Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [29]
My hands glided on a film of moisture over the curves of his back, and my breasts wobbled against his chest, a rivulet trickling between them to oil the friction of belly and thigh.
“Christ, your mouth is slick and salty as your quim,” he muttered, and his tongue darted out to taste the tiny beads of salt on my face, butterfly wings on temple and eyelids.
I was vaguely conscious of the hard rock under me. The stored heat of the day rose up and through me, and the rough surface scraped my back and buttocks, but I didn’t care.
“I can’t wait,” he said in my ear, breathless.
“Don’t,” I said, and wrapped my legs tight around his hips, flesh bonded to flesh in the brief madness of dissolution.
“I have heard of melting with passion,” I said, gasping slightly, “but this is ridiculous.”
He lifted his head from my breast with a faint sticky sound as his cheek came away. He laughed and slid slowly sideways.
“God, it’s hot!” he said. He pushed back the sweat-soaked hair from his forehead and blew out his breath, chest still heaving from exertion. “How do folk do that when it’s like this?”
“The same way we just did,” I pointed out. I was breathing heavily myself.
“They can’t,” he said with certainty. “Not all the time; they’d die.”
“Well, maybe they do it slower,” I said. “Or underwater. Or wait until the autumn.”
“Autumn?” he said. “Perhaps I dinna want to live in the south, after all. Is it hot in Boston?”
“It is at this time of year,” I assured him. “And beastly cold in the winter. I’m sure you’ll get used to the heat. And the bugs.”
He brushed a questing mosquito off his shoulder and glanced from me to the nearby creek.
“Maybe so,” he said, “and maybe no, but for now …” He wrapped his arms firmly around me, and rolled. With the ponderous grace of a rolling log, we fell off the edge of the rocky shelf, and into the water.
We lay damp and cool on the rock, barely touching, the last drops of water evaporating on our skins. Across the creek, the willows trailed their leaves in the water, crowns ruffled black against the setting moon. Beyond the willows lay acre upon acre and mile upon mile of the virgin forest, civilization for now no more than a foothold on the edge of the continent.
Jamie saw the direction of my glance and divined my thought.
“It will be a good bit different now than when ye last kent it, I expect?” He nodded toward the leafy dark.
“Oh, a bit.” I linked my hand with his, my thumb idly caressing his big, bony knuckles. “The roads will be paved then; not cobbled, covered with a hard, smooth stuff—invented by a Scotsman called MacAdam, in fact.”
He grunted slightly with amusement.
“So there will be Scots in America, then? That’s good.”
I ignored him and went on, staring into the wavering shadows as though I could conjure the burgeoning cities that would one day rise there.
“There will be a lot of everyone in America, then. All the land will be settled, from here to the far west coast, to a place called California. But for now”—I shivered slightly, in spite of the warm, humid air—“it’s three thousand miles of wilderness. There’s nothing there at all.”
“Aye, well, nothing save thousands of bloodthirsty savages,” he said practically. “And the odd vicious beast, to be sure.”
“Well, yes,” I agreed. “I suppose they are.” The thought was unsettling; I had of course known, in a vague, academic way, that the woods were inhabited by Indians, bears, and other forest denizens, but this general notion had suddenly been replaced by a particular and most acute awareness that we might easily—and unexpectedly—meet any one of these denizens, face-to-face.
“What happens to them? To the wild Indians?” Jamie asked curiously, peering into the dark as I was, as though trying to divine the future among the shifting shadows. “They’ll be defeated and driven back, will they?”
Another small shiver passed over me, and my toes curled.
“Yes, they will,” I said. “Killed, a lot of them. A good many taken prisoner, locked up.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“I expect that depends a lot on your point of view,