take me home, country road
[ao3]
You have nothing on your person apart from a hastily packed suitcase and the dress you came into town wearing, on the run from trouble back home. Too bad John's missing a bride that matches your description.
Or: the 1800s (mistaken) mail order bride au (chapter 14)
first chapter >> last chapter
-
It’s you for once crawling over him in the dead of night and stroking your hand down the side of his face.
Any other night, you would be able to brush off the urge to curl yourself around him and press your lips into the bristly corner of his jaw, but after a long day of waiting and worrying, and a week’s worth of pent up stress and guilt, you have no choice but to succumb to your urges. It’s burrowed so deep inside of you that it’s almost a base need now. You need to be as close to him as possible.
John coaxes you to bed once you finish bandaging his hands. It’s not meant presumptively; you can tell from the deep bags under his eyes that he needs sleep more than anything.
For a spell, you sleep with the comfort of your husband by your side. After a week of keeping to your side of the bed, body stiff to keep from turning over in your sleep and curling up into his—committed, in your ire, to punishing both him and yourself—you relish the opportunity to snuggle up under his arm.
The ache between your legs only becomes unmanageable somewhere around the middle of the night. You wake in a daze, sweating profusely, cheek pressed to a hard chest that rises and falls with his breaths. It takes a moment for the fog to clear, but once it does you realize that you’ve rolled on top of him, legs spread on either side of a thick thigh and your sex pressed tight to the muscle, your hips undulating.
Your lips part enough for your tongue to slip out and wet them. Another wave of need washes over you, making your breath come out ragged. Your vision is still spotty, sleep half-crusted into the folds of you, and with the room still ensconced in darkness, no amount of blinking ever clears it out.
The air around you feels hot and humid; your skin sticks to his when you lift your head up, your face damp with sweat. John’s hand is loose at your bottom, curved under a cheek to hold you to him. The other is nestled against the small of your back. Your shift is drawn up around your waist, likely riding up when you crawled over your husband in the middle of the night, but it means that only the thin fabric of your underwear is pressed against John’s thigh. Every roll of your hips rubs your clit in just the right way.
You pant against his chest when you roll your hips again. You’d be humiliated if he woke up to see you humping his leg like a puppy, but you can hardly control yourself. In the month since marrying him, you’ve grown accustomed to a certain amount of relief at your husband’s hands, and to suddenly lose that in one fell swoop has left you, for lack of a better word, frustrated.
“Hmm…darlin’…” John suddenly groans, hand gripping into the flesh of your backside and grinding your sex down against his leg.
You still at the sound of his voice, biting back your moan when he shifts his thigh and presses it up into you. He wakes gradually, blinking down at you when you peer up at him. The blood rushes under your cheeks, growing hot when he blinks at you again slowly, realization unfurling behind his eyes like a lotus flower blooming under moonlight.
“I’m sorry, I’m just…” you whisper, choking back a moan again when his hand slides down your bottom and in between your legs, fingers rubbing against the wet seam of your cunt.
John chuckles, the sound raspy with sleep. “Christ, honey, you’re wet…should’ve told me you needed a good fucking.”
“You n-needed to sleep,” you say, gasping into his chest when John strokes his fingers up and down between your thighs. The sensation is mildly dulled by the fabric covering your center, but his prodding fingers make you jolt anyway.
“Darlin’, If I’d known, I never would’ve let you go to bed wanting.”
He maneuvers you onto your side for long enough to let him draw your underwear down your legs before rolling over onto his back again and balancing you over his lap. With your knees on either side of his hips, your cunt is spread wide open for his gaze, the soft, dewy folds parting to expose your slick center.
Words are silken in your head and they slide from side to side as you watch John lift his hips and reach down to pull himself out. He moves with a practiced ease, but the flush high on his cheeks betrays his eagerness. You run your hands through the pelt on his chest as you stare at the glistening tip of his member poking out the top of his grip.
“We’ve never done this,” you remark, almost a casual observation. Despite your heart beating rabbit-quick, the words aren’t caught behind your tongue. Instead, John's presence acts like a balm, nervousness bleeding away to anticipation.
“First time for everything, isn’t there?”
“I suppose,” you murmur, eyes locked on the turgid length that he notches against your entrance, impaling you on it so slowly that it almost doesn’t register at first.
