by Alice Orr
“I don’t want to soak as much as I thought I did,” he said, his voice huskier than ever.
He carried her to a wide lounge chair just out of the direct sun from the skylight. He enfolded her in a large, thick towel and laid her gently against the cushions. Taylor let herself succumb to it all—the warmth from the water, the softness of the towel, the strength of Des’s arms. She wanted nothing more at this moment than to give up her will and all of the confused reality that went along with it for her just now. She watched Des lower himself, inch by inch, onto the lounge next to her. The sweet ache inside her spoke, with an intensity that could not be denied, of how much she wanted him there.
His hands found the opening amid the folds of the towel and touched her body. His fingers slid downward from her shoulder, pulling the damp suit with them as they moved. His lips were on her forehead, her eyelids, her mouth, her throat, moving in the same mesmerizing rhythm as his hands. He unwound the towel from her body as though he were unwrapping some new and wondrous gift, then moved away for a moment to look down at her. She lay naked next to him and suddenly remembered her moment of vision the first time she saw him, of her pale body next to his darker one, just as they were now.
“You are so very beautiful,” Des said. He spoke in a whisper, but she could hear the depth of feeling there all the same.
Taylor had never felt such tender urgency. She responded by taking his face in her hands and pulling his mouth to hers. His body followed, rolling on top of hers, his arms enveloping her, pressing her close. The muscles of his back rippled beneath her fingers. His chest hair teased her nipples. He slid his hand between their bodies to capture her breast. When he circled her hard nipple with his thumb, a moan escaped her lips.
“Oh, Des. I want you so much.”
She slid her hands down his golden body, over knots of muscle under firm skin. She could feel how warm he was, burning with the same rising passion that seethed through her own veins and made her throb with the fury of desire. She pulled his damp suit down over his narrow hips and strong, hard thighs. Her bold words and actions enflamed them both beyond all thought of tenderness. Tenderness wasn’t what Taylor wanted now. She arched her hips to press against him, as if she might push herself through to the very core of him, under his skin among his nerves and sinews, until the two of them became a single being straining toward release.
He pulled himself, rather roughly, just free enough from her embrace to draw his mouth down her throat, past her shoulders, and over her breast, licking at her along the way. He sucked hard at her nipple, and she gripped the edge of the lounge’s cushion, feeling that she had to hold onto something or be propelled away by the force of her own passion. She was completely given over to him now, abandoned to the momentum that carried her along like a leaf on a flood.
She reached for him with her free hand, eager to set him on fire with the same wild, pleasurable pain she was feeling, as his fingers slipped between her thighs and she pushed herself against him once more. She flattened her palm along his chest, stroking the tautness of his skin and feeling the wiry golden hairs between her fingers, then sliding her hand down his side, over the jut of his hipbone. She drank in each sensation that the feel of him sent burning through her, awakening a thirst that must have lain dormant inside her for years and now demanded to be quenched. She touched the hardness between his thighs, and he moaned. His head fell back from her breast. He was still for a moment, as if helpless, while she stroked and caressed him.
Then he rose slowly, deliberately, moving his body over hers, pushing her thighs apart and lowering himself between them. Never in her life had she been as ready as she was now to feel a man moving over her. She was equally ready to be carried further and further from the control and caution that had kept her passions imprisoned for so long. She wound her arms around him and held him to her as her body echoed the motion of his.
It was as if they were struggling together over an erupting landscape, their voices urgent in each other’s ears as they described the delicious torment of the journey. Then they reached their destination at last. With an explosion of almost unbearable pleasure, relief was theirs. They drifted gradually back toward consciousness once more, tangled in towels and each other’s arms.
Chapter Seven
Des pulled the fluffy towel around them both, swaddling their bodies together in a cocoon of softness. Taylor nestled in his arms, and he felt toward her as he had never felt toward any woman before in his life. He wanted to protect her from all harm. Most of all, he wanted to believe such protection could be possible in this nearly impossible situation.
“It’s never been like this for me before,” she whispered against his chest.
Her words were halting, and they snagged his heart in a way that made his throat fill with emotion.
“It’s wonderful.”
“Yes, it is,” Des said.
“If only there weren’t so many other things that aren’t so wonderful.”
“Let’s not think about that now. We’ll pretend there’s just you and me and this moment.”
“I’m not sure I can do that.”
Des didn’t respond. Already he could feel the passion between them beginning to cool, as the moist heat of recent exertion cooled from his skin. He held her closer and told himself that he must find a way to keep that fire from going out altogether. The voice of his usual pessimism piped up uninvited to remind him how fragile even the brightest flame can be, ablaze one minute and gone to ash the next. Still, he had to try, and he knew what the first step must be. He would take her to talk with Violetta. There were things she knew that Winona did not. He also suspected that Violetta’s way of telling them would be less clinical, though no less true.
The truth will set you free, Violetta would say. He wanted Taylor to be set free. He wanted that for himself, too, no matter how strongly Taylor’s eyes and his own thoughts told him that freedom and happy endings might exist only for other stories than theirs.
