A Wild Yearning (45 page)

"Are you chilled?" He ran his hands up over her shoulders and down her back, his gaze lovingly caressing her face. "Let's go to bed. I'll soon have you good and warm. Hot, in fact—"

She pulled back slightly from his embrace. "Ty, we saw the Dreamer. Out by the lake."

A crease appeared between his brows. "Are you sure?"

"No... not sure." She closed her eyes, trying to conjure again the strange, crowlike image. "That wooden-headed fool Pulwaugh thought it was a ghost."

"If it was the Dreamer, it probably was a ghost."

"No, it was a man, a real man. And it was the Dreamer. I could feel it." She opened her eyes. "What are you scowling at
me
for?"

His face relaxed into a rueful smile. "Aw, hell, Delia. I'm just jealous, I guess. I wish you were a little less impressed with the man."

"I'm not impressed with him. He frightens me."

"Forget about him. Think about me." He cupped her bottom, tilting her hips toward his. "Do you know how long it's been—"

"Ten hours."

"God, it feels like ten centuries." He took her hand and put it between his legs. His manhood stretched and swelled, pushing against her palm. She could feel the heat of it through the pliant leather of his breechclout. "There, see," he said, his voice strained. "I'm dying for you, Delia."

She assumed the haughty face she had worn for her customers at the Frisky Lyon, while below, her hand was daringly squeezing his turgid sex. "Then why, sir, are ye standin' here a-talkin' me t' death?"

Groaning with need and anticipation, he lifted her, carrying her to his bed where he fell upon her greedily, his lips locking on hers in another deep, shattering kiss.

Long, breathless minutes later, he ended the kiss by growling against her mouth. "I hated coming home and finding you gone, Delia-girl. Don't ever leave me like that again."

Delia smiled to herself, for she knew that nothing short of death would make her leave Ty.

Ty dashed a ladleful of water on the red-hot stones. Moist, suffocating steam rolled up, filling the tiny wigwam.

"It's too hot, Ty," Delia protested, panting a little. She lolled naked against a backrest, feeling wonderfully relaxed and wanton.

Ty opened the entrance flap a crack. He picked up a brush made from the tail of a porcupine. "Come here," he said.

She came to him eagerly, positioning herself between his legs. It had become an afternoon ritual with them, performed almost every day. The steambath, the hair brushing, the talk... and the love. The Norridgewocks had merely thought it a Yengi idiosyncrasy when Bedagi had built his own private sweat lodge so that he could share the pleasure with his woman.

Ty drew the brush through his wife's long, black hair. It slithered and coiled wetly around his hands and over his thighs. Delia purred. She felt tingly all over from the steam generated by the water on the hot stones, and the steam generated by his touch, by the presence of his warm and wet and naked body pressed in intimate places against hers.

"Do you think your cabin was burned during the raid?" she asked lazily. "I can't bear to think you've lost all your fine things."

"They were only things." He set the brush aside and pulled her back to lean against his chest.

"But your mother's moccasins, Ty. And all your books and—"

He stopped her by kissing her mouth. "They don't matter. I have you now and you're all I care about." He rested his chin on her shoulder. "I would've had to build another cabin anyway. The old one was too small to accommodate my dozen babies."

She turned her face aside so he couldn't see her smile. "Aye. And the three wives it'll take t' give ye those dozen babies," she said tartly, although she liked the idea of having
a
houseful of children. Hers and Ty's... and Nat's. She wanted Tildy and Meg as much as she wanted children of her own. "I keep thinking of the girls, especially Meg. Poor Meg. She took her ma's death so hard. Now her da..."

Gently, he squeezed her shoulders. "They still have you."

"But I'm not there." She twisted her head around. "When can we—"

He placed his finger over her lips. "Soon, love of my life. At the first sign of spring."

He moved away from her to pour a bit more water over the stones. Steam wafted between them. He stretched out on his side and her eyes moved over the length of him—naked, hard, and beautiful. She wanted him to make love to her.

No, she wanted to make love to him.

Leaning back on her elbows, she thrust her chest out. Her breasts, firm and full, pointed saucily toward the low domed roof, their nipples dark and puckered. Her eyes took on
a
smoky cast, and her knees fell brazenly apart, one of them just brushing his thigh. Beads of water glistened in her dark triangle of tight curls, like dew caught in a web.

His chest trembled with silent laughter. "Are you perchance trying to seduce me, you wanton wench?"

"Hunh. Wishful dreamin', Tyler Savitch."