You feel the stretch when he bottoms out though. The last inch comes all at once, winding you. It is a frightening, soaring sensation; a blunt intrusion that takes you to another place. No pleasantries this time because you’re an old hat at this now, you suspect, but still you gasp when his girth stretches you beyond what you recalled.
“Fuck…there it is,” John grunts, transferring his hands to your waist. “Christ, tightened right up since we last made love, didn’t you, sweetheart?”
His words, while crass, hold true. You can feel every throbbing inch of him.
“It’s not like—” you pant, squeezing your eyes shut for a moment, sweat beading around your hairline. “I wasn’t about to, ah… fool around with anybody else.”
“‘Course you wouldn’t, darlin’,” he croons, stroking his hand up your side. “We just had a little spat, is all. I know you’re my good girl.”
His words make you clench up tight, drawing a rumbling groan out of him.
“N-no, I’m not a good…—I’m just…it just wouldn’t be right. We’re married. I’d—I’d never…” The words come out shaky, punched out because he takes that moment to help guide you up, nearly pulling out of you completely before bringing you back down.
“Knew you were my good girl soon as I saw you,” John muses, his voice low and husky, hands gripped tight at your waist. “Couldn’t wait to make you mine. Wasn’t even supposed to marry you right away—thought we’d get to know each other a bit, but then—”
“You—oh, unf—you dragged me to the courthouse.”
He smiles roguishly. “I couldn’t let you go after I saw you. Had to make you mine, darlin’.”
You ride him carefully at first, unsure of yourself.
It’s strenuous work taking his cock this way, doing all the heavy lifting yourself. You almost think you’d fight him if you weren’t lost in pleasure, eyes defocusing as you stare down at him. Each time you impale yourself on his length, your breath hitches out of you. A sharp oh, oh, oh; chasing something elusive that wants you after it.
When your thighs feel strained to the point of burning, you beg him to hurry up. Enough, you blubber, the word almost subsumed into a guttural moan. That makes him grit his teeth, a dark look coming over his face. You hiccup when he plants his feet against the bed and his hips buck up into you, the squelch of your own cunt making your fingers dig into his chest hair.
All you can do is take it, your hands planted on his chest and jaw dropping open on a moan that you can’t hold back.
Tears clumping your eyelashes together, a single drop landing in the middle of John’s chest when he forces you all the way down on his cock and holds you there, jiggling the pearl at the apex of your sex with his thumb until you almost struggle to pull away. He always has to fight you through an orgasm, the stubborn thing trapped behind your teeth, begging him to use you how he wants.
When it hits you though, it’s sharp and hot. It makes you reel backwards, your control slipping out of your grasp so suddenly that the sharp buck of his hips nearly knocks you clean off. He holds you down tight though, keeping you impaled on his shaft.
“There we go,” John rasps. “That wasn’t so hard, huh?”
After making you come, he rolls you over until your back is pressed against the bed and he hovers over you, nestled between your thighs. He drops down until his face is buried in your neck, a big arm wedging under your back and hooking over your shoulder, the other sliding under your low back and clutching your waist. When he thrusts into you, you realize with a start that he has you locked to his chest. You aren’t going anywhere.
“Christ, keep squirming like that,” John growls into your neck, sucking at the sweaty patch of skin between your neck and shoulder.
Each thrust knocks the air out of you. Where your skin isn’t slick with sweat, you itch. Overwhelmed by touch and taste. Teeth clacking when his hips speed up, driven into a frenzy by his own urge to come. And again, there’s nowhere for you to run, not with his arms wound tight around you, all of his strength concentrated on holding you to his chest. You don’t think anyone could pry him off you.
“I’m gonna—I’m gonna—” you gasp, feeling it brewing under your skin again. The feeling makes you panicky this time though. He’s made you come plenty of times, but never in such quick succession.
The pitch of your moans goes breathy and high, rising to nearly a caterwaul.
He licks into the shell of your ear. “Got a little tighter there, sweetheart. Gonna give me another?”
You can’t answer him. Only intelligible babbling, a high, reedy plea whistled through your teeth. Your hands rake down his back, scoring red lines into the skin, and clutching helplessly, trying to both pull him closer and push him away. It’s almost too much, too soon.
