Chapter 2: First Touch
The tension from the hallway bled into the next day, thick and unspoken. Breakfast was a quiet affair of scrambled eggs and averted eyes. Emi moved through her chores with a nervous energy, keenly aware of the men’s presence, feeling their gazes like physical touches that lingered just a moment too long on the back of her neck, on the sway of her hips as she bent to place a plate in the cupboard. The memory of her own desperation in the dark made her cheeks burn with shame.
“You’re awful quiet today, Emi,” Hart said finally, his voice a low rumble over the rim of his coffee cup. He wasn’t looking at her. He was studying the grain of the wooden table.
“I am sorry. I did not sleep well,” she murmured, the truth tasting metallic.
“Wind kept me up, too,” Sam offered, the first words he’d spoken all morning. His eyes met hers briefly, and in them she saw not pity, but a mirror of her own restless night. It was a shock, that shared recognition. It made her feel less alone, and more exposed.
The day dragged on, the sun a slow arc over the endless fields. Every casual brush of Hart’s calloused hand passing her a tool, every time Sam’s broad shoulder nearly touched hers in the narrow hallway, sent a jolt through her. The ache from the night before hadn’t faded; it had settled into a constant, low hum.
When night fell, it felt inevitable.
She lay in bed again, the patchwork quilt pulled to her chin. She tried to be still. She tried to sleep. But the memory of their eyes on her all day, combined with the persistent, throbbing need between her legs, was too much. Her hand slipped under the covers. This time, she didn’t think of Bobby. She thought of the solid, quiet strength in Sam’s frame, the commanding gentleness in Hart’s voice. A soft, guilty moan escaped her lips before she could stop it.
The door opened.
No knock. Just the creak of hinges and two dark shapes filling the doorway, backlit by the faint hall light. Emi gasped, scrambling back against the headboard, yanking the quilt up to cover her nightgown-clad body.
“Shhh,” Hart said, his voice a soft command. He stepped in first, closing the door behind them, plunging the room into near-darkness save for the sliver of moonlight through the window. “We heard you.”
“Please,” Emi whispered, her heart a frantic bird in her chest. “You should not…”
Hart sat on the edge of the bed, the springs groaning under his weight. He didn’t touch her, not yet. “We’ve been listenin’ to you cry for weeks, darlin’. So has he.” He nodded toward Sam, who remained standing, a tense silhouette by the door. “That ain’t no way to live. Bobby wouldn’t have wanted it. He’d have wanted you tended to.”
The use of her husband’s name, the warped logic of it, unraveled her. A fresh sob caught in her throat. Hart reached out then, his big hands gentle as they closed around her wrists. He didn’t force them down; he just held her, his thumbs stroking her fluttering pulse. “Just let us help. No more than that tonight. Just let us give you what you need.”
As he spoke, Sam moved. He crossed the room silently and knelt on the worn rug beside the bed. His face was level with her thighs under the quilt. Emi could only watch, paralyzed by shock and a terrifying, swelling curiosity.
“Sam…” she breathed.
“It’s alright, Emi,” Sam said, his voice rough. He didn’t look at her face. His gaze was fixed on the quilt where it tented over her knees. Slowly, so slowly, he hooked his fingers in the fabric and drew it down.
The cool night air hit her legs. She shivered. Hart released one of her wrists and his hand came up to cup her cheek, turning her face toward him. “Look at me,” he murmured, and then his mouth was on hers. It was not a young man’s kiss. It was firm, experienced, insistent. It tasted of coffee and tobacco and a forgiveness she didn’t understand. Her protests died, melting into shaky, acquiescent breaths against his lips.
While Hart kissed her, Sam bent his head. His lips pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss to the inside of her knee. Emi jolted. He moved upward, a trail of searing kisses along her inner thigh, his stubble scratching the tender skin. Her legs fell open of their own volition.
“That’s it,” Hart whispered against her mouth, his other hand moving to the front of her nightgown. He pushed the fabric aside, baring one breast to the moonlight. He broke the kiss to look down at her, his eyes dark. “So pretty.” He bent and took the taut nipple into his mouth, suckling deeply.
Emi cried out, her back arching. The dual sensations were too much—the rough-sweet pull at her breast, the agonizingly slow progression of Sam’s mouth up her thigh. When Sam’s breath finally ghosted over the damp, curls between her legs, she whimpered.
“Please,” she gasped again, but the meaning had changed.
Sam’s tongue touched her. A slow, flat stroke through her folds. Emi’s hips jerked off the mattress. He did it again, more firmly, and then his mouth was on her, licking and sucking with a focused intensity that shattered all coherent thought. Hart switched to her other breast, his hand kneading the soft weight of it.
“You’re so tight, darlin’,” Hart mumbled against her skin. “Bobby ever make you feel like this?”
Emi shook her head wildly, tears of overwhelmed pleasure leaking from the corners of her eyes. “No… no, he… it was quick…”
Sam paused, lifting his head. His lips glistened. “How many times?” he asked, his voice thick.
She didn’t understand. “What?”
“With him. How many times did he take you?”
The intimate question, asked in the midst of this, stripped her bare. “Not… not many. Once. Before he shipped out. It was… we were learning.” The admission was a whisper.
Hart made a low, approving sound. “Still practically a virgin, then.” He kissed her shoulder. “Don’t you stop, Sam. She’s close.”
Sam returned to his work, but one hand came up, his fingers sliding through her wetness. A single, thick finger pressed at her entrance. She was so slick it slipped in to the first knuckle with ease, but then met a shocking tightness.
“Jesus,” Sam breathed, his eyes finding hers in the dark. He applied gentle, persistent pressure, working the finger in deeper, an impossibly slow invasion. “Fits like a glove. A tight, hot little glove.”
The blunt stretch, combined with the relentless rhythm of his tongue on her most sensitive spot, coiled the tension in her core to a breaking point. Hart captured her mouth again, swallowing her ragged moans as the world fragmented into pure, blinding sensation. The climax ripped through her, a silent, seizing wave that left her trembling and boneless, Sam’s finger buried deep inside her, his tongue gentling until she shuddered through the last pulses.
For a long moment, the only sounds were their ragged breathing and the eternal wind. Sam carefully withdrew his finger. Hart released her breast, pulling her nightgown back into place with a strange, paternal care. He smoothed her hair back from her damp forehead.
“There now,” he said, as if soothing a spooked animal. “No more cryin’ yourself to sleep.”
Sam stood up, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. He looked dazed, hungry, guilty. He and his father exchanged a glance over her spent body. It was a look of shared conquest, and a silent agreement for what would inevitably come next.
They left as quietly as they had come, shutting the door on her and the scent of sex and lavender soap now mingling in the air. Emi lay utterly still, the ghost of Sam’s finger and Hart’s mouth imprinted on her flesh. The physical relief was profound, a sweet, heavy lethargy in her limbs. But in its wake, the guilt came crashing back, colder and sharper than before. It was laced now, however, with a treacherous, addictive thread of satisfaction. They had given her what she could not give herself. They had seen her, and they had not turned away.
She fell asleep within minutes, a deep, dreamless sleep, for the first time since the telegram arrived.