The Passions of Emma (50 page)
H
e ran flat out until his chest hurt. He ran hard, until his feet stirred up a pall of dust that floated over Ferry Road, and his breathing blew harshly in his ears.
e ran flat out until his chest hurt. He ran hard, until his feet stirred up a pall of dust that floated over Ferry Road, and his breathing blew harshly in his ears.
He ran and ran, but the pain kept pace with him, matched him stride for stride and breath for breath. The empty, whistling pain.
He flung back his head and shouted her name into the hard, blue, merciless sky: “Bria!”
The road curved. He was running into the wind now, and it was warm and dry on his face. It was a sou’wester, and it came up every afternoon in the summer here, smelling of the sea. The old-time Yankees claimed it fanned the passions and stirred desire.
Desire. And what a queer thing that was, desire. You could choose what you took and what you bought, and what you kept and what you gave away.
But not what you wanted.
He was deep in the woods now. Three months ago the maples and birches and elms were still greening in the late spring rains. Now their leaves were drooping from the wet summer heat. A month would pass and they would be blazing crimson and gold, and his wife would still be dead. And though his heart might clench in unbearable grief to think of it, that didn’t change the truth of it.
He wasn’t going to choose to stay away from the meadow today, he saw that now. He’d been running down this road for quite some time, all the while telling himself he was running away. Now there was nothing more left to choose, nothing left to do.
But run to meet her.
The meadow was blazing with goldenrod, like a bowl of sunshine. She sat in the middle of it, a girl in a white pleated lawn dress and a yellow straw hat, whose blue ribbon lifted and floated in the breeze.
The light seemed to spill from her flesh, as if the sun lived inside her. He saw her, and he wondered how he ever thought he could feel this way and yet make himself believe and behave as if he felt nothing at all.
He stood within the shadows of the trees and watched her for one long sweet moment. Then he walked out into the sunshine to join her.
She heard him, and turned her head, and her face lightened even more, became buoyant and expectant.
“You came,” she said, the relief in her voice tinged just a little with fear. And she didn’t even know yet how much he wanted her.
He was dizzy, desperate with wanting her.
He sat down next to her and rested his wrists on his bent knees. The hot, dry wind fanned the dark wisps of hair on her forehead and neck. He wanted to take off that delicious little hat with its wide blue ribbon and let down her hair. He wanted to fill his hands with her hair and bury his face in it, breathe it in until he was full up inside with the smell of her.
He looked away from her, around the clearing. At the dark evergreen of feathery hemlock boughs. At the yellow splashes of goldenrod and black-eyed Susans. At the purple elderberries plump on their vines.
At the fox’s earth that had a bird sitting in front of it—a huge naked, pink bird.
“And would you be telling me,” he said, “what the devil is that?”
“It’s a capon.”
“Mother of God. Those kits will be hard pressed to make do with a farmer’s scrawny chicken after this.”
She had the laugh of a naughty child. He wanted to kiss her open mouth when she laughed and swallow the sound of it down deep inside him.
“I hope you looked carefully before you sat down,” he said, thinking to tease her with the blarney and make her smile, maybe laugh again. “For don’t you know, surely, that on hot days such as this, the snakes like to hide themselves in the goldenrod fields?”
Her lips trembled into the smile he wanted. Her mouth was like a delicate bruised rose in the paleness of her face. He wanted to kiss her mouth.
“Perhaps I came here looking to be bitten,” she said.
He laughed at her bravery.
“Shay . . .”
He loved how she said his name. It sounded the way woodsmoke smelled, tangy.
“Emma,” he said, giving the gift back to her, and he saw her pleasure in the way the ocean depths of her eyes shifted and stirred.
Her gaze fell to her lap, where her hands were gripped together in a tight little fist. “What do we do now?” she said, her voice small and tremulous.
“We lie with each other, Emma. If you still want that.”
“Yes, I do,” she said on a little gasp. “But what do we . . . How do we begin?”
“Slowly, I think,” he said and smiled, for the way he felt inside, shaking and flapping like a sail loose in the wind, “slowly” seemed an impossible thing. “Aye, we will make it slow and sweet. We’ll undress each other slowly, and then I will touch you sweetly in all those places you want to be touched.”
She made a breathy sound that was half laugh, half sigh, although she wouldn’t look at him. She pulled her hands apart and began to pluck at the little pearl buttons on the wrist of her glove, but she was shaking so, and her breaths were coming in soft little gasps again.
