Marry Me (25 page)

Rhyne’s flannel nightgown was inadequate protection for the chill that penetrated the house at night. At this time of year no one ever allowed the fire in the stoves to go out, but keeping them lighted required attention and effort. Although it was not her primary reason for going downstairs, Rhyne took time to add coals to the kitchen stove and the one in the surgery. The library’s stove required no additional fuel. She warmed her hands and backside before she began searching the shelves.

The book she eventually pulled down was not the reference she sought.
Burnside’s Illustrated Anatomy
was heavier than she remembered. Her arms sagged a little with the weight of it, and she wondered how she’d manage to pitch it so accurately that Cole couldn’t avoid the blow.

Anger, she reckoned, was what primed the pump. She raised the book experimentally and realized she’d have difficulty tossing it as far as the chair that was only a few feet away.

It made sense, she supposed, that Runt Abbot won so many fights. He had …
she
had … spent most of her life being purely pissed. It was hard trying not to feel that way now.

Rhyne dragged the heavy shawl from the back of the chair and pulled it around her shoulders as she sat. She was wearing thick woolen socks, but she still lifted her feet off the floor and tucked her legs to one side. She rubbed her hands together to generate enough heat in her fingers so she could turn the pages.

Inhaling deeply, she carefully opened the book to page one hundred eighteen.

There was a pressure deep in her chest as she stared at the naked figure on the page. Letting out a long breath only relieved a fraction of the ache. Was it revulsion that made her want to look away? It was merely a drawing. It wasn’t as if it could hurt her. Why wasn’t she as openly curious as Whitley? She really had never had the opportunity to study a man before, not this way, not without fear of ridicule or retaliation.

She didn’t know how long she had been studying the illustrations before Cole walked in, but she didn’t pretend she was so absorbed in the book that she didn’t hear him. Her smile was faintly crooked, but it wasn’t guilty.

“I came to check on the stove,” he said. “I saw your light.”

She nodded. “The stove’s fine.”

“Do you mind?” He rubbed his hands, indicating he wanted to warm them at the stove.

Rhyne waved him on. “The wind’s picked up.”

“It woke me.” It would have been truer to say it kept him awake since he hadn’t been asleep, but even that was not the entire truth. Wrestling with the problem she’d put before him was the full accounting of why he couldn’t find any rest. He held his palms out to the stove, his back partially presented to Rhyne. “You took the Burnside down.”

“I did. I’m learning the proper names. I wonder if my brothers knew they had a penis. Instead of pecker, I mean. Or a cock. They called it that some–”

Looking back over his shoulder, Cole stopped her with a single raised eyebrow. “Instead of a rainspout, perhaps?”

She flushed, surprised he remembered. “That’s when I was young.”

Cole turned around and clasped his hands behind his back. “How old were you when you realized you weren’t like your brothers?”

“Five, or thereabouts. We were tramping through the woods, and they had a call of nature. I tried to do the same as them because the privy was so far away. They couldn’t run back to the cabin fast enough to tell Judah that I’d been capitated.”

“Capitated?”

She shrugged. “They probably said castrated, but that’s the way I remember it. I also remember how hard Judah took his strap to me for what he called ‘showin’ off my girl parts.’” She saw Cole wince. “I suppose you never had a strap put to your backside.”

“No. My father delivered stern lectures about responsibility and duty.”

Rhyne winced. “It sounds painful, but I reckon it’s what you get used to.”

“I reckon it is,” he said quietly.

Rhyne closed the book and set it on the table beside her. She nestled her cold fingertips in the folds of her flannel nightgown.

“You’re freezing,” said Cole.

“Hardly.”

“Come over here and stand.”

She shook her head.

“But you’re shivering.”

She merely watched him, waiting.

“Could you be more stubborn?”

This time one corner of Rhyne’s mouth curled upward.

“Could you?”

Cole closed the distance between them so quickly that Rhyne had no time to catch her breath. It was just as well. He would have taken it away. Grasping her upper arms, he lifted her out of the chair. She couldn’t quite get her legs under her and she fell into him. He found her mouth while she was still trying to find her breath. His lips ground against hers. The heat that he’d abandoned at the stove was replaced by one that was entirely more satisfying.

