Amish Redemption (Erotic Romance) (Amish Heart Trilogy) (6 page)

The day of the funeral dawned hot and dry.  The Weather Channel announced a heat advisory in effect until
seven that evening.  Services were to begin at ten a.m., with a graveside to follow and a wake at a local pub in the late afternoon.  It was to be a whole day of grieving and reminiscing.  Rebekah was dressed in a long dark skirt to cover her cast. She was somehow reminded of her wedding with Ezekiel, where people fawned over her while saying bright things and eating potato salad.

Upon reaching the church, she was informed that the air conditioning was broken, but that repairmen had been called and it would be handled shortly. 
Rebekah looked around.  Hardly any people were there and the temperature in the building was already uncomfortable.  Rebekah checked her watch.  It was still early.  There was plenty of time for it to be fixed.

Early arrivals began to drift in. 
Rebekah sat in a wheelchair and watched them all file in, all dressed in black.  Each came up to Rebekah and offered their condolences.  They tried to say helpful things. 
Mostly stupid platitudes
, she noted. All of them admired how much Rachel looked like Nick.  Rebekah just took each offered hand and thanked them. 

By the time the church was half full, she was wishing they would all just go away. 
A gagging feeling was blocking her throat.  She could no longer get the ‘thank you’s’ out.  She could only paste on a smile and nod.

Jack
Collins was not in attendance.  Rachel didn’t care.  She hadn’t really expected him to come.

Finally the church was full and the service began.
The air conditioning had still not been attended to and the heat rose steadily from all the warm bodies in the church.  Rebekah sat numbly.  The preacher had spoken of life everlasting and was requesting her to come up and say a few words about Nick.  It was the type of service she wanted for Nick, where some who loved him the most were invited to share something of what Nick meant to them.  The minister had asked that she go first.  While Rachel sat on Staci’s lap, Rebekah placed her crutches over the wheelchair arms and wheeled herself toward the podium.  Her head swam. 

Someone came forward to push her wheelchair for her and she cast them off with a cold, “I’m fine, thank you.”  She did not want help.  She wanted to hurt.
She wanted to die but she couldn’t.  Rachel still needed her, now more than ever.

Her speech
was folded on the chair beside her thigh.  Arriving at the podium, she pulled herself up on one crutch, holding the paper.  The pain in her leg was immense.  She had not taken pain pills, wanting to feel the pain, wanting to feel anything to replace the feeling of emptiness she now had with Nick gone.  She looked up at the people assembled for Nick’s funeral.  She and Staci had sent out invitations to everyone who knew Nick, and the church was filled with people in every seat and more were standing anywhere else there was room.  It was stiflingly hot.  She knew that a service where those who cared to speak about Nick were invited to do so was certain to be a long one.  It was going to continue all day. She hadn’t minded that when planning the event with Staci; now she just wanted it to be over. 

Her body was shaking, her head was burning up and her hands were icy.  She looked down at the paper in her hand.  It spoke of how goodhearted Nick was, of how much she loved him and would miss him.  It spoke of how he was the perfect father and—
oh God!—
husband.  She crumpled the paper up and threw it aside. Her mouth was dry as she spoke and her voice sounded too loud in the microphone.  A swirling, buzzing feeling was starting in her head.

“I—I should have married him.” 
Her voice cracked.  With that the darkness she had been holding back descended upon her, crumpling her body and whirling her blackly into oblivion.

***

She was seated beside Staci at the bar.  Rebekah had repeated, “I’m fine” so many times to so many people that she wanted to scream.  Each of Nick’s friends were going up to a microphone that had been set up and telling funny stories about Nick and drinking a toast to a large photograph of him that was on display.  The picture showed the Nick she knew, sweet and intense. 

She had suffered a broken left leg and broken ribs with a deflated left lung.  She refused to be kept in the hospital longer than a day
, saying Rachel needed her.  Once at home, she slept on the couch, unable to bear her empty bed.  She refused to take her pain medication, wanting to feel the pain.  She just couldn’t believe he was really gone.  It was easy to pretend he was late at work.

