The Widow's Bargain

At first, he had been before her whether waking or sleeping, always gently adoring. More recently, her need for a man’s arms and kisses was so strong that she could scarcely tell whether it was Robbie who called to her or whether it was her own body crying out to be reminded of what it was missing, some of which she had never experienced. No man had held her since her loss, except for today, nor had she wanted one to except in the deepest seclusion of the night when the vibrations came silently to overpower her with a craving that left her trembling, ashamed and weeping.

Her first half-sleep was broken and confused by a blur of remorseless questions without answers, most of them concerning a large and commanding figure that stalked into each jumbled scene, restraining her, taking her offer with a staggering self-assurance. It would mean no more to him than some light relief on his journey, a trophy to flaunt after a successful raid. But vague notions of what this threatened intimacy would mean to her were, in the darkness of her longings, not as clear-cut as she had made them sound at the time of her bargaining, and then there was little more than a token sign of those sacred memories of Robbie as they became alarmingly confused with indecent curiosity.

Barely inside the boundaries of sleep, a warmth spread comfortingly across her back. Was it Sam? Or Biddie? Or Robbie? His knees tucked beneath hers, curving her into his lap and cradling her into a deeper sleep. Later, she turned and felt her head being lifted gently to rest in the crook of his shoulder, pulled closer to his body, enfolded by his warm arms with her naked breasts against his chest, her hair lifted away, her forehead brushed by his lips. As it had so often done, her leg moved over to rest on top of his, and she heard her breathing change to the ragged gasps of craving that invariably left her desolate, alone, and whimpering in her sleep. This time, however, his comfort stayed with her until a peace came to replace the dream without waking her.