Key West Heat

by Alice Orr

His face was in the hollow of her neck. His lips nuzzled, and his teeth nipped, and her reaction tore through her like wildfire. She pushed at him, but the battle within her made those efforts too feeble to be convincing even to herself. He covered her hand with his and moved them together down the front of his shirt. She sensed what he was doing and knew she should struggle all the harder to pull away. She didn’t do that. Too much of her longed too powerfully to be exactly where he was leading her, and to touch what he was guiding her to touch.

  When her fingers reached their goal, a shock ran through her. The mound of him was large and hard, constrained as it was by the tightness of his jeans. Her last impulse to resist melted in the heat of that touch. She did not need his hand to guide her any longer. She caressed the evidence of his desire for her in a manner that made her own desire equally undeniable.

  Des groaned. “I love it when you touch me,” he whispered.

  She had touched him that afternoon, in the wildness of their lovemaking. Her touch was even more urgent now, fuelled as it was by a deep-down hunger like nothing she had ever experienced before this moment.

  “I know you don’t trust me,” he said between ragged breaths. “The things you’ve heard aren’t true. I want you to believe that.”

  “Later,” she said somewhat harshly.

  She shoved her fingers through his hair, surprised by how thick and silky it felt. His mouth was against the fullness of the top of her breast as he spoke. She pulled his head upward. His hand remained over her breast. When she covered his lips with hers, his hold there tightened, sending an excruciating flash of pleasure straight to her loins. She thrust her tongue between his lips, which opened eagerly to greet her.

  With one arm, he pulled her closer to him, till his hand on her breast was crushed between their bodies. Still, he managed to move that hand downward. She was left to assuage the ache of her abandoned nipple by pressing herself hard to his chest and rubbing her breasts slowly, agonizingly back and forth against him. Meanwhile, his hand travelled across her belly to her hip then to the top of her thigh, where it paused to yank the hem of her shirt upward impatiently. She shifted her body to help him do that.

  Her own hand was also moving, up from the hardness of him that felt as if it might rip through the denim at any moment, to his waistband, where she was glad to find that he wore no belt. She wanted to reach her destination with as little obstruction as possible. She slipped the metal top button through its hole more expertly than she would have thought she could, then touched the top of his zipper and found the tab. She took a firm hold and was about to pull downward when Des’s fingers raked along her inner thigh to the lace hem of her panties and then over the silky material that covered her most private place.

  Taylor’s head snapped back. Her body arched in a movement she had not willed and could not possibly control. Her mouth pulled away from his in the convulsiveness of that movement, and a cry escaped her lips. His hand was caressing her as hers had so recently caressed him, but through much flimsier material. His fingers tantalized her, first gripping almost roughly, then teasing with strokes that probed but could not penetrate because of the silken barrier that shielded her wet and pulsating flesh as it had no wish to be shielded.

  Taylor was debating, in near frenzy, whether to continue unzipping his jeans or to use her hand to force his own beneath her panties where she needed so badly for it to be. This dilemma was a delicious one. Everything about this moment was delicious and abandoned and purely thrilling. The last thing she wanted was an interruption. Unfortunately, that interruption came—in the form of a sharp rap and a voice at the door.

  “Taylor, are you all right in there? Did I hear you call out?”

  It was Early. He must have been walking down the hall and heard her cry. Taylor didn’t answer. She and Des had both frozen in place. Her body continued to throb beneath his touch, but her mind had already begun to intervene. She remained still for another instant, arched and thrust against his fingers. Then she made a slight movement away. He must have caught the message of that signal. He slipped his hand over to the more neutral territory of her thigh.

  In the meantime, Early must have been listening outside the door. When he heard nothing, he apparently was concerned because the next thing Taylor knew, there was the sound of metal entering the keyhole. She had locked the door after Jethro’s visit. Did Early have a key? If so, why? But, there was no time to think about that now.

  “Get under the comforter,” she whispered to Des, just loudly enough for him to hear without the sound traveling to the door.

