Suddenly she felt awkward and sexless and knew for sure he'd tell her to get back upstairs and she would die of humiliation.
Yet she whispered his name anyway. Or did she whimper it?
"J… Jesse?"
It might have been the brush of curtain upon sill, so tentative was the sound.
"Jesse?" she asked again of his moon-clad body.
He straightened his head around on the pillow drowsily. Although she couldn't make out his eyes, she saw the moon's reflection on the bolder lines of his face. His moustache made a darker, beckoning shadow. His chin lowered and he looked across his chest and saw her, and pulled a hank of sheet over to cover himself.
"Abbie? What is it?" he asked sleepily, disoriented, braced up on his elbows now.
"J… Jesse?" She quavered, suddenly not knowing what else to say. This was awful. This was so awful. It was worse than any of the insults she'd suffered at his hands, yet she stood as she was, her two hands, fisted tight, bound together against her chin.
But he knew. He knew by the tremulous way she spoke his name at last. He sat up, taking more of the sheet across his lap, dropping a single leg over the edge of the bed for equilibrium.
"What are you doing down here?"
"Don't ask… please," she pleaded.
The silent night surrounded them and time seemed to cease its coursing until out of the creamy night quiet came his voice, low and knowing.
"I don't need to ask, do I?"
She gulped, shook her head no, unable to speak.
He didn't know what to do; he knew what he must do.
"Go back upstairs, Abbie. For God's sake, go. You don't know what you're doing. I shouldn't have let you have that champagne."
"I'm not drunk, Jesse. I… I'm not. And I do not want to go back upstairs."
"You don't need this in your life."
"What life?" she asked chokily, and his heart was clutched with remorse for having made her question the blandness that had always been enough before.
"The life you've always prided yourself on, the one I don't want to ruin for you."
"There have been so many times I thought I knew what would ruin my life. My mother always warned me that men like Richard would ruin it. Then she died and he ran away and I wondered how to exist from one day to the next with all that nothingness. Then a man named David Melcher came into my house and made me hope again, but—"
" Abbie, I tried to apologize for that. I know I shouldn't have done that to you. I'm sorry."
"No, you shouldn't have, but you did, and he's gone and shall never be back. And I need… I…" She stood as still as a mannequin, the moonlight limning her in ivory, her hands pressed to her throbbing throat.
"Abbie, don't say it. You were right at the supper table tonight. I do value all your old-fashioned morals or I'd have taken you long ago. I don't want to be the one to make them come crashing down now, so just go back upstairs and tomorrow I'll be gone."
"Don't you think I
know
that!" she cried desperately. "You are the one who made me realize the truth about Richard and me. You are the one who accused me of stagnating, so who better shall I ask? Don't change on me now, Jesse, not now that I've come this far. You… you are my last chance, Jesse. I want what every other woman has known long before she's thirty-three."
He jumped off the bed, twisting the sheet around him, holding it low against one hip. "Goddamnit, that's not fair! I will not be the one to aid in your undoing!" He tugged the sheet viciously but it was anchored beneath the mattress, tethering him before her. "I lay there thinking about you for hours after I went to bed and I found you were a hundred percent right about my motives. I don't know what it is about you that mixes me up so, but one minute I want to bend you and the next I'm cussing because you're so godalmighty moral that if you bend, I'm the one who breaks. But you know that and you're using it against me!"
She was. She knew it. But she swallowed her pride and spoke in a strained whisper. "You're sending me away then?"
Oh, God, he thought. God, Abbie, don't do this to me when I'm trying to be noble for the first time in my life! "Abbie, I couldn't live with myself afterward. You're not some… some two-bit whore following the railroad camps."
"If I were, could I stay?" Her plaintive plea made him ache with want.
Why the hell did I push her so far, he berated himself, wondering how to get them both out of this without lasting hurt to either This was the moment when her morals and her mother's morals faced off. How ironic that he should now be the spokesman for the mother he had criticized.
"Abbie," he reasoned, "it's because you're not that you can't. Do you understand the difference?" Had she no idea what she did to him, standing there hugging herself, swathed in moonlight and trembles?
"You'll hate me afterward, just like you hate Richard. Because I'm going, Abbie. I'm going and you know it."
"The difference is that I know it beforehand."
Sweat broke out across his chest and he tightened the twist of sheet at his hip until it dug into his skin.
