***
Laura and Rye might have been eating sawdust for all they cared. The conversation was sprightly, and the salon seemed much gayer than it had at noon, once Captain Swain announced to the other passengers that he’d had the honor of performing a marriage ceremony. But in spite of the chatter around them, Rye and Laura were conscious of only two things—each other and the time. It seemed to slog by on leaden feet. It took a conscious effort to keep from getting lost in each other’s eyes. They were surrounded by people and were approached repeatedly by total strangers offering congratulations. Though it was impossible for Laura to check her pendant watch without being observed, she noted that, more and more often as the evening progressed, Rye pulled his watch out under cover of the table. Each time he snapped its cover shut and tucked it away in his vest, he would move his eyes to hers and she would feel the heat travel up her cheeks. Once as she listened to a female passenger relating an anecdote about a millinery store in Albany, Laura felt Rye’s gaze and turned slightly to find him staring at her left hand, which was unconsciously fingering the pendant watch at her collarbone. She dropped the hand immediately and turned to pay attention to the woman. But Laura heard not a word the stranger said, for beneath the table Rye shifted his leg until a long, hard thigh pushed hard against hers, even as he turned to face the opposite direction and answer a man on his far side.
Several minutes later the leg shifted again, and Rye’s heel began bouncing in an unconscious jitter of impatience. The motion quivered its way up Laura’s leg and increased the heavy-hollow feeling of arousal deep within her.
At a point when she thought her patience couldn’t hold out another second, Josh—bless him!—turned to Josiah and put a hand on his arm.
“Grampa, I think we better go check our chickens.”
“Aye, I think y’r right, boy. Been lollygaggin’ here long enough.”
Beneath the table Rye’s heel stopped jumping. He stretched his long form up off the bench with a feigned leisure that made Laura smile inwardly, then took her elbow to urge her to her feet. As if I need urging, she thought.
The handshakes and good nights seemed to take a monumental amount of time, but at last the group broke up and the Dalton party filed through the companionway to their quarters.
At Rye and Laura’s door, Josiah stopped and gestured at them with the stem of his pipe. “Y’ best sleep late in the mornin’. Don’t worry about Josh and me ...” His hand felt for Josh’s shoulder, found it, and squeezed. “We’ll be busy feedin’ the animals.”
Josh took the wide, gnarled hand and dragged his grandfather toward the next door. “C’mon, Grampa! Ship is whining!”
“I’m comin’, I’m comin.” Josiah let the boy tug him away, knowing a sense of well-being he hadn’t felt since the day his son sailed off on the whaleship Massachusetts.
Chapter 23
THE LATCH CLICKED behind them. Laura paused in the middle of the room, Rye a foot from the door. Through the wall came the muffled sound of Josh greeting Ship enthusiastically, answered by two canine yips of excitement, then silence, but for the steady, throbbing beat of the steam engine that churned in the bowels of the boat. They’d left the lantern burning. It swung now above Laura’s head, throwing her shadow across Rye’s legs, up the wall, and back to his feet again.
Laura studied the narrow single bunks, comparing their inadequate length to Rye’s, coming up short by a good six inches. She was slipping the drawstrings of her reticule from her wrist when Rye’s low voice came from behind her.
“Mrs. Dalton.”
She turned slowly to face him. He stood with feet planted wide apart, knees locked, one hand hanging loosely at his side while the other untied the stock at his throat.
“Yes, Mr. Dalton?” She tossed the reticule toward the bench without bothering to check where it landed. Her heart did a mating dance along her ribcage. Her breath was in short supply.
“Can I make love t’ y’ now?” He leisurely unwound the stock but let it hang loosely around his neck. Pushing his jacket front back, he hooked it with both wrists and rested wide hands on slim hips. His stance revealed why his foot had been jumping under the table earlier, though he stood now boldly, hiding nothing. The masculine ridge pressed outward up the center of his green trousers, and he watched her eyes travel down to it and back up to his mouth.
“I thought you’d never ask,” came the husky reply.
