Author: Elizabeth Grayson
Category: Western
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/elizabeth-grayson/page,11,76810-a_place_called_home.html
Drawn by his tenderness, his reticence, Livi rose on tiptoe to deepen the communion between them. He bent his head to take her mouth more fully, the supple furl of his lips brushing hers, the gentle press of his palm at her waist drawing her closer. She curled her fingers into the folds of his clothes and leaned into him. He gathered her closer still, letting her know she was safe with him.
Slowly he deepened his kisses, charted the curves of her lips, sought the silky cavern of her mouth. She shyly touched his tongue with the tip of hers. She tasted the sweetness of brandy and the hint of pipe tobacco.
He eased her closer, and sensation budded between them. Tenderness delicate and sweet, yearning as elemental as breathing.
After a time David raised his mouth from hers. "Oh, Livi, I love you so." He drew a shaky breath. "Do you suppose I could I help you slip out of those things?"
"Act as my ladies' maid, you mean?" she asked, unaccountably pleased that she was enough at ease to tease him.
He laughed. "Indeed. Is that all right?"
When she nodded, he opened the knot of her fichu, worked the hooks at the front of her gown and parted her bodice. A flush sluiced beneath the skin staining her chest and cheeks a ripe pink. As he slid the close-cut fabric off her shoulders and down her arms, her color intensified.
When she did not stay him, he trickled delicate kisses along her jaw and the curve of her throat.
Shivers lapped the surface of her skin, starting between her breasts and spilling down her belly. When he opened his mouth hot and wet against her skin, tingles danced even lower.
Never had Livi been more aware of her own body, of the blood pulsing in her veins, of her breathing gone erratic and shuddery. And David was the reason—David's kisses, David's caresses. The love he gave so freely.
At length he raised his head, his face flushed, his gaze all but devouring her.
"I should leave you now," he murmured, his callused fingers rough against her shoulder. "I should give you time—"
"Time for what?"
"To finish undressing. To prepare yourself."
Livi's stomach fluttered. "Prepare myself for what?"
"You mean your mother has never told you—"
"Told me what?"
David let out a sigh and shook his head. "About the greatest pleasure of married life." He raised a hand to cup her chin. "But then, perhaps it is just as well that I show you myself."
Livi stood patient as David reached to pluck the pins from her hair. One by one the strands of her hair unfurled, shimmering against her shoulders.
"Lovely," he whispered, veiling her breasts with the silky strands. "You have hair like polished copper, the color of dawn."
"You like the color of my hair?" Not one person in her life had anything good to say about her hair.
"I love it your hair," he assured her, gathering it up in his fingers. "Nearly as much as I love you."
Then as he bent and plied her with sultry kisses, he reached for the tapes at the back of the tight, closely boned underbodice.
Livi felt the ties slip and the constriction around her ribs ease. Once he'd teased the heavily boned garment free, he fingered the ribbons at her waist, letting the skirts and petticoats ripple to the floor.
Standing in the center of the mound of fabric, clad only in her chemise, Livi flushed to the hairline. She'd imagined standing before David Talbot as his bride, but she never anticipated how exposed she'd feel. Or how overcome she'd be by the longing she saw in his eyes.
That gave her the courage to step beyond the circle of discarded skirts and into David's embrace, into David's kiss. As those kisses deepened and his mouth moved hungry and hot against hers, she answered in kind.
A restless, breathless need rose in her, an urge to press closer. "David?" she whispered.
But before she could properly order her thoughts to tell him what she was feeling, he lifted his hand to cup her breast and sought the knot of her nipple with his thumb. Fresh waves of longing washed through her.
"David?"
"Hush, love," he murmured. "This is how a man shows his wife he cares for her."
"Truly?"
"And tonight I mean to teach you everything I know of desire."
"I think I know what desire means," she told him.
He laughed and paused at the base of her throat to lave her collarbone. "Oh, I very much doubt that," he whispered and laughed again.
