Twice Blessed (20 page)

His tongue teased her ear as he whispered, “I was sure I would go mad before I could persuade you to come here with me, sweetheart. I thought you'd never finish those accursed dishes tonight.”

She framed his face so she could see the desire softening his stern features. “Neither did I!”

“Think how much more quickly you'd have finished them if …”

“Would you stop talking and kiss me?”

With a laugh, he whispered, “Gladly, sweetheart.”

His fingers brushed her breast as he slipped his arm beneath her. At her gasp of excitement at his bold seduction, he pressed his mouth over hers, refusing to be denied what she had dreamed of night after night when he slept on her sofa. Each audacious caress of his tongue elicited a stronger need within her. She had been the proper storekeeper for too long after giving up her dreams to a man who turned them into nightmares. Now she was going to savor this sweet dream coming true.

The buttons on his shirt undid with such ease that she smiled. That smile became a soft whisper of his name when he began to unbutton her blouse. The touch of his fingers on her breast added to the heat deep within her. When each side of her blouse dropped to the pallet, his eyes glowed like the stars overhead.

The quiver focused on that growing warmth as he leaned over her again. The caress of his skin against hers above her corset and shift was as fiery as that light in his eyes. He held her gaze, not releasing it, as his finger looped over the lace along the top of her corset and popped the first hook. Then the next … and the next. His eyes narrowed as he peeled it away from her. That was her only warning before he drew down her loose shift and ran his tongue between her breasts.

She grasped his shoulders and pulled him closer. With a laugh, he found her lips again. All gentleness vanished from his kiss. It demanded she give every bit of herself to this pleasure. Stroking his bare back and letting her hands curve down over his hips as he had caressed hers, she pulsed with the accelerating need within her as he overpowered her senses with his kisses.

He refused to be satisfied with her lips as he drew off her blouse. He tasted her cheeks, her eyelids, the curve of her jaw. His lips burnished her skin, setting it afire with longing. Teasing her ear with the liquid heat of his tongue, he laughed when she whispered his name again as she fought to keep from being overwhelmed by this untamed passion. The caress of his breath fanned the flames into a wildfire.

Her fingers splayed across his back when he slid the straps of her shift down along her arm, and he probed beneath the soft cotton over her breasts. The sensation of his mouth against her was an exquisite delight. She wanted this craving, but it would shatter her if it lasted a second longer.

Pushing his shirt aside, she dropped it to the floor atop her discarded clothes. She swept her fingers along his broad chest. His skin was becoming the inferno she could see in his eyes. A hint of a smile curved his lips as he loosened the button holding her skirt in place.

She laughed and pushed him away. When he regarded her with astonishment, she held his shoulders to the pallet. He groaned with the longing that also taunted her as she ran her tongue along her curves of his ear. She continued to explore each flavor of his delicious skin as he rid her of her skirt and petticoats.

He rolled her onto her back, then sat. His gaze swept over her as he unbuttoned one of her shoes with the same slow, fascinating caress as he had her corset.

She sat up so she could unhook the other. He laughed and pressed her back onto the pallet.

“I'm just trying to help,” she whispered, barely able to recognize her own husky voice.

“I've been waiting for this, and I want to enjoy every moment.”

“Of taking off my shoes?” She laughed as he pulled off her other shoe. “You have strange fantasies.”

“Not so strange.” His hands curved along the top of her stocking, and he slowly rolled it down her leg. Drawing it off her foot, he ran his hands up each side of her leg again.

She gasped with the craving that was becoming a hunger that must be sated when his hands slipped across her from one thigh to the other, then slowly rolled down the other stocking. He tossed it away, before sliding his hands back up her leg again.

She could not withstand much more of this without losing all of herself in the mindless bliss. When he had kicked away his boots and his own socks, she saw him reaching for the buttons on his denims. She playfully slapped his hand away and sat.

“I have fantasies of my own,” she whispered as she put her hand on the topmost button.

