“You know, Sara,” he began. It was the first time, maybe the only time; he’d ever used my name to address me. He looked directly at me as he spoke; another first. “I used to hate this place when I was a teenager. I was so damned ready to get the hell away from here and go see the world. I had a chip on my shoulder and was ready to prove how much of a bad-ass I was. When Dad died, I didn’t want to lose the place, so Emily came out here and held the place down until…” He turned away again.
With the ice melting away so quickly, I felt the urge to reach out and place a hand on his shoulder, but I had enough sense not to speak. He didn’t shrug away from me or push me away. When he spoke again, he was rising up from the ground. The words were barely audible as he strode away from me toward his horse.
“She died holding onto this place for me.”
Following his lead, I went to my horse, stepped into the stirrup and swung my leg into place. There wasn’t much conversation on the way back to the ranch, but I could feel that an enormous change had taken place between us. Ironically, it was the sensitivity and humanity rather than his muscles and bad boy charm that attracted me to him again.
VI.
His strong, rough hands upon the skin of my stomach sent tingles radiating throughout my body and I quivered slightly. I remembered that when we were together in Vegas we were like insatiable animals, but when he invited me into his bedroom the night after he’d finished fixing my car, there was something completely different about him. He was intent on pleasing me rather than taking what I was willing to offer.
While his fingers caressed my skin, his lips planted tender kisses around my lips, torturously near, but not quite on them. They wandered to my ears, behind my ears and down my neck before traveling back up to my face. He was lingering, seeming to admire and memorize every inch of my face. It was such a complete turnaround that I was afraid to open my eyes and see that it had all just been another one of my fantasies.
When his lips finally found mine, he kissed me tenderly, probing softly with his tongue, but not trying to force himself upon me. Every nerve ending in my body was tingling at that point and I was beyond intoxicated by his touch, his breathing, his scent; every part of his essence that was lingering over me, surrounding me and enveloping me.
The iciness between us had melted away slowly and then disappeared entirely after the day that he’d told me about his sister. From that point forward, though we had slept in our designated rooms, we’d begun to warm up to each other and converse much like friends or partners. Since I’d begun to learn how to do a lot of the chores around the place, we’d started working as a team and discovered that once we’d let down our guards and started to communicate, we were actually pretty well suited for each other.
Grins, glances, giggles and lingering touches had begun to follow, but we’d steered clear of any other physical interaction. Instead, we started telling each other about our childhoods, where we’d been, what we’d seen and done, and what we hoped for the future. As we talked about those things, sometimes late into the night, a new attraction grew between us. It wasn’t an attraction based on lust and aided by shots of tequila, but a true respect and admiration for each other. Consequently, when he had invited me into his room, I had been only too eager to accept.
When his kisses left my mouth and began to travel lower, my body quivered under each touch of his lips and my nipples stood erect; inviting him to linger over them. He nibbled on them with his lips and traced around them with his tongue while his hands cupped the fullness of my breasts and pressed them together so that he could pass between them with ease. The sensations that were flowing over my body began to gather together under the soft mound between my thighs; aching to for him to continue downward.
It took an eternity for him to abandon my nipples and work his way down my stomach with his kisses; each of them driving me nearly out of my mind with anticipation. His arrival at my sweet spot down below was explosive. I don’t want to say that I saw flashing lights and had bells and whistles going off like a slot machine, but, well, yeah. He knew what he was doing and I lost count of the number of times that he took me over the edge.
I was so turned on that I was about to turn into a savage. Visions of the rough, animal passion that had engulfed us in Vegas were returning with a frenzy and I was out of control with wanting to feel him take me that way again, but he slowed things down or kept things slow, I don’t know, I just know that the next several minutes seemed to last a life time as he worked his way back up my body with kisses.
For as long as I’d known Dan, which wasn’t a long time granted, there had always been a shadow inside of his crystal blue eyes. At first, the shadow was mysterious and dangerous, but as I was around him more, it was sorrowful and full of regret. When he hovered over me that night in his bed on the Arizona ranch, they had become deep, clear pools without any sort of shadow. I was frozen in time and lost in those deep pools when he gazed down into my own eyes and entered me.
“Oh god,” I gasped. The moment had so much intensity to it that I became suspended somewhere void of time and space; somewhere inside of those deep crystal blue pools above me. It wasn’t the same rough, primeval passion that we’d had in Vegas, but it had an even more ancient and raw essence to it. I clung to him as though letting go would send me plunging into a dark pit.
Our eyes stayed focused on one another as he moved inside of me. It was though our eyes completed a circle between us and I could see and feel myself in him. I felt each of his long, slow strokes and each of them gathered together a thousand tingles from all parts of my body. Those thousand tingles grew into an enormous ache between my thighs and finally drove me well beyond the edge. I’m pretty sure they heard my screams echoing all over the desert and they were just beginning to die out when Dan let go as well.
