The Grass Widow (17 page)

Any man.

That strange and frightening kiss had been how a man might have kissed her...if men thought like women, and knew to stop when a no was said.

She looked up to be startled by a short-haired stranger, but she knew the warm, dark eyes. “Joss—” But the words wouldn’t come; she looked away. When at last she spoke, her voice was very soft. “Joss, I...what happened to us this morning?”

The short end of her cigarette suddenly demanded attention; Joss took a last hot taste of it and got up to put it in the stove. “What d’you mean?” She felt exposed in the thigh-length shortness of Ethan’s shirt. There came a sudden, pungent memory of that rogue brother of hers, laughing wickedly after his first trip to a Kansas City whorehouse, telling her about it:
they licked each other,
Joss! Would you ever do that, kiss another woman between her legs?

They liked it, too, both of
’
em. I could tell they did.

“You know damn well what I mean,” Aidan said, and Joss almost jumped.

“I—” She made meticulous adjustment to the stove lids, her blood roaring in her ears.
They licked each other. Would you—
“I

don’t know, Aidan. I...” She swallowed. “I don’t know.”

Aidan’s gaze was so gentle that at last Joss had to meet it, her own look pleading that this be left alone, and for a silent moment their eyes held; it was Aidan, finally, who looked away and said quietly, “I suppose I’m ready for bed, then. You must be tired.”

Joss breathed a tiny sigh of relief. “Yuh. Long day.”

Aidan cupped her hand behind the chimney of the lamp; in a puff of breath the night closed around them. Joss stood cautiously in place, waiting for her eyes to adjust. “Isn’t it dark tonight.” Aidan’s voice was closer than when the lamp went out.

“New moon?”

“I’d say.” Her nerves screamed at her, memory adding to the chorus:
stay with me, Joss, I’m so afraid of the dark
—

“Will you walk me in?”

“I—yuh.” Aidan’s fingers found hers, a touch like sunrise and moonshine, like heat lightning shimmering across August afternoons, or stars shooting to their deaths through midnight skies; Joss was acutely aware of her nakedness under the wornthin old shirt. “G’night,” she whispered at the bedroom door, and tried to turn, but Aidan kept her hand. “Aidan—”

“Stay with me,” Aidan said softly, and Joss’s belly took a painful leap toward her heart. “Please, Joss.”

“Aidan, I can’t—” She rescued her hand and tried to put it in a pocket she wasn’t wearing, and then didn’t know what to do with it, or its companion; she stuck them into her armpits. She wished she hadn’t had the whiskey. She wished for more of it. She wished for a cigarette. She wished she had on trousers. She wished she was out in the barn, out in the beans, out in the night—anywhere; just out of this precarious place.

“Joss, don’t leave me alone with this. Please. I know you don’t want to talk about it, but—”

“It’s not the talkin’ I’m afraid of.” She raked her hand through what was left of her hair, a breath escaping her that felt as if it had been held in tight rein all day. “I’m sorry if I frightened you,”

she said softly. “I didn’t intend that, Aidan. None o’ this. This mornin’—I don’t know what it was. I didn’t mean to do it. It just...happened. It won’t again.”

“Joss, I’ve never felt—” She drew a breath. “I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. Not when—” She bit that off, as if it were an admission too close to the truth to reveal. “Joss, I—”

Joss waited, but there was no more. “I wish I could lie to you, Aidan.” She ran a hand over her face, and through her hair; she shook her head. “How I kissed you—” The words tasted odd and liquid; she had to stop, to absorb their intimate, unfamiliar flavor.

“It’s how I feel,” she said quietly. “About you. But I never meant for you to know.”

“Joss, why? Why would you keep that from me?”

“I’m afraid of it! It’s only part of how I love you, an’ if it’d cost you leavin’ me—”

“Leaving you!” It was a strangled laugh of disbelief. “If you told me to I’d go, but if they came for me, I wouldn’t.” She abandoned the support of the doorframe, took a step into the bedroom, turned back. “All the time I was growing up they told me I’d find a nice man and fall in love and live happily ever after. And then Mother would tell me about a wife’s duty. She’d say all a woman can do is suffer it. Well, I suffered it once! You didn’t frighten me, Joss. Jared Hayward frightened me. He hurt me and he humiliated me, and I’ll never let a man touch me again.”

