Memory's Embrace Read online

  She bustled about happily, washing her dishes, putting them away on her shelves, washing her forks and knives and spoons and putting them in their drawer.

  “Tess,” said a familiar, longed-for voice behind her.

  She stopped, her back rigid, her soapy hands in midair. Keith. Had she said his name aloud? She didn’t think so, but she wasn’t sure. And she didn’t turn around. “You might knock or something,” she choked out.

  “On what?” he asked softly. Hoarsely.

  It was a reasonable question. She had, after all, neglected to shut the door to her quarters. It was fortunate that it had been Keith who walked in, and not some—some ruffian.

  Was there a difference?

  She closed her eyes, willing her heart to beat at a pace that did not steal away her breath and close her throat.

  He was behind her, his hands strong on her shoulders, but gentle, too, as they turned her.

  “I love you,” he said.

  The words came as a shock to Tess, like being drenched in ice-cold water or startled on a very dark night. She could say nothing, see nothing—except for the golden wedding band that hung in the V of his open-necked shirt.

  “Tess.”

  She broke free of him, turned away again. “The ring. Amelie.” The words were broken, incoherent. But they were the best she could manage. “Please, go away.”

  Keith did not go away. She heard a chinking sound and turned to see the ring and its chain sitting on the table in a little, glimmering pyramid. “I love you,” he repeated.

  Tess stared at the small rise of gold and then shifted her gaze to his face. His beloved face. “If you want me for a mistress—”

  He only waited, watching her. Was that smugness gleaming in his sky-blue eyes, or was it tender amusement?

  “I won’t be that.” Brave words, she thought to herself. If he kissed her, she would respond like a hussy—she wouldn’t be able to help herself.

  He came nearer and then nearer still, and Tess trembled as he cupped her face in his hands, entangling his fingers in her hair. He bent his head and his lips were warm, tantalizing at her temple.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were a preacher once?” she demanded, in desperation. Tingles of heated desire were already prickling through every part of her.

  “You didn’t ask,” he muttered, and each word had the effect of a caress, going from the top of Tess’s head to the tips of her toes.

  “A person wouldn’t think to—”

  He undid the tiny buttons of her prim shirtwaist, easily displaced the frilly camisole hidden beneath.

  “A person couldn’t know—”

  Keith chuckled and took the peak of one full and eager breast into his mouth. And, after that, Tess didn’t even try to talk anymore.

  Chapter Thirteen

  CORNELIA HAMILTON STOOD BEFORE HER HUSBAND’S RAW grave, stricken and alone. Jessup was gone, Emma was gone. Both of them dead, though Emma did not rest here in the churchyard, like her father.

  There had been a wire—from somewhere. Where? Oh, yes. Portland. Emma was in Portland, married. Happy.

  That was a lie, of course. Emma was dead, just as Jessup was dead. And it was all the fault of one man, one evil, despoiling man.

  Cornelia tilted back her head, searched the bright April sky for a sign from God. Seeing none, she wrapped her spring cloak tighter around her thin frame. Jessup, Jessup—such a generous, kind husband he had been. “Choose any cloak you like, my love,” he’d said. “Choose any cloak in the catalogue.”

  She shivered, though it wasn’t cold. She was not a strong woman, like Derora Beauchamp or her niece, Tess—no. Cornelia could not survive without her man, and she hadn’t the spirit to find another.

  Soon enough, she would rest here, beside Jessup, her own grave freshly mounded, like his. But first—first there was one thing to do.

  She looked up at the sky again. “Just one thing to do,” she whispered, and, in the distance, she heard the lonely whistle of the train. Quickly. She must prepare for the journey quickly.

  Tess was powerless to stop the man taking suckle at her breast; indeed, she had no desire to stop him. She moaned as he made a sweet feast of her, her fingers knotted in his wheat-gold hair.

  Gradually, Keith lowered her until she lay upon the table, beside the box that had contained her new dishes. He plied her other breast now, suckling and then kissing, nibbling, and then gently, gently biting. Tess was electrified and near blind with the need of him.

