by Anna Jeffrey
Swollen lips smiled up at him. He could see where his whiskers had reddened the skin around her mouth. He wished he hadn’t been so hard on her.
“Really? What a nice thing to say. I think I could say the same about you.”
“I’m sweet?”
“In a rough sort of way. I think you don’t want anybody to know the gentle, nice person who hides behind so much cynicism.”
“I don’t know how you could think I’m nice after the way I…after the way this happened.”
“You didn’t twist my arm. We both came up here for the wrong reasons.”
He looked at her for a long time, a new set of emotions churning inside. He wanted her again all right, but in a different way. “Maybe not,” he said softly. He placed his hand on her neck and brushed his thumb over her smooth cheek. “It can be, should be, better than it was, Dahlia. . . . Not that it wasn’t good, but it can be . . . not so, I don’t know, rushed, I guess.”
She shrugged, sort of resigned-like, and he wondered if it had ever been really good for her. “You could show me,” she said, “if you want to.”
“Lord, girl. Right now, there’s nothing I want more.” He kissed her then, gently filling her mouth with his tongue and just as gently, her tongue played with his. When they parted, he moved his hands to the shirt front. “Can I see you?”
She looked down and nodded.
He eased the shirt off her shoulders. It drifted to the floor. She stood there and let him look at her. Her body was long and slim, like his. He could see why they fit together so well. The amber lamplight played over larger than average breasts, round and plump, with nipples high and pronounced and dark as chocolate. He could feel his throat thickening again. “You’re so beautiful. I know I’ve already said it, but . . .”
At a loss for more words and fearing what she might see in his eyes, he pulled her against him and tucked her head against his shoulder, felt her trembling against him. She wrapped her arms around his middle and they held each other, her breasts burning against his middle. It had been a long time since a woman had simply held him.
He kissed her deeply, sinking to a place in his mind he usually didn’t visit during sex. She kissed him back in kind and he opened himself to let softness seep from her into him. When they had to stop for breath, he led her to the bed and pulled back the covers. She scooted between them and sat there, her arms wrapped around her knees, watching as he dug in his jeans pockets for the two packages of rubbers he had bought downstairs. He tossed them on the table by the bed. She glanced at them, then back up at him and he knew her thoughts. “I like my kids, sweetheart, but I don’t want any more.”
She picked up one of the foil packets and read it. “Your granny would say this is shutting the barn door after the horses are gone.”
He had to laugh. She didn’t seem concerned about the risk they had taken. With any other woman he knew, he might suspect a trap, but instinctively he knew she was too honest. So if she wasn’t worried, he wouldn’t worry either. He shucked his jeans and shorts and slid into the bed beside her and pulled the covers over them. “She might, at that.”
She snuggled against him as if she belonged there. He reached up and clicked off the light. Usually, he liked the light, but for some reason, tonight, he wanted the darkness. Maybe he wanted to make it easier on her. “I lied when I said I couldn’t remember when I didn’t use a rubber.” he said. Then he added something he probably couldn’t have said in the light, something he hadn’t told another living person. “It was the night we made Jimmy. It was my fault. I knew she wasn’t on birth control. I was mad and horny and didn’t care. Of the mistakes I’ve made, that one was the biggest.”
She held him tighter, as if she understood the weight of the hair shirt he had worn for seven years. “How long were you married?”
“Not quite nine years. . . . You?”
“Not quite five.”
“Your husband’s name was Kenneth? Why didn’t he want kids? Mine are just about the best thing that ever happened.”
“He was career-oriented. He thought they’d be in the way.” She paused and he waited, toying with the silky curls that tickled his nose. “I wanted a houseful of kids,” she said softly. “But he sort of had a thing in his mind about the . . . We never discussed it, but I believe he didn’t want his children to be mixed-race.”
Her voice held a note of sadness and for damn fool reason, he wanted to wipe it away. Caution, practicality and fantasy warred in his head as he searched for a reply. “But he knew what you were when he married you.”