I started off saying that that night in Vegas was the most incredible night that I’d spent with a man, well, that wasn’t exactly true. It was pretty awesome, no doubt, but it was nothing compared to Dan and I’s first night in the desert of Arizona. I think that when they do wedding vows they say something about two becoming one flesh. That night, Dan and I became one.
“Your car is fixed,” he said in the early hours of the morning after we’d pleased each other numerous times. His fingers continued to caress me and the heat of his body insulated me against the coolness of the desert night.
For a moment, his statement confused me. I had sort of thought that what we had just done communicated something other than his desire to be rid of me. “Does that mean that I have to go?” I asked.
“I did tell you not to get comfortable,” he muttered.
Had he just returned to his asshole state again? I turned to look into his eyes, which were sparkling like diamonds. “Do you seriously want me to leave?”
He shrugged, “I suppose we could make an arrangement.” The corner of his mouth twitched upward slightly. “You don’t really like it here, do you?”
“About ten days ago I would have rather been boiled in oil,” I responded. It was true, the Arizona desert had been hell. It was rugged, isolated, hard and dangerous, but it had begun to grow on me. Once I’d gotten past that outer shell, I began to see something peaceful, comforting and homey about it. “It’s grown on me,” I replied. “And, for your information, I have already made myself comfortable.”
“You don’t take orders very well, do you?”
“I’ve heard that they say the same about SEALs,” I countered. He didn’t reply, which was okay with me. The continuous caressing of his fingers on my skin were speaking volumes to me and the lingering silence no longer bothered me like it did before.
“Do you remember the day that you told me that you were pregnant and then stood up to me when I said that it could have been any of the other half-dozen men?” That question had come out of the blue.
“Yeah,” I giggled. “I was pretty sure that you were going to kill me.”
“Nah,” he replied. “I adm
ired that, but that’s not why I brought it up.”
“Then, why?”
“I need to apologize for saying that. I know you’re not that way.” He rolled over so that he could look into my eyes. “Can you forgive me?”
It wasn’t easy, but I forced him onto his back, pinned his arms to his sides and began giving him the same slow, torturous treatment that he’d given me earlier. That bad-ass, trained killer who was the father of my little baby SEAL was forgiven.
THE END
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Every morning, every noon, and every night Annabelle served a meal. They were mostly easily prepared, and she knew it was her contribution to the ranch, so she always told her husband that she was happy to do it. But some nights, when the men were talking amongst themselves while she got around to serving up all their plates, she could admit to herself she had never really wanted to be a cook for the hired hands of her husband’s ranch.
She was barely listening, thinking for the hundredth time about the warm bed she had in the big house and the view of the land from their bedroom window, when a word cut through the haze.
Chris.
There was more than one Chris in the world, Annabelle knew, but it always struck her when she heard the name anyway. There was only one Chris to her, and there probably always would be, she’d thought idly and resignedly from time to time. Involuntarily, she found herself listening to their conversation.
“And when is he supposed to get in?” one was saying. At the beginning she’d diligently learned all their names, but now she only did so if she thought there was some reason she’d need to know them, and Flannel-shirt Long-hair wasn’t going to be important, she suspected.
“Tomorrow was what I heard. He’s from here, I gather. Grew up in this town and went to high school here before he went off and joined the army five years ago. No one thought he was going to be coming back, but here he is.”
Annabelle’s hands froze. She had to stop herself from correcting them. It’s been the Navy, he’d left for. It’d been the Seals. And it wasn’t true that no one thought he was going to be coming back. She’d thought he was going to be coming back.
“Annabelle?” Flannel-shirt Long-hair was questioning her and her ladle, that hung frozen in the air where it had been when she’d put together that he was coming back.
Flannel-shirt Long-hair was expecting an explanation, but she gave him none. She could only manage a slight grimace and a nod, and finished serving up his dinner.
The rest of the line went agonizingly slowly. There weren’t so many men. The ranch was large, but it was a tough season for hiring out there, and she knew that her husband’s wages weren’t exactly on the competitive end of the scale. But still it was hard even to give the limited focus necessary to spoon out roughly even portions in the general vicinity of the bowls.
Had it really only been five years? She counted them in her head. Annabelle remembered each spring, each blistering summer, each fall, and each dark winter. It felt like more, but it had to be right. The first year she’d been mostly refusing to believe he’d left. He would be back, she was certain. She’d not yet graduated, and she remembered now thinking that that had something to do with it. He was only doing this while she was busy, she’d said to herself. He’d just gone off while she was finishing up school, and surely when she was done she’d get letter after letter, telling her where he’d been and what he’d been doing. Inviting her out to whatever base he was at, where she would get a little apartment and maybe go to community college, and wherever they sent him she’d follow.
But Chris’ letters never came. Annabelle never received a single one. She only even knew it was the seals when she’d broken down after High School graduation came and went and she’d still heard nothing, and went to visit his family home.
