by Beverly Bird
They reached the sixth floor and tumbled out into the corridor. It was what he loved about her, he thought, that she was so willing, so wild, letting emotion sweep her, carry her, for better or worse—and this time it was for the better. He supposed, in a way, it always had been.
He found the key in his pocket and pushed the door open. They spilled inside and he slammed it behind them, sliding his hands under the loose hem of her shirt, finding skin, warm skin. Sanity told him to take it slow, to savor, to fulfill, and urgency drove him. The fire of her drove him. He wondered if he would ever be able to take it slow with her, even when he was ninety.
He pulled her shirt over her head again without worrying about the buttons and realized that she was getting impatient with his own. She tugged his shirt out from his jeans with a small cry of frustration and they came together even as he struggled with the little clasp at the back of her bra. Then finally there was skin against skin again as they tumbled onto the bed together.
He found her mouth again and pushed at her jeans. She yanked at his.
He sank into her even before his hands could find her breasts, before he covered them, and there was too much sensation all at once. She felt wild with it, with the fullness of him and with his thumb on her nipple, teasing, with his mouth at her neck, nuzzling. Slow down. She had to make this last somehow, had to draw the memory out, had to make it live forever, but he wouldn’t let her because he was moving inside her, slowly then harder, deeper. She dug her nails into his shoulders, wrapped her legs around his hips and cried out.
He wasn’t gentle, wasn’t polite. She didn’t want him to be.
He drove into her harder still and she felt herself going over the edge no matter how she tried to stop it. Like the sparks from the warehouse fire, sensation rained through her, taking her breath, taking sanity. She felt him stiffen above her, going with her, coming apart, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on.
It felt like an eternity before he lifted his face from her neck and touched his mouth to hers. He did it slowly this time, carefully.
“What now?” he asked, and something within her started aching again.
“One more time,” she whispered aloud. “Please?”
He laughed, a deep sound, so good, so whole. She realized that he had never laughed quite that way before.
“Can you give me a few minutes?” he asked.
“Do we have a few minutes?”
He sobered. “We’ll figure something out,” he answered, and she knew he was talking about more than minutes. She breathed again cautiously.
He was quiet for a moment, watching her. “I’m not sure what we can tell Ricky about this.”
She felt a jolt. “Tell him?”
“I guess he pretty much already knows we’re consolimating.”
“Consolimating?” Her head was beginning to spin.
“Consummating.” He shook his head as though to clear it.
“Is that what this was?”
“It’s what you call it when you’re talking to an eight-year-old.”
She felt another shimmer of pain inside and her breath died. “I guess I don’t know much about eight-year-olds.”
“You do all right. It’s that mother instinct we were talking about. Some things are just innate.”
She shivered. Don’t hope.
He shifted a little, moving his weight, but not leaving her. “So what if we get married and don’t tell him?” he asked. “Don’t tell him who you really are, I mean. Not yet. Not for awhile. When he’s older, when he can handle it. When Mary’s a more distant memory. She died when he was barely six.” She saw pain cross his face, but it was fleeting this time then gone. “He was so young. Her image will fade and I think that’s the way she would have wanted it.”
“Married?” Her voice was a squeak.
“Will you? Can you go along with me on this?”
“On what you want to tell Ricky?”
“Yeah.”
A laugh worked its way up into her own throat, husky and full, alive and vibrant. But the sense of glory, of sweetness inside her, wouldn’t be contained. And somehow, impossibly, she realized that she was crying again.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Do you even know what you just offered me?” Everything, the world, she thought.
“There are flaws in it,” he warned.
“No. None.”
“Yeah. Ellen, he’s a really smart kid. I don’t want to take him out of Ashford. He doesn’t want to leave Ashford.”
“So why should he?” she asked cautiously.
“Because if we move to the Res, I’d be buying a new car every six months driving him back and forth to Flagstaff every day. And accumulation notwithstanding, I have a business. It takes me into Phoenix a lot whether I like it or not.”
Something started shaking inside her again. Could she do it? Yes. Hozro was a matter of adapting, adjusting, after all.
“So we’ll live in Flagstaff.”
“What about your people and the land within your mountains?”
“I told you—San Francisco Peak is one of those mountains. Dallas, this is the twentieth century. I can live anywhere.”
He seemed to chuckle. “Without picking up a bow and arrow and fighting for it.”
She wasn’t sure she understood. “That’s right. Actually, my father’s clan lived out that way before the wars. So insofar as tradition is concerned, I guess it’s one of my homes.”
He studied her a moment. “Will you ever forgive them? Your parents?”
She thought about it. “Now. Now I can because the Holy People put everything right again. They balanced it. Ernie was right. They had a plan.” And the ball of twine had unwound. At the very center was the past and the future and more love than she could hold.
“This is still crazy,” he said finally. “So why do I feel so damned good about it?”
She buried her face against his throat and then he understood. There was a sense of closure, of balance, a full circle. There was no way he could make the situation the way he’d thought he’d wanted it, so he would accept, adapt to what was, and in the end it was a richer kind of peace.
He felt her lips curve in a smile, then he heard her soft, husky voice.
“It’s hozro.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8728-0
A Man Without a Wife
Copyright © 1995 by Beverly Bird
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