  She felt her skirts edging upward; there was a cool rush of air upon her most heated part as his hand captured her, touched her, tormented her. Her legs dangled over the side of the table and parted willingly enough at his urging.

  “Keith—”

  “It’s all right.”

  “T-This is a t-table!”

  “And you are a feast.”

  His hand undid the ribbon ties of her drawers. He did not lower the garment, but instead reached inside. Heated moisture was there to greet him; Tess’s hips began to lift and then fall again, repeatedly.

  Keith left her breasts—they felt damp and good and fiercely peaked-and then suddenly he was nipping at the core of her, through the thin fabric of her drawers.

  She gasped, knowing that she would be bared to him. Soon, she would be bared to him, to be savored and enjoyed at his leisure. The excitement quickened her already thunderous heartbeat and made her breath come in throbbing gulps.

  “Keith, Keith—”

  He brought her drawers down, slowly. Skillfully. She shivered and then cried out hoarsely because he parted her for claiming.

  Keith kissed her softly, causing her to writhe now and wail to be taken, consumed. One of his hands rose to attend a pulsing breast, cupping, caressing, gently rolling a pleading nipple between thumb and forefinger. He chuckled—it was a rich, masculine sound—and then his mouth devoured her.

  Tess cried out again and convulsed, so ferocious was the pleasure to which he subjected her, but he was not moved to mercy. No, he was avaricious, nipping her and then tonguing her and then taking full suckle.

  Treacherous heat built within Tess, she moaned and tossed like a wild thing, exalting in the giving and in the taking, in the terror and the beauty. Finally, there was a sweet, tearing burst of light and warmth within her, and she stretched her hands high above her head, her breasts jutting proud and bare with the motion, in delicious, abandoned surrender. Her cry of release was a high, keening cry of some savage creature living within her.

  His hand still working the imprisoned breast, Keith kissed her, softly, again and again, until she had reached another point of shuddering, incomprehensible need.

  “Have me—” she choked out, “—oh, God, if you don’t have me—”

  She thought he would carry her to the bed; he did not. He drew her upright with his hands and then sat down in one of the three kitchen chairs, facing her. Casually, as though it were an everyday matter to make love in a kitchen, he undid the buttons of his trousers, revealing the proud shaft of his manhood.

  “Come to me,” he said, in a voice so low that Tess might have sensed it rather than heard it.

  Obediently, Tess slid off the edge of the table to stand on her own tremulous feet. Keith’s hands eased her drawers the rest of the way down; she stepped out of them. A delicious, tingling chill moved beneath her skirts.

  Catching bunches of those skirts in both hands, Keith lifted them until she was again bared to him, still damp from the first pleasuring, aching now for more, for the final, wondrous, and wounding fulfillment.

  He drew her down carefully, his powerful shaft moving further and further inside her as he lowered her onto it.

  Keith was leisurely in his conquering, content to fill her to brimming with himself, delighting in the passion playing in her face. She gasped again as he smoothed her dress aside to reveal her breasts, to admire and caress, to trace the pointy pink nipples with an index finger.

  Tess groaned and tried to mo
ve upon him, for therein, in the friction of their joining, she knew she would find what he had caused her to need so desperately.

  His hands came to her hips, staying their motion with a strength that only made her desire sharper, a thing of madness now.

  “Oh, please,” she whispered.

  Keith chuckled, bent forward slightly to take playful suckle at one vulnerable breast. “Soon,” he promised.

  Soon was not good enough for Tess. Her need was too savage; she had been driven far beyond the boundaries of civilized reason. She rose and fell, making a wild sound in the depths of her throat, and his hands could not stop her—did not try to stop her. Keith was moaning as she moaned, his head thrown back, his eyes closed, his hips thrusting without restraint.

  He muttered wicked, incoherent things as they both struggled toward the pinnacle, things Tess would have slapped him for at any other time, things that were oddly fitting in those moments of glorious, straining passion.

  They reached the heights at the same time, his body slamming upward as hers descended. Steel was sheathed in rippling velvet, the essence of one was blended with that of the other.

