Royce turned back to the screen door. The rain pelted the patio now. Thunder’s growl and lightning’s flare grew closer as the trees began to sway in the escalating wind. “You’re right, we’ve changed. Lots of things have changed and not necessarily for the better.” He swiveled to look at her. “But one thing hasn’t changed, at least not for me. I still care about you, still want to spend time with you. I’ve missed my best friend, my confidant and skinny co-conspirator.” He blew out a deep breath. “Mostly, I’ve missed the closeness we shared all those years.”
Royce’s words echoed her sentiments exactly. “I’ve missed you too, but I’m afraid . . . .”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid that if we make love, the closeness might not be there afterwards. It might be different than before.”
“It will be different. It has to be because we’re different. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be satisfying.” Royce took her hands in his. “When we were younger, we had to sneak around and worry about being caught. But now, we can take our time and enjoy being together whenever we want to.” He brushed his lips across hers. “Doesn’t that sound good to you?”
“Royce Sutton, are you trying to seduce me?”
He grinned. “Yep. Is it working?”
Elita wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled his mouth close to hers. “Reckon so.”
Royce kissed her and she returned the favor. They traded short, teasing pecks between giggles and smiles, like two friendly boxers baiting each other for the main event. As their kisses warmed and lengthened, he pressed her against the wall. Elita’s hands slipped inside his unbuttoned shirt and moved across his chest to his shoulders. He cupped her breast with one hand, raking his thumb back and forth across the nipple, as his other hand unhooked the top of her bathing suit.
In a slow, deliberate manner, Elita slipped his shirt off his shoulders, down his arms, finally letting it drop to the floor.
His hands wrapped gently behind her neck and untied the strings to her bathing suit.
As the top fell, Elita leaned back against the wall
His eyes went straight to her breasts. He cupped one in each hand and laughed.
Elita pushed his hands away. “You think my breasts are funny?” Embarrassed and hurt, she bent down and retrieved her bathing suit top.
Royce snatched the top out of her hands. “Don’t get all huffy, Elita. I just remembered how you used to worry that they’d always be small.”
Elita folded her arms across her chest to shield her breasts from any further scrutiny.“You called them, ‘Mini donuts.’ That didn’t help bolster my confidence any.”
His face turned serious. “Let’s keep the record straight. I called them mini donuts with a strawberry on top.” The sides of his mouth twitched as he tried not to laugh.
Her embarrassment turned to anger. “Give me my damn top.”
Royce shook his head, wadded up the top, tossed it across the room. A smug grin spread across his face as he started toward her.
Leaning back against the wall, she raised her knee level with his groin. “If you touch me, I’ll hurt you.”
He stopped. “You wouldn’t do that to me.”
“Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t.” Elita flashed a wicked grin. “Are you willing to take the risk?”
“I think the potential reward is worth the risk.” He moved slowly, cautiously toward her. “How many times did I tell you that your breasts would fill out?”
“A couple . . . maybe.”
“More like a hundred times.” Royce stopped his advance as his groin brushed against her knee. “I told you they’d be perfect and I was right.”
She lowered her knee. Royce advanced, silencing any further protest with a hard, eager kiss that demanded a similar response. Her hands slid over his bare shoulders, then up into his thick hair as his tongue trailed down her neck. He drew a nipple into his mouth, gently tasting, then moaned softly as he freed his first captive and moved to savor its twin. A line of fiery pinpricks raced up and down Elita’s spine.
Royce raised heavy-lidded, sapphire eyes. In a low, thick voice he murmured, “As sweet as ripe Georgia peaches. I knew they would be.”
Elita brushed back his hair. “Must you always compare my breasts to food?”
He smiled and returned to his feasting. He ran a finger along the top of her bathing suit bottom, stopping at times to tug at the sides, pushing it down inch by inch.
Her earlier doubts flickered. “Royce, maybe . . . .”
“Maybe what, Elita?” he asked, his voice tinged with frustration.
