Chapter Twenty


Marie-Rose came awake in the dark, feeling his hands on her, warm and damp from sleeping coiled body against body, and he rolled on top of her and his arms slid up beneath her back, taking a strong grip that stopped her heart for a moment, and his breathing was next to her ear as he aligned himself over her. Her shift was absent, his drawers as well, and no peaceful lake this time, this was the unconquerable ocean, moving tidally against her, and she thought good boy but then good God! as she took him inside her and she held back her gasp, so as not to give him pause and break the spell, for if he thought too much of what he was doing he might balk skittish. And she thought Thank the Lord it wasn't dainty Clara, we'd be using her for split rail-ties and he growled, a throaty wolf snarl and had her hair in his teeth and he flowed atop her as a great ocean wave, not banging in and out like a battering farm hand hammering a tent-peg but using his legs and back and hips and arms to move every part of him, every fiber and muscle flowing, and she thought of a gale sending surging wave after wave against the imperishable shore, and she was hardly imperishable but damn, and his growl transformed into a long, single note of unquenchable need being slowly quenched, and then she stopped thinking and wrapped her legs and clutched at his powerful rolling back.

At the crescendo of his devourment of her, she felt sure he'd forgo his control and grind her like a beetle under a wagon wheel, but his was not the grunting cannonade finish, no, instead he fell to a deliberate and measured pace, struggling to kiss her, and the great wave crested almost tentatively, just little dancing droplets daring the edge, till they fell, then fell more, and to her amazement he carried her with him, not to drown, gasping for air, though gasping she was, but over the brink into delirium, thundering horses and dizzy falling and falling, at last subsiding into a whispering sighing. Rarely indeed did she take that journey to extremity with her partners, never without her determined intention.

He twitched mightily. She moved lightly under him, boat against the dock, just enough to lull him back to sleep. In time the spasms ceased, and then the quivering, and he sank back down, and wonder of wonders, the implacable ocean was placated by her insignificant body; the sea was serene and calm. Should she ever again hear of fools who dared go in barrels over those great waterfalls far to the east in Buffalo, New York, she would mock no more, as she now felt she appreciated the sensation. The room was dark as the moon had moved off, but there were fingers of false dawn in the sky. She listened to him slumbering beside her in the dark, his heavy breathing washing ashore barnacled memories of her lost husband and she cursed all green-eyed men.



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Chapter Twenty-One