Winter Rain

2

August 1868

HER BODY GLISTENED beneath his.

Hungrily Jonah licked salty droplets from the crevice at the base of her throat, savoring their musky bitterness on his tongue like a man thirsty too long for the earthy taste of her, the strong womanness that rose to him now, filling not only his nostrils, permeating everything in him to bursting.

Still, somehow he held back, savoring the exquisite pain of waiting. Hook had promised himself that he would not be too anxious this first time back in the shelter of Gritta’s arms. Lying with her at long last, just as he had dreamed so deliciously, for so many lonely nights.

Those nights swam before him the way smarter folks claimed a man’s life swam before his eyes when he was dying. All those nights of bitter reverie—from the first cold morning he had marched out of their valley, taking off to fight for General Sterling Price gone to drive the Yankees out of Missouri. After Confederate blood had flowed freely on the slopes of Pea Ridge down to Arkansas, Jonah had been one of the few who stuck with the barefooted brigades to march behind Price, tramping east to Mississippi where he was wounded and left for dead, left behind in a pell-mell retreat, left for capture by the blue-bellies after the Confederate debacle at Corinth.

All that came bubbling up from his memory, seeping through remembrances of long winter nights suffering with the predead stench of the human sties the Yankees called prison cells at Rock Island in Illinois. Nothing would ever drive from his nostrils the stench of that repugnant offal of human waste: not just the decaying feces, but as well the slowly rotting dead, the moldering flesh, the puffy, gassy, bloating corpses the Yankee guards came to collect of every morning.

Yet this sweet, fleshy, earthy fragrance of Gritta moving beneath him drove that stench of remembrance far, far from his mind now.

How musky was this perfume about her taut, smooth body. Smells of a fresh-scrubbing of lye soap and dashes of lilac water were quickly gone the way of her own heated fragrance as Gritta’s hunger readied her to receive him. That heady smell near drove him crazy with anticipation of just how she would feel around him when at last he sank his own flesh deep inside her.

As if she sensed his very need, Gritta took his rigid weapon in both her hands. It proved more than enough to make him gasp in surprise, shock, wonder at that singular, profound sensation dreamed of timeless nights of the past. He had wondered all those years apart from her on just how it would feel when finally back within the circle of her legs and arms, lying against her with nothing but the cool night air between their naked bodies.

Gently, so very gently, she kneaded his swollen flesh between her two hands, sensing it throb and leap in his growing anticipation. Those woman’s hands coarse and hardened to daily toil, the lot of a settler’s wife, mother to children and the land itself. Yet at this moment Gritta’s hands wrapped him with a touch like the finest of silk gloves, grasping him gently—so gently urging him with a furious insistence of her own.

“You do any more of that,” he rasped at her ear, licking a droplet of sweat from the earlobe, “I can’t save myself for you.”

Gritta immediately guided him toward her waiting moistness. With him started within, she urgently clawed at the small of his back, fervently pulling him to her—burying him firmly.

Jonah groaned at the sweet ecstasy of that first full thrust, at long last feeling the heated liquid fire of her engulfing all of him as her legs drew up, encircling his hips, allowing Jonah to sink within her as far as a man dared go. It seemed as if he filled her like never before.

Gritta’s head sank back, her eyes rolling in her own private, savage fury. And from somewhere down deep in her throat, a rumbling growl freed itself—a low, primitive coursing of bestial release like nothing he could remember hearing from her before.

Perhaps it was as he had feared. His wife was now a changed woman. Those years with the Mormon zealot had scarred her soul, taken their toll. This animal hunger in her now confirmed it: what the time apart from Jonah had done to her… what Jubilee Usher had wrought to change Gritta.

For a moment Jonah slowed his own fury, in a way wanting his old Gritta back now. Then as quickly he realized he did have her, telling himself there was nothing changed about her as he put his mind to think on it. This was the same woman, the same passion, the same furious swallowing of him that she had thrown herself into that second time their wedding night, not long after their first painful, hurried coupling. And then a third—and every time since.

How she murmured now in his ear—those secret, provocative things that drove him crazy atop her. Gritta clearly sensed what effect she had on him. And she brazenly used that power to her advantage. Seeking her own private brand of pleasure from the man who drove himself in and out of her now with an increasingly fevered pace.

