Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [190]
She had thought Theo, Jefferson and John Fallon all to be good lovers, but they were only mediocre compared with Jack. He used his fingers with such sensitivity, stroking, probing and kissing in such an unhurried way that every nerve in her body came alive. Again and again she reached out to fondle his penis but he always stopped her. It was only when she felt something erupting inside her, and all sense of where she was and even who she was had left her, that he finally entered her, driving forcefully into her as tremendous shock waves engulfed her.
She heard herself cry out, felt tears course down her face, and she knew then that he had taken her to a place that none of her previous lovers had.
Jack propped himself up on one elbow and watched Beth as she lay sleeping next to him, his heart swelling with love for her. It was close to midnight, but there was enough light from the stove and the lantern hanging above it to see her clearly. It was midday when they came into the cabin, and since then he’d made love to her three times, along with making food, washing each other, drinking half a bottle of whisky between them and talking about anything and everything. He thought he ought to be exhausted, but he was too excited to sleep. She had been his first love, his only true love, and now she was finally his.
There had been many other girls during the six years since they first met on the ship. Straitlaced ones, wanton ones, kind girls, cruel girls, happy and sad ones. Some he’d tried to tell himself he loved, others he just made love to and hoped the pleasure he gave them made up for his lack of commitment. But inevitably he was always left with a sense of disappointment.
Beth had always been his lode star, even when he knew she had eyes for no one but Theo. But for her he would still be in New York; he’d never have gone to Montreal, travelled across Canada or come here. He had become her self-appointed guardian just to be near her. He would have done anything for her, even if she never saw him as anything more than a friend.
Now she was here, her slender body curled into his, deep in sleep, her face as soft as a child’s. He remembered how she’d looked when they rescued her from the cellar, frozen to the bone and her face haunted by the horror of her imprisonment. Her indignation when she discovered Pearl’s place in Philadelphia was a brothel. The night at the hospital in Montreal was etched on his mind too, when she’d cried out for Theo but had to settle for comfort from him.
Her courage on the Chilkoot Pass and her powers of endurance throughout that trail had astounded him. Then, in Dawson, having so recently lost Sam, she lost Molly too. Yet she gritted her teeth and played her heart out night after night in the Nugget. Many stampeders who had no money for drinks had told him they stood outside the saloon to listen to her play. They said she made them feel less hungry and thirsty, and that her music gave them hope they’d find a way to make their fortune.
Jack could understand how they felt, for he had fallen under the spell of her music the very first time he heard it on the ship.
Slipping out of bed, he put a little more wood on the stove to keep it going till morning, and blew out the lantern. In another couple of weeks the river ice would break up, and once again thousands of people would arrive in search of gold.
He smiled, for here in his little cabin he knew he had something far more precious than gold.
A loud whoop of excitement from Oz wafted up the hill to Jack and Beth who were busy at the sluice washing through stones and gravel.
‘What’s got into him?’ Jack said, standing up and moving to a place where he could see what was going on below.
‘Most likely he’s found a full bottle of whisky he’d forgotten about,’ Beth joked.
It was the middle of June. Two weeks earlier the ice had broken up on