Pamela Morsi (27 page)

“Miss Gussie, if you don’t want me to touch you …”

“Touch me,” she answered, guiding his hand beneath the lacy covering. “Please touch me.”

Rome couldn’t deny either of them. He made hasty work of the three strong hooks that kept her bound so tightly. He pushed the offending garment away as he clasped her breasts in his hands. Finally flesh against flesh.

Her breath came through the depths of her throat, deep and impassioned. Rome caressed her naked bosom,
marveling at its size and firmness. Nothing she’d worn had shown her to such advantage as the bare skin he could glimpse through the thin shafts of light from the curtains. Her nipples were thick and hard, begging him to handle and tease them, begging him to taste them. He did.

She gasped at the touch of his tongue upon her, drawing up her knees. It was a fortuitous move. Rome slipped in between her thighs, spreading her before him.

He took turns suckling one breast and then the other as she squirmed and writhed beneath him, moans of earthy carnality emitting from her throat. Never had any woman felt so sensual, so desirable in his arms. Never had he wanted a woman as he wanted this one.

He whipped her nipples with his tongue. A sensation that she greatly enjoyed, judging by the flailing of her head from side to side and her inability to keep her legs stilled.

Rome grabbed her knee and bent it, curving her leg around his waist. He allowed his hand to traverse the length of her thigh. Her black cotton stocking was gartered a few inches above her knee, only a short distance from the legs of her drawers. He slipped his hand inside the latter. The flesh there was so soft, so welcoming, he nearly moaned aloud.

She did exactly that. Begging for more with phrases like, “Oh, please!” “Yes, Rome.” “Please, Rome.” “Yes! Please! Oh! Rome!”

He knew what she needed. He knew what she wanted. Even if she did not know herself. He brought his thigh up tightly into the crux of her legs.

At first she didn’t seem to know what to do. It was as if she were waiting for him to explain the rules. In
her innocence, she did not know that desire has no rules. He leaned down to nibble lightly upon her neck. Ever so gently, he rubbed against her and then whispered into her ear.

“Do what feels good,” he told her. “Move as it feels good.”

She hesitated.

He swirled his tongue into her ear and then whispered again more breathily, “Find pleasure, Miss Gussie,” he said. “I want you to find pleasure with me.”

Tentatively she began to move. Ever so curiously, she eased herself against the hardness of his thigh. Rome urged her on with words and caresses and kisses.

“That’s it,” he praised her. “Yes, my precious, my darling, my love. Yes, that’s it.”

Little whimpers of needs were escaping from her. He held her fast, glorying in her. He slipped his hand between them. Down past her waist, along the seam line of her bleached lawn drawers to the firm, pouty lips so near his knee. She was close. She was very close. Just a little push would send her over the edge. Just a tiny push and she would know pleasure the way a man could give it to her. The way Rome could give it to her. He wanted to give it to her. He wanted to do it. He knew a lot about women. Amos Dewey would never have the sense to offer her this; he wouldn’t have her live without it no matter how she chose.

Her cries and words and pleas were coming faster now. Her body was squirming beneath him, riding him.

As his hand moved lower she fought between the desire to spread herself for him and the urge to clutch him to her more closely. He understood what she wanted. He wanted it too. He wanted it so badly, he ached from it. There could be nothing more pleasurable than being inside her. Buried deep inside her.
Being one with her. That was what he wanted. But he wouldn’t take it. He wouldn’t take it now.

He moved his hand lower and lower along the front of her drawers until he caressed her intimately.

She whimpered his name. Begging for what she did not know. But he did. Softly, gently, he touched her, mapping her, appreciating her. Then he pressed her labium together between his last three fingers and the ball of his hand, forcing the tiny nubbin to squeeze outward and reveal itself to his touch. He grasped her between his thumb and forefinger and manipulated her with painstaking tenderness.

Her orgasm was like a lightning bolt, sudden and intense. Then, like in an earthquake, there was more in the aftermath. She cried out.

She looked up at him, eyes wide, unbelieving. He took her in his arms, holding her, comforting her as she reassessed the world they lived in. His own pleasure denied, he held tight to her, tamping down the desire that he felt, cradling her in his arms as he tried to think.