He pounced on her and they rolled together over the reed-matted floor. She wound up on top, straddling his thighs. Her eyes widened at the sight of his splendid arousal.

"Do you see something you might like, sweetheart?" he drawled.

"Oooh," was all she could manage, as
a
coil of heat, blazing red as the fiery stones at her back, unfurled deep between her legs.

She ran her palm up and down his rampant length, admiring it, manipulating it, worshipping it. Enjoying the beautiful thought of what she could do to it. She pressed her lips to the round swollen tip of it.

Ty sucked in a sharp, hissing breath.

Her mouth closed around it, and she sucked on him.

His thigh muscles tightened until they quivered, his fingers became ensnarled in her hair, his hips lifted...

She drew as much of him as she could into her mouth...

His mouth fell open. "Oh, sweet heavenly Je... ah..."

She sucked in her cheeks, drawing her lips along the length of him. She traced the pulsing veins with her tongue. She scored him lightly with her teeth, until he could bear it no longer.

"Oh God," he cried. "Enough..."

He pulled her up by the hair. She pressed her knees on each side of his slender hips and, rising up, impaled herself on him, deep and hard, and she gasped aloud as he seemed to pierce to the very core of her and his huge thickness packed her full. She ran her fingers over his chest, tracing the hard slabs of muscle, leaving little trails and swirls through the moisture on his dampened chest hair and steam-slick skin. Leaning forward, she cupped her heavy breasts with her own hands and lifted them, presenting her swollen nipples to his lips as if offering two ripe juicy strawberries for his degustation.

And he licked, nibbled, tasted.

He rose up, she sank down. Slowly at first, and then with greater and desperate urgency. Their bodies melted, flowed together as she rode him, sliding up and down on his thick length, faster and harder. Their breathing was choppy, harsh, muffled by the hot, steamy air. She was burning, burning, burning from the inside out.

He thrust up, hard, and she slammed down, driving a harsh cry out his throat as he pumped and pumped and pumped into her, and she melted over him, and they were one.

Small aftershocks still tremored through her body as she opened her eyes onto his face.

He blinked the sweat from his eyes, swallowed. Breathed. "Delia that was..." But he couldn't finish. He seemed shattered, and she felt shaky inside. In pieces. As if a giant hand had picked her up and rattled her like a gourd.

His glistening chest expanded as he sucked in another, deeper breath. "I think I'm going to live," he said.

Her wet hair slapped against his arms as he drew her head down and took a slow and loving kiss from her mouth. Then he laughed and bucked his hips, lifting her off him. "Let's take a snow bath."

Delia shrieked, trying to fend him off. "No, Ty!"

Heedless of her kicking feet and flailing hands, he carried her out of the wigwam. Sky, sun, snow—all were white, the blinding, brilliant, bleached white of the purest ice. Minute crystals floated in air so cold it burned.

A big snow drift, fluffy and loose like a pile of goose down, loomed before them. Delia shut her eyes. "Oh, Lord above us..."

The snow was so dry it squeaked, and so cold it snatched the scream from her throat. Her muscles, fluid and loose from the steam and the heat, tautened with the snap of a bowstring. The cold was like the slash of a blade, so sharp she couldn't feel it.

And then she did—and it was like the water dashing onto the red-hot stones. She sizzled, she bubbled. She burst into hard and vibrant life.

His face floated above hers. Tiny diamond chips of snow dusted his flaring brows. Bright splashes of color heightened his cheekbones. His eyes were so blue they outdazzled the glare of the sun on the ice, and they burned with love, so that lying naked in a bed of snow, she felt not cold but warmed by the heat of his look.

His mouth slanted into a crooked smile. "God Almighty. I'm freezing my balls off!"

Laughing, clinging together, they fought their way out of the snow drift. They were halfway to their feet when Delia fell to her knees again. "Oh, Ty. Look..."

A
spot of bare earth showed through the snow and from it emerged a tiny blue flower in the shape of a star. She brushed the flower once lightly with the tip of her finger. Looking into his shining face, her own face mirrored back his love and happiness and promise. They said it together.

Spring was noisy.

The snow plopped and thudded as it fell from drooping branches. Mist formed over the lake and river ice as it creaked and groaned, and cracks slithered and twisted across the once glassy surface. The steady drip of icicles thawing off the trees and roofs pattered like rain. Everywhere was the sound of water—flowing, running, gurgling. After so many months of snow-shrouded silence, the noise of spring battered the ears.