He not only felt her tightening her legs around him, but he actually sensed her tensing that heated moistness around the rigid flesh he rammed into her with a heated intensity. Losing contact with everything else around him—Jonah became like a man possessed.

Then he forced himself to open his eyes and gazed down into the inky indigo-blue of hers. And slowed his hammering as he noticed that peculiar mix of passion and helplessness and total abandon he saw welling in Gritta’s eyes, swimming there with the tears that began at last to spill down her cheeks.

Jonah stopped, his flesh no less hard, yet at rest inside her moist insistence. Gritta’s legs locked around him, her fingernails still brushing at the small of his back. Like that, they gazed at one another for a long moment, unmoving.

“It … it has been so long, Jonah,” she whispered past the sob threatening to choke off her words.

Gently swiping the hot tears from both of her cheeks, he felt his own eyes smarting, moistening suddenly.

“It won’t happen again, Gritta. Us being apart. I promise you.”

Fighting back his tears, Jonah looked up, finding the room familiar: this place that brought him contentment. “Just look around you, woman. This is our home. I finally brung you home.”

She nodded, biting her lip. Of a sudden unable to speak, she clenched her eyes shut, tears seeping forth beneath the lashes. It moved something within him, something that had too long remained untouched.

“We’re back home, Gritta. Believe it. You must believe it—as surely as you are here. As surely as I can take my hand and place it here … on your soft, sweet breast.”

Jonah encircled her small, perfect breast with one hand, cupping it so that the nipple stood rigid at its center when he bent over it, kissing, licking, sucking on it while Gritta moaned, freeing that animal sound from the far back of her throat, a sound that emanated from the deeper recesses of what she was as a woman in need.

“This breast that has given life to our children, Gritta,” he went on, whispering, his hot breath on the breast, his lips still near the swollen nipple that seemed to quiver as he spoke, yearning for more of his gentle, insistent touch. “Your body, sustaining the life of our babies.”

She sobbed. “Only my dream of you, Jonah … my memory of you—only that sustained me for those years waiting for you to come for me. To find me. To bring me back home.”

“We are home. I never gave up. Lord knows it was your hope and your prayers led me to you.”

“I never gave up waiting for you, Jonah.”

He stroked her wet cheek with his roughened fingers. “Now I brung you home, woman. Here beneath Big Cobbler Mountain. To our Shenandoah Valley. Where we first fell in love and married and began our family. Here is where I had to bring you again before lying with you like this.”

Jonah had built up the fire in the stone fireplace to scare the chill from the place before he had gone to sit beside her on their rope-bed, that old tick emptied and stuffed anew with fresh-cut Virginia grass. Like the young lover she had been their wedding night, Gritta had taken his hand in hers, then slowly laid it over her breast.

“This is what I’ve been waiting for, Jonah,” she had told him there at the side of their wedding bed.

He had said nothing, but had instead covered her mouth with his, his tongue parting her lips fiercely, seeking out hers the way his swelling flesh strained to be free of his britches, yearned to sink inside her. Jonah had pushed her gently down atop the old comforter fattened with down, so fragrant with this sanctuary of their memories. Here in the valley of the Shenandoah, where he had first laid eyes on young Gritta Moser. And been instantly smitten the way only his mother could describe it.

According to Mother Hook, a man was a carnal animal, desirous of but one thing from a woman. So to control that man, to keep him in line and force him to practice his Christian industry, a woman had to portion out her sexual favors a little at a time—never could she truly enjoy that shameful travail she had to undergo in the name of God’s high command to be fruitful and replenish the earth.

Yet right from first jump Gritta had been different. After that first painful, and blessedly short-lived, episode on their wedding night, Gritta had thrown herself into lovemaking with such an abandon that it surprised Jonah, a young man fully expecting no more from a woman than for her to lie there while he did his business and finished, when at last she would pull her nightshirt back down over herself and roll away to fall asleep like her husband.

That’s what he had expected from the tales told him by a stone-faced Mother Hook.

