Jezebel's Blues (12 page)

“I’ve heard a swear word or two in my life.” A clear picture of his life was emerging. The child of a mother who would have been unkindly regarded, orphaned and sent into the care of an uncle who cared little for him.

Celia reached out to take one of Eric’s scarred hands in her own. “No wonder you like my daddy’s books. They’re written about your life, aren’t they?”

He looked up sharply, his eyes nearly black in the shadowy light. For a long, long moment, he simply stared at her, his hand loose in her own, his expression hard and unreadable. The hollows below his cheekbones gave him a hungry look, and Celia reached out with her other hand to touch the darkness on his face, hoping to somehow erase it.

Still his gaze didn’t waver. Celia heard his call for her, a call coming from someplace deep inside of him. She leaned forward, surprised at her boldness, and for the second time, she kissed him.

This time she felt no surprise. His mouth met hers halfway, and it shocked her again with its tenderness. He tasted of chocolate and tea and