Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [85]
Her hand cupped itself between his legs, and he reached to return the favor, the small, fat softness of her filling his hand, pressing against him as she moved. She rose over him, smiling, her hair falling down around her face, and threw her leg across him.
“Give me your mouth,” he whispered, not knowing whether he meant to kiss her or to have her take him between her lips, only knowing he must have her somehow.
“Give me yours,” she said. She laughed and leaned down to him, hands on his shoulders, her hair brushing his face with the scent of moss and sunlight, and he felt the prickle of dry leaves against his back and knew they lay in the glen near Lallybroch, and her the color of the copper beeches all around; beech leaves and beechwood, gold eyes and a smooth white skin, skimmed with shadows.
Then her breast pressed against his mouth, and he took it eagerly, drawing her body tight against him as he suckled her. Her milk was hot and sweet, with a faint taste of silver, like a deer’s blood.
“Harder,” she whispered to him, and put her hand behind his head, gripping the back of his neck, pressing him to her. “Harder.”
She lay at her length upon him, his hands holding for dear life to the sweet flesh of her buttocks, feeling the small solid weight of the child upon his own belly, as though they shared it now, protecting the small round thing between their bodies.
He flung his arms about her, tight, and she held him tight as he jerked and shuddered, her hair in his face, her hands in his hair and the child between them, not knowing where any of the three of them began or ended.
He came awake suddenly, panting and sweating, half-curled on his side beneath one of the benches in the cell. It was not yet quite light, but he could see the shapes of the men who lay near him, and hoped he had not cried out. He closed his eyes at once, but the dream was gone. He lay quite still, his heart slowing, and waited for the dawn.
* * *
June 18, 1755
John Grey had dressed carefully this evening, with fresh linen and silk stockings. He wore his own hair, simply plaited, rinsed with a tonic of lemon-verbena. He had hesitated for a moment over Hector’s ring, but at last had put it on, too. The dinner had been good; a pheasant he had shot himself, and a salad of greens, in deference to Fraser’s odd tastes for such things. Now they sat over the chessboard, lighter topics of conversation set aside in the concentration of the midgame.
“Will you have sherry?” He set down his bishop, and leaned back, stretching.
Fraser nodded, absorbed in the new position.
“I thank ye.”
Grey rose and crossed the room, leaving Fraser by the fire. He reached into the cupboard for the bottle, and felt a thin trickle of sweat run down his ribs as he did so. Not from the fire, simmering across the room; from sheer nervousness.
He brought the bottle back to the table, holding the goblets in his other hand; the Waterford crystal his mother had sent. The liquid purled into the glasses, shimmering amber and rose in the firelight. Fraser’s eyes were fixed on the cup, watching the rising sherry, but with an abstraction that showed he was deep in his thoughts. The dark blue eyes were hooded. Grey wondered what he was thinking; not about the game—the outcome of that was certain.
Grey reached out and moved his queen’s bishop. It was no more than a delaying move, he knew; still, it put Fraser’s queen in danger, and might force the exchange of a rook.
Grey got up to put a brick of peat on the fire. Rising, he stretched himself, and strolled behind his opponent to view the situation from this angle.
The firelight shimmered as the big Scot leaned forward to study the board, picking up the deep red tones of James Fraser’s hair, echoing the glow of the light in the crystalline sherry.
Fraser had bound his hair back with a thin black cord, tied in a bow. It