4
Snow Desire
The man who wasn’t a man at all but more of a monstrous creature… The man with only a ragged memory of his past, lacking the ability to speak… The man who, despite his solitary existence, could still understand, reason and regret. He, nevertheless, possessed keen senses. Was that not what had kept him alive—if one could term this limbo sort of existence “alive”?
His keen hearing heard the gasp of attraction—uttered by the female upon touching this newcomer. Keen smell scented the unmistakable mating fragrance the couple exuded once they turned their attention from the grisly task she’d begun and came within two feet of each other.
Keener loneliness from the pair; loneliness he recognized because it matched his own.
Yet a compassionate heart lurked beneath his beastly exterior. Kind even, if one could discount the myriad mammals he’d been forced to dispatch in order to survive, the four-pawed and hooved variety, not the upright, two-legged furless sort.
More than anything this wretched evening, after sensing the unmistakable aloneness they each emanated apart?
Well, it appeared even a lost, restless beast could find a purpose once every few months.
You’re betrothed!Ed’s brain shouted into the abyss created by her stunning action. Shall you prove an imbecile in truth and dally with this winsome lass while being committed to another?
A gasp. A groan.
The gasp against his lips. The groan from within his chest.
Followed quickly by a prayer—that she not stop her curious exploration quite yet…
Light as a snowfall, warm as the missing sun, eager lips pecked lightly over his, traveling from one side of his mouth to the other.
A soft moan—hers.
And then she dropped back to her heels.
“There now,” she said in the dark space between them. “Now I know.”
“Know what?” His lips still tingled, awakened for the first time in months. Likely longer. Lower parts pulsed and throbbed. Completely out of proportion to the innocent mating of her mouth against his.
“Why, how you kiss.” Said as though only a chowder-headed simpleton would not have followed her reasoning.
His fingers burned. He still held her wrist? Secured her flattened palm against his riotous heart? Chowderhead, indeed.
The handle of the shovel she gripped ground into his thigh.
“Nay, you do not,” some forthright, part of him felt compelled to correct her misapprehension. “You do not know how I kiss at all.”
What about the other misapprehensions? She thinks you a gamekeeper. A single man free of commitments.
And for the remainder of the night, till sunrise, that’s exactly who he’d be.
He wanted to get them somewhere else. Inside. Out of the cold. Beyond the night. He wanted her horizontal—on a bed. Or perhaps, even vertical—against a wall. He wasn’t feeling overly particular, so vastly relieved at the return of wanting, of desire, after months of apathy. He wanted to soak his sore leg, bask in a hot bath and sleep for a week.
But a bath would delay things. And a flat surface would ruin her completely—he had not that much restraint after so long without.
But a kiss? A real one?
Just might provide the succor he needed to follow through with his unasked-for, unwanted commitments. Might give him the memories and fortitude—not to mention the confidence—to meet the unknown Miss Larchmont without doubting himself—and cursing her…
Might give him the ability to face his wedding night without seeds of disquietude sewing into choking vines about his questionable sexual efficiency. Did his body command the ability to do his duty and beget an heir?
Perhaps he would stop doubting if he possessed the experience, and therefore the vivid memory, of kissing the stubborn, shovel-wielding saucebox bold enough to ask—in a roundabout way—for a kiss.
“I do not what?” she whispered. “Have the right to seek such a thing? Forgive me, sir—” She tilted her head down. “It has been the most trying day.”