Twice Loved (copy2) (11 page)

And he took her back to those beginnings, pressing his mouth fully over hers, his tongue inviting hers to dance. His silky inner lips were just warm enough, just wet enough, just hesitant enough, just demanding enough, to wipe away today and take her back through the years to those first times.

She shivered. He felt the tremor beneath his palm on her neck and drew her against him, then slipped that warm, seeking palm within the dress that hung loosely from her shoulders. But when he would have pulled it down, she quickly flung her arms about his neck so that he couldn’t. The dress was doing its intended job, for through spikes of whalebone and clumps of gathers there was little chance of his touching her intimately. The hoop was pressed tightly against his thighs and flared out behind her as if blowing in a hurricane.

But the hurricane blew not on her skirts but within her head and heart, for the kiss now had substance. It was a hot, whole giving of mouths, with neither holding back anything. Her tongue joined his and she knew the immediate shock of difference, as anyone knows who has kissed only one person for a long time, as she had Dan. It should have sobered her, reminded her she was not free to do these things with this man, but instead she welcomed it and realized that ever since she’d married Dan, she’d been comparing his kiss to this and finding it lacking.

That traitorous admission brought her somewhat to her senses, and she hoped fervently that Rye would be content with this kiss for now, because her resistance was fast slipping as he held her firmly and ran his hands along the exposed skin of her back, which was the only bareness he could reach.

He tore his lips away and spoke with savage emotion. “Laura—my God, woman, does it give y’ joy to torture me?” He raised one hand and slid it along her arm, capturing one of her hands from the back of his neck, carrying it down, and placing it on his swollen body. “I’ve been five years at sea and this is what it’s done t’ me. How long would y’ make me wait?”

Shock waves sizzled through her body. She tried to puli free, but he held her palm where it had too long been absent, the heat of his tumescence insistent through the cloth of his trousers. Clutching the back of her neck, he drew her wildly against him once more, kissing her, his hot, demanding tongue stroking rhythmically in and out of her mouth, reminding Laura that it was he who had taught her these things in a boathouse loft years ago. Her hand stopped resisting and conformed to the shape of him, and he thrust against her caress, still pressing the back of her wrist and knuckles and fingers.

Against her will, she again compared him to the man who waited at the house for her now. Her palm moved up, then down, measuring, remembering, while Rye begged her with the motion of his body to seek the touch of his satin skin if she would not allow him to seek hers.

The fog curled its tendrils about their heads, and the seductive scent of blossoms filled the night. Their breathing scraped harshly with desire, like ocean waves rushing upon sand, then retreating.

“Please,” Rye growled into her mouth. “Please, Laura-love. It’s been so long.”

“I can’t, Rye,” she said miserably, suddenly withdrawing her hand and covering her face with both palms, a sob breaking from her. “I can’t ... Dan trusts me.”

“Dan!” he growled. “Dan! What about me?” Rye’s voice trembled with rage. He grasped her arm and jerked her almost onto tiptoe. “I trusted you! I trusted y’ t’ wait for me while I sailed on that ... that 
miserable
 whaleship and floundered in the stink of rancid oil and rottin’ fish and ate flour with the weevils sifted out of it and smelled men’s unwashed bodies day after day, and one of them my own!” His fingers closed tighter, and Laura winced. “Have y’ any idea of how I longed for the smell of y’? I nearly lost my mind at the thought of it.” But now he thrust her away almost distastefully. “Lyin’ there adrift in the doldrums, at the mercy of a windless sky, while days and days passed and I thought of the wasted time when I could’ve been with you. But I wanted t’ bring y’ a better life. That’s why I did it!” he raged.

“And what do you think I was going through?” she cried, her shoulders jutting forward belligerently, tears now coursing down her cheeks. “What do you think I suffered when I watched you stuffing clothes in your sea chest, when I saw those sails disappear and wondered if I’d ever see you alive again? What do you think it was like when I discovered I was carrying your baby and I got the news that that baby would never know his father?” Her voice shook. “I wanted to kill you, Rye Dalton, do you know that? I wanted to 
kill
 you because you’d 
died on me
!
”
 She laughed a little dementedly.