He took her hand. “Here, let me,” he said.
He turned her hand over and laid it on his knee, and he undid a single pearl button, and then he brought her wrist up to his mouth and kissed the small patch of white, white skin that showed there, then he undid another button, and kissed her again, and again, and again, until all six buttons were undone and so was he.
She was looking at him now, and all of a young woman’s first love shone brilliant and vulnerable in her eyes. “Touch me some more,” she said. “Touch my mouth now with yours.”
As simply as though he did it every day of his life, he kissed her on the mouth. A long kiss that began soft and gentle, and turned rough and hungry, and went searching for all he wanted, and found it.
He undressed her as he’d promised, slowly, and he touched her sweetly. With his mouth and his hands and his tongue, he touched her breasts. He touched her throat with them, and her belly and between her legs. He couldn’t speak words anymore. Only touch her.
When he pulled off his own clothes, he wasn’t surprised by the daring way she touched him, for he knew that about her, knew how she could be both daring and shy. She touched his flesh, all over, as if she were molding the shape of him with her hands.
He rose above her so that he could see her face. Her eyes were wide and dark, the color of peat smoke. He wanted her so much, so much, and he wasn’t going to stop now.
When he entered her, she uttered a little cry, and he caught it with his mouth. He pushed all of himself inside her, thrust himself deep inside her, and when it was time he pulled out of her, so that he could give of himself without giving her a babe.
He eased down beside her, but he kept his arms around her, and he gathered her close. He felt strands of her hair between her face and his. He felt the softness of her breasts against his chest, and the heat and wet of her naked belly pressing against his.
He had wanted her, but just as much he wanted to be held by her like this. Simply held by her, and comforted.
She lay on her back, naked.
The sun melted and flowed over her like hot butter. The wind touched places on her she hadn’t known existed before Shay had found them. She felt ripe and bursting with love.
She opened her eyes onto the great windy blue bowl of the sky. The world seemed caught in a simmering hush. Then a wood thrush began to sing, and a bee buzzed by her cheek. And she heard his ragged breathing.
She turned her head, and her whole view of the world was the round, hard bulge of muscle in his arm.
At first she had felt his body with something very like fear, the weight of it, the strength. But that hadn’t been an end, only a beginning. For he had done such things . . . He had put his tongue in her mouth. He had suckled her breasts like a babe. He had touched her between her legs with his fingers and his mouth, and he had put his tongue inside her there, as well.
And then he had put himself inside her there.
It had hurt a little, but she hadn’t minded. She thought she had been created for that moment, when she would take his body into hers and feel his weight and his need. And when it ended, when they pulled apart, the moment was still there between them, would always be there. They were two; then they were one.
I will never love anyone but him, she thought. Not like this, not ever again.
She pushed herself up on her elbow and looked down at his
face. His eyes were closed, and there was a brooding slant to his mouth. She wondered if he thought of Bria. She didn’t mind if he did. Bria was the mirror to both their hearts.
face. His eyes were closed, and there was a brooding slant to his mouth. She wondered if he thought of Bria. She didn’t mind if he did. Bria was the mirror to both their hearts.
She put her hand on his chest and felt him take a breath. Then he opened his eyes.
“Emma,” he said, and what she heard in his voice wrapped around her heart and squeezed mercilessly.
She put her fingers to his mouth. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t say we shouldn’t have done it.”
He left her fingers on his mouth. He reached up and pushed his hand through her hair. It had all come undone.
“A man,” he said, and she felt his lips move, felt how soft they were beneath the hardness, “can ruin a virgin by seducing her, but if she comes to him of her free will, that is her gift to him. I’ll not be saying we shouldn’t have done it. I’ll not be saying that to you.”
“I don’t want it to end,” she said. “Not yet.”
He leaned in to her, and his hair brushed her cheek and his breath scalded her neck. “God save me, neither do I.”
Her kissed her mouth and then he pulled back again, and his gaze roamed over her, all over her. She felt it as though he touched her with his eyes, and it made her melt inside. As though she were made of wax and his eyes were fire.
“Don’t look at me,” she said, suddenly feeling shy again.
He smiled at her, a bandit’s smile.
He ran his fingers along the curve of her belly, along the dark line of hair that grew there, and into the dark warmth below it. “
Ah mhuire
. . . How can I not?”
Ah mhuire
. . . How can I not?”
The deep purple of twilight was just falling over The Birches when she drove up the long quahog-shell drive in her little black-lacquered carriage.
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