* * *
DES HAD TOLD Taylor there was someone he wanted her to talk with. She, of course, recognized the name of Violetta Ramone. She had been written about often in Aunt Netta’s letters, as both the Stormley cook and a valued friend. Taylor wasn’t sure whether she had memories of her own of Violetta or if those remembered associations originated with others. Whichever the case might be, Taylor found herself both eager and anxious about meeting someone who had been so closely connected with her childhood past.
Meanwhile, Taylor was grateful for the driving time between the Beachcomber and Bahama Village. She needed to ease herself back into the real world following her afternoon of lovemaking with Des. Those hours had been a transition in themselves, a contrast with the repeated shocks to her system over the past twenty-four hours. As for those experiences, she’d already reminded herself that she’d suffered shocks in her life before this. She had the will to survive anything she put her mind to surviving. “We are only given the burden to bear that we are capable of bearing,” Aunt Pearl would say. She herself would most likely have been shocked that Des Maxwell had turned out to be one of Taylor’s keys to survival of this difficult time.
The Jeep bumped along over the uneven pavement of the Key West streets. Des had driven south on Whitehead for several blocks before turning west into a part of town Taylor had never seen. Of course, she had been here too short a time to see very much, at least on this visit. The awareness of there having been other visits she would have been old enough to remember—but did not remember—only added to the unreality of the last two days. As she gazed out from the bouncing vehicle, the colors appeared too bright, the scents seemed too sharp, the breeze felt too warm not to have made a lasting impression.
Taylor felt as if she were driving through a fairy-tale scene done in poster paints and crayons, all in primary colors, no subtle tones. Pastels and muted shades were not the stuff of this tropical fantasy place, or of what had happened to her since she arrived in it. That was why she
was less than surprised when, after the Jeep pulled over and the engine stilled, a rooster sprang down from its perch on a nearby fence post and lighted on the hood. Taylor stared through the windshield at its sleek plumage and beady black eyes and wondered if, after last night and the news today, she would ever be surprised by anything again.
Des shoved the door open on his side. The rooster gave a squawk in response, tossed its haughty head, and hopped to the ground. Taylor watched him strut away into a yard where a number of chickens were already pecking the dirt. They paid the rooster no mind. His posture might suggest he was master, but the hens didn’t appear to be impressed. Taylor would have been content to stay where she was and watch the antics of the local poultry, but Des was holding the door he had just opened for her. She stepped down, feeling the warmth of his hand on her arm and smiling to herself how natural it seemed to have him touching her.
They walked side by side across the dusty road to a small, white house on the corner. Des tapped on the screen door and waited for a moment, but no one responded. “Violetta,” he called out. “It’s Destiny.”
Taylor was aware of his given name. She had seen it written down on paper in Aunt Netta’s will, but Taylor had never heard it spoken. The sound of it startled her a little, maybe because of the meaning of the word. She shouldn’t have been surprised, of course. A man with a name like Destiny was about as probable as everything else about her experience of Key West.
“Violetta,” he called again. “She must be out in the backyard,” he said after waiting another moment with no reply.
Des opened the screen door and stepped inside. Taylor followed. She was barely across the threshold when she understood that something was very wrong in this small, white house on Olivia Street. She peered around Des, who had stopped, transfixed, just inside the door. The sight was even more unnerving than that of her own ransacked guest-house room had been that morning. The state of her room had suggested that someone was looking for something. This one had simply been trashed. Furniture was upturned, and glass objects had been broken, leaving shattered hulks and shards strewn over the floor. A three-cornered hutch had been torn from the wall in one corner. It lay on a rumpled throw rug along with ripped photographs and what looked like religious icons, some in pieces, some still intact. A votive candle, luckily not still burning, was on its side with a stream of hardened wax spilling out. Whoever had done this damage felt no qualms about sacrilege.
Taylor was so taken aback by the devastation that she didn’t realize Des had hurried on to the next room. Then she heard him, and the sound froze her to the bone. He cried out, not with what she might recognize as fear or rage, but something even more chilling. The cry she heard came from deep in his soul and a place even more devastated than this ravaged room.
“Oh, no. Please, no,” were the words she heard.
She ran toward him through the debris. The kitchen was even more of a mess than the first room had been. The remains of plants, plant pots and potting dirt were everywhere, along with broken crockery and various pieces of cookware. There could no longer be any doubt concerning the source of the spicy cooking aroma. Red broth, vegetables and chicken were spattered across the stove and wall and puddled on the floor. In the midst of that puddle lay the most shocking sight of all—a stocky woman with black hair streaked with gray and splashed with sauce, clutched at something between her breasts. Her eyes were wide and staring. Taylor could still see the terror there, even in death. Des knelt over the woman with his head bowed. Taylor knew that, if she could see his eyes, she would find heartbreak there.
* * *
TAYLOR WASN’T SURE how much time had passed before she followed Des across a screened porch and into Violetta’s backyard. He had called the police, who arrived shortly afterward with sirens blaring. Then Des said he had to get out of there for a while. The yard was a welcome change from the chaos of the house. Bougainvillea covered the tall fence that hid the dusty street from view. A wide, cushioned chair swing had been suspended by chains from a tree limb at the center of the grassy yard. Des took hold of one of the chains.
