by Theresa Weir
Her fingers were getting numb. She wiggled them, trying to get the feeling back. “I know there’s a key.” Her voice rose in growing panic. “There has to be a key.”
“I don’t think calling a locksmith would exactly thrill you. It would thrill him, but not you.”
She swung her leg in his direction. “I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
“If I have to cut the cuffs off, I will,” he assured her. “Do you have a hacksaw?”
“No.”
“Anything that will cut metal?”
“No!”
“Okay, okay. Let’s not panic.”
“I am panicking!”
He lifted the drawer, looking closely at where wood met wood. And there he found the small key wedged between the side and bottom of the drawer. He crawled across the bed. Then, kneeling beside her on the mattress, he stuck the key in the lock and turned it, freeing first one of her hands, then the other.
Claire watched as he brought a hand to his mouth, kissing her wrists one at a time. His eyes looked kind of sleepy, kind of like he was still turned on. She could relate.
Her gaze dropped to his arm, to the tattoo. Forever Olivia.
She knew better than to mention her name, not now anyway. But soon. Soon she would ask him who Olivia was and what she’d meant to him. And what she still meant to him.
“That was probably one of my dumber ideas," she said, clenching and unclenching her fingers, trying to get the circulation back.
“Great ideas sometimes come with a few things to iron out. Nothing wrong with straddling the line between madness and genius.” She continued to stare at the strange symbol above the woman's name. She hadn't realized it before, but the tattoo looked old, as if he’d gotten it when he was a kid. It was a little out of focus, as if he’d grown after getting it. “Were you in a gang?” she asked.
When he saw the direction of her gaze, he looked down at his arm, then back at her. “More like a club.'"
From the abruptness of his tone, she could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. It belonged to his past life, back with Olivia, back to a time he’d apparently rather forget.
He put everything the drawer, then returned the drawer to the dresser, reached up, and clicked off the light. Then he slid into bed beside her and pulled her close.
Was he going to do what most guys did and fall instantly to sleep? She waited, listening to his even breathing. Was he asleep?
Ten minutes of waiting and wondering, she had to ask. “You liked the handcuff thing?”
“You were so quiet, I thought you were asleep,” he said, sliding a hand down her hip, not sounding groggy in the least. “The handcuff thing? To say I liked it would be putting it mildly.” There was a lengthy pause. “In fact, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to top it.”
“I don’t know about that.” She rolled to her knees, pushed him firmly onto his back, and straddled him.
“But then again,” he said in a tight, expectant voice, “you’re so damn ingenious.”
She wrapped her hand around him, feeling him harden. “I’m full of admiration for this particular part of your anatomy,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Not that the rest of you isn’t nice, too, but this part ...” She stroked him. She cupped him. “I’m just particularly taken with it.” She leaned forward and kissed him, her nipples barely brushing the hair on his chest, sending little electrical impulses all the way to her belly.
She slipped down his body, her hands on his hips. She leaned close. Starting at the base of his shaft, she licked him with the tip of her tongue. Under her hands, his thighs tensed. She heard his indrawn breath. She followed a straight line all the way to the tip. She felt his fingers against her scalp, felt them digging into her hair.
He smelled and tasted like sweet, sweet love. “I love how you taste.”
“Claire,” he groaned, his fingers digging into her scalp. “Sweet, sweet Claire. My God, woman. You’re torturing me.”
She slowly worked her way up his body, kissing his abdomen, his navel, his chest. When she reached his lips, he was ravenous. He kissed her with madness, with the passion of ten men. “Down on me,” he gasped, between kisses. “Come down on me.” His hands were suddenly under her arms, pressing into the soft sides of her breasts. He lifted her onto him, filling her with his iron heat, amazing her anew at the power and breadth of him.
It had been her plan to be the one in charge, in control, but suddenly he turned everything around. He sat up and wrapped her legs around him. And then he twisted to the side, swinging his feet to the floor, and stood, his legs braced apart, holding her tightly to him.
“What are you doing?” she asked breathlessly.
“Bed's too soft.”
With his legs braced apart, he lifted her, then dropped her against him, his body trembling, his muscles like rocks.
It was one of the most erotic things she'd ever experienced, each thrust taking her closer to the edge. He made love with such mindless abandon, such lack of self-consciousness. It was the most liberating, the most electrifying thing she'd ever known.
He finally reached a point where he couldn't stand any longer. Trembling, he dropped into a nearby chair, Claire wrapped around him.
The chair was like driving on a road with no shocks. He grasped her hips, lifting her in a rhythmic motion, his lips finding hers. “I don’t know why we didn’t do this before,” he said, his breathing ragged. “We’ve got a lot of time to make up for.”
“A lot of time,” she agreed.
Her feet couldn’t reach the floor. She had to move, needed to move, needed to participate. “This isn’t working,” she finally said.
“I never claimed to be a grand master.”
They went back to the bed, this time with Claire on the edge, Dylan standing.
Perfect.
“Now I know why they made these old beds so high.”
