For a long time she did not speak. Then, “It’s been a long, long time since’t I laid with a man.”
That sweet tang of prickly anxiety rose in him like an awakening. He even felt the stir in his flesh as her fingers came away from his lips and traced their way down his chest to his belly, where she pulled and jerked at the tail of his shirt to free it from his button-front leather britches. As her fingers lightly brushed across the skin of his bared belly, Bass sensed himself growing. Enjoying it. Yet afraid of what was to come.
“We ought’n not t-to …,” he started with a bit of a stammer as her fingers no longer stroked his skin lightly but began to knead the flesh and muscle at the waistband of his britches. “I c-can’t.”
“Why?” she whispered huskily in his ear. “Ain’cha been with a woman?”
“I have—”
“You ain’t no boy,” she interrupted, pulling her hand away suddenly. “Could tell that right off there in Bailey Henline’s store. You had a look about you. I knowed you was the kind what’d had you many a woman. Likely a lot of whores too.”
He felt her shuffling the blankets behind him, tugging more at his shirt until she had the back tail out and yanked up nearly to his shoulders.
“Ain’t gonna deny none of that,” he answered at last.
“But I never took you for the kind what didn’t know the difference twixt a whore … and a woman in need.”
“In … in need?”
“Bad in need of you,” Edna answered. “Been a long time, Mr. Bass. And though the thought’s crossed my mind a time or two, I ain’t about to go to my own husband’s brother with my … need.”
As she said it, the woman came against him once more with her body heat. And this time he was sure he sensed more of that warmth, now that she had raised his shirt—now that she had her breasts pressed against his bare back.
“Someone gonna hear us,” he whispered, suddenly aware of how quiet the night had become around them. “Your young’uns. Maybe your brother—”
“No one gonna hear us,” she breathed at his ear, reaching around him again and taking one of his hands in hers. “Less’n you’re one what likes to scream when he climbs atop a woman.”
“I ain’t … no, never did I scream.”
“Just shush then and feel what I’m giving you this dark, cold night.”
Her hand tightened on his, guiding it over his hip to hers. Surprised, he froze the briefest of moments, finding her hip bare. Leading his hand up and down her thigh, then sweeping it back over her buttock, Edna began to groan, low and feral. Her hand left his as Titus continued to explore on his own.
“You didn’t wear nothing at all?” he asked.
Huskily, she replied, “Just a ol’ coat I shimmied out of.”
By now he felt himself become fully erect as she grabbed hold of his hand again and led it directly between her thighs, locking it where she was the warmest. He sensed a shudder shoot through the woman as his fingers explored, finding her moist.
“Y-you’re a widow woman—”
“That don’t mean nothing.”
Starting to roll toward him, Edna immediately had her fingers at the buttons of his britches, sitting up slightly so she could get both hands working to yank at the front of his pants. The blankets slid off her shoulder. In the dim starshine he got his first good look at her bare neck, a shoulder where the coat had slipped down her arm, and then her breasts.
Her hand hungrily grabbed his rigid flesh as the front of his britches opened. Up and down she toyed with him, first squeezing about as hard as she could, then lightly brushing a single finger up, then down. “You’re ready for me, ain’cha, Mr. Bass?”
“Get out of your coat,” he ordered hungrily, his eyes flicking a last time across the starlit yard toward the small buildings. There were no second thoughts now.
“Just soon’s I get you outta your shucks,” she said, yanking, pulling, tearing at his canvas pants.
At the same time, he was tearing his shirt the rest of the way over his head and off his arms, flinging his clothing to the side in a careless heap.
As she leaned back to slip off the coat that lay open, he leaned forward, taking one of her breasts into his mouth and began to kiss, fondle, suck. A tremor shot through her body and she moaned once more, hurriedly shaking the coat from her arms. The instant it was off, she had a hand encircling his rigid flesh once more while at the same time collapsing to her back beside him there.
He found himself between her legs as he brought the blankets over them, the cold night wind sharp as freshly stoned knife against their flesh. Impatiently, Edna guided him with the one hand, her other insistent, pressing at the small of his back, urging him forward. After several moments of lunging against her in vain, Edna’s warmth eventually wrapped itself around him as he drove himself up to the hilt.
Now as one they began to rock there beneath the stars on that moonless night as the earth spun toward dawn. The closer he got to spending himself within her, it seemed the larger his penis grew. And the more Edna whimpered. Low and sporadic at first, now she tangled her fingers in his long hair, pulling him down, holding him there so that she could press her lips against his ear as he continued to thrust himself against her with a growing urgency.
Then a high-pitched, staccato, and almost silent screech escaped her throat as she shook volcanically beneath him in those seconds Titus finished inside her. Her scream quickly became a whimper, then a raspy, breathless whisper at his ear as he collapsed fully atop her. Spent, as weak as a newborn calf.
“You sleep for ’while now, Mr. Bass.” Her words brushed his flesh as she nestled her head against his neck. “Then I’ll be rousing you well afore first light another time. That way I can be back with the young’uns and no one’s the wiser come morning.”
She was true to her word, Edna was.
It seemed like no time at all until he was nudged awake. Bass found her kissing on his neck and down his chest, her hands busy as ever stroking him, her small breasts brushing and tantalizing against his shoulder, his arm, his belly as she shifted beside him.
Then, just as she had promised, after that second feral coupling the woman rolled herself away from him, peeled her coat from the jumble of his blankets, and wrapped herself within it before she leaned over him.
“Mr. Bass,” she whispered, her lips almost against his, her eyes staring right into him. “I ain’t no young woman no more. And I ain’t got a damn prospect one way out here where Heber brought us for to find his dream. So I’m telling you to take what I give you of Edna Mae Grigsby and ride off come morning. I damn well know you’re gonna ’member the smell of me when you’re out there fighting off them Pawnee or any them other nasty Injuns. An’ then maybeso you’ll wanna come riding back here to me, to what you had you a taste of this night.”
The guilt rose in him like an underground spring. “I …
“Don’t have me no idea a’tall, Mr. Bass,” she interrupted. “Fact is, you’ll likely not ever be back. But if you’ve got yourself a hankering for a good woman to spend out your days with—just remember I’m here.”
“Edna.” He said it in such a way that she already knew.
Apologetically.
And the woman put her fingers on his lips to silence any more rejection of her. Edna drew her face back from his as he fought to find the words to explain.
“Then go, Mr. Bass,” she whispered. “I figger we both got what we wanted here tonight. You’re on your way out there for something. And I got what I been needing—needing for the better part of a year since my Heber gone and left me with young’uns to raise and fields to plow.”
“But you ain’t never cried,” he said. “That’s what—”
“No I ain’t,” she admitted, her lip stiffening. “But likely I will one of these days soon, Mr. Bass. At first, I only got dead inside when Heber died. It hurt so bad him going that I made myself go all dead inside, like a dried-up autumn leaf. Then I tol’t myself another man be coming along and want the pleasure I could give him for the rest of his days. Didn’t know if’n it’d be you …” She wagged her head as she leaned back. “So be it.”
The look on her face, the sag in her shoulders—it caused him such pain inside. “I didn’t tend to hurt no one,
