“You’re joking, right?” She gave that miserly snort of laughter. “Where I come from, nobody even knows what an umbrella is for.”
“I kind of thought you were from around here.”
“Yeah, well…” She slanted a look at him, then caught a quick breath, let it go in a hiccup of laughter and, as she moved on, murmured in a thick Alabama drawl, “That is somethin’ I try daily to foh-get.”
And not succeeding all that well, darlin’, Troy thought as he unlocked the passenger’s side of the Cherokee.
He opened the door and out of habit, held it for her, then went around to his side, pausing on the way to give Bubba’s ears a tug. The dog had his head hanging out the opening in the window as far as he could get it and was whining and looking as if the rest of him wanted to follow it pretty bad. But at least he wasn’t howling.
Troy bumped out of B.B.’s parking lot, across the highway and into the driveway of the Mourning Springs Motel, which still had its Vacancy sign on. Once he’d roused the night desk clerk, he had no trouble at all getting two rooms, except that the clerk seemed to be a little hard of hearing. He kept saying “Two rooms? Two?” as though he couldn’t quite believe it.
“Probably a first for this place,” Charly commented when he told her about it.
He handed her one of the keys. “They are adjoining-that okay with you?”
“That’s fine.” Her voice was low, expressionless.
“Why don’t you go on and make yourself at home?” he said as he started around to the back of the Cherokee. “I think maybe I better take ol’ Bubba for a walk first.”
The wind was picking up, and the thunder was a lot closer, doing some cracking and booming now instead of just mumbling and grumbling. He opened up the door and untied Bubba’s leash and got a good grip on it, Bubba being none too fond of thunderstorms. He looked over at Charly, who was still standing there turning her key over and over in her hands. “I think this storm’s about to cut loose. I’ll be right ba-” About which time Bubba lifted his leg and cut loose all over the Cherokee’s rear tire.
“Guess that takes care of that,” said Charly, deadpan.
Cussing and muttering, under his breath, Troy got his overnight bag out of the truck and locked it up, then hauled Bubba away from Charly’s legs and over to the door of number 10, which was the number on the key in his hand.
He had just unlocked the door and pushed it open when a flash of lightning lit up the whole place like broad daylight. The thunder crack that followed a moment later propelled Bubba through the door like a rifle shot. With his mouth open and one hand on the light switch, Troy watched as his pup made straight for the bed and tried his best to crawl under it and, when that didn’t work, wallowed across the top of it and down into the space between the bed and the wall on the other side.
Still speechless, he turned to look at Charly. She’d unlocked her door and opened it partway, but hadn’t gone inside yet, and since she’d just been an eyewitness to his dog’s cowardice, he figured he’d see a big grin on her face at the very least, maybe even some laughter and cute remarks. But she was just standing there looking at him as if her mind was on something else.
He started to speak, but for some reason, didn’t. Lightning flickered briefly, giving her features the translucent look of marble. The wind whipped her hair, casting strands like shadows across her face.
“What is it?” he asked her. But something in him must have known. Deep in his belly, a pulse began to pound.
She shook her head, reaching up to pull the strands of hair away from her face. Her lips parted, but whatever she said got lost in the growl of thunder. He leaned closer.
But it wasn’t words he heard. It was something else, something he couldn’t even put a name to, something a lot more primitive than language and a whole lot easier to understand. He knew that words can lie and mislead and throw up all sorts of barriers; this was a direct link between his soul and hers, bypassing all those confusing things like logic, conscience, morality, ethics, rules, customs…all those things he’d had pounded into him by parents and Sunday-school teachers and drill instructors and that he believed in devoutly and under normal circumstances, tried his darnedest to live by. And it was as impossible to deny as a lightning bolt bent on connecting with the ground.
As he hovered there, his face close to hers, he heard the hiss of an indrawn breath-his own. He felt the first raindrops splatter on his scalp, his shoulders, his back, saw them glisten on her cheeks and forehead…and ignored them. As did she. Her eyes gazed into his as if she’d been hypnotized. Electricity ran through his veins.
