The sight of him crying astonished Lily. There was no way around his decision. “This isn’t fair,” she said desperately.
“Nothin’s fair!”
She pivoted and walked out of the building, her vision blurring with tears. She dimly heard Artemas following her. Outside on the steps he grasped her arm gently. She halted and turned her head away, knowing that she’d sob if she looked at him. Crying wasn’t worth a damn.
“It’s not over,” he told her.
“That’s your sense of guilt talking. Forget it. You’ve done everything you could. You came back to help me. You offered him a lot more money than my place could ever be worth to him.” She pulled away from him and went to the Jeep. Her hands were shaking. She climbed into the driver’s seat and gripped the steering wheel, staring blindly ahead as he threw himself into the seat beside her. “It is over,” she said, her shoulders squared.
“Lily, goddammit, I—”
“There are things I want from you that you don’t want to give. That’s just bare bad luck on my part, like what happened to the farm. So don’t give me any lectures, and don’t tell me to keep hoping.”
“Listen to me.” He took her by the shoulders and pulled her half out of her seat. She braced her hands against his chest. His face was flushed; his gray eyes glittered. “I’m not free. Understand? I made a decision a long time ago to do whatever it took to give my family something to be proud of again. Without that, I’m no good to you or anyone else. I’m no good to myself.”
“And there’s no room for somebody who doesn’t help your plans? People have to be useful to you, or they’re a waste of time?”
“Not a waste—a luxury I can’t afford right now.”
The sordid suspicion she’d harbored all along now chilled her. “That woman you’re going to marry—she must be useful.”
“Don’t try to analyze a part of my life you know nothing about.”
“What’s her place in your plans? She’s got connections? An important name?”
“There are different ways to love someone. It doesn’t have to be as sentimental as the poem on a goddamned Hallmark card.”
“You’re going to marry her because you’re obligated to.”
“Don’t throw wild accusations at me.”
“A second ago I practically announced to your face that I’m crazy about you. If you’re really in love with your woman, you’d have said so then. You wouldn’t have gone off on a tangent about not being free, or about what you have to do for your family. You’ve got yourself chained to some kind of promise, but it’s not love.”
“I think you’re one step away from calling me a whore.”
“Closer than that. I’m right on top of it. You are a whore.”
He slapped her. It was only a slight clap on the chin with his fingertips, a shock rather than painful, but she drew back in alarm, for once in her life too stunned to hit back. Artemas lowered his hands slowly. She watched the anger drain out of his face and an expression of agonized disbelief replace it. “That’s a first,” he said. “And it makes me sick.” The raw whisper destroyed her defenses.
She sagged back on the seat. “I’d hate any other man who did it.” She bent her head to her splayed hands. “But all I want is for you to say I have a place in your plans too. There’s nothing left for me here. I’d go to New York with you. I’d share you with her. That’s how crazy I am.”
His portentous silence throbbed in her ears. “If I had the morals of a whore, I’d ask you to go,” he said in a low, tortured tone. “Eventually you would hate me for it.”
Dignity crawled into her shattered thoughts. He did want her. That was a jewel she could keep. But he was right about the outcome. She lifted her head and studied him with a sense of defeat and loss so deep it robbed her of the ability to tell him. “You better get yourself on a plane this afternoon,” she told him. “The longer we spend together, the worse this is going to be.”
“I’ll leave tomorrow morning. We don’t have to pretend this is easy, but I want something good to remember, just as you do. Will you try to make peace with me?”
The answer shimmered in her mind before she realized what she intended. The fragment of thought running through her mind suddenly became clear.
Artemas was hers, until tomorrow. He wasn’t the gallant fantasy she’d cultivated, but a complicated, driven, brutally fallible young man. The last vestige of her childhood daydreams disappeared. He and she had one last day. And one last night. “I’ll do it,” she told him.
He didn’t have to know exactly what she meant.
