Walk in Beauty

by Wind, Ruth

  “Seeing Marcia and Giselle makes me wish I’d known her.”

  He chuckled. “Do you know what your daughter told me this afternoon?”

  “No telling. What?”

  “That you never kiss Daniel like they kiss on TV.”

  Jessie felt the heat of embarrassment spread through her cheeks and was grateful for the darkness. “He’s my friend.”

  “He was my friend for a long time, too. It was Daniel who helped me run away that time.”

  “Really?” She grinned, trying to imagine the two of them as children, plotting a doomed expedition. “I can see that.”

  “Giselle thinks a lot of him.”

  Jessie pressed her lips together for a minute, knowing this was a sensitive area. “He’s like her uncle, you know? He—” She almost said, “takes the time to be with her,” but knew it would wound Luke.

  “I know.” He dropped the cigarette and stood up to crush it beneath the heel of his boot. “I guess we should hit the hay.”

  A ripple of awareness spread through Jessie at his words, a slight, quivering heaviness in her breasts and belly. “I guess so,” she agreed, but made no immediate move.

  He was very close, close enough for her to smell the scent of him, that foresty note of his skin. “Do you want me to sleep in the cab?” he asked.

  Jessie hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “That might be the most honest thing you’ve said to me.” His gaze, dark and liquid, met hers. Against the night, the harsh planes of his face were shadowed, like the mesas all around them, and Jessie caught her breath at the wave of longing she felt. She had to consciously restrain herself from reaching up to touch his jaw.

  Beauty all around me.

  He took a step closer, and now his body was just barely between her knees. With one hand, he reached out to shift a lock of her hair over her shoulder. “We don’t have to make love.” His voice, quiet with the night, seemed more accented than usual, giving his English a hypnotically musical sound. “Let me hold you. Just for tonight.”

  Jessie found she had no will to resist when he swayed forward, his fingers tightening on her shoulder, to kiss the side of her neck. She knew she should tell him to go to the cab, or volunteer to go herself. And yet… . and yet…

  “Oh, Luke,” she whispered with a hint of despair, her body betraying her. “I can’t stop needing you.”

  “Maybe you aren’t supposed to,” he said. Swiftly he gathered her close, wrapping his arms around her, lowering his face to her hair with a sigh. His hair brushed her mouth, coarse and cool.

  Even just being next to him made her feel better, made the weariness slip from her shoulders and the anxiety of the past week seem far away. She lifted her arms and wrapped them around his back, hugging him close, unable to turn away from the one thing that would make her feel whole and right. It was only for tonight. One more time she could take what he wanted to give. One more time, she could love him.

  Easing away, she scooted back into the truck. Luke waited at the tailgate, and she saw from the hard line of his jaw that he thought she was going to make him go to the cab. She held out her hand.

  He stood there a split second longer, as if he regretted his choice; then he jumped into the truck, slamming the barriers closed behind him. An involuntary rush of pure need rippled through Jessie as he bent his head, and the light from beyond caught his hair. She reached for him, putting her hand on his thigh.

  He smiled and lifted her hand to his mouth. “Kick off your shoes, honey. It’s gonna be a long day tomorrow.”

  Jessie yanked off her boots and unbuttoned the heavy jacket, then zipped open one of the sleeping bags laid out on the pallet. He stopped her. “Let’s put them together.”

  She nodded, lifting her end up so Luke could join it to his. It was a deeply intimate act, especially in the pure, unbroken silence of the desert. They crawled in together, one from each side. Jessie felt deeply shy and didn’t know quite what to do next.

  “Come here,” Luke said, lifting the bag to make room for her to ease up next to him. From long habit, she nestled her head in the hollow of his shoulder, and once again all the tension flowed out of her.

  He held her close. “That’s it.”

  Jessie sighed, letting go. Only with Luke had she ever felt this sense of perfect ease, this perfect safety. Only with him had she ever been able to let down her guard and allow another human being to see her.

  It had been so shattering to lose it.