“Almost there, almost there,” he pants, the sweat on his brow dripping down onto your face. It nearly drips into your eye. You wish he’d pull back and kiss you, sooth the panicked staccato of your heart, but he’s lost in his own need, bucking into you like a beast. “C’mon, give me it, sweetheart. Be a good girl.”
You’re on the precipice of it, hanging on with clawed hands dug into the muscle of his back. In danger of tipping over, a gale at your back. The intensity frightens you though. You cling to him like digging your hands into the earth to root you in place.
John’s arms tighten around you as he nears his end. You feel compressed, choked, only a warm slippery thing for him to plant his seed in.
His breath is hot in your ear when he rasps, “Where the fuck are your manners, darlin’? I said, give me it.”
Then he arches into it, spine going stiff when he empties himself into your cunt. His arms squeeze all the air out of your lungs. You must come more than once, a record, because by the time he pulls out of you, you practically sink into the bed, sapped of energy. Not enough strength to even twitch a finger.
John collapses onto the bed beside you, tugging you into his chest. It feels so intimate, lying on your side with a leg draped over John’s hip. You shiver when the sweat begins to cool.
He drags a finger through your puffy, raw sex from the back, scooping up his essence with two fingers. You go cross-eyed when he pushes it back into you, hissing and pushing against his shoulders, trying to dislodge him from between your legs. John doesn’t budge; his eyes barely even flick down to meet yours as he pushes more of his spend back into your hole.
Your chest goes tight at that.
After, he sits you upright with your back to his chest and holds a glass of water up to your lips, making you drink until it dribbles down your chest. A big hand rests on your belly.
“Why do you like touching there?” you ask, taking another sip.
“This is where my babe will sit,” he says, and you choke on your water, coughing until your lungs are clear and your eyes water. “Soon, with any luck.”
“You sure know what you want,” you wheeze, eyes still watering from your coughing fit.
He presses a kiss into your hair. “That I do.”
Two days later, John wakes you up with the news that an incident on a farm a few towns over will take him from you for the next few days.
You frown into your oatmeal. “Why so long?”
He sits at the table across from you with his chair pushed out, scraping off the mud caked on his boots with a dry brush. He sucks his cheek when you ask that question.
“Bit unpleasant to bother you with the specifics, darlin’, but, uh…suffice it to say that it’s not something we can wrap up in just one day.”
“Did someone die?” you ask bluntly.
John looks over at you from the corner of his eye, unimpressed. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Was it violent?”
“Jesus Christ, woman, you don’t need to go poking your nose into all of that.”
You roll your eyes at that. If he knew even a fraction of the things you’ve seen, he wouldn’t be nearly so askance at the thought of upsetting your delicate constitution. “But it’ll keep you there for some time?”
He nods. “At least a couple days. Maybe more. There’s matters to be dealt with, arrests to be made…won’t be easy work.”
“Is Simon accompanying you?”
“Both him and Kyle. I’m leaving Soap behind to keep the peace.”
“So you’re expecting to come back to the town in complete disarray then?”
John laughs at that, a big bellowing sound that makes you flinch and then warms your belly with delight.
Summer is well on its way to being flush with itself now. Katydids in the bushes outside whistle and burr, a raspy, percussive sound. Long strands of high cirrus clouds stretch across the clear blue sky. Spiders weave thick webs into the corners of the windows on the outside of the house, thin, filamentous strands of silk woven over each other until it’s a dense, compact web. Even the sound of the bees buzzing through the air sets you at ease.
The sound of your husband’s laughter seems to carry all of that in it, all of the fat, flushed joy of summertime.
“I might need a list of what to take care of around the house while you’re gone. I’ve never…I’ve never managed a house on my own before,” you say into your oatmeal, taking another bite.
You don’t know why it embarrasses you to admit that. John may not know about your previous circumstances just yet—you’ve never divulged stories of your time working at the estate or the years you spent living with your aunt and uncle—but he must certainly have guessed by now that you didn’t own property back east.
“The boys and I aren’t heading out from here; gotta meet them in town to settle a couple of things first, but that wouldn’t take too long.” He takes a long sip of coffee before continuing. “Planned on asking Soap to check on you a couple times while I’m gone. He could help with the chores.”
Your irritation flares up at that. You put down your spoon sharply, the metal clanging against the porcelain bowl. “Do you still think I’m going to run away?”
