Free The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland Page A

no boats. He wasn’t there. Her lungs stung with cold brine. She’d said no and no, and now that she might say yes a little, he wasn’t there. She huddled against the tent to stay out of the wind and waited an hour. Two. She smoked four cigarettes, and watched the moving pattern of whitecaps. Wind lifted the feathers on the backs of black gulls and snapped the tent like a lightning crack.
    At dusk his boat chugged into the cove, towing the skiff full of crates. A cry rushed out of her throat. She flung herself toward the water’s edge.
    â€œMademoiselle Courageuse!” he called, smiling with all his might as he climbed out of the skiff, dragged it on shore, and bent her head back kissing her, all in one smooth movement. He drew her into the tent. No stories this time. And no furs in the tent. They’d all been sold. Instead, there were stacks of blankets for northern villages. How much longer would he be here?
    He dropped to his knees and rubbed her hands warm, made a nest of blankets, rubbed some more, her arms, her thighs, briskly, his eyes deep and limpid.
    â€œWhy didn’t you come inside the tent to stay warm?”
    â€œI wanted to see your boat the minute it came. And to show you I’m not afraid of cold up north.”
    He raised one eyebrow. “Up north?”
    His eyes told her he knew she was different than she’d been the day before. He yanked off his moleskin shirt. She stared at his shoulders and chest shaped by years of rowing. His hands on herface, her neck, her shoulders urged her to lie back. His face, a tawny moon, came down to her. He whispered in French. She threaded her fingers through his hair. His lips parted hers. He cupped her breast. “Round and full,” he murmured. A quiver ran through her somewhere new, low, deep, and she was overcome by a moist presence. She felt his other hand under her skirt sliding between her knees.
    â€œLike a salmon swimming up river, no?”
    There will be thrust and tearing and blood. She clamped her legs shut.
    He stopped, waited, kissed her. “Comme ça. Doucement.” The words, his voice, gentle.
    She trusted, relaxed her legs, and opened herself. They rolled together as if at sea until something else stopped her. Not Father. Grimmer than Father. She pushed against Claude’s chest, his hair coarse under her palms.
    â€œDon’t tease me,” he said huskily.
    â€œI’m sorry. I don’t mean to.” Any second she would cry, right in front of him. She ducked out of the tent and scrambled up the incline. She looked back, hating herself for being wishy-washy.
    He stood at the tent opening, shirtless, hands on his hips, and shouted into the wind, “If you go now, mademoiselle, don’t come back!”
    â€¢ • •
    Dumbly, she watched sheets of rain slide down her window the next day. Like liquid glass, she thought. Water poured out of the eaves troughs. Sitting on her bed, she fed dog biscuits to Billy, one at a time, and looked into his loving brown eyes. He’d begun to worship her, but probably only for the treats.
    If you go now, mademoiselle, don’t come back. Mademoiselle—the word he’d said so playfully had turned ugly. He didn’t even say her name. Father might have clamped shut her body, yes, but not her heart. She couldn’t deny the sting of Claude’s last words.
    She tried to become absorbed in painting the cove and camp from her sketches, yet something stopped her each time, just as it had with him. That panic was ridiculous at her age. But now it wasn’t fear of the act of love. It was how the act might make her live, as Mother had, worshiping, a minion to a god, never having asingle desire of her own that didn’t fit with Father’s plan. That was the grim thought that had stopped her.
    The day after Father’s brutal telling, when Mother had told her to meet him at James Bay Bridge to walk the last stretch home from work