“Maybe we should slow down a bit.”
“Fine. Whatever you say.” He let go of her and walked over to the open patio door.
Booming thunder punctuated the heavy curtain of pouring rain. Lightning streaked across the dark afternoon sky slamming into an unlucky cypress on the opposite side of the bayou.
Elita stood beside Royce, both naked from the waist up. “It’s really coming down. Good thing we didn’t get caught out on the lake.”
He gave a curt nod, but said nothing.
The tension in the room grew with each passing moment of silence. Anyone who knew Elita would testify that she was seldom at a loss for words. If anything, she talked too much, asked too many questions, and readily voiced her opinion. But at this moment, she couldn’t think of any words that would break the awkward hush between them.
Royce shifted his weight from one foot to the other, showing her more of his back.
Words tumbled out of her. “What happened to your shoulder? How did you get that scar? When did—”
Royce whirled around. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
Elita moved behind him in an attempt to get a better view at the scar, but he kept twisting around. “Let me see your back, Royce.”
He shook his head. “I said it was nothing.”
“You never had a scar there before. Let me see.” She slipped behind him before he could stop her. She ran a finger along the three-inch pink scar and then noticed a longer scar on his left thigh just below where his cut-offs stopped. “Someone shot you! Twice! Who, Royce? Who?”
He turned to face her. His eyes were mere slits in a face shrouded with hate. “I didn’t get his name. The lieutenant popped the guy before proper introductions were made.”
“Vietnam,” she whispered. “You were wounded in Vietnam.”
“It’s no big deal.”
“Is that why you got your medals?”
“Who's been talking to you, Elita?”
“Cliff.”
“Damn him! What else did he tell you?”
“Nothing, except that you were a hero.”
Royce threw back his head, released a loud, mocking laugh. “Hero? There’s no such thing as a hero. There never was.”
Elita had seen Royce aggravated before, seen him downright mad, but she’d never seen such raw anger in him. She picked up his shirt, wrapped it around her chest. “Did Cliff lie about the medals?”
“I got a purple heart, but so what? All you have to do to receive one is to get wounded. That’s easy to do in war.”
“What about the others? Cliff said you got medals.”
Royce snorted. “Little brother runs his mouth as much as you do.”
The hateful nature of Royce’s words cut deep. But working in a hospital for three years had taught her to recognize when a person was lashing out because of pain. Elita rested her hand on his forearm. “I’m so sorry you—”
“Thousands of men came home with these little souvenirs,” he said, jerking his arm away. “Save your sympathy for the guys still fighting and the ones coming home in body bags.” He yanked open the screen door, cupped his hands, caught some rain, and splashed it on his face before closing the screen.
“Don’t ever ask me about Vietnam, Elita. Don’t ask about my father or medical school either. That’s all in the past. It’s dead and buried, and I plan to keep it that way.” He smoothed back his hair wi
th his damp hands. “You can ask me about anything else if you want to.”
Elita couldn’t speak. Her heart ached for him. She tried to reconcile the compassionate, confident boy who’d been her best friend and first love with the embittered, disconsolate young man standing beside her.
“Perhaps I should take you home,” Royce said without looking at her.
At first, Elita thought he might be right, but then her eyes rested on the carved wooden box. Royce had said he’d missed her and still cared about her. The wooden box and the gift it held was proof he’d spoken the truth. A gust of wind blew through the screen door, bringing with it a spray of chilling rain. She shivered hard.
Royce drew her into his arms and turned his body sideways to shield her from the cold. They stood there for a long time before he asked, “Do you remember how it used to be between us, Elita? How close we were?”
“I remember.”
He looked into her eyes. “I don’t think you do. If you did, we wouldn’t be standing here half-naked just talking. We’d be on that bed by now.”
Elita’s eyes widened in disbelief. Royce had never been one to be so direct and plainspoken about sexual matters. Teasing, cajoling, subtly hinting he wanted to make love was more his style. “I don’t recall you being so blunt before.”
