Sweet Water

by Anna Jeffrey

  The next thing she knew, Patsy Cline was singing “So Wrong,” Terry Ledger’s left hand was cupping her jaw and they were kissing and it was slow and sweet in all the ways she liked and as familiar as if they had done it a thousand times. Not one thing about it felt “so wrong.” Yet it was different from the first time, perhaps because, being slightly drunk, she was less inhibited.

  He lifted his mouth from hers and their gazes locked. They kissed again, deeply, with hands everywhere and panting breath. Beyond the lust on his lips she tasted something she hadn’t expected--loneliness. A yearning for home. Until now, he hadn’t quite captured her heart. There had always been an open door for her to escape, for until this moment he hadn’t convinced her he was real.

  When their lips parted again, she was defenseless. She was his.

  She slid her hands up his arms and around his shoulders. His head lowered and his open mouth pressed soft and warm on the curve where her neck met her shoulder as he moved her to the music. She thought of the apartment behind the café and the bed she had shared with Woody many times, the one with the mattress now bare of sheets. After Woody’s confession, in a fit, she had ripped off the old sheets, stuffed them in the burn barrel and never re-made the bed. Now, desire heightened by Budweiser, she hooked the fingers of one hand behind his belt buckle and gave a little tug.

  He caught her hand and moved it, but didn’t stop teasing her neck with his lips. “Don’t you need to go home and check on your mom?”

  “Hmm,” she murmured and tilted her head for more of his mouth.He complied, his lips traveling over her shoulders, the slope of her breasts, his breath hot. His tongue touched sensitive places and sent shivers from her nose to her toes.

  As if they had minds of their own, her fingers went back to his belt and tugged the end from its loop. A deep hum came from his throat and he gripped her hand again. “Unh-unh. You’re playing with fire.”

  “I hope so,” she said softly. She wrapped her arms around his waist, hooked her hands on his shoulders and pressed herself against his fly. His erection felt like an iron rod pushing against her belly. She reached down and undid the top button of his jeans, found his zipper.

  He stopped abruptly and set her away. “Not while you’re drunk.”

  “I’m not drunk.”

  “Let’s cool it. I’ll help you close this place up. Then I’ll take you home.”

  ****

  The first thing that struck Marisa when she reached the café the next morning was how wide open Pecos Belle’s was, how huge the display windows were. Huge enough for anyone passing by to get an eyeful of her dancing and making out with Terry. She walked to the front door and gazed back across the flea market to the café, trying to determine if anyone who might have seen them could tell where he had his hands. Unable to decide, she dragged back to the kitchen, ate a slice of bread and swallowed two aspirins.

  She got through lunch without a “special” and no one seemed to notice or mind. By late afternoon, the physical agony of a beer hangover had diminished and she felt better. Now, total mortification sneaked in. What had she been thinking, getting drunk in the kitchen, then behaving like a sex-starved twit with Terry? Lord, she had even tried to unzip his pants.

  And what would he be thinking today? She had a nagging suspicion she knew and if she knew men, he would show up before the day ended. She had given him a green light. No stud worth his manhood would let that go un-pursued. Then again, he might be so embarrassed by her being drunk and forward he would never want to see her again.

  With those upsetting thoughts in mind, she returned to the singlewide to check on things there. Mama was asleep in her recliner. Marisa went back to Pecos Belle’s and busied herself preparing for the evening’s diners, all the while telling herself she wasn’t waiting for Terry. But as every hour passed and he didn’t put in an appearance, her mood darkened.

  She had already wiped down the tables and chairs and was working on the lunch counter when he came through the front door. She stopped her task and looked at him. He hesitated just inside the doorway. Even from across the room, she saw the look in his eyes, that predatory hunger. So he was as transparent as most of the other men she had known. Instead of being put off by that discovery, she had an odd feeling of relief and self-satisfaction. He did want sex with her as much as she wanted sex with him.