He nibbled lower and nudged aside the veil of her chemise. He took the dusky halo of her nipple in his mouth. Livi moaned as streamers of delight streaked through her.
At the apex of her thighs came a budding, an unfurling, a deepening warmth. As he circled her nipple with his tongue, the very core of her seemed to flower with new sensations.
Crooning her name as if it were a melody, David swept her into his arms and carried her to the curtained bed. The draws and the covers were pulled back so the sheets rippled with golden light of the fire. He settled her gently, then bent over her and kissed her until she was trembling.
David stood looking down at her with glowing eyes as he stripped the shirt from his trousers and tugged the billow of fabric over his head.
Though she'd appreciated how big and strong David was, Livi had never seen a man whose arms were so thick and sinewy, whose shoulders spread broad as an ox yoke. She lay mesmerized as he removed his shoes and stockings. She averted his eyes as he released the waistband of his breeches and let them drop to the floor.
"I am as God made me, Livi, for your admiration and your pleasure," he said stepping nearer. "You are my wife now and may look at me and touch me as you please."
Curiosity scorched away her modesty. Beginning with his beloved face, she took him in, her gaze trailing down his massive shoulders to the muscles that bound his chest and ribs. She hesitated, then turned her eyes to his hips and long, long legs. But it was the rod that rose proudly between them that made her suck in her breath.
"It will be all right, Livi-love," he murmured, stretching out beside her.
He stroked a strand of hair from her cheek and stared at her. "I don't know what miracle made you love me," he told her, "but I swear to do my best to make you happy."
"I know you will."
Instead of answering, she tangled one hand in his golden hair and drew him to her. The kiss swelled between them was exquisite in its promise. It was, by turns, both delicate and breathless, wildly intoxicating. It fired up the wanting in both of them.
David slid his callused palm beneath the hem of Livi's chemise, his fingers gliding over her, abrading the satiny texture of her thigh and hip, the soft skin of her belly and ribs. That tantalizing friction made Livi shiver and shift against him. Almost without her realizing, he teased the sheer lawn gown over her head.
As they lay flesh to flesh, wound intimately together, David became her shelter and her temptation. He looked into her eyes, offering the most intimate secrets of love and life to her.
"Oh, David," she whispered. "I want this, but I'm afraid."
"Trust me, love," he urged, trailing his fingers down her body. "I have so much yet to show you."
Mesmerized by his touch and the tenderness in his eyes, Livi sighed as he pressed his hand against to the coppery curls at the juncture of her legs and circled slowly. She gasped and fit her mound into his palm. The heat rose between them.
At her core she had gone all liquid and soft, and she opened to him completely. As she did, David stroked with a slow, sweet rhythm that seemed both new and utterly familiar.
He claimed her mouth and kept touching her until she lay shivering in his arms, wanting something that seemed to maddeningly elude her.
Then he lifted his mouth from hers and began to kiss his way down her body. She arched toward him as he paused to suckle each nipple in turn. She squirmed as he laved her navel with his tongue and nibbled down her belly.
When he pressed a kiss against the apex of her legs, she gasped and opened herself to him, mindless, breathless,
and dizzy.
Waiting.
He lowered his head and slipped his hot, slick tongue into the very core of her. She flushed from her head to toe. Ripples of sensation shot along her nerves. Her senses flared. The world shivered around her. In that instant Livi came apart.
Raw sensation swept her away and, safe in David's arms, she lost herself in pleasure.
When at last she came back to herself, she was curled in David's embrace, feeling liquid, formless, soft.
He nuzzled along her hairline as she began to stir. "Are you all right?"
She was thrumming inside, astonishingly aware of every contact, every sensation.
"Was that what you wanted to teach me about marriage?"
"Part of it."
She heard a smile in his voice. "And how am I to survive your next lesson when I'm still shivering from the last?"
He chuckled soft and low, beginning to trace lazy patterns from the slope of her shoulder to the rise of her breast, from the dip of her waist to the flare of her hip. It was not long before that barely discernable touch began to turn her restless and trembly. She wanted him again, she realized, and it was clear he knew it.