And then, without his knowing quite how it had come to be there, his mouth was on her mouth, and her lips were melting into his like butter on a hot griddle.
He felt pressure building in his chest and throat and belly. Lightning flashed against his eyelids, and in the second of silence that followed he heard her whimper. He opened his mouth, and she did, too, just as the thunder crashed in on top of them. It drove them together, a collision of lips and teeth and tongues and bodies. His arms were wrapped around her, holding her closer, and closer yet, while her arms coiled around his neck, urging his head lower.
The sky opened up and let loose the rain; it pounded on his head and pummeled his shoulders like a demon taking out its pent-up fury. For all Troy knew or cared, it could have been the Johnstown Flood. He was caught up in a natural disaster of a different kind.
They broke apart, gasping and drenched, to stare at one another for an incredulous, immeasurable time. Then, as if the spell that enchanted them both had suddenly broken, they turned and plunged through the open door together. Troy kicked the door shut behind them and reached for her in the sudden darkness. But the space around him was empty-he could feel its emptiness with every revved-up nerve and sense in his body.
A light came on-the lamp above the bed. Charly was poised in a half crouch beside it, looking like a wild thing pinioned in a car’s headlights, eyes wide and luminous, dangerous and alluring as a bayou on a moonlit night.
Cocked and wary, breath coming shallow and quick, he held up a calming hand. “Look-” But she held up a hand, too, and stopped him right there.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a low, urgent growl. “I’m sorry. I know what you’re thinking of me. But I can’t do this. I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“No problem,” Troy drawled with a calm he was a long way from feeling, folding his arms across his hammering heart. Outside, the thunder cracked and grumbled, and the rain roared like a whole herd of demons, and it was nothing like what was going on inside him. “I understand.”
She shook her head with controlled fury, hugging herself as if to keep from coming apart. “No, you don’t. I want to-I do. Lord knows, I’m crazy, but…I do. All right, so I’m out of my mind. But I’m not stupid, okay? I’m not stupid. We can’t…do this.”
And all at once Troy was pretty sure he did understand. Taking the kind of heart-stopping, gut-tightening gamble he thought he’d left behind him for good, he reached into his jeans pocket, took out a small foil-wrapped package and tossed it onto the bed. “This what you’re worried about?”
Her startled glance flicked at it, then at him. She caught a breath, and some of the fight and fury went out of her eyes and was replaced with laughter. Husky and breathless with it, she murmured, “I should have known. You were a Boy Scout, right?”
“What? Oh, Be Prepared, you mean?” He shook his head, half-smiling. “No, ma’am-navy. SEAL.” He paused, then said stiffly, “I want you to know, just because I believe in being ready for any and all contingencies, doesn’t mean I expect those contingencies to take place. You understand? What happened out there just now-maybe we both got a little bit carried away, okay? You want it to end right here, you say the word and I’m gone. No questions, no blame.”
She heard him out, lips slightly parted, eyes never leaving his. And when he’d finished she went on like that, just staring at him, while ropes of
tension coiled and tightened around his chest.
Finally, unable to stand the torture any longer, he growled, “Well? What’s it gonna be?”
She shook her head and said slowly, “I can think of about a hundred reasons why you should go…and only one reason why you should stay.”
“And that is?”
“Because-” the growl in her voice became a purr, a vibration he could almost feel in his bones “-I want you to.”
She came toward him, one slow step, then another, her eyes catching fire the way hazel eyes can, sometimes, when the light’s just right. “Because,” she whispered, “I’ve just had one of the worst days of my life.” She stopped right square in front of him. “And I don’t feel like sleepin’ alone.”
He let out a breath, lifted his hands to her upper arms and brushed his fingers back and forth over the smooth, cool skin, and still felt as if the fire in her eyes were consuming him alive. “You don’t have to do that,” he mumbled, his throat dry and scratchy as kindling. “If that’s all you want…”
“Don’t be stupid.”
