move over.'
'What?'
'Move over. If there's no room for me, then I'll sleep here.'
'Of all the nerve!'
'Hush! We share this bed, or we sleep in the hay together,' he warned
her.
He meant it! she thought, still incredulous. She started to rise, trying
to escape from the bed. He caught her arm and pulled her gently back.
'Where are you going?' he whispered.
'Where else! You're bigger than I am--I can't throw you out! I'm going
to the barn!'
'Wait.'
'For what?' she demanded.
For what? Every pulse within her was alive and crying out. She felt him
with the length of her body, with her heart, with her soul, with her
womb.
He did not hold her against him. He caressed her. He was warm, and his
smile and the white flash of his teeth in the night were compelling and
hypnotic.
'I said that we'd go together,' he told her. He swept her up, cocooned
in a tangle of sheet and quilt. He held her tightly against his body and
started for the door. Her arms wound around his neck. She stared at the
planes of his face and felt as if the soft magic of the moonbeams had
wrapped around her. She should have been screaming, protesting, bringing
down the house.
But she was not. Her fingers grazed his nape, and she felt absurdly
comfortable in his arms. He was dragging her out to the hay, she
thought, and she did not care.
Nor was there anything secretive or furtive about his action. He moved
with long strides and went down the stairway with little effort to be
quiet. He opened the front door, bracing her weight with one arm, then
let it close behind him. He stood on the porch and looked out into the
night. Then he stared at her, and she knew that she was smiling.
'Where am I heading?'
'I don't know.'
'Where do the hands sleep?'
'In the bunkhouse, by the far barn.'
'Then I want the first barn?' he demanded softly. She couldn't answer
him.
She wasn't sure what the question was. All she could think was that he
meant her to sleep in the hay.
She wasn't sure what else he meant for her to do there, but though she
was in his arms now, and though he carried her with a certain force, she
suddenly knew that what happened would be her choice. Still, he had
caught hold of something deep within her, and she wasn't angry.
She smiled again as she looked at him and told him primly, 'You, sir,
are completely audacious.' 'Maybe,' he said, and smiled in return. Then
it seemed they were locked there in the night, their eyes touching, and
something else touching maybe, with the tenderness of the laughter they
shared. Then the laughter faded.
