to his in a silence that echoed the slap of the metal wheels against the rails at each joining.
His arms slid around her, drawing her gently against the length of his lean, fit body pulling her up to press her closer. “No, don’t close your mouth, Nora,” he whispered when she drew her lips together. “Open it, very slowly… Yes, little one, just like that…”
She felt his tongue tease her upper lip and then work its way around to the lower one. All the while she heard his heavy breath, belying the patience he showed her. Her hands slid up to his throat and pressed just at his collarbone, savoring the thickness of chest hair that covered him.
Her hands excited him. “Wait,” he whispered. He paused to shed his jacket. Then he lifted one hand away from her waist and moved it between them, watching her curious face while he unfastened his shirt and slowly pulled it out of his belted blue jeans. Her eyes dilated as she stared at him, her breath unsteady, loud in the car.
He felt himself shudder at the fascinated, hungry expression on her face. With a harsh sound, he threw the shirt off and dragged her hands to him, shivering as he guided them over the hot muscles of his bare, hair-roughened chest. Her breathing matched his now, and her hands were unsteady where they touched him. They felt…glorious on his skin!
“Nora!” he whispered in torment, as he bent to grind his mouth into hers.
She clung to his mouth, her legs involuntarily pressing to his and not withdrawing even when she felt the surge of his body against her, the hardness that pressed insistently against their child.
His lean hands released hers and went to her slender hips, to pull them in quick, jerky movements against him and then rotate them in so blatant a seductive dance that she moaned under his demanding mouth.
The heat they generated was blinding. She felt his hands on the buttons of her dress and arched back to give him total access. Her misty, dazed, half-closed eyes looked into his as he fought tiny buttons out of buttonholes and his body shivered with its need.
He skinned the dress down her arms and found the laces of the corset, cursing it through laughter. He managed finally to get it loosened enough that he could tug it up over her head and toss it onto the berth.
She didn’t try to cover herself when he turned back to her. He looked at her small breasts with pleasure that was tinged with curiosity when he recognized the changes that the baby had made in them.
He touched the wide areola of one and traced a pale-blue vein up to her collarbone while she stood trembling at his fingertips.
“They’re…different,” she faltered. “I don’t know why. It isn’t something I could ask a man, even a doctor.”
His thumb slid over the areola tenderly and he smiled. “Then shall I tell you what they are?” he asked softly. “A cattleman learns quickly about conception and birth, and the changes that occur in your body occur also in that of other creatures. These,” he said, tracing the noticeable veins, “bring more blood to your breasts so that they can prepare milk for our baby. And this,” he added, tracing the nipple until it hardened and she gasped, “enlarges to fit his mouth so that he can suckle you.”
The imagery and the tender, deep, smoky sound of his voice made her knees weak. “I never dreamed…” she whispered.
He bent and lifted her, and then sat down on the seat with her in his arms. His hand traced her breasts softly, lovingly, while hers pressed deep into the thick hair over his breastbone.
“Your skin is like alabaster,” he whispered. “And you smell of roses. I want the feel of you under my body, Nora, and the softness of your legs sliding against mine as I press deep into you.”
“Cal!” She pressed her hot face against his chest, embarrassed at the things he said to her so uninhibitedly.
“You are so shy, my wife,” he said at her ear, “to be so responsive to me. Come closer. It’s been a long, long time since I felt your skin against mine.”
He guided her hands around his neck and brought her up against him, holding her eyes while he moved her softly against his rough chest.
“It feels good, doesn’t it?” he asked solemnly.
She hesitated to speak, and he smiled at her.
“A lady does not admit to these dark pleasures, is that it?” he teased.
“A decent woman is not supposed to feel pleasure,” she said worriedly.
He chuckled. “Oh, Nora, are you really so naive? Do you think that because society dictates stoic indifference to the sensual, it does not exist? Tell me that you have never peeked at the words of Swinburne.”
She colored prettily and her face sought his chest.
The sensations he felt wiped the smile away and his lean hands caught her head, stilling it.
She felt him shiver. Why, he liked her face against his chest, she thought, fascinated. Would he like more than this? He was hesitating, as if he might like to ask something of her but hesitated for fear of shocking her.
Her breath trembled in her throat. “Cal?” she whispered. “I… I will do anything you like.”
