“Well, hussy that I am,” she admitted sheepishly, “I’m glad you did.”
“Great minds think alike, Ace.”
Strong hands that had, in his youth, pounded nails to renovate a tumbled-down fishing cabin on Bayou Lacombe began to tug gently at the waist of her cotton shirt, pulling it free of her jeans. Corlis remained absolutely still, reveling in the sensation of the soft fabric sliding along her torso. King eased the material away from her body and leaned back. For a moment he merely gazed at her, his dark blue eyes roaming over her slender form, a satisfied smile playing about his lips.
“What a very pretty lady you are,” he said, unfastening her jeans and then gently unzipping them. “But then, I already guessed that.”
“Well… let’s see how pretty you are, Mr. Preservation,” she said, playfully unbuttoning his khaki shirt.
The rest of their garments began to fall on the floor, as if she and King were in a contest to see how quickly they could cast them off. King won, taking Corlis into his arms and gently laying her against the quilt and the bed’s plump white pillows.
“Ohhhh…” She luxuriated against the bed linen. “This is sinfully delicious.”
“No, sugar,” King replied, easing her last scrap of underwear down her naked legs. “You’re the one who’s sinfully delicious.” He moved closer and drew her into his arms again.
They lay quietly for a moment, adjusting to the newness of their bodies pressing against each other. Then King shifted his weight to lean on one elbow. He gently began to trace his forefinger from the base of Corlis’s neck down, down, between her bare breasts, to her waist.
“Oh… boy…” she said on a long breath.
King’s hand continued its serpentine route toward a sweet softness between her thighs, producing sensations that made her feel both brazen and bashful. Back and forth King’s fingers strayed in some wild, erotic rhythm that seemed part of the sensuous musical beat pouring from the next room.
Could they put their love on solid ground?
King’s touch was relentless. It was as if he were pulling from her notes and cadences contained in the song that floated in the humid air. The rhythms they created together forged an expanding link between them that grew so intense, she felt she would either start to sob or scream.
Corlis reached for one of King’s hands and pressed it against her heart. “Feel that?”
“Oh yes,” he whispered. “Mine, too.”
Every movement between them was synchronous, each embrace a complex harmony as balanced and fulsome as the music wafting from the living room. Finally, when neither could bear their separateness another instant, King reached for the small packet he’d placed earlier on the bedside table. Corlis sat up and smiled a woman’s smile.
“Here,” she said softly, taking it from his hand and easily tearing the cellophane. “Let me do this…”
Then she was beneath him, her back sinking into the tufted quilt. He hovered above her, teasing her, refusing just yet to give her what they both knew she yearned for.
All she knew was that she wanted to kiss this man, caress his back, touch him—and be touched. She lightly ran her fingertips along the crease between his leg and torso and was immediately rewarded by a soft moan of satisfaction. There was no predicting the outcome of her actions this night, but she carried on blindly, flying on faith, bestowing feathery kisses under his ear and along his jawline, until she reached his lips once again—in response to which he promptly seized her wrists and pinned them on either side of the pillow. To her delight, he announced his pleasurably wicked intentions while covering her with more kisses.
“Despite my legendary bad behavior,” she murmured with a provocative smile, “you are so good to me…”
“Being good to you,” he whispered, “is just being good to myself.”
“Oh, yes…” She sighed as his lips drifted toward her waistline. “Good. Very… good…”
Heat shimmered in her soul like the burning cane fields at an October roulaison. She ached for him to enter her and wondered briefly if her bones had turned to liquid molasses, like the sugar boiling in metal cauldrons at Reverie Plantation so long ago.
