Cupid’s Confederates

Chapter 8

“Bett?”

Through a sleepy fog, Bett opened her eyes, reaching automatically for Zach when she saw his face so close to hers.

“No, sweetheart. Up,” he whispered.

“Pardon?”

Zach, for some strange reason, was dressed. Jeans, a dark sweatshirt, sneakers. The room was still shrouded in the charcoal fuzziness of predawn; she could barely make out his shaggy brown hair and crooked smile. The same fuzziness muddled her brain as Zach, speaking in whispers, urged her into a robe and slippers, then down the stairs.

At the front door, she was sufficiently awake to at least open her mouth. She was not generally in the habit of walking out the front door in yellow scuffs and her long yellow cotton robe. Zach kissed her just then. Zach kissed her very, very thoroughly.

By the time she surfaced, he was herding her toward the pickup. “The babies-” she protested vaguely.

“Billy took the babies yesterday morning. Don’t you remember?”

Sort of. There’d been two nights and a day before the raccoons had changed from reluctant feeders to guzzlers. She couldn’t let Billy take them until she’d been sure they would survive.

Last night, though, she’d fallen asleep like a zombie; she only vaguely remembered Zach carrying her upstairs. Now, she regarded her husband with a definitely sensual smile. “You seem to be kidnapping me.”

“You bet your bare toes I am.” He tucked her in the curve of his shoulder for the drive, aware that he’d woken her from sleep she still needed, but not caring as much as he should.

Something had clicked in his head during the past few days. Elizabeth, so insensitive to Bett’s feeling for animals, to something so integral to her daughter’s nature. Elizabeth, criticizing Bett so very subtly on half a dozen fronts, always well-intentioned. Elizabeth, forever and with all good intentions, interrupting every moment of closeness between them.

Zach had never intended to complain about the inconveniences Elizabeth’s stay was causing for him. He not only cared about his mother-in-law, but also accepted Bett’s feeling of responsibility for her welfare.

But Liz should never have made the mistake of hassling Bett.

Very complicated issues had been reduced to utter simplicity. As simple as breakfast. Twenty minutes later, he had a small fire going at the edge of the woods by the pond. Bett was staring at him with increasingly bewildered eyes, her soft hair fluffed around her face in a haphazard halo. Wearing yellow inevitably made her appear as fragile as a daisy. Bett was, at times, very fragile. Scrambled eggs were cooking in the iron frying pan; Bett was curled up on the sleeping bag with an old blanket around her shoulders; and dawn’s pale, silvery colors were peeking through the woods.

“So.” Bett was groping for conversation. “You just suddenly felt like a picnic at five o’clock in the morning.”

Zach spooned eggs onto a paper plate and handed it to her, along with a plastic spoon. Finding plastic forks had proved difficult. “You’re going to need this energy,” he commented.

“I am?”

His eyes flickered to hers. “When you’re all done, I’m going to make love to you so long and so hard you won’t know what hit you.” He frowned, staring at her. “Hard isn’t the right word. I don’t want you to misunderstand. I want an hour with you, in complete silence. I want you open for me. I want to bury myself inside your softness.”

Her lips formed a startled O that never materialized aloud. A moment ago, they’d been talking about breakfast. She tried to swallow a bite of food, staring at her husband.

Zach looked the same. His brown hair was still the color of chestnuts, all disheveled, his sideburns getting a little long. His skin still had the whole summer’s sheen of bronze in it. He was moving casually, his walk lithe and easy, to the pond, where he crouched on his haunches to rinse out the frying pan.

Maybe he hadn’t just said all that, she thought fleetingly. Maybe she’d imagined it. Because there was nothing specifically different in the way he looked that could account for an instant, vibrant, delicious tingling in every erotic nerve ending in her body. As he strode back toward her, his eyes seemed to burn into hers with an intense, deliberate flame.

“Eat,” he scolded.

Ah, yes. For that energy she was going to need. She took another bite, not the least interested in food. Zach kicked sand on the embers of the fire with the side of his boot, served her the last of the coffee from the thermos and took the few items involved in his cooking project to the back of the pickup.