“Aidan, he was but one man an’ a bad one. You can’t say that. It’s like—”

“Don’t tell me I can’t! A wife’s duty is naught but the worst of a life of slavery, and I’ll be damned first!” She fumbled pins from her hair and threw them at a basket on the stand by the bed; shielded by the dark and the thick fall of her hair, she searched for her composure. “I don’t know what I’ve thought today, but leaving you never occurred to me. And I can’t bear to be without you tonight. Could I let you go I would, but—” She shivered; she had never been so honest. “I so need for you to hold me,”

she whispered. “I need to feel safe, the way I felt when—oh, Joss. Please—”

Silently, Joss went across the bedroom; she took Aidan’s face in her hands, slipping her fingers deep into her hair. “I can’t just hold you.” Her breath was rich with tobacco and the warm, subtle hint of liquor. “The first time I did I knew I’d never be able to again. You don’t understand how I think about you, an’ I don’t know how to say it, but—”

“Joss, you’re all I’ve thought of! I don’t know what to call this, and I’m afraid and confused and I know you are too but Joss, I want you with me. I need you with me. When you—how it felt when you—I didn’t want you to stop. As soon as I said no I wanted you back, but I was afraid—”

“Aidan, you don’t know what you’re sayin’. You don’t know what you’re askin’ for. Stop this now, while we can.”

She touched her fingers to Joss’s lips. “I’ll never forget how it felt when you kissed me, Joss,” she said softly. “I’ll always want to feel it again.”

“I can’t—oh, God! Aidan, I can’t just kiss you. You don’t know what I want, to know if you want it too.”
Would you ever do that?

Kiss another woman between her legs?
“Oh, no.” Something halfway between a laugh and a groan jittered from her. “Lord, no. I can’t say that to you.”

Aidan tasted the length of Joss’s back with her palms, finding the washboard of her ribs, the sharpness of her shoulder blades, rediscovering the startling absence of hair at her neck before her hands found Joss’s face, turning from palms to fingertips against her skin. Delicately, she traced Joss’s lips with a finger, feeling a barely-controlled shiver of response there. “Whatever you want, I want it too.” It was hardly a breath; there was hardly a breath between them. “Kiss me, Joss. The way you really want to.”

“Aidan, you don’t know—”

“I don’t know the words, Joss. I don’t know how to say it any more than you do, but I know how I feel! I can’t be without you tonight. I can’t. I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want to be close to you. Joss, please—”

“Oh, Aidan—” It was almost a moan. “I wasn’t born with strength enough to say no to you. God forgive me—”

It was a kiss like the morning, but daring to, this time; it was the soft question of lips tasting hers, and the press of fingers at her cheek as that gentle mouth sought her more closely; it was the query of Joss’s tongue asking if she might part her lips. It had never occurred to her that a lover might want that from her; now there was nothing she wanted more than the smoky warmth of that tongue against her own. She buried her fingers in Joss’s hair. Hands drew her closer; the warmth of that hard, lean body against her made some hot and liquid thing surge in her.

“Joss—oh, how you touch me—”

“Everywhere,” Joss said softly. “Aidan, I want to touch you everywhere—” She buried a deep, wanting kiss into Aidan’s throat, her hand coming to cup one heavy breast in gentle possession;

0

Aidan almost shuddered with the feel of it. “—with my mouth,”

she whispered, and Aidan’s breath deserted her in helpless shock.

“Will you let me?”

There was no answer she could have said that would have been more honest than what her body spoke as Joss’s thigh pressed between her own. “Is that how—oh, Joss—” She shivered, in terror and in aching want; Joss’s tongue sought hers again, and she imagined that probing tongue finding her
(everywhere? Oh,
God, can this be right? Can it be wrong?)
as hard-palmed hands stroked to her waist, holding her close as that hungry mouth tasted her lips and trailed across her cheek; Joss’s tongue slipped delicately into her ear, pulling a moan from her. “Joss, this is—oh, you make me feel so—”