“He’s a seal now,” Chris’ little sister had said, “I’m sure he doesn’t have time to be thinking about anything back here.”
Chris’ sister had clearly been impressed that he’d made the grade and joined Special Forces. But she wasn’t surprised, and she wasn’t proud. She only felt hollow, and a little bit glad that at least if he wasn’t writing to her, Chris also wasn’t writing to his family.
She’d been listless all that summer. Chris had always been the one with the plans, and she’d always listened to them noncommittally. She remembered now, again, as she had so many times, when they were laying beneath their tree – the tree where she’d first given herself to him. He wanted to go away – to take her to California.
“You’d go with me, wouldn’t you?” he’d asked. “You could sing. You’re good at singing. Or you could find something else to do, I don’t know. There are a lot of things to do in California. We’d find something.”
She hadn’t answered him. She just left the sentence hanging in the air between them just a little bit too long to go unnoticed. Then she’d tried to kiss him, to end the conversation. They were laying side by side and she sat half-way up to be able to reach his lips. But he’d grasped her wrist before she could plant her hand on the ground beside him to support herself, and tossed her harshly back into the scattered grass.
“Chris!” she’d called his name, but he didn’t seem to hear. He was gone.
As were the ranch hands, now. She’d been standing there, lost in thought, idly stirring the pot, for the entire meal. Had they thought she was strange? It hardly mattered. She didn’t much care if they did or not. They’d be gone in due time anyway.
There wasn’t much to do, so she idly watched TV with Jason, her husband. They sat on separate recliners as they always did, alone in the big house, while the hired hands slept crowded in little rooms in their quarters.
“It’s so empty in this house,” Annabelle heard herself say, to no one in particular, after the final credits of an episode of House Hunters where a family of six were looking for an improbably cheap house in a crowded market.
She hadn’t really even directed it at Jason, but here he was now, crouching at the side of her recliner, and taking her hand in his.
“It’ll happen for us, Annabelle Lee,” he said. Then he drew her hand to his lips and kissed it. She watched him, as though from a distance, observing him.
Had she ever loved him?
She asked herself this as he drew closer to her, and kissed her neck.
“We just have to keep trying,” he was saying now, and she knew where he was going.
So she let it go, as it had so many times, changing nothing and meaning nothing.
After it was done she looked at him in his sleep. He was a little older, and his hair had gone salt and pepper. Maybe she had loved him. She’d loved that about him, at least, once. And the length of his smooth jaw.
He turned over in his sleep, away from her. She felt accused, as though he must have felt her judgement. He wasn’t a bad man. He’d never been a bad man. But it had never felt to her entirely as though he were her man.
It took Annabelle what felt like hours to get fully to sleep. She kept thinking of the last time she’d seen Chris. She kept trying to convince herself that there was some way it could not be him. Maybe the ranch hands had heard it wrong. Maybe his name was different, and it was six years, or three, and he really had joined the army, and he has nothing to do with Annabelle and the man she had loved the way only teenagers who have never seen a love go wrong are capable.
When Annabelle finally did sleep, she dreamed of Chris. He was looking away, wearing a uniform and staring off into the distance. She kept trying to turn his head, so that she could look at his face and be sure it was
him, but he wouldn’t turn. So she tried to walk around him, so that she could see his face that way. But wherever she walked, however she tried to get around him, his back was always to her.
She awoke frustrated and alone. Jason was no longer there, and that was her first clue that she’d overslept and breakfast wouldn’t be served to the hired hands on time. Oh well. This had happened before. Year three had been a hard one for her, and she’d missed breakfast almost more often than not.
Annabelle lazily stretched and craned her neck from the position she was laying in to be able to see the alarm.
10:34.
She shot out of bed. Missing breakfast was one thing. Missing lunch because she overslept was another entirely. In her hurry, at first she threw on an ordinary, everyday outfit. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good. Just what she wore because she had to wear something. But at the doorway, with her hand on the knob, she stopped. She was remembering her dream, and the frustration, and it reminded her of watching him walk away under their tree.
So she went back to her wardrobe and took a good hard look, and found a dress she thought she’d thrown away years ago. She’d worn in that summer, and she knew he’d liked it. She tried to remember if she’d worn it since and could not.
On her way downstairs she heard voices. The same ones as always. At first Jason was talking, in words she couldn’t quite make out. Then Steve, his staff manager and second in command, was saying something about taxes, and then…
And then Chris was speaking. And she saw him, as she came around a corner, simultaneously. It was the back of his head, as it was in her dream. But it was undeniably him. He stood up a straighter, now. But the dimensions of his torso, his arms and legs, hadn’t changed. The curve of his neck, and the three little dots on it, right in a row, were the same as they had always been, though his hair had been cut short in military style.
AFRICAN AMERICAN URBAN FICTION: BWWM ROMANCE: Billionaire Baby Daddy (Billionaire Secret Baby Pregnancy Romance) (Multicultural & Interracial Romance Short Stories) Page 30