Page 117 of Always to Remember
“Then let’s make the most of it. My shoulders don’t hurt anymore—” She took his hand and laid it at the heavenly juncture of her thighs. “But other places long for your touch.”
He didn’t have to tell her he longed for her touch as well. Having a woman with experience had definite advantages. She knew when to touch him, where to touch him, how to touch him in ways he hadn’t dared imagine. She taught him how to touch her. Her moans, sighs, and small spasms pleased him as much as her hands and mouth traveling over his body.
“Come to me, Clay,” she whispered, and he plunged into her warm depths.
All the touching they’d done before had shaped the shadows of desire. Now, they moved in a rhythm that revealed the details and carved out an exquisite fulfillment that left them breathless and melded within each other’s embrace.
She sighed his name like the soughing of the wind as she trembled in his arms. He kissed the dew from her throat. “How are your shoulders now?” he asked in a low voice.
Laughing quietly, she said, “Better, much better. How are you feeling?”
He lifted his head, gazed into her blue eyes, and smiled tenderly. “I’ve never felt so good in my whole life.”
With an appreciation he hadn’t felt in a long time, Clay watched dawn ease over the horizon. The sky had never looked so blue, the fields so green.
Only a few hours of night had remained after he walked Meg home, but he had slept soundly. He thought if it had stormed while he slept, the nightmares would have stayed away.
He heard the rumble of wagon wheels and glanced over his shoulder. The beautiful dawn gave way to the dark clouds of reality. With a deep breath, he stepped off the porch to greet Kirk’s father.
The man drew the wagon to a halt and climbed down like a man of younger years. He removed his hat. His hair had turned pale blond since Clay had last seen him. He supposed losing a son could do that to a man. Mr. Warner studied the hat he was turning in his hands before he met Clay’s eyes. “My mother passed away in her sleep last night.”
Clay wished the man had just punched him in the gut. It would have hurt less than hearing the words thrown at him as though he wouldn’t give a damn. “I’m sorry.”
“I gave her my word that I’d mark her place with the headstone you made for her.”
“I can’t …”—Clay winced as he shoved his injured hand into his pocket—"I can’t carve the date, but everything else is done the way she wanted. It’s in the shed. I’ll get it for you.”
He strode past the man who’d once welcomed him into his home as he might welcome his son. Entering the shed, he walked to the table where he’d carved Mama Warner’s headstone. He trailed his fingers over the lettering that he’d cut as deeply as he could. People would still be able to read her words long after Clay was gone.
He bowed his head. Grieving was unbearable when one did it alone.
“Dear Lord,” a deep voice whispered in awe behind him.
Spinning around. Clay stared at Kirk’s father as he slowly approached the granite.
“That’s my son,” he said in a raw voice.
“Yes, sir. Mrs. Warner asked me to make a memorial in honor of those who gave their lives—”
“My wife?” His face showed disbelief.
“No, sir. Meg.”
With reverence, he stepped up onto the stool and touched his son’s face, carved in stone. “Don’t tell me this is what you were talking to her about in church.”
“No, sir. I’d misunderstood something. She was setting me straight.”
Kirk’s father slowly nodded his head. “My son and I fought the morning he left. Did you know that?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, we did. We fathers were so damn proud of our boys enlisting the way they did. You were a blight on our honor. We’d planned to lynch you that evening if you didn’t leave with them. Kirk found out. Told me if he heard you’d been hanged, he’d desert. I told him if he deserted, I’d hunt him down and shoot him for being a coward.”
He dropped his chin to his chest. “He told me I wouldn’t have to hunt him because he’d come straight to my door. My boy was going off to face death, and my final words to him were spoken in anger. I didn’t tell him I loved him, didn’t tell him how proud I was of him. All the words a father should say to his son, I let pass. Now, I can’t tell him anything.”
Wiping his eyes, he stepped down from the stool. “I talked them out of lynching you because I couldn’t bear the thought of shooting my own son.”
The man stood with slumped shoulders and a bowed head. Clay didn’t know if Kirk’s father expected him to drop to his knees and thank him for sparing his life. He didn’t know what to say, couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say. “Here’s the marker.”