"But you know what I am, Abbie."
She raised her chin proudly, though her body quaked. "Yes, you are Jesse DuFrayne, photographer, seer of life as it really is. But you are the one running from reality now, not I."
"You're damn right I'm running." His labored breath sounded like he actually had been. "But the reason is you. Tomorrow you'd look at this differently and you'd hate me."
"And would you mind?" she braved, her chin lifting defensively.
"You're damn right I'd mind, or I wouldn't be standing here arguing, wrapped in these sheets like some timid schoolboy!"
"But you know that if you send me back upstairs, I shall hate you anyway."
The moonlight scintillated off their outlined bodies as they strained to see each other's faces. He thought he could smell roses clear across the room. Her shoulders were so small, and she looked all vulnerable and scared with her arms folded up the center of her chest that way. But her hair was loose, lit by moonglow, like a nimbus about her shadowed face.
"Abbie…" His voice sounded tortured. "I'm not for you. I've had too damn many quick women." But his conviction somehow faded into appeal and he took a halting step toward her. She too took one tremulous step, then another, until he could make out the quick rise and fall of her breathing.
"All the better that it be you, Jesse, my one and only time—you who know so well." Her words were soft, breathy, and raised the hair along his arms. They were so close that Jesse's shadow blocked the moonlight from her upraised face. Tension tugged at their hovering, unsure bodies. The whisper of curtains in the night breeze was now the only sound in the room. Jesse's nostrils flared while he clutched the sheet tighter, tighten He thought of tomorrow and knew she had no idea that David Melcher would be back in town. All he had to do was tell her so and she would turn back upstairs obediently. But the thought of leaving her to Melcher flooded him with livid jealousy. He could take her now, but how she'd hate him afterward, when she found out he'd known all along of Melcher's return.
She knew absolutely nothing about what he could do to her, he was sure. There she stood, imploring him for that of which she was ignorant—his tiny little hummingbird Abbie, who'd fought for his life and defied death right here in this very room. And in return she asked just one thing of him now… and he wanted to give it to her so badly that it physically hurt. She was a scant four feet in front of him now. All he had to do was take one step more. Standing there, fighting desire, smelling the aura of roses drifting from her, Jesse floundered, became lost in her "Abbie," he uttered, the name strained, deep in his throat, "you're so damn small." And the sheet, like a puddle of rippling milk, moved with him as he leaned to whisper in her ear, "Don't hate me, Abbie, promise you won't hate me." His gruff words moved the hair behind her ear and trapped her heart in her throat. A sinewy hand reached through the moonlight to close itself about her upper arm.
Her lips fell open. She raised her face and her nose touched his firm shoulder. His skin smelled of night warmth and sleep and held a faint trace of dampness, not wholly unpleasant. She raised a hesitant hand to brush it with her fingertips. He was so hard, so warm, and she so unsure. He poised, his breath beating upon her ear, and she wondered what he would have her do. She knew so little, only that to kiss as they'd kissed in the yard had turned her body to sweet, shaking jelly. So she raised her lips and asked near his, "Would you kiss me first, like you did in the yard, Jesse?"
His grip on her arm grew painful. "Oh, God, Abbie," he groaned, and let the sheet spill from him as he scooped her up in powerful arms and held her against the heart that hammered wildly in his breast. He buried his face in her hair, knowing he should not do this, but was unable to deny himself any longer.
She rubbed her temple against his lips, eager for the touch of them on her own. Then slowly, timidly, her face turned up, seeking that remembered rapture.
"Abbie, this is wrong," he reiterated one last, useless time.
"Just once, like in the yard," she whispered. "Oh, Jess, please… I liked it so much."
Sanity fled. Her childlike plea threw his heart cracking against his ribs. He lowered open lips to her warm, waiting ones. As she met his kiss her arms went twining around his neck, fingers delving the mysteries of thick, black hair at the back of his head. His tongue, once dry with fever, was now wet with fervor, dipping against hers, slipping to explore her mouth greedily. She responded timidly at first, but imitating his actions, her pleasure grew and her tongue became bolder within his mouth. He released her suddenly and her knees and legs went sliding down along his until her feet touched the floor. He cinched powerful arms about her ribs, lifting her untutored body up and in against him. His mouth slanted demandingly across hers and his tongue delved deeper, plying, playing, melting her insides like sugar candy until she felt it drizzle, sweet and warm, far down from the depths of her.
