Heaven in His Arms (25 page)

He pulled away, watching her face as her lips parted, begging for more. "Sweet Jesus, Genny."

Her hand slid up the front of his shirt, grasping the open ends of the edge. She wished she had the strength to rend the skin in two so there would be nothing more between them. His lips captured hers, hard, slanting across her mouth possessively. His kiss screamed of aching hunger, of angry desire too long denied. His beard brushed her cheek, her chin, as soft as a bird's feathers. She opened her mouth at his urging and felt the glorious roughness of his tongue against hers, tasting her, drinking her passion like a man dying of thirst. She succumbed to him, saying wordlessly,
Take my body. Take my soul. Make love to me, Andre.

They tumbled to the ground, landing partly on her deerskin blanket, partly on the cold granite. The butt of his pistol and the handle of his knife dug into her abdomen as his weight fell upon her. He kissed a trail of fire down to her collarbone and she wove her fingers in his soft hair. He untied the laces of her bodice, then brushed aside the edges and closed his hand over her full breast. Then he raised his head, met her eyes, and captured her lips once again.

She ran her fingers over his beard, cupping his face, drawing him closer and drinking the love from his lips. His anxious fingers centered on the nub hardening at the tip of her breast, poking through the threadbare chemise. She groaned, deep in the back of her throat. He released her lips, and her head fell gently back against the pillow of granite. He took the ridge of her chin in his mouth, the curve of her throat, the edge of her jutting collarbone. Then, after a chill moment as he shifted his weight, his hot lips closed over her distended nipple, chemise and all.

Her hands, lost in his hair, curled into fists, capturing long tresses between her tight fingers. The worn fabric of her shift cooled in the evening air whenever he moved his lips, chilling the nub to tautness. Impatiently, he yanked the edge of her chemise down, exposing her naked breast to his gaze, taking the throbbing peak into his hungry mouth.

Andre .. . She didn't know if she had spoken his name or if it just lingered in her mind, a silent murmuring of her passion. He was taking possession of her, with his warm lips and callused fingers and strong will, taking possession of her like he never had before. Vaguely, she felt him tugging up her skirts. She loosened her grip on his hair and spread her fingers over the taut muscles of his back. She felt his fingers skimming her deerskin-bound calves, hesitating on the flesh just above the ribboned garter of her hose. Genevieve arched instinctively in his arms, wanting him to touch her as he had before, to give her that sweet, sweet joy, wanting more than anything to finally give that full joy to him. His fingers continued their unerring journey up the inside of her thigh, until they brushed against her secret curls.

The thickness of his deerskin shirt scraped against the rosy peak of her breast as he slid up to meet her gaze. Their breaths misted between them, for the sun had long set and the earth had given up the lingering threads of the day's warmth. She felt none of the cold, not even the icy hard granite against the back of her head. Her blood pumped hot beneath her skin and he warmed her like a blazing fire with his gaze alone. The stars twinkled in a sky as soft as dark purple velvet, and they seemed to swell and come closer as he touched her.

She was lost. Utterly. It was as if she were caught in the rapids again, drawn irrevocably along with the tush and gurgle, helpless against a force much more powerful than herself. But there was a difference. Now there was no terror, no choking blindness, nothing but a pleasure so exquisite, Genevieve thought she might happily die from it. He brushed his lips against hers, murmuring her name with a tremor, urging her deeper into the vortex. He kissed the hollow beneath her earlobe, the pounding vein in her throat, the tender white skin between her neck and her shoulder. He returned, relentlessly, to her lips, taking her bottom lip between his, then her top one, teasing her with his tongue and his gentle fingers at the same time.

She flattened her hands on his shoulders, then dragged them down between their bodies, feeling his heart pounding like a blacksmith's hammer in his chest. His fingers paused for the briefest moment, then plunged into her, moving in swift, hungry strokes in and out of her quivering body. His tumescence throbbed against her hip, and she wanted him to touch her with his sex, to fill her with a husband's need, finally, finally.

"Make love to me."

She barely recognized her voice, it was so husky, so strangled, her throat so tight with desire. He shifted his weight off her and she felt the frigid air bathing her bare thighs. Genevieve made no attempt to hide herself, though one breast was exposed to the yawning sky and her skirts were piled high on her hips. She wanted him. She wanted him to see how much she wanted him.

