Blackberry pie, p.1
Blackberry Pie, page 1
“Blackberry Pie”
by Bonnie Dee
A young minister’s celibacy is challenged by an earthy, Appalachian woman.
A Midsummer Night’s Steam story
On a blistering summer afternoon, Reverend Nathan Andrews climbs a mountain to meet backwoods members of his congregation. Fresh from seminary, the young man isn’t prepared for the onslaught of lust that hits him when he encounters a sensuous girl picking blackberries.
Determined to implement his outreach plan, he helps her harvest the fruit.
But their potent sexual chemistry is too intense to deny and they engage in passionate sex surrounded by the beauty of nature.
Grace is earthy and primal, the opposite of the proper young lady he expects to take as a wife some day. Can there possibly be a future for a college-educated minister and a primitive mountain girl?
Warning, this title contains the following: explicit sex, graphic language.
eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
512 Forest Lake Drive
Warner Robins, Georgia 31093
Copyright © 2007 by Bonnie Dee
Cover by Anne Cain
ISBN: 1-59998-595-0
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: June 2007
Blackberry Pie
Bonnie Dee
Dedication
Thanks to all friends and family who have been supportive of my writing obsession
Chapter One
When he first glimpsed her out of the corner of his eye, he thought she was a forest animal, a deer foraging for food. If he looked at it directly, the wild creature would crash through the undergrowth and disappear into the emerald depths of the woods. His gaze swung toward the movement in the briar patch and focused, but she didn’t run.
A pair of deep brown doe eyes stared back at him. The animal frozen among the brambles was human. The sun shone on the crown of her dark brown hair, picking out strands of gold and red. The tangled, curly mane spilled around her thin face and down her back. Sweaty tendrils stuck to her forehead and fell across one eye.
Her eyes drew him back again. They dominated her small face so much that he scarcely noticed the elegant, high bridge of her nose or bowed upper lip of her mouth.
Nathan’s gaze slipped from her eyes to her body. The girl wore a sleeveless dress of fabric so thin it clung to her like a second skin. The shift may once have been colorful, but was now so faded and threadbare it was a dingy off-white. But the cheap, cotton dress was merely a setting for a precious stone.
The girl’s slender arms, sharp collarbones and long neck were a warm tan against the pale fabric. Underneath the translucent material pressed the swell of her breasts and the small, hard shape of nipples.
Inside his sober black pants, so very hot from absorbing the sun’s rays, Nathan’s cock stiffened. Ashamed of his brazen perusal of her body and its 6
effect on him, his gaze snapped back up to her face. The girl’s wide eyes held a glitter of inherent awareness, although perhaps it was only reflected sunlight.
The exchange transpired in moments, but felt like an eternity in which they were suspended like ants in amber.
Sweat trickled down Nathan’s spine, itchy and tickling. The armpits of his shirt were wet and, after an hour of rambling through the wilderness, he wished he’d worn one with short sleeves. His black jacket was draped over one arm. He’d abandoned it after the first twenty minutes of hiking. His clerical collar was tucked in one of the jacket’s pockets.
The open glade in the woods was somnolent with heat, the air so thick and muggy a person could drown in it. He hadn’t known the mountains in summer would be so humid. Back at seminary he’d pictured the Blue Ridge much differently than it actually was—more Alps than Appalachia.
The amber moment had run its course. Nathan needed to speak before the silence grew any more awkward. He stretched the corners of his mouth up into a smile. “Hello.” He half-expected the wild-looking girl to startle at the sound of his voice and bound off into the woods.
“How-do.” She inclined her head as slowly and graciously as a queen accepting her subject’s homage.
“I’m the new minister, Reverend Nathan Andrews.” He moved a few steps toward her, but was confronted by a thicket of blackberry briars and had to stop. “I’m out today, hoping to meet some of the community.” The non-church-attending backwoods members of my congregation.
“Mm.” Her eyes scanned him up and down more leisurely and lingering than he had dared look at her. “Might hot for visitin’, ain’t it?” His smile became more sincere. “Yes, it is. But I’ve found when it’s not steaming hot here, it’s pouring rain. This seemed slightly more agreeable weather.”
7
The girl walked toward him, passing carefully through the briars without once snagging her clothes. She stopped when she stood only a few feet from him. “Ain’t you young for a preacher?”
He could smell her hot skin, her ripe, feminine sweat, not unpleasant but natural and heady as catnip. Scratches marked her arms in thin, long streaks.
A wooden bucket dangled from one of her hands. It was half-filled with deep purple berries. Nathan glanced down at her bare legs and feet under the hem of her dress. More scratches and dusty grime coated her high-arched feet and lean, brown legs.
Again he brought his attention back to her face. “I just graduated in spring.
Class of ’34. This is my first church.”
She nodded, looked at his black coat and white shirt, which had been crisply ironed when he put it on that morning, then back to his face again. “I’m Grace.”
