A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [36]
She didn’t reply, but made a slight dissentient motion of the behind. Under normal conditions, this would have caused him to let go. He did let go, but only with one hand, and this in order to slide it down her leg, evidently meaning to get hold of her skirt and ruckle it up.
She reached back hastily and grabbed the roving hand, bringing it round and placing it on her breast, as an indication that while she appreciated the notion and under other circumstances would be thrilled to oblige, just this moment she thought—
Roger was usually very good at reading her body language, but evidently this skill had dissolved in whisky. That, or—the thought came suddenly to her—he simply didn’t care whether she wanted—
“Roger!” she hissed.
He had started humming again, the sound now interspersed with the low, bumping noises a teakettle makes, just before the boil. He’d got his hand down her leg and up her skirt, hot on the flesh of her thigh, groping swiftly upward—and inward. Jemmy coughed, jerking in her arms, and she made an attempt to kick Roger in the shin, as a signal of discouragement.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he murmured into the curve of her neck. “Oh, God, so beautiful. So beautiful . . . so . . . hmmm . . .” The next words were a mumble against her skin, but she thought he’d said “slippery.” His fingers had reached their goal, and she arched her back, trying to squirm away.
“Roger,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Roger, there are people around!” And a snoring toddler wedged like a doorstop in front of her.
He mumbled something in which the words “dark” and “nobody’ll see” were distinguishable, and then the groping hand retreated—only to grab a handful of her skirts and start shoving them out of the way.
He had resumed the humming, pausing momentarily to murmur, “Love you, love you so much. . . .”
“I love you, too,” she said, reaching back and trying to catch his hand. “Roger, stop that!”
He did, but immediately reached around her, and grasped her by the shoulder. A quick heave, and she was lying on her back staring up at the distant stars, which were at once blotted out by Roger’s head and shoulders as he rolled on top of her in a tremendous rustling of hay and loosened clothing.
“Jem—” She flung out a hand toward Jemmy, who appeared not to have been disturbed by the sudden disappearance of his backstop, but was still curled up in the hay like a hibernating hedgehog.
Roger was, of all things, singing now, if one could call it that. Or chanting, at least, the words to a very bawdy Scottish song, about a miller who is pestered by a young woman wanting him to grind her corn. Whereupon he does.
“He flung her down upon the sacks, and there she got her corn ground, her corn ground. . . .” Roger was chanting hotly in her ear, his full weight pinning her to the ground and the stars spinning madly far above.
She’d thought his description of Ronnie as “reeking wi’ lust” merely a figure of speech, but evidently not. Bare flesh met bare flesh, and then some. She gasped. So did Roger.
“Oh, God,” he said. He paused, frozen for an instant against the sky above her, then sighed in an ecstasy of whisky fumes and began to move with her, humming. It was dark, thank God, though not nearly dark enough. The remnants of the fire cast an eerie glow over his face, and he looked for an instant the bonny big, black devil Inga had called him.
Lie back and enjoy it, she thought. The hay made a tremendous rustling—but there were other rustlings nearby, and the sound of the wind soughing through the trees in the cove was nearly enough to drown them all in sibilance.
She had managed to suppress her embarrassment and was indeed beginning to enjoy it, when Roger got his hands under her, lifting.
“Wrap your legs round me,” he whispered, and nipped her earlobe with his teeth. “Wrap them round my back and hammer my arse wi’ your heels.”
Moved partly by an answering wantonness, and partly by a desire to squeeze the breath out of him like an accordion, she flung her legs