Winter Rain

But Gritta had been different from that first jump. She had come to him eagerly that second time, awakening him, every bit as hungry as he was for her, if not more so. It had startled him, perhaps even frightened him a little, to find such eagerness in this woman he had vowed to spend out his years with. He was worried too at first with what monster he had unleashed in his new wife. Yet he quickly came to enjoy and savor, to love, ultimately, that most secret person Gritta proved herself in bed with him. So quiet and strong before the rest of the world—it was like he alone knew her true self: a woman who became a ravenous temptress once they were alone beneath the covers. He loved her for it—if for no other reason than she wanted love, wanted to be loved as much as he wanted her to love him, answering his needs and hungers with the unquenchable fires of her own.

So it was they found themselves in this bed below Big Cobbler Mountain in the Shenandoah of Virginia once again. Countless miles and endless years it had taken in bringing her back here where they both began a life together standing to make their vows before the circuit rider, their families, and God Himself.

That was before they had pulled up deep family roots and resettled to Missouri with young Hattie. Before the two boys come along. Before the Yankees and Sterling Price and Pea Ridge and bloody Corinth, where he had to lie in the damp, rain-soaked forest waiting for the Yankees to find him—afraid the tremble-fingered blue-bellies would shoot him on the spot, simply because Jonah had dragged himself on his belly across a few yards of wet grass on that forest floor, crawled toward a dead Yankee to steal the young soldier’s rations. Some crumbs of hardtack and a handful of moldy salt beef. As bad as it was, Jonah had mused as he gulped it down greedily, at least the. Yankees had something to eat in this god-blamed war.

Yankees had boots and shoes too, while most of the boys Jonah marched with come along to fight the blue-bellies with an empty belly and bare, bleeding feet.

The nights had been cooling off so suddenly in those days before the battle at Corinth that Jonah had coveted the dead soldier’s boots like nothing he had ever coveted before. He took them, not without a struggle from the stiffening carcass, along with rank, torn stockings too. Not that it was hard getting those socks off the dead soldier. Just that everything was a struggle to Jonah what with the welling pain in his leg wound and the lost blood that made him faint, ready to puke with most any ounce of exertion he made.

But now it was over. His hunt for Gritta complete, and Jonah had brought her back to the Shenandoah Valley.

“Make love to me like you never have before,” she whispered to him as his left hand cupped, stroked the other breast.

“Like never before?”

“Now, Jonah—now,” she growled the words, insistent as she tightened herself around him, thrust herself up toward him, arching her back as he planted himself more firmly into her heatedness.

It drove him near crazy when she did that, never ashamed was Gritta of asking for what it was she wanted. She was so unlike what his mother had told him he was to expect of a woman on that morning before the preacher joined the young couple. So unlike what even his father had already confessed a man had right to expect of a wife and her duties to her sworn husband.

So this felt like that second time their wedding night, all over again: her crying out in pleasure as he hurled himself against her, frantically gripping her, holding her for fear their damp, sweaty bodies would slip loose and fly asunder when what he hungered for most right now was to melt together with her as one and never be apart. He was fearful with the savageness of their lovemaking that he would fling himself free of her: lose her again, if only for a moment.

That fear was something he could almost taste. Like the salty sting of the sweat he bent to lick from the crevice between her breasts.

Yet Gritta stayed with him, rocking with a fury that drove him ever higher.

“Let me feel you explode inside me, Jonah—please,” she begged at his ear, biting it tenderly, her fingers raking the back of his neck. “I want to feel your heat,” she moaned.

There was no more holding back once she did that to him. It was one command he had never been able to deny. Whereas he had spent a life of choosing what orders to obey, Jonah Hook was helpless when his woman demanded his immediate compliance.

The release came like a long-awaited volcanic shock quaking the entire Shenandoah Valley. Tingling from his belly down through his thighs, Jonah exploded in a growing crescendo of thrusts as he sought to plant himself deeper and deeper into her body—wanting never to free himself of this moistness, this heat, this joy of ultimate togetherness with her.