But Gritta had been different from that first jump. She had come to him eagerly that second time, awakening him, every bit as hungry as he was for her, if not more so. It had startled him, perhaps even frightened him a little, to find such eagerness in this woman he had vowed to spend out his years with. He was worried too at first with what monster he had unleashed in his new wife. Yet he quickly came to enjoy and savor, to love, ultimately, that most secret person Gritta proved herself in bed with him. So quiet and strong before the rest of the world—it was like he alone knew her true self: a woman who became a ravenous temptress once they were alone beneath the covers. He loved her for it—if for no other reason than she wanted love, wanted to be loved as much as he wanted her to love him, answering his needs and hungers with the unquenchable fires of her own.

So it was they found themselves in this bed below Big Cobbler Mountain in the Shenandoah of Virginia once again. Countless miles and endless years it had taken in bringing her back here where they both began a life together standing to make their vows before the circuit rider, their families, and God Himself.

That was before they had pulled up deep family roots and resettled to Missouri with young Hattie. Before the two boys come along. Before the Yankees and Sterling Price and Pea Ridge and bloody Corinth, where he had to lie in the damp, rain-soaked forest waiting for the Yankees to find him—afraid the tremble-fingered blue-bellies would shoot him on the spot, simply because Jonah had dragged himself on his belly across a few yards of wet grass on that forest floor, crawled toward a dead Yankee to steal the young soldier’s rations. Some crumbs of hardtack and a handful of moldy salt beef. As bad as it was, Jonah had mused as he gulped it down greedily, at least the. Yankees had something to eat in this god-blamed war.

Yankees had boots and shoes too, while most of the boys Jonah marched with come along to fight the blue-bellies with an empty belly and bare, bleeding feet.

The nights had been cooling off so suddenly in those days before the battle at Corinth that Jonah had coveted the dead soldier’s boots like nothing he had ever coveted before. He took them, not without a struggle from the stiffening carcass, along with rank, torn stockings too. Not that it was hard getting those socks off the dead soldier. Just that everything was a struggle to Jonah what with the welling pain in his leg wound and the lost blood that made him faint, ready to puke with most any ounce of exertion he made.

But now it was over. His hunt for Gritta complete, and Jonah had brought her back to the Shenandoah Valley.

“Make love to me like you never have before,” she whispered to him as his left hand cupped, stroked the other breast.

“Like never before?”

“Now, Jonah—now,” she growled the words, insistent as she tightened herself around him, thrust herself up toward him, arching her back as he planted himself more firmly into her heatedness.

It drove him near crazy when she did that, never ashamed was Gritta of asking for what it was she wanted. She was so unlike what his mother had told him he was to expect of a woman on that morning before the preacher joined the young couple. So unlike what even his father had already confessed a man had right to expect of a wife and her duties to her sworn husband.

So this felt like that second time their wedding night, all over again: her crying out in pleasure as he hurled himself against her, frantically gripping her, holding her for fear their damp, sweaty bodies would slip loose and fly asunder when what he hungered for most right now was to melt together with her as one and never be apart. He was fearful with the savageness of their lovemaking that he would fling himself free of her: lose her again, if only for a moment.

That fear was something he could almost taste. Like the salty sting of the sweat he bent to lick from the crevice between her breasts.

Yet Gritta stayed with him, rocking with a fury that drove him ever higher.

“Let me feel you explode inside me, Jonah—please,” she begged at his ear, biting it tenderly, her fingers raking the back of his neck. “I want to feel your heat,” she moaned.

There was no more holding back once she did that to him. It was one command he had never been able to deny. Whereas he had spent a life of choosing what orders to obey, Jonah Hook was helpless when his woman demanded his immediate compliance.

The release came like a long-awaited volcanic shock quaking the entire Shenandoah Valley. Tingling from his belly down through his thighs, Jonah exploded in a growing crescendo of thrusts as he sought to plant himself deeper and deeper into her body—wanting never to free himself of this moistness, this heat, this joy of ultimate togetherness with her.

Then as he lay there atop Gritta, his breath slowing raggedly, for the first time sensing the sweat pouring from his own body and hearing at his temples his own heart hammering like it wanted free of its cage, Jonah marveled at what he had found with this woman—marveled that they had seen their special bond through the long years of his search to reclaim her.

The breeze of that evening felt good on his cheek as he snuggled closer to her, listening for the beat of her own heart, the slowing of her own breathing, the last of the whimpers in the back of her throat as the crescendo washed from her in eddying waves.

