Blood and Iron Ch. 04

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"And you wouldn't be so quick to turn it down, neither," she pressed on, stubbornly hopeful. Her muddy gaze shimmering so beautiful at him in the middle morning light. Her fingers squeezing at his hand. "You'd let me try to find a way that we could...be. Be together. Teach me what I need to know, to make you happy."

His lips tightened, twisted up somewhere between a rictus and a smile. God, the artless promise of her words, the devil's offer from an angel's tongue...it was hard enough just to shape an answer to her euphemism, dour and faintly chiding. "You ain't got to worry about makin' me happy, Alice."

"I do." Staring plain and bold into his eyes. Her demurral high and pure, the words as clean as crystal. No trace now of the gruff façade that she so often wore. "I am. Bein' with you, pa...it makes me feel so good inside, so right. Leastwise, when you ain't callin' me a liar, or sayin' how you oughta die." Faint amusement, slender and self-conscious in her expression as she pressed up closer, just inches now away. Words breathed out quiet as a whisper. "I want you to feel the same."

James could little trust himself to answer this. Still less, as her free hand rose up to lay soft and tantalizing on his side, as he saw and heard the slight, seductive pop of moist lips once more opening to speak - her voice muddied with imploring and with a subtle cast of woe. "Pa, I know I ain't had much practice, just at...at actin' like a woman should. Sure as blazes Jack weren't the first to say it." A shadow of a smile, wry and quietly forlorn. "But I could maybe try, for you. Could buy a proper dress, have somebody put my hair up nice...even hang up the iron, maybe, if'n it's what you want." The slightest tremor to her chin, her gaze flickering between his eyes. Searching. "If that's what it takes, to be the kind'a woman you'd want to...to be with."

He should lie. He knew it, saw it, plain as day - look down stern and cold and tell her that it didn't matter what she did or how she dressed, that she could never catch his interest. That she was ugly to his eyes, a beast, a thing. Whatever hurt the words might carry, they could scarcely do more damage than the truth. It was only his own cowardice that moved his tongue, unwilling to bear the burden of her sorrow, to see those finely-crafted features crack with pain. "'ts nonsense, little rose. Ain't no need for nothin' of the kind." Slow and soft, words on the edge of guilt. Spilling outward despite himself as his hand turned in hers, squeezing soft and comforting at her long and limber fingers. "You got a fire in you 'ts prettier than any dress could ever hope to be. Prettier'n..."

A tightening of silence, confession burning in his throat. Surrendering to look at her, to meet her gaze head-on, to feel in his heartbeat all the need he'd tried so poorly to ignore. Speaking again, a husky thickness clasping at his words. "Tell the truth, I can't recall the last time I met a woman half as beautiful as you. Man who doesn't want you, doesn't love you just the way you are...I figure he ain't no man at all."

How sweet the little smile, curling almost tearful in her expression. Sparkling with sudden, lambent joy, her eyes alight with undeserved affection. Adoration...she made a sight so damned enchanting, biting softly at her lower lip, the faintest blush of red upon her cheeks. The bottom edges of her frontmost teeth peeking pearly out into the light, her daintily determined fingers stroking just a moment at his chest before she moved forward once again, erased what little space had stood between them.

Her gaze never flickered, and James could not bring himself to look away. Left instead to stare into the heaven of her eyes as her body's so-alluring curves whispered to his skin, as her hand upon his chest drifted gently to his shoulder and she pushed up careful to her toes. No question here of what she planned, of the meaning of those lightly-freckled features rising up to meet him. Those eyes so wide and clear and deep, brimming with a courage and a hope that overwhelmed the worries he could still see tightening her brow. Her pink lips gently parting, curved and supple with that enticing hint of plumpness...so clear that he should step away, push her back, refuse. That he should not permit this kiss, not allow another like that which pulsed so urgent and appealing in his memory. There could be no excuse.

And yet he was so weary of the fight. Beaten back already, to speak so candid of her beauty, of the allure no father should admit. He did not have the time to find his strength, to pull himself into the image of a decent man...a reedy voice of self-defense, protesting somewhere inside that it would not even be his fault. That none could blame him if he did nothing for himself, if it all was her idea, her action. If his only sin was that of silence.