“King, please… I want you,” she cried out with an abandon both shocking and utterly foreign to her. “I want you to—”
His drugging kisses bathed her stomach, her breasts, the hollow at the base of her neck. “I know, darling…” he murmured. “I want you just as much—”
He entered her swiftly with the instinct of someone certain that he was being welcomed home. When she lifted her hips off the quilted coverlet to meet his seeking embrace, he pressed her even closer to him, finding her, filling her, telling her wordlessly that their dancing and the music would soon come to a longed for conclusion. The harmonies of touch and taste invented this night were for the two of them alone, striking chords that resonated deep and true. Theirs was a union full of passion and loss, reconciliation—and burgeoning trust.
In the most primal way, this act for them was both an acknowledgment of Emelie’s passing and an urgent, eager reaffirmation that the beat of life does, indeed, go on. Neither could speak of this heartbreak and happiness, but could only cling to the other, as wild creatures cling when a force so elemental fuses them like lava pouring into the sea.
There was silence now, except for the rustle of a night wind outside the old log cabin, blowing gently against surrounding pine branches adrift in cascading moss. Across the silken waters of Bayou Lacombe, a series of ripples fluttering in concentric circles hinted at life teeming just below the surface—unheard, unseen… fecund in the murky depths. Now their song was a soundless melody that spoke to wounded hearts and lingered long after the tiny waves had been reduced to invisible tremors.
Corlis and King drifted off to sleep beneath the stitchery wrought by a long-deceased Kingsbury ancestor.
Chapter 20
April 19
Corlis awoke first. She sat up and stared out the window at the mist rising in thin ribbons off the water. As she glanced around the shadowed bedroom, a litany of doubts began to assault her.
In the bathroom she’d seen a vial of coral nail polish residing in the medicine cabinet when she’d searched for toothpaste in the wee hours of the morning. How many women had Kingsbury Duvallon brought to this cozy little love nest? she wondered ruefully. Had she, in fact, behaved like a naive idiot last night? Had King actually experienced the same overwhelming desire for her that she had for him, or was he merely a red-blooded male in need—especially last night—of consolation for Cindy Lou’s betrayal, as well as for the deeply felt loss of Emelie?
Worse yet, she fretted silently as she gazed at King’s sleeping form, had she done something genuinely self-destructive by going to bed with a professional source? Had she just done something that would result not only in shooting herself in the foot—again—but in her getting trounced emotionally?
“Mornin’ sugar,” King said sleepily.
Startled from her gloomy reverie, Corlis leaned over and kissed him lightly on his forehead. Then she said abruptly, “King? We have to talk. I have to tell you something.”
King opened both eyes. “You hated baiting your own hook?”
Corlis laughed in spite of her lagging spirits. “No, nothing like that.”
“Don’t tell me some ghostly visitors turned up in this ol’ cabin last night?” he said, half-seriously, half in jest. She gave him an odd look but shook her head. “Well…” he said, pulling himself up to lean on one elbow, “my mind’s not working well enough yet for any more guesses. Shoot.”
“I loved the fishing, loved the scenery, and I don’t mind baiting my own hook one bit. And,” she added, feeling suddenly shy, “I certainly loved… making love with you.”
“Why, thank you, darling,” King replied, seizing her hand from the bedcover and raising it to his lips for a kiss. “I feel the same way.” He gazed at her steadily. “So… what do you want to talk about?”
“
It’s… something else. Something that I should have told you yesterday, before we even came out here.”
“Ah…” was all he said. He sat up in bed and indicated she should lean on the large square pillows he placed against the headboard for both of them. The resulting silence grew louder as Corlis searched for an unemotional way to pose her current dilemma.
“Yesterday, at Emelie’s funeral… when Edgar Dumas—”
“Look, Corlis,” he volunteered with a slight grimace. “I feel terrible ’bout that. I should have realized Edgar was likely to turn up there. He and Emelie weren’t close, especially after his vote in favor of the Good Times Shopping Plaza and the underhanded way he got her to sign the demolition papers, but I should have considered that he might come to her funeral. I just wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Oh… it’s not only that,” she replied, wondering if King’s fuzzy-headedness extended to his decision to bring her here with wine and condoms at the ready.