“Claire?” he asked as he stroked her long and hard, his hips moving faster and faster.
“Mmm? You talkin’ to me?”
“Tell me when you’re having an orgasm.”
“What?” Had she heard him right?
“An orgasm.”
“Stop talking.”
“I like to talk.”
“You’re distracting me.”
“So? Tell me again how you like the way I taste. And the way I smell.”
“You taste like love, like sex.”
“Tell me everything you feel, everything you want.”
“Touch me.”
“What?”
“With your hand. Touch me.”
“You mean like this?”
She threw back her head. “Yes,” came her faint whisper.
He knew just where to touch her, just what she wanted, just what to do to drive her wild. “Now,” she gasped. “It’s happening now.”
“What?”
“An orgasm.”
“I can feel it. I can feel you contracting around me, squeezing me.”
“You’re crazy. You’re not supposed to analyze it.”
“Crazy love. You feel so damn good. My God, woman. What have you done?”
“Done?”
“You’ve done something to me. Some kind of magic. Some kind of spell. Some kind of shit big spell.”
Chapter 23
Several days later, Dylan was sound asleep when Claire pounced on the bed, waking him. She wore a heavy oatmeal-colored sweater and smelled of the cold outdoors, a smell he'd come to associate with her.
“Let's go do something,” she said, her exuberance crashing into his groggy bafflement.
She was so damn wide-awake. People weren't supposed to be so damn wide-awake at—he twisted around to look at the clock—6:00 A.M. He groaned and let his head drop back to the pillow.
She threw her leg across him, so she was straddling his hips. Then she slowly leaned forward, until her arms were crossed over his chest, her chin resting on her arms. “Come on.” When she
talked, her chin remained in one place while her head bobbed a little and her voice came out tight, like someone talking through her teeth. “I want to take you to some beautiful places.” He cupped her bottom with his hands, thinking about the sexy panties that were somewhere under a pair of faded jeans and long underwear. “You've already taken me to some beautiful places. In fact, I wouldn't mind going to some of those places again.” He slipped a hand under her sweater. And then under something else that was thick and textured. And then under a tight tank top, to finally find her warm skin.
“I don't know,” she said, smiling in a sexy, teasing way. “It took me about an hour to get all of this on. I thought we could drive up Highway 95 today.”
“Why?”
“Because there's a frozen waterfall you just have to see.”
“We can still do that,” he said. “It's early.”
She pushed herself to a sitting position, still straddling him. She crossed her arms in front of her, grabbed the hem of her sweater, and pulled it over her head. That was followed by an insulated cotton henley, leaving her in the tank top. She wasn't wearing a bra. He could see the sweet shape of her breasts beneath the soft, clinging cotton, see the hard outline of her nipples.
“I was just dreaming about you. And me,” he told her, putting his hands behind his head so he could simply watch her.
“What were we doing?”
He smiled at her sleepily, still caught up in the hazy sensuality of the dream. “We weren't looking at frozen waterfalls.”
She slid from the bed, unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, and kicked them off. That left her in a pair of cream-colored, waffle-weave long-john bottoms and heavy wool socks. He didn’t understand how such an outfit could be sexy, but it was. She slipped out of the long underwear, then the tank top, and finally the little strip of elastic.
“Seems a shame,” he murmured, lifting the down comforter for her. “After all the work you went to getting all of that on.”
“I know,” she said, sliding in next to him, wrapping herself around his nakedness, her body hot in places, cold in others. “All that work.” Because he wasn't quite awake, their lovemaking took on a different tone. It wasn’t the hot passion they’d shared in the middle of the night. This time it was slow, kind of sleepy, and oh so sensual.
~0~
“Are we there yet?”
Claire laughed and readjusted her hands on the steering wheel of the Jeep. “We’ve only been on the road fifteen minutes.”
“Stop at the next gas station, will you? I want to get some munchies. Half the fun of cruising is the junk you eat on the way.”
She pulled off at a tourist trap with a huge carved bear outside and real live geese waddling around on the porch, pooping all over everything. She was standing in front of the soda case when Dylan motioned to her with one hand. “Come here. You gotta check this out.”
She went along with it until she reached the men’s rest room. There she double-checked the sign.
“This is great,” Dylan said, grabbing her by the elbow, trying to pull her inside. She looked behind her. Nobody around.
“This alone makes the day worthwhile,” he said.
What could he possibly want her to see, she wondered, stepping inside.
He pointed proudly to the hand dryer on the wall.
“So?” she asked.
“Look closer.”
Scratched in the paint were the words WIPE HANDS ON PANTIES.
“The message is getting out. I’ll bet it says the same thing in the women’s.” He pushed her out the door, then went into the women’s. He immediately returned to give her a wink and a thumbs up.
Oh, brother. She crossed her arms over her chest. “When I talked about showing you the sights, I didn’t mean public rest rooms.”
He grabbed her by both arms and gave her a firm, quick kiss, then let her go. “I appreciate your willingness to be flexible.”
A lot of roads were closed because of the extreme amount of snow they’d had throughout the winter. But they were able to get to the waterfall by driving down a narrow canyon, then following the Salmon River for several miles.
