Unforgiven
Page 24
“The Marine Corps motto is Semper Fidelis. Always faithful. It’s the core of what it means to be a Marine, underscores everything you do, every action you take. Fidelity to your brother and sister Marines binds you more strongly than friendship to your oath of service, to God and country, but fidelity isn’t the sole province of the military. Fidelity is the bond that keeps marriages and families together. It strengthens communities, makes love true, keeps honor untarnished, and it is at the core of the love and commitments Keith and Delaney share with each other, a gift that will flow from them to all of you. They’ve taken Proverbs chapter three, verse three to heart: ‘Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.’”
From her position at the back of the room Marissa could see many of the older women’s mouths move, reciting the verse as Adam spoke, his voice ringing clear and strong. “As you give, so shall you receive. May your marriage be blessed with love, and may we all return to you the love and fidelity you’ve shown us.” He lifted his glass and turned to the newly wedded couple. “To Keith and Delaney.”
Keith and Delaney echoed in the room and up from the tent in the meadow below, the call and response as automatic and heartfelt as the most passionate churchgoer’s. Marissa wondered if she was the only person to see Keith’s jaw clench as he returned Adam’s salute, or see Delaney’s gaze focus intently on the gathered guests rather than look at Adam.
The tableau broke when Delaney’s maid of honor rose to give her own speech, followed by both fathers, before Stacey cued the waitstaff to break down the head table to open the dance floor. Keith and Delaney shared their first dance. Delaney danced with her father, then with her father-in-law. Finally the wedding party retook the floor and the deejay urged everyone to join them.
She was sitting on a stool, out of the chef’s way as they packed up the remaining food for transport to the shelter in Brookings, when Adam walked into the room as if he had every right to be backstage at the wedding. Without a word, he crossed to the back door that led out to the kitchen garden, then to the meadow. One hand in his pocket, with the other he held the door opened and tilted his head in a let’s go gesture.
Marissa looked out the open kitchen door into the rain-pelted night. “Really?” she asked in disbelief.
His edgy smile, a mere flash of white teeth in his tanned face, didn’t make it to his eyes. She slid off her seat, folded the silk wrap and left it on the stool, then kicked her heels under it. The ground was too wet for anything less than flat feet.
“Where are we going?”
“The barn. Ready?”
At her nod Adam shucked his tuxedo jacket and held it over their heads as they dashed through the rain, skirting the enormous white tent before crossing the gravel spread in front of the big double doors. She held his coat over her head while he put his shoulder to the door and opened it enough to let her slip inside. Rain pelted the shingled roof high overhead, and the interior was dark as night.
Beside her Adam flicked on a flashlight. His white shirt clung to his heavy shoulders and upper arms, and she didn’t look much better. She was soaked to her waist, and her hair hung in damp tendrils around her face.
“I must look like a drowned rabbit,” she said as she coiled the heavy mass to wring it out.
“I like the look on you,” he said. “Remember?”
Water trickled from her hair to the floor as she looked at him. She did remember. The water fight, the thrill of the chase, the heat of the summer sun on her face and back as they made out in the loft. The feel of him, hard and slick with sweat against her, the soft, helpless sounds she made and he made as they pushed the limits further and further. Him saying no, again.
You can do whatever you want. I want you to do whatever you want. Please, Adam. Please.
But he didn’t, wouldn’t. He’d held back, locked it all away until, half-crazed with longing, he’d gotten drunk, gotten on his bike after a vicious summer thunderstorm, and raced Josh to his death.
“I remember,” she said quietly.
The flashlight beam flicked away from her face to the ladder leading up to the loft. “Let’s go,” he said.
She went up first while he held the beam steady on the rungs, then he followed her. The light swept over first a heater, then a battery-powered camping light Adam turned on. The weak light brightened the space enough to reveal a bed made of an opened sleeping bag and several blankets in the middle of the loft.