“Do you?” His voice was as unsteady as hers, which thrilled her more.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to share them with me?”

“I want to share more than my fantasies.”

With a groan, he grasped her face and brought her mouth to his. She knew her fingers were fumbling on the buttons, but she did not pause as she undid his denims. Drawing them down and dropping them somewhere in the shadows, she smiled at him as she ran her hands up his strong leg. She did not stop when she reached the top. Stroking the silken skin that reacted to her very touch, she did not hurry to slide her hands away down his other leg. Her gaze absorbed the firm lines of his sculptured body

He reached for her as she began to let her fingers wander down his other leg. She paused and stared at him when they touched puckered skin that was broader than her palm and more than twice as long as her hand.

“Noah?” she whispered. “What happened?”

“Don't ask now, sweetheart.”

“But you were hurt.”

“Nothing hurts now but this longing to be part of you.” His mouth took hers again. Creating a pattern of joy along her skin, he seemed determined to leave no part of her untouched.

Seized by the eager cadence of his breath, she moved with the tempo of a song created by two hearts and two bodies in perfect harmony. She gasped as the song became a crescendo when his fingers swept along her legs again to seek the fire within her. Touching him as intimately, she lost herself in the longing that flowed from her to him and back again in a wild rhapsody.

He drew her beneath him. His fingers brushed her hair back, framing her face, imprisoning her gaze within the passion blazing in his eyes. He brought them together, and the emptiness that had taunted her for so many years was filled with desperate desire. With his lips over hers, he dared her to reach for every delight waiting for them. She matched his motions and his need. She relinquished herself to the splendor that merged them into one perfect moment of ecstasy.

Emma stared up at the moonlight and smiled. When Noah shifted, she kept her head on his shoulder. He tipped her face up.

“I want to see that smile,” he whispered.

“I shall wear it every time I remember this moment.”

He kissed the spot on her neck where her pulse still pounded. “You shouldn't have to remember it too often.”

“What?”

With a chuckle, he said, “This can't be the only memory you want to make with me, is it?”

She laughed too as her fingers stroked his chest. Her other hand ran along his leg. As they encountered the scarred skin, he drew his leg away and caught her hand in his, keeping her from touching him.

Looking up at his face, she saw his smile was gone. She leaned across him. “Noah, tell me, please.”

“Some memories I prefer not to recall now.”

“Don't you trust me with them?” She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling.

“I trust you with everything I can, sweetheart.” He framed her face and smiled. “I simply don't want to talk about bad memories when I want to create more splendid memories with you now.”

She could not argue with that, for she did not want the joy to be tarnished either. Yet it had been. As soon as he held back this part of his past from her, she recalled how much she had not told him.

When he drew her into his arms and found her eager lips again, she expelled those thoughts from her head. The past was all around her, but tonight she wanted to think of only this man and the wondrous sensations they could share with each other while she forgot how short-lived this joy could be.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Sean, stand still, so I can check that you washed behind your ears,” Emma ordered as she inspected Sean from every angle.

Even though his cowlick refused to be lacquered down, his face was scrubbed. He wore a brown worsted coat with trousers to match. His shoes were well shined, and the bowtie at the throat of his neatly pressed white shirt was surprisingly straight. With his face already tanned from playing out-of-doors, he barely resembled the boy who had arrived in Haven with a sickly pallor and a bearing that suggested he was preparing himself for the next person who might do something to hurt him.

He wiggled away from her and put his hands over his ears. “No one's going to see behind my ears but you.”

“Not if you don't let me cut your hair soon.” She gave him a playful slap on the shoulder. “If it gets much longer, I swear we'll have to braid it like Belinda's.”

“Jenny likes it like this.”

