And now she touched him, adding to the heat, adding to the fire.
When his gaze met hers again, she knew she was even adding to the healing.
“Should all the armies fall,” he said softly, “I do not think that I could regret this invasion of the North.”
She wet her lips, about to reply. He did not need one. He lowered himself against her again, just touching her lips with his. His mouth brushed briefly over her throat, against the hollow of her collarbone. His tongue teased the flesh at the valley of her breasts.
He inched himself lower, creating a searing liquid line of heat, slowly, surely, down her midriff, between her ribs to her navel. She wanted to cry out, she wanted to move. She wanted to fight the very force of the sensations he evoked. She could not. She lay still, feeling the tremors rock her body again and again.
His tongue moved leisurely upon her abdomen. Caressing, stroking, tasting. She tried to say his name again. The words would not come. She set her fingers once more into the rich mat of his ebony hair. She did not desist him in his purpose.
His kiss swept to her hip, and back to her navel. Fire, shooting, golden streaks of it, seemed to spring forth from the deepest, darkest, most intimate recesses of her desire as she felt the movement of his lips and the searing wet stroke of his tongue. He couldn’t be intending to kiss her there …
Anticipation swept through her along with the protest that bubbled to her lips but went unspoken. Surely a flush covered the length of her body. The expectation was the sweetest agony. It was too intimate, too deep, too close to her soul….
He shifted. He kissed all of her flesh, the sweep of her stomach, the top of her thighs. He moved all along them. He came everywhere but there.
And then he was gone. She was cold and bereft, and she was in anguish! How she needed him, wanted him. Her body moved, as fluid as water, seeking his touch in a subtle undulation. It was the sweetest ecstasy of wanting, it was sensation so strong that it was anguish.
What did he now intend? She didn’t dare meet his eyes. The intimacy had gone too deep.
He lowered himself against her body, stroking her leg. His kiss fell upon the back of her kneecap.
And then that hot and molten trail of steaming moisture began to move up the length of her inner thigh once again. Higher and higher now until she trembled and writhed and waited.
She cried out, the breath escaping her, the very life seeming to escape her as he at last ceased to circle the velvet petals of her deepest desire and treasure them with his liquid caress. The world itself spun with the leisurely, supple movement of his intimate kiss. But it was swift, so swift, for the sweet, spiraling soaring was barely upon her before it burst into blackness, then came crashing down upon her in wave after wave of shimmering crystal, wracking her body with quivers. Words began to escape her then; if not words, then sounds. What she had done, what she had permitted—what she had felt!—came rushing in on her senses. Again she felt that the whole of her body must have blushed a vibrant red, and she was wholeheartedly eager not to have to meet his eyes.
“Oh, no!” she whispered, but soft laughter greeted her, words that she barely heard in her sudden and swift desire to hide away.
His eyes were above hers, deep cobalt blue, so hot and demanding still, so very alive with their startling blue fire. In his arms, she was reassured. In his arms, she realized that he wanted everything. His mouth found hers even when she would have twisted away. His lips parted hers, his tongue plunged and plundered past her teeth, capturing her own.
Just as his body at long last captured hers.
Ecstasy had come so swiftly before. It could not come again. But he intended that it should, and those startling eyes pierced and held hers as he began to move. He entered deeply into her. More and more of him became a part of her, until she thought that she would shriek, for he could go no further, she could give no more. But he could, and he would.
And she could, she discovered, give endlessly.
His eyes remained upon hers as he began to move. She gasped softly, realizing that she was moving again herself, undulating, writhing, grasping again for the elusive wonder. His eyes closed and he clasped her tightly into his arms, and a sound choked from her as he gave a total free rein to the strength of the desire he had restrained so patiently, so very long.
And then it was as if a storm swept through her, wild, reckless, violent, encompassing everything within its pass. The thunder and the size and power of him seemed to rock her to her extremities, seize her in tempest. She clung to him, her arms around him, holding tight. And he lifted her higher and closer, whispering to her, until her legs were also locked around his back, until tears of pleasure and pain stung the back of her eyes.
