Read LeClerc 01 - Autumn Ecstasy Online
Authors: Pamela K Forrest
Bear greeted Linsey, then removed his shirt as he walked to the wash bucket. It was only when she gasped and grabbed the wall as another pain took hold that he realized something was wrong.
“Linsey?” He turned, water dripping from his chin to his chest. “What is it,
mon ange
?”
She could not speak until the pain began to ease, and even then her voice wavered. “I think your son has finally decided to join the world.”
“The baby? It’s time for the baby?” Bear felt a fissure of fear run up his spine.
“Well, not this minute, but I’d say sometime before morning.”
Kaleb walked over to the cradle holding Hawk and reached down for the infant. “Come on, little warrior. This ain’t no place fer us men ta be.” He confidently cradled the baby in the crook of his arm and grabbed the bottle sitting on the edge of the table.
Hawk, recognizing the grizzled face, grinned his toothless smile and reached for Kaleb’s long beard.
“Kaleb, go for Sarah,” Bear ordered, little realizing that it was a command rather than a request.
“We’ll do that, yes siree, we’ll jist do that.” Kaleb looked across the room at Linsey and winked. “Don’t ya be a frettin’ none about this young’un. I’ll be a’tendin’ him. You jist be sure en have us a new babe when we come a’caHin’ in the mornin’.
“Les go, mighty Hawk. Ole grandpa Kaleb’ll tell ya ‘bout the time them damn Iroquois lifted my hare. Why if’n hit waren’t fer your uncle Bar, I’d still be …”
They heard his voice drift off as he walked away. Bear wondered how long it would take Sarah to come. Feeling helpless and more frightened than he could ever remember, he turned to Linsey.
“What do I do until Sarah arrives?” he asked.
Linsey smiled gently and thought about his reaction when he discovered she was not coming. “You could help me get undressed and into bed,” she suggested.
Just as he reached for her, another pain began. Linsey clasped his hands, waiting for it to pass, and beads of sweat dotted Bear’s brow before it was done. When she looked up at him and smiled, he swore fiercely in French and picked her up. At the edge of the bed, he lowered her feet to the floor and reached for the hem of her loose dress. Pulling it over her head and throwing it out of the way, Bear helped her to sit down. Piling several furs into a huge mound, he encouraged her to lean back into an upright position.
Bear couldn’t help but notice her swollen breasts, the blue veins showing beneath the tightly stretched skin. His eyes lowered to her stomach, and as he watched, another contraction tightened it to rock hardness. Linsey squeezed his hand at the height of the pain, and he was amazed by her strength.
Grabbing a blanket, Bear shook it out and started to cover her, but she stopped him with a smile.
“I’m already hot and will probably get hotter. I don’t want that scratchy thing on me.”
“Do you want a shirt or something?” he asked anxiously.
“I thought you liked to see my body,” she teased. “Last night down by the creek, you told me I was beautiful even swollen up like this.”
“I did … you are … I mean —” Bear turned and walked to the door. “Where is that woman? She should be here by now.”
“Sarah’s not —” Linsey gritted her teeth as another pain racked through her. They had started early in the morning and were finally coming closer together. Sarah had told her what to expect, and so far everything was happening just as she had said.
“Sarah’s not what?” Bear asked, agitation making his voice gruff.
“Coming!” The pain was at its peak, and Linsey almost screamed the word.
“Sarah’s not coming?” He walked back to the bed, waiting impatiently for her to be able to respond.
Linsey let her breath out with a deep swoosh and tried to relax. “You will deliver our child,” she said quietly.
“What?! Woman, have you lost your mind?”
“Not yet.” Linsey’s attempt at a smile quickly turned to bared teeth as another pain reached its peak.
“Kaleb went to get her!”
“No … I talked to him a few days ago and asked him not to send her here. This is such a special time, Luc. I don’t want to share it with anyone but you. Please?”
