Free Vows by Lavyrle Spencer Page B

pleating and turned sharply away from Charles, displeased with herself. "Oh, that sounds so self-indulgent, and I don't want to be that way. Really, I don't."
      "Emily." He took her shoulders and pivoted her around to face him. "You'll like housework better when the house is your own."
      She stared into his familiar eyes and answered frankly, "I doubt it, Charles."
      Disappointment touched his face, then he swallowed and asked in a pained voice, "Why do you fight it so? How many more times will I have to ask?"
      "Oh, Charles…" She shrugged free of his touch and placed her plate in the hamper.
      "No, don't avoid the issue again." He set the hamper aside and moved closer to her, face-to-face, hip-to-hip. "I want to marry you, Emily."
      "You want to marry a woman who's just admitted she hates housework?" She forced a chuckle, unable to meet his gaze. "What kind of wife would I make?"
      "You're the only one I've ever wanted." He took her by both arms. "The only one," he repeated softly.
      At his words her eyes lifted. "I know, Charles, but with Mother ill I don't think—"
      "You've just said Fannie is coming to take care of her, so why must we wait? Emily, I love you so…" His caresses became more insistent. "I rattle around in that great big house of mine wishing you were in it with me. I built it for you, don't you know that?"
      She did know, and it added to her sense of obligation.
      "I want you in it … and our children," he pleaded in a low, throaty voice, transferring his hands to her shoulders, rubbing his thumbs over her collarbones.
      "Our children?" she repeated, feeling a shaft of panic at the thought. Taking care of a stableful of horses she could handle, but she felt totally unprepared for motherhood. Another thought came and a blush warmed her chest and rose to her cheeks. She tried to imagine herself begetting children with Charles but could not. He was too much like a brother for it to be seemly.
      "I want children, Emily, don't you?"
      "Right now I want a certificate of veterinarian medicine much more than I want children."
      "All right—a year, two years. How long will it take you to get it? We'll wait to get married until you've finished your course. But in the meantime, we'll announce that we're betrothed. Please say yes, Emily." As he lowered his face toward hers he repeated in a whisper, "Please…" Their mouths touched as he drew her close, raised one knee, and lay her in the crook of his lap. She felt her breast flatten against his chest, and his arms slip to her back. His hands spread upon it and began moving. His elbow brushed the side of her breast and sent a spear of reaction to its tip. Goosebumps shivered up her nape, which he circled with his fingers. She rested a palm on his breast and felt his heart ramming against it, and wondered—if she waited long enough, would the same thing happen to her own?
      Then Charles did the most unexpected thing. He opened his lips and touched her with his tongue, holding absolutely still everywhere else, waiting for her re action. The warm wet contact sent a jolt of fire to her extremities. He rode his tongue along the seam of her lips, wetting them as if to dissolve some invisible stitches holding them sealed. She forgot about the prickliness of his mustache as he touched her teeth, drew wider circles, inscribing upon her a message that seemed shocking. Yet her virgin body hearkened to it. Curiously, timidly, her tongue reached out to touch him, too. She felt the difference in him immediately. He shuddered, and expelled a great gust of breath against her cheek, and held her hard against him while their tongues tasted each other for the first time and increased their ardor in a great, grand rush.
      This, then, was the forbidden, the reason for all the veiled warnings, a thing only husbands and wives were supposed to do. His head began moving, his mouth opened wider, and his hands caressed her waist, her spine. She allowed it,