Until the world, and all the stars within it, suddenly exploded.
Night descended, eclipsing the room, eclipsing life itself. She wondered if she had died. She knew vaguely that she had not.
She opened her eyes slowly. She was indeed alive. A silver sheen of perspiration moistened her body, and her body remained entwined with his. A hot flush covered her cheeks as she felt him, still inside her, still filling her with the searing sweet nectar of his climax. His body lay limp, though his thigh was still cast over hers, his arms still about her. The desperate tension was gone.
He slept, pray God, he slept. With her passion spent, she suddenly realized just exactly what she had done.
She had made love with a stranger.
No, no, not a stranger!
She had made love with her enemy.
A choked cry caught in her throat and hot tears of shame nearly fell then from her eyes. She had betrayed everything that she had been taught, and she had truly betrayed the love she had once known.
But she had wanted him. She had seen the male glory of his nakedness, and she had felt his kiss, and she had known that she wanted him.
Wanting him was one thing. Having him was another.
She cared for him. More deeply than she could ever dare admit!
He moved his forefinger tenderly over her lip. She looked at him to discover the warmth of his eyes upon her and compassion etched deeply into the cobalt of his eyes. She shivered. Even while lying here ashamed of herself, she wanted him again.
She liked his face. Liked the character there, and the honesty, and yes, the honor, and both the tempest and the peace.
He appeared very much at peace at the moment. But he did not appear smug, or triumphant, rather, it seemed that his features were touched by concern.
Daniel was concerned. Now that the ragged fires that had threatened to incinerate his very soul had been somewhat quenched, he was worried about the very object of those desires.
She had given him so very much. She had surrendered herself to his every lead. Yet even while he had lain there, spent, amazed by the climax of desire when he was not an inexperienced boy, she had begun to withdraw.
He couldn’t let her withdraw from him. Ever. Not now that he had felt the silken fire of her hair flow over his fingers when he held her. Not now that he had feasted upon the beauty of her nakedness, tasted the sweetness therein, known her, loved her. He was amazed still by the natural and fluid movement of her body, by all that she had brought forth in him. She was so alluring looking up at him with her dark lashes shielding those silver and gray eyes. Her lips, parted and moist and slightly open with the whisper of her desire, had sent him into new realms of need and pleasure, into a world he was suddenly certain he had never quite been before.
He held her when she would have turned away. “Callie, I am ever more entranced. Yet you look now as if you had truly come from battle.”
Her eyes, soft gray now, flickered shut, then met his again. “A battle lost,” she whispered.
“No, angel. A battle won. By North and by South.”
She still seemed distressed, and he understood. It was one thing in this world for a man to want a woman. But in that same social world, her wanting him would be condemned, time and time ag
ain. Prim and proper madams would whisper, and all would swear that their daughter would never be so bold or promiscuous. Be she rich or be she poor, a woman should be chaste, so society claimed.
Daniel had decided long ago that society could be damned. What needs and emotions lurked in the hearts and minds of men and women could not be dictated by society. There were other reasons for Callie to have regrets now, when the flames cooled between them.
He was the enemy. One of the enemy who had taken her husband.
A husband she had loved.
Daniel wished that there were something he could say to convince her that there had been something special and unique between them. That no intimate action could be condemned when two people had been so strongly attracted to one another, when emotions had come so swiftly, when need had been so deep. There was nothing at all wrong because he loved her, he thought with a growing amazement.
He loved the gravity and emotion in her eyes, and he loved the way that they could fall upon him. The way that she spoke would remain in his memory forever, the softness of her voice, the beautiful tone of it. During long lonely nights ahead, he would dream of the perfection of her face, and he would remember both the thrill and the tenderness of her fingers upon him. He would remember, too, the steadfastness of her heart, her loyalty to her cause, right or wrong. He would remember the way that she had loved him, and he would know that, yes, he loved her.
