"It ain't gonna be for long, Honey Doll."
Danny brought Marylou's head up to his face, bringing her lips to his by raising the crock of his arm. Long, fine strands of honey blonde hair cascaded over his hard, tanned biceps and fanned out into the pulverized oat stalks underneath their bodies. Bodies beautifully formed by honest, hard work and healthy Nordic genes.
Having silenced her accusing objection with his hungry possession of her lips, he moved to kiss away the tears that had formed at the corner of her long-lashed eyes. He ached that he was disappointing her so. She had so little and yet gave so much and filled his world to bursting. He couldn't bear to see her sad.
Danny looked down Marylou's long-limbed, voluptuous body as it stretched out beside him on her worn- and patch-clothed powder blue sack dress in the private little den they had created with their insistent, thrashing bodies deep inside the field of harvest-ready oats. God she was beautiful. The plainness of her dress, made over a second time as it was handed down from their death beds by, first, her mother's sister, and then her mother, couldn't hide the beauty of this young woman who had given herself to him, only for the third time, just now.
She deserved only the best, Danny, thought. Gems. Diamonds. Something that competed with her indomitable luster in this unyielding, dull life on the prairie.
She had cried out in ecstasy as he entered, and filled, and stretched her to capacity and moved deep inside her. He was the best, she cried out to the glaring, cloudless sky—she'd never had any better. It mattered not that she'd never had any man at all before Danny. She had no doubts this was the best she'd ever have, this hard, hot, throbbing sword reaching for her womb. The smooth, rock-solid muscles of glorious youth enveloping her, holding her close, the two melting into one. Nothing in life was as good as her Danny covering her and spreading her legs, and invading and moving inside her to the quick, making her flow and explode. Again, and again, and again. And, most important of all, making her forget the hardscrabble farm; her defeated father, dreams as dead now as her long-suffering mother; and those sisters and brothers back at the house looking to her for all of the answers and for performing the daily miracle of finding something to put on the dinner table. Making her forget if only for these moments of sheer joy and passion.
And Danny could only regret that she was probably right—that a furtive fuck in the fields was as good as it would get for a woman from Carson County. He certainly had nothing to give her but a fuck—although he could only think of the joy she was giving him. He'd fucked the girls before, but nothing had been like this. There was nothing as beautiful and lustrous and as transcending beyond life in Carson County as Marylou.
Marylou, he whispered her name with each virile thrust. Marylou. Who likely would never see anything beyond Carson County. Marylou, moaning for him. Marylou. Who would never own anything firsthand store bought or that hadn't been worn to the grave by women before her. In, hold, swivel hips, listening for the sound of the sigh, retreat, then dig deep again. Marylou. Who would be put in an early grave herself if her pappy found she had been fucking with one of the Owen boys. Marylou. More rapid stroking, pelvises grinding together. Marylou. Who was giving herself to him without reservation. Ahhhhh. Marylou!
Well, he wouldn't let that happen. He wouldn't let Sam Yelton lay a hand on his daughter. And he wouldn't let Marylou go through life as her mother and her mother's mother had. She would have something of value from life before life aged her before her time, wore her out, put her in her grave, and sent this tired, power-blue sack dress to the next casualty of this cruel prairie existence.
An arch of her back, clawing at the oats with her fists, a deep intake and hold of breath, a deep-throated cry of electric flow. Joined by his own trembling lurch and, three quick jerks, and youth-driven strong ejaculation. Kissing her on the neck, Danny sighed and rolled off to her side. Knowing his arousal was not yet dissipated; both knowing this was but a respite; both rejoicing in that knowledge.
Danny propped his head up, elbow in oats and heel of hand tucked under his chin. He presented Marylou with his best version of contrition couched within gratefulness and awe, gave her a kiss on her pert little nose, and returned to his attempt at reassurance. "I'd be back by Christmas, Marylou. I was promised to help Uncle Joe git the threshing done. I weren't asked; Uncle Joe jist said he needed help from somewhere, and there be more Owen boys here then needed and none out there."
"But it's so far away," Marylou whispered in a small, hurt voice. "Oh, yes, yes, do that." Danny was sucking on a nipple and had taken up a couple of stalks of oats and was running them teasingly along the lines of her body, following her curves and twirling the oat heads in moist crevices.
Her voice had become stronger and taken on a thick slurring of a renewed interest Danny had quickly learned to interpret as invitation and readyness. Marylou wasn't the shy or squeamish lay he had been used to with the prissy town girls. She gave it her all, and one fuck was never enough. He continued the running of the stalks of oats across the glistening skin of her sex-flushed body. He leaned over her and blew on a nipple and marveled that it became more taunt almost instantaneously and that Goosebumps formed in ripples radiantly in all directions along her firm, plump breast.
