Ciji Ware (46 page)

The only thing she was conscious of was that King Duvallon held her in his arms in a log cabin overlooking a moss-shrouded tributary of Bayou Lacombe—and she
wanted
him.

King pulled back from their embrace and stared at her with unnerving intensity.

“Don’t stop kissing me,” she whispered, “or my batteries will go dead.”

“Believe me, I won’t let that happen,” King replied, drawing her near him until they were nose to nose. “And I haven’t forgotten that the lady from California likes being kissed very… very… much.” To confirm this fact, he pressed his lips against hers again for an exploration of tongue and mouth while he slid both his palms down her back until they came to rest on her derriere. “Then you’ll stay?”

“Unfair tactics…” She sighed, powerless to stem the surge of high voltage that continued to course through her veins. “I love it when you do that.”

He began kissing her on her nose, her eyes, and at the base of her throat as he leaned her against the edge of the kitchen sink. Corlis sensed every sinew and bone and corpuscle between them was in tune, yet King slowly pulled away from her, a troubled expression clouding his eyes.

“Look, darling,” he said as he gently cupped her chin in his hand, “if you think we should wait till after all this is over with…”

Wait?
she thought, unable to mask her disappointment. Should they wait? At that moment, an avalanche of desire engulfed her, making her dizzy.

Then, as if Corlis were some person she hardly recognized, she reached up and placed her palms on either side of King’s face and leaned forward. She kissed him slowly, provocatively, and with a determination that could leave no doubt as to her decision to spend this evening on the banks of Bayou Lacombe.

McCullough!
a warning voice echoed in her head.

Oh, be quiet for once, will you?

King sought out the tender spot he’d discovered at the base of her throat and began a tantalizing, torturous journey toward her mouth, nuzzling and nibbling at her earlobe en route.

“Oh, baby,” he murmured. “Now,
look
what you’ve gone and done…” The angle of his hips left no doubt as to his rising passion. King’s lips seized the nub of her earlobe and tugged sensuously. “May I take you to bed, darling? We’re way overdue.”

“Oh yes…” she moaned in a fog of desire. “Yes,
please
!”

Hand in hand, they walked into the bedroom. The last rays of afternoon sunshine had given way to dusk as he paused beside the bedside table. He reached for a book of matches that lay between the brass clock and a hurricane lamp. He lifted the lamp’s glass and lit the wick that extended into the metal base below. Within seconds a soft, golden glow illuminated the room.

Next to the lamp King had also placed a bottle of wine. Carefully he poured a ruby stream of Merlot into two pieces of stemware and handed one to her.

“To lovers, past and present,” he declared softly.

King didn’t know about Julien and Martine…
or André and Henri…

In the flickering lamplight a shock of dark hair fell across his forehead, turning his blue eyes nearly to indigo. Corlis’s thoughts drifted to the inviting bedroom in Martine Fouché’s elegant cottage on Rampart Street… the mellow candlelight dancing on the walls… Julien pouring champagne into fluted glasses. She felt herself flushing—all over. Her lowered glance rested on King’s shirt front, where curling black chest hairs peeped through his open collar.

Good Lord, this is a sexy man!

“To lovers… then and now…” she echoed his toast, and took a sip of her wine.

A silence fell between them, except for the slinky rendition of The Radiators’s “Solid Ground” coming from the living room.

Was she standing on solid ground or quicksand?
she thought with sudden apprehension. She took a second sip of her wine to the accompaniment of the music’s riveting backbeat, thinking that it was the kind of melody that a person could easily get into a lot of trouble listening to. It was definitely music to make love by. But was she about to commit her proverbial act of self-sabotage, or—

At that moment King relieved Corlis of her wineglass and returned it to the table, along with his own. He began kissing her again, blotting out all rational thought. The throbbing music enveloped them in a cocoon of sound that forged a veritable link between their bodies that felt wonderfully familiar and highly charged.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world for Corlis to lean even closer to King and brace herself against his chest, as if he were one of the sturdy, moss-draped trees sheltering their cabin outside. The mesmerizing scent of his verbena aftershave filled her head, its lemony tang imprinting itself permanently upon her senses.

Solid ground
…
why do I feel so
…

Languidly Corlis watched King reach toward the bed’s wooden headboard and give the quilt a tug. He gently bent down and kissed her hard, signaling loud and clear that beneath the surface of this self-contained, highly intelligent, and disciplined former marine boiled a cauldron of emotional intensity that was certainly a match for her own. After several long minutes Corlis again pulled away from his embrace, her eyes widening with pleasure and a soupçon of mischief.

“Ah, Professor…” she said with a throaty laugh. “There’s one thing needed before we can proceed.”

His eyes locked onto hers like a heat-seeking missile. “Could you possibly be referring to condoms?” he inquired with a rakish grin. She nodded affirmatively, feeling both shy and shameless all at once. King dug into his pants pocket and pulled out a small square cellophane-wrapped object that he placed on the bedside table. “I have to confess…” he said, turning toward her once more. “I planned ahead, hoping something like this might happen sometime soon.”

“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.