Rhyne’s hands found their way between their bodies, and she clutched the lapels of his dressing gown. She felt her toes graze the carpet as she was lifted again. He turned both of them, putting his back to the chair. She held on, her eyes closed, and gave herself over to a kiss that made her shiver more violently than when she’d been cold.

The hot suck of his mouth held her fast. His tongue pressed against her lips, her teeth, and finally speared her. The tip of it tickled the roof of her mouth. She pushed back, tentatively at first, then with more confidence, tasting him in a like manner. She caught the flavor of baking soda and peppermint and a hint of …
sherry?
The memory of tasting it for the first time came back to her pleasantly, but this was better.

He changed the slant of his head, and she followed his lead. His mouth was hot, humid, his lips faintly damp from the sweep of her tongue. She flicked his upper lip. His groan startled her, caused her to hesitate, but he didn’t raise his head and she didn’t turn aside. The moment passed, and her heart resumed its strong, steady beat.

The first that she knew he was no longer holding her upright was when she felt his fingers in her hair. She wished desperately that it were longer for him, long enough to wind around his hand or be crushed in his fist. He ruffled it and tugged lightly on the curling ends. He pressed his fingertips against her scalp, cupping her head in his palms.

His mouth moved away from her lips. He kissed her cheeks, her temples, the corners of her eyes. He caught the tip of one earlobe between his teeth and nibbled. She thought she might have whimpered, but she wasn’t sure. He kissed the space between her eyebrows and then the crooked bridge of her nose. He wouldn’t let her avoid that last kiss. “Shh,” he whispered. “I like it.”

It was sleight-of-hand that put her in his lap. Nothing else explained it. One moment she was standing on his toes, and in the next he was completely under her. She still clung to the lapels of his robe. They remained her point of reference when everything else was shifting.

What shifted next was his hand. Rhyne felt it slip under the shawl and come to rest close to her heart. He had to know how hard it was thumping.

“Feel mine,” he said.

She stared at him dumbly.

“Go on. Feel mine.”

Rhyne would only allow herself to release one lapel. She uncurled her fingers slowly, stretching them just a bit before she slid her palm under Cole’s robe and laid it flat over his heart. It beat against his chest as if it were looking for a way out.

“The same as mine,” she said.

He nodded. He touched his forehead to hers. “Are we stealing comfort now, Rhyne?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “What do you want?”

“This is … nice.”

“It is.” He removed his hand from under the shawl and laid it over hers. “Has no one really held you before?” “No one that I can remember,” she whispered. “Only you.”

Cole drew her down so her head rested against the curve of his neck and shoulder. “I never thanked you properly for assisting in the surgery.”

“With Ezra? That was months ago.”

“Then I’m months late.”

“But you did thank me,” she said. “That very night.”

“Not as I should have.’” He turned his head and kissed the crown of hers. “I still have books back in New York. Fundamental subjects mostly. Biology. Chemistry. But they’ll help you understand the things you keep pulling down from my shelves. I’m sending for them tomorrow. I want you to have them. You can burn them in the stove if you like, but I hope you’ll make better use of them.”

“Books of my own? They would be mine?”

Cole nodded. “You have a hungry mind, Rhyne. I think it’s been starved far too long.”

Her head came up so suddenly that she heard her neck crack. “Oh, it has. It
has.”
She let go of his lapel and wrested her other hand from under his. She cupped his face, held it still so she could look hard into his eyes, and then she kissed him on his perfectly formed mouth.

It wasn’t a mannerly kiss. It was a deeply carnal one. Everything she learned from him, she gave back, and it was different still because she was in charge. She teased him with her lips and tongue and pushed her fingertips into his thick thatch of hair. She riffled it at the nape, back and forth with her index finger as if she were turning over cards. His skin was warm, scented by the soap he used after leaving the surgery. She buried her face against his neck. Her nostrils flared as she breathed him in.

Her kisses were long and slow and deep. She did not think beyond what was now. She took his hand and moved it to her heart. She held it there until she was ready, then she lifted it so that it covered her breast. The heat of his palm slowly penetrated the flannel. Her breast swelled. The tip of it became a hard nub.