Then her lips again were touched to his, and there was no further room to think. Working fiercer now than they had before, deliciously insistent, slippery and sweet...oh, the subtle taste of her, the spice and savor of vitality, of youth. Her breath exhaled into his lungs, warm and humid as summer bayou. The length of her exquisite body pressed up firm against him, shifting just so slightly as her neck craned up for greater contact, her mouth slipped and worried so divinely at his own, and he could little keep his hand from sliding further forward to tighten close around her back, nor stop the stirring of his loins, awakened by the moment's lustful pleasures. By the soft, unconscious sounds of satisfaction which issued from the bottom of her throat, quietly emphatic moans and whimpers that he felt as much as heard. All of his resolve was taken just to stop himself from kissing down her jawline, to the velvet elegance of her neck, from permitting his other hand to slip up beneath her shirt to caress upon the skin beneath, tug the strings of her corset towards freedom.

It was an hour later that she stopped - or perhaps it was only moments. Honeyed lips retreating just so far as to rest their edge upon his chin. Her breath tickling along his skin, warm and playful as an autumn breeze, her cheek upon his jaw, scraping softly on his few days' worth of whiskers.

"Pa." It was as fine a sound as he had ever heard, the golden feeling in that simple syllable. The brilliant hue of bliss that so infused her whisper as she held himself still close against him. "Promise me somethin'."

He couldn't nod, nor try to shake his head. Hardly even dared to speak, as much afraid of dislodging her from this repose as he was of what he might soon be agreeing to. "What's that?"

He could scarcely see her eyes, looking up at him. A tiny tinge of green at the corner of his vision, near-occluded by her lashes. "Promise me you ain't gonna talk no more about how you ought to die." Firmness, determination. That trace of iron, contrasting so enchanting with the sweetness of her voice. "Or how I'd be better off without you, or how you ain't got nothin' to live for, or...all of it."

Errant stands of rosewood hair wavered on his cheek, tickled lightly at his nose. The faintest scent of cinnamon and spice, of femininity... "All right." A murmur. There was no choice but to agree. Right now, he'd have promised anything to the girl in his arms. A golden ring, a castle, a kingdom of her own.

He could feel her smile tug up on his skin, a quiet note of joy. Her hand shifting on his back as she hugged him briefly tighter, so tender and alive. "Good." A beat of silence, then. His hand stroked slowly up her spine, her neck, weathered fingers slipping into the rusty tangle of her hair. Emotions swinging freely as a pendulum, wildly careening between the choking grip of guilt and the excited tingle of temptation. The beast of lust, rough and brutish, called up by her kiss and by her body still against him, imagining her slender bosom squeezed softly in his hands. Seeing them together in the night, skin slippery with sweat as he gave her the thing that she had said so plain she wanted, what the very marrow of his bones seemed to be urging him to give. The scent of her, the feeling of her cheek shifting slightly on his shoulder, drifting down to nestle closer on his chest...where was the wrong of it, if it was only her desire?

It was a conflicted kind of blessing when at last she pulled away, left him standing there with knees a trace unsteady. Half a smile glowing joyous on her lips, and her eyes gleaming with the faintest sheen of tears. "C'mon, now," her hand grasping for his as they somewhat disengaged, dirty nails scratching at his calloused palm. "I figure you'll maybe heal up better if you keep movin'."

But she was soon pressed up again upon his side as they once more began to walk together. Her shoulder there beneath his arm, his hand held tight in hers, the way that it had been when she helped support him to her horse, worked so hard to save his life...he little was surprise to hear her murmur there beneath his ear. "I love you, pa." Softer now, though the silver words still echoed with a power that was far beyond their force. Resonating in his soul. "I do. Don't hardly care who knows it. And we...once you're well again, we can work this out. Can put things all together the way they oughta be, like you was never gone at all. And you..." Her voice was like a dream. "You can maybe teach more about the other half of life."

So powerful a promise, poisonous and sweet. James just walked beside, not trusting his tongue to speak for the ache of contradiction in his nerves. Want and remonstration, the deep tugging of desire at war against the cold reserve of judgement. And a certain sick suspicion that it scarcely mattered in which way he leaned, if he fought or just surrendered - that there was no objection he could raise, no obstacle he could erect which would be too much for this girl. That if he in fact had died, she would just have rode on down to hell, fought the devil for his soul and dragged him back to life.