For the past few hours he had tried not to think, but now was surely the time. Now was, at the very latest moment, the time to think.

She was trembling and he pulled her closer. Kissing her eyes, her cheeks, her chin, her lips. He unfurled the corset cover that had ended up around her neck and drew it down over her bosom. He removed his trousered leg from the wet warmth it had so recently awakened and straightened her skirts more modestly. He sat beside her upon the narrow fainting couch. It was full darkness now and he could not see her face. But he could hear her breathing and he comforted himself that there were no tears or recriminations in the sound.

“Miss Gussie,” he said finally, his own voice sounding strange to his ears. “Miss Gussie, I want to marry you. But I won’t ask you tonight So much has happened. I know I haven’t given you time to think. I’m going to give you time tonight. I’m going to leave you now. And tomorrow afternoon I’m coming back. I’m going to get down on one knee and ask for your hand. I would be so overjoyed, so honored, if you would say yes.”

With that he rose to his feet.

“I’ll see myself out,” he added. “Good night.”

P
ANSY
R
ICHARDSON SAT AT HER KITCHEN TABLE, STARING
at the bold stripes of her tablecloth. She could not quite get her mind around all that had happened. She had gone in to seduce Amos Dewey and been seduced herself. Amos had not lured her into some romantic tryst, that had been her forte. But somehow during that afternoon in his arms, she’d been coaxed into seeing a new vision of what her life could be. She had thought herself independent, in control of her own destiny. Now she realized that the opposite had been true.

Fate had taken her husband from her. Will Barclay had ruined her reputation. And the community had prescribed her life from that point as one of sinner and outcast.

Pansy had thought that she was living her life, but now saw clearly that the first action truly of her own making was the altruistic attempt to help Rome.

The fact that her efforts had blown up in her face was disappointing. The reality that she had made a deep-seated connection with Amos was frightening. But the truth was that she now saw the possibility to
change her life. For that she could not be anything but grateful.

There was a light tap on the kitchen door before he stepped inside. She had known he would come. He had not said that he would and, in truth, she had not invited him. But somehow she had known he would come and had been waiting for him here in the kitchen.

They gazed at each other from across the distance separating them. He looked troubled. She felt that way exactly. Smiling at him, she indicated the other chair at the table. He crossed the room and seated himself.

“How was the kissing booth?” she asked him.

“We did well,” Rome answered. “We made enough for a first-class fireworks exhibition with maybe even some funds left over.”

“That’s good,” she said, nodding. “That’s very good. I knew you would do it.”

“Of course, Miss Gussie and I had other intentions,” he reminded her. “But I … things have changed, Pansy, and I …”

“Things have changed for me, too,” she said. “I want to be on the speaker’s podium at the Founder’s Day Fourth of July Picnic.”

“What?”

“I want to be on the podium,” she repeated. “No, more than that, I want to speak from the podium.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“I am the last of the Richardsons,” she said. “Grover’s family founded this town fifty years ago and I am Grover’s widow. If I want the Richardson name to be kept alive, I am the only person able to do it.”

Rome was speechless for a long moment, simply staring at her as if he had never seen her before.

“You’ve never been too concerned about the Richardson name in the past,” he pointed out.

Pansy nodded, acknowledging that truth. “I haven’t been thinking about it,” she admitted. “I suppose it could be said that I simply haven’t been thinking.”

There was a silence in the room. It lingered as Pansy considered how much she should say, how much he deserved to know.

“I didn’t break up Judge Barclay’s marriage,” she told him.

It was the first time the man’s name had been mentioned between them.

“He was a dear friend of Grover’s,” she explained. “I was hurt and scared and I turned to him for comfort. I needed the warm arms of a friend to console me. I had no idea that he was a womanizer.”

She looked up and met Rome’s eyes. They were full of sympathy and understanding. She’d always known he would not condemn her. She didn’t know why she had not trusted him with the truth.

“It only happened between us once,” she murmured.

Pansy felt the sting of tears in her eyes, but she refused to give in to them. It was time to say it aloud. It was time to speak the truth, if only so that she could hear it herself.