  Des didn’t answer. If he had any misgivings about cowering beneath her bed coverings, he didn’t express them. He made haste to do as she said and pulled the comforter over him, then crouched behind her, curled compactly as was possible for a brawny man over six feet tall. Taylor raised herself on her elbow. She was on the side of the bed closest to the door, and the room was dark. They might be able to keep Des’s presence a secret. Then again, they might not. She dreaded the thought of having to explain this to Early.

  “Who’s there?” she called, making her voice annoyed, which was not particularly difficult at the moment.

  “It’s me. Early. Are you all right?”

  The key had halted its turning in the lock.

  “I’m perfectly all right. I was sleeping,” Taylor lied.

  “I thought I heard you call out.”

  “You must have imagined it.”

  There was silence for a moment on the other side of the door. “Were you having a nightmare? I’m almost certain I heard you.”

  “Early,” she said, fully as exasperated as she sounded. “I was not having a nightmare. I am trying to sleep. I wish you would let me do that.”

  Silence in the hallway again. Taylor could almost see Early standing there, one hand on the doorknob, the other on the key. He would be sorely tempted to barge in, taking more liberties with her life than he ought to, just as he and her aunts had always done, in what they referred to as Taylor’s “best interests.” She had no doubt that was their motivation. She no longer wanted or needed that intervention, no matter what the motive. Still, she could understand why Early might debate which course to take. The events of these past days had been devastating. He had good reason to be worried about her mental state. She was worried about that herself. All the same, she was prepared to go to the door and stop him from entering if he made one more move toward doing so. Fortunately, that was not necessary.

  “All right,” he said in a reluctant tone. “But you must talk to Winona in the morning. We’re both very concerned about you.”

  “Good night, Early,” she said, deliberately not agreeing to any plan that involved having herself taken care of in any way.

  “Good night, Taylor.”

  She heard the key being pulled from the lock. There were a few further seconds of silence, during which Early was probably wrestling with himself about whether or not he was doing the right thing. Then she heard him walk away. She breathed a sigh of relief. She simply was not equal to more complications in her life at the moment. Early finding Des in her bed would definitely be a complication.

  Meanwhile, she had been aware all along of Des beneath the comforter and close behind her. He reached out to encircle her waist now. She pushed him away.

  “You have to leave,” she whispered. She turned to look at him. His head had emerged from beneath the covers. The moon shining through the open skylight provided just enough light for her to see the question in his eyes. Before he could ask it, she repeated, “You really must go.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then sighed and nodded. He tossed the comforter aside and stood up, looking down at her without a word. He turned away and walked to the balcony door. She heard him fumbling with the lock. Then the door was open and he stepped through it. He closed the door behind him and was gone. She should have been grateful for how quietly he had left, so quietly that she didn’t even hear his footsteps on the balcony
. Instead, she was thinking about how cold the place beside her in bed had suddenly become and how she could still feel the memory of Des’s touch upon her skin.

  * * *

  WHAT IN HELL was that character doing with a key to her room?

  That question pounded in Des’s brain as he chained his motorcycle to a parking meter outside his cafe. He’d tried to sleep after coming back here from Elizabeth Street last night, but it had been no use. He had paced and cursed and pounded things to keep from pounding some people he knew. At just about dawn, he’d taken the bike out along the shore highway and up U.S.1 past Stock Island toward the Upper Keys. He rode fast against the wind, but nothing could blow away what was in his head—the sound of Early Rhinelander about to let himself into Taylor’s room.

  What was that all about? What kind of relationship did she and Early really have? Was he in the habit of stopping by her room for warm-up sessions back there in the godforsaken frozen north where they came from?

  Des couldn’t stand the thought. Taylor seemed so straight-arrow to him. Still, Early had her key, and she didn’t act surprised that he did. After all, their being lovers wasn’t so hard to imagine. Lots of women dated older men. Some even preferred them. Taylor had talked about how tired she was of being hovered over, but maybe that wasn’t really true. Maybe she liked having an older guy around because it made her feel safer, more secure than she would with somebody younger. She’d definitely had a life that might make her desire safety over other things.