“But y’ certainly wasted no time findin’ someone t’ take my place afterward, did y’!”

She clenched her fists and shouted. “I was pregnant!”

“With my child, and y’ turned to him!” They stood almost nose to nose.

“Who else could I turn to? But you wouldn’t understand! When’s the last time your stomach swelled up like a baloon-fish so you couldn’t even walk without hurting or ... or shovel a walk or carry wood or lift a water pail! Who do you think did all those things while you were gone, Rye?”

“My best friend,” Rye answered bitterly.

“He was my best friend, too. And if he hadn’t been, I don’t know what I’d have done. He was there without being asked, whenever I needed him, and whether you want to believe it or not, it was as much because he loved you as because he loved me.”

“Spare me the dramatics, Laura. He was there because he couldn’t wait t’ get his hands on y’, and you know it,” Rye said coldly.

“That’s a despicable thing to say, and 
you
 know it!”

“Are you denyin’ that y’ knew how he felt about y’ all the years we were growing up?”

“I’m denying nothing. I’m trying to make you see what two people suffered at the news of your death ... suffered together! After we heard that the 
Massachusetts
 had gone down, we got through those first days by walking the dunes where the three of us used to play, telling ourselves one minute that it couldn’t be true, that you were still alive out there someplace, and the next minute telling each other to accept it —you’d never be back. But I was the weaker one by far. I ... I told myself I was acting exactly like my mother, and I hated it, but the despair was worse than anything I’d ever known. I found I didn’t care if I lived or died, and at times I felt the same about the child I carried. After the funeral was the worst ...” Her voice cracked with remembrance, and she shuddered. “Oh God, that funeral ... without a corpse ... and me already awkward with your child.”

“Laura ...” He moved near, but she turned her back and went on.

“I couldn’t have made it through that ... that horror, if it weren’t for Dan. My mother was perfectly useless, as you can well imagine. And she was no better when Josh was born. It was Dan who was my strength then, Dan who sat beside me through the first of my labor, then paced outside where you should have been pacing, then came to praise the baby and tell me he looked like you, because he knew those were the words I needed to give me the will to get strong again. It was your best friend who promised he’d always be there for Josh and me, no matter what. And I owe him for that.” She paused a moment. “You owe him.”

He studied her back, then stepped close and roughly began lacing up her stays.

“But 
what
 do I owe him?” His hands stopped tugging. “You?”

Laura shivered, unable to answer. What did they owe Dan? Certainly something better than stealing off into the night and indulging in sex play. Again Rye continued lacing.

“You’ve got to understand, Rye. He’s been Josh’s father since the day Josh was born. He’s been my husband three times as long as you’ve been. I can’t just ... just fling him aside carelessly, without a thought for his feelings.”

At her back came one irritated tug, harder than the rest, then the tension disappeared around Laura’s ribs as Rye fumbled. “I’m not much good at this ... I haven’t had much practice.”

There was an icy insinuation in his tone. He was still angry with her, and with this seemingly unsolvable confusion into which their lives had been thrust. When he’d finally managed to close both corset and dress, his hands continued resting on her hips. “So y’ intend t’ stay with him?”

Laura closed her eyes tiredly, inhaled deeply, no closer to solutions than Rye. “For the time being.”

His warm hands slipped away. “And y’ won’t see me?”

“Not this way ... not ...” But she stammered to a halt, uncertain of her ability to resist him.

His anger was back, roiling just beneath the surface as he gritted his teeth. “We’ll see about that ... 
Mrs. Morgan!
” 
Then he spun and walked into the silent fog.

Chapter 5

THE DAYS THAT 
followed found Laura and Dan uncomfortable and distant. Since the night of the Starbucks’ dinner, Dan had grown more and more stoical toward her, often wearing a wounded look that pricked Laura’s conscience each time she glanced up and encountered it. She had not lied when he asked if she’d been with Rye that night, but Dan had seen her red-rimmed eyes and guessed the worst hadn’t happened—not if there’d been tears. Yet those tears themselves told Dan that Laura still had feelings for Rye. And the tension grew.

