Pamela Morsi (36 page)

“I haven’t known what I was doing since the afternoon I came to you, planning to offer you a proposal
of marriage, only to have you advise me to marry someone else.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” she told him, trying to wiggle out from under him.

He released her hands and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, crushing her chest tightly against his own.

Rome rested his head in the crook of her neck for a moment before he raised up and looked her squarely in the eye. “I don’t love her,” he said.

It was an excuse. But not enough of one to suit Gussie’s ideals.

“Then you shouldn’t … you shouldn’t have gone to her bed,” she answered.

“No, I know now that I shouldn’t have,” he admitted.

He sighed long and thoughtfully, a little line of worry cropping up between his brows.

“I can’t change that, Gussie. I can’t alter the past. I can’t do anything to make it better.”

“No, you can’t,” she agreed, her heart aching. It was the truth and the truth was often painful.

“But, Gussie,” he continued, “you are so willing to give Pansy Richardson a second chance. You found it so easy to believe that she would put that opportunity to good use. Will you not allow me the same consideration?”

“I cannot,” she said with certainty as she trembled against him. “I cannot.”

“Why?” he asked in a whisper against her ear. His warm breath raised gooseflesh along her skin.

The tears welled up in her eyes. Gussie wanted to cry. She wanted to cry and scream and rail against him. But she did not. Instead she answered his question.

“You kissed her just like you kissed me,” she said. “You touched her as you touched me. You showed her
pleasure the same way you did me. That’s what you did, Rome. You can’t deny it.”

“I can deny it,” he answered.

“Don’t lie to me,” she pleaded.

He ran a caressing palm down the length of her hair and wound it around his hand like a rope.

“I won’t lie to you, Gussie,” Rome said. “You can believe me when I promise that I will not lie.”

She believed him.

“I kissed Pansy Richardson,” he said. “I touched her. I lay with her without benefit of marriage. But nothing, nothing that I did with her was anything like what you and I did together.”

“And how was it so different?” she demanded.

“Because it was love between us, Gussie.”

His eyes were so close. He was looking at her with such intensity.

“It was love,” he repeated. “You can’t tell me that it was not. It was love when we embraced. It was love when we kissed. And it was love when you shuddered in ecstasy against my hand.”

Aghast, she turned her face away from his gaze, too humiliated to look him in the eye.

“Must you remind me of my weakness?” she reproached him.

He kissed her temple and tenderly ran two fingers from the spot to her jawline.

“It wasn’t weakness, Gussie,” he told her. “It was power. The power of love. The very consequential power of our mutual love for each other.”

“Oh, Rome,” she complained.

She tried to pull away from him, but he wouldn’t let her go.

“You cannot deny that you love me,” he said.

“I do love you,” she admitted. “But I cannot forget
that you’ve been in her arms. I forgive it, Rome, because I do love you. But I cannot forget it.”

“I can’t forget it either,” he told her. “And I wouldn’t want to. It was a terrible, hurtful mistake. A mistake I intend to learn from and keep before me always as a reminder of how casually I can head down the wrong path and how dangerous that can be to my happiness.”

He took her face in his hands and gazed into her eyes.

“But I also vow to limit my mistake to that, not complicate it by a marriage that was never meant to be. I don’t love her. And it’s wrong to wed someone you don’t love. Are you listening to me, Gussie? It’s wrong for me. It’s wrong for you as well.”

“You men all seem so very sure about that,” she said. “You should learn to see wedlock more in terms of a diversity product line. Not necessarily exactly what you might want, but a profit margin that you can live with.”

He chuckled lightly and lay a tiny peck upon the end of her nose.

“The union of two people involves more than gain and loss,” he told her. “It is the only thing about human existence that makes the rest of it worthwhile or even bearable.”

He angled his head above her mouth. She knew he was going to kiss her.

“Forgive me, Gussie,” he pleaded. “Forgive me my mistake and make my life bearable once more.”

Somehow she couldn’t resist him. She didn’t want to resist him. As he lowered himself to her, she wrapped her arms around his neck. Openmouthed, she met his kiss with her own.