“Of course. But I think maybe it didn’t really dawn on him until later. . . . You see, my mother was tribal. She was beautiful, but she was darker than I am. He didn’t see her pictures until after the wedding. I’ve wondered if there would’ve been a wedding if he’d seem them.”
A flash of anger at a man he had never met zinged through Luke. No wonder she was sensitive about her race. “That’s self-centered bullshit,” he said. “I’ll tell you this much and you can believe it. If it was years ago and I was starting over, I’d be proud for you to be the mother of my kids.”
“Thanks,” she said, “but you don’t have to say anything. I’m past it now, though I used to spend hours wondering why Kenneth felt that way. To this day I don’t know why he married me. As time passes I’m finding it harder to know why I married him.”
“In my case, that’s one question I know the answer to.”
“Was your wife pregnant?”
“What do you think?”
“Didn’t you love her?
“I was a kid. And a dumb one at that.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to swallow what life hands you. But you learn to. The luck of the draw, I think they say in poker.”
He thought again about her sensitivity to being “half-white,” how much the man in whom she had put her faith must have hurt her and he vowed to tread softly. “Know what? Right now, I’m feeling pretty damn lucky drawing this hand. I told you how I felt about race. And I meant it when I said you’re all I’ve thought about since the first day I saw you.”
She rose on one elbow. In the snowlight, he could make out the outlines of her high cheek bones, the fullness of her lips. “What you actually said was slightly more graphic.” She smiled and kissed him. “But yeah, me, too.”
His heart made a little bump. She trusted him in a way no one had in a while, if ever. He knew it.
He began to touch her sensitive places again, reveling in her soft sighs and throaty moans. When she seemed embarrassed, he held her and told her it was okay to enjoy. She wanted to explore his body. He wasn’t used to giving up the lead in bed, but trust seemed to be contagious and he lay back and let her gentle, questing hands learn his intimate parts. When he could endure no more, he stopped her and buried his face in her rain-smelling hair, shaking with new and unfamiliar needs.
“I want to tell you something,” she said. “I couldn’t tell you at first, but now I can. I’ve never . . . It’s not that I didn’t know how it felt, but never with . . . Kenneth didn’t—”
“Shhh. I know. I’ve already figured out that man was a damn fool.”
He found her mouth with his and their lips clung in heart-hurting tenderness. He prepared her with caresses and kisses again, making her whimper and tremble until she teetered on the edge of climax. He crawled between her thighs, his naked cock stretched and eager. She took him easily this time. Her hot, tight sheath gripped him in climax the moment he pushed into her. He squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath. As soon as she finished, he moved up high on her body and they moved together in a silky rhythm. She lifted her knees and he penetrated to her deepest place. A frantic little noise burst from her throat and she came again, her deep muscles convulsing around him. He lost control. Orgasm thundered through him, blinded him and took his breath and nothing had ever felt so right.
Chapter 12
Dahlia awoke in the circle of Luke’s arms, their legs tangled, his
hand loosely cupping her breast. His deep, regular breathing sounded near her ear, his heart beat against her back.
Brilliant sunlight filled the room. Last night, they hadn’t closed the draperies on the wall of windows. A snow-covered landscape and distant brilliant white mountains rose to meet a cloudless, electric blue sky.
She would kill for a toothbrush.
A few feet away, her lacy blue bra hung by one strap from the back of a chair and Luke’s tan shirt lay across the seat. Her stockings were strewn six feet apart in grayish wads on the teal blue carpet. She couldn’t spot her panties, didn’t know where they had gone after Luke had swept them away.
She had a driving urge to shower. She hadn’t washed before going to sleep. Her cheeks warmed at the memory of how they had both drifted off with him inside her.
What to do next was the question of the moment. Of all the bedroom adventures she had heard from Piggy, as well as some of her other sexually-active friends, morning-after etiquette when waking up with a stranger was a detail they hadn’t covered.