He laughed then, a soft hissing like the sound rain makes when it falls on live coals. He tightened his hands on her arms, and she swayed toward him, leaning against their support. “Lady,” he growled, “your clothes are soakin’ wet.”
“So are yours.”
“Maybe we’d best get out of ’em-”
“-before we catch our death.”
Their laughter tumbled giddily together with shivers as he skimmed his hands down her sides, gathered in the damp, limp fabric of her top, drew it from her waistband, peeled it up and over her head. Her bra was the kind that closed in the back; he reached around her and unhooked it with the kind of practiced ease he could feel grateful for without being proud of. Some things about his life he’d learned it was best not to agonize over, or regret too much, but just to accept as part of what it had taken to bring him to where he was.
And, he thought, where he was now was just about the last place he’d ever thought he’d be when he’d gotten out of bed that morning. Life could be full of surprises.
He flattened his hands and splayed his fingers across her back, then moved them slowly upward, watching her eyes as he hooked his fingers under the straps of her bra, willing now, since he knew it was okay, to let the fire take him.
Slowly he drew the straps over her shoulders and down her arms, lightly grazing her skin with his fingernails so that every tiny follicle sprang erect in a rash of goose bumps. So that when he let it fall, the bra brushed over nipples so hard and sensitive she had to gasp with the exquisite shock of it. Then and only then did he let his gaze leave hers, and set it free to explore what he’d uncovered.
He felt like a kid, opening up his own special box of treasures. Her breasts were small but round and full, the nipples tight and pert, the exact pinky brown of certain seashells. He could almost taste them, cold and sweet on his tongue, feel them warm and. swell and soften in his mouth…
His body’s response to that notion nearly made him groan aloud. Tight and airless with self-control, he managed an edgy laugh. “You’re freezin’ to death.”
Her response was immediate, if bumpy. “Then warm me.”
Her hands were on his sides, already entangled in his rain-damp shirt. He meant to let go of her just long enough to haul it up his back and over his head and toss it aside. But now her hands were tugging at his belt buckle, and it seemed like a smart idea to dispose of that obstacle, too. And then there was her belt. And her hands under his waistband, sliding over the slick, sensitive places just below. And his hands inside her trousers, inside her underpants, pushing them over the swell of her hips so that they fell in a pool around her feet, leaving his hands free to touch, to savor and explore…
His hands stirred over Charly’s cold-prickled flesh like a magician’s wands, leaving behind showers of sparkly shivers; electricity skated up and down her legs, generating heat that turned her insides to melted honey. Her body grew heavy; pulses throbbed in her belly and between her legs. She leaned against him, lightning flickering around the edges of her consciousness, weak with wanting, so tightly strung with need that every muscle and fiber and sinew in her body quivered, like a tuning fork that hadn’t yet found the right overtone. She would know it when she found it, that moment when all the vibrations meshed into one perfect harmony that would drown the dissonances inside her head-the rage and sorrow and pain and regret. The loss and betrayal. The guilt.
For that, she needed…this. Needed him. Needed him kissing her until she couldn’t breathe, needed to feel the weight of his body crushing down and his fire and force deep inside her. Needed more.
She cried out with wordless affirmation when she felt his hands cupping her buttocks, lifting her into him. She laughed when she felt his back muscles harden beneath her palms as his head came down and his mouth found hers.
Yes! she thought as she lifted and opened to him. Come inside me! Kidnap my soul! Take it away and hide it from me. Then maybe I won’t have to think or feel or remember.
In all his life Troy couldn’t remember ever experiencing anything like this. He’d never had a woman respond to him like this, with all need unmasked, all passion unbridled. He found it irresistible. Impossible not to get caught up in it, like being in the path of a flash flood. What else could he do but go with it, let it sweep him away, ride the crest for as long as he could, wherever it took him?