His pistol and knife clattered to the ground. He ripped off his sash and fumbled beneath the hem of his shirt. Rolling his weight atop her, he braced himself with his elbows on either side of her face. He nudged her knees apart with his but she needed no prodding. She arched against his hips and his throbbing member pressed intimately against her inner thigh.

Andre brushed the hair away from her face, his fingers lingering on the curve of her jaw. He looked down at her with such intensity that she lifted her hand and brushed his soft beard. He kissed her hand, one finger at a time. Andre shifted his hips and pressed against the warm entrance to the core of her body, stopping as she felt him lodge against something—something she knew instinctively was the thin membrane of her maidenhead.

"Only a moment's pain," she whispered. Every sinew in her body strained toward the promise of release. "I would suffer worse for you."

It was a single, sharp pain, a startling twinge, forgotten a moment later.

Then he filled her.

It was a sensation more exquisite than a cool bath in the still, humid heat of summer, more shocking than the tingle of the wine of Champagne on her tongue, more explosive than the fireworks she had seen the day Louis XIV had married the Spanish Infanta. Andre throbbed deep, deep inside her, as if he had become a part of her body. She lifted her hips higher, taking him in, possessing him even as he possessed her. They were one, man and woman, lover and mate.

Genevieve moaned and squeezed her eyes shut.

This is what she'd missed all those times before; this was the fulfillment. His weight fell against her and he murmured something unintelligible in the hair above her temple. Her hands found their way beneath the hem of his fringed shirt, tracing the tense muscles of his back, feeling the heat of his skin. He moved in her and her soul moved with him.

He stroked. Again. Deeper.

And suddenly, she was the summer sun, aflame in passion. Suddenly, she was the wine of Champagne— all sweetness and bubbles and gathering pressure. Then, as he stroked again, touching a part of her that had never before been touched, she became the fireworks, exploding in the air in a frenzy of color, showering like a thousand glowing sparks over the great open sky.

Andre lay atop Genevieve, his face lost in her hair, his loins still buried intimately in hers. His breath eluded him. He struggled to inhale and then exhale, to slow the racing of his pulse, to find his bearings, but his senses seemed to have scattered to the four corners of the earth.

He had wanted her this way for so long, had fantasized about caressing her, had spent entire nights straining not to do this. Nothing in his imagination could match the feel of her warm body throbbing around him, the salt-and-woman taste of her skin, the delicious sound of her cries of pleasure, and the heat and pressure of her womanhood sheathing him, even now. There was more than a little madness in this joining. He had lost part of himself—the part that reasoned, the part that knew better than to spill his seed into a woman's body.

Andre pushed the thought aside. There had been too much between them, and she had been so wet, so hot, so eager, so tight. He couldn't stop, he couldn't pull away—not anymore. He knew he would feel guilty later, when he found his senses and realized the possible consequences of his lack of control, but he didn't want to think about it right now. His body and his mind were still reeling. Nothing mattered but the feel of her naked flesh against his, the final echoes of her pleasure pulsating through her frame, and the brush of her hot breath against his neck.

Genevieve shifted languidly beneath him. He kissed her temple, then lifted himself on his elbows to look down upon her face. Her lips were soft and parted, her cheeks dark with a flush. Her eyes mirrored his own lingering surprise, his own sense of dazed rapture.

Her mouth trembled in a hesitant smile. "We've done it."

"Yes,
ma mie
."

She closed her eyes and sighed, then tightened her arms around him. "This is a thousand times better than wintering with the Jesuits."

He couldn't quite smile. Her comment reminded him that he had tried to send her away; he had tried to save her, and he had failed. The guilt pierced his lethargy, and this time he could not push it aside.

"Come." He shifted his weight. "You must be cold."

She clutched his arms as he tried to rise. "Let's stay here for a while."

"We'll stay." He traced her lips with one finger. "But I'm crushing you, and the ground must be hard against your back."

She released his arms, wincing as he gently pulled away, separating their loins. His guilt increased. He had had little experience with virgins—except for Rose-Marie, and that seemed like a hundred thousand years ago. His tastes had always veered toward women of lesser virtue, and in the mad fog of their lovemaking, he had no idea how badly he had hurt her. Andre looked down and saw bloodstains on her inner thighs.

"It's cold." Genevieve sat up and tossed her skirts over her legs, then wrapped her arms around herself. She pulled her rumpled deerskin blanket from beneath her hips. "Come keep me warm under this."