His eyes closed on a silent groan. His hands tightened in her hair. “Nora, sweetheart, put your mouth on me,” he whispered. “No, little one. Open it. And…here.” He guided her to the counterpart of her own nipple and pressed her face close.
She was shocked, first at the request and then at the way he reacted, and then at the pleasure it gave her to make him groan aloud. Under her mouth, she could feel the small, tight nipple, and beneath that, the dampness of his skin and the roughness of hair and the deep, dull, racing pulse of his heartbeat.
She nibbled at his chest lazily, delighting in their intimacy. Why, marriage was exciting, she thought! She smiled and lifted her head to look into his pale, glittering eyes.
“Do you like making me like this?” he whispered roughly. “Do you like seeing me at your mercy?”
She nodded, her breath too shaky for speech.
“Do it again, then.”
She slid against him to find the other side, and her hands smoothed over the warm muscle of him while she tasted the strange maleness of his chest with soft, eager lips.
When he could bear it no longer, he bent to find her mouth and he kissed her until her lips were swollen and her body was lifting rhythmically to the slow tracing of his hand.
He had her dress around her hips now, and his fingers were wandering over the faint swell of her waist and stomach. He lifted his head and looked down, and smiled with possession at the soft rise.
“You look very smug,” she accused breathlessly.
“I gave you my child,” he said simply. He met her eyes with a faint frown. “It disturbs me that I did it so easily, and so quickly.”
“Because there could be a great number of children,” she said, understanding.
He nodded. “The alternative is abstinence.” He smiled ruefully. “Or other women. And that, I could not contemplate,” he added before she could speak. “Nora, I find that I have no desire for other women, since that afternoon we spent together.”
He said it as if it bothered him. It lit up her face. “Do not worry so,” she said gently. “We must live one day at a time.”
His hand pressed gently on her stomach and he looked into her eyes quietly. “I want you. It would be safe, because there is no risk of making you any more pregnant than you are. But I will do nothing against your will.”
“It is shameful to admit,” she confessed, “but I…want you, too.”
“Is it dangerous for the baby?” he asked. “I will be very, very gentle with you.”
Her arms looped around his neck. “You were, even the first time,” she recalled, burying her face in his hot throat. “Oh, love me,” she whispered fervently. “Love me, love me…!”
He made a rough sound, deep in his throat, and carried her to the berth.
SHE SHIVERED FOR A LONG TIME afterward, cradled against his nude body under the single white sheet that covered them. He smoked a cigarette, with an ashtray propped on his chest, and looked worried.
Her hand pressed flat over his breastbone, testing the hard muscle there. “What’s wrong?”
“You bled a little.”
She nestled closer. “Yes. But it didn’t hurt.”
“Still, it may be unhealthy for the baby,” he said quietly. “I was rough with you, at the last. I didn’t mean to be, but my body was too hungry to listen to reason.”
She recalled the fierce, rough buffeting of it with pleasure, seeing again his body arched over her, his face clenched and wet with sweat as he cried out and convulsed. The sight of him brought her own pleasure to a peak, and while it was less violent, it was just as satisfying.
He smoothed over her hair. “I like it when you watch me,” he said gruffly, and his fingers contracted. “It makes the pleasure almost beyond bearing to feel your eyes.”
She pressed her eyes into his throat, because she couldn’t look at his face. “I like…to watch you,” she confessed in a whisper. “It is very intimate.”
“We are married,” he reminded her.
“Yes, but I have learned things about myself that make me a little ashamed. I whisper things to you that make me blush afterward.”
“And you think that it’s unnatural, between lovers?” He sounded amused.
“You’re the only lover I have ever had,” she reminded him.
He put out his cigarette and set the ashtray on the floor before he rolled over and pried her red face out of hiding. “You are the only lover I want,” he returned, studying her face. Her hair was loose and splayed across the white pillow, its chestnut richness barely visible in the darkened cabin when the lights of a city flashed past and highlighted it momentarily.
His leg eased between hers and he moved her, gently, so that they were lying side by side, perfectly fitted to each other. He put his finger over her lips when she started to speak.
“Slide your leg over mine, so that I can get closer,” he whispered.
She obeyed him, loving the roughness of his long leg against hers. He made no move toward greater intimacy, and seconds later, her head was pillowed on his shoulder, with the cover over both of them.