One thing was without doubt. She had to go home. Though she suspected Piggy had spent the night with Pete, if she returned to the cottage and found Dahlia and the Blazer missing, she might assume the worst and be frantic. Dahlia carefully moved body parts—his and hers—and eased out of bed. He didn’t stir.
Covered with his shirt, she went to her dress hanging in the corner of the room, finding her panties on the way. She gathered them, the wrinkled blue dress, her purse, her stockings and garter belt and tip-toed to the bathroom.
Her hair looked like a windstorm. The sight of it in the vanity mirror made her glad Luke had been asleep when she left the bed. On a tray on the counter, small bottles of courtesy shampoo and conditioner sat alongside a bar of soap. She sniffed their fragrances and finding the pear scent pleasant, dripped several tiny drops of shampoo in her hand, added water and scrubbed at her teeth with her finger. Then she swished the perfumey mix in her mouth, and rinsed. Her mouth felt better, but pear-scented shampoo was not a teeth cleaner she would recommend
As she showered and washed her hair, she wondered what Luke would think when he awoke. What would last night mean to him? A one-night stand? Did she want it to be more? She didn’t know. She stayed in the shower until she ran out of unanswerable questions to ponder and tender places to wash.
With no cosmetics except lipstick, she traced a light coat of the burgundy shade onto her lips. Then she dug a ballpoint pen from her purse, picked tangles from her wet hair and dried it standing under the overhead heater. When she had made herself presentable as possible, she eased the door open.
Luke was awake, lying on his back, his hands locked behind his neck, his biceps bunched and round as baseballs. Reddish-brown hair lined his armpits and covered a muscular chest like a pelt. It whorled down and disappeared under the sheet and blanket caught at his waist. His nipples showed as tan buttons and she remembered how at one point in the night she had wantonly licked and sucked them and he had groaned and shuddered.
“You’ve got your clothes on,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
He looked sexy and dangerous with his hair mussed and whisker stubble framing his lips.
She loved his lips even more now that she knew their taste, knew the pleasure they could deliver. Suppressing the erotic memory fogging clear thought, she shrugged. “Nothing. I have to go home. You were sleeping—”
He threw off the covers and stood, unconcerned for his nakedness. She swallowed a gulp, but made no attempt to shield her greedy eyes. She hadn’t really looked at all of him at one time last night, but in the bright sunlight, she thought him magnificent—stomach taut and flat, waist narrow, hips even more so, the thickly muscled legs of a man who had spent his life horseback. And he was aroused. She didn’t see how he could be after last night, but his erection protruded from a thatch of dark brown curls.
He had to know she was staring, but he stood there letting her look. Intimate memories raced through her mind. A quickening low in her belly startled her and she glanced away. She had already been reckless enough. Now, going home was what she had to think about. “I—I left soap and shampoo on the side of the tub.”
He came to her and pulled her close. His skin felt warm and soft, his lips brushed hers with the sweetest of kisses. “What is it? . . . Sorry?”
This morning, she had a new attitude about sex and men. Of the myriad emotions she felt, sorry wasn’t one of them. “No.”
“Then what?” His eyes probed hers.
She shook her head. “Nothing. Really. I’m not sorry, no. It was—you were wonderful.”
A twinkle softened his gaze. “You were pretty damn good yourself.” His head tilted toward the bed. “I guess, since you’re all prettied up, you wouldn’t be interested in crawling back into that bed and letting me kiss all the places I missed last night.”
She could feel his hardness against her stomach and with a newfound shamelessness, thought of doing just that. She resisted the lustful urges and curled her hand around his neck, drew his face down to her and kissed him again. “Piggy doesn’t know I went out. She’ll be worried.”
He angled his head toward the phone. “Call her.” His palms framed her face. He kissed her cheekbone, her nose her eyelids. “Let’s don’t go yet. Take a shower with me.”
“I already—” She stopped and smiled into his eyes. “You’re a terrible influence.”