Memory and longing, that most potent mix of emotion and desire, shivered through her as she stood by the ladder. Seeing this, Adam turned on the space heater. “Sorry it’s so cold,” he said. “I didn’t want to turn it on earlier and burn down your barn.”
“I’m not cold,” she said quietly. Uncertain. Touched. Aroused. Very aroused, as the state of her nipples had nothing to do with the temperature. “When did you do this?”
“Between the ceremony and the reception. It didn’t take long. It’s not exactly the Palmer House,” he said, looking around at the makeshift bed, the dark, silent space. She heard only the rain on the roof. In here there was no trace of the wedding, no lights or laughter or music. Just her and Adam, wet and torn by desire, back where it all began.
“Is this some kind of revenge thing, to get back at Delaney?” she asked.
Hands deep in his pockets, rain clinging to his hair and face, he looked at her, unsmiling. “This is about you and me, Ris,” he said. “It’s always been about you and me.”
Intrigued by the purpose in his voice, she lifted her chin and met his gaze, but despite the longing cracking in the air like static electricity, she made no move toward him. Twelve years ago she’d drawn him up the stairs and down on the floor. She’d stripped off his shirt, and hers. Unzipped his jeans, and hers. This time, in this place, with the reality that was oh-so-real outside the door, he would have to come to her. Waiting for him made her heart slam into her breastbone and her breathing go shallow.
He crossed the slight distance between them and turned her so she faced the dim light emitting from the camping lantern, then stood behind her. Another shiver coursed down her spine when his warm fingers gathered her hair and sent it tumbling over her shoulder, then found the ties holding up her drenched halter. Two tugs and the fabric dropped forward. Adam unzipped her skirt, then pushed both skirt and halter to the floor. Light illuminated her bared torso while his body heat radiated against her back.
She wore nothing but black lace panties, her hair, and the shadows hovering all around them. His breath huffed warm and soft against her collarbone as he looked down at her body. His breathing deepened, rough and slightly unsteady as he looked at her. Her nipples hardened and he cupped her breasts, rolling the hardened tips between his thumbs and forefingers before sliding one hand up her throat to turn her mouth to his.
One hard, demanding kiss and she opened to him. A little whimper escaped her before she lifted one hand to his nape and the other to his ruthlessly shaved jaw. A deep kiss, another slick and hot and teeth-clicking and wet, then he turned her so she faced him. She went up on tiptoes to press the length of her nearly naked body to his and kiss him like she’d kissed him when they were young, without hesitation, without reservation. Holding nothing back.
His hands skimmed down her back and slid into the black lace boy shorts she wore. He cupped her ass, pulling her tight against him, and for a moment she thought they might set the barn on fire with their peculiar, potent chemistry. But he lifted his head to break the kiss, then shrugged out of his tuxedo jacket and draped it around her shoulders. She smiled and slipped her arms into the sleeves. The rain hadn’t penetrated the lining, so the jacket was warm and heavy around her nearly naked body. While he unfastened his cummerbund and dropped it on the floor, she examined the black tuxedo studs fastening his shirt, figured out how they worked with the buttons, and began to undo them, dropping the released studs into his jacket pocket.
“Ris,” he said.
He went to his knees on the sleeping bag and pulled her down with him until he was flat on his back. She straddled his hips, shook back her hair, and kissed him. His hands roamed through her hair, fisted, tugged, then swept down her back to her ass, again and again, until she was undulating against his erection. It was like no time had passed at all. Different season, different decade, two seemingly different people, but it was the same. The heat, the passion, the need, the sense of total rightness; and this time he held nothing back. He rolled her, pushed the jacket to the side, baring her body to his gaze, his hands. His competent, strong fingers trembled when he hooked in the waistband of her lacy boy shorts and tugged them off.