Staci had shown up while she was in the hospital and retrieved Rachel from the neighbor who was caring for her. 
Staci looked much like her brother, having his soft brown eyes and unruly curly hair.  Her hair was dark, streaked with a lighter gold.   Rebekah suspected that she bleached highlights into it.  Despite the sadness of the recent events, Staci had an irrepressible good humor about her which Rebekah found irresistible. 

She
had brought Rachel to visit in the hospital. The two women had communicated on the phone and by email occasionally.  This was their first face to face meeting.  Taking a look around the room Staci wrinkled her nose with distaste and then said to Rebekah with a conspiratorial wink: “So, do you want to break out of here or what?”  Rebekah knew they were going to be great friends.  She signed herself out against medical advice and went home to plan Nick’s funeral.

The slightly inebriated speaker at the mike was relating a long-winded tale of Nick’s first day at the hog farm, where he was supposed to kill a huge sow, but ended up wrestling with her instead.  The crowd emitted howls of laughter.  She looked over the gathering. 
Most were more than a little drunk.  All had loved Nick.

“You know, we can leave anytime you want to.”  Staci said.  Rebekah shook her head.  She was determined to stay until the last mourner left
.  She had sent Rachel home with the neighbor prior to the wake as Rebekah did not want Rachel to breathe in cigarette smoke. Missouri still allowed for smoking to take place in restaurants and bars, something Rebekah did not have a political opinion about.  She just didn’t want her daughter subjected to it.

“Rebekah.”
  Staci grabbed her hands. 
Just like Nick would have done,
Rebekah thought.  “Since I’ve been here you haven’t cried, not even once.  You need,” she said, offering Rebekah her glass, “to get wasted.”

“No.” 

“You need to let loose.  Look,” she glanced around the room.  “Nobody here is going to care.   They’re all toasted, too.”

“No.”  It wasn’t that she was afraid to drink.  It was that she was afraid of letting go.  She didn’t want to feel better.  She didn’t deserve to feel better.

“You need to let go,” said Staci. 
Just like she was reading my mind.  Just like Nick would have done. 
She looked into Staci’s eyes—
so much like Nick’s
—and felt her breath hitch.  It was like seeing him again.

“Okay, but not here
,” Rebekah conceded.

She made Staci wait until the last person paid their respect
s, about one in the morning.  Rebekah paid the bartender out of Nick’s and her savings.  Staci then piled her into her car and drove to the local Wal-Mart where she left Rebekah in the car while she went in for libations.  While Staci drove home, Rebekah peeked in the bag.  There was two large bottles of Jack Daniels. She gave Staci a questioning look.  She had never had whiskey.  Staci shrugged.  “Well, Irish whiskey was too much of a cliché.”

Arriving home, Staci went to retrieve the sleeping Rachel and tuck her in
to bed.  Rebekah was struck how at ease she was with a child. 
Again, so like Nick. 

She came back in the living room and kicked her shoes off.  She handed Rebekah a glass and poured it full of the pungent amber
alcohol.

“Slam it,” she told Rebekah.

Rebekah tried to gulp it down.  The drink burned her sinuses and throat but when it got to her belly, it was warm.  It felt good, like the champagne Nick and she had enjoyed two years ago when he proposed to her the second time, but with more fire. 

“Keep going.”  Staci belted a glass down and watched her.  Rebekah took a deep breath and three more swallows.  Two more swallows marked the end of the glass. 

Staci wheeled her into the bedroom and lugged her onto the bed.  She poured another glass for Rebekah and started to unzip her own dress.  In short order, she was down to her lacey underwear and was unbuttoning Rebekah’s blouse.  “Drink,” she urged.  Rebekah lifted the glass to her lips and took another long swig.  She no longer minded the burn.  In fact, she liked it.  The room was getting hazy and light. 
Spinny,
she thought,
but in a good way
.

Staci pulled Rebekah’s blouse, then skirt away.  She took a sip of her own drink and then sat on the bed close to Rebekah. 

“I can see why he fell in love with you,” said Staci.  “You are fucking unbelievably gorgeous.”