He cocks an eyebrow at that, but doesn’t respond.
“So nothing’s changed then, even after I’ve already apologized. You still don’t trust me,” you sigh, your appetite suddenly gone. You push the bowl away from you, taking a sip of coffee instead.
John sighs. You glance down at his hands instead of looking up into his eyes. His hands are still lightly ink-stained from reading the paper. The ink imprints onto your hand when he pulls his chair in and reaches across the table to lace your fingers together.
“You might just see my concern for what it is, instead of fighting me at every turn,” he drawls.
“Suppose I should say thank you then. I really appreciate being kept under lock and key,” you deadpan.
“Oh, and I suppose you’ve done so much to prove that you’re the staying type?” he teases.
“I’m still here, aren’t I?”
“By my count, you’ve tried to run off twice. You sayin’ you won’t go for three?”
You stay mulishly silent, again going cold instead of deigning to have a conversation with the man. Your hand pulls from his grasp when you go to clean the table, taking the plates with you to the sink to wash. The brisk scrub and rinse betrays your mood, your shoulders tense with displeasure. You feel his gaze heavy on you from where he still sits at the table.
John catches you before you have a chance to skitter off, hooking an arm around your waist to reel you in.
“I never get off easy with you, do I?” he murmurs.
You harrumph, scrunching your nose when he nuzzles into the side of your head. Squawking when he plants a wet kiss there too.
John sees you off at the door with a kiss to your lips and then one to your forehead. His farewell kiss always seems to linger, as though he were reluctant for it to ever end. A disconcerting ache in your belly follows his departure. More than anything, you wish he’d turn back around and come home. Instead, you’re forced to bite your tongue and watch him leave because there are things more important than your desperate, cloying need for attention from a man that you once swore you’d run away from if given half a chance.
Now, as you stare at the shadow of him disappearing beyond the horizon, you can barely force your feet to take you back into the house.
The ache is a perturbing reminder of the seeds of trust and affection you’ve planted here. Now, they’ve begun to sprout, the buds opening up to tender, fragrant flowers. Those are the thoughts that occupy your mind when you go into the garden to harvest the lettuce heads and tomatoes. You think about all of this while staring down into the garden that John started so very long ago and now you tend. The earth here yields in abundance, but it requires a sure hand, and it rewards your joint efforts with a harvest that’ll last you through the winter if properly cultivated.
Part of you anticipates company, waiting for Kate or Soap to come down the path on horseback, but when hours pass and neither show up, you have to admit to yourself that perhaps John hasn’t left a guardian to watch over you this time. Your heart trips over itself at the thought.
Trust is a precious, easily spoiled gift. You know it is not given lightly, and you’ve not put in the effort to engender it in recent weeks. You wonder if John wrestled with the decision to leave you alone, weighing your hurt feelings against the assurance of keeping you at home and found the latter wanting for once.
You spend the better part of the morning gardening and cleaning. It muffles the longing. It’s entirely antithetical to the way you waited for John during the train robbery, but the different circumstances have you less on edge. The situation doesn’t seem as precarious. Never free of trouble, of course, but John hadn’t seemed too worried at breakfast, so you tell yourself that you shouldn’t worry either.
In fact, finding some way to occupy yourself proves the greater challenge. You hadn’t realized how much you’d grown to expect the company of others. The silence swells to a bubble that you itch to burst.
It takes a great deal of courage to talk yourself into riding Buttercup into town. You hold the reins so tight that your knuckles ache when you finally let go. Still, when the sun-bleached town comes into view and you no longer need to swat repeatedly at the horseflies pestering you, you celebrate the little victory.
You find Kate in the saloon enjoying a little brandy with lunch. Her eyes crinkle at the sight of you.
“Didn’t expect to see you here so soon,” she says when you take a seat across from her.
“I couldn’t clean the house for a third time,” you shrug.
It’s not an exaggeration. You spent the better part of the morning yesterday scrubbing the floors and sweeping the leaves and mud from the foyer, paying special attention to the caked mud on the sill, where John has a habit of wiping off his boots. You’ll have to remember to pick up a mat for the porch on the way back home.
“You just missed my company so?” Kate teases.
You roll your eyes. “Who else do I have to talk to?”
“Well, don’t flatter me too much.”
