* * *
Such was his state of mind in mid-July, when they arrived at what Ravenna called the Nimpkish River. Two months had passed. No longer worrying about death as much, Paul was really starting to enjoy the charting and exploring, the Alaska-like wilderness they saw all about them. When they approached the native village off of which Vancouver intended to anchor, Paul wasn’t nervous in the least. In fact he admired the painted house fronts, the forest rising up along the river’s banks. When the clouds moved in and the rain began, he didn’t care. Ravenna’s hand was in his; she leaned at his side with obvious affection, naming bights and points and passages so distant Paul could barely even see them, and soon he forgot the weather entirely, so fixated he was upon her tutorial.
“It’s Kwakiutl,” she was saying, pointing toward the village.
“That’s a people, is it?” Paul winked, squeezed her hand.
“Yes, a people,” she said, laughing at his flirtatiousness, “a native people, but they’re actually called something I can’t pronounce. If I’d taken the time to learn it on my last trip—”
And telling Paul about her parents and that, how Mitchell Bay was just beyond an island to their northeast and she’d spent many an hour in her motor boat there…hearing about her life before they’d met, Paul was more than content.
Soon he was summoned to help set the anchor. Ravenna went below, but even then Paul felt good. It’s been a really great day, he thought to himself. That morning had been especially perfect. They hadn’t begun sailing until nearly eight o’clock, so Paul had had plenty of time for making love before he’d been called. Also, after days of going hungry on ship’s biscuit, they’d been greeted by Indians eager to trade salmon for sheets of copper. With Ravenna’s morning sickness gone, for once Paul had been able to enjoy his meal along with her company, something he’d missed in the last few weeks. That she was now pregnant—a turn of history he didn’t object to—this, for Paul, was the greatest happiness of all.
Indeed, finishing up at the capstan bars, he couldn’t have been in a better mood. The working day was done. Everyone went below, but still Paul remained, watched the sunset sink below the clouds and turn red as the downpour really started. I’m blessed, he thought. Blessed t’be standing here, healthy and alive and soon to be a father. Blessed to have not only Ravenna in m’life, but James as well. Taking off his shirt in the midst of the squall, he thought about what he cherished, whom he loved. The chill of the storm only sharpened his sense of belonging, stirred him even further toward envisioning what he’d soon have—a son and family, a real home with real friends, in a Swallowhill not falling down in a mess.
This is where I’m meant to be. And reaching into his trousers’ pocket, he pulled out his fob watch, held it toward the weakening light to the west. He was still far too preoccupied to notice either the time or Ravenna coming up behind him there on deck. The rain drummed loudly. Paul couldn’t hear her words, nor her footsteps treading the well-worn planks until she’d slid her hands around his shoulders.
“What’s keeping you?” she purred.
Closing his eyes at the sound of her voice, Paul smiled to himself. As if I’d be kept from you. Turning around in a surge of emotion, he gathered her up, took her in a slow, meandering kiss that brought all his senses to attention. The sheer pleasure of it, savoring the taste of her, feeling her snuggle closer, it made him forget they were standing on deck. He slipped his hands around her. He probed the velvet warmth of her lips with careless abandon, needing everything she had to give, not complete without her, until he wanted to stay in her mouth forever.
Ravenna didn’t let him.
“Where’s your shirt?” she asked, drawing back. Her hands rubbed up and down his arms, warming him as she waited for his answer, which she didn’t get. “Paul, you can’t keep doing this. I know you’re used to Ireland, but if you should get sick—”
“I’m fine,” he whispered, and cupping her strong little chin, he leaned closer, rested his nose against hers. He felt completely overwhelmed with the way he adored her in that moment. Even with her hair dripping about them, the rainwater running down her pert nose and onto his, she was everything he’d ever wanted—lover and mother, conspirator and minder, confessor and tempter. She was his life. She made sense of him, and Paul felt God’s favor every time he held her, in each breath he drew against her soft ivory neck, between her limber, flexible legs…
Although the rain kept coming down, he couldn’t bring himself to usher her toward the companion ladder and below, out of the storm. Instead, he bent to kiss her right there. He didn’t mean to, but he couldn’t help uttering a low, uncontrollable moan when her lips parted, when she took him in her mouth and wet his passion with an urgency of her own, flicking her tongue in a satiny invitation. He could barely stand it when she slipped her hands into his trousers. Now how does she do that? he wondered, for already he felt that familiar heat like a drug all through his body, the rush of her lilac scent, her taste flooding his senses until his maleness had become unbearably hard.
“You’ve got me going here,” he whispered, his words smothered by her lips. He tried to step away a bit, just enough to keep himself from taking her then and there, but Ravenna’s nimble fingers had slipped around him, caressing him to the breaking point with all that he’d taught her and more that he hadn’t. “Sweetheart…Ravenna, I’m gonna embarrass m’self if you don’t give me some air—”
“Should we go below?”
Raising her knee, she rubbed him in a slow, deliberate friction, and he almost couldn’t answer. “No, em…let’s not, actually. I’ve another idea.”
With a quick kiss, he rebuttoned his trousers. Then, taking her by the hand, he pulled her toward the mainmast shrouds. He urged her up before him, catching tantalizing glimpses of her shapely legs, her voluminous skirts hiked up as she climbed. Her bare feet seemed inexplicably enticing, and by the time Paul had crawled into the crow’s nest after her, it was all he could do to keep himself together.
Soon darkness fell around them. The masthead rocked gently with the ebbing tide as Paul undressed her feverishly, tearing at her buttons, her woolen lapels. He pulled back her dress to get at the cotton chemise beneath, and feeling the heat of her skin at last, her slick strands of hair when she leaned close to tug his trousers down, Paul was furious with how much he wanted her. He wrenched the chemise over her head. He didn’t care if it ripped. He was aching for her, and when he slipped his hands up her inner thighs, saw that reach of heaven in the dark, enticing curls of her warmth, his need overrode everything else.
“Come here,” he told her.
Fumbling for her hands amid the tangle of their limbs, Paul pulled her forward. He led her into his lap until she’d settled herself on the source of his throbbing and wrapped her arms about his neck. “You’re perfect,” he murmured to her.
All the while the rain beat down. It beaded on her lips in a moist, delicious kiss, and he drank it up as he felt her glide downward to sheath him in a rapturous snugness. More than just the exquisite feel of her or the way she instinctively rode his desire, it was the look in her eyes that affected Paul most. She’s forgotten herself entirely, he thought. Tossing that mane of heavy hair, she arched her back. She wasn’t even aware of the little sounds she made, the soft, whimpering moans that escaped her lips when he reached down and stroked her. She sat astride him, rocking him with a delicate fervor, and as the friction built between them, as he hurried the rhythm of his fingers in those damp, silky curls, she shuddered in a whisper against his cheek. He rose up to meet her, and his own release seared through his veins in a shattering heat, a white hot whirl of heedless carnality and near-religious affection centered in the motion of her slender hips.
* * *
Again and again they sought out that hallowed communion, safe in the height of their chosen retreat. They lay kissing under the shelter of her woolen skirts when finally Ravenna drifted off, and listening to her quiet breaths, bursting ins
ide with contentment, Paul lay awake for the longest time just relishing the love he felt.
I’d die for you, he thought, cuddling her closer.