Dylan made all the correct noises. The “Wows” and “That’s amazings.” But Claire had a feeling it didn’t evoke the same sense of majesty she was feeling. And as they continued the drive, she came to realize that he didn’t like the dark, confined areas, but he loved the lookout where you could stand on top of the world and see for hundreds of miles all the way across Hell’s Canyon into Oregon.
She was glad they’d come. The outing gave Claire a new perspective on their relationship. And what she came away with was a realization of just how limited it was, and how little they knew about each other.
At the lookout, the air was cool, but the sun was warm on her face. “You should see this place in the spring and early summer,” she said. “The wildflowers are unbelievable.”
She’d mentioned the future. Would he have a response to that? Would he say, Let’s come up here again then?
He didn’t say anything. Instead, he seemed to be lost in his own reflective world.
Standing there, looking out across the huge expanse of wilderness and mountains served to remind Claire of how insulated their life together had become. She knew nothing about Dylan, nothing outside of who he was when he was at her house. There had been a couple of times when she’d tried to bring up the subject of his past, but he’d neatly sidestepped her question and turned the conversation another direction, into something funny, or something sexy. He certainly knew how to distract her.
“Have you ever seen the Grand Canyon?” he asked, finally breaking the almost religious silence.
“No.”
“You should.”
“There are a lot of things I want to see, places I want to go.”
“Don’t wait too long.”
He seemed suddenly sad, depressed. She hadn’t meant for the day to make him sad.
He kept his eyes focused on the horizon, where a lavender haze had settled between the peaks of tall pines. “I’ve been to a lot of places.”
It was the first time he’d ever offered any information about himself. She was afraid to say anything, afraid he’d accidentally forgotten she was there, had accidentally spoken out loud. “I’ve seen Kilimanjaro.”
He turned to look over his shoulder at her, the wind ruffling what there was of his hair, his expression daring her to dispute what he’d just said. When she didn’t, he continued. “I’ve seen the pyramids of Egypt.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched his back to the wind. “My parent were missionaries,” he explained. The way he said it made her think that these were words he rarely spoke.
“That must have been wonderful. To go to so many places, see so many things.”
“Yeah. Well.” He turned back to stare out past the valley, to the blue, blue sky. “They were killed in an uprising in South Africa.”
“Oh my God. Dylan. I’m so sorry.” That explained a lot of things, like how he could be so intelligent, yet so directionless.
“I didn’t tell you so you’d feel sorry for me. I hate that. Everybody has baggage. Some people just have a little more than others. Looking out there like this, well, it reminded me of those days, that’s all.”
He was so contemplative, so quiet. It was hard to believe that he was the same person who, just hours earlier, had dragged her into the men’s rest room so she could read the hand dryer.
He crouched down and placed his palm against the hard surface of the rock on which he stood. “You won’t believe how hot this is. The winter solstice is over and the sun's really beginning to put out the heat.” He ended up lying down on the rock, a hand behind his head. “Come here, Claire. You’ve got to feel the heat from this rock.”
She joined him, kind of curled up next to him, the heat from the rock radiating around them, the wind stinging their chilled faces. He closed his eyes and sighed. “I haven't felt this kind of freedom in years.”
They lingered as long as they could, until the sun began to fade and darkness began to fall.
On the way home, Dylan discovered her stash of tapes in the glove compartment. “All right. Tunes.” He began rummaging through the tapes. Some were old, some were fairly new. Libby, who liked nothing but Top Forty, was always complaining because Claire had such an odd assortment of tastes, the bands often groups Libby had never heard of. Claire's music preference changed with her mood, so her collection reflected a state of mind that was always fluctuating. She expected to hear the same complaint from Dylan that she heard from Libby.
She could see him out of the corner of her eye, reading first one tape, then another.
“All right. The Pixies,” he said with satisfaction, bent over, reading by the tiny dim glow of the glove compartment light. “Frank Black’s a genius when it comes to structured mayhem.” They hit a bump and he braced himself. “Hey, Velvet Underground. They were ahead of their time, weren't they? Cowboy Junkies. This is the one they recorded in the church, isn’t it?” He paused in his perusal and verbal cataloging, a tape in his hand. “You listen to Leonard Cohen?”
“He’s a wonderful writer. You’ve heard of him?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Judging from the reverent tone of his voice, it sounded as if Cohen’s music had had an impact on Dylan’s life.
He shut the glove compartment and took the tape from the case. “Does this have 'Suzanne' on it?”
“Side one, I think.”
“This is so weird.”
“What?”
“That you listen to Leonard Cohen.”
“A lot of people think he’s too sad, but I don’t think his music’s sad as much as—” She searched for a word.
“Spiritual?” Dylan offered, finishing her sentence.
“That’s it. Spiritual.”
He just kept holding the tape, staring at it. “I used to have a friend who liked Cohen,” he finally said.
She got the idea it may have been something he didn’t want to be reminded of, that it was maybe something too painful.