On his knees between her legs, he planted his palm beside her shoulder and moved his finger in slow, tight circles around her clit. Heat blasted at her, from the space heaters, from his body. Open to him, utterly helpless, she stared up into his eyes as the heat built, tightening muscles and setting fire to expectant, desperate nerves. She could feel pleasure washing up her body in ever-growing waves, felt her own gaze grow desperate and demanding and molten all at once. And still she looked at him, fighting the urge to close her eyes and go deep inside her body, wanting, needed to see what was happening in his own eyes.
He didn’t look away, either. He didn’t look down at his hand, working so intimately between her thighs, or at her pink nipples, or at the way her abdomen tightened and flexed as the pleasure built. He looked at her, no longer avoiding what they felt for each other or how it came out, right there with her in the storm. Rain slapped at the roof in wind-tossed sheets. She arched and gasped under his hand, the noise high-pitched, needy, and almost inaudible over the downpour.
“Go under, Marissa,” he commanded.
She did. At the next slow stroke of his finger she let the waves and the rain take her. When she subsided into the padded sleeping bag his hands went to his waistband and unfastened his pants. His erection sprang free as he shoved the black wool down to the tops of his thighs, then dug in the jacket pocket by her hip. When he pulled out a condom, she gripped his wrist.
“Adam,” she said. “It’s okay. Go under with me.”
He went still above her, and for a moment the only sound in the loft was the steady patter of rain on the roof as she looked at him and he looked at her.
His eyes were dark, mossy green from heat and lust. She could drown in his intense hazel eyes, clear and unguarded in the lantern’s steady light. “No unplanned pregnancies,” he said. “No mistakes.”
No lives ruined.
Her throat tightened. Tears stung her eyes. “Adam,” she whispered. She cupped his stubbled jaw and stroked her thumbs over his mouth. “This isn’t a mistake. We were never a mistake.”
Long moments passed as he remained poised above her, emotions scudding under the blank surface he wore like armor. Her thighs glowed in the light, his hair-roughened legs between hers, his erection above her dark curls. She slid her hands down his ribs to his hips, stroked the soft skin there with her thumbs. “I’m asking. Please. Give me something more than a facade, more than a dream. Give me something real. Give me you.”
His gaze searched hers as he lowered his chest to hers. They pressed together, breath to breath, sex to sex, thighs to hips. “Adam, I love you. It’s all right. We’re all right.”
He froze, and long moments passed while his gaze searched hers. She’d never said the words to him before, never told him that truth. But she could, now. Finishing the house made her strong. He made her strong. She could wait for him to finish whatever he’d come home to do.
Time held its heated breath. His response was to align himself with her entrance and push inside. The slick, gliding pressure against sensitive inner walls made her gasp and coil around him. Her heels dug into the backs of his thighs, her arms slid under his to grip his shoulders. “God,” she whispered as her eyes dropped shut. “Adam. Oh, Adam.”
Still watching her, he withdrew, then did it again. He reached down and adjusted the cant of her hips. Again. Again. Lightning streaked through her, and she tightened around him even more, calling a harsh gasp from his throat.
“Ris. It’s too much.”
“It’s never too much,” she whispered with what little air remained in her lungs.
Perfect synchronicity, skin to skin in every way possible, every cell in their bodies working together . . . she buried her face in his neck to stifle her noises, and his hand cupped the back of her head to hold her safe as she cried out and came. Utterly helpless under him, the pleasure wracked her in sharp pulses, sensation heightened with his relentless thrusts until he went rigid above her, and his release joined her own.
He eased down on top of her, taking enough of his weight on his elbows to avoid crushing her, but the heft of his body against hers eased her shudders into trembling, as if trapping the waves and sending them back in on themselves in a physical and emotional feedback loop. So that’s what it could be like, she thought. When you get everything aligned, when love welcomes the longing, accepts it, learns to live with it, you make love.
She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat, inhaled shakily.
“You okay?” he murmured against her hair.