Gritta trembled beneath him like a frightened animal again, like she always did as he pulled his softened flesh from her. He drew the woman into his arms and brought her against him as he rolled onto his back. The breeze felt good and clean and cool and dry.

A sky above their bed hung dusted with more stars than he had ever recalled seeing over the Shenandoah before.

Jonah blinked, and blinked again. Drinking deep of the air as the Big Dipper whirled silently overhead.

The sky. The air.

Different somehow.

The coarse wool blanket beneath his hand startled him. Not the soft, years-worn goose-down comforter whereon he had made love to her.

As he sat upright, he trembled like a wet dog with distemper, the sweat on his brow and face and chest gone quickly cold and stale now in the breeze. Jonah drank deep of the night air. Only one place smelled like this—the high plains. Sage. But more than sage.

Wildness. Unfettered wildness.

He swallowed hard, near choking on disappointment.

“Goddamn,” Jonah muttered, his head sinking backward in an arc atop his shoulders as he clamped his eyes shut angrily, cursing the dream that had come to haunt him again.

That haunting vision returned less and less with every year now, yet still it remained a torture he practiced on himself—forcing himself to believe again each time the dream returned that he was actually making love to his wife back home in Virginia.

How real it had been. The touch and smells and tastes of her. The utter warmth of her wrapped around him.

So cold now in the aftermath that he began to tremble uncontrollably, drawing his shirt to him across the dry grass. Dolefully Jonah dragged it over his head as the tears began to well in his eyes. So alone.

So damned alone, after all. Halfway gone to hell and back all these years. Having finally found his girl. Hattie.

The boys were gone—sold off somewhere into the Southwest. At least that was what he had learned from one of those who ripped his family from their homestead during the bloody days of the war.

And his woman—said to be the property of some maniacal bastard who laid claim to her in the name of his own God.

Jonah flung an arm at the night sky, shaking his fist at God, at everything that God wasn’t for Jonah. God wasn’t there to answer a lonely man’s prayers, his pleas to put back together the shattered pieces of his family, his life, the circle of those he loved.

Instead, on that trackless high prairie sat a bitter, angry, lonely man filled with unrequited rage as he wavered to his feet and stood shaking beneath the great night sky—but more from the fury unspent within him than from the cold of this desert night in southern Wyoming Territory.

“Damn you for this!” he roared.

Damn you for hurling your anger down at my family the way you done—when you should have taken out your wrath only on me!

Yanking his pistol from its holster, Jonah fired and fired and fired again until the hammer clacked repeatedly on empty cylinders. Each bullet sped into the black face of the heavens—perhaps into the face of God Himself—in futile hope of getting the Almighty’s attention to his private pain, this hell only God Himself could be putting this lonely man through.

Jonah whirled and flung the pistol down onto his rumpled bedroll. He collapsed onto his knees, crumpling forward as he began to sob in earnest, not understanding why he had been cursed this way, not knowing just what he had done to merit having his family wrenched from him.

After all, he had grown to be a man who had never knowingly hurt a soul, never so much as harmed another until the Yankees had come to Missouri. Any man worthy of his backbone had to stand and be counted to turn back the blue tide.

Here he sat crumpled, knowing nothing more than that it hurt him beyond all endurance, this being without her. Not knowing if she was still alive, or dead by now.

For years now his clumsy prayers had remained un answered. He knew that much. Still, he had been told a man called Jubilee Usher waited for Jonah somewhere out there with his army of Mormon gunmen—cutthroats protecting the Mormon zealot and his woman captive as they marched back toward the City of the Saints.

With a dirty hand Jonah swiped at his nose, slowly gaining control once more. He swallowed the sting of the salty tears, promising himself that one day soon he would stand in the streets of that Mormon stronghold and cry out the name of Jubilee Usher—calling the godless bastard forth to atone for his crimes against the family of Jonah Hook.

Drenched in starlight, he reloaded his pistol quickly, ramming home powder and wad and ball, capping all six cylinders in the indigo loneliness, the sweat encasing his flesh grown cold and stiff, gone stale and rank in the freshening breeze of postmidnight.

Where once his body had tingled with her touch, he now felt the cold seep of anger swollen into a furnace of rage.

It was like nothing Jonah had ever compelled himself to do in all his life.

This having to find her.