  He twisted the deadbolt with a heavy metallic snick and turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED. The sane, sensible part of her, the part that stood watch over her virtue, told her to protest, to proclaim that she hadn’t yet decided to close the cafe, but sane, sensible and virtuous were weak defenses against the iniquitous woman inside her who had spent the day anticipating fantastic sex with a hunky guy.

  Fearing he could read her mind, she returned to wiping down the lunch counter, though as he ambled through the flea market, she sneaked peeks from the corner of her eye. In tight Levi’s and a bright blue T-shirt, he looked more delicious than her best cream pie. And just as edible.

  Then, in what seemed like seconds, he was standing at the end of the lunch counter. That aura of S-E-X was glowing around him like neon and her heart was trying to leap out of her chest.

  “Hey,” he said softly, then came to her side and placed a possessive hand on her back, his palm hot against her thin tank top. Enveloped by the smell of him, the feel of him so close, the very idea of him, she didn’t know what to say. “I’m still open,” she managed.

  “No, you’re not. I just locked the door. I’ll get the lights if you tell me how.” He turned her to face him, cupped her jaw with a large hand and kissed her, long and slow, with a tantalizing hint of tongue. Godhelpher, she kissed him back, like for like.

  In time, their mouths parted, but his eyes held hers. “I thought about you all night,” he said huskily. “I didn’t get a wink of sleep.”

  She placed her forearms between them. “I was drunk last night.”

  “But you’re not tonight.” His eyes still locked on hers, he grasped her dishtowel, pulled it from her hand and dropped it on the counter. He bent to kiss her again, but she turned her head to the side.

  His hot mouth found her neck instead of her lips. “And after you spent the night inside my head, I woke up this morning with a blue-steel hard-on. All I could think about all day was kissing you all over, teasing that navel ring with my tongue.”

  Eek!A shiver raced down her spine. “Terry, please. Someone could see us.”

  She freed herself from his arms and as if by rote, picked up the dishtowel and sashayed to the kitchen. Big mistake, because he followed to where her only escape was through the kitchen’s back door, into the apartment. Her heart pounded harder. She turned on the water in the sink. A cloud of steam rose in the tight space and dampened her face as she thrust the towel under the stream of hot water. “Honestly, Terry, this is such a mistake.” She twisted the towel, wrung out water. “And I’ve got to finish cleaning.”

  “I’ll help you later,” he said, standing behind her, running his fingers along her upper arm. Heat from his body against her back, combined with steam from the water, made the room feel like a humid cocoon.

  Preparing to close the café, she had turned off the overhead kitchen light before he came in. Now in the subdued light from the under-cabinet fixture, his arms came around her waist. His hand slipped under her tank top bra. He deftly undid her bra and she went soft all over at the release of her breasts into his hands. The room began to spin, her eyelids fluttered closed.

  His open mouth landed on her shoulder. His hands caressed, his fingers teased and plucked at her nipples until they became hard and eager and her deepest vaginal muscles began to flex. His mouth moved up to her ear. “You feel it inside you when I do that, don’t you?” he whispered.

  “Yes,” she answered in a tiny voice.

  What she also felt was chaos. Her nerves seemed to be strung along the very surface of her skin and the words whispered in his deep voice played them like guitar strings. Godohgod.


  “Will it make you come?” he asked softly, while he gently pulled at her nipples.

  “I don’t know,” she breathed.

  “But it makes you want to, doesn’t it?”

  He knows too much about women. And about sex, the protector of her virtue warned her. “You know it does,” she whimipered. ”

  A hum came from his throat as his tongue flicked against her neck, and all she could think of was those shameless flicks in other places. She gave up, dropped the towel into the sink and leaned back against him. She could be a good girl tomorrow.

  He got the message. In one quick move, he reached around her with his left hand and turned off the water. At the same time his right hand slid inside her elastic waistband and down and into her bikini panties. Without a second thought she spread her legs. His fingers combed into her pubic hair and began to stroke where she felt swollen and hot.

  “You’re wet,” he said against her neck.

