“Joe!” I heard Maggie call to me.
I didn’t know if her voice had been carried on the wind, or if I had only imagined it. But she called again and I followed the sound. I moved on blindly then, closing my eyes to the pummeling and gritty rain. I stumbled again, and still kept moving forward. I was close and I could feel her, as if she was pulling me towards her.
“Maggie!” I shouted.
“Joe… I’m here… Joe…!”
I felt her hands on my arm and I fell to my knees, letting Ron roll off my back and onto the soaking ground. I pushed and Maggie pulled… together we rolled him through the stone opening and into Margie’s waiting arms.
“I thought I’d lost you…,” Maggie mouthed words I couldn’t hear… but could see it in her eyes. She gripped my hand in hers, trying to pull me inside. We were close, so fucking close… I was almost in… almost beside her… a sudden flash of lightning lit the sky and I could see her face, her beautiful mouth and her wide, dark eyes.
Then the world went black, and I felt her hands slip away…
Nothing was left, but the picture of her face.
32
Maggie
“Joe!!”
I screamed uselessly into the wind, driven back by its force. One moment he’d been there, and the next he was gone. I could hear my own voice, shrill and echoing off the dank stone walls. I scrambled back up towards the opening, calling into nothingness. Sharp bits of flying debris ripped into my skin, tearing at my face and hands. I had to squeeze my eyes shut… It was only when Margie pulled me back that I collapsed in shock and utter exhaustion.
I sat in a heap at the bottom of our stone crypt, in a haze of pain and disbelief. Joe had saved me… he had saved all of us… even little Emily… He was bigger than life, stronger than any man I’d ever known. He was all I’d ever wanted for as long as I could remember.
He had asked me to marry him…
I sat staring out as the storm lifted, gently and easily dissolving into nothingness. It was suddenly as if it had never been…
I climbed out, ignoring Margie’s warnings and stood staring into what was left of the night. Hours before, Joe and I had been swept away in a storm of our own… I could still feel the ache between my legs that he’d left behind. I’d become a woman in his arms… his woman…
I was going to be his wife...
But the world I saw now wasn’t the same world I’d left behind. Nothing remained of the farmhouse but the foundation and a tangle of wreckage. Our truck was on its side and almost unrecognizable. The one the Walker’s had brought was simply gone.
Empty plains stretched out in every direction in the dim morning light. A few remaining stars twinkled overhead before fading into the dawn. I helped Margie get her husband out of the cellar and we made him a bed on the ground with anything we could scavenge. Rainwater sat in the broken shells of a random cup or bowl. We found what we could, under a clear sky and a rising sun.
I picked up a wooden bucket, its handle still intact and put a few scraps of the food inside. I found a bottle and filled it with water from an upturned china bowl. It sat at the top of a pile of broken plates and chairs. Legs stuck out at odd angles, and the old pink towel Joe had used to dry me after my bath was tangled amongst them. The world had turned on its head and we’d been shaken out by the heels. But the china bowl sat perfectly atop, as if it had been placed there with care…
I grabbed the last of what I found and crammed it into the bucket. Dean and Ryan knew where we’d been headed before the twister hit. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky now, and I knew rescue crews would soon be on their way.
Margie looked up at me from where she sat next to her husband. His color had come back and she had been giving him water as often as he would drink. She looked down at him and back to me. I could see that she knew… and she understood.
“I have to find him,” I said simply. “He isn’t gone… I’d know it in my heart.
But he needs me.”
She smiled and offered her hand, squeezing mine… I could feel the strength in the gesture, in the bond between us. Two women who loved their men…
I let go, closing my eyes and turning my face into the sun. I opened my heart wide and listened as it whispered…
I turned to the left and headed out.
Thank God, my cell had been in the pocket of my jeans. In everything that had happened, it was still there. I turned it on and stuck it into my shirt pocket. The battery was low, but it was better than nothing. At least it offered a chance that a rescue team could find us.
“Talk to me, Joe…,” I whispered through dry lips. “I’m right here…”
I watched the movement of the sun through the sky to keep my bearings. But I followed my heart. Miles of empty, desolate land passed under my feet. There was nothing to do but go forward. But as my legs moved me forward, my mind drifted back. A thousand memories of him…
When Dean had been off with his friends, it had been Joe who’d stayed behind, helping me with my math and making sure I had dinner. He’d taken me up to the big house when my dad had been too drunk to stand. He’d tucked me in with a blanket when I’d fallen asleep on the couch, and taken me back home only when Dad had sobered up. I could only imagine the hell his grandmother must have given him. She’d resented all of us from the day her son had allowed us to move in. We hadn’t had much of a family once Dad died, but at least Dean and I hadn’t lost each other. We’d been able to stay together. Joe had made sure of it.
I flashed to all the times I’d needed him and all the times he’d been there. All the times we’d said goodbye, and life had taken us in different directions… But even in the absences, he’d always been there. Never a day had passed, in all the years apart, that he hadn’t been my first thought in the morning and the last one at night. In my dreams, we’d always been together, and it seemed as if the binding thread between us had only grown stronger in the years apart. I felt it when I saw his face in the bus station. I felt it in his touch when he first kissed me. The longer I walked without finding him, the less hope I should have had. But each step drove the next… I could still feel his skin on my skin and hear the echoes of our love in the night…
I would find him… there was no other choice. As faint as it was, I could hear my name on his lips… and I followed.
