Cupid’s Confederates

downward. His tongue teased her breasts-one, then the other. His palm was work-roughened; he knew that. He kneaded the small ivory orbs, then apologized with the velvet wet of his tongue. He counted her ribs, one by one.

They were all there. He shifted up again, his knee bent, riding the space between her warm thighs. Way back, before they were married, before Bett had slept with him, he could remember well how he had desperately tried to coax her into bed. Rubbing, just so. A jeaned thigh, like now, until her body moved against his, desperately trying to sate itself.

“What are you trying to do to me?” Bett whispered huskily.

The answer was so very easy. To remind her of exactly how it had been with them at the beginning. Remind her…but not with words. He could still remember her murmuring unhappily that she couldn’t just…sleep with him. They barely knew each other. She’d made love before; heart wounds hurt. So they did, but Bett had some terrible misconceptions about herself and loving. That she was safe as long as he kept his jeans on. That it was important to be polite in bed. That it was not quite right that she had this wild, sweet, wanton side; that one kept one’s private fears and feelings to oneself. Out of fear of losing her, he’d kept his clothes on for a time. Not hers. Rapidly he’d turned around what she thought she could keep secret from him. They would keep no secrets from each other, not of the kind that counted. Sex was the medium; loving was the message.

Loving was still the message. His lips seared a very gentle, tender path down her throat, her breasts, her navel. Soon, the crinkle of soft hair tickled his lips; her hips tensed violently. He held them still with his hands. Very still. Like a sweet little whip, his tongue lashed out, a very gentle intruder.

Silver rain flooded through Bett. Her whole body convulsed, and her fingers clenched in his hair. “Come up here,” she said furiously.

Her husband was obviously trying to drive her mad. The morning sunlight was all around her, bathing her flesh, a warm weight on her eyes. She closed her eyes, aching inside. Her body felt like the hot, steady pulse of a summer rain. She was naked, and so close to the earth that her flesh felt part of it. Her heart was beating with a terrible thunder, but around her there was only sunshine. Sun and the peace of morning and shade and silence. Her breath, coming in harsh gasps, appalled her.

“Zach!”

Far too slowly, his lips trailed upward again. Her hands fumbled for his jeans, racing down the zipper. Her palms slid around and inside his jeans, curling over his flat male buttocks, pushing down the denim fabric that had separated them for far too long.

He had to stand to get his jeans off. Abandoned for those few seconds, she found herself staring at him, at his maleness, then at the look in his eyes as he came back down to her. His eyes were blue-silver with the first velvet thrust, blue-soft with the tenderness of loving, silver-sharp with a man’s drive to possess. So full he filled her, so unbelievably full.

“Burn for me, Bett,” he whispered. “Hurt with it. All of you.”

She tossed her head, wild with fever. All around her was the smell of dew, the smell of Zach, the smell of morning. She surged beneath him, exploding with need. The fierce rhythm of love rushed through her like a wanton silver river.

A stream of sunlight stole through the treetops in celebration of day, at the same time a different sunlight burst inside of her.

***

“We have,” Zach murmured, “a problem.”

Bett shook her head drowsily. “You may have a problem. I have no problems of any kind.” She curled her arms around his waist, snuggling closer to his bare, warm flesh. It seemed like a wonderful idea to stay just as they were. At least for the next hundred hours.

“You can be a disgracefully wanton woman, two bits.” He nuzzled at the delectable hollow in her shoulder.

“Thank you.”

“Insatiable.”

“Yes.”

“Uninhibited.”

She opened one sleepy eye. “Where are all these compliments leading?”

“You look like such an angel. Blond hair, blue eyes.” Zach shook his head in teasing puzzlement. “I’ll tell you, though, you’d never cut the chaste life playing a harp.”

She chuckled, lazily sitting up. At a motion from him, she raised her hands in the air. He slipped her nightgown on her, then her robe. Finally, Zach stood up to tug on his jeans.

“So. What are we going to do about your mother?”

The question seemed to come out of the blue. Bett, leaning over to fold up the blanket, shot her husband a startled glance.

“Kick her out when she’s doing so well? Obviously not. Have her continually lay stress on you? That’s not going to keep happening, either. So let’s talk choices, Bett.”

He swung an arm around her shoulders as they strolled back down the path toward the pond. Bett wanted to answer him, but she couldn’t get any words out. So Zach was aware of how unhappy she’d been-she’d done her best to hide it from him. She’d done her best to pretend even to herself that it didn’t matter. Regardless, she saw no choices. Her mother had been lonely and unhappy and grieving alone; Elizabeth was happy with them. If Bett found the continual pressure wearing, the old game of trying to please both her mother and herself impossible, she didn’t see that she had any choice.

Zach pushed aside a low-hanging branch so they could pass. “Well, talkative one?”

“Zach, I didn’t think you were…bothered,” Bett said quietly.

“How on earth could I be bothered? A cold drink’s waiting for me even before I want it, slippers laid out, a woman to ask my opinion on everything as if I were an oracle. You think I don’t like being spoiled?”

A small smile played on her lips. “You like the starched work shirts, do you?”

“About as much as I like having to abduct my wife and run off to the woods to make love to her in peace and privacy.”

Bett sighed. “It’s not as though she knocks on the door every night.”

“No. Just often enough that you’ve got half your attention on worrying every time we make love.”

They reached the truck, and both climbed in. The key had been left in the lock, but for the moment Zach didn’t turn on the engine. He leaned against the door, bemused for a moment by the sight of his wife in pale yellow, her hair whispering in soft dishevelment around her cheeks. The whole subject caused her distress; he could see it in her eyes, and he had the sudden urge to haul her right back into the woods and make it all go away.

“Zach,” Bett said unhappily, “all she wants is to care for and take care of. And there’s no one but us to make her feel needed.”

“Exactly,” he said softly. He straightened in the seat, turned the key, and started the engine. “Number one, two bits, we’re about to share the stress. You keep something like that bottled up inside again and I’ll have to beat you.”

“Like you do so often?”

He cast her a severe look. “Just once, you could show a little fear.”

“I’m terribly sorry.”

“Number two. If you don’t mind starting with the total inconsequentials. This isn’t a criticism, honey, it’s just a question. Is there some reason why, after all this time, you’re suddenly wearing makeup?”

Bett sighed. “Mother’s afraid I’ve been ‘letting myself go.’”

“You certainly have,” Zach agreed fervently. “A very few minutes ago, you were one hot little-”

“Zach!”

“What else?” His tone had turned serious, almost angry.

She took a breath. She could have drowned in all the little doubts that had been raised in the past month. Did a clean house actually matter to him? It wasn’t that she wanted to turn into a