  Against her temple she felt a warm triangle of flesh at the opening of his shirt. One of her hands rested on his waist and the other was curled close to her. Idly, he moved his stockinged feet against hers.

  But it wasn’t as easy as she had imagined to just lie there. His hands moved on her back, up and down. She found her own hand moving, too, over his ribs and back, to his upper arm below the cloth. The sound of his breath in her ear was intensely personal.

  Slowly, he began to massage her scalp, a luxurious experience Jessie had missed. She let her head fall against his palm and smiled at the soft sound of amusement that rumbled from his chest. “Putty in my hands, woman.”

  She made no reply.

  After a time, he shifted a little, until he could touch her face, and applied the same exquisite pressure over her forehead and temples and along her jaw. The deft fingers were gentle and powerful at once. With her eyes closed, Jessie reached for the opening of his shirt, where the tantalizing warmth of his skin waited.

  He caught her hand. “No. I have some discipline, but not that much.”

  Jessie opened her eyes. “What about mine?”

  He leaned closer, fingers brushing down her neck. “What about it?”

  With one hand, she reached up and touched his mouth, brushing her fingers over the well-cut lines, feeling the firmness soften. “Kissing doesn’t count as making love,” she whispered and strained upward a little.

  “No,” he said as he came closer. “No, it doesn’t.” He wrapped his hands around her and pulled her tightly against him. Their hips nestled together. Slowly he bent over her and brushed the lightest possible kiss over her mouth. “Like that?”

  A pulse began to thump in her groin, in her breasts, in the lips he’d just teased. “No,” she said, and swallowed. “Try again.”

  “Mmm.” This time, he hovered close for an instant, his lips bare millimeters away from her own, then his tongue brushed the edge of her lower lip and the corner and the bow.

  He didn’t move away, but hovered again, close yet not touching her. Against her belly, she could feel Luke’s arousal pressing against his jeans, ready to burst the fabric to touch her, and she smiled at the way his teasing her aroused him. “Try again,” she repeated in a throaty voice.

  “Hard to please, aren’t you?”

  “Very.”

  This time, he really kissed her, but with the same slow savoring he’d used a moment before. First his lips and hers, sliding and playing, then the slight opening and the barest brush of tongues. Jessie lifted her hand to his hip, unable to avoid touching him, and she arched a little against his erection. His hands clutched her shoulders tighter and his tongue unexpectedly plunged.

  And suddenly, Jessie didn’t care anymore about the past or the future. Only now mattered. Only Luke and his hands and his mouth. “If we take off our shirts, it doesn’t count as making love, does it?” she asked breathlessly.

  In the darkness, his eyes held a rich shine of light. He shook his head and reached for the hem of her sweater. Jessie lifted her arms and let him pull the fabric over her head. “Better,” she said.

  Luke’s hands fell on the front clasp of her bra. “Wouldn’t you like to get rid of this, too?”

  “Of course.”

  He smiled as he released the clasp, then slipped it from her body. “Much, much better,” he said, touching her with both hands.

  “Now you,” Jessie said.

  “Well, if you insist.” He shed his shirt quickly and then he was
against her, sleek and warm, his torso against her bared breasts. He held her that way, trapped between his legs and wrapped in his arms, skin to skin, their heads cradled side by side on the pillows.

  “So now,” Luke said, his voice husky with a need he was trying to hide, “we have kissing. And bared breasts.” His hands cupped her lazily. “I suppose kissing breasts is out of the question?”

  Jessie closed her eyes, knowing she was lost when he spoke like that, when he touched her like this… “I don’t know,” she managed to whisper over the clamor in her blood.

  “Maybe I should try it, just to see.” His thumbs teased her almost irresistibly, and she felt him slip closer, felt his hair brush her chin.

  And at last, at last, his mouth swept over the swell of her breast, edging close to the aroused tip. Wickedly, he barely kissed the aching point. “Like that?” he murmured, and his breath was as tantalizing as his touch.

  Jessie could manage no more than a sigh.