  After her imagination had worked overtime all day, of course she was. Oh. God. She hated having him know. “Terry—”

  “Shhh.. Just let me in,” he murmured, his fingers parting her and probing.

  On a soft moan, she gripped the edge of the sink, bent her knees and felt herself open. His fingers easily slid into her and she felt herself flex around them.

  “That’s it,” he whispered. “Just pretend this is my eight inches going all the way to your heart.”

  Tthe visual all too vivid as his fingers worked and teased, she squeezed her eyes shut. Her breathing grew shallow. Every rational thought left her mind, replaced by the utter bliss of being tormented in all the right places by a man who knew where they were. He played at will until she was almost crazy with desire and frustration. She had never been so ready.

  When she thought she couldn’t wait another minute, his fingers moved to the throbbing heart of the issue. The instant he touched her clitoris her brain turned to red mush and she began to spasm hard. She gripped the sink’s edge even harder and bit down on her lower lip, stifling the outcry that rushed to her throat. But she was helpless to stop the little animal grunts that escaped instead.

  When she finished, her dignity as well as her strength decimated, his hand cupped her between her legs and he pulled her back against him. “Hmm,” he murmured. With the other hand, he brought her face around to his and kissed her, his tongue sweeping into her mouth and stroking with an erotic rhythm. When they broke to breathe, he whispered against her lips, “I knew you’d be easy. I just knew it.”

  “I’m not easy,” she said weakly, struggling for the strength to stand straight.

  “Trust me. It’s a good thing.”

  He was the devil in person. “Let me go,” she said, doing her best to be insulted, and giving him an elbow in the midriff.

  He moved his hand from between her legs, allowing the scent of her moisture to escape in the tight, steamy room. But he left his hand splayed across her bare stomach, continuing to hold her against him and fitting an erection that felt like steel against the cleft of her backside. “What are we gonna do about this?” he said against her ear. “Turnabout’s fair play.”

  Embarrassed now at being easy, she couldn’t look him in the face, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want that eight inches right where he had promised it. Her knees still felt like jelly and she drew a shuddery breath. “I have to make Mama’s supper and put her to bed. If you want to stay in the apartment and wait for me, I can come back afterward....There’s, uh...a, uh, bedroom—”

  “Can’t you just come to my place?”

  “I don’t want the phone to ring and me not be where I can answer it. Mama usually goes to bed by eight thirty or nine.”

  He turned her in his arms and smiled down at her. “I’ll be here.” He kissed her, so soft and so sweet and so impossible to resist.

  On shaky legs and smelling like sex, she left Pecos Belle’s with good-looking, rich—and horny—Terry Ledger waiting in the apartment behind the café. This was the stuff fairy tales were made of. Or porno movies.

  She had just reached the singlewide when Ben’s pickup pulled up outside.

  Oh, crap.

  Soon she heard his footsteps on the deck and rapping on the door. “I brought some barbecue from Freeman’s in Midland,” he said when she opened the door. “I got Raylene a CD and I’m in a dancin’ mood.”

  Oh, hell. From the sound of him, he was back on the Jack.

  He came in, dropped a greasy sack on the dining table and went straight to the CD player. Along with the smoky, pungent smell of barbecue, something loud and country filled the small living room.

  Mama had already risen from her chair. She began to clap her hands and stamp one foot. “Get yourself over here, Clyde, and swing me around this floor.”

  Goddammit! Great. Just great.

  Chapter 21

  A man shouldn’t raise his expectations when it came to women. Terry had learned that from his mother and had lived by it all his life. And it ain’t been proven wrong yet, he told himself this as he shaved.

  Last night, he had waited like a dumbass in the café apartment until Marisa came and told him her mom and Ben were dancing and she had to stay with them. Terry had come home with a case of blueballs like he hadn’t suffered since he was a teenager.

  He stepped into the shower muttering a string of oaths.

  Hadn’t he already lectured himself a dozen times on the stupidity of getting involved with Marisa? Jesus Christ, he wasn’t that far from forty. Hadn’t he matured past letting his libido drive his behavior? What he needed to do was make sure he had food in his kitchen so he didn’t even have to go to that café to eat. Ever again.

