CHAPTER 16 #2
It is the first kiss a man has put at her mouth.
Beck has kissed her temple in his kitchen of his slow careful way; Tate has kissed her temple in his loft of his slow grief-shaking way; I am the third of us at her mouth and the first of us to find it, and the kiss is wild because I am wild and the kiss is full and it is unbalanced and her mouth opens under mine and she kisses me back, hard, her hand at the back of my neck, the cool small precise hand of a tailor's daughter at the cropped hair at my nape.
"Love," I say into her mouth. "Love."
I lift her.
Her skirt up at her hips with both my hands.
Her legs around my waist. The bone pin in her hair has not yet fallen but it is going; I feel it slip against my own jaw at the angle she takes her head and I feel it slide down the braid and I hear it fall to the dust at our feet and I do not stop. The bone pin is on the floor.
I will give it back to her in an hour. I cannot wait for her to set it down. I am sorry already. I am sorry.
I put my face in her throat — jaw and lips, never the windpipe, never the throat itself; the long warm column of her below the jaw and above the collarbone where the lavender of her trunk-lining is still faint and the warm salt of her skin is under it — and I undo my trousers with the right hand at her hip while the left holds the underside of her thigh against my own hip, and I am hard, and I am at the slick of her already, and she is slick.
She is slick at the parting of her own folds without my hand yet at her, her own want of me wet at the inside of her thigh; I feel the cool wet of it against the underside of my own length where I am pressed at the entrance of her, and I say it because I have to say it, because the asking is the binding for me, and I take my face from her throat and I look at her, eye to eye, six inches off in the barn's brown air.
"Tell me. Love, tell me."
She says, "I want you. Now. Yes."
I push in.
Once, deep, against the wall.
Her shoulder blades go against the rough planks and the small sharp catch of her breath goes into my collarbone and the give of her around me is the give of a woman who has been carrying me at the back of her own want since the porch step the night before, and I bottom out at the first stroke and I am too quick already and I know it, and I move — quick, hard, my hands flat on the planks above her head, the rough wood at my own palms, the rough wood at her shoulders, her arms around my neck, her face at my jaw, her teeth biting the back of her own right hand to keep from making a sound the dooryard will carry.
Three minutes. Maybe four. I am verbal at her ear because verbal is what I do, "love love love look at you Christ's teeth love—" and through the planks of the wall, six feet away, I hear Ardent's heartbeat.
The long blow-and-breathe of the chestnut at the next stall.
The high singing heartbeat of a stallion that has just been ridden.
The basin's three pulses in the same small space — his and hers and mine, mine the loudest because I am the loudest, hers the steadiest because she has been steadier than me at every turn of this morning, his the deepest and the slowest because he is the only one of the three of us who has done the cleanest piece of work today already.
I come.
"Fuck — love — Christ's teeth — Willa —"
The word is out of me before I know it has been in me; I have not said the word in a heat scene in any town in any state in any year of my life that I can call back to mind now; the word is at her throat and it is once and it is once only and it is not at her — not a slur, not a hurt — it is the small flat plain word of a man whose body has overrun him at the apex with the woman he has not been with before, and I come, and I stay inside her against the planks while I breathe, and I lower my forehead to her shoulder and I laugh once, soft, the laugh of a man who has been alone too long and is suddenly not alone.
"I am sorry. I told you. I am sorry."
She laughs once.
She laughs into my collarbone and the laugh is dry and even and it is the laugh of a woman who has known what she was asking for. "Now slow," she says.
---
I pull out.
I lower her to her feet. I steady her at the elbow because her own knees are not at her command for a count of three, and I am steadier at her than I am at myself, and I take the navy-wool saddle-blanket from where I dropped it at the door — the worn one with the faded yellow stripe, the same blanket that was on Ardent's back an hour ago, the smell of horse-sweat and pine resin and her own lavender and now me — and I fold it twice on the floor by the hay-pile at the door.
I undress her. The bodice. The summer corset.
The cotton drawers. The chemise. I undress her with the small careful hands she did the linen-knot at my wrist with, and I undress myself, and we are both naked in the brown dust-bright light of the barn at seven in the morning of a hot dry July day, half clothed in dust and fully clothed in a morning the rest of the basin has not been told about yet, and I lay her on the folded blanket on her hands and knees, and I kneel behind.
I lay the head of my cock at her entrance. She is wetter than at the wall — me and her at the inside of her own thighs both — and I say it because I have to.
"Yes?"
She says, "Yes. Slow."
I push in slow.
I am hard again already. I have been twenty-eight years old for two months and the recovery is fast and the chestnut is still in the next stall through the planks and I can hear his heartbeat through the wood between us, the long blow-and-breathe winding down to the slow steady beat of a stallion at rest, and I lay my right hand splayed wide on her belly — the whole of my palm at the low warm soft of her, fingers stretched at her hip-bones, the heel of my hand at her navel — and I lay my left at her hip, and I move slow.
Long strokes. Withdrawal nearly to the head.
The give of her around me at every push.
The slick at the join. The small involuntary tightening of her thighs every fourth stroke.
I talk because I have to talk, because talking is how I keep from breaking apart, and the run of it is not Beck's careful colon-and-period English and not Tate's long grieving Scots-Irish — it is mine, comma-spliced, kind.
"Love. Look at you. Look how you take me, love, look how you — yes — slow now, slow — there — there now—"
I reach down with the left hand from her hip.
The pad of two fingers at her clit. Slow circles.
The same slow as the stroke. She breathes through her teeth a long count and the breath catches and she comes — slow, long, around me, her thighs going tight around my hips, the whole inside of her closing on the length of me in a long wave that goes from the entrance of her up to the deepest place I have been, and she says my name into the blanket: "Levi. "
I come a second time, slower, deep. I do not pull out.
I had thought I would. I do not. I stay inside her.
My forehead at the back of her shoulder.
The chestnut at the next stall through the wall, the long blow-and-breathe of him at the same beat as mine and hers, the three of us at one beat for a long count of breath that I will not be able to call back to mind when I am eighty and trying to.
I say it.
I say it before I can stop.
"Ours."
It is in the back of her shoulder and it is low and it is half-into her own hair, and I hear myself say it and I freeze.
I wait for her to correct me. I have said the word to a horse three thousand times in my life and I have said it to no woman, and I have said it now to a woman whose other husband — whose first husband — is at the assay shed three hundred yards off and whose third husband — whose second husband — is at the freight stable getting the wagon ready, and I have said ours into the back of her shoulder, and I wait.