It was just as it had been between them. Sweet and hot, matched and matchless. The taste of him was oh, so familiar and her body recognized him as well. She
curved herself upward from the bedticking to press herself closer.

He moaned deep in his throat.

“I love you, Gussie,” he whispered. “I love you so very much.”

He kissed her mouth, her eyelids, her forehead, her cheeks. He tenderly feathered his lips along her jawline to her ear.

“Love me, Gussie,” he pleaded. “Love me, if you ever can.”

“I do love you,” she answered. “I love you, Rome Akers.”

He muffled a shout of joy against her throat.

She arched her neck to give him more access. He took it eagerly, testing and tasting her from the edge of her collarbone to the delicate flesh between her breasts. Such a tender touch took her breath away.

His strong, dependable hands, so warm and soothing, moved upon her fevered skin.

The right hand found its way to her bosom, weighing her breast and urging the nipple to rise, turgid and eager, for his touch. He did not leave her wanting, but took the small, hardened bud between his thumb and forefinger and tweaked it in a fashion that was all pleasure and no pain.

The force of the sensation sizzled down her body to her most secret and intimate places. She gasped from the intensity of it and drew up her legs to try to tamp down the fire.

“Yes, my sugar,” he said, so close to her ear. “Yes, I know what you’re needing. I know what you’re wanting. I need it too. I want it too.”

As if to emphasize the truth of his statement, he drew her hand down between them. Through his trousers she felt the long, hard length of him.

She stilled abruptly.

He kissed her and allayed her with whispered, soothing words. “You don’t have to be afraid,” he told her. “I’ll be very gentle. We’ll take it very slow. If you tell me to stop, I’ll stop.”

“Stop,” she told him.

There was a moment’s hesitation on his part and then he pulled away from her. Sitting back on his heels at the end of the bed, his legs straddled on either side of him.

His eyes were focused completely upon hers. He did not for an instant glance away.

“What are you doing?” Gussie asked him.

“You told me to stop,” he said. “So I stopped.”

That was good, she told herself. Somehow it didn’t feel that way.

“I am your partner,” he said, “in everything with you, Gussie. I want what you want.”

She was still nervous. She was still afraid. But she did love him and she did want him.

Gussie sat up. She was in a very unladylike position, her clothes all bunched and her legs spread before him. Bravely, in one motion, she pulled both her wrapper and her nightdress over her head and discarded them on the floor.

Rome was watching her. His eyes were so intense upon her skin, the look was almost scorching.

She ran a hand along his shoulders and to his collar, first pushing aside his suspenders and then loosening his tie. When her fingers arrived at the first of the line of pearl buttons down the front of his chest, she hesitated.

“It’s been my experience that in any severe and unforeseeable downturn,” she said, “and perhaps we can call these loosened bedcovers exactly that, both partners lose their shirts simultaneously.”

He smiled at her as she undid all the buttons and peeled the impediment to his bare chest from his back.

“What about trousers?” he asked her. “Do partners lose their trousers simultaneously as well?”

Gussie glanced down and couldn’t help blushing at the evidence of his arousal.

“I’m not sure I’ve heard trousers mentioned in terms of economic conditions,” she told him.

“I don’t believe I have either,” he admitted as they each explored the naked flesh of the other. “But I have heard it said, Gussie, not to mix business with pleasure. And what I want to share with you is totally and completely pleasure.”

He slid his arms more tightly around her, easing her closer. Warm flesh against warm flesh was enticing, almost overpowering. Gussie shivered, but she was so hot.

Rome began to shower her with kisses on her face, her arms, her breasts, her belly. She trembled, glorying in the way he touched her.

“Do you remember how you felt before?” he asked her.

“Oh, yes,” she answered. The words came out more like a moan than a reply.

“I’m going to make you feel like that again,” he promised. “Would you like that?”

What a silly question to ask. She didn’t bother to answer, but simply sought his mouth with her own in reply.