  Tess sank, still quivering, to bury her face in the curve of his neck. “Ooooooh,” she breathed, as the last sweet tremors shook her.

  Keith stiffened violently, rasping her name, and then he, too, shuddered into a gasping stillness. “Bed,” he said, when he could speak.

  Tess gestured vaguely toward the doorway beside the cookstove.

  After a few more moments of recovery, Keith stood up, Tess still riding scandalously upon him, her legs wrapped around his hips.

  “This is awkward, you know,” he said, in a husky voice.

  Tess sighed. Though he had been satisfied, his manhood was a firm sword within her. “But so nice.”

  Keith laughed and buried his face in her neck, nibbling at that moist column as he progressed carefully toward the bedroom. There, on Tess’s neatly made bed, with its white iron headboard and ready-made quilt, they made love again. Their needs were not so urgent as before, at least not at first, so they took the time to undress each other fully, to wash each other with tepid water from the basin on Tess’s bureau, to touch and learn each other.

  For all this, their joining was a furious one, one of tender savagery.

  They lay curled together, exhausted, for some considerable time, neither speaking. Tess, for her part, knew a sort of beautiful melancholy. It was humbling to be shown that she was no more modern than her mother, not when it came to this man. Others—such as Cedrick Golden—she could have refused all her life. This one, however, could take her when and where he wanted—hadn’t he just proven that?

  She sighed.

  Keith’s fingers were playing idly in her hair, his shoulder was damp and strong beneath her cheek “What is it?” he asked softly.

  “You made love to me in a kitchen.”

  Keith laughed; the sound was low and husky and somehow comforting. “That could become a habit.”

  Tess balled her fist and slugged him, albeit halfheartedly, in the midsection. “It won’t become anything of the sort, Keith Corbin. I told you I wouldn’t be your mistress and I meant it.”

  “What do you want to be, if not my mistress?” he asked wryly, turning onto his side now, smiling down into her face.

  Your wife, the mother of your children, thought Tess rashly, but she said nothing. She simply bit her lower lip and looked up at him.

  Keith ran one hand from her shoulder to her breast—this he briefly cupped—and then down over her ribcage and her hip. Clasping her bottom, he pressed her closer to him. “Tess,” he prompted.

  Instead of answering, she closed her eyes and stretched, kittenlike, her arms above her head. This proved to be a strategical error, for Keith caught her wrists together and held them against the cool iron of the headboard.

  Her breath caught as he surveyed the spoils of the tactic.

  “Beautiful,” he muttered, and Tess could feel her breasts growing heavy, feel their tips puckering to please his mouth. She tried to lower her hands, and he held her tighter, though painlessly, her arms stretched to their full length. “If you don’t answer my question—”

  Tess gasped as his other hand came boldly to the triangle of silk between her legs and daudled there, playing. Teasing. “Wh-what question?”

  Keith bent his head, circled the taut pink point of her right breast with the tip of his tongue. At the same time, he was parting her legs with his free hand, stroking the inner thighs, venturing back to a place already preparing a musky welcome. “You know very well what question.”

  “I wo-won’t say it!” she whined.

  “If you’re going to be my wife, you’re going to have to learn to be more obedient, shoebutton.”

  He was mastering her with his fingers, making her writhe and then thrust her hips up to make deeper contact. He still held her hands, and he was tonguing her breasts thoroughly. “I’ll—never—be”—she was tossing now, wildly, her breath heaving in and out of her lungs—“obedient!”

  “You’re being obedient—right now,” he pointed out. His hand moved faster, setting a pace for her, and instinct forced her to keep up. Her naked knees fell wide and she groaned helplessly.

  “No! No, I’m not—I—” A violent shudder shook her, sweet heat exploded in her depths and sent flaming bits of her pride in every direction. “Ooooooh!” she cried, as feminine muscles tensed convulsively around his fingers. “Keith! Keeeeith—”

  He suckled at her breast until the crisis passed, all the while making it keener with his hand.