For Abbie it was the wonder of the first kiss magnified a hundred times as her body pressed willingly against his. He made a faint growling sound in his throat, then threaded his long fingers back through the hair at her temples, cradling her head in his palms while he scattered little kisses everywhere. He seemed to be eating her up by nibbles, making her feel delicious as he took a piece of her chin, then her lip, her nose, her eyebrow, ear, neck, settling back upon her mouth again, biting her tongue lightly as if finding it the tastiest. She forgot everything but the slow, sweet yearning inside her body. She let it control her, leaving her with the wonder of this man whom she had so long feared, but whom she wanted now with a desire that shut out all thoughts of wrong. She forgot that his was a practiced kiss, knew only that it was the prelude to all she was so eager to learn from him, of him. He buried his face in her neck, his breath summer warm on her skin.
"Abbie, I have to know, so I don't hurt you," he said in a hoarse, stranger's voice, "did you and Richard ever do this?"
Her hands fell still upon his neck.
"No… no!" she answered in a startled whisper, straining away suddenly. "I told you—" She would have turned aside, abashed, but he took her jaw in both of his warm hands, tipping her face up as if it were a chalice from which he would sip, forcing her to look at him.
"Abbie, it doesn't matter," he said low, brushing his thumbs lightly, lightly upon the crests of her cheeks. "I don't want to hurt you is all. I had to ask."
"I… I don't understand," she said tremulously, her eyes wide on his, lips fallen open in dismay.
She swallowed hard; he felt it beneath the heels of his hands, and thought, Lord, she's so small, I'll kill her Yet he brushed her cheek with his lips and hushed, "Shhh… it's all right," and lifted her face to meet his kiss again, making them both forget all but the turbulent senses aroused now beyond recall. With his tongue in her mouth, he picked her up again and carried her to the edge of the bed, where he sat with her upon his lap. Silently he vowed to go slow with her, to make it good, right, memorable if he could. He lifted her bashful arms and looped them around his neck. She was ever aware that he was naked, that his skin burned warmly through her wrapper and gown. His lips slid to the warm cay of her collarbone, and he murmured, "You smell like roses… so good." She twisted her head sensuously, rubbing a jaw against his temple. He touched her neck with his tongue, and she shuddered with some new, vital want. "Can I take your wrapper off, Abbie?" he asked, trailing brief kisses to a soft spot on the underside of her chin.
"Is that how it's done?" she asked rather dreamily.
"Only if you want."
"I want," she confessed simply, sending his senses thrumming. So he found the twist of belt at her waist and tugged it free and brushed the garment away until it lay tumbling across his bare knees.
He kissed her once more, then said into her mouth, "Abbie, I'm shaking as if it's my first time."
"That's good," she whispered.
Yes, he thought, it's good.
Then she added, "So am I," and he heard the smile in her words. He smiled too, against her cheek, then bit the tip of her ear.
"Remember when we were sitting on the swing? I really wanted to do this then, but I was afraid to put my arm around you all of a sudden."
"You've never been afraid, I don't think. Not of this." But still it pleased her that he said so. His hand slid to her ribs, rubbing sideways, abrading her skin softly through the thin cloth of her nightgown.
"I'm afraid now, Ab, afraid this might melt away beneath my hand."
She held her breath, her skin tingling with anticipation until at last his palm filled itself with her breast, warm and peaked and generous. The pressure of his other hand grew insistent at the back of her neck until she obeyed its command and turned her mouth again to his. But this time his kiss was no heavier than the touch of a moth's wing, more a kiss of breath than of lips. But it made shivers ride outward from every pore of her body. His caresses were loving, gentle, as he took a nipple, hard and expectant, between his thumb and the edge of his palm, squeezing it gently until she sighed against his lips. His hands roamed her shoulders and the nightgown fell down about her hips, letting first the warm fingers of night air ripple over her bare skin… then the warm fingers of Jesse DuFrayne. When his hand at last cupped her bare breast, she laid her forehead against his chin, lost in the magic of his touch. He brushed the erect nipple with the backs of his fingers while her wrists went limp, hanging across his shoulders. Drifting in sensation, she unconsciously pulled back to free a space so he could explore further. Finding her other breast as aroused as the first, he made a satisfied sound in his throat. "Ahhh, they're so hard," he said thickly.