“I was horrified at what I had done,” she confessed. “I was wretched and ashamed. It was not a misstep or a fall from grace. It was a vileness. A disgusting, horrible vileness. And I was guilty. I knew that I was the one who was completely and totally guilty.”

Her hands were trembling. She clasped them together to keep them still.

“It was not just the adultery,” she continued. “I saw my sin as much deeper than that. Grover was making love to me when he died. My lust for him, my need for
him, had cost him his life. And then he was not a month in the grave and I was in the arms of another man.”

She stared at Rome, willing him to understand.

“It was as if I had murdered him,” she said. “And then moved on as if nothing had ever happened.”

“Don’t say that about yourself,” Rome implored her. “It’s just not true.”

“What’s true is what we believe to be so at the time. I was disgusted with myself. Certainly I was still grieving, still confused and bewildered by what had happened. But I believed myself solely at fault. I believed that I had lured the man against his will. And that I deserved to be punished.”

“So you purposely took upon yourself the mantle of a harlot?”

Pansy smiled humorlessly and shook her head.

“That was not the punishment I intended,” she replied. “I wanted to apologize. To make restitution to those I’d injured. I was the one who confessed all to Madeline Barclay.”

Rome’s eye’s widened. That piece of information genuinely surprised him.

“I went to her, penitent and guilty, taking all the blame upon myself,” Pansy said. She shook her head again and gave him a self-deprecating grin. “I can assure you that she did not thank me.”

Rome nodded, comprehending perfectly.

“The judge had always been a womanizer,” he said. “I suspect she’d always known about it.”

Pansy agreed. “It wasn’t until afterward that I realized that this was not the first time the judge had strayed. But because I admitted it out loud, she had to do something. And that something included publicly naming me in her divorce.”

“I am so sorry,” Rome told her.

Pansy shrugged. “I wasn’t particularly. I was still guilty. And what I did was still wrong. The punishment, the shunning that I received, felt justly deserved.”

She watched his brow furrow. She was not certain that anyone else could truly understand her motives.

“Everyone thought the worst of me,” she continued. “So I cultivated that opinion. I nurtured it and enhanced it at every turn. I believed I was living my life as I pleased, despite the disapproval of my neighbors. But the truth was, I was living my life intentionally to foster that disapproval. It was what I wanted. But it’s not what I want anymore.”

“What’s changed?”

“I have,” she said. “I’ve stopped looking at who I am based on a single series of actions. I was Pansy Richardson before I was the wicked widow. I can be Pansy Richardson again.”

Rome’s expression was worried. And she knew why. She knew that it was hard for him to imagine her change of course. She knew it was hard for him to believe that her fellow citizens would allow such a turnaround.

“I have to speak from the podium at the Founder’s Day Fourth of July Picnic,” she told him again. “I want you to speak to the Monday Merchants about it.”

“I will certainly try, Pansy,” he promised. “But I don’t know if they’ll let you speak. I don’t know how I’ll convince them.”

“Oh, I think you can convince them,” she said. “Tell them I know why the construction on the lagoon system can’t get started.”

That certainly got his attention.

“What do you know about the lagoon system?” he asked, startled.

“I know that the Monday Merchants keep sending paperwork to the judge about getting the digging started and nothing happens. You’ve all blamed it on my neighbor here. Poor Mr. Pearsall is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but his incompetency is not the problem.”

“What is the problem?”

“I am the problem,” she told him.

“You?”

Pansy nodded. “Construction can’t begin, won’t begin, because the people of Cottonwood don’t own the land.”

“What do you mean, we don’t own the land?” Rome asked. “Your husband gave it to us.”

“Not quite,” she replied. “He intended to donate it to you. It had been announced that he was signing the land over to the town. Judge Barclay was drawing up the papers. But Grover died before the papers were signed.”

Rome gazed at her with undivided interest.

“I had no idea that it hadn’t been taken care of,” she told him. “Not for months after. Not until the terrible scandal had broken and the whole town had turned from me in disgust. Then one day I got a visit from the judge.”