  “Or this?” As he had done with her mouth, he just tasted her nipple with small licks, tiny flickers of his tongue. But after a moment, it was as if he forgot to tease her, for he made a long, low sound deep in his chest and his mouth opened full and hot over her, took her inside.

  She cried out softly and clutched his head, dragging him up to kiss him. “I think,” she said, reaching for the buttons of his jeans, “it’s getting too hot for any of our clothes.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He groaned as she teased him, stroking his erection through the straining fabric of his jeans. “But I’m afraid that’s going to qualify—”

  She didn’t let him finish. She kissed the words from his mouth, her hunger so deep she could not bear to think that it was anything but exactly right, exactly what she should do.

  They knew each other so well, knew how to shift this way or that, to ease from the clothes in ways ungraceful but efficient. Socks and jeans and underwear were shed in haste, until there were only limbs entwined, and lips, and hands.

  All at once Jessie felt the sleek warmth of his thighs against hers, and then he plunged with a single, sharp thrust, joining them. Jessie cried out, grasping him as he moved inside of her, fiercely, roughly, their bodies rocking against each other with bruising intensity. She felt his hands on her shoulders, his fingers digging into her flesh. His face was dark with hunger when she looked at him.

  They roared into the height of the moment, crying out, clutching each other closer, closer. It was like the windstorm, endless and violent and clearing. When together they rolled to their sides, neither had the breath to speak. They kissed, hands still roving, bodies still pulsing, hearts pounding. Jessie put her palm on his chest to hear the racing beat of his heart and grinned. “That definitely qualifies as making love.”

  He laughed softly, curling his fingers in her hair. “And that’s only the beginning, honey.” He brushed her cheek. “Only the beginning.”

  * * *

  Luke didn’t question her sudden change of heart. In the darkness and the cold, on the hard metal bed of the truck, he was happier than he had been in many years, holding her warm body next to his in the sleeping bags they’d zipped together.

  Tonight, she was different. Almost insatiably hungry for him, almost unbearably giving. He gave as clearly as he was able, trying not to think of tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow, or anything past. Just now, for them, for what had been.

  When they lay together, sated at last, he thought there had been a healing. The resistance had gone from her, and the fear. She nestled her face in his chest, her hand draped around his waist, and made a soft sighing sound of contentment.

  He closed his eyes, just holding her. In the morning, she might not remember why she had done this, why she had decided it would be all right to make love with him, one more time. He was prepared for her to be cold and distant once again.

  But surely she would not be able to remember this night, and last night, and not want to work to overcome what lay between them. Surely there was some answer. His fingers tightened involuntarily against her ribs. “I love you,” he whispered, his face in her hair.

  He thought she was asleep, but at his words, she pressed close, her forehead to his chest, her fingers almost painfully fierce on his side. Abruptly, she lifted her face and kissed him hard on the mouth, and he tasted her tears once more. He chuckled gently. “I have seen you cry more in the past few days than I did in the whole time we were together.”

  Unabashedly, she wiped at them. “I feel so emotional. Like everything is too big for me, too much for me.” She touched his mouth. “When I doze off and wake up and you’re still here, it seems like a miracle.”

  “I’m here,” he said. “Yours for the asking.”

  A wicked grin spread over her face. “Oh, really?” Her hand slipped down and cupped him boldly. In seconds, he was half-ready again. “Are you Superman?”

  “Looks like I just might be, under the right circumstances,” he said, and groaned as she moved her hand deliciously. “Ah, Jess,” he moaned, his hands in her hair.

  She laughed, the sound throaty and warm. “You think there’s a record for the most times in a single night?”

  He could not reply, not with words. He reached for her, touching the silk of her breast as her hands worked their magic, awash in the wildness, the passion, the power that was Jessie.

  * * *

  He must have slept finally, rubber-boned with lovemaking, for Tasha’s bark startled him awake. He blinked, disoriented for a minute, then heard an odd scrape on the outside of the truck. In the cab, Tasha growled low in her throat.