Marylou moaned deep in the back of her throat, and Danny felt himself coming alive again. Never had he wanted to fuck a woman like he wanted to fuck Marylou. He reached down with his other hand and fanned his palm over the golden patch of curly hair in the V descending from Marylou's belly. His long, hard-callused middle finger rubbed across Marylou's clit, sending her to sighing and her skin to shimmering, as it continued its sex-slickened journey downward and inward.
Marylou arched her back and began to writhe and move her hips against the invading finger. Her arms flung up, around Danny's neck, and pulled his sucking lips back to a nipple.
"Jist promise me you'll be back for Valentine's, Danny. It's the only dance my pap will let me go to with a man."
"Yes, yes, I promise," Danny muttered between her breasts in a lust-choked voice.
"Be my man again, now, Danny. Take me away from here. Lift me up. Out of . . . this. Ohhhh!"
Marylou didn't have to say more. Danny was already crouched on his knees, between her thighs, pulling her pelvis up to him, sliding her across the tired power-blue material as she dug her fists, through mashed oat stalks, into the brittle, begrudging dirt of the prairie.
He thrust his strong, young cock forward, easily entering her already-slathered, loosened, and stretched treasure tunnel. He thrust again and again, plowing deeper with each thrust. Each slide was met with a welcoming thrust from Marylou, the two of them quickly establishing an age-old rhythm of natural impulse, joining the primeval plowing, seeding, and harvesting rhythms of the wild and beautiful but cruel and begrudging plains.
With each thrust, Danny promised something better for Marylou, and with each of Danny's thrusts, Marylou stifled a cry of joy for fear of the sound reading the forlorn, weathered farmhouse just beyond the edge of the oat field.
Marylou felt Danny stiffen and she experienced a flash of disappointment and regret. "Jist hold on. Jist hold on, Danny. Almost," she cried through clinched teeth.
Danny held, with supreme effort, and in a rush of adrenaline and flowing, the two young lovers came together. One of the few rewards of this life they could hope to attain. Something even the rich couldn't guarantee themselves.
* * *
"Are you sure that was all?" Marylou asked in a distant voice. She couldn't look up from the floor of the general store. She couldn't let Hugh see the tears forming. She had told no one but Hugh, and she hoped she hadn't let him know it all. She couldn't let it get around that she and Danny were lovers. She couldn't let any hint she was no longer pure get back to her pap at all.
But she and Danny had to let Hugh know they were at least a little sweet on each other. And it wasn't because Hugh was Danny's best friend. It was because Hugh had to be their go-between. And not only because Marylou couldn't chance having her pap see a letter from Danny. Marylou was no different from any of the other young women on the county farms. She'd never learned to read. That had never seemed to be needed by any of the rural Carson County women—except for the school marms. But they weren't exactly Carson County women. They came from somewhere and after a year or two, when the county had threatened to suck them in and wear them down too, they got back on a wagon and escaped over the county line.
"You sure he didn't say nothin' about the Valentine Dance . . . about being back by then?"
"No, I'm sorry, Marylou." Hugh said in a low soothing voice. He gently placed his hand on Marylou's arm, helping her to stand against the body blow she'd taken and couldn't quite conceal. She felt the heat of him through the thinness of the power-blue cloth. The feel of him was both frightening and reassuring all at the same time.
"He didn't mention being back by February at all. In fact, he said something about someone he'd met. He . . ." Hugh stopped stone cold. Chills started radiating down Marylou's arm, but it wasn't from any coldness Hugh was transmitting. Hugh's touch was all heat; it was only his voice that was chilling.
"Uhhh. I'm sorry, Marylou. I didn't mean to . . . oh, damn. Umm, sorry. Oh, I'm such a klutz." He had to hold Marylou up with hands on both of her arms. She was sagging at the knees.
"Yoohoo, Mr. Preston," a high, trilling voice soared from the front of the store, just barely out of sight from where Hugh and Marylou were standing. "Has that calico cloth you promised me come in yet?"
"I do believe so, Mrs. Belsam. If you'd step this way . . ." The voice of Hugh's father was drawing closer.
"Here, through that door," Hugh hissed. "You don't want them to see—"
Marylou needed no prompting. She didn't exactly move into the storeroom behind the goods floor on her own, but she didn't resist Hugh's urging voice and shuffling guidance.
They entered a dimly lit, low-roofed room, packed with stacked and boxed goods, waiting to replace whatever was selling out front. Hugh bundled Marylou back into a corner, behind stacks of feed bags, some only three or four sacks deep, but enough stacked nearly to the ceiling to conceal them from anyone coming into the storage space from the storefront.
Hugh propped Marylou against a high stack of feedbags and hugged her close to him.