“We don’t have to check out of here ’til noon.”
She sighed. “Well . . . okay.”
A few minutes before noon, they left the room, headed for breakfast, his wrinkled shirt and her wrinkled dress covered by their coats. They and one other couple shared the hotel dining room. A waitress came with a coffee carafe, but as she started to fill Dahlia’s cup, Luke covered the rim with his hand. “I know you don’t like coffee. What would you rather have?”
“Uh, tea,” Dahlia answered, surprised he remembered she wasn’t a coffee drinker.
He ordered eggs, sausage and biscuits with gravy and she let him tease her into having the same. A heavy breakfast was a novelty. She usually had a cup of tea and a snack. They sipped while they waited for their food.
“Your friend at home?”
“She didn’t answer the phone.”
“She with Pete?”
One thing Dahlia didn’t do was discuss Piggy’s affairs and liaisons. She suspected Piggy was indeed with Pete, but she said. “I don’t know. Maybe. What do you do on Sundays?”
“Um, kind of a slow day. If mom’s around to roust them out of bed, the family goes to church. I use the time to go through the mail, pay some bills, grab a little privacy in my cabin.”
“You don’t go to church with them?”
“Darlin’, I’m in church with every sunrise and sunset, every time a calf or colt comes into the world, every time the seasons change.”
She smiled. “That’s poetic. You keep showing me sides of you no one would guess were there. Or is that another of your granny’s old sayings?”
“Granny McRae wouldn’t be poetic. What she would say is, ‘I don’t need a damn shiny-faced flatlander to tell me there’s a Higher Power.’”
Dahlia laughed, wondering how it would be to have a feisty grandmother.
“How about you? You a churchgoer?”
“Not so much anymore. When I was a little girl and my mother was alive, she took me to the Mexican church. It’s the only Catholic church in Loretta. But after she passed on—well, the grocery store’s open on Sundays, so—”
“You lost your mother when you were little?”
“When I was twelve.”
Luke’s eyes took on an odd expression of earnestness. “What happened to her?”
“Pneumonia. I barely remember it, but Dad said it started with the flu. She believed in tribal remedies, so she hadn’t had much exposure to doctors.. By the time she went to see one, it was too late. Actually, I don’t know if the pneumonia or a reaction to antibiotics took
her life. I haven’t often discussed it with my dad. It’s too painful for him.”
“That’s tough, a young girl growing up without a mother. Who raised you?”
“My dad. He’s the only family I have. My mom’s relatives were all killed in the Philippines during World War II. My parents were older, so my dad’s parents, except for his mom, were all gone by the time I was old enough to know them. Like me, he was an only child, so . . .”
Dahlia shrugged the serious discussion away. Growing up, she had envied her friends who had mothers and families, even envied their sibling rivalries. Now, except for how it affected her dad, she no longer had strong emotions about her mother’s absence from her life and she had substituted Piggy’s large family for her own. “Flatlander. That’s a word I hadn’t heard until I came here. That must be what I am.”
He chuckled. “Sweetheart, you’re worse than a flatlander. You’re a foreigner. Where is Texas anyway?”
She laughed, enjoying his teasing. “You have a log cabin?”
“Yep. Me and Davy Crockett.”
She laughed again. “I’ve never been in a log cabin. Tell me about it.”
She sat back for the waitress to serve their food, then watched his long, efficient fingers as he buttered a biscuit. She liked his hands. They were obviously working hands, but they had a masculine grace about them and he knew all sorts of erotic things to do with them.
“Nothing much to tell. It used to be one of the bunkhouses. When I quit school and moved back home, I turned it into a house for me and my family.”
“So you did go to college. Why didn’t you want to tell me?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, but it isn’t unreasonable that I’d want to know.”
“University of Idaho, up in Moscow.”
“And something tells me you weren’t an Ag major.”
“Nope. Biology.”
Now some of the remarks he had made became clearer. “Biology. Really?”