He knelt by the bed and brought her hand up to his mouth. Lightly kissing her palm, Bear tasted the salty flavor of sweat. Her brow and upper lip were beaded, and as he watched, her belly tightened again.
“I can’t, Autumn Fire.”
Linsey felt his big hands shake as they held hers, and she knew he was truly frightened. He had faced a tribe of Iroquois to save Kaleb, his thirst for revenge had led him to fight a grizzly with nothing but a knife and his bare hands, but the thought of delivering his child made him quiver with fear.
“It is too late, Bear.”
“I can get to their cabin and back in only a few minutes.”
“The pains are coming with almost no space between them.”
“I don’t know what to do!”
The pains were flowing together with no break. Through gritted teeth Linsey guided him. Bear stood beside the bed and between her open thighs saw the top of the dark, fuzzy head of his child, and for the first time in his life he wondered if he would pass out.
“I see it,” he murmured. “
Mon Dieu,
I see it.”
Linsey bent her knees and grabbed the back of her thighs with her hands. She panted as Sarah had instructed and kept her eyes glued to Bear’s face where the wonder of the moment stamped multiple expressions of joy, amazement, fear and hope across his rugged features.
Biting her lip until she tasted blood, Linsey forced back a scream as the head pushed out of her body. Tears streamed down her face to join with the sweat pouring off her as the tiny body slipped free.
Reverently, Bear lifted the child still connected to her by the cord of life. He held it up so that she could see the life they had created. Tiny legs kicked as small arms batted the air and new lungs filled with life-giving air.
“You have given me a son, Autumn Fire,” Bear whispered, tears filling his eyes to overflowing and streaming down his face. “A son … “
Linsey smiled and lay back, a feeling of utopia vying with exhaustion. Quietly she instructed him how to tie off and cut the cord. Bear laid the infant on her flat belly, his hands now sure as he finished with the birth.
Linsey stroked the damp head of her son; a feeling of pride and love filled her heart. His hair was dark, and she suspected when it was dry it would be thick and black. His face, wrinkled like an old man’s, showed his father’s wide brow and aquiline nose. He wiggled and kicked, screaming lustily his outrage at being removed from his warm, quiet world.
When the cord was safely cut and the afterbirth delivered, Linsey held her son against her breast, fascinated as he rutted around searching for her nipple. She jumped with surprise when his tiny mouth closed around it and he began to suckle fiercely.
“Being born must be hungry work.” Bear chuckled at the baby’s enthusiasm.
Linsey counted fingers and toes, examined ears, arms and legs while Bear gently ministered to her. When he was finished, he drew a light cover up to her breasts, then knelt down beside the bed.
“He’s so tiny.”
Linsey snorted. “You wouldn’t have said that if you’d been in my position!”
The reality of the moment set in, and Bear’s hands began to shake. They had been completely steady as he helped his son into the world, but now he felt weak with reaction.
“Was it bad,
mon ange
?”
Linsey turned her gaze from her son, and her eyes melted with love for her gentle giant. She lifted her free hand from the baby’s leg and caressed Bear’s cheek.
“No, my Bear. Holding your son in my arms and knowing he is our child wiped every bit of the pain from my mind.”
He believed her; the expression in her eyes was joy. No hint of the pain she had suffered marred their clear emerald light.
“Thank you, Autumn Fire.”
“For the baby?”
“Him, too. But I would have run for Sarah and have never known this incredible joy of sharing his birth with you.”
“Since you like it so much, we’ll have to do it again soon,” Linsey teased.
With a groan, Bear leaned down and kissed her, then softly kissed his son. “Can we wait a few days? I don’t think I’ll stop shaking for a week or two.”
The sound of their gentle murmurs and quiet words drifted on the crisp night air. A leaf twirled and twisted in the gentle breeze before it relinquished its hold on life and drifted to the ground below. One life had lived its short span of time on earth. The silence of night was broken by the tiny voice of a new life just beginning.
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