“Anyway—no one, well…no one understands me…quite the same.” You speak evasively because you’re still too much of a coward to just say it outright. Nevertheless, Kate understands, and nods with a gleam in her eye that says as much.
“Probably best to keep it that way.”
You don’t know why her words make your chest ache. For a beat, you keep silent, ordering a drink and a small meal for yourself from a passing waiter.
“I’ve considered…telling John,” you start, a hesitant thread in your voice begging to be unraveled.
Kate glances up at that. “Why would you do something like that?”
“I thought that maybe…well, maybe he might understand…if I explained the circumstances to him.”
Her hand stills over her glass, face screwed up like she’s tasted something particularly unpleasant. “Seems like a dangerous game to play—risking your freedom on a maybe. It’s better to keep private matters just that. Private.”
Worry makes you wring your hands under the table. “You think he’d turn me in if he knew?”
Kate shrugs. “John’s a good man. He’s a good sheriff too. It’s a risky gambit. I can’t imagine what the trade off would be—I happened to find out by chance, but if you have the option to let buried dogs lie, I would take it.”
“Isn’t it ‘let sleeping dogs lie’?”
Her smile is not cruel, but it cuts. “Not in this case, hun. ‘Fraid we both know that.”
“Oh,” you murmur.
Her lack of faith leaves you at a loss. It takes you so long to come to terms with it that by the time you open your mouth again, you’re halfway back to the shop, following her step for step. Dark clouds loom ominously off in the distance, just far enough away that you don’t expect for them to reach town for another hour or so, but the sight of them compounds the somber mood you’ve fallen into since Kate’s words.
You don’t bring up the subject again until the rain begins to fall outside, slate grey like a gauzy veil. From the window, you peer down the street towards where Buttercup stands under the roof of the sheriff’s office, shielded from the rain. You stare morosely at the dirt ground; the rain will make walking anywhere after a hassle.
Kate must notice the general air of malcontent hovering around you because she apologizes to you when the ensuing silence from the morning’s conversation becomes unbearable. “Now, I don’t want you to think I hold John in poor esteem, hun. He’s a good man; I have no reason to think he’d ever turn you in for putting down the man that tried to…well, the man that tried to do you harm. I just don’t want you to regret your decision if I’m wrong.”
You shrug, bad mood not in the least assuaged. “It’s fine. It was a foolish idea. Why invite trouble when I’ve escaped it thus far?”
She doesn’t seem reassured at that. If anything, her scowl deepens. Instead of addressing it, you offer to help clean the shop, sweeping the back room and dusting the shelves. There are items on the shelves that look like they haven’t been touched in years, and you wonder whether Kate holds onto things after they’ve outlived their usefulness out of habit or an unwillingness to part with them. Then you shake your head of the thought. It shouldn’t matter to you.
Around midafternoon, a few trappers come in to stock up on supplies and spend the better part of an hour talking to Kate. You flatten your lips together to keep from cursing them out for tracking in mud and rain with them, but they studiously avoid looking at you.
“Morning, Mrs. Price,” one of them says, still keeping their gaze politely trained on the floor.
You roll your eyes internally. Not surprising that news would spread eventually of John’s new wife.
The conversation is of little interest to you, but you eavesdrop anyway because the rain hasn’t relented yet and there’s little else to do. Most of their conversation goes over your head, but some parts stick out. They tell her about a mutual acquaintance waylaid by a mountain slide up north forcing them to take another route home, and another who’d recently perished of consumption. Kate seems particularly upset by that, the lines around her mouth more pronounced than ever when she offers her condolences.
They stay until the rain lets up and then say their goodbyes before heading out.
“G’day, Mrs. Price,” the same one says to you before departing.
You smile bemusedly at the door. “I don’t suppose I’ve met either of them before and don’t remember it?”
Kate shakes her head. “Unlikely. Alex and Frank spend most of their time up north hunting and fur trapping. One of them has a cousin in town, but they visit only seldomly. It’s been a year or so since I last saw either of them.”
“Then how’d they know who I am?”
“Well, I imagine they probably read about it.”
“Read about it?” you repeat confusedly.
“In the paper. The county sheriff got hitched—of course it’d be a story.”
That unnerves you. Somehow, you thought you might fold into history like you’d always been there, but a marriage announcement in a newspaper punctuates the present. Your only reassurance is that the story ran over a month ago and therefore of little interest to anyone these days, at least from what Kate tells you; overshadowed by subsequent issues and stories. Old news, she tells you.