Night had closed in with a moonless, cloudless sky. “I’d forgotten that the stars were so bright,” Artemas said. He hadn’t spoken for a long time, and his voice startled Lily. His effect on her had an ebb and flow; she would calm down a little, the pain and hunger and unforgiving anger at him temporarily ignored, then suddenly vivid again.
Sitting beside him on the creek bank, she pretended to study the sky too. The Big Dipper could have been upside down and backward, but she wouldn’t have noticed. Her mind whirled with secret anticipation and fear.
He’d tried to talk to her all day about her future. College. Guilt and anger over what had happened with Mr. Estes was eating him up. She didn’t tell him not to blame himself; she let him suffer. Her losing the farm wasn’t his fault, not directly But she was hurt and angry about so much else, she couldn’t let go of the feeling.
They’d spent the past few hours out here. Peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches had passed for dinner.
He told her more about his parents, brutal stories that made her frantic with confusion. There was so much he’d never written about—ugly, demeaning episodes that had changed him. She decided he told her those stories to repulse her, so she’d be relieved when he left.
But the stories only showed her why he’d become so merciless about getting what he wanted. She had to accept that fact. He did what was best for his family’s future. He always would.
He didn’t tell her—and she didn’t want to know—about that creature she now thought of as the woman. Lily despised her and dismissed her as unimportant. There was no way she’d believe she’d been wrong about her intuition—he needed that woman for some reason, but he didn’t love her. She wished she could believe that he’d change, but she couldn’t.
Absolute loyalty. That was Artemas. He made up his mind, and he stuck to it. She loved him for that, but she’d never forgive him for it.
Lily gave up on pretending to look at the stars. It was time. He owed her for what he’d done, and she wanted him to pay. She wanted him. Confused, her nerves crackling with a need to fight and win, she got up and slapped at bits of dirt on her jeans. “It’s gettin’ late,” she told him. “Why won’t you sleep in my bed at night? What’s wrong with it?”
He rose slowly, a dark, large form in the starlight. She had the feeling he was surprised and wary. “Nothing.”
“It’s too short for your long legs, I know. Put the mattress on the floor, if you want to.”
“I will.” He stepped toward her. “Don’t go yet.” It sounded like more of an order than a request. “I’ve done most of the talking. I don’t usually.”
“Yeah, you’re not exactly a chatterbox. But I like hearing you talk about yourself. You ought to practice more.”
“I want to talk to you about your future. About college. I have so many questions—”
“I’ve already told you all there is. I got accepted at Agnes Scott a couple of weeks ago. It’s a private college for women. Aunt Maude’s cousin is a professor there. Great academics. I’ll study biology, major in botany. I’ll work with plants. What else is there to say?”
“That you believe me when I tell you I’ll buy this place back for you.”
“I believe you.”
“Don’t say it like that—just to end the discussion. Mean it.”
“I know you’ll try. I’ll try too. But it’s water under the bridge for now.”
“Then you will be. Good.” She touched his cheek. He flinched, and she dropped her hand quickly. What else could she say that hadn’t been said before, and foolishly? If she tried to tell him how bereft she felt, it would only make him feel worse. “You better try to get some sleep,” she said. She turned and walked up the hill to the barn. Her heart was pounding, and she felt disoriented. She wasn’t done with him tonight, and he’d see that soon enough.
Artemas stood in her dark bedroom, looking at the mattress he’d thrown on the floor. He was filled with unquenchable anger—at himself, at the circumstances he couldn’t change, at Lily for knowing how to push every button. She could do it better than anyone he’d ever known.
He stripped to his briefs and lay down, jerking a quilt over his legs and belly. Her scent was everywhere—the feminine subtleties of makeup and some brand of light perfume sitting in a small basket on the otherwise cleared dresser, the faint fragrance of her clothes. The first night, when she’d left him alone in the house, he’d roamed into her bedroom and belligerently opened her closet door, brushing his fingers over print dresses, a blazer, a straight skirt. He had wondered about the textures and colors of her lingerie, too, but the idea of opening a dresser drawer in search of such things made him feel like an addict looking for a fix.
