Диана Гэблдон - Drums of Autumn 4

“Or maybe Ian’s right, and I just smell awful,” I said aloud. I dipped my fingers in the water and flicked a spray of drops at a dragonfly resting on my rock, no more than a transparent shadow, its colors drained by darkness.

I hoped Jamie would hurry. Riding for days on the wagon seat next to him, watching the subtle shifts of his body as he drove, seeing the changing light on the angles of his face as he talked and smiled, was enough to make my palms tingle with the urge to touch him. We had not made love in several days, owing to our hurry to reach Charleston, and my inhibitions about intimacy within earshot of a dozen men.

A breath of warm breeze slipped past me, and all the tiny down hairs on my body prickled with its passing. No hurry now, and no one to hear. I drew a hand down the soft curve of my belly and the softer skin inside my thighs, where the blood pulsed slowly to the beat of my heart. I cupped my hand, feeling the swollen moist ache of urgent desire.

I closed my eyes, rubbing lightly, enjoying the feeling of increasing urgency.

“And where the hell are you, Jamie Fraser?” I murmured.

“Here,” came a husky answer.

Startled, my eyes popped open. He was standing in the stream, six feet away, thigh-deep in the water, his genitals stiff and dark against the pallid glow of his body. His hair lay loose around his shoulders, framing a face white as bone, eyes unblinking and intent as those of the wolf-dog. Utter wildness, utter stillness.

Then he stirred and came toward me, still intent, but still no longer. His thighs were cold as water when he touched me, but within seconds he warmed and grew hot. Sweat sprang up at once where his hands touched my skin, and a flush of hot moisture dampened my breasts once more, making them round and slick against the hardness of his chest.

Then his mouth moved to mine and I melted—almost literally—into him. I didn’t care how hot it was, or whether the dampness on my skin was my sweat or his. Even the clouds of insects faded into insignificance. I raised my hips and he slid home, slick and solid, the last faint coolness of him quenched by my heat, like the cold metal of a sword, slaked in hot blood.

My hands glided on a film of moisture over the curves of his back, and my breasts wobbled against his chest, a rivulet trickling between them to oil the friction of belly and thigh.

“Christ, your mouth is slick and salty as your quim,” he muttered, and his tongue darted out to taste the tiny beads of salt on my face, butterfly wings on temple and eyelids.

I was vaguely conscious of the hard rock under me. The stored heat of the day rose up and through me, and the rough surface scraped my back and buttocks, but I didn’t care.

“I can’t wait,” he said in my ear, breathless.

“Don’t,” I said, and wrapped my legs tight around his hips, flesh bonded to flesh in the brief madness of dissolution.

“I have heard of melting with passion,” I said, gasping slightly, “but this is ridiculous.”

He lifted his head from my breast with a faint sticky sound as his cheek came away. He laughed and slid slowly sideways.

“God, it’s hot!” he said. He pushed back the sweat-soaked hair from his forehead and blew out his breath, chest still heaving from exertion. “How do folk do that when it’s like this?”

“The same way we just did,” I pointed out. I was breathing heavily myself.

“They can’t,” he said with certainty. “Not all the time; they’d die.”

“Well, maybe they do it slower,” I said. “Or underwater. Or wait until the autumn.”

“Autumn?” he said. “Perhaps I dinna want to live in the south, after all. Is it hot in Boston?”

“It is at this time of year,” I assured him. “And beastly cold in the winter. I’m sure you’ll get used to the heat. And the bugs.”

He brushed a questing mosquito off his shoulder and glanced from me to the nearby creek.

“Maybe so,” he said, “and maybe no, but for now…” He wrapped his arms firmly around me, and rolled. With the ponderous grace of a rolling log, we fell off the edge of the rocky shelf, and into the water.

We lay damp and cool on the rock, barely touching, the last drops of water evaporating on our skins. Across the creek, the willows trailed their leaves in the water, crowns ruffled black against the setting moon. Beyond the willows lay acre upon acre and mile upon mile of the virgin forest, civilization for now no more than a foothold on the edge of the continent.

Jamie saw the direction of my glance and divined my thought.

“It will be a good bit different now than when ye last kent it, I expect?” He nodded toward the leafy dark.

“Oh, a bit.” I linked my hand with his, my thumb idly caressing his big, bony knuckles. “The roads will be paved then; not cobbled, covered with a hard, smooth stuff—invented by a Scotsman called MacAdam, in fact.”

He grunted slightly with amusement.

“So there will be Scots in America, then? That’s good.”

I ignored him and went on, staring into the wavering shadows as though I could conjure the burgeoning cities that would one day rise there.

“There will be a lot of everyone in America, then. All the land will be settled, from here to the far west coast, to a place called California. But for now”—I shivered slightly, in spite of the warm, humid air—“it’s three thousand miles of wilderness. There’s nothing there at all.”

“Aye, well, nothing save thousands of bloodthirsty savages,” he said practically. “And the odd vicious beast, to be sure.”

“Well, yes,” I agreed. “I suppose they are.” The thought was unsettling; I had of course known, in a vague, academic way, that the woods were inhabited by Indians, bears, and other forest denizens, but this general notion had suddenly been replaced by a particular and most acute awareness that we might easily—and unexpectedly—meet any one of these denizens, face-to-face.

“What happens to them? To the wild Indians?” Jamie asked curiously, peering into the dark as I was, as though trying to divine the future among the shifting shadows. “They’ll be defeated and driven back, will they?”

Another small shiver passed over me, and my toes curled.

“Yes, they will,” I said. “Killed, a lot of them. A good many taken prisoner, locked up.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“I expect that depends a lot on your point of view,” I said, rather dryly. “I don’t suppose the Indians will think so.”

“I daresay,” he said. “But when a bloody fiend’s tryin’ his best to chop off the top of my head, I’m no so much concerned with his point of view, Sassenach.”

“Well, you can’t really blame them,” I protested.

“I most certainly can,” he assured me. “If one of the brutes scalps ye, I shall blame him a great deal.”

“Ah…hmm,” I said. I cleared my throat and had another stab at it. “Well, what if a bunch of strangers came round and tried to kill you and shove you off the land you’d always lived on?”

“They have,” he said, very dryly indeed. “If they hadna, I should still be in Scotland, aye?”

“Well…” I said, floundering. “But all I mean is—you’d fight, too, under those circumstances, wouldn’t you?”

He drew a deep breath and exhaled strongly through his nose.

“If an English dragoon came round to my house and began to worry me,” he said precisely, “I should certainly fight him. I would also have not the slightest hesitation in killing him. I would not cut off his hair and wave it about, and I wouldna be eating his private parts, either. I am not a savage, Sassenach.”

“I didn’t say you were,” I protested. “All I said was—”