33
Maggie
By the time I saw another house on the horizon, the light was waning and so was my strength. I’d left the path of destruction, cut by the storm behind long ago. And there’d been nothing but emptiness ahead of me.
But this house stood solid and whole… like a sign of hope. I trudged my way up the narrow dirt drive and saw a pair of sleepy dogs resting on the porch. I could hear a television and the sound of a child laughing…
“Please…?” I knocked at the door. “Is there anyone there?”
I almost fainted at the sight of her. A tiny, grey-haired woman opened the screen door and caught hold of my arm. The delicious smell of cooking made me lightheaded, and I leaned against the doorframe. The woman’s face began to swim in front of my eyes and I felt my knees start to buckle underneath me… “Oh, heavens…,” I heard her cry out. “I need some help…”
“I love you, Maggie,” Joe said, as his body moved against mine. My flesh was hot and I could feel trickles of moisture running down my sides and soaking the bed underneath me. His cock was inside me and he was moving… in and out… in and out… He held my face between his hands and filled me… and emptied me… filled me and emptied me…
“I found you…?” I asked him, as I felt the deep, humming energy building inside me. The rhythm of his thrusts made me dizzy… we seemed to be weightless… moving…
“I was never gone, Maggie,” he answered back. His voice was warm and his breath hot against my ear. He reached one hand down between my breasts and put his hot palm in the center of my chest. “I’ve been here all along… right here… I never left you, my love. I never could…”
I felt his cock swelling inside my tender flesh. He was deep and hard… heating from inside until I threatened to burst. “Can you feel me?” he whispered. “When I do this…?” He thrust inside, stopping my breath. “When I do… this…?”
His cock churned inside me, and my lips clenched to hold him. Every muscle in my body seemed to burn with the need to hold him. Every time he filled me, I touched the limit of pleasure and pain… every time he withdrew, I ached with emptiness and loss. I rode the movement of his body as he pushed me closer and closer to the edge. I felt my flesh as it dissolved and became part of him… I reached out to touch him, and never let him go…
“Always, Maggie,” he whispered. “Always…”
Together we exploded in a fury of love and desire. I felt his seed pump hot and deep. Lightning flashed behind my eyes and I squeezed them tight. The climax seemed to go on forever, with wave after wave of heat and pleasure. Our bodies were slick, drenched with our passion. Every pulse of his come seemed to heat my body… I was burning… burning… wet with sweat…
“... Joe…,” I gasped out weakly. My voice seemed so far away… “Joe…”
“There, honey… it’s all gonna be okay…”
I felt a cool, wet cloth on my aching forehead and struggled to open my eyes. They ached deep into the back of my skull, and the daylight burned…
“What’s your name, honey?” the old woman asked. I blinked, working to focus on her face. She was the woman at the doorway… I remembered…
“Maggie,” I croaked. “Where is he…?”
She lifted my head off the pillow and I felt sweat drip down my neck. She put a cup to my lips and I drank greedily. ‘My name’s Elsie,” she said kindly. “Bill went for the doctor again as soon as your fever started to spike. They should be back by evening.” She patted my shoulder soothingly. “Looks like you got caught in the storm, too.” She clucked her tongue. “Poor old Doc’s never made two trips in less than a day. But I think you’re past the worst of it now.” She rested the cool, papery skin of her hand on my forehead. “I think it’s broken now.”
She pulled a dry sheet over my damp, cooling body. I was dressed only in my underthings. She tucked it around my shoulders as I began to shiver. “I’ve got soup on the stove, honey. You need it to get your strength back.” She gave me such a kind look, I could feel the tears sting at the back of my eyes. “I’ll just be a minute, honey… I promise… I’ll be right back.”
As she left the room, I rolled onto my side and curled into a tight, painful ball. For a moment, I was numb. My feelings and thoughts seemed to float up above me somehow… They lingered a second longer and came crashing down all at once. The tears came flooding out, in a wave of pain and anguish that promised no end. The sound of my own racking sobs filled my ears… the sound of a heart breaking… a heart wrenched in two…
I was alive… but I was alone. Joe was gone…
and it was more than I could ever hope to bear.
34
Joe
The last thing I saw was her. And she was the only thing I remembered when I first woke up. She was the strongest memory I had.
I rolled over in bed and winced. The doctor had done a good job stitching the jagged gash on my arm. It was my head he was worried about. Hell… so was I.
My feet had left the ground, that much I knew. For how long and how far…? I doubted I would ever know for sure. But the storm had dropped me gently enough that my arm and a bruised forehead were the worst of my injuries. The doctor had told me to stay in bed for a few days, but it was the man who had found me and brought me into his home who had kept me there.
“Hey, Joe,” Gus said, coming in with a tray. “You look like you might make it after all.”
