The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [662]
“And salt,” he said, very softly, his breath warm on my face. “There is salt on your face, and your lashes are wet. D’ye weep, Sassenach?”
“No,” I said, though I had a sudden, irrational urge to do just that. “No, I sweat. I was . . . hot.”
I wasn’t any longer; my skin was cool; cold where the night-draft from the window chilled my backside.
“Ah, but here . . . mm.” He was on his knees now, one arm about my waist to hold me still, his nose buried in the hollow between my breasts. “Oh,” he said, and his voice had changed again.
I didn’t normally wear perfume, but I had a special oil, sent from the Indies, made with orange flowers, jasmine, vanilla beans, and cinnamon. I had only a tiny vial, and wore a small dab infrequently—for occasions that I thought might perhaps be special.
“Ye wanted me,” he said ruefully. “And I fell asleep without even touching you. I’m sorry, Sassenach. Ye should have said.”
“You were tired.” His hand had left my mouth; I stroked his hair, smoothing the long dark strands behind his ear. He laughed, and I felt the warmth of his breath on my bare stomach.
“Ye could raise me from the dead for that, Sassenach, and I wouldna mind it.”
He stood up then, facing me, and even in the dim light I could see that no such desperate measures on my part would be required.
“It’s hot,” I said. “I’m sweating.”
“Ye think I’m not?”
His hands closed on my waist and he lifted me suddenly, setting me down on the broad windowsill. I gasped at contact with the cool wood, reflexively grasping the window frame on either side.
“What on earth are you doing?”
He didn’t bother answering; it was an entirely rhetorical question, in any case.
“Eau de femme,” he murmured, his soft hair brushing across my thighs as he knelt. The floorboards creaked under his weight. “Parfum d’amor, mm?”
The cool breeze lifted my hair, drew it tickling across my back like the lightest of lover’s touches. Jamie’s hands were firm on the curve of my hips; I was in no danger of falling, and yet I felt the dizzy drop behind me, the clear and endless night, with its star-strewn empty sky into which I might fall and go on falling, a tiny speck, blazing hotter and hotter with the friction of my passage, bursting finally into the incandescence of a shooting . . . star.
“Ssh,” Jamie murmured, far off. He was standing now, his hands on my waist, and the moaning noise might have been the wind, or me. His fingers brushed my lips. They might have been matches, striking flames against my skin. Heat danced over me, belly and breast, neck and face, burning in front, cool behind, like St. Lawrence on his gridiron.
I wrapped my legs around him, one heel settled in the cleft of his buttocks, the solid strength of his hips between my legs my only anchor.
“Let go,” he said in my ear. “I’ll hold you.” I did let go, and leaned back on the air, safe in his hands.
“YOU DID START OUT to tell me something about Laurence Sterne,” I murmured drowsily, much later.
“So I did.” Jamie stretched and settled himself, a hand curved proprietorially over my buttock. My knuckles brushed the hairs on his thigh. It was too hot to lie pressed together, but we didn’t want to separate entirely.
“We were talking of birds; he bein’ uncommon fond of them. I asked him why it was that in the late summer, the birds sing at night—the nights are shorter then, ye’d think they’d want their rest, but no. There’s rustling and twittering and all manner o’ carryings-on, all the night long in the hedges and the trees.”
“Are there? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Ye’re no in the habit of sleeping in the forest, Sassenach,” he said tolerantly. “I have been, and so had Sterne. He’d noticed the same thing, he said, and wondered why.”
“And did he have an answer?”
“Not an answer—but a theory, at least.”
“Oh, even better,” I said, in sleepy amusement.
He gave a soft grunt of agreement and rolled slightly to one side, admitting a little welcome