  He didn’t have long to worry about it, he thought with satisfaction. The damn thing would soon be gone. He had already gotten bids from a couple of construction companies out of Odessa for the cost of razing the whole building.

  And if the café was gone, Marisa and her mother would be gone, too. On that alarming thought, he turned off the water and stepped out of the shower.

  Fuck. He didn’t want Marisa to be gone. He didn’t want her mother to be gone. Her nearly marrying Lanny had been a close enough call. Fuck. He didn’t know what the hell he wanted.

  He should stall before accepting one of the demolition bids on the Pecos Belle’s building.

  But this morning he didn’t have time to stew over Marisa and her business. This morning he had to catch up with the surveying crew, to whom he was paying a hefty sum to lay out lots and streets for Ledger Ranches. No doubt they had started at the crack of dawn to get in a few hours of work before the heat wiped them out.

  In his fridge he found a package of hot dogs. Good enough. Since when did he think he needed eggs over easy, cooked to perfection, sugar-cured bacon or buttered biscuits that melted in his mouth? He tore open the package of wieners and placed four in the microwave. He made two sandwiches by folding a slice of bread around two hot dogs and washed them down with a quart of orange juice. The breakfast of champions. A meal he had eaten a thousand times as a kid.

  Leaning a hip against the counter and chewing, he reviewed his behavior toward Marisa. Last night he had gone at her like a horny teenager, an approach that had been all wrong. He had watched guys put the old full-court press on women, but until Marisa, he had never done it. His style had always been subtler--lunch, dinner, good wine, good entertainment, conversation. And things had always evolved in a positive way toward the bedroom and in the bedroom. Testimony to the fact was that even when he and a woman parted, they usually remained friends.

  He might as well face it. What he wanted just as much as he wanted Marisa’s body was to get to know her. Sex would naturally follow, but for now, he should spend his time learning what made her tick, what made her happy or sad. He didn’t know her likes and dislikes, didn’t know how it must have been for an only child growing up in the isolation of an outpost like Agua Dulce. True, he was an only child himself—they had that in common—but he, at l
east, had grown up in a real town around ordinary people.

  He had heard from Ben that she and Lanny had gone out on dates several times, with Lanny hiring a sitter for her mother. Terry could do the same. If he could get Marisa out of Agua Dulce, they could at least have a conversation without something in the café interrupting or one of the town’s citizens showing up with a new problem.

  He picked up the phone and punched the café’s number, which he now had on speed dial. When she answered in her soft alto, words refused to form on his tongue. “Hi,” was the best he could think of.

  “What’s up?” she asked. He heard wariness in her tone, yet he couldn’t keep from chuckling at the double entendre. “You really wanna know?”

  A pause. He suspected she rolled her eyes as he had seen her do a dozen times. “Well, you know what I mean,” she said in an I’m-in-no-mood-for-jokes voice. “What’s going on?”

  “I was just thinking, why don’t we go out?”

  “Out where?”

  “Ben told me you went out with Lanny. We could go over to Odessa or Midland for dinner.”

  Another pause. He imagined her cussing Ben for gossiping. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s a hundred miles. And it was a hassle for Lanny. Finding someone to stay with Mama isn’t that easy.”

  “What if I take care of it? What if I find someone? You won’t have to do anything but dress up and look pretty.” He couldn’t believe his ears. He was negotiating taking a woman out to dinner.

  He heard shuffling noises in the background, muffled voices. “Be with you in just a minute,” Marisa said. She obviously wasn’t talking to him.

  “Listen,” he said in frustration, “I’ve got to catch up with my surveying crew, but I’ll work on it. I’ll let you know what I come up with.”

  “Sure. I gotta go.” She hung up.

  He stood there staring at the phone, thrown off balance by what had just happened. The positive thinker in him wanted to feel good because she hadn’t said no, but he couldn’t get past the distinct feeling he had been brushed off anyway. Fuck.