He put the tray down and the scent of chicken soup filled the air. He sat down in the chair next to the bed and eyed me hard. “You ain’t thinkin’ a leaving again…? Not been a single day yet, and you spent most of the night thrashin’ and callin’ out.” He ran a hand over his bald pate. “Hell of a storm, that. It blew almost a damned mile wide, and didn’t so much as lift one of my hens off her nest. Damned miracle, you lived.”
I put the tray aside and sat up, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. Dark splotches swam in front of me and the room tipped on its side…
“You just lay your behind back down there, boy,” Gus said, putting a firm hand on my shoulder. Doc’s comin’ out again this evenin’… And you ain’t getting past me nor the missus. You have some of that soup or you’ll hear about it, I promise…
Sent the boy to town… he’ll tell your people where to find you.”
He nodded kindly, wrinkles lining his leathery face. Then he closed the door firmly behind him.
I waited until his footsteps fell silent on the stairs. Then I pushed myself upright again, waiting for the wave of vertigo to pass. I focused on the dresser across from the window. My clothes were washed and neatly folded… waiting for me…
All through the night, the vision of Maggie’s face had haunted me. To the point of madness, I’d dreamed of her… her lovely face disappearing in the darkness. I’d dreamed of her voice, calling to me. Even as the morning light had broken, I’d imagined I could hear her… far in the distance and calling my name…
I slipped into my jeans, pushed bare feet into my boots, and grunted with the effort to pull on my shirt. For a moment I stood, waiting for the shifting room to settle around me.
Rescue crews had most likely already found her. Dean would have headed for the farmhouse himself as soon as news of the storm had reached him. I knew in my gut Maggie was safe. I knew it because it had to be true… But I also knew I’d never rest until I held her in my arms again. Even fully awake… no longer dreaming, I could still hear her. Maybe it was the injury to my head, an auditory delusion… But whatever it might cost, I would find her…
I worked my way slowly down the creaking stairs, careful not to bring old Gus rushing back to my side. My room had been on the top floor… by the time I reached the second, the rushing sound in my ears had changed. It sounded like a woman sobbing… her heart broken beyond all healing…
I knew the sound wasn’t real. All through the night I’d heard phantom voices and seen flashes of color and light in the pitch black darkness. But my feet carried me of their own accord, down the end of the hallway. And it seemed as if the sound grew louder, and its tenor reached deep inside my chest and pulled me ever closer…
I stopped, resting my aching forehead against the door. Hallucination or not, the sound was loudest here. I turned the glass doorknob and half fell, half stumbled into the room.
35
Maggie
I felt strong hands lifting me up, cradling me tenderly. I squeezed my swollen eyes tight and sobbed all the harder. For a second, I thought those arms felt like Joe’s… I could almost catch the scent of him…
“Maggie,” he groaned…
Words I’d never thought to hear again… sweet and anguished and full of love… I opened my eyes and felt my chest fill with air again. “Maggie… my darling… my heart…”
He collapsed onto the bed, half beside me, half on top of me. He moaned my name as if in a delirium, but his eyes were clear, bright and blue… He looked at me, desperate, and crushed me to his chest.
“I thought I was mad,” he said harshly, his lips ravenously taking mine. I met him with a passion that matched his own. I tangled my limbs with his…
“You were gone…,” I gasped out against his hot mouth. “I searched…
I thought you were dead… You saved us all… and I thought I had lost you…”
He leaned his face into the softness of my breasts, and I cradled him. “I was lost, until now…,” he answered. He reached his hands under the sheets and ran them over my flesh, as if to reassure himself I was real. I pushed his shirt open and pressed my face against his muscled chest…
There were a thousand questions… how and why… But as I listened to the ste
ady beat of his heart, none of them mattered. “I love you,” he said softly. “From that last moment until the storm took me… I could hear you, sweetheart. I could feel you.”
“I followed you as soon as I could,” I said, stroking the hair back from his eyes. ‘I didn’t know where to start… I just knew I had to find you.”
“You’re the most obstinate and maddening woman I’ve ever met, Maggie. I don’t think you’ve ever met a line you didn’t have to cross.” His voice was broken and harsh. “You could have gotten yourself killed…”
He reached down and slipped off my underthings. Then he shifted to strip off his jeans and shirt. “But I need it all, sweetheart.” He pulled me to him with that familiar sizzle of flesh on bare flesh. “I need your skin… your maddening, delicious skin.” He cupped my ass and used the curve of my belly to cradle his cock.
“You need to rest,” I argued, pushing uselessly at his chest, even as my body responded. “You’re hurt… this isn’t the time…” I touched the bandage on his arm.
He chuckled softly as his mouth tasted the hollow of my throat… the curve of my shoulder…
“Ahhh… no… That’s where you’re wrong…” He licked at the skin underneath my breast and moved slowly upwards… He looked in my eyes and my skin tightened… tingled. “A very wise woman told me there is no perfect moment. There’s only now.” He teased my nipple with his rough thumb. “And I plan to be ever so gentle…”
He touched every inch of my skin tenderly, exploring as he moved, finding every tiny mark and bruise. He kissed them all, one at a time, making sure he didn’t hurt me. He dragged his lips between my breasts and down my belly… he flicked his tongue over the top of my mound, spreading my lips with his fingers…
Little Sister Next Door Page 11