"You're bleeding."

"That's what happens the first time, isn't it?" She pulled the blanket across her shoulders. "Proof of my virtue and all that."

"We should clean you up—"

"Not now." She spread her arms, holding the blanket behind her like a cape. "It's not likely I'll bleed to death, but I will freeze if you don't hold me and keep me warm."

He lay back down on the ground, reaching for her and pulling her small body fully on top of him. A dozen pebbles dug into his back, and Andre realized how hard a bed he had given her for her deflowering. She spread the blanket over her back, kicking it down so it covered his legs and protected them both from the cold air. She sighed deeply and pressed her cheek against his chest.

For a long time they lay in silence. Andre listened to the murmur of the late autumn night and smelled the tart but distant scent of rain on the wind. He stared blindly up into the star-filled sky as he ran his hands through her tangled hair and down the length of her back. His mind raced with so many conflicting emotions, with so much guilt, yet lying with her body warm and still atop him, he felt an unusual, rare sort of peace.

"Andre?"

"Mmm?"

She plucked at the ties of his deerskin shirt. "Is it always . .. like that?"

Genevieve lifted her head and looked at him. He gazed into her wide, innocent, hopeful eyes. Laying with a woman had never been like this. At this moment, he, too, felt like a virgin—right down to the sharp pain he felt, deep in his gut, because in the end he would bring her nothing but sorrow.

He told her none of these things. Instead, he brushed her hair off her flushed face and let his hand linger on her cheek.

"For us,
Taouistaouisse
, it will always be like that."

That much, at least, I can promise.

***

Andre stood in the stern of the canoe, squinting against the afternoon light. The waters of Lake Superior swelled heavily beneath the belly of the laden vessel. He peered at the steely clouds in the distance, then scanned the rocky southern shore for coves. After a week upon this lake, he was brutally familiar with the scents and sights and signs of these waters. Twice in seven days, he had peered in the distance and seen what looked like white water breaking on a reef, only to discover that it was a storm, descending unexpectedly and with fury. Fortunately, both times he and his men had survived unscathed by paddling desperately through the black, choppy water to the protection of the scalloped shore. But he didn't relish another brush with fate. And right now, the air smelled suspiciously like an oncoming squall.

A rough swell bobbled the canoe as they veered off into deep water. A groan rose from the deerskin-covered form at his feet.

"Out, I smell him too, Blossom." Wapishka pulled back in another powerful stroke. "But this Indian guide wouldn't leave the shore if it weren't safe. He knows Missipeshu better than us."

Andre frowned. Missipeshu was a spiny-backed, horned creature of Ojibwa legend who, with one swipe of his tail, could swirl up the wind and the waves on Lake Superior. He didn't welcome another battle with him, not now in the middle of a bay. Andre glared at the forward canoe and wondered if the Ojibwa guide he had hired at Sault Sainte Marie really knew what he was doing. Normally, he would never hire a guide when he could explore the land himself, but since they had left Manitoulin Island, the morning frosts had grown more persistent, the nights colder. He knew that if he did not arrive at Chequamegon Bay soon, the lake would grow grim with ice, and he and his men would be forced to walk the last long leagues across frozen land to the bay. So he had hired an Indian who knew the way, an Indian who now blithely forged across open water toward a distant peninsula in the midst of a gathering storm.

"That Indian is in league with the Iroquois!" Tiny lifted his paddle and waved at the forward canoe. "Blossom can scent that Indian's own demon, blinded beneath a blanket. I can smell him with my white man's nose. That Indian is sending us right out into the dragon's mouth!"

"Missipeshu can't be out here." Genevieve's pale face peeped out from the edge of the blanket. "With the way my stomach is churning, I'm sure I swallowed him."

Without missing a stroke, Tiny said, "Didn't my squaw's brew do you any good?"

"Missipeshu didn't like it at all." She sat up and pulled the deerskin tight around her shoulders. Her hair sprung unruly from its plait. "He's been chasing his tail all morning."

Andre gazed upon the figure of his wife. Despite her words, she looked better than she had in days, and for the first time since they entered Lake Superior, she hadn't lost her breakfast over the side of the canoe. Her skin was pale, but it was no longer as green as boiled peas. The noxious, watery brew that Tiny's new "wife" had prepared and Andre had fed to her last night, seemed to have made her feel better.