“Jenny Anderson?” she asked, trying not to smile. The Andersons ran the livery stable across the street from the store. She had wondered why their oldest girl, who was about a year older than Sean, had found so many excuses to come to the store in the past week. Somehow, Sean had always managed to be sweeping the porch when she arrived so the two of them could talk before Jenny did her shopping for her mother. “She is a very nice girl, Sean, but that is no excuse to let your hair grown down over your ears.”

“I want to look like a slicker.”

“Where did you learn such language?” She held up her hands. “No, don't tell me. I think I'd be better off not knowing the answer to that. Just watch what you say.”

“I won't embarrass you, Emma, during the wedding.” His face was abruptly sober.

She squeezed his shoulders and smiled. “And I'll try not to embarrass you either.”

“You?”

“Of course.” She drew on her best lace gloves. “When Jenny Anderson walks by, I could casually mention that I hadn't seen the back of your ears in more than a week.”

“You wouldn't!”

Laughing, she said, “You're right. I wouldn't do that.”

He grinned and curled the top of his ear forward. “See? All clean?”

Emma pretended to peer with concern at him. She would not tell him, but she was glad to see him come into the kitchen all dirty and laughing about how he had beat someone in a footrace or played hide-and-seek. Now that some of the other orphan train children were attending the village school, he was not as reluctant to attend each day. His chores were done more quickly, and Emma often had to call him in after dark to eat the supper that had grown cold on his plate.

A knock came on the door. Through the frosted glass, Emma could see three people on her porch.

Her smile broadened as she threw the door open for Noah, Belinda, and Gladys. She started to greet them, but could only stare. She had seen Noah dressed in his working clothes—cotton shirt, suspenders, vest, denims, and scuffed boots. The man standing before her now could have stepped out of an eastern fashion plate. Straight black trousers flowed down to his brightly polished boots. His black cutaway coat contrasted with the silver vest he wore over a flawlessly white shirt. The collar of his shirt, which reached nearly to his chin, was closed in front by a white tie that tilted slightly to the left—the only imperfection in his appearance. In his hand, he carried a black top hat edged with a band of silver.

This aristocratic man who looked as if his feet had never walked on anything but a sidewalk or through a fine garden unsettled her, for Noah wore these fine clothes with such ease. The questions she had tried to silence burst forth again, and she wondered why he spoke so seldom of his past. Was this elegance a part of his past?

Belinda peeked around him, smiling broadly. Her hair was pulled back in two braids beneath a hat decorated with silk roses to match the ones at the dropped waist of her dress. The full pink skirt was held out by crinolines and reached just below her knees. Pink-striped stockings and recently polished white shoes that buttoned up to her calves gave her an appearance as elegant as her father's.

“Look at the swells!” Sean whistled in appreciation, breaking her mesmerism with the sight before her.

She looked down at her gown. It was her very best, a silk only a shade deeper than the pink of Belinda's dress. Did fashionable ladies still wear cascades of ruffles down the back of their gowns below their bustles? And were the necklines still scooped so deeply that the sleeves were little more than a few layers of lace? She wanted to ask him, but her voice seemed to have vanished as she realized it was not her appearance that bothered her, but his.

This wondrously elegant man seemed so different from the one who had carried her in his arms across the floor of his new barn to make love with her in the moonlight. She loved that man who was not afraid to let her know how much he wanted her. He was plainspoken and kindhearted and so enticing that he made her breath falter each time she looked at him.

Noah's finger in the gray kid gloves reached beneath her chin and tilted her face up toward his. His smile and twinkling eyes were unchanged, and she was able to smile back at him.

“You look lovely,” he said softly.

“Not as lovely as you.”

He laughed. “I thought I'd do you proud today, Emma.”

“You could do the fancy houses on Fifth Avenue proud in such clothes.”

“No one would notice me if I walked down the avenue at your side. Today, you don't look like the sensible Miss Delancy of Delancy's General Store.”

“She looks like a fairy-tale princess!” Belinda chirped. “Can I touch the ruffles on the back of your dress, Emma?”

Noah began, “Belinda, you shouldn't—”