She nodded, unable to do anything more complicated, like talk. Her fingers loosened their death grip on his shoulders, scudded down the damp length of his back, and patted his ass tentatively, prompting a chuckle. He pulled out and reached for a travel pack of wet wipes in a plastic bag by the camping lantern, prompting a chuckle from her as she sat up.
“What’s the Marine Corps saying?”
“Semper Fi,” he said with a grin, then hunkered down beside her.
She plucked wipes from the packet and cleaned up as best she could while he did the same. He found her panties in the darkness and handed them to her, then fastened his pants.
“I’m going into Brookings early next week to look at apartments again,” he said as he pulled on his slightly wrinkled shirt. “Want to come along?”
She looked up from stepping into her skirt. “You know, I’m starting to believe you’re really staying.”
“I’m staying, Ris. I’ll graduate, join a firm in Brookings or Sioux Falls, but I want to open an office here in Chatham County and focus on rural sustainable design projects.” He gave her a crooked smile. “Brookhaven would make a great space for a home office, and it’s always good to have a reputable contractor to recommend to clients.”
She felt her heart stop dead in her chest. “You want us to be business partners?”
“I want you to be aware I’ve thought about it.”
She pulled the halter top over her head, then presented her back to Adam. “You don’t have to say that because I said I love you,” she said, proud of her even tone.
He tied the tapes, then wrapped his arms around her, engulfing her in his warm, solid embrace. “I’m not saying it for that reason. It’s always been about you and me, Ris,” he said into her hair.
The edge was gone, whatever had simmered under his skin when he arrived from the church, and maybe for the first time their being together made things better for him, not worse. “I know,” she said quietly. Always. It had always been Adam, would always be Adam. Forever. And it would be a good life. A very good life. People made very good lives out of far less than the love of a lifetime and honest, important work in the community where her roots ran deep and wide.
Isn’t this what you wanted?
Yes, when I didn’t dare want anything else!
As if he could hear her thinking, he said, “We’ll travel. Not as much as I’d like while I’m in school, but after that, we’ll make the time and find the money.”
“I know,” she said again. It was a storybook ending, the fairy tale she’d never dreamed she could have. Twelve years ago all she’d wanted was Adam, a life with him, whatever life they could scratch together from Dakota dirt and dreams, from sweat equity and passion. But then he’d left, and in the cool, gritty darkness his absence created, different dreams took root and flourished.
She could go back to the old dreams. For Adam she could, and she would. She took a shuddering breath and relaxed back into his heavily muscled body. They stayed like that for a long moment, breathing together. Eventually he kissed the top of her head.
“I should get back,” she said. “God only knows what crisis Stacey’s handling without me around.”
“Stacey could take over supply logistics for an entire battalion and not lose a beat,” Adam said, but he let her go.
“Are you staying tonight?” He nodded. “The door to my apartment’s unlocked,” she said. “Wait for me?”
“Sure,” he said, then gave her a crooked grin. “It’s my turn to wait.”
21
THE SUNDAY AFTER the wedding was like every other Sunday in Walkers Ford, slow, quiet, traffic on Main Street picking up in time for church, but not before. Adam went home to dig through the last of the boxes; Marissa joined him and his mother at the Heirloom for brunch. The mood in the restaurant was subdued, as if the whole town was suffering from a wedding hangover. Marissa certainly was. They let Adam’s mother do most of the talking, a steady stream of chatter about customers and orders, the kind of seemingly trivial background noise that cemented people together. After he took his mother home they went back to Brookhaven and slept for six hours, waking up only for supper and a hot bath that turned into a leisurely, sweet evening in bed.
On Monday, Adam drove his mother to Sioux Falls to pick up a fabric order, and set up appointments with apartment managers in Brookings while Marissa caught up on her books. It was one of the rare fall days when the sun played hide-and-seek with the low gray and white clouds, gilding the very air. Delaney and Keith were off on their honeymoon in Fiji, and Adam was due in a few minutes to pick up Marissa for another apartment-hunting trip to Brookings.