Perhaps he couldn’t tell her such a thing. Not now. She mourned a husband and lived in the midst of a battlefield. Perhaps all that he could do was hold her and let that be enough.
“I surrendered everything!” she said suddenly, fiercely.
He cupped her cheek and met her gaze, and smiled with all his tenderness.
“No, angel. I surrendered everything.”
He felt her trembling and hesitated to speak again. Her eyes widened with a sudden gratitude, then suddenly she pushed away from him, sitting up. Her gaze met his, a sizzling, shimmering silver. She lifted back a long, wild wayward skein of her deep flame hair, sending it sliding down the length of her back as she straddled over his hips and leaned closely over him.
“Want to fight again?” she whispered softly.
He grinned, knowing that she was going to be all right with her decision to lie with him.
Her head lowered, her lips touched his chest, the tip of her tongue seemed to singe it.
“Fire away, Yank,” he told her, caressing her neck, cradling her head against him. “Fire away!” he repeated, and he wound his arms around her, sweeping her beneath him, as all the fires that had just begun to cool found a new and wild ignition with her touch.
The whole world could be damned, Daniel thought. Even as he lost himself within the musky sweet scent and taste and feel of her, he dimly marveled at the very idea.
He was falling in love.
With a Yank …
It was a strange war.
And a strange, strange battle.
———— Eight ————
“We call him ‘Beauty.’ Of course, we try very hard for the rank and file not to hear such terms. After all, we are military men. But Beauty he became, and so Beauty sticks.”
“Is he really so handsome a man, then, so beautiful?” Callie asked, laughing.
It was night again. They had spent the day like newly-weds until dusk had fallen, and then Callie remembered the few animals that remained on the farm. Feeling more than a little guilty toward the poor creatures, she had enlisted Daniel’s help to feed them.
It was interesting to watch him—not because she had discovered it was hard to take her eyes off him—but because he was so at ease with everything she asked of him. He knew what he was doing, whether measuring grain for Hal, her one remaining horse, or strewing out the grain for the chickens. Of course, a plantation was just a big farm—a very big farm—she reminded herself, but Daniel had been born and bred a child of privilege, of the southern aristocracy, and she had never imagined he would have such ease with manual labor.
Not that he had given her a chance to talk about it. Still barefoot, in her father’s breeches and open plaid flannel shirt, he might have been the image of any farm boy. Against the setting sun, atop the gate of the barnyard door, his legs dangling, he seemed so very young. The lines had eased from his eyes while he chewed upon a blade of hay and entertained her with stories about some of the more infamous southern commanders.
“Is he really beautiful?” Daniel repeated, then laughed. They were talking about Stuart—General James Ewell Brown Stuart, “Jeb,” as he was known. He was Daniel’s immediate superior, but it didn’t sound to Callie like Daniel gave that matter much thought at all. He called Stuart “Old Beauty.”
Daniel shrugged, the light of laughter still in his eyes. “Beautiful, well, let’s see. He is certainly gallant. And he loves to dress. He is flamboyant, he is courageous, and to Flora, I imagine, he is beautiful.”
“Flora?”
“His wife,” Daniel said with a grin. “But beautiful? The name was given him at West Point. I fear it was given him as a joke, for apparently, his classmates found his features not beautiful in the least.”
“And what do you think?”
“Well, he is my superior officer.”
“And you do not sound respectful enough.”
“Well, I have known him forever, so it seems,” Daniel admitted. “He’s older than I by a few years.” He was quiet for a minute. “He and Jesse were in the same class, but we were all Virginians, and were all assigned to the West together.” He shrugged again, as if he didn’t want to dwell upon the past any longer. “Beauty and I are friends, we are both avid horsemen, and we work very well together. In truth, I am very respectful, for I know of no cavalry commander more talented, dashing, or bold.”
