Marrying Stone (28 page)

Meggie felt him tremble for one hesitating minute before his hands went around her waist and he pulled her into his embrace.

"I want you," he declared almost angrily before he closed the distance between their lips.

Meggie was startled by the raw passion of his kiss. The touch of his mouth on hers was neither gentle nor reluctant. His lips parted over hers demandingly and the clutch of the arms around her waist was sure and controlling.

"R-Roe," she stuttered in stunned surprise against his lips. "Roe, I—"

"Meggie," he answered her in a whisper against her flesh. "Meggie, stop me if you must, but do it now, now while I still can."

In answer she melted against him, quivering in awakening awareness of dazzling sensual desire.

Roe pulled her tightly against him and his hand moved across her back from shoulder to waist, pressing her bosom against him, as his lips moved over her own.

Completely unprepared for the sensations that assailed her, Meggie maintained her grasp upon his shirtfront as if it were a lifeline.

The taste of Roe Farley was hot and compelling against her mouth, but when his mouth moved down the tender softness of her throat, gooseflesh raised upon Meggie's skin and shuddering waves of desire flowed through her.

Pull away, pull away from his touch, her reason implored her. But her heart hammered within her loudly, drowning out all warnings.

Eagerly, she wrapped her arms around his neck and crushed her inexplicably aching bosom against his chest. The crowning buds at the tips of her breasts had swelled and bloomed at his touch. She snuggled against him even closer.

She heard a groan from deep inside his throat. One strong sun-browned hand slid up her side to cup her breast. His touch was firm and sure as he teased the hardened nipple between his fingers.

Meggie gasped with pleasure and he pulled gently along her earlobe with his mouth.

She crushed herself to him. "Closer, I need to get closer," she whispered.

"Oh, Meggie," he ground out hoarsely. "I'll get you close. Closer than you've ever been to another human soul."

Roe slipped his arms beneath her knees and carried her only a few yards away before laying her in a bed of sweet-blooming clover.

He followed her body to the ground, his knee gently parting her thighs.

"Meggie, sweet Meggie," he whispered as his mouth moved down her throat to her bosom.

She trembled at the heat of his kiss and the cool of the night breeze upon her dampened breast. The feelings that coursed through her were new and untamed. She felt removed from her body as if it had an existence separate from her own. Yet, never in her life had she felt so aware of her senses and desires as she did now.

Roe pulled up her josie. Not slowly or surreptitiously, but with purpose. The nakedness of her legs chilled Meggie. But she sought warmth, in the heat of his body.

"You're beautiful, beautiful, Meggie," he told her as he ran his hand up and down the naked flesh he'd uncovered. "I knew the day I saw your pretty bare feet that your legs would be strong and shapely. The kind of legs to wrap around a man's waist."

She didn't need further invitation. Meggie clasped her knees about him and held fast as he rocked in place atop her, stoking the fire that blazed up between them.

"Does it feel good?" he whispered. 'There is more, Meggie. Let me give you more."

"Give me everything," she breathed.

Roe sat back on his knees, keeping her thighs spread before him. He smoothed upward the pale, tender skin of her inner thighs.

"What curls, Meggie," he said. "What seductively tempting curls." He coursed through them with his fingers.

She jerked and twitched at the intimate caress. As his hands explored more firmly, she strained and wiggled against him.

She heard him sigh with contented delight as he whispered into her ear. "Perfect."

His words both excited and entranced Meggie as she quavered in his embrace, her head turned against the fresh spring softness of the clover beneath her.

Roe eased one long finger into the honeyed heat of her. Meggie gasped aloud at the intimate touch.

"Oh, my sweet darling," Roe muttered as he slid another finger inside. "You are so ready, you are so wonderful." With one hand he fumbled at his britches. "Damn, I've got to get these trousers off."

They weren't off, but they were down as he moved over her, circling his waist with her legs once more. He set his mark true and as he thrust himself inside her, Meggie cried out. It was not so much from pain, as from wonder.

Fully inside, he lay over her. "Are you all right, Meggie?" he asked her as he kissed her ear.

"Yes, I'm—" Meggie had no other words as tiny,glistening tears from emotions she didn't understand escaped from the corners of her eyes.

Roe felt the dampness on his cheek and tried to kiss them away. "I can't stop now, Meggie," he pleaded. "Don't make me stop now."

"Don't stop," she answered.

Roe needed no further sanction. With strong, powerful thrusts he drummed a rhythm older than time or music. Meggie's answering fire strained melody to the highest and lowest of fevered pitch. Until, with muscles tense in consummate ecstatic rapture, they cried out together in perfect harmony.

THE SUN WAS near the middle of the sky when Roe Farley squinted his eyes open. The light seemed to stab through his head like a hot knife. Moaning, he rolled over and buried his face in the trampled clover beneath him. The sweet smell of it was welcoming to his aching body and soothing to his tired soul. He'd never before appreciated the gentle grassy scent. But this morning it was a glorious fragrance as dear and as precious to him as his Meggie.