“Pleased to meet you, Grace.” He extended his hand to shake hers.
She stared at it a moment before taking it. Her slim hand was warm and damp with sweat. He supposed his was too. Her palm was hard with calluses, not soft and delicate as it appeared. Her fingers curled around his hand and released it slowly like vines clinging to a trellis. Nathan felt the ghostly pressure of her hand even after it was gone. An electric tingling vibrated through his flesh.
“Blackberry?” She held up her bucket. The sweet aroma that had teased his senses since he entered the glade rose strong and potent from the mass of fruit.
“Thank you.” He reached into the bucket and picked a berry. It was pulpy and moist from the heat. He nodded at the girl and popped the fruit into his mouth where it burst, syrupy and rich. Hard seeds crunched in contrast to the mushy flesh of the fruit.
8
She watched him chew. Her gleaming eyes made the act seem too intimate, as if he was doing something other than eating in front of her. Although the bite of berry was small, Nathan swallowed hard. “Very sweet. Thank you,” he said again.
“This ’ere’s the best patch around.” The girl lifted a berry to her own mouth.
Her indigo-stained tongue slipped out between rosy lips. She placed the berry on her tongue and drew it slowly back inside.
Nathan watched, mesmerized, searching for something to say, but his mind was completely blank. Pleasantries like asking about her family, where she lived, whether she ever attended the Grace Baptist Church—which ironically shared her name—all that was beyond him. He could only stare at her moving mouth and the subtle fluctuation in her throat as she swallowed. His erection swelled harder and he backed away a step, looking past Grace at the blackberry patch. “What will you make with the berries?”
“Preserves and pie.” She reached into her bucket and selected another berry. Her eyes sparkled like the sun on a dark pool as she extended her hand toward his mouth. If chewing in front of her had felt intimate, the offering from her fingers directly to his lips was downright erotic. Her eyes challenged him to open his mouth and accept the fruit, and he couldn’t refuse it without looking like a flustered fool.
He opened his mouth, throat dry as sandpaper, and felt the feather-light touch of her fingers brushing his lips and the berry settling on his tongue.
She smiled as she withdrew her hand and let it drop back to her side.
Nathan’s heart pounded like a blacksmith’s hammer. His cheeks blazed with heat and blood rushed in his ears. His cock throbbed in time to his rapid heartbeats. The glade’s heat seemed intensified, smothering. Nathan’s head swam and he wondered if he was about to pass out—all because a country girl hand-fed him a blackberry.
9
A charge like ionized air before a thunderstorm smoldered between them for several seconds before the girl broke it by speaking. “Must be thirsty from all the walkin’. There’s a stream over yonder.” She pointed toward the woods on the far side of the glade.
“Yes, water would be good,” he agreed weakly.
“Best come ’round the patch lessen you want to get your nice clothes all ruined.” She turned and walked in front of him, hips swaying slightly from side to side.
It took every ounce of Nathan’s willpower to drag his gaze away from the undulations of her h
“You been to Cadey’s Pass, seen the family up there yet?” she asked as she led him up a slope and through a stand of pine trees. He heard the trickling of water and his mouth salivated in response.
“Um, no. I had directions, but got lost on the way.”
“Easy to get twisted ’round on the mountain.” Her light voice drifted back over her shoulder, rising up and down with a musical lilt.
“Where do you live?” he finally remembered to ask. “What’s your last name?”
“Owl Ridge over yonder. Last name’s Parkins.” She stopped walking suddenly and Nathan ran into her. He stepped back so quickly he tripped on a branch half-buried in the leaf mold. It took him a few stumbling steps to regain his balance.
“Here.” She crouched and pushed back a tall clump of ferns to reveal water bubbling right up out of the ground and meandering away in a thin stream.
“It’s plenty cold.” She lay down on her belly and bent her face to the surface of the water.
Nathan could hardly breath, watching her natural ease as she sprawled on the ground and scooped water to her mouth. Her dress rode even higher, 10
revealing a lightly haired expanse of leg all the way up to the rounded shadow where her thighs met her bottom. He swallowed the hard lump in his throat and raised his eyes to the canopy of green leaves above them. This was a test—
surely a test from God of Nathan’s dedication to the ideal of chastity.
Back in the seminary it had been easy to talk analytically with his peers about moral and spiritual matters. The seminarians all expected to work in the mission field for a year or two, return home to meet and marry a suitable young woman and begin life as a family man. Full of religious fervor and the desire to grow new spiritual communities, none of them considered delaying sexual gratification a problem. The young men had been celibate so long, what was another year or two? But out in the world, Nathan had discovered working with real people was considerably more complicated than he’d anticipated, and today’s sudden, unexpected and powerful surge of physical desire for a strange young woman took him completely by surprise.
“Ain’t you thirsty?”
He looked down at Grace. She had pushed up off the ground and squatted by the water, looking up at him, her lips glistening wet. Her hair was darker here in the shadows with no sun highlighting it. Her eyes looked darker too.