“What’s new news then?”
She ponders that for a bit. “Aside from what Frank mentioned? Hm…Farmer Shepherd’s ewe had a lamb the other night.”
“Who’s that?”
“A farmer, I reckon.”
You deadpan. “Funny.”
She laughs at that, a husky, amber sound. “Shepherd’s got a farm in the next town over. Kyle and I always stop to buy mutton whenever we’re in town.”
“Oh, that’s right, you were just there recently. Do you visit that often?”
“From time to time,” she says, vague enough to pique your interest.
“Must be good mutton.”
She snorts. “He’s not as good a butcher as Simon, but he’s alright. It’s worth stopping by. I wouldn’t call it a reason to make the journey though.”
“Then why do you go?”
She smiles a bit wistfully. “I have…a friend in town. It’s worth the trek.”
“Oh. A… male friend?”
You say the word tentatively, gauging her reaction in case you’ve overstepped. Usually you wouldn’t be so inquisitive. In fact, you’ve made it a habit to know as little about the people you keep company with as possible. But Kate is different. This place is different. Time in this town moves at a slower pace, and it swells in the moments where it seems endless. It makes you talk slower, chew the fat. You spend so much time around these people that it almost feels like a lifetime has passed in their presence. You feel close enough these days that asking doesn’t feel as forbidden as it used to.
“No. Not a man.”
It could mean nothing at all, but her words have just enough inflection in them that you can't help but meet her gaze.
“A woman?” you ask, caught between embarrassment at having to ask and curiosity.
She nods, her smile strained.
“Oh,” you say dumbly.
You can’t really think of what else to say in response to that revelation, but leaving it like that also feels wrong. It’s nothing you haven’t heard whisperings of before. Boston marriages. Sentimental friends. Spinsters cohabitating in virtuous friendship. It’s perhaps only shocking to finally put a face to the rumors.
“Well, that’s nice,” you say after another awkward pause. Kate rolls her eyes and her nonchalance vexes you. “What? It is!”
“You don’t need to get all twisted up. It is what it is. There’s no need to go making a fuss about it.”
You frown at that. “I would never.” Then something dawns on you. “Have other people made a fuss before?”
“…A few,” she answers, looking troubled when old memories flicker behind her eyelids. “A long time ago, in another place, but when I…well, I trusted more. There’s no one that could make a fuss about it these days.”
“But surely Kyle knows? He accompanied you to town last time.”
“Kyle does not know.”
“Then why tell me?” you ask, dumbfounded.
She holds you in her gaze for a few moments at that question, then comes out from behind the counter where her notebook still lies open, a thin strip of fabric acting as a bookmark.
“You have your secrets and I have mine,” Kate says, leaning back against the counter and clasping her hands loosely in front of her. “The same reason I won’t tell John what you’re running from. The less people that know the things that could hurt you, the safer you are.”
“You think John would do what—run you out of town if he knew?” you ask, hardly able to convey your disbelief.
“The point is that neither of us know until the very moment when it matters most.”
“But that’s not John,” you stress.
“It’s the same John that you won’t trust with your secrets either.” And that strikes true. It dumbs you into silence, mouth opening uselessly for words that don’t come. The battering behind your lips like an inch of give, opening then to silence across the open plain.
You want desperately to say something that just won’t come. But how can you say anything at all these days? How does your voice not give out at the slightest quiver of emotion? You speak with a voice plump like fig skin, easy give, and violet bruised. It is always tender when you bite it through.
When Kate notices the way you struggle for words, she takes pity on you, her smile more sympathetic than you’ve ever seen it. “Enough about that though. What say we get you something to eat before you head home?”
When the path of least resistance beckons you forth, you run towards it.
Your troubled conscience persists however, speaking into your ear even as the first shaft of sunlight pierces through the slate clouds and illuminates the town in a soft glow. It troubles you so fiercely that all you can think about is retreating home and burying yourself under the warm quilt draped over your bed. It has you hastening to say your goodbyes, excusing yourself on the basis of taking Buttercup home.
Bidding Kate farewell, you step out of the shop to see that the rain has cleared. Everything after that dispels into the thinly perfumed air.
679 notes
·
View notes