His hands were not gentle or tentative upon her. He was certain and eager. He wanted to please her and he knew how. He kneaded her bosom and nipped each breast in turn until she could think of nothing else but his mouth there.

When he moved his head lower and the cool air assaulted the raised, damp point, she whined in complaint.

He ignored her as he lay a trail of delicate love bites from her midriff to below her navel. As his face approached the crux of her spread thighs, she demurely attempted to draw her legs together.

Rome would have none of it. He braced a hand on each knee and opened her wide before him. She gave a little cry of astounded shock before he lowered his mouth to the source of her feminine secrets that twitched with immodest eagerness.

Her dismay quickly fled as incoherence took over. She could not think or wonder or even express herself in words. Her head flailed from side to side and the sounds that came from her mouth were indecipherable, except for their origin, which was ecstatic pleasure. As his tongue flourished upon her with rapidity and persistence, she began grinding her hips to get more, to feel more.

When she reached the pinnacle, it was so vivid, so powerful, she tried to pull away from him. But he held to her and helped her through until she cried out his name in ardent passion, shattering her remaining fears and restraints.

He held her tightly in his arms thereafter, soothing her, praising her. He kissed her and she tasted herself upon his lips. He tasted of her and himself and the indescribable fervor they’d shared.

When she could catch her breath enough to speak, she tried to explain herself.

“That was … it was … I can’t believe …”

“I know, my sweet sugar,” he whispered. “I know. And there is more.”

“More?”

He drew her hand down to her own body, which was now hot and wet and so very sated, it seemed.

“Do you feel that?” he asked her.

She nodded, surprised, intrigued. It was as if the lips of her entrance had opened wide, a puckered, seeking edge raised high.

“You’ve bloomed for me like a flower,” he told her. “I will promise not to hurt you.”

Gussie believed him. With no trepidation at all, she unbuttoned the front of his trousers. She had never seen a naked man before and was a little taken aback by both the difference from herself and the sheer dimensions of his body parts.

“How do you keep something that big in your trousers?” she asked him.

Rome gave her a teasing bite and settled himself between her thighs. “I’m hoping, once we’re married, I won’t have to.”

It was as he had promised. Slow and gentle. He eased himself inside with only the mildest of resistance. There was stretching, accommodating, but somehow it was not uncomfortable. In fact, once he was buried completely inside her, Gussie felt a wholeness, a perfection, that brought tears to her eyes.

“Am I hurting you?” he asked, worried.

“Oh, no,” she assured him.

“Are you … are you sorry to give yourself to me?”

She opened her eyes wide then, hurriedly disabusing him of that notion.

“I love you,” she told him. “I have loved you for some time. But at this moment, I love you more than I thought it was possible to love. And I feel more a part of you than I thought it possible for one person to feel for another.”

The tears slid from her eyes back toward her temples.

“I’m crying with joy,” she said. “With immeasurable happiness. I don’t want you to ever stop doing this.”

Rome’s grin was warm and understanding, his eyes bright with the same emotions that she was feeling. But when he spoke, his words were teasing.

“Stop? Miss Gussie, I haven’t even started yet.”

P
ANSY WAS MORE NERVOUS THAN SHE COULD EVER
recall feeling. It was hard for her to understand what she was so fearful about. If these people did not accept her offering, did not accept her penance, she would simply go back to being the woman she had always been. Even as she comforted herself with this notion, she knew it was impossible. One of the most disturbing aspects of learning the truth about yourself was that you could never go back to believing the lie again.

She was seated upon the dais with a select group of local leaders. Though the stage had been hurriedly made with rough-hewn pine, someone had carried chairs all the way from City Hall, and the stately, overstuffed mahogany looked a little out of place in the natural surroundings.

There was one seat too few. But that didn’t matter; the mayor was far too flighty and nervous to sit down. He seemed slightly overwhelmed with the responsibilities that had fallen to him. He consulted in turn with Huntley Boston, the sheriff, Mr. Potts from the newspaper and Reverend Holiday. He glanced in Pansy’s
direction several times, acting as if he expected at any moment that she might grow horns.