The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [533]
He inhaled gently. No, she’d put him back. No scent in his bed now save Brianna’s, the earthy smell of woman-flesh, a faint, sweet cloud of sweat and slippery willingness.
She sighed in her sleep, murmured something incomprehensible, and turned her head on the pillow. There were blue smudges under her eyes; she’d been up late making jelly, up again twice more with the little bas—with the baby. How could he wake her, only to gratify his own base urges?
How could he not?
He gritted his teeth, torn between temptation, compassion, and the sure conviction that if he yielded to his inclinations, he would get precisely as far as the worst possible moment before an interruption from the vicinity of the cradle compelled him to stop.
Experience had been a harsh teacher, but the urgings of the flesh were louder than the voice of reason. He put out a stealthy hand and gently grasped the buttock nearest. It was cool and smooth and round as a gourd.
She made a small noise deep in her throat and stretched luxuriously. She arched her back, pushing her backside up in a way that convinced Roger that the course of wisdom was to fling back the quilt, roll on top of her, and achieve his goal in the ten seconds flat it was likely to take.
He got as far as flinging back the quilt. As he raised his head from the pillow, a round, pale object rose slowly into view over the rim of the cradle, like one of the moons of Jupiter. A pair of blue eyes regarded him with clinical dispassion.
“Oh, shit!” he said.
“Oh, chit!” Jemmy said, in happy mimicry. He clambered to his feet and stood, bouncing up and down as he gripped the edge of the cradle he was rapidly outgrowing, chanting “Chit-chit-chit-chit” in what he evidently thought was a song.
Brianna jerked into wakefulness, blinking through tangled locks.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Ah . . . something stung me.” Roger flipped the edge of the quilt discreetly back in place. “Must be a wasp in here.”
She stretched on her pillow, groaning and smoothing her hair out of her face with one hand, then picked up the cup from the table and took a drink; she always woke up thirsty.
Her eyes traveled over him, and a slow smile spread across her wide, soft mouth. “Yeah? Nasty sting you got there. Want me to rub it?” She put down the cup, rolled gracefully up onto an elbow, and reached out a hand.
“Ye’re a sadist,” Roger said, gritting his teeth. “No doubt about it. Ye must get it from your father.”
She laughed, took her hand off the quilt, and stood up, pulling her shift on over her head.
“MAMA! Chit, Mama!” Jemmy informed her, beaming, as she swung him up out of his cradle with a grunt of effort.
“You rat,” she said, affectionately. “You aren’t very popular with Daddy this morning. Your timing stinks.” She wrinkled her nose. “And not only your timing.”
“Depends on your perspective, I suppose.” Roger rolled onto his side, watching. “I imagine from his point of view, the timing was perfect.”
“Yeah.” Brianna gave him a raised brow. “Hence the new word, huh?”
“He’s heard it before,” Roger said dryly. “Many times.” He sat up, swinging his legs out of bed, and rubbed a hand through his hair and over his face.
“Well, all we have to do now is figure out how to get from the abstract to the concrete, huh?” She put Jemmy on his feet and knelt in front of him, kissing him on the nose, then unpinning his diaper. “Oh, yag. Is eighteen months too soon for toilet-training, do you think?”
“Are ye asking me, or him?”
“Pew. I don’t care; whichever one of you has an opinion.”
Jemmy plainly didn’t; cheerfully stoic, he was ignoring his mother’s determined assault on his private parts with a cold, wet cloth, absorbed in a new song of his own composition, which went along the lines of “Pew, pew, chit, chit, PEW, PEW . . .”
Brianna put a stop to this by swinging him up in her arms and sitting down with him in the nursing chair by the hearth.
“Want snackies?” she said, pulling down the neck of her shift invitingly.
“God, yes,” Roger said, with feeling. Bree laughed, not without sympathy, as she