He smiled down into her eyes. "I think it's time I showed you the rest of this."
Before she could think how to answer, his mouth moved over hers. The longing for him gathered again, fluttering in her chest, filling her loins with a slow, sweet heat. In a tumult of fresh need, she reached for David and they opened to each other completely.
As they came together, the ultimate rightness of their union left them gasping. Being one with him made Livi feel as if she had found home after years of being lost. Of being safe, of being loved. Of meaning more to this man than she had ever meant to anyone.
Tears clogged her throat. "I love you, David," she whispered.
"And I love you."
This, then, she thought, is the meaning of our vows: this closeness, this perfect moment of communion so intense that nothing else exists.
Then her clarity began to blur with the sharp, insistent pulse of yearning. David's mouth came down to capture hers in a kiss that ended in mutual surrender. They began to move together and gloried in the escalating frenzy. They clung tighter still in the ecstasy of release. They cried out together as satisfaction swept them away. Then lay together for a long and hazy time, claimed and claiming, sated and sating, loved and loving.
Finally Livi raised her head. "Am I truly your wife now?"
"In every way."
"And you'll never leave me?"
David gathered her close. "Man and wife," he whispered. "From this moment on, we'll be together. Always, Livi. Always."
Chapter 7
Livi awoke with David's words ringing in her ears and the taste of ashes in her mouth.
You should never have promised me always, she thought, caught in the dregs of her dream.
Life was too fragile, too uncertain. But they'd been young. They hadn't known that trouble or grief or death could intrude on their safe little world. David had promised her always, and she had believed him.
Groaning, Livi coiled out of the tangled bedclothes and took stock of her surroundings. Pale gray light was just beginning to delineate the mouth of the cave making it a half-moon of hope in a dense black world of uncertainty.
Beside her, Cissy lay lost in feverish sleep. Livi could see that there were more of the angry red splotches peppering Cissy's face than there had been the night before. That realization gave a hard tug on the knot of panic already snarled in Livi's chest. Cissy had to get well. Livi knew she would lose her mind right here in the wilderness if her daughter died.
Across what was left of the campfire, Tad sprawled in his blankets, deeply asleep and apparently well. She whispered a quick prayer thanking God for that and for His help in these past days.
Easing away from her daughter, Livi rose, added wood to the fire, and prodded the coals to life. She should never have allowed the fire get so low, she chided herself. She should never have closed her eyes last night.
Ignoring the faint churn of morning nausea, Livi took up the nearly empty water bucket and crept to the head of the cave. The boulders that guarded the opening shone slick with wet, and fog dense as day-old porridge billowed up, filling the little hollow beyond all the way to the rim.
Though she was loath to leave her children, Livi slipped the primed pistol in her pocket, hefted the pail and stepped out into the half-light. Fog roiled around her, feeling thick and frigid in her lungs and scattering pearls of condensation in her hair. As she picked her way along the path she could barely make out the shapes of the pines and hawthorns, though at the end she caught the gleam of a clear vein of silver.
Livi knelt beside at the edge of the steam and filled her bucket to the brim. After scanning her surroundings, she dipped her hands and bent to wash her face. The first splash was like a slap and cleared her head, bathed her arms to the elbows, and drank deep.
Fortified, clearheaded for what seemed like the first time in days, Livi sat back on her heels. If Cissy recovered, if neither she nor Tad fell ill, if they could keep body and soul together and the Indians didn't find them, they might eventually resume their journey.
And then what?
Livi could never remember being so down-to-her-bones weary. She knew carrying the baby had sapped her strength and that every decision she'd been forced to make had broken her heart and taxed her will. Was it even possible for them to press ahead over such rough terrain when they were all at the brink of exhaustion?
Last night she'd indulged herself by turning to thoughts of David for comfort, but David could not help her. Livi had taken responsibility for her family, and she must decide if she was strong enough to see them safely to David's land.