  “You son-of-a-bitch!” she hissed, when she could breathe again.

  “I beg to differ. My mother is a very nice woman.” Just for good measure, he tongued the nipple of her right breast into a shape he liked. “You’ll be very fond of her.”

  “I will not.” There were tears shimmering in Tess’s eyes, blurring her vision. No matter how she hated that fact, it was the truth. “I’ll never meet her and you know it.”

  “How can you get out of meeting her? You did ask me to marry you, didn’t you?”

  Tess swallowed hard, staring up at him. Confused. He had mentioned marriage, in the heat of their passion—or had he? She couldn’t remember. “I—I most certainly did not,” she said.

  He laughed. “I’m devastated. I thought such an intimacy naturally implied—”

  “Stop teasing me!”

  Now, he kissed her. Briefly and tenderly. “All right. Since I can’t seem to maneuver you into a proposal, I’ll just have to take care of the matter myself. Marry me, Tess.”

  “Why should I?” What was she saying? What was she doing? Nothing, nothing in the world could be better than being married to him!

  “Because I love you. And I think you love me.” He kissed her again. “Can’t have you on the loose,” he added, after a long time. “You might take up with that free love bunch again.”

  Tess ached with joyous despair. “I love you,” she confessed. “And I want very much to be your wife. But—”

  “But, what?” Keith frowned, stroking her again, issuing no demands but making it very hard for her to think properly, all the same.

  “My shop. I can’t just give it up—just walk away—”

  Keith rolled away from her, sat up, began to dress. There was no anger in the motions, just an easy grace. “We can talk about that another time. Right now, I want to buy a ring and corral a preacher.” He turned to look back at her briefly, azure eyes impish.

  What was it, this perverse thing inside Tess that bade her argue against what she wanted most? “Oh, sure. And then, when we’re married, you can force me to give up the shop. What I want won’t matter then, because the law will be on your side!”

  He stood up, buttoning his trousers, his chest bare and glinting with a matting of dusky-gold down. “I will never force you to do anything, Tess,” he said seriously.

  “Are you willing to live here, with me? In my shop?”


  “For now.” Keith reached for his shirt, shrugged into it, began fastening the buttons.

  “I won’t have to obey you?”

  “I didn’t say that. There are certain areas where I expect total obedience, Tess.”

  “Such as?” she snapped, determined to find something wrong.

  “If I send you to our bedroom, for example, I expect you to go without any arguments, tears, or attacks of the vapors. You will await me there and you will accommodate me.”

  Tess felt a delicious sort of rage at the very idea. “Suppose I send you to the bedroom?”

  Keith threw back his head and laughed. “You may take your pleasure as you wish. But I expect the same kind of co-operation, Tess—don’t forget that.”

  She sat up on the bed, scandal pulsing in her cheeks. She would have to obey him in that area, but he would have to obey her, also. It was a fair enough bargain, as far as she could see. “Anything else?”

  “Yes. You’ll have to stay away from free lovers. And you’ll have to be faithful to me, Tess.”

  “Will you be faithful to me?” she asked softly, and so much depended on his answer that she held her breath to hear it.

  “Absolutely,” he said, with conviction. “Now, do I accept your kind proposal or what?”

  Tess laughed and flung a pillow at him. “You accept,” she said. “In fact, you’re honored!”

  He hurled the pillow back. “Honored?!”

  “Yes,” said Tess, “You’re lucky to get a wife like me, you know.”

  Keith spoke softly. Seriously. “Yes. I know.” He came to the bedside, bent to kiss her. “I’m going out for a little while.”

  Tess felt daring and brash and totally happy. “Be back soon. I might want to send you to bed.”

  He chuckled and drew her to her feet, pulling her against him. As he had once before—it seemed so long ago and so far away—he swatted her firm bottom. “I certainly hope so,” he said, and then he was turning away, disappearing through the bedroom doorway.

  Cedrick Golden paused on the sidewalk, admiring himself in the window of Tess Bishop’s laughable little shop. The minx. She belonged on a stage, not behind some tacky counter, selling photographs.