"Meggie?"

The word passed his lips in a quiet whisper. A long second passed and the sound faded before Roe's head popped up from the grass. His eyes opened wide with shock.

"Meggie!"

He ran a hand along the ground beside him as if he didn't trust his own vision. Finding no soft, feminine body at his side, he sat up.

His quick, intemperate move seemed to rock the universe, and he fell back clutching his temples.

"Donk," he groaned and silently cursed the unholy brew. He'd got himself royally drunk, crazed with liquor, and had taken illicit advantage of Meggie Best.

"Mindless drunkard," he cursed himself with anger that stirred him to resolute purpose. He couldn't regret the pleasure, and he had no idea of what he meant to do or say. But he knew only that he must see Meggie, he must talk to her, hold her, comfort her. He began running toward the cabin.

Cold chills and dizziness overcame him and he stopped. Leaning against the long lean trunk of a giant white oak, he waited impatiently for the queasiness to pass. In his mind he felt the smooth, clean touch of her flesh once more. He tasted the salty spiced flavor of her skin and felt the stretch and give of her intimate body as he pressed his own inside her.

He bent forward, willing the unholy spin of the ground to subside. As soon as it did, he hurried on toward the cabin.

On the distant hillside, he could see Onery out working in his fields and as he hurried into the yard, he could hear the moaning complaints of Jesse who still lay in the new bed in the half-walled cabin room. Neither sight drew more than a cursory glance nor one iota of his attention and concern. He was hurrying to Meggie and in that moment, nothing, no one else, mattered at all.

He came around the corner of the cabin, calling out her name. He felt a rush of tenderness. She was there. But the polite nod and casual morning greeting he received was not at all what he expected.

Meggie sat in a straight-backed chair, a huge skinning knife gripped comfortably in her right hand. In the dishpan on her lap were the legs and backs she was preparing for the evening's meal. Beside her, a bucket contained the severed heads and slimy hides of the big green bullfrogs Roe had helped to catch the previous night.

"Meggie—" he began, still not knowing what he was about to say.

She looked over at him as casually as if he'd just strolled up from the barn for a dipper of water. "I don't suppose you're hungry," she said calmly. "But there's pone in the kettle and coffee's still hot on the fire."

She turned back to her frog butchering with such indifference that Roe stood staring in puzzlement until she glanced up to look at him again.

"Last night, Meggie—"

Only the scarlet flush that stained her cheeks revealed that she even understood his words. She cleared her throat a little uncomfortably.

"Get you some coffee and pone, Mr. Farley," she said calmly. "It'll settle your stomach and then we can talk and I'll settle your mind."

There was nothing of the dreamy scatterbrain in the Meggie Best that sat before him. She was quiet, purposeful, and practical. Roe felt as if he had never seen her before. He hesitated only a moment before deciding that perhaps she was thinking more clearly than he. Such a momentous moment as theirs should not be faced on an empty stomach. With a nod of polite excuse, he stepped into the cabin for his breakfast, but was not even tempted to linger.

With a full cup of thick black coffee and a chunk of the half-burnt, half-raw cornbread, he hurried back out to the porch. Meggie didn't look up from her work. Roe watched her. He didn't even pretend to try to eat or drink, but just stood beside her watching with abhorrent fascination as Meggie methodically sliced off the heads of the wiggling frogs, gutted them, and then ripped the skin back from shoulder to feet. The gentle, romantic glow that had wrapped him in a fog dissipated as the everyday reality set in. He'd never imagined himself enamored of a woman who could gut and peel her own foodstuffs. A return of the queasy feeling Roe had suffered earlier prompted him to look away from the sight and clear his throat uneasily.

"I suppose I should speak first," he said. His voice took on a deep, responsible tone that he thought appropriate for the moment.

Meggie looked up at him. "There is no need," she told him quietly.

"What do you mean, there's no need?"

She shrugged with deliberate unconcern and answered with carefree nonchalance. "I already know what you have to say, Mr. Farley."

"Oh?"

"You were liquored up and now you are very sorry. I wasn't liquored up, but I'm sorry, too. We agree on that, Mr. Farley. So there's no need for us to dwell upon it."

Roe found her manner unsettling and became somewhat annoyed at her apparent reluctance to use his given name.

"My dear Miss Best," he said with formality that bordered upon arrogance. "That was not at all what I had intended to say to you."

Meggie turned to look at him. Her hair was unusually neat and tidy this morning and was pulled very tightly away from her face in a fashion severe enough to seem almost a punishment.

'Then what were you going to say, Mr. Farley?" she asked.

The question immediately deflated the smugness in Roe's stance as reality swept upon him in a rush of consequence.

"I was going to say… I mean I am saying… or rather I'm asking…"

Roe nervously took a deep swig of the coffee in his tin cup and scalded his mouth. The pain effectively cleared his muddled thinking and he knew, in that one moment with perfect clarity, the purpose for which he'd hurried toward the cabin and the reason that he stood next to this woman.