  Stealthily, he eased free of Jessie’s embrace and slipped into his jeans, hearing again an unidentifiable noise on the body of the truck. Quietly as he was able, he turned the handle of the window on the back of the cab, lifted it and eased his body through the opening.

  Outside the night was freezing and his feet were unaccustomed to the rough terrain. He had to pause to pick a burr from his big toe before he rounded the side, cautiously.

  Crouched by the passenger door was a man, smearing something dark over the door. “Hey,” Luke said, “what the hell are you doing?”

  The man looked up and dropped the jar in his hand, bolting away from the house, through the dirt of the driveway toward a short bluff across the road. Luke ran after him.

  Given the advantage of shoes, Luke might have caught him faster. As it was, he found himself leaping over yucca and praying he wouldn’t land in a patch of prickly pear. He couldn’t avoid the goat heads, though. One stabbed the ball of his foot. Cursing, he kicked it out with the other foot and kept running. Wind chilled his chest and arms. A stitch caught in his side.

  All at once, the man tripped and went down with a strangled cry. Luke sprinted and tackled him before he could recover, feeling the air whoosh from both of them.

  The light was eerie and cold, pale with the clouds overhead. Luke dragged the man to his feet, smelling whiskey as the youth—for he was no more than twenty—staggered uncertainly against the clutch of Luke’s fist on the back of his jacket.

  Luke recognized him. It was the boy who’d been drinking with Mary’s son earlier in the evening. As he stumbled, he laughed, a high, whinnying sound that shouted of rabid drunkenness.

  For a moment, Luke froze, staring into that face—that drunken Indian face. Revulsion swept him, deep and nauseating. It stole his breath. With a violent gesture, he shoved the youth away. The boy stumbled and fell in the brush.

  Luke sucked air into his lungs, trying to calm himself. On the ground, the young man laughed and muttered something unintelligible, ending with, “Eh, Tonto?”

  “Who are you working for?” Luke asked.

  “The Meeker Galleries, man. They paid me and my boys big money to harass all you earnest Injuns.” He let go of a cackling laugh.

  With a head-splitting sense of rage, Luke grabbed the youth’s coat front and hauled him to his feet. He smelled sour alcohol and a long stretch of no bathing. “Why?” he
demanded, shaking him. “Why would you betray us that way?” He shook him again. “Don’t you know they just used you?”

  The laughter had fled the young man’s eyes, leaving behind only a sullen, flat expression. He didn’t resist the shaking, but didn’t answer, either.

  Jessie appeared from nowhere, wearing her jeans and sweater but no shoes. She grabbed Luke’s arm. “Leave him alone,” she said.

  Abruptly, Luke dropped the youth and spun on his heel, almost physically ill with revulsion and disgust and other emotions he couldn’t even name.

  At the road, he paused to look back, reason telling him he should not leave her alone with the drunken youth. From where he stood, he couldn’t hear what she said, but the tone of her voice was instantly, painfully familiar. It was gentle, quiet, reasonable—infinitely patient.

  As she knelt to help the youth to his feet, Luke felt his nausea grow. Memories crowded in, memories of Jessie so gently helping him at moments like this; Jessie making coffee in the morning, giving him tomato juice and aspirin without a single word of censure.

  He saw she would manage the youth without help—as she had managed himself, managed her mother—and limped toward the truck, remembering himself awakening in a park on a brilliant Sunday morning.

  * * *

  The youth slumped on the ground, making no move to run. In the dim, cloudy night, Jessie could see little about him except that he was very drunk. His hair was long, tied back from his face in a ponytail, and an earring shone silver in the night. He looked up at her dully, swaying a little even in the sitting position. She knelt beside him. “Can you walk?”

  “I can do anything, lady,” he said, the words slurry, and laughed like a hyena before he tumbled over sideways.

  There was probably nothing Jessie hadn’t learned about drunks at one time or another. This one was a long way gone, maybe even dangerously so. Gently, she took his arm. “You can’t stay out here. And I can’t carry you. Let me help you up.”