When she released his hand, he didn’t paw her.

Cole watched Rhyne closely as she lifted her head. His hand remained exactly where she put it. She breathed in slowly as though she were testing her own mettle. Her pupils were dilated, her eyelids heavy. Her mouth was parted. The tip of her pink tongue touched her upper lip. There was no mistaking her arousal. There was also no mistaking his.

He couldn’t begin to count the ways that wanting her was wrong. He doubted that the sum of all those things could persuade him to give her up. She fascinated and frustrated him, often in equal measure, on occasion at the same time. She was tender with Whitley, tough when she had to be, and her own vulnerability terrified him.

He’d missed her these last few months. His self-imposed exile to the surgery had denied him countless opportunities to be in her company, to watch her gain confidence as Rhyne Abbot but never fully abandon Runt. She still struggled with the trimmings of being a woman. The ivory combs that Whitley picked out for her wouldn’t stay in her hair. The corsets were too confining, the heeled shoes barely comfortable. She still wasn’t used to wearing gowns, although she inhabited them handsomely. He knew that sometimes she wore trousers underneath her skirts instead of petticoats. He never said a word.

“Can you feel me, Rhyne?”

She nodded. His erection pressed against her thigh. “That’s your penis. It means tail.”

He removed his hand from her breast and raised it to his mouth. He cleared his throat in time to keep from choking on laughter. “So it is.”

Rhyne stared at him. “That’s right, isn’t it? It means tail.”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you want to laugh?”

Her direct question sobered him. “I don’t. Believe me, I don’t.” He touched her mouth with his fingertips, tracing the shape of it. His darkening eyes searched hers. “What do you want?”

She wished he hadn’t asked. “You know I’m not a virgin.”

He took her wrists and gave them a small shake. “I also know you’re not a whore. You’ve never talked about what happened to you.”

“And I won’t now. Don’t ruin it.” She put her mouth within a hairsbreadth of his. “Kiss me.”

Their lips brushed once. Twice. Clung. Cole opened his dressing gown and lifted her hands to his chest. He directed her fingers to the buttons on his union suit. She opened three before her hands slipped under the material and lay next to his skin. At the same time, she rubbed against him experimentally. His cock pulsed hard and heavy against her hip. His hands only tightened marginally on her wrists.

Rhyne felt the stirring of her own blood. She shook off his hands and spread her fingers across his chest. She traced the lines of his collarbones and learned the breadth of his shoulders. His skin was warm and smooth. She dragged her fingertips through the mat of red gold hair. She heard his breath hitch and felt the hesitation of his heartbeat.

There was a wildness in her that Cole did not try to restrain. There was also innocence that he could not preserve. Without any guidance from him, she found her own way to straddling his lap. Her nightdress bunched just above her knees as she settled herself on his thighs. They fit snugly in the chair.

She leaned into him, brushing against his chest with her breasts. She did it again, then again, and it wasn’t enough until she took his hands and laid them over her breasts and felt her nipples pucker in the heart of his palms. She untied the ribbon that gathered the neckline of her nightgown. The shawl slipped off her shoulders, and she never felt the loss of heat as Cole’s hands slipped inside the gaping neckline and cupped her breasts.

She shivered, but it wasn’t the same as being cold.

He lifted his head and found her mouth. Each time he kissed her he thought of more. He wanted
more.

“I can stop now,” he whispered against her lips. His voice was a harsh rasp, almost unrecognizable to him. “I can still …”

The shake of her head was nearly imperceptible, and she spoke so quietly the words merely hovered at her lips.

“Heal me.”

He simply stared.

“Heal me.”

The touch of his mouth on hers was infinitely gentle.

She let him help her with the rest of the buttons on his union suit because her fingers were no longer as steady as they had been. He rearranged her bunched nightgown so it spread around them and palmed her bare buttocks. Watching her, he urged her up to her knees. He ran his hands along the backs of her thighs, then around the front, and finally settled on her hips. He exerted the slightest pressure with his fingertips, but it was enough for her to know what he wanted and what she should do.