For some odd reason, Rebekah flushed like she did when Nick made that statement.  She could almost see Nick in Staci’s
intense eyes and instead of being a sorrowful reminder, it made her feel . . . warm, strangely connected to this woman she barely knew. 

Staci brushed Rebekah’s hair
away from her face.  It made Rebekah somewhat self-conscious and she drained her glass again to hide her embarrassment. 

Her brain felt thick in her head and it was swimming, although pleasantly so.  She looked at Staci.  Her eyes were dark and brooding.  Staci brushed Rebekah’s face with her fingertips and reached over and planted the most gentle of kisses on her lips.  Surprised, Rebekah did nothing but a familiar wave of
warmth started in her groin.  Staci kissed her again, sweetly, and Rebekah allowed her mouth to be explored.  The heat arched and spread within her belly and thighs. 

Rebekah grappled with her emotions.  Staci was making her feel what only Nick had before, but it was wrong.  Women shouldn’t feel this way about each other. 

“Let go,” Staci said softly. 

Suddenly she wanted to let go.  She wanted to feel and not think.  She thought seriously about pushing these feelings away and realized that she was, in fact, too drunk to fight. 

Staci kissed her once more, this time flicking her tongue across Rebekah’s lips, then parting them.  Rebekah closed her eyes.  This almost felt like Nick’s kisses.  By the next one, she was returning the kiss, shyly at first, then whole-heartedly. 

Staci’s hands unhooked Rebekah’s bra and slid it off her arms.  Her hungry mouth sought her breasts, massaging and sucking tenderly, then potently.  A fire ignited between Rebekah’s legs.  She pulled Staci’s face to hers
and gave her great surging kisses.  Moisture accumulated along her folds.

Staci got up and removed her own bra and panties.  She had medium sized, uplifted breasts, a slender waist and had shaved the triangle between her legs
, exposing her feminine lips.  She pushed Rebekah gently back on the bed. 

Pulling off Rebekah’s panties, Staci
slipped a finger within her.  “Fuck.  You are so wet.”  She stuck the finger in own mouth and sucked.  “So sweet.  Don’t you tell me in the morning that you didn’t want this.  The body doesn’t lie.”

Carefully avoiding Rebekah’s leg, Staci nestled her face in Rebekah’s folds.  She re-inserted her finger and moved it back and forth, while at the same time,
applied quick movements of her practiced tongue.  She began moving the fingers of her free hand in the wet area just above Rebekah’s entrance.  Up and down . . . up and down.  Meanwhile her tongue went around and around Rebekah’s clit, much in time to the stoking of her fingers. 

Rebekah squeezed her eyes shut.  It’s Nick.  It’s Nick, she told herself.  But she knew it was Staci. 
She wanted to reconcile the battle within herself but between the Jack Daniels and Staci’s sweet manipulations she lacked the strength to do so.

“Let go.  I just want to make you feel good.  Let go.”

It was too easy to do what was asked.  Hampered a bit by her broken leg, she nonetheless raised her hips slightly in keeping with Staci’s tongue movements.

Staci sucked on her
clit, hard.

Rebekah whimpered, desire burning through her, but unable to find release. 

“I know what you need.”  Staci left for a moment, went to her suitcase, and then returned, turning off the lights.  “Honey, you just lay back and enjoy this.  This is all for you.”  Seconds later, she was on top of Rebekah, propping herself up so as not to lay on Rebekah’s broken ribs.  She felt Staci’s fingers probing her and then felt—
oh, my God, what is that?  It feels like a cock!—
push its way into her core.

Staci moved like Nick would have done and the cock moved in . . . .
and out.  And in . . . and out.  Over and over again, deeper and faster. 
It feels so damned good.
  Staci’s hand reached down and stoked Rebekah’s clit, up and down, up and down, in cadence to her thrusts.  Wells of emotion were coming to the surface in Rebekah, threatening to erupt violently.  Deeper and deeper Staci lunged.  Harder and harder she pressed.  In and out and in and out and in and out.  She drove all her lust into Rebekah, who raised her hips as much as she could to meet the onslaught.