Pushing that depressing possibility from her mind, Corlis spent the next minutes bringing King up to date on everything that had transpired in Andy Zamora’s office following the final broadcast of her three-part minidoc about the Selwyn buildings. She included her boss’s edict that she was on probation and forbidden to see the advocate for historic preservation on any personal basis whatsoever as long as she continued to be assigned to the controversy between Jeffries Industries and the preservationist community.
“So, you see…” she concluded, lowering her eyes to study the bed quilt. “I absolutely knew what the stakes were—and I chose to come out here with you anyway. Any resulting trouble from what happened yesterday with Edgar Dumas is my responsibility, not yours. And, therefore, much as I regret it, we… we can’t see each other anymore like this—remotely like this—until this whole thing comes to some conclusion.”
King remained silent for a moment. Then he said quietly, “Gotcha!”
“Thanks.”
She swung her legs to the side of the bed just as King said, “But… I sure have trouble imagining going back to the way it was for us before last night.”
She turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Me, too.”
He reached out and brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek. “And I sure am happy you stayed over. Especially if it has to be the last time we’ll be alone together for a while.” He playfully put his arm under the covers and placed a proprietary hand on the side of her naked thigh.
Corlis inhaled deeply, shifted on the bed to face him, and reached under the quilt to still his hand.
“And another thing…” she said, swallowing. “To me… what’s happened between us is very serious! As far as I’m concerned, this isn’t a little fling, you know… not for me, at least.” She peered at him solemnly. “Are you sure you’re up for this sort of ‘real deal,’ as you call it? I mean, really up for it?”
“Oh… I’m up for it all right,” he said, his dark blue eyes boring into hers as he seized her hand and pressed it against his groin.
Corlis’s gaze clouded, and she was suddenly assailed by another avalanche of doubts.
“Let’s… be… straight with each other, okay?” she said. “Goodness knows, there was—and is right now—more than enough lust floating around this cabin to send us both into outer space. However, that’s not what I’m talking about—”
“Neither am I.” King cut her short. “You said this is serious, and I want you to have no doubts as to exactly how serious it is for me, too. I wouldn’t have risked what we’re risking—” He paused abruptly and then amended, “Asked you to risk what you’re risking if I… could’ve helped what I felt last night.”
An enormous sense of relief flooded through her.
“Me, too,” she murmured.
He pulled her hard against his chest. Roughly seeking her lips, he kissed her long and thoroughly. Then he guided her hand once again to his midsection. “Oh, baby…” He groaned. “Look, darlin’… you’ve done it again…”
“King… I…”
He gazed at her quizzically. Then he smiled. “Why, Corlis McCullough, I do believe you’re nervous as the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof!”
“I am. Sort of,” she admitted.
“Does the notion of making love in the clear light of day make you nervous—or do I make you nervous?”
“Both,” she confessed.
“Ah…” he said quietly, “then you’d better tell me why.”
“Well…” Corlis began, averting her eyes, “in addition to feeling worried about my job… about doing the right thing as a journalist, I—” She stopped short, shook her head in frustration, and said, “Oh… I can’t really explain it!”
“Yes, you can,” King insisted soberly. “Just say it. Tell the truth in real time, Corlis.”
“‘Tell the truth in real time.’ What a great phrase.”
“It’s what Emelie used to say to me when I was a boy. It helped get me out of all sorts of jams.”
She raised her eyes and looked around the beautifully appointed log bedroom.
“Well… the truth… in real time… is that I began wondering this morning if… if this cabin is the place where you bring… women you hope to… seduce.”
There! Now that’s a first, she thought. She’d told a man she cared for the truth about the way she was feeling in real time.
“And you’re wondering if you’re just another notch on my bayou belt?” he asked. Corlis glanced down at her hands resting in her lap and nodded with embarrassment.
“I saw a bottle of nail polish in your medicine cabinet,” she mumbled.