"Ma!" Tad's voice sliced through the fog.
"Here, Tad!" She staggered to her feet and hefted the water bucket. "Is something wrong?"
"It's Cissy!"
Livi's knees wobbled as she climbed the slope to the cave. "What is it?" she demanded when she saw the panic in her son's face.
Tad took a shaky breath. "Cissy's mumbling in her sleep, and I can't make her keep the covers on."
Livi thrust the water bucket at Tad and ran to kneel at her daughter's side. The boy was right. The child's face and throat were beaded with perspiration, and her hair lay dark and wet against her temples.
Beside her, the boy stood quivering. "Is she—Did I—"
Livi tested the heat of her daughter's forehead with the back of her hand, then smiled up him. "That she's sweating is a good thing. It means her fever's broken, that she's going to get well. Now, if you could just bring me a basin of water..."
When the boy jumped to do her bidding, Livi gathered her daughter in her arms. She closed her eyes against the sweet seep of relief and bowed her head.
I don't know why you took David from me, Lord, but I thank you for giving back my Cissy girl.
Though Livi knew that a wilderness rife with dangers stretched before them, she had to believe that Cissy's recovery was a sign. That somehow she and the children would find their way to the land in Kentucky—just as David had wanted.
* * *
The world changed almost overnight. The wind's sharp bite lost its teeth. The earth sprawled soft and fecund beneath an azure sky. A pale pink flush swept the uppermost branches of the trees. It was spring. It was planting time.
It's time to press on to David's land. The imperative nagged Livi like a crone.
Cissy recovered with remarkable speed. Her fever dropped and her energy returned. Since it had been less than a week since the company of churchmen had abandoned them for fear of contagion, Livi doubted that Cissy's illness had been smallpox. And though the girl claimed the splotches still "itched like a hundred mosquito bites," they broke camp.
Fortified with two rabbits Tad had snared and an herb and a bear grease unction Livi mixed to treat Cissy's itching, Livi, the children, the horses, the piglets, the chickens, and the co
w, set off down the Wilderness Road once more.
Carefully following the directions in David's journal, they traced the course of Yellow Creek to the west and north, penetrated cane breaks where the last of the winter-dry stalks clattered in the wind.
They climbed into the hills where the delicate leaves unfurled and the forest floor had come alive with violets and star-bright trillium. Carpets of bluets bloomed wherever shafts of sunlight penetrated the canopy of newly leafed trees.
The first night Livi and the children pitched their camp just south of Pine Mountain Gap.
We should be able to traverse the gap tomorrow, Livi thought as she cooked supper, and ford the Cumberland River by early afternoon. Knowing that, a sense of well-being settled over her.
Firelight filled the campsite with an amber glow. Doves cooed in the branches overhead. The children sat near at hand, Cissy writing simple words on her slate and Tad struggling to read from a battered copy of Pilgrim's Progress. Then Livi glanced up and saw a tall figure looming on the far side of the fire. His face was striped with red and black. Garish feathers bloomed from his vermillion-tipped scalp lock. He bore a war club in one big hand.
Memories of David and what the Indians had done to him burst through her. Her hands tingled and went numb. Then, as if the trunks of the trees around the camp had been transformed from bark to flesh she saw that there were other braves in the shadows.
A dollop of rabbit stew spattered from the spoon Livi had been holding, landing with a hiss in the fire. The sound startled her into action. With a cry of alarm, she dove for David's rifle where it was leaning against the tent an arm's length away.
The first brave hurdled the campfire and caught the muzzle of the gun just as Livi tightened her grip around the stock. He jerked it toward him. Livi jerked back. As he worked to twist the weapon out of her hands, she raked back the hammer and squeezed.
The gun went off with a flare of light and a concussion that rang in her ears as the ball went wide of its mark.
Cissy howled and covered her head. Tad leaped to his mother's defense.
"No, Tad," Livi cried as the Indian wheeled to face her son.