The sun was just peeking over the horizon; the smell of dew surrounded them; the pond waters, pearl gray, were like glass. It was a silent world. She watched Zach as he moved about soundlessly, strong and tall and very, very male. Zach smiled so readily. But Zach was not smiling when he looked her way.

“Bett?” His voice was curiously gentle. He took the half-eaten breakfast from her hand. When he scooped her up, yellow blanket and all, she was not surprised. Zach was doing an unforgivably good job of making her feel like a princess, a princess captured by a pirate. Not that she really believed that, but she gave in to the odd, vulnerable feelings inside, that fragile, trembly rush. She nestled her cheek against his chest as he climbed into the cover of the trees.

“Are you angry?” she whispered suddenly.

His lips fleetingly brushed her forehead. “No.”

“You are,” she said hesitantly.

“Not,” he promised, “with you. And you are the only one on my mind at the moment, Bett.”

He stopped walking at the crest of the hill, where in spring there was a bed of wood violets and the sun shone down in long, dusty ribbons through the leaves. In early fall, there were no flowers, just the bed of green like a spongy cushion beneath the blanket as he laid her down. She could smell the fresh dampness of morning, the promise of a sultry Indian summer day that hadn’t yet arrived. A golden leaf fluttered down here and there in the stillness. The shade was dark and private.

A cool flush touched her skin as Zach knelt beside her, his fingers threading through her hair as he drew her face close, close enough to lower his lips to hers. “You’ve been keeping secrets from me,” he murmured. “I don’t like that, two bits. I don’t like that at all.”

“What secrets?”

His lips swept over hers again, denying her question, his tongue probing between her parted lips, stirring a crazy flurry of emotions. His mouth left hers at the very instant she’d become addicted. He trailed kisses along her profile, so fragile and light she might have imagined them. His fingers were just as gentle untying the sash of her robe, parting the lapels, slipping inside. “When you’re unhappy,” he murmured, “I want to know about it. Some problems are solvable and some aren’t, sweet. I don’t give a damn. I want to know.”

“Zach, I don’t have the least idea what you’re ta-”

His blue eyes blazed into hers. “After all this time, if you really think there’s something you can’t tell me, Bett, you’ve got a long lesson coming to you.”

“But I never-”

Zach was too intent on engraining the lesson to explain. Her robe was in the way. It had to go. He could feel the shiver vibrate through her body when it was gone. She wore some kind of nylon nightgown that crinkled in his fingers as he swept it up and off, baring her sweet ivory flesh to the morning coolness. She needed warming. He had no intention of letting her catch cold.

He reveled the feel of her bare skin against his sweatshirt and jeans, the tease of clothes between them. His hands swept up and down her flesh, searing in warmth wherever he touched, creating fire with the friction of his hands that were never still. “Don’t you ever hold out on me,” he murmured. “You don’t wear a mask, not around me. You put on coverings for the rest of the world, but not for me.”

“Zach-”

“I want you like hell,” he whispered. “Open, Bett. All of you.”

His lips trailed down her body until his teeth could gently pull at the taut pink centers of her breasts. Her hands were fluttering aimlessly at her sides, but already her body was flushing with warmth, exactly what he wanted. Part of her so obviously wanted to talk, to understand where he was coming from; and yet her pulse was already racing. Zach, too, was communicating on the two levels, but he had no problem defining his priorities. He carried her hand to the growing hardness in his jeans and held it there.

Her breath locked in her lungs for a moment, and then her palm rubbed, over and over, that warm hardness encased in denim. His desire was clear. His need for her was just as clear. If she wanted to talk, that wasn’t solely for the purpose of hearing words said out loud. One could start communication in other ways; Zach had taught her that a long time ago. And her response was from the heart, as primal as his, her instincts just as strong.

Her lips were suddenly hot and wild, molding themselves against his. Her fingers fumbled for the zipper of his jeans. Why on earth did he have so many clothes on? Her heart kept beating harder, terribly uneven. Was he actually doubting how much she loved him; was that what his enigmatic anger was about? How could he be such a fool?