---

The next few days would be a kind of stand-off, a lingering twilight between the darkness of his lust and the flame he clutched so desperate of affection still paternal. There was safety in the daylight - more or less, anyhow, puttering around the villa or in the town, while he waited for the dull ache in his belly to subside. Alice there beside him like a shadow...but even if his body was aware of hers, even if she insisted to slip up soft beneath his arm and walk with him as though the two were long-accustomed lovers, there was litle that could truly happen while he stuck to public places, while he could call upon propriety to buttress his restraint.

The nights, though, were another matter. Laying in the dark and warm beneath the covers, his daughter squeezed up cozily against him, nearly naked...even were there nothing more, the vileness inside him would have roused itself to this, insinuated its temptations deep inside him mind. Whispered wordless how he ought to tear her from her meagre wrappings, grab hold of those delicious thighs and pull them wide. Forge his way into that tangled crimson garden that he'd briefly glimpsed and sate himself upon her sweetness. Satisfy the rutting instinct that pounded deep and primal in his skull, feel her firm and youthful body squirm and stretch around the straining of his manhood, her lovely legs wrapped tight around his waist as he unleashed on her the passion and the need that he'd been damming up inside...

Far too easy to slip into such fancies, laying there beside her in the night. Knowing distantly the fact that hovered somewhere still beyond acceptance, that she would neither scream nor fight if he surrendered to his lust, that she would even welcome it...it was a truth that had no answer, a puzzle piece without a place. Hours of reflection - even, tentative, of prayer - had given him no better plan than just to act as though it were not true, as though any slip of his desire would bring from her the horror that it ought. As though she would forever hate him if he conceded just to turn in her direction, let his throbbing hardness to brush upon her thigh. It was a war inside him, and there could be no accomodation, no quarter given. Any compromise would soon collapse upon itself, leading to a sin that could never be undone. To steal his daughter's innocence...the reminder of the crime that stood before him was enough for now to stiffen his resolve, though he did not often try to think the words so plainly, lest repetition sap them of their strength. He was already weak enough, facing just his own desires.

For there was then the other battle, the one he did not even dare to fight. The one he'd lost the moment she had slipped into his bed, softe and lithe and winsome, and he had not found the will to leave or kick her out. Inaction was the height of his control; he could not go further to refuse her, could not tell her 'no.' And in the past few nights, she had taken to this lenience with a growing boldness. Laying sometimes half upon him, one arm thrown possessive across his chest, her long and slender legs sliding down to interlace with his. Her foot, her dainty toes, rubbing absently along the inside of his calf as his mind fixated to the feeling of her pubis pressed upon his upper thigh, separated by just the worn red flannel of his underclothes and by her own brief drapery of cotton. Or, what was harder still to take, when she would grab his hand...

He almost wondered if she meant it as seduction, for all that such a thing did not seem to be her style. Her nimble fingers curling firm around the backside of his unresisting hand, moving it to touch and slide upon her skin...a dark blessing for the beast inside him, a fulfillment of the wants that his conscience would not permit him to pursue. His fingers sliding slow across her body, soaking in her warmth, the feeling of her flesh made only more alluring in his uncertainty of where his hand would travel next. Resting gentle at the swanlike slimness of her neck, feeling there the subtle pulse of blood coursing just beneath the skin. Dropping down along her chest to lightly cup at the soft swell of her breast, three fingers sitting on the sturdy cloth of her corset while his thumb and forefinger lay ecstatic in the modest overflow above. Descending further still to light upon her narrow waist, her fingers slipping briefly free to squeeze his tightly closed above her hip...and such a flood of feeling sent to babble senseless in his mind. Ownership, conviction, the voice of primal instinct insisting she was his, that he should take her, claim her, allow no other man to know her beauty.