His mouth was dry; ordinarily he would have smoked a cigarette, but tonight even that distraction seemed hopeless. What he needed couldn’t be had, not tonight, probably not ever.
The distinct rattle of the front door opening made him rise to one elbow and listen. He’d left the door to Lily’s bedroom half-open, and he stared into the dark hall beyond. The front door closed, and the floor of the main room spoke in soft, rhythmic groans as feet crossed it at a measured pace, growing louder and headed in his direction.
Not expecting Lily and unwilling to let surprises creep up on him in the darkness, he vaulted to his feet and slung the bedroom door open. Lily halted. He could barely see her. Without saying a word, she stood there, watching him in the blackness. His body reacted with wariness coiled around the raw current between them, shooting heat through him and bringing a primal thrust between his thighs.
He held the quilt in a fist. Pulling it in front of himself, he reached outside the door and found a light switch. The dim illumination of a low wall sconce brought her into stunning clarity.
Her eyes were locked on his, somber and defensive. Her face was flushed, and her hair hung over her shoulders in a curly red mane. She wore only a long white T-shirt, and it stopped high on her legs. She was barefoot. In one hand she clutched a tiny box.
“I don’t want promises or sympathy from you,” she said. Her voice shook a little, but her accusing stare didn’t flinch. “I just want tonight.” She stepped forward, her chest rising and falling roughly, and held out her strange gift.
When he saw she’d brought a box of condoms, alarm merged with the sharp streak of hunger. He couldn’t do what she wanted. Fury grew out of the dilemma. “Get out of here,” he ordered. He heard the thread of desperation in his voice. “Right now.”
Her hand trembled but remained out, the arm rigid, her fingers clenched in a fist around the package. “I’m not going to hang on to you in the morning. I won’t cry and beg and expect you to change your mind. Yeah, I’m asking you to forget about her tonight. But you and I had something between us a long time before anybody else laid a claim on you. We were just kids, and it doesn’t mean much now, but it was real.” She shook her hand at him. “You owe me.”
Her manipulation was outrageous but imbued with deadly logic. Artemas tried to intimidate her with a sardonic glare. “Sex won’t help matters. It complicates them.”
“I thought men kept it simple. When you’re hungry, you eat. When you’re horny, you fuck.”
The breath rushed out of him with a vicious sound. “I doubt I’m listening to the voice of experience.”
“So teach me.”
“What makes you think I want to?”
Her hand wavered, and for the first time painful uncertainty clouded her eyes. Then she stiffened and said, “I don’t care if you want to or not.”
His patience snapped. He dropped the quilt, leaped forward, and grasped her wrist. “I said leave.” He bullied her up the hall, crowding her, his nearly naked body slamming into hers. She dug her heels in and drew back her free hand in a fist. Artemas caught it and shoved her against a wall. The contact was instant and damning—their bodies sealed together from chest to thighs, her wrists pinned by her shoulders, making her breasts thrust outward, scalding him with their pressure and the electric scrubbing of the soft T-shirt covering them.
They stared at each other in blank desperation. He was hard against her belly, and recognition flashed through her eyes. She cried out—a low, strident moan of relief or fear. His mind was too fogged to know which—he only knew that he couldn’t stand having her feel more fear, hate, or desperation because of him. His head sank against hers. She sighed near his cheek, then kissed the spot. He was lost. Defeated.
“You can say no, or stop, whenever you want to,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “But if you don’t say either one, you’ll have to take what you get.”
Her breath shuddered against his face. “All right.”
He released her wrists with a caustic little shove, then snatched the box of condoms from her. He turned and walked back into her bedroom. The hall light cast the room in a faint glow, leaving deep shadows in the corners. After a second he heard her step in after him and stopped. His back to her, he tossed the box on the mattress’s white sheets, then shoved his briefs down to his feet and kicked them aside. His actions were as graceful as he could make them, but hardly delicate.