It was ironic that after all the portages, all the white water, and nine hundred miles of rivers and lakes, it was this final leg of the journey that was physically breaking her. The first day out on Lake Superior, she told him that the rocking of the canoe on the enormous lake reminded her of the sea voyage from France to Quebec. He remembered what she'd looked like after that voyage. He didn't want her sick. He wanted her strong and healthy and determined and bold. More than anything, he wanted her to turn to him in the cold, dark night and press her body against him, so they could share once more the passion they had discovered on Manitoulin Island.

Andre tightened his hands on the cedar handle of his paddle. It had been a week since they had made love. He had restrained himself in the days that followed, determined to hold his passion in check until she was fully healed, but it was a difficult task. He had taken his place beside her in the tent. Every night he felt her soft breasts crush against him. Every night he lay beside her with an erection as hard as the granite upon which they slept. What had happened to that control he was so proud of? Under the influence of her touch, he had about as much restraint as a gangly fourteen-year-old fumbling with his first girl. He'd be more worried about his lack of control now, if she hadn't stiffened and blushed three nights after their lovemaking, when he reached for her and she told him that it was "her time." Though the news left him aching with frustration, at least he knew she wasn't pregnant. In the future he would be more careful. It was the least he could do for a woman who had decided of her own free will to give him her greatest gift.

He stifled the powerful surge of guilt. She gave herself to me fully warned, he thought. She knows what not to expect.

"Why are we so far from the shore?" Genevieve asked.

"We have to portage over that peninsula." Andre nodded toward the low strip of land in the distance. "It will take less time than following it around."

"If we make it across this bay," Tiny mumbled.

The Duke knelt in the bow of the boat. He took his paddle out of the water and balanced it across his knees. The Indian pulled a twisted stick of tobacco from the pouch hanging from his belt, cut off a hunk, lifted it ceremonially in the air, then tossed it into the water.

"By the Martyrdom of Saint Joseph!" Tiny stopped paddling. "There's barely a carrot left of that tobacco."

The Duke shrugged. "This Ojibwa's Missipeshu asks only for a sacrifice."

Simeon shook his black-bearded head. "Pagan rubbish!"

The Duke calmly dipped his paddle back into the water. "The tobacco will do us little good if we drown."

Wapishka and Tiny looked at one another, then at Julien and the Roissier brothers behind them. Their paddles clattered against their knees as they dug into their near-empty pouches for the last vestiges of precious tobacco. Curled brown leaves fluttered to the lake and bobbed on the swells in their wake.

"It's all your sacrifices to false gods," Simeon warned, "that will bring God's fury upon us."

Tiny closed his pouch and settled his paddle back in the water. "For all you know, Missipeshu and God may be one creature with a different name."

"Blasphemy!"

Genevieve reached for her battered case and unknotted the ragged ties. Gripping it tightly on her lap, she riffled through the contents. "I have nothing to offer," she murmured. "I don't think Missipeshu would appreciate pins or linens."

Andre's loins tightened as she held up bits of feminine frippery. Limp lace, a knot of corset strings, a frilly edge of a shift. Deeper in the case, he saw an enticing swatch of green velvet. He found himself wondering what it would be like to see her dressed like a civilized Frenchwoman in the midst of this wilderness—stiff-backed from a boned corset, her breasts thrust up against a scooped neckline, her legs rustling beneath yards and yards of underskirts. But as soon as the image materialized in his head, he started thinking about stripping the layers from her body until she was naked as the day she was born.

Groaning, he reached inside his pouch and pulled out the end of a stick of tobacco, "Here. Offer this."

"Don't you want some?"

"Missipeshu would probably prefer it from your hands."

She solemnly held the tobacco in her palm, closed her eyes, then tossed it into the water.

"Look what you've all done," Simeon raged, "corrupting a good Christian—"

"Oh, put a pipe in it, Simeon," she exclaimed.

"And paddle, will you? Before Missipeshu stirs and we become the next sacrifice into these waters."

Andre didn't know whether to bless the tobacco sacrifices or just plain luck when all his canoes and all the squaws who followed pulled into the mouth of a river on the peninsula, just as the squall burst overhead. It rained furiously, then the storm passed as quickly as it had come. They paddled upstream to a lake as far as they could go, then spent the last light of day portaging across the rest of the peninsula. They camped on the shores of the west side just as the sun sank below the horizon.