He grabbed her shoulders. “And you were never so indecisive. You knew what you wanted and weren’t afraid to ask for it.” Royce took her face in his hands. “What do you want from me, Elita? What do you need?”
She sucked in a deep breath, gathered her courage, and blurted out the primary questions that had kept her awake the previous night. “Did you love her? The Senator’s daughter. Did she break your heart when she left you?”
Royce chuckled. “She didn’t break my heart and I didn’t break hers. We were drawn to each other because we had lots in common.”
“Like having rich, powerful families?”
“It had more to do with the fact that we were both rebelling against our rich, powerful, families. Her father and uncles were attorneys and politicians. They planned on her being the first woman Senator from their state. She wanted to be an archeologist. We spent most of our time together studying or commiserating about how controlling our families were.”
“There must have been more to it than that. After all, you did ask her to marry you.”
“There was more. Something called loneliness. Luckily, she realized what a mistake our marriage would be and called off the wedding.”
Elita brushed her hand across his cheek. “Still, the breakup must have been painful.”
“I was as relieved as she was. Shortly afterwards, she and a teaching assistant in the archeology department went to Egypt on a dig. Last I heard, they got married and had a baby.”
Elita sighed, relieved to know that whatever happened between them, it wouldn’t be simply his rebounding from a broken heart.
“What do you want to do, Elita? Go home? Eat? What?”
She let his shirt slide to the floor. Wrapping her arms around his waist, Elita laid her head against his chest and savored the warmth of his smooth skin pressing against hers. “I want you to tell me what else you remember about us.”
“I remember some of the stunts you pulled.”
“Like what?”
“Like getting out of the cabin cruiser and swimming around when alligators were lying right there on the bank. Basically daring them to come after you just to scare me.”
“I had to do something to get your nose out of those books. Besides, you pulled me into the boat before they reached me.” She smiled up at him. “You saved me, Royce.”
“I was saving the alligators from your right hook. Something I failed to do for Todd Menard.”
She pulled back. “That knucklehead deserved the whipping I gave him. He was forever bullying the little kids, stealing their toys, or eating their lunches.”
“Maybe so, but did you have to break his nose?”
“As I recall, you approved of the fight at the time, even made money betting on me to win.”
“I did make a few bucks off the older boys. But I had to pay Todd twice that to convince him to tell his folks he got hit in the nose with a baseball.”
Elita laughed. “Todd bamboozled you. He’d have never told his family he let a girl beat him in a fight. His brothers would’ve never let him live it down.”
“Maybe, but I didn’t want to take a chance.” Royce tweaked her nose. “I spent half my allowance every month trying to keep you out of trouble.”
“Oh you poor, poor, little rich boy,” she said with mocking sympathy. “What else do you remember?”
“I remember that camp on Duck Island and your sixteenth birthday. We decided you were ready for . . . .”
“I think we called it my final exam, and you decided I was ready. I thought I was ready months before, but you insisted we wait.”
“You were so young. Looking back now, we should have waited longer. Your father would’ve killed me if he’d known I’d stolen your innocence.”
“He’d have wanted to, but Mama would have stopped him. After all, she married Daddy when she was sixteen. Besides, you didn’t steal anything. It was my gift to you.”
Royce hugged her. “What do you remember, Elita?”
“The night before you left for college and us in this room. We spent the whole night trying to get enough of each other, trying to figure out how we were going to survive not seeing each other again until your Thanksgiving break.” Elita blinked back tears. “Who’d have guessed a few months would turn into years?”
“I should have gone to Chicago,” he said, his voice filled with regret.
“Why didn’t you?”
“When I came home at Thanksgiving and you weren’t here, I was so damn angry at you, especially after Matt told me your mother gave you a choice of staying here or moving to Chicago.”