At the same time there was a part of him that knew and acknowledged that, for all the thrill and intensity of it, what was happening between them wasn’t the real thing. That in a way it was more like an amusement-park thrill ride than a force of nature. That the thrills were temporary, and barring some weird catastrophe or some really stupid lapse on his part, the consequences minimal. This was fantasy. Fun. It had nothing to do with love. And nothing to do with the rest of his life.
He recognized, too, that there was a darkness in this woman’s passion, a kind of desperation in the way she kissed him. He did. And God help him, he ignored it. Maybe he didn’t have time to think about it then; maybe he simply didn’t want to.
She kicked off her sandals, and he plucked her out of the pile of sodden clothing, carried her, cradling her bottom and riding her soft places against his hard ones while she wrapped her arms and legs around him, threw back her head and laughed out loud. He threw away his thoughts as he laid her on the bed and followed her down, holding himself away from her with his arms while his head swooped down to capture her mouth. She lunged forward to meet him, nipping and tugging hungrily at his lips, raking his back with her fingernails, inflaming him almost beyond the limits of his endurance.
Dimly aware that things were moving a lot faster than he wanted them to, he tried to get his brain to order his body to back off, ease up, slow down. He might as well have tried to stop a cyclone. Still kissing her mindlessly, his tongue deep in her mouth, he felt for the condom he’d tossed on the bedspread. Found it, and bracing himself with one hand, tore his mouth from hers and ripped open the packet with his teeth. He heard her approving chuckle, felt her hands helping him…a silky coolness, more agony than assistance. And then he was sheathed, first in latex and then…at last, blessedly…in her warmth and softness.
He was conscious first of a most exquisite sense of relief-and then of surprise. For all its swiftness, the penetration had not been easy. He’d felt her body arch and tense in involuntary protest, heard the gasp she’d so quickly stifled. He wanted to believe he could have stopped even then, if she’d asked him to, or at least had the self-control to gentle them both. But she wouldn’t have it. Her legs wound around him; her body tightened and pulsed, further enfolding him. She lifted her head and shoulders, surging upward to meet him. Her breath came in gasps.
Thought, reason and control slipped away from him like the last willow branch in the flood. Instead it was her arms he grasped, sliding his hands along their smooth, slender length until he found her hands. She clutched at hi
m, then laced her fingers through his and glared fiercely up at him when he pinned them to the mattress. Her mouth opened in invitation-no. demand. He plunged down and poured himself into the kiss, his body tensing like an archer’s bow as he drove more deeply into hers. And again, deeper still.
Pressure hammered inside his chest, screamed through his head, turned his muscles to iron. He heard her whimper and thought, Oh, no, I must be hurting her. Please…don’t let me hurt her.
And then he began to realize that the whimpers were mixed with laughter, and that her body was already shivering and pulsing and rippling around him. That her breaths were coming in gasps, bumping breasts soft as powder puffs against his chest.
His own relief came with the violence of an earthquake. His body rocked with it; a groan seemed ripped from deep inside him. He’d lived through quakes before, including one in Turkey that had killed people, but nothing had ever shaken him as profoundly as this. Nothing. In its aftermath he felt as if a building must have fallen on him. He wondered if he would ever move again.
Little by little he became aware of the woman who lay beneath him, first of the moist warmth of her breath on his cheek, then all the places they still touched-the slick union of bellies, the tangle of legs, the gentle abrasion of her hair against his forehead. He lifted his head and looked down at her, not at her face yet, but at their still-clasped hands, and saw the white imprints her now slack fingers had made on the backs of his.
His gaze shifted almost fearfully to her face. Her eyes were closed now, the lashes wet and spiky, the darkness beneath them like bruises on her pale skin.
Awash with remorse and other feelings less easy to define, he had an urge to touch his lips to each eyelid, to gently smooth back the damp strands of hair from her forehead and maybe kiss her there, too. But suddenly he wasn’t sure he had the right to do that, or whether that sort of tenderness was even appropriate under the circumstances. He barely knew this woman. Who in the hell was she?
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