Restored to shaky health and pleased to be on land, Genevieve ate more than her share of the dwindling reserves of sagamite, even daring to complain about the lack of meat. She looked at him so longingly as she entered the tent that it took all his will not to chase in after her and to hell with his responsibilities.

But his canoe had been damaged during the trip across the peninsula. He and The Duke had stumbled over some rocky ground and dropped the vessel, ripping a hole in its belly. If he intended to be in the water tomorrow, it had to be fixed immediately.

Andre stayed up late into the night with Tiny, Wapishka, and The Duke, mending the tear and caulking the belly with heated spruce gum, swearing and cursing all the time. By the time he crossed the campsite to their tent, set a short distance away from the men, the fires had burned to embers and the men snored loudly beneath the overturned canoes.

He opened the flap and crawled in. Beneath the tarpaulin the air was warm from the heat of her body, smelling faintly of tanned leather and dampness. He kicked off his wet moccasins and slid up beside her, pulling a deerskin and a red woolen blanket over him.

Instinctively, she rolled up against him. She was all softness and curves, all warmth and fragrance. Her breathing was deep and even against his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut and cursed to himself, vowing that he'd make one of the Roissier brothers or Julien caulk the canoe next time—even if they knew nothing about it.

Her voice startled him.

"What took you so long?"

Andre ran a hand over her head, pushing the hair out of her face. He couldn't see her expression in the darkness, but he sensed her alertness. His blood coursed in anticipation. "I had to repair the canoe."

"I've been waiting for you."

Her small hands found their way up his chest to wind around his neck. Her breasts, those warm, heavy globes, pressed against him. Hungrily, he searched for her lips in the darkness, finding instead her smooth forehead, then her nose, before finally landing on her generous mouth.

He drew slowly away from her lower lip, tasting the spicy remnants of Tiny's squaw's medicine. Control, he thought. He wasn't going to climb on her in lust if she was still as weak as a newborn calf.

"You've been ill,
Taouistaouisse.
"

"The Indian medicine helped."

He rubbed his hardened loins against her thigh, asking huskily, "Are you well enough for this?"

"Mmm." She kissed him. "I've been waiting for that medicine all night long."

Her lips parted. Andre drank in the sweet, hot breath of passion. All rational thought fled. He plunged his tongue deep into the silken cavern of her mouth, toyed with her tongue, traced her teeth, tasting the cherry-sweet essence of her. He filled his hand with a breast and felt the peak tighten against his palm, ruthlessly tweaking it beneath the layers of her bodice and shift until it stood out sharply against the fabric. Each gasp of pleasure she released spurred him on, for he wanted to hear her cry out beneath him; he wanted to feel her body throb around him in ecstasy; he wanted to taste and touch and hear and see her pleasure.

Genevieve removed her hands from about his neck, pulling at the laces of her bodice until it gaped open, giving him free access to her breasts. Andre buried his hand in the warmth beneath her shift, feeling the tautness of her nipple bead against his hand. He released her lips to feast on the fullness of her bosom, to suck greedily on the dark areola until it throbbed, every flick of his tongue against its rigid bed making her entire body arch against him.

He felt that urging again, the same urging that had driven him over the edge of sanity on Manitoulin Island. It was as strong and powerful as the winds across Lake Superior. He released her breast and slid against her, letting her feel the proof of his desire. Andre silently cursed her clothes. He wanted to hold her bare body against his bare skin. He wanted to fold her nakedness in his arms, to merge their bodies into one, to hold her tight against him, not just now, in the midst of their passion, but tomorrow and the day after.

He tried to push it out of his mind. Possessions had a way of cluttering up a man's life. He must be mad to be thinking about having a woman, now and always—but right now, in the midst of desire, he could think of nothing better than merging their bodies and making her his. He wished he could see her in the darkness. He wished he could watch her face as he drove into her.

Andre nudged her knees apart and slid his hand up her leg, under her skirts. She was ready for him, oh, so ready, and he felt a thrill of victory as he realized she wanted him as much as he wanted her. And he would have her. He would give her a woman's pleasure, and for this night and the winter to come, he would utterly possess her.

He squeezed his eyes shut as he rolled atop her. When he spread her legs and entered her tightness, he felt the heated passion of her sex sheathe and throb around him. Andre braced himself above her, buried his lips in her hair, and felt their hearts pound wildly as one.