Captivated

Abigail rolled up the damp journal. The colonel was far from decrepitas he must very well know. There was not a single strand of gray in his hair. 'Fishing, Colonel Coally?'

'Merely stating a truth.' She jumped at the shock of a heavy thuda boot dropping onto the floor. Another thud followed. Then the entire bed shook. She sensed rather than saw him scoot across the mattress to sit with his back against the wall. 'I am thirty-five years old. The last twenty-two years have been spent in the Army. What are you doing out here all by yourself?'

Abigail refused to be cheated of her anger. 'What areyou doing here, Colonel Coally?'

There was a brief silence. 'Convalescing.'

She craned her head back in the direction where she knew he was sitting. All she could see was darkness. 'There is another cottage near here?'

'No. Not nearby.'

Straightening, she listened to the tempest outside the cabin for long seconds. 'Twenty-two years ago you would have been thirteen, Colonel Coally. The age of consent for a no combative position is fifteen.'

'You are correct, Miss Abigail.' The voice in the darkness was dismissive. 'I lied.'

Lied? Twenty-two years ago or now?

'What are you convalescing for?'

Again that silence, followed by a reluctant, 'A bullet wound.'

She remembered his limp. And the sight of a well-shaped muscular ankle sprinkled with fine black hair. 'In the left leg.'

'Yes.'

Abigail followed the war movement through the newspapers. 'By a Boer?'

'Yes.'

The seaside cottage was miles away from the nearest thoroughfare. She had deliberately chosen it for its isolation. 'That still does not explain why you arehere, Colonel Coally.'

The silence was longer this time. She concentrated on the cool damp of the journal rolled in her hands and not the throbbing warmth that came from the end of the bed where his legs stretched out.

'My horse threw me. I walked for a while, but there was no shelter to be found. Then I saw your light… and here I am.'

'But why were you out in the storm?'

'Why do you read erotic literature?'

Abigail prepared to defend her choice of reading materialit was educational; it was amusing;it was none of his business. She surprised herself by baldly stating, 'Because it is the only way a woman can learn about sex.'

A current of electricity passed through the darkness, as if lightning had struck nearby.

'I could be mistaken, of course,' the colonel's voice was gravelly, 'but I believe there exists another method that a woman may discharge her curiosity.'

'I never met a man who I was interested in 'discharging' my curiosity with, Colonel Coally,' she said repressively.

Outside the cottage, the force of the storm rose. The wind howled around the cupboard. Waves pounded on the beach below. Thunder roared in the skies above.

It occurred to Abigail that a very real danger existed. The windcould take the thatch roof off. Wavescould swell up out of the ocean and swallow the tiny cottage. Lightningcould

'I wanted a woman.'

The unexpected words jarred Abigail back to reality. 'I beg your pardon?'

'You wanted to know what I was doing out here in the storm. I rode out, hoping to find a village. Or a tavern. And a willing woman.'

The confession was abrupt.

Colonel Coally begrudged the need that had driven him out into the night. As Abigail begrudged the conventions that did not allow a lady the same privilege.

She should have felt shock at the admission no gentleman made to a lady; instead, she felt the lingering remnants of rancor evaporate. It was replaced by a strange sense of camaraderie.

This man had seen her trunk filled with erotica and he had not judged her. It was the height of hypocrisy to judge him now, when he obviously had his own needs.

'I envy you, Colonel Coally. Were I a man, I, too, would have ridden out in search of companionship.'

'It wasn't companionship I rode out for, Miss Abigail.'

'I know very well what you rode out for, Colonel Coally.'

'Do you, Miss Abigail?' The voice in the dark was curiously passionless. 'Do you know what it is like for your body to burn and throb until you want to throw aside everything you have ever believed in for just one moment of oblivion?'

Abigail closed her eyes against a lifetime of wanting things that could never be, gently reared as she was. Things she would never have, spinster that she now was. 'Yes, Colonel Coally. I do.'

The bed shifted. 'Do you have fantasies, Miss Abigail?'

Unbidden images danced behind her eyelids. Forbidden images of a man's naked desire filling a woman's body. Sexual images of things she had never done. Things she had never seen. Things she had never even read about.

Yearnings that in the next three weeks she must somehow put aside.

'Yes.' She opened her eyes and stared into the darkness. 'I have fantasies.'

'Tell me.' The abrupt command was harsh.

'I…' How could she tell this man who was a virtual stranger what she had privately dreamed about for years? But the darkness provided a certain anonymity. It almost seemed as if she talked to herself… or a fantasy.

'I fantasize about what it is like to kiss. Not the small peck that I give and receive from my family and friends. But a real kiss… like they do in my books. With their… tongues.' Before she could lose her courage, she blurted, 'Do men and women really kiss that way, Colonel Coally?'

'Sometimes. What else do you fantasize about, Miss Abigail?'

Abigail transferred the journal to her left hand and scooted sideways across the mattress so that her back rested against the iron headboard. The sole of her right foot brushed against wool and a muscular leg.

Heat shot up her calf.

She curled her foot underneath her skirt. 'I… fantasize about what a man looks like. I mean… I have little nephews and I… have changed their nappies. They are… not really very impressive. Yet in the books they describe a man as being… much larger.There. Are men as large in real life as they are in books?'

It could have been the intake of his breath that she heard. Or perhaps it was hers. Because suddenly she realized exactly what it was that she had grabbed in the darkness, all silky sinew with pulsing veins.

And yes, it had been very large indeed.

'Some men are large, some men are small.' The voice in the dark deepened. 'Just as some women have large breasts, and some have small. Is it important to you?'

'Yes,' she said softly, wondering what or evenif he had thought about her breasts during that fleeting touch, wondering how large were his measurements, wondering if all men were his size. Then she laughed self-consciously, embarrassed yet strangely exhilarated at discussing a man's anatomy. 'I meanI suppose it would not matter as long as a man can give a woman satisfaction. Is it possible, Colonel Coally? Can a man give a woman satisfaction?'

'Do you doubt it, Miss Abigail?'

'Oh, yes, Colonel Coally. Every time I look at one of my pomaded, bewhiskered brothers-in-law I doubt it. I try to imagine them kissing with their tongue oror touching a woman's breast oror kissing a woman between her legs, and, quite frankly, I cannot. I cannot imagine them doing any of the things I read about. I cannot even imagine them begetting their own children. They have fat bottoms, Colonel Coally. I simply cannot imagine those fat bottoms pistoning up and down.'