“Oh. I understand. Well…” he said, staring at the foot of the bed. “In the last four years, I have been here, on occasion, with… one other woman. Cindy Lou. It was a ‘serious’ relationship—as you put it earlier. Or at least I thought it was. But I wasn’t ready, then, to make a commitment. A commitment to marriage.” He gestured toward the log wall nearby and smiled sardonically. “I just wasn’t sure we were right together for the long haul. She barely tolerated this place, hated fishing, and loved the New Orleans Country Club scene.”
“A genuine magnolia, huh?”
King nodded. He reached over and tousled her hair. “Unlike you, Ace, she did despise baiting her own hook.”
“And my problem has always been allowing anyone else to help me bait my hook,” Corlis confessed, laughing. She cocked her head and asked, “How ’bout we put our cards on the table, Professor?”
“Absolutely,” he agreed with an emphatic nod. “Cards on the table.”
Wondering at her own courage, she began, “Although I am compelled to reveal that I find you a sinfully attractive man, King Duvallon—”
“Why, thank you, Ms. McCullough,” he replied gallantly. “I’m duly flattered.”
“I’ve also had my share of rebound relationships,” she disclosed doggedly. “I absolutely hated them, so… I was wondering if you aren’t possibly reacting to—”
“This is definitely not that,” he interrupted, a hint of irritation tinging his words. “With Cindy, we had all that family stuff in common, and she supports historic preservation and so on, but on some level, as I look back on it, I think she thought that little toe dance she did with Jack Ebert in the cloakroom at Antoine’s would make me jealous… get me to finally propose to her. It was a classic magnolia maneuver. Instead, as you and everybody else in town witnessed, she got caught by my sister with her panties down, and our relationship came to a screeching halt. It was pretty embarrassing for everybody involved,” he said grimly.
“Especially since I put a lot of it on TV,” Corlis reminded him ruefully.
King shrugged and continued. “So… after that happened, I decided to let some time pass… to kinda let it all settle in my mind, you know?” He regarded her levelly. “So, to answer your original question, I haven’t brought anyone else out here… till now.”
King leaned forward and began kissing her again. Corlis sensed
it was also a cover to avoid elaborating on the degree to which Cindy’s betrayal with Jack Ebert had humiliated him.
“Oh, King… what a saga,” she whispered against his collarbone. “For everyone.” And she knew that she would have done anything to spare him that kind of pain. Now, however, her empathy was mingled with a tremendous resurgence of sexual excitement.
She leaned toward him and initiated an eye-opening exploration on her own, skimming the tips of her fingers along the contours of his chest, paying homage to muscles she’d yearned to touch for months. Then she reached up and cupped his face between her hands. “My guess is that you were lonely, and a little sad, long before Miss Cindy Lou appeared on your radar screen,” she whispered. “But I’m here now,” she added simply, “and I am so sorry for the losses you’ve had.”
At first King didn’t answer but continued to hold her gaze, and his eyes grew moist. “Thank you,” was all he said. He studied her for a moment. Then he murmured, “Such a powerhouse of a person… yet, you have an incredible sweetness about you.”
No one had ever called her sweet. It sounded rather nice the way King said it.
“Well… Professor,” she proposed with a throaty laugh, slyly slipping her hands beneath the covers. “Since this has to be our last time together for a long while… let me show you just how sweet I can be…”
***
On Julia Street, Cagney Cat was forced to wait for his morning meal. It was nearly 11:00 a.m. by the time King and Corlis came off the Lake Pontchartrain causeway and headed down Interstate 10.
“Do you mind if I just check in at my family’s house?” he proposed. “My parents are spending the weekend on somebody’s boat down on the Gulf, and I promised Aunt Bethany I’d fill her in about Emelie’s funeral and say hello to my grandmother. It’ll only take a minute. Then I’ll drop you on Julia Street and go on down the block. I’m supposed to meet with Chris and a few others at the Preservation Resource Center around noon.”
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