“Cal, we cannot sleep without our nightclothes on!” she exclaimed. “We are naked!”
“Yes. How glorious it feels, Nora,” he whispered, running his hands along her silky back. “How exquisite your skin is to touch.”
“But someone might come in,” she worried.
“I have locked the door, and the blinds are drawn. Sweetheart, there’s nothing to worry about, I promise you. Now, go to sleep. It’s been a long and trying day, and you’re tired. So am I.”
She gave up arguing and closed her eyes. It was sweet, she had to admit. So sweet…
WHEN THE MOVEMENT of the sunlight through the window blinds pressed at her eyelids, she was disoriented. She opened her eyes to an unfamiliar place and the sound of quiet breathing.
Her head turned and she stared, shocked, at a staggeringly handsome Cal Barton sprawled nude beside her on top of the covers. Her eyes averted and then homed back, caressing the strong lines of his body and lingering on the secret place at the juncture of his powerful legs. His anatomy fascinated her. She hadn’t been able to look at him fully their first time, out of embarrassment. Now, when he was asleep, she could indulge her curiosity.
How different his body was from her own, how frightening as she recalled the driving strength of it above her. Now that she knew something of the way two bodies joined, she began to realize what a shattering thing rape must be. Cal was beautifully made, but he seemed terribly large to her naive eyes, and even though he was slow and tender and very careful, she was still a little afraid of him until her body had absorbed that first gentle thrust of possession.
Her hand reached toward him and then, when she realized what she was doing, she jerked it back. A deep, amused laugh echoed from the head of the bed. Her eyes darted toward the pillow and met a pair of laughing gray ones.
“Touch me,” he challenged. “Go ahead, chicken, I won’t bite.”
“I couldn’t!” she whispered.
“Why not? I’m only flesh and blood. God knows, I touched you in every way possible last night.”
She drew the cover over her breast and hid her embarrassed eyes from him.
“Come here, you coward.” He pulled her down on top of him and cradled her body there while he laughingly slid her struggling hand down to the object of her curiosity. “Stop fighting me,” he whispered. “You know you want to. Open your hand.”
He felt…strange. Alien. But after a minute, she began to relax and give in to the coaxing motion of his fingers. She knew nothing about a man’s body, but he told her, gently and without embarrassment, explaining it to her in the early morning silence of the compartment.
“Marriage is very complicated,” she said finally, when he let her draw her hand back.
“Oh, yes,” he agreed. “But very pleasurable, too.” He stretched hugely and moved her aside so that he could get to his feet. She sat up, watching him with fascination; with possession.
He turned and saw her shy gaze and smiled at her. “You see? I am not so shocking anymore, am I?”
She smiled back. “Only a little.”
“You are beautiful,” he replied. He took the sheet from her hands and drew her out of bed, to stand in front of him. He studied her with solemn appreciation, from head to toe. “Exquisite,” he said softly. “Perfect.”
She pressed against him, only to be held away with a choked laugh.
“No, you don’t,” he said breathlessly, turning away. “You’re much too fragile for that, and I haven’t much control.”
“But can’t you just hold me?” she asked, curious.
“Sure. After I get my clothes on and calm down,” he replied, reaching for his shorts.
That didn’t make a lot of sense at first, so he explained it to her while he dressed. Her hands shook as she got back into her own things. Heavens, marriage was going to be complex!
When they were dressed, he turned to her, but his eyes were caught by the faint stain on the sheet. Her gaze followed his and she chewed on her lower lip worriedly.
“Perhaps it is natural,” she said.
“You must see a doctor,” he replied firmly. He held up his hand. “No one need know how long we have been married, or where. If your aunt asks, you may tell her that we met in secret and were married before you left here.”
“But where, and by whom…?” she asked.
“By a visiting justice of the peace from Richmond, of course,” he said. He produced the marriage license from his pocket. His thumb covered the strategic spot. “Look at the place name where the marriage took place.”
“Tyler Junction!” she burst out. “But, how…?”
“A very sympathetic man, the justice of the peace, and knowing that we were unlikely to meet again, he was more than happy to bend the law a little to comply with my request.”
It was all becoming clear. The kindness and sympathy of the man who had married them and his wife, the brief ceremony, the lack of questions. “Oh, Cal. You told him about the baby!” she said miserably.