“Yes, yes, I do,” he said, “how could you think I didn’t want to, that I wouldn’t … how could you believe that? Hold me, Rowan, hold me tighter. I’m here now. I’m with you, yes.”
Crying, she collapsed in his arms. Her hand ripped at his belt, at the zipper of his pants, but these were clumsy, unsuccessful gestures. A soft cry came out of her. Pure pain. He couldn’t endure it.
He kissed her again, kissed her neck as her head fell back. Then he picked her up and gently carried her across the room and up the iron stairs, walking slowly round curve after curve, and then into a large and dark southern bedroom. They tumbled down into the low bed. He kissed her again, smoothing her hair back, loving the feel of her even through the gloves, looking down at her closed eyes, her helpless half-open lips. As he pulled at the sweater, she struggled to help, and finally ripped it over her head, her hair beautifully tousled by it.
When he saw her breasts through the thin covering of nylon, he kissed them through the cloth, deliberately teasing himself, his tongue touching the dark circle of the nipple before he forced the cloth away. What did it feel like, the black leather touching her skin, caressing her nipples? He lifted her breasts, kissing the hot curve of them underneath-he loved this particular juicy crevice-then he sucked the nipples hard, one after the other, rubbing and gathering the flesh feverishly with the palm of his hand.
She was twisting under him, her body moving helplessly it seemed, her lips grazing his unevenly shaven chin, then all soft and sweet over his mouth, her hands slipping into his shirt and feeling his chest as if she loved the flatness of it.
She pinched his nipples as he suckled hers. He was so hard he was going to spill. He stopped, rose on his hands, and tried to catch his breath, then sank down next to her. He knew she was pulling off her jeans. He brought her close, feeling the smooth flesh of her back, then moving down to the curve of her soft clutchable and kneadable little bottom.
No waiting now, he couldn’t. In a rage of impatience he took off his glasses and shoved them on the bedside table. Now she would be a lush soft blur to him, but all the physical details he’d seen were ever present in his mind. He was on top of her. Her hand moved against his crotch, unzipped his pants, and brought out his sex, roughly, slapping it as if to test its hardness-a little gesture that almost brought him over the edge. He felt the prickly curling thatch of pubic hair, the heated inner lips, and finally the tight pulsing sheath itself as he entered.
Maybe he cried out. He didn’t know. She rose on the pillow, her mouth on his mouth, her arms pulling him closer to her, her pelvis clamped against him.
“Ride me hard,” she whispered. It was like the slap-a sharp goad that sent his pent-up fury to the boiling point. Her fragile form, her tender bruisable flesh-it only incited him. No imagined rape he had ever committed in his secret unaccountable dream soul had ever been more brutal.
Her hips slammed against his; and dimly he saw the red flush in her face and naked breasts as she moaned. Driving into her again and again, he saw her arms flung out, limp, just before he closed his eyes and exploded inside her.
Finally, exhausted, they tumbled apart into the soft flannel sheets. Her hot limbs were tangled under his outstretched arm, his face buried in her fragrant hair. She snuggled close. She drew the loose neglected sheet over them both; she turned towards him and nuzzled into his neck.
Let the plane wait, let his purpose wait. Let the pain go and the agitation. In any other time and place, he would have found her irresistible. But now she was more than that, more than succulent, and hot and full of mystery and seemingly perfect fire. She was something divine, and he needed it so it saddened him.
Her tender silky arm slid up around his neck as he gathered her to himself. He could hear her heart beating against him.
Long moments later, swinging perilously close to deep sleep, he sat up with a start, and groggily stripped off his hot clothes. Then he lay naked with her, except for the gloves, his limbs against her limbs, breathing her warmth and hearing her soft drowsy sigh like a kiss, as he fell to dreaming beside her.
“Rowan,” he whispered. Yes, knew all about her, knew her.
They were downstairs. They said, Wake, Michael, come down. They had lighted a great fire in the fireplace. Or was it simply a fire around them, like a forest blazing? He thought he heard the sound of drums. Michael. Faint dream or memory of the Comus parade that long-ago winter night, of the bands beating the fierce, dreadful cadence while the flambeaux flickered on the branches of the oak trees. They were there, downstairs, all he had to do was wake up and go down. But for the first time in all these weeks since they’d left him, he didn’t want to see them, he didn’t want to remember.
He sat up, staring at the pale milky morning sky. He was sweating, and his heart was pounding.
Stillness; too early for the sun. He picked up his glasses and put them on.
There was no one in this house, no drums, no smell of fire. No one at all, except the two of them, but she was no longer in the bed at his side. He could hear the rafters and the pilings singing, but it was only the water making them sing. Then came a deep vibrant sound, more a tremor than a noise at all, and he knew it was the big cruiser rocking in its mooring. That ghastly leviathan saying I am here.
He sat for a moment, staring dully at the Spartan furnishings. All well made of the same beautiful fine grain wood he had seen downstairs. Someone lived here who loved fine wood, who loved things put together perfectly. Everything quite low in this room-the bed, the desk, the scattered chairs. Nothing to interrupt the view from the windows that rose all the way to the ceiling.
But he was smelling a fire. Yes, and when he listened carefully he could hear it. And a robe had been set out for him, a nice thick white terry-cloth robe, just the kind he loved.
He put on the robe and went down the stairs in search of her.
The fire was blazing, on that account he’d been right. But no horde of dream beings hovered around it. She sat alone, legs crossed, on the deep stone hearth, in a robe of her own, her thin limbs almost lost in its folds, and again she was shaking and crying.
“I’m sorry, Michael. I’m so sorry,” she whispered in that deep velvety voice. Her face was streaked and weary.
“Now, honey, why would you say a thing like that?” he asked. He sat beside her, enfolding her in his arms. “Rowan, what in the world are you sorry for?”
In a rush her words came, spilling so fast he could scarcely follow-that she had placed this immense demand upon him, that she had wanted so to be with him, that the last few months had been the worst of her life, and that her loneliness had been almost unbearable.
Again and again he kissed her cheek.
“I like being with you,” he said. “I want to be here. I don’t want be anyplace in the world … ”
He stopped, he thought of the New Orleans plane. Well, that could wait. And awkwardly he tried to explained that he’d been trapped in the house on Liberty Street.
“I didn’t come because I knew this would happen,” she said, “and you were right, I wanted to know, I wanted you to touch my hand with your hands, to touch the kitchen floor, there, where he died, I wanted … you see, I’m not what I appear to be … ”
“I know what you are,” he said. “A very strong person for whom any admission of need is a terrible thing.”