He turned to face her. “This is what you think you want. Take it or leave it.”
Even the dim light couldn’t cloak the stark expression of panic on her face, but she quickly shuttered it behind a grim nod. “It’s big enough, I guess. Plenty. I guess I’m lucky. Or unlucky, if it hurts.” She paused. “But nothing could hurt worse than the way I already feel.”
That plaintive remark nearly broke him, but a terrible brand of self-defense had taken over. He dropped to the mattress and sat with one leg jackknifed against the other, waiting. She stood motionless, her hands hanging at her sides, staring down at him. He expected her to turn and walk out at any second. He prayed she would. His body, hard and virile, rejected that prayer.
Instead, she reached under her shirt and pushed her panties down. The strip of white material slipped to her feet, a dull flag of surrender. He wanted to console her, to tell her he didn’t want this charade of uncaring sex. But her pride returned with the sudden, brusque lifting of her chin. She grabbed the bottom of her T-shirt and dragged it over her head. Without hesitating, she dropped it by her feet. Soft and strong, as defenseless as he was, she was devastating.
The torment had been savage before. Now, it became a throbbing menace, a rupture in his self-protective cruelty. “Lesson number one,” he said, sarcasm hammering the words, “my cock doesn’t reach far enough for you to stay by the door.”
She inhaled sharply and shot back, “Maybe I ought to get a pair of heavy pliers and stretch it for you.”
She took two long strides and sank down on the mattress’s foot, her eyes fixed on some point over his shoulder. Her breasts swayed slightly, and he watched her arms tighten along the sides of them. She started to curl her legs beside her, a demure little movement, while one of her hands moved awkwardly from one thigh to the other, obviously fighting an urge to cover the delicate patch of hair between them.
“No. Lie down,” he ordered, scrutinizing her with unrelenting challenge. She shot him a fierce look but stretched out on her side, her back to him. “For God’s sake, you know what I mean.” The ugly instruction ca
me out sounding hoarse and tortured, not what he’d intended. She flung herself over on her back, clamped her mouth in a tight line, and defiantly laced her hands behind her head, as if to prove that being naked didn’t embarrass her.
“Don’t order me around,” she whispered fiercely. “At least have the guts to touch me.”
Touch her. He couldn’t resist the one lovely gift that had always belonged just to him. In one smooth movement Artemas came down on her, snagging her waist with both hands, sinking his mouth onto hers, pulling her to meet the weight of his torso. She quickly challenged the rough kiss, catching his lower lip between her teeth and biting. The sting of it cleared his senses; he wasn’t capable of humiliating her, not even to make a point.
Jerking his head back, he looked down at her narrowed eyes and gritted teeth. The ragged cadence of her breath roared in his ears. He lowered his mouth to hers again, slower, softer, calculating. It wasn’t a surrender, but she wouldn’t know that.
Her heart beat wildly against his ribs; her lips were tight and unforgiving, but her hands faltered, then rose to his shoulders, digging into them. The taste of her mouth shot through him. He touched her teeth with his tongue, then dragged gently at her lips. He felt her first, tiny concession, as they pursed a fraction, searching.
Losing himself in that pursuit, he coaxed her more, barely touching his mouth to hers for a moment, then sealing it, nudging her with almost imperceptible movements of his jaw. Her heat rushed into him, a backwash of intensity, building, returning, surging outward again. A silent sigh went through her body, and her fingers spread on his arms, feathering across the fevered skin.
Lily felt her anger and humiliation changing to astonishment. His seductive power could erase everything. The surrender worked both ways; he was apologizing—that must be it, because he was suddenly so gentle. The deep, drugging force of his mouth traveled into her blood like the pulse of a drum. His smoky male scent invaded her; the careful thrusting of his tongue stroked chords of agreement inside her, and a kind of exquisite lethargy radiated from it.
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