They paused on the brink of forever, tarrying that last scintillating moment to relish the anticipation of the embrace before the embrace itself.
“Then come here and let’s get started.”
But they moved of one accord, meeting halfway, heart to heart, mouth to mouth, man to woman, in a union preordained by the years through which not even the frowns of fortune had been able to keep them apart. Their impatient tongues met, sleek, silken members joining husband to wife in an oral imitation of what was to follow. His kiss forced her head back against a solid shoulder as he bent low, savoring her taste, texture, and the ever-clinging essence of bayberry trapped in her clothing.
He smelled of fresh linen and the woodsy tang his body seemed to have captured from the furlongs of oak and cedar he’d shaped down through the years.
His body was warm, the flesh resilient within his clothing, as she slipped an arm between loose jacket and tight vest, contouring his wide ribs, then spreading her palm wide over the silk fabric that stretched taut across his shoulder blades as he bent into the embrace.
The months had been long, testing their rectitude time and again. But restraint was no longer necessary, hands need not delay. His moved to cup a waiting breast while hers measured and caressed the warm column of flesh along Rye’s stomach.
A grum sound of passion rumbled from his throat while her answering murmur was swallowed by his kiss and the tongue that stroked the satin reaches of her mouth. Their hands began moving and delight to build.
When he moved his head at last, Rye’s hand was atop Laura’s, increasing the pressure and following her strokes. “Ah, m’ love, I was beginnin’t’ think I’d never feel y’ touch me again.” His palm left her knuckles and moved down her yellow skirt, clasping the mound of femaleness hidden beneath layers of cotton. “Or me you.”
His touch fired her blood and transformed the simple act of breathing into a most difficult labor.
“I thought supper’d never end,” he uttered against her throat.
“I kept wanting to ask you what time it was.”
Rye’s lips brushed Laura’s and he straightened her with a deft sweep of an arm. Eyes as blue as the Atlantic’s deep waters smiled into those as dark as rich loam. “Time t’ get y’ out of that dress, Mrs. Dalton.”
“And you out of that suit, Mr. Dalton.”
He dimpled engagingly and scratched a sideburn. “Aye, come t’ think of it, it has grown a bit uncomfortable.”
“Then please allow me,” she intoned sweetly, pushing his lapels back over his shoulders.
Obligingly, he turned his back and slipped from the jacket. She tossed it to the bench while he swung again to face her, unhooking the watch fob from its vest button while her eager fingers also moved to Rye’s chest. His arm reached wide to place the watch more securely aside while she freed the vest buttons and nudged the garment from his shoulders, heedless of how it fell.
She was reaching for his collar button when her forearms were grasped firmly and held. “What’s y’r hurry, darlin’? You’re gettin’ ahead of me.” His rough thumbs stroked the bare flesh of her inner arms, where pale veins seemed to throb beneath his touch. His eyes held blue sparks of impatience that put the lie to his words while he forcibly restrained himself from rushing. Keeping his eyes locked with hers, he kissed first the heel of her left palm, then of the right, before running his tongue lightly along the sensitive skin of her inner arm to the edge of her elbow-length sleeve. He placed her hands at her sides and lifted his own to the row of buttons running from the shallows of her throat to her
hips. When the dress was open, he brushed it from her shoulders. It caught on the petticoats at her hips, where it lay forgotten while Rye delicately touched her beneath both earlobes with only the tips of his middle fingers, then ran them with agonizing slowness down the sides of her neck, along its sloping base to her shoulders, hooking the straps of her chemise and dragging them over the alluring curves.
While his fingertips made their journey, her eyelids trembled shut. A breath was captured and held deep within Laura as Rye’s feather-light touch sent a hot arrow of fire down her belly. It seemed to pierce some vessel of liquid contained deep within her body, releasing it in a warm, sensual flow of desire and preparedness.