“Here, here!” Callie applauded, smiling. Then her smile faded, and she swirled about in the dust to cast more seed to the chickens. Dear God, how strange. He was speaking about the men who were grinding countless companies of the Union army into constant bloody defeats. The way that he spoke, she found herself smiling far too frequently, and anxious to meet such a man as Beauty Stuart.
“There was an occasion when the Federals under Pope managed to take Stuart’s magnificent cape and his plumed hat,” Daniel told her, his eyes twinkling.
“And?”
“And so we had to go after Pope—and get back his cape and hat.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true, and we succeeded nicely, thank you. You see,” he advised her, his tone grave, his eyes alight, “we are entirely bold and dashing and daring, and there’s nothing that can stop the southern cavalry.”
It was often proving all too true, Callie thought. Northern horsemen had a difficult time keeping up with their southern counterparts. Too many of the South’s men were like Daniel, born and bred to ride and hunt and master the slopes and hills and valleys and forests of their region.
“We are Lee’s eyes and ears—” Daniel began, but he broke off, looking into the darkness of the night.
“What is it?” Callie asked him.
“Nothing,” he said after a moment. He shrugged. “I thought I heard something.” He stared at Callie again. “Cavalry was all-important in the battle here. Lee’s orders for the campaign were discovered by the Federals, and it was our scouting and riding around the Federals that brought back that information.”
“Lee’s orders were found by the Union?” Callie said. One point for their side. How unusual.
Daniel nodded, watching her. “Special Order Number 191,” he said. “It advised a number of Lee’s key generals that he was splitting the army, that Jackson would be taking Harpers Ferry. Someone was careless. There were seven copies of the order. One was found by Federal men in the grass at one of the campsites we had abandoned near Frederick, Maryland. It was wrapped around three cigars, can you imagine? It was an incredible gift to the Union—and a blow to us. But McClellan moved too slowly. Jackson
managed to take Harpers Ferry, and to meet us here to do battle. And Lee was forewarned that McClellan knew about the order because we looped around to get the information.”
“You didn’t win the battle,” Callie reminded him.
“Do you know that for a fact?”
Callie shrugged. “Union soldiers are keeping you here,” she said softly.
“I wonder. I wonder if it is Union soldiers keeping me here,” he murmured softly. He tore his eyes from hers, looking out over the night that settled around them. “Perhaps we didn’t win. Maybe we didn’t take the territory. But I don’t think that the Union won either.”
Callie didn’t want to remember the aftermath of the battle. The bodies had been taken away from her lawn. More selfishly, she didn’t want to give up the night, or this very strange time between her and this Rebel. He was anxious to leave, she knew. Now that she was anxious that he stay, he was feeling the hard pull to return to duty. She was very afraid for him to go. He wasn’t strong enough yet, she had convinced herself. And the countryside was crawling with Union troops.
He wouldn’t allow himself to be taken. Not easily. He’d die to escape, or he’d bring down more men to whom she should owe her loyalty and concern.
She smiled at him, dispelling the desolation that had intruded between them.
“So the southern cavalry can all ride,” Callie said. “Watch it. The northern boys just might catch up.”
“But we ride very well,” he assured her with a grin.
“So might they.”
“We ride exceptionally well.”
“And you also excel in your humility,” she said.
“The prim and proper Mrs. Michaelson, returned to me at last!” he teased.
Callie threw out a handful of seed to the chickens, which hurriedly pecked away at the offering. “I am very prim and proper, and you must keep that in mind,” she told him. She didn’t dare look at him to see the warmth of the smile that curved his lip. Perhaps she had been prim and proper once. But he had changed her. Irrevocably. He knew her more intimately than any man alive … or dead. He had demanded so many things from her, and he had given back so many. He had robbed her of old emotions, and given her new ecstasy—and anguish. She didn’t dare dwell too closely upon it. She was falling in love with her enemy, and in this war, that was a very frightening thought.