Outlander aka Cross Stitch - Gabaldon Diana - Страница 80

“Including the whereabouts of Horrocks?” I guessed.

Jamie nodded. “Aye. And he’ll carry a message for me, to change the meeting place.”

“Which foxes Dougal rather neatly,” I observed. “If he had any ideas about holding you to ransom over Horrocks.”

He nodded, and a smile creased one corner of his mouth.

“Aye, there’s that about it.”

It was near supper-time again as we reached the inn. This time, though, Dougal’s big black and its five companions were standing in the inn yard, contentedly munching hay.

Dougal himself was inside, washing the road dust from his throat with sour ale. He nodded to me and swung round to greet his nephew. Instead of speaking, though, he just stood there, head on one side, eyeing Jamie quizzically.

“Ah, that’s it,” he said finally, in the satisfied tones of a man who has solved a difficult puzzle. “Now I know what ye mind me of, lad.” He turned to me.

“Ever seen a red stag near the end of the rutting season, lass?” he said confidentially. “The poor beasts dinna sleep nor eat for several weeks, because they canna spare the time, between fightin’ off the other stags and serving the does. By the end o’ the season, they’re naught but skin and bones. Their eyes are deep-sunk in their heads, and the only part o’ them that doesna shake wi’ palsy is their-”

The last of this was lost in a chorus of laughter as Jamie pulled me up the stairs. We did not come down to supper.

Much later, on the edge of sleep, I felt Jamie’s arm around my waist, and felt his breath warm against my neck.

“Does it ever stop? The wanting you?” His hand came around to caress my breast. “Even when I’ve just left ye, I want you so much my chest feels tight and my fingers ache with wanting to touch ye again.”

He cupped my face in the dark, thumbs stroking the arcs of my eyebrows. “When I hold ye between my two hands and feel you quiver like that, waitin’ for me to take you… Lord, I want to pleasure you ’til ye cry out under me and open yourself to me. And when I take my own pleasure from you, I feel as though I’ve given ye my soul along with my cock.”

He rolled above me and I opened my legs, wincing slightly as he entered me. He laughed softly. “Aye, I’m a bit sore, too. Do ye want me to stop?” I wrapped my legs around his hips in answer and pulled him closer.

“Would you stop?” I asked.

“No. I can’t.”

We laughed together, and rocked slowly, lips and fingers exploring in the dark.

“I see why the Church says it is a sacrament,” Jamie said dreamily.

“This?” I said, startled. “Why?”

“Or at least holy,” he said. “I feel like God himself when I’m in you.”

I laughed so hard he nearly came out. He stopped and gripped my shoulders to steady me.

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s hard to imagine God doing this.”

Jamie resumed his movements. “Well, if God made man in His own image, I should imagine He’s got a cock.” He started to laugh as well, losing his rhythm again. “Though ye dinna remind me much of the Blessed Virgin, Sassenach.”

We shook in each other’s arms, laughing until we came uncoupled and rolled apart.

Recovering, Jamie slapped my hip. “Get on your knees, Sassenach.”

“Why?”

“If you’ll not let me be spiritual about it, you’ll have to put up wi’ my baser nature. I’m going to be a beast.” He bit my neck. “Do ye want me to be a horse, a bear, or a dog?”

“A hedgehog.”

“A hedgehog? And just how does a hedgehog make love?” he demanded.

No, I thought. I won’t. I will not. But I did. “Very carefully,” I replied, giggling helplessly. So now we know just how old that one is, I thought.

Jamie collapsed in a ball, wheezing with laughter. At last he rolled over and got to his knees, groping for the flint box on the table. He glowed like red amber against the room’s darkness as the wick caught and the light swelled behind him.

He flopped back on the foot of the bed, grinning down at me, where I still shook on the pillow with spasms of giggles. He rubbed the back of his hand across his face and assumed a mock-stern expression.

“All right, woman. I see the time has come when I shall have to exert my authority as your husband.”

“Oh, you will?”

“Aye.” He dived forward, grabbing my thighs and spreading them. I squeaked and tried to wriggle upward.

“No, don’t do that!”

“Why not?” He lay full-length between my legs, squinting up at me. He kept a firm hold on my thighs, preventing my struggles to close them.

“Tell me, Sassenach. Why don’t ye want me to do that?” He rubbed his cheek against the inside of one thigh, ferocious young beard rasping the tender skin. “Be honest. Why not?” He rasped the other side, making me kick and squirm wildly to get away, to no avail.

I turned my face into the pillow, which felt cool against my flushed cheek. “Well, if you must know,” I muttered, “I don’t think – well, I’m afraid that it doesn’t – I mean, the smell…” My voice faded off into an embarrassed silence. There was a sudden movement between my legs, as Jamie heaved himself up. He put his arms around my hips, laid his cheek on my thigh, and laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks.

“Jesus God, Sassenach,” he said at last, snorting with mirth, “don’t ye know what’s the first thing you do when you’re getting acquainted with a new horse?”

“No,” I said, completely baffled.

He raised one arm, displaying a soft tuft of cinnamon-colored hair. “You rub your oxter over the beast’s nose a few times, to give him your scent and get him accustomed to you, so he won’t be nervous of ye.” He raised himself on his elbows, peering up over the slope of belly and breast.

“That’s what you should have done wi’ me, Sassenach. You should ha’ rubbed my face between your legs first thing. Then I wouldn’t have been skittish.”

“Skittish!”

He lowered his face and rubbed it deliberately back and forth, snorting and blowing in imitation of a nuzzling horse. I writhed and kicked him in the ribs, with exactly as much effect as kicking a brick wall. Finally he pressed my thighs flat again and looked up.

“Now,” he said, in a tone that brooked no opposition, “lie still.”

I felt exposed, invaded, helpless – and as though I were about to disintegrate. Jamie’s breath was alternately warm and cool on my skin.

“Please,” I said, not knowing whether I meant “please stop” or “please go on.” It didn’t matter; he didn’t mean to stop.

Consciousness fragmented into a number of small separate sensations: the roughness of the linen pillow, nubbled with embroidered flowers; the oily reek of the lamp, mingled with the fainter scent of roast beef and ale and the still fainter wisps of freshness from the wilting flowers in the glass; the cool timber of the wall against my left foot, the firm hands on my hips. The sensations swirled and coalesced behind my closed eyelids into a glowing sun that swelled and shrank and finally exploded with a soundless pop that left me in a warm and pulsing darkness.

Dimly, from a long way away, I heard Jamie sit up.

“Well, that’s a bit better,” said a voice, gasping between words. “Takes a bit of effort to make you properly submissive, doesn’t it?” The bed creaked with a shifting of weight and I felt my knees being nudged further apart.

“Not as dead as you look, I hope?” said the voice, coming nearer. I arched upward with an inarticulate sound as exquisitely sensitive tissues were firmly parted in a fresh assault.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. There was a faint chuckle near my ear.

“I only said I felt like God, Sassenach,” he murmured, “I never said I was.”

And later, as the rising sun began to dim the glow of the lamp, I roused from a drifting sleep to hear Jamie murmur once more, “Does it ever stop, Claire? The wanting?”