Zach pushed her hand away. Once his jeans were gone, he knew he wouldn’t last long. His patience was forced, but he was determined to try. His palm took a long, lazy path, between and around Bett’s breasts, over the satin flesh of her abdomen, finally slipping between her thighs. Her whole body arched against the shelf of his palms, and a silver mist of wanting filled his head, his blood, his body. Bett’s lips were suddenly moist and sweet and warm, seeking his, demanding his. His tongue invaded the hollow of her mouth.

She was on fire. It wasn’t enough. “Let me,” she whispered furiously.

Her fingers pushed up his sweatshirt. He let her strip the soft fabric over his head; he let her fingertips slide over his smoothly muscled chest; she loved to do that. Her hands trailed up, curled around his neck, got lost in his hair. He turned and shifted both of them. With her weight on top of him, he spread his legs, pinning her, loving the imprint of her tiny, taut nipples on his bare chest, loving the ache in his loins as he pressed against her abdomen. Her hair swept down, all in a tangle, strands of sun-touched silk that tickled his cheek as her lips sought his again. Dawn had turned into day. Sunlight filtered down, catching in her hair. Her eyes were never more blue than when she was blind with loving, caught up in the sweetest of senses. She thought herself such a seductress.

She so very much was. He slowed the pace she didn’t want slowed, but with a terrible effort. He had to bat her fingers away from his zipper again. He turned so that he was next to her and half on top, and then shifted his body 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 hausfrau; she doubted she was capable of it, but his values were involved, too. She’d never questioned him. Maybe he found it more restful to sit at the kitchen table and use silverware and china than their old habit of paper plates on the floor in the living room. Stupid, yes?

“But it’s details that make up every day, Zach. I push the toothpaste tube from the middle, leave my shoes where you stumble over them at the door. Maybe-privately-you were annoyed. The thing is, I never thought to ask you.” Maybe working together so closely wore on him from time to time; maybe when he continually saw her ramming around on a tractor in jeans and sweatshirt he saw her as less feminine than he once had-

Between the peach orchard and the plum trees, Zach jammed on the brakes and turned off the engine again. The groove between his brows boded ill. “How the hell could you have let her do this to you?”

Bett gnawed on her lip. “Mother? She isn’t doing anything to me.”

“Four weeks in the house and she’s turned my confident, sassy wife into a worrywart. What is this? If I’d wanted a wife obsessed with ring around the collar, I would have married one. I happen to be a big boy with strong vocal cords, two bits, and I’m more than capable of telling you if I’m unhappy with how we’ve set up our life. I’m not. Now, if you are, we’ll work on it. If you’ve really suddenly decided you need the floor under the refrigerator waxed, we’ll hire someone to do it. You sure as hell aren’t going to devote a second to it. You happen to bloom best in fresh air, and I happen to get a kick out of watching you, tiny as a minute, ramming around inside the cab of a tractor ten times bigger than you are. It makes me feel protective, and proud of you, and good inside to know we’re sharing the same goals. Generally, it also makes me want to go up and whip you out of there and take you in the middle of a field, but that’s neither here nor there.” His frown leveled out, a wicked smile taking its place. “I’m used to that reaction, whenever you’re within a two-mile radius.”

Bett, for some strange reason, had tears in her eyes. Was he shouting? He reached out and tugged her close, drawing her onto his lap, irritated at the limitations imposed by the steering wheel.

“Have we got that stuff clear now?” he grumbled.

“Yes.” Very clear, Bett thought. Zach should shout at her more often. All the mindless anxieties that had been haunting her had abruptly fled.

“And in the meantime, there’s an answer for your mother.” Zach shifted her next to him, very close, as he started the truck again. “She likes to take care of people. She is never going to survive well alone. She needs to feel needed. Heaven knows, she’s into waiting on a man-”

Bett slapped his thigh. “Don’t get too used to it.”

“She’s still relatively young,” Zach continued absently. “Not unattractive. She’s got this rather crazy side and she talks continually and there’s that insomnia of hers, but maybe we could keep that kind of thing secret for a while.”

“Pardon?” Her husband was talking Greek.

He shot her a mischievous smile. “Are you ready for the campaign?”

“What campaign?” Bett asked bewilderedly.

“We’re about to get your mother married off, two bits. It’s the only answer.”