  But did it have to be with Early Rhinelander? He had been a thorn in Des’s side ever since he was a kid. Maybe that was because he couldn’t put anything over on Early. Des had conned a lot of people in those days, but never Early, and never Desiree. Des hadn’t wanted to be anything but honest with her, and he couldn’t get away with being less than honest with Early. Maybe that was what bugged Des about Rhinelander. Whatever the reason, it had been good riddance to that guy when he left the Keys. Now, he was back, and Des didn’t like it. He especially didn’t like Early being so familiar with Taylor. In fact, just the thought of that tormented Des. He reminded himself that this was another argument for not getting hooked on a woman. No involvements. No torment. That policy had worked very well for him—till she showed up.

  Des was not at all in the mood for company. He didn’t feel like talking to anybody right now. He’d come to the café because there would be nobody here at this hour. Even the cook didn’t come in for a couple of hours yet. Des would make himself a pot of strong coffee, maybe scramble up some eggs with jalapeños. If he made them hot enough, they might just jolt him out of this funk he was in.

  The man who stepped up to Des at that moment must have been standing in the closed doorway of the Beachcomber barroom. At first, Des thought the guy was after a handout. Des reached into the pocket of his jeans for some spare change. Then he recognized the man—or sort of recognized him—as somebody Des had seen here and there around the island from time to time, though not very often. He wasn’t a panhandler, only one of the local bumper crop of eccentrics. Des wondered if he’d end up like this guy someday, tanned to brown leather, with a grizzled gray head, dressed like he couldn’t remember the last time he gave a thought to what he put on.

  “Mr. Maxwell,” the man said, “I need to talk to you.”

  Des looked at him in a way that wasn’t likely to encourage conversation.

  “It won’t take but a minute,” the stranger went on. “Well, maybe that’s not quite true. It could take some more than a minute. But not much more, mind you.”

  “Listen, buddy, this really isn’t a good time. Let’s make it later,” Des said, pulling out the key to the padlock on the bamboo gate to the café courtyard.

  “I don’t think this should wait, sir.” The guy sounded serious.

  “What was your name again?” Des had heard it somewhere, but all he could remember right now was that it had been pretty unusual.

  “They call me Lewt Walgreen.” He hesitated. “That’s what I told everybody was my name. But it isn’t.”

  “Lots of people around here don’t go by the name they were born with.” Des felt a confession coming on from this guy, whatever his name was. Des was definitely not in the right frame of mind for that. “Look, pal,” he said as he fitted the key into the padlock. “I have to get going now. Check me out later.”

  The man touched Des’s arm as he was pulling the gate open. “My real name is Paul Lawrence Bissett,” he said. “I’m Taylor’s father.”

  Des had been about to yank his arm away from the man’s grasp and tell him to get lost in terms he couldn’t ignore. Instead, Des hesitated only a moment, then opened the gate and stepped inside. “Let’s talk in here,” he said and motioned for the man to follow into the courtyard.

  Des let his companion walk ahead across the courtyard. Des needed a minute to think about what he’d just heard. Paul Bissett had run out on his family and never been heard from again. He’d deserted the navy, too. Everybody had assumed he was dead. Netta and Pearl could have officially declared him deceased years ago, but they could never bring themselves to do it. Des remembered Netta saying that part of the Bissett estate was still in her nephew’s name. Des had always figured the guy couldn’t be alive. Otherwise, he would have showed up some time over all these years to get the dough he had coming. There’d be a pile of it, too. Maybe that’s what he was here for now, if he really was who he claimed to be.

  “Have you got any proof you’re Paul Bissett?” Des asked, taking the seat across from the one he’d indicated for his guest.

  “Yes, I’ve got proof. It’s back at my room, and my prints are on file with the navy.”

  “What are you doing here after all these years? Why’d you take off in the first place? You left your wife alone, never knowing what happened to you. Because of you, your kid grew up an orphan. Now you show up out of the blue. What are you after, anyway?”

