Wild Indigo by Judith Stanton Page B

he whispered back, managing to sound like a teacher until his mouth covered hers, humid and urgent. She closed her eyes. He was too, too close. Too pressing. A pressing heat, heat like the brutal summer’s day that lay thickly over the room, enveloped her body.
    He pulled at her lower lip, released it, then parted her mouth with his wet tongue. Its tip touched her teeth, then probed around them and searched above them and between them. He touched her tongue. She gasped. He tasted of the cider.
    She had seen people kiss, a little, but hadn’t imagined it would feel like this. Nor had she thought that a kiss would taste—that a man would taste—so good. No matter that he did, his invasion sent an unexpected ripple down the back of her neck. A frightening sensation. A faint memory of some bad dream, some nameless fear flitted across her mind’s eye. She wondered—no, worried—what would happen next.
    But he broke off.
    And she felt his terrible absence in the cool air on her damp lips.
    â€œJacob?” She whispered his name again, confused by yearning and an unspeakable fear that strummed through her at once.
    â€œBeautiful.” Jacob started to touch his new bride’s lips with his finger until a look of feral caution flashed in her amber eyes. He withdrew.
    Perhaps he had imagined that look. She tasted sweet as a summer peach plucked from a tree and hot from the sun. Yet she pulled away. Twice. He gave a sigh and let her go again. Noticing the heavy confinement of his black coat for the first time all day, he unbuttoned it with fumbling fingers and shrugged out of it. Hot air hit him like a blast from a forge. God help him, he hated summers in his new country. They had never been this bad in Germany.
    He turned to hang his coat on a peg. Not a second too soon. Under his damp waistcoat, hard desire for Retha pressed against his breeches. His virgin bride was not yet ready for evidence of his arousal. She could barely handle a drink of cider. Behind him, she choked merely sipping it. He hoped coughing would occupy her while he adjusted himself inside his breeches.
    She walked away, striding lightly across the floor into the parlor. He pivoted in time to see her tip a curtain aside. For a long time, he watched and wondered as she gazed into the night. He must have frightened her away.
    He blamed himself. He had assumed too much and rushed her. She could not be like his first. Christina had been a distant cousin and his closest childhood friend. With their families, they had sailed to the Colonies together and never been separated after that. Once married, they had come to loving as naturally as water flows a well-planned course.
    Retha started out a stranger.
    That had to be her problem. Simply welcoming her here must not have been enough. Women took to houses in bits and pieces, room by room, table by chair by bed. Except for the scary night he found her, she had never seen his home. He could only hope she didn’t remember that. She had been only ten or twelve, and straight from years of living in bark houses under stars. How alien his home must have appeared to her.
    He joined her by the shadowed parlor window, knowing she saw nothing. “’Tis dark out,” he reminded her quietly.
    â€œEveryone’s gone home.” She sounded lost. His heart twisted. He could think of nothing in his life for which he had been as unprepared as she must be for this. For him, for his whole family, overnight. Christina had been playmate, confidante, long before she became his wife. He must not assume that anything tonight would be the same.
    â€œCome,” he said. He thought better of trying to lead his bride. Wild she might be, but innocent, too, unused to a man’s touch. He was sure no man had ever kissed her.
    He lit a golden candle, releasing its honeyed scent into the room and casting a pale light. Already it was dark enough to spook his daughter. But his new bride was a grown