She shuddered and opened her eyes. His were deep and watchful, certain of what was happening within his bride as he sketched invisible tendrils around her collarbone, then over the soft, warm swell of her chest, ending at the lacy top of her chemise. Her hands came up beneath his, and with a single tug, the bow disappeared from between her breasts and the chemise lay reefed around her waist. She grasped the backs of his hands and filled their palms with her breasts, leaning against him with a pressure that still could not quell the almost painful aching in her flesh.
Again her eyelids dropped; her head was thrown slightly back and to one side as strained words whispered past her lips. “Rye, I’ve thought of this every day since last August. Kiss me, darling, please.”
His head dropped forward, and warm lips opened over an ivory globe of flesh, which he lifted and reshaped until its pink tip thrust into his engulfing mouth. He suckled it, bathed it, and rolled the nipple between his teeth before they closed gently upon it. She moaned and grasped his shoulders, pulling back while his teeth held the aroused bud and stretched it. And when the sensations of pleasure bordered on pain, she lunged forward again, moving her shoulders sinuously, making his mouth seek and follow the nipple.
Suddenly he growled, grasping her hips and burying his face against her fragrant flesh, capturing the breast again and holding her still while his hands freed the button at her waist, then pushed chemise, pantaloons, petticoats, and dress into a lemon-colored billow at her ankles.
“Sit down. I’ll take off your shoes.”
She fell back with a soft plunk onto the cloud of garments and perched there like the pistil in the center of a yellow-and-white daffodil, while he knelt before her and quickly loosened the strings of her shoe, slipped it from her heel, and peeled off her stocking before at last looking up.
“The other one,” he ordered, impatient now. It was caught in the waistband of the petticoat, but he freed it, then began baring the foot without a wasted motion.
While he deftly tugged at the strings, she caressed his hard thigh with her bare foot, studying the top of his hair as he bent over his task. “Have you any idea how badly I wanted to make love that day you had me on your lap in the chair?”
He looked up, surprised. “The day y’ threw me out,” he recalled.
“Yes, the day I threw you out,” she said, then went on seductively, “I went to bed that night and pleasured myself.” His jaw dropped. A look of stunned disbelief held his face immobile. Then the shoe thudded to the floor. “After five years y’re still full o’ surprises.”
She turned her knees to one side, rolled to a hip, and leaned nearer him with a palm braced on the floor. “Well, don’t tell me you didn’t do the same thing plenty of times all the years you were on that whaleship.” While she spoke, her hand reached for the buttons of his trousers.
He manipulated his shirt buttons at the same time, grinning down into her face. “I won’t deny it. But I thought of y’ every time I did it.” He grabbed the front panels of his shirt and, with an impatient jerk, thrust it from his shoulders. His grin grew bolder. “I don’t think there’ll be much need for self-pleasurin’ in the future, d’ you, Mrs. Dalton?”
“Oh, I hope not.”
His trousers were unbuttoned, and he dropped flat onto his rump, began tugging at a long, black boot while her eyes caressed his face. The boot stuck. He muttered a curse, straining at it while she raised on both knees, grasped the ends of his stock in both hands, and hauled him close, then passed the tip of her tongue along his left eyebrow.
“This goddamn boot—” But just then it came free. Immediately, he hoisted the other one up while she went to work on his other eyebrow, nearly forcing him backward as she tantalized him, caressing his eyelids now with her moist tongue tip, moving to the side of his nose, and finally biting his upper lip.
“Do you need some help with that boot?” she murmured, closing her teeth on an unruly clump of side-whiskers, tugging gently before nuzzling her way toward his ear. Her tongue dipped inside, and Rye gave a vicious yank, sending the second boot flying across the room.
He spun on his hips, knocking her flat to the floor beneath him with her breasts crushed under the curled hair of his chest. He grabbed the sides of her head, plundering her mouth with his own, slipping his impatient tongue along her teeth, beneath her tongue, atop it, plunging it again and again with suggestive rhythm.