  Des was suddenly very angry. He locked his fists around the arms of his chair to get himself under control. He would rather have socked this guy in the nose. Maybe he’d do that yet. He’d been itching to sock somebody for several hours now. This guy just might end up as the target of the moment. There was no question he deserved a punch or two, after what he’d done to Taylor and Desiree.

  “I know I did wrong.” The guy looked ashamed all right, but that didn’t cut much ice with Des. “I have no excuse, except that I was very young back then and in over my head.”

  “So, you left your family to fend for themselves.”

  “I knew they’d be well taken care of. My aunts would make certain they never wanted for anything financially.”

  “There’s a lot more to taking care of somebody than making sure they have money.” Everything this guy said made Des angrier. He understood that some of his anger at Early might be mixed in there, too. But he didn’t care. “Look, whoever you are. I asked you why you’re showing up now. Either give me an answer or get out of here, before I do something you’ll be sorry for.”

  “I heard about what happened to Violetta. I had a feeling it could mean trouble. Then I heard Taylor was here on the island and she was staying at the place where that Cooney woman was killed. I couldn’t help putting two and two together.”

  “And just what did that little piece of math tell you?” Des’s patience had about run out.

  “It told me that Taylor is in serious danger.”

  * * *

  TAYLOR WOKE UP with one of her Aunt Pearl’s sayings in her head. It went, “Sometimes, child, you don’t know if you’re afoot or on horseback.” Taylor used to tease her aunt by calling her one-liners “Pearls of Wisdom” in a slightly sarcastic tone. She wasn’t feeling sarcastic this morning. Pearl had been right. Taylor knew she didn’t have her feet on the ground at the moment, but she also had no clue as to what breed of mount she might be riding. All she did know for sure was that the situation was close to a runaway and she had only a tentative hold on the reins.

&n
bsp; She dragged herself upright and pulled her fingers through her tangled hair. What would today bring her way? She shuddered at the possibilities, and those were only the ones she could anticipate, not to mention the surprises. One thing she could count on. Early would be up here soon knocking on her door. He didn’t get his name from being tardy. He sometimes seemed to arrive at Taylor’s thoughts before she got there herself, and he would often be the first to understand their significance, too. She had depended on that quality in him when she needed it over the years. But she neither needed nor wanted it this morning. She scrambled into her clothes and tiptoed out of the house.

  She had noticed a bicycle propped against the side of the garage where Jethro kept his red sports car. Taylor hadn’t ridden a bike in years, but they say you never forget how. She was about to find out if that was true. She walked the bike to the corner in case her foray on two wheels turned out to be a noisy one. There was almost no traffic at this hour. Key West was really little more than a sleepy tropical village. Most residents wouldn’t rouse themselves to their first cup of Caribbean coffee for another hour at least. Taylor was able to launch her wobbling vehicle into the street without much fear of collision.

  She was wearing a short jumpsuit with the cuffs rolled above her knees so her legs would be free to pedal and there would be no long material to catch in the bike chain. Her canvas espadrilles had soles of sensible thickness and tied around the ankles. They wouldn’t fall off as she pumped along. She had pulled her hair back with a band after brushing the unruly mass as tame as it would go. Locks escaped into springs of curl around her face, but her vision was kept clear so she could see to ride.

  The morning breeze swept her cheeks, which had already brightened from these past few days of sun. The coolness was welcome on her bare arms. She felt alive as she pedaled briskly along, and was glad to feel that way. She was very aware of how much Des had to do with this vigorous life force coursing through her. His hands had done more than arouse her flesh with their burning touch. They had reached inside her to the barrier that a reserved north-country upbringing had erected between her self and her senses. They had torn that barrier down and allowed her capacity for passion to come rushing forth. If he had not come along, she might have remained caged forever. Even though she had arrived on this island ready to be set free, she had needed a guide to show her the way. Des had done that for her, and she couldn’t help but be grateful.