One day the wind changed direction, becoming warm and damp against the skin. The sap began to rise in the maples; young ferns and flowers poked through melting snow. The first tiny leaves of the birch and beech unfurled. Nature sang, a single loud repetitive note.

Spring.

The folk of Merrymeeting had waited out the long winter, each according to his nature—with resignation or impatience or hope.

The dead were mourned and buried but life went on, marked by the passing months. In November, they gave thanks for the harvest, with pumpkin bread and popped corn and roasted chestnuts. Hollowtide marked the slaughtering time with cracklings and sausage. For Christmas there were greens and minced pies, and in March they rang in the New Year with mead and hardened cider-brandy. On Good Friday they baked hot-cross buns.

Those farmers along the Kennebec who had been burned out in the raid set up housekeeping within the stockade. Along the inside wall of the palisade were low sheds whose roofs served as firing platforms. The families bedded down in these sheds at night. They cooked and lived communally in the blockhouse by day. Most of the men still logged the great pine masts that winter, but they went out in gangs, heavily armed. They built a small but stout garrison house at the central logging camp, and some of the men, those without womenfolk, remained up in the hills after the first big snowfall.

Colonel Bishop sent out scouts to cover the Sagadahoc Territory in fan-shaped wedges around the settlement. Those families who lived within Merrymeeting proper, and those who still dared to remain on their isolated homesteads, always had one ear cocked, listening for the alarm bell warning of another raid. But feelings of security increased when each scout returned to report the same emptiness in the woods.

It was the second week in March and just about the time they were scraping the bottom of the pork barrel, when the ice broke up in the Kennebec with such a shattering and a roaring that it rattled the ground like an earthquake. There was a jauntiness to the steps of the men coming down from the logging camps that day and the women were heard to sing as they went about fixing supper. But in blew a blizzard that night, dumping another foot of snow, and it was cold enough the next morning to make a body's toes jingle. It was The Maine's peculiar sense of humor, the old hands said. Spring was still a good ways off yet, but the promise was there.

It had been that sort of winter—full of both promise and disappointment.

Sam Randolf, the blacksmith, had cursed and spat and pulled out tufts of his red hair, but by February he thought the cannon would fire if they were ever to put a slow match to priming powder. They pointed the cannon upriver and dared the Abenaki to come back and fight like men, now that they were ready for them. "We'll bang the bastards stoutly this time," Sam Randolf said. They hadn't tested the cannon, though. They didn't have the extra shot.

In spite of the Indian scare, the settlers prepared for the season's plowing and planting, for farms that lay idle soon became full of hawkweeds and hawks. When Colonel Bishop lamented to his wife about the danger of working the isolated fields, his wife's tart reply was, "You can either die hungry or you can die scared." Having no answer to that, the colonel occupied himself with busily scratching his head. Wigless, he was growing his hair back out and it itched to beat hell.

Obadiah Kemble spent the winter drunk enough to pickle a hog and brought home a squaw from Cape Elizabeth to warm his bed. He told anyone who would listen that he'd never had so much fun in his life. The women said it was scandalous. The consensus of the men was that Obadiah Kemble, like a man just out of prison, was doing a little well-deserved celebrating.

Daniel Randolf caught Meg Parkes alone on the veranda of the Bishop manor house one schoolday morning and kissed her on the mouth. She punched him so hard with her fist that she knocked him on his rump and bloodied his nose. Young Daniel swore off girls for life.

Every night after saying her prayers, little Tildy Parkes asked Anne Bishop when her new ma was coming home. Anne always answered, "In the spring." And every morning on first waking up, Tildy would say, "Is it spring yet?" So they built a snowman outside the gate of the stockade. His eyes were made from the buttons off one of the colonel's old coats, he had a corncob for a nose and a piggin for a hat, and Obadiah Kemble carved him a wooden rifle to scare off the Abenaki. "When he begins to melt," Anne said, "you'll know it's spring."

Colonel Bishop and the Reverend Caleb Hooker got into an argument early in November—the day the old timber beast Increase Spoon brought the message from Dr. Ty. They repeated the argument at least once a week throughout the next five months. Caleb wanted to set off into the wilderness after his wife. The colonel accused him of being a cussed fool.

"You don't know where she is or how to get there or how to find your way back once you did get there!" the colonel would bellow into Caleb's drawn face. "Dr. Ty has found her and she's alive. He's lived with those savages and he can deal with them. You'd only wind up with your hair decorating some scalp pole, which would do her one hell of a lot of good now, wouldn't it? And her with a babe on the way..."