“I made this for her,” he said.
His tone was too controlled to reveal whatever he might be feeling, but there were other indications of his inner turmoil. He always stood straight and tall, but never as stiffly as he was standing now. The set of his spine was so rigid he looked as though he might break if he tried to bend. A muscle worked in his left cheek very near the dimple Taylor found so winsome. She would have liked to stroke that ticking tension to relief, but something about the way he was holding his head told her he wouldn’t care to be touched right now.
Des’s face was turned from her. He stared out over the low roofs of Bahama Village. She sensed that he wasn’t really here with her at all, that his spirit had followed his gaze off into the distance. He had left her and retreated into aloofness once again. When he finally did turn to look in her direction for a brief moment, his eyes told her she was correct in her judgment. The warm, passionate Des who had made such intense love to her only hours ago was nowhere to be seen in this fleeting green glance. He had secreted the vulnerable part of himself behind the barrier of coolness that was his usual refuge. She longed to take him by his broad shoulders and shake as hard as her strength would allow, until his heart was jarred back to life and he returned to nestle in her arms once more.
But the message in his eyes had been clear. Keep away, it said. She heard that message, however reluctantly, and heeded it. A message of her own, from herself to herself, was almost as plainly spoken—that this man had a history of withdrawal into deep and probably brooding solitude and that his past history would project into his future. He most likely could never be a full-time emotional presence for anyone, and that included her. He would pull back inside himself on a regular basis, and she would be left alone. She could already anticipate the heartache that would cause her. She wanted freedom and to be her own person, but she wasn’t looking for emotional abandonment. She felt herself pull back as well, to much more neutral territory than the wide-open place their lovemaking had taken her. She was about to walk around the side path to the front of the house when Armand Santos emerged from the screened porch.
“I’m running into the two of you a lot lately,” he said in his now-familiar sarcastic tone.
Des turned slowly to face Santos. The message in Des’s eyes had become a warning. Despite her resolve to keep her distance, she couldn’t help moving to stand next to him now. She would be his ally and a mediator if one was needed. She was on his side, and she wanted Santos to know it.
“Des has had a terrible shock,” she said quietly but firmly. “Maybe you could question him later.”
“This morning he spoke for you. Now you’re speaking for him,” Santos said. “Isn’t that interesting.”
“I can speak for myself,” Des said in a voice so tight it barely sounded like his own.
“She said the same thing. Do you remember that, Ms. Bissett?” It was apparent that he didn’t expect an answer. “Which is also interesting. Is there something going on between you two that I should know about?” He looked back and forth from Des to Taylor.
“Nothing that has anything to do with you,” Des said.
“When it comes to murder, everything has to do with me,” Santos said. He turned his attention to Taylor. “I’m afraid it won’t be possible to postpone my questions. In fact, I’ll be asking some of them right here and now.”
“What kind of questions?”
“What kind of questions do you think I’d be asking after two homicides in two days? You can bet your ass they won’t be about the weather.”
Taylor was reminded of two rams butting heads. They did that, harder and harder, until one cracked the other’s skull. She couldn’t help hoping Des would be the one to end up intact from this particular butting match.
“In most cases, I would interrogate you separately,” Santos was saying. “But this isn’t most cases. So, why don
’t the two of you sit down?”
He indicated the wide swing. Des ignored that suggestion and walked to the picnic table instead. Taylor hesitated a moment then followed Des and sat down beside him on one of the attached benches. Santos watched them as he flipped open his notepad. Taylor had no doubt he would write down every detail. “The subjects were reluctant to cooperate,” might be his way of describing their behavior. He took his time joining them at the table, and then he didn’t sit. He put his right foot on the opposite bench and stood there. That meant they had to look up at him. Taylor supposed this was an interrogation tactic. It was also the only way a man of Santos’s stature could ever manage to tower over Des Maxwell.
“Where were the two of you when Violetta Ramone was murdered?” Santos asked. “Let’s begin with you, Des.”
“What time would that have been?”
Des had cringed slightly at the mention of how his friend had died. He was cold and impassive again almost instantly. Taylor was reminded once more of his talent for emotional distance.
“A couple of hours ago, more or less,” Santos said.
Taylor’s small gasp was barely audible, but Santos picked up on it.
“Maybe I should ask you that question first, Ms. Bissett,” he said.
“Are you asking me?” She was surprised at how cool she could also sound as she stalled for time and kept herself from glancing over at Des as she longed to do.
“Yes, Ms. Bissett. I’m asking. Where were you two hours ago?”
Taylor took a deep breath. There was no way to avoid telling the truth, or whatever Santos would make of it. She was about to say the words that felt too private and personal to be spoken, when Des said them for her.
“We were together.”
“Aha,” Santos responded, again looking from one of them to the other. “Isn’t that convenient. Wouldn’t you say that was convenient, Ms. Bissett?”