“It wasn’t really a choice. I wanted to stay, but Mama needed me.” Royce needed to understand her reasoning behind the hardest decision of her life. Elita chose her next words carefully. “In a few short months, Mama lost everything. Her son, her husband, and her home too because, although she was a Caddo girl born and raised, she couldn’t stand to look at Caddo Lake after daddy drowned. She had to leave to keep her sanity. I was all she had left. If she’d lost me too, what would’ve happened to her?”
Royce brushed back her hair. “I realized later you had to go. After I got over my anger, I really did plan on visiting, but everything went crazy. I took the maximum number of hours the university would permit and every visit home brought another battle with my parents. I meant to come, but time got away from me and then I met . . . .”
“The Senator’s daughter.” There, Elita had his explanation, unsatisfying as it was. But having spent the last four years going to school, working part-time, and trying to squeeze in some kind of personal life, she understood how life could slip by so quickly.
It came to her then, that feeling of calm that flows from mental certainty—the peace that comes when ambiguity and anxiety melt away and your mind and body are in one accord. It’d been a long time since she’d felt sure about anything, but at that moment Elita knew exactly what she wanted—Royce. Wanted him as much as he wanted her. She wouldn’t let remorse about the past or fear of what the future might hold spoil their time together.
Her arms encircled his neck. She lifted her face.
Royce brought her mouth to his and kissed her deeply. His hands moved across her naked back to her hips. She offered no resistance when he carried her to his bed. He laid her down gently and stretched out on his side next to her.
Elita raised her head to kiss him again, but a thunderous boom followed by the loud popping of wood splitting caused her to draw back.
He rose. “I’ll close the door.”
“No, don’t.” She pulled him down beside her. “I like the storm too. Its fury, its power, its—“
Royce silenced her with a passionate kiss.
“Do you know what else I remember?”
She shook her head.
“I remember how you like to be touched, how you liked to be kissed.” His voice grew lower, more ragged with each word. “I remember how and where.”
Her breath caught in her throat as Royce began a brazen exploration of her body. The heel of her foot pressed into the comforter as his mouth and hands worked diligently to prove the veracity of his claim. He murmured encouragements as her fingers fumbled with the buttons on his jeans. The storm raging inside of them swelled to match the tempest hammering the Caddo.
Royce broke off his tantalizing assault on her senses and pulled back to look at her. His blue eyes held a promise, the same promise Elita knew he saw reflected in her eyes. Whatever happened now, there’d be no regrets.
* * *
He crouched behind a large rhododendron bush on the edge of the master bedroom patio. Even in this downpour, it was careless to get this close to the house. What if one of them decided to shut the patio door or close the drapes? But the vision before him overrode his primary concern for self-preservation. Besides, the couple was too caught up in the joining of their bodies to notice anything else. Earlier, he’d heard them arguing and hoped she’d leave, go pack her bags, and return to Chicago.
Thankful that the lashing rain prevented him from hearing her moans of delight, he watched the culmination of the couple’s mating, followed by the young man rolling onto his back beside his obviously satisfied companion. She turned toward him, smiled, and entwined her long, slender legs with his. Her lover pulled the sheet over them and flicked off the lamp.
A low growl lodged in his throat as he stared at the darkened room. He wanted to see more of her, to watch her a little longer. He wondered if she would’ve let the young stud bed her if she knew he’d been pleasuring another bayou beauty for months.
Thinning rain and waning wind signaled the storm’s subsidence. He needed to go. A grisly task awaited him in the Caddo, one he must complete. He hoped this young woman would leave before she suffered a similar fate.
CHAPTER 4
Elita stood on the limestone patio staring at the Caddo below, her bare feet cooling in a puddle of rainwater. Frogs croaked an all clear, signaling their Caddo neighbors that the danger had passed. Once again, it was safe to spread their wings or hunt for an evening meal. On the other side of the bayou, a family of wood ducks emerged from the shelter of a blackgum tree downed by a previous storm.
Shadows of Home: A Woman with Questions. A Man with Secrets. A Bayou without Mercy Page 5