“Sounds young to an old timer like me.”
“You’re thirty-six. You’ve hardly got a foot in the grave yet.”
“How’d you know my age?”
“I asked Mary Alice. The day I came over and made you the chicken pie.”
“You asked about me?” He smiled a lazy smile. A “feel good” smile.
Ruth’s heart leaped. “Yes, I asked about you. You’re an interesting person, Garth Mackenzie. You intrigued me from the start.”
“You intrigued me too, Ruthie. You’re so pretty, and so smart, and you just told me where to go, didn’t you?”
“Well, somebody had to. Mary Alice was failing for no good reason. And now that I’m here, things will change. Tomorrow I’ll get this place in tip top shape, and then we’ll—”
He hushed her with his fingers on her lips. They burned hot.
“Tomorrow we’ll figure this whole marriage out. I promise. But tonight I want to make love to my wife.”
She nodded, her lips quivering. He stood, and his strong arms lifted her off her feet. He strode slowly through the front room to his—their—bedroom. Once there, he set Ruth on the bed, closed the door, and latched it. He sat down next to her and began working the buttons to her bodice.
His gaze penetrated hers. “I could drown in those midnight eyes of yours.”
So hot, and then cold, and then hot again. Ruth shuddered as his fingers grazed her skin. When her bodice was loosened, he pulled the pins from her hair until it fell down her back in soft waves.
He kissed her neck as he pushed the fabric of her dress down her arms.
“Garth, I—” How could she tell him she was frightened? Not of him, but of disappointing him?
“Shh,” he said. “I’ll try not to hurt you.”
“I know. I’m not worried about that. I mean, I know it will hurt at first. I just…I’m not sure how to please you.”
“You will please me, Ruthie. I promise.”
“But I don’t know what you want.”
“I’m not that hard to please, honey. Trust me.”
He fumbled with her chemise and petticoats, and soon she lay against the cool cotton covers in nothing but her pantalets. Her nipples poked forward, two hard berries, and a strawberry flush glossed over what she could see of her body in the moonlight streaming through the open window.
Garth’s bronze gaze singed her body. Tiny tingles raced along her skin, igniting sparks along the way, and culminated in the moist spot between her legs.
The spot her pantalets still covered, but wouldn’t for much longer.
He didn’t speak, just scalded her with his eyes and then his strong hands, as they swept from her cheeks over her shoulders, over the slope of her breasts, to her waist, her hips, where they eased the pantalets over her bottom, down her legs, and onto the floor.
He sucked in a breath. “God.”
She closed her eyes. Did he not like what he saw? Had he decided she wasn’t what he wanted after all? Beautiful she was not, and her figure was more lithe than womanly. What she wouldn’t give, at this moment, to possess Naomi’s feminine curves.
A flutter touched her eyelash. She opened her eyes slowly.
“Such long eyelashes.” Garth caressed her cheek with his thumb. “As much as I love to see them resting against your cheek, I want you to keep your eyes open.”
“W-Why?”
“So you can see me touching you. I want you to be a part of this. Don’t close your eyes.”