On a warm golden evening in late May, when the sun hovered over the rim of the ocean like a ripe melon, Laura watched from the window above her zinc sink while Dan and Josh played together in the yard. Dan had made a pair of stilts and was patiently trying to teach Josh to walk with them. He held them upright, and Josh clambered up onto the footblocks once more while Dan supported him, keeping the sticks steady. But the minute Dan let go, Josh’s legs spread apart like two halves of a wishbone. A single halting step, then the stilts went crashing to the ground in one direction and the boy in another, rolling over and over and over, playfully exaggerating, and Dan right with him, the two of them laughing joyously. They tumbled to a halt and Dan lay flat on his back, arms outflung while Josh straddled his chest as if he had Dan pinned. Then over they went in the other direction, and this time Dan pinned Josh, whose childish giggling drifted through the spring evening ... the music of love.

The sun was behind the pair, turning their bodies to silhouette as Laura observed with a lump in her throat. Dan pulled Josh to his feet and brushed his clothes off, turning him around to tease with a playful spank on the boy’s backside. Josh whirled around to get his giggling revenge, but in the next instant Dan’s brushing slowed ... then stopped ... then his arms went around Josh and their two outlines melted into one.

Laura’s heart expanded. Quick tears stung her eyes, seeing the desperation in that sudden embrace, the way Dan laid his cheek atop Josh’s golden head, the way he hugged a little too tenaciously, and Josh squirming free, galloping toward the stilts once more while Dan knelt on the ground for a long moment, his eyes following the romping child.

He turned and looked down toward the house then, and Laura jumped back from the window, her throat constricting. Her eyes slid closed. Her fingers made a steeple before her mouth. How could I ever separate those two?

Later that night Laura and Dan made love, but she felt in his embrace that same desperation she’d seen in his clutching grasp of Josh earlier. He held her too hard. He kissed her too avidly. He apologized too profusely if he thought he’d done the smallest thing to displease her.

She wondered, after Dan at last fell into a restless sleep— would it ever be the same between them again? As long as Rye lived within touching distance, how could it be? Whether she saw Rye or not, kissed him or not, made love with him or not, he was there again, accessible, and this fact alone thwarted her and Dan’s relationship.

Conscience-torn, Laura lay in the dark, the back of one wrist draped across her forehead, mouth dry, palms damp, willing her thoughts to take the straight and narrow.

But her reflections had a will of their own and would plague her with comparisons she had no right to be making. For what did it matter, the proportions of a man’s body, the turn of his shoulder, the texture of his palm, the shape of his lips? None of this mattered. What mattered were his inner qualities, a man’s values, the way he cared for a woman, worked for her, respected her, loved her.

But Laura wasn’t fooling herself one bit. The physical comparisons were the ones that now brought her the most discontent. The undeniable truth was that Rye was the better lover and had the more desirable body. Deep in her heart she had recognized this during her years of marriage to Dan, but she had effectively suppressed the thought whenever they made love. But now Rye was back, and his superiority as a lover plagued her, causing great guilt each time she let the fact intrude between herself and the man to whom she was still wed.

Dan had always approached her almost as a supplicant approaches an altar, whereas she and Rye had always met on equal terms. She was no goddess, but a woman. She didn’t want adulation, but reciprocation. Yes, there was a vast difference between making love with Dan and making love with Rye. With Dan it was sobering, with Rye intoxicating; with Dan it was mechanical, with Rye shattering; with Dan a ceremony; with Rye a celebration.

How could this be, and why should it matter? Yet it was ... it did. Laura felt her body—only now, after Dan had left it—growing aroused at the memory of herself and Rye in the orchard with fog tendrils binding them closer and the scent of spring ripening in the damp night about them.

Oh, Rye, Rye, she despaired, you know me so well. We taught each other too well, you and I, to be able to live in the same town together and not be tempted.

Her hand rested on her stomach. She raised it to her breasts, finding them hard, tight peaks at the very thought of him. She pictured his lips, remembered that first time he’d kissed her ... out in the bayberry patch up on Saul’s Hill ... and the first time he’d touched her here ... and here. First times, first times ... when they’d been trembling and afraid but burgeoning with sexuality as they treaded that fine line between adolescence and adulthood. It had begun with that innocent touch on his bare back ...