Madness. He knew it was, swore at himself savage in his mind - but that did not slow the eager pounding of his heart, did not still the thoughtless driving of desire that battered what was left of his restraint. So hard to remember in these moments even why it was that it was wrong. Especially as she moved his hand again upon her body, brought it trailing slowly upwards like a lingering caress, climbing on the subtle curves and valleys of her form. Brushing on her slim, athletic belly, the solidity of practiced muscle veiled with a slight softening of fat. Trailing up along the well-worn fabric of her corset, her chest, her neck, the rounded pertness of her chin, rising gently to her mouth...and holding there, enraptured.

His thumb was lightly touched to the bottom of her narrow jaw, his index finger laid down between the pillows of her lips, warm and moist and yielding. Slightly parting - his finger slipped in slowly deeper towards the heaven of her mouth, christened with the wetness there within. All his awareness fastened to that solitary digit as it felt the subtle scraping of her teeth, the fleeting presence of her tongue...it was so tentative at first, brushing almost guelty there upon the fleshy bottom of his finger, light and evanescent as an angel's kiss. Tasting of him, as a rattler tastes the air, a moment's touch of wet and velvet warmth.

If he closed his eyes, there was nothing in the world but the feeling of his finger's slow advance between her lips, no time in which to measure the quiet explorations of her soft and loving tongue. Just the blood that pounded hot inside his veins, hazy in his mind. An instant or an hour there before she let his fingertip to pass inside the corner of her lips, before at last this tiny part of him was sealed so sweetly there within. Her tongue now seeming unafraid, bold enough to wetly play upon his skin, to paint about his knuckle, soft and attentive, as a gentle suction puckered at her cheeks and shivered up his nerves.

That was where they were that night. An almost hum of slightly nervous bliss, buzzing bright in Alice's mind as she softly suckled at her father's fingertip, explored amidst the faint tracery of lines and spirals, imagining that she could feel them on her tongue. Shivering hot somewhere deep inside her at the feeling, the solidity and thickness of his finger pushed between her lips, halfway filling up her mouth. Soaking in the richness of his flavor, the subtlety of sweat and oils, the fulfilling bitterness of trail dust worn deep into his skin...the taste of him sat warm and thrilling at the center of her mind, her body set ablaze with the fevered dreams that it invoked.

Silent. Always silent in these nights - she never knew what words to speak, to ask for what a proper woman wouldn't want. The fumbling attempts she'd made before sounded foolish in her memory, humiliating. It was easier by far to simply take his hand in hers, to bring it down across her body to all the places which hungered for his touch...or almost all, anyway. Anxiously at first, afraid at any moment that he would rip his hand away, tell her stern and frowning that she was wrong to act so foward, that he had stood for it too long, that he was disgusted with her presumption.

But he didn't. Only lay down there beside her on the bed, as silently as she, breathing sometimes just a little faster as she held his palm against her breast. Her heart beating eagerly beneath, whispering carelessly excited of how much finer it would be if she'd only taken off her thick corset, if she could feel his roughened fingers squeezing bare upon her skin...the hope was stronger than the fears, urging her forward night by night, and as he stayed still quiet through it all she began to think perhaps they didn't need the words. That this was even how such things were meant to be, finding pleasure from his hand and from his presence until the night at last that he was taken by desire, and brought her hazy dreams to life.

If she could stand to wait so long. An open question - for every mote of pleasure that she found here at his side, every drop of satisfaction that she wrung from his finger thick and sopping in her mouth, there was an equal weight of yearning, of longing yet to be fulfilled. The smoky heat she carried, the wordless itch that burned from down beneath her belly...it was only stronger in these last few days, fanned into a conflagration by the teasing tingle of his touch. The frustrated ache she felt no longer even ending - she would be with him in the daylight, in plain and public view, when the sun would kiss upon his brow or cast a sculpted shadow on the grave and manly shaping of his jaw, and suddenly her cheeks would flush with color, her mouth go dry, her knees fall weak beneath her. The flame that nestled there between her hips flare up abruptly higher, dizzy and demanding, and she could only press up against his side and think about the night before, the evening still to come.

Such as tonight. His finger slipped into her mouth almost to the second knuckle, his presence warm against her...and her thighs rubbing slow together, squeezing out from one another a steady trickle of sensation, trembling and sweet. Dripping like the juices from an orange. And yet it still was not enough to slake her body's thirst, to satisfy the need that pulsed and whimpered so insistent from her center. The void inside her, aching to be filled.