His disheveled trousers still clung about his hips, but her naked back was pressed to the raw wood of the cabin floor, through which the throb of the engine shuddered. She felt its beat drive up into her muscles while Rye adjusted himself until he fit securely against her length. Somewhere deep in the boat the valves of the steam engine plunged into the pistons and the steady thrum of its power reverberated through the wooden craft with a faint ongoing ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk.
Laura’s arms circled Rye’s shoulders and her fingertips caressed each bone along his spinal column as far as they could reach, while Rye’s hips began moving in rhythm with the powerful litany of the machinery that could be both felt and heard.
Their movements synchronized as she joined him in a cadence of thrust and ebb, then maneuvered one foot until it caught at the waistband of his pants and began working them down past his buttocks. He reached back to give a helping hand, and when the trousers shimmied from his heels, the soles of her feet silkily caressed the backs of his thighs and explored the hollows behind his knees.
He braced both forearms on the floor, cradling her head in his wide palms, dropping a garland of kisses across her face. “I love y’ ... Laura, Laura ... all these years ... I love y’ ... His hips undulated, finding their complement within her own. Her body lifted in greeting while her fingertips slid along his skull and drew his head down above her own.
“Rye ... it’s always been you ... I love you ... Rye ... Her moist lips pressed his eyelids closed, adored his hollow cheek, and found his dear mouth once more, knowing its shape, its warmth, its treasure even before it closed over her own.
He rose.
She reached.
He poised.
She placed.
He pressed.
She parted.
He sank.
She surrounded.
To the uncountable and ceaseless rhythms of the universe, they added one more.
Her body opened like an oyster shell, and his silken strokes sought and grazed the pearl within, that precious jewel of sensuality whose arousal unleashed some magical force that fired Laura’s limbs. She met each thrust with one of equal might, and together they reached for the reward they had earned with the long winter of solitude.
They were buoyed by love but powered by a lust as rich and demanding as their hale bodies deserved. Laura’s teeth were bared as Rye drove into her with a puissance that soon set off the first pulsations deep within.
Unknowingly, she reached above her head, palms pressed flat against the cabin door as the explosions of feeling gripped her muscles. The sensations triggered a shuddering reaction and dotted the surface of her skin in a thousand tiny shivering pinpoints, as a breeze ruffles the smooth surface of a pond.
A growl sounded in Rye’s throat as he lifted her higher, his wide hands spanning her hips while Laura’s clasped her elbows above her head and the powerful muscles of his arms co
rded as tight as rigging under sail. He called out an unintelligible utterance of release as he lunged a last time, then shuddered against her, the hair over his forehead quivering for an interminable moment while his tense fingers left ten bloodless stamps of possession on her hips.
Then his arms went lax, his eyes slid shut, and his head dropped forward, open lips coming to rest on her shoulder.
Beneath them, the engine continued to throb. Above them, the lantern still swung. Beyond them, the two-tiered berths remained untouched. She brushed his damp shoulder to recall him from the lethargy into which he’d sunk.
“Rye.”
“Hmm?” His weight was a gift that lay unmoving.
“Just Rye, that’s all. I always want to say it ... afterward.” The lips at her shoulder parted, pressed firmly in wordless accolade, and the tip of his tongue wet her skin.
“Laura Adele Dalton," he returned.
She smiled. He rarely used her middle name, because she disliked it. But hearing it now from her husband’s lips, it took on a new note, sitting side by side with Dalton.
“Yes, Laura Adele Dalton forever.”
They lazed in afterglow, thinking of it, until the boards beneath Laura spoke their piece.
“Rye.”
His eyes opened and his head came up. “Hmm?”
“This floor is harder than the one in old man Hardesty’s loft.”
With a smile he pulled her up until she straddled him with their bodies joined. “Mmm, but it works good, doesn’t it?” She looped her arms around his neck and draped herself around him. “Wonderful.”
“Y’re wonderful. Y’re better than wonderful. Y’re ... stupendous.”
She laughed silently against his chest. “Either stupendous or stupid. My hipbones are chapped, I think.”
He laughed, rubbed the bruised parts, and warned, “Better get used t’ it, woman.”