She gazed at him over one bare shoulder, the sleeve of her shift having slipped down her arm. The vulnerability of the soft curve of flesh made his heart twist.
She looked like a young girl wearing her older sister’s too-large dress.
“Yes,” he finally answered her question. He dropped to his knees on the leafy forest floor, setting his jacket aside. With one hand pressed flat to the ground, he lowered his face close to the bubbling stream and scooped icy cold handfuls of water to his mouth. The sharp mineral tang soothed his throat and cooled his raging libido a little—until he turned his head and faced Grace’s eyes, only a couple of feet away, looking back into his.
She smiled and her eyes crinkled at the corners, her lashes making a long, lacy fringe around them. Her full lips parted to reveal a flash of white teeth 11
then closed again, as she regarded him solemnly, her gaze lingering on his mouth. For one heart-stopping moment, Nathan thought she was going to lean in and kiss him, but she sat back on her heels, hands resting on her lap.
Nathan sat too, closing his eyes for a moment to gather his senses before he looked at her again. When he opened them, she was still there, not a fairytale sprite of the woods, but a flesh and blood young woman with dirty feet and berry-stained fingers.
“Don’t get many visitors up here,” she said. “How long you been preaching at the church?”
“Almost two months. It’s taken me some time to get around to meeting the whole community. Families are spread out all over the mountain.” Grace laughed. “And half of ’em got some grudge or feud goin’ on with the other half. You can’t spit for fear of rilin’ somebody.” She shook her head. “Best to try an’ keep out of it, but tain’t enough for people to get mad at each other—
they want everybody to choose up sides.”
Nathan smiled, feeling easier as her talk filled the awkward silence. “It doesn’t make my job easy, trying to convince people to ‘turn the other cheek’.” Grace rose to her feet, extending a hand to him. He couldn’t refuse to take it without appearing rude. She grasped his hand firmly and pulled him to his feet with more strength in her slim body than he would have guessed. She continued holding his hand and looking up at him.
Almost a head shorter than he, Grace made Nathan feel big and masculine, words he didn’t usually associate with himself. His mind had been immersed in books and theology for so long, he’d forgotten what it was like to indulge in more sensual pursuits. Something as simple as holding a girl’s hand or enjoying a sweet blackberry on a hot day took on an aspect of sinful pleasure.
“Well…thank you for the water. It was very refreshing. I suppose I’d better be going.”
12
A flicker of something crossed her eyes, disappointment or maybe nothing but a shadow caused by a fluttering leaf overhead. “You could tarry a while.” Her voice was low and soft. “Pick blackberries with me. Or, iffen you don’t care to dirty your clothes, you could talk to me while I pick.” Nathan dragged his gaze away from her mesmerizing eyes, glanced up the mountain then back at her. “I should be getting on. I’ve a number of stops I intended to make today.”
“Ain’t I one of the folks you came up here to meet?” Releasing his hand, she raised an eyebrow and folded her arms beneath her breasts. The shape and color of her dark nipples pressed against the almost transparent, limp fabric.
He blinked and looked away. “I—I suppose you are at that.” His quick, sharp smile was almost a grimace. He felt he was standing on a precipice and the edge was crumbling underneath his feet.
“I’ll send some berries home with you. Who’s keepin’ house for you?”
“Um, Mrs. Crowder. She cooks and cleans.”
“She can make you a cobbler.” Allowing no further argument, Grace took his hand in hers and pulled him through the patch of woods to the clearing again.
13
Chapter Two
Out from under the shelter of trees, the heat trapped in the little hollow of weeds and blackberry brambles was oppressive. The sun bore down on the crown of Nathan’s head like a heavy hand weighing on him. He pushed his hand through his sweaty, brown hair, lifting it from his scalp so the air could pass through it. He should’ve immersed his whole head in the spring water.
That would’ve kept him cool for a while.
“Too hot? You can set under yonder tree if you’d care to.”
“No. I’ll help you pick.” Nathan had decided the best way to gain trust as a minister was to show his flock he would work alongside them. A spiritual laborer shouldn’t be too proud to physically labor with his congregation on occasion.
“Then best remove your shirt. Blackberry stains don’t never come out.” Nathan hesitated, torn between the logic of her words and the inappropriateness of being half-garbed, alone with a woman. Finally he unbuttoned his shirt, shrugged it off and laid it with his jacket underneath a tree. Wearing only a sleeveless T-shirt, he felt instantly cooler—and conversely hotter. A brush of air touched his bare arms and neck, but so did Grace’s eyes, sending hot licks of fire through him.
She handed him an empty bucket. “I done this patch over here. Y’might try just over there.” She indicated where he should pick and Nathan obediently moved to the clump of bushes. The berries were clustered high on the canes, 14
but Grace cautioned him to check beneath the leaves as well. “Ever picked blackberries afore?”