“Put your arms around my neck,” she whispered; Aidan did, and Joss raised her into her arms to hold her tight against her chest, finding her mouth, her hunger, her urgency. “To hold you this way—” The feel of teeth against her throat made Aidan arch against her, tearing harsh breaths from them both. “You don’t know how I’ve wanted this, Aidan. You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to touch you—” It was a husky admission. “Since the last time I shared this bed with you, I’ve wanted this—you, this way.”That look, that morning—yes, it had been different, some secret behind it—and yes, that had been the moment she had fallen in love with Joss Bodett. “Whatever this is, it’s what I want,” she whispered as Joss gave her to the bed. “It’s all I want. Joss, I need you so—oh, Joss!” Questing lips at her breast pulled the gasp from her; with no thought for the time it might take to sew the tiny buttons back onto her gown, she tore open the throat of the silk. No lips had ever touched her breasts, nor any hand their nakedness, and more than she needed to breathe she needed to know the feel of Joss’s mouth there—and with that touch there came a feeling so intense, so fervid and foreign, it pulled a cry from her as she held that close-shorn head there, her fingers buried in the thick dark hair as Joss drew her hardened nipple into her mouth. “Joss—oh, my Lord. Joss—”

Delicately, Joss’s tongue sought her, both her hands coming to embrace her breast, and when teeth closed there with exquisite gentleness Aidan remembered the morning and that hot liquid surge when Joss had kissed her only because “Oh—” it exploded

“—my—” in her “—Joss! oh love oh my love don’t stop—” now as if it had been some real thing inside her heart and mind and belly, a straining bubble filled with warm honey or sweet cream, bursting to spill itself into her as a peach hot from a summer tree would spill its juice into a mouth as hungry as the one against her now. “Oh, Joss,” she wept, and then had to assure her that she was all right. “You didn’t hurt me,” she whispered around concerned kisses, clinging to her, still trembling. “It felt so good—”
are you
sure?
“I’m sure.”
Aidan, are you sure I didn’t hurt you?
“God didn’t strike you dead, did He? Joss—” She stretched against that hard body, thinking of peaches; one always made her want another. Still uncertain, Joss leaned over her. “I want to feel you against me,” she said softly. “And I never want to sleep without you again. Will you always sleep with me, Joss?”

“I’ll do anything you want me to,” Joss whispered, as Aidan undid the buttons of her shirt and slipped her hands inside it, tracing fingertips across her breasts, brushing the hardness of her nipples. “I’ll do anything at all.”

“That’s what I want you to do.” Aidan drew her head down to her, offering her mouth, her want, her need. “Anything you want. Anything at all, Joss.”

There were dozens of tiny buttons down the front of her gown; patiently, Joss freed them, hands and lips murmuring across skin bared by their defeat, lingering where her touch made Aidan’s breath come short, brushing a kiss at the compelling scent of hair, wandering down one smooth thigh; when at last she could spill open the silk she eased beside her to feel the length of skin on skin. For a moment they could only hold each other, absorbing the wonder of their naked warmths together. “How I’ve wanted this,” Joss whispered. “Lord, how I’ve wanted this. To feel you this way—”

Aidan had never known that hands could be so gentle, that a

mouth against her own could make her ache with want, and when Joss’s hands and mouth found her breast again she wept with the depth of her love—and the bitter wish that her virginity could have been given to this tender, patient woman. For she could feel the effort of control in the body so close to hers, in the lips that brushed her skin as if it was their desire to taste every inch of her, in the palms that explored her curves and hollows with a wonder she understood, for she felt it, too, touching a body so different and yet so much the same it was almost like another vision of herself, and when at last fingers trailed up the tender inside of her thigh (and oh, they were such long and slender fingers, precise, delicate, gentle with everything they touched) she shivered in her need, and when Joss’s mouth found hers with a whispered question:
Is it all right?
she rose to meet that hand in her answer, and when fingers touched her smooth, wet warmth she was helpless; she heard Joss draw a breath, almost moaning her name at that first discovery, and something newly familiar, something ripe and unrestrained, pulsed and ached and grew in her as lips found her breast “Joss—” and then her belly “Joss, please—” and that tongue traced the hollow inside her hip “Joss!

Yes oh my love Joss yes—”

And knowing there was no one but Joss to hear, she allowed to come ungoverned the scream that spilled from her as that gentle, probing tongue proved what Joss had meant when she had said that she would kiss her everywhere.

When Doc Pickett rode past the Bodett place at nine the next morning there was no smoke coming from the chimney; he spurred his mare into the dooryard and tossed a rein over the porch rail on his way to the door. “Josie!”

The curse from Aidan’s room made him suspect; he had suspected all along, but he grinned in certainty when Joss burst out with one of Ethan’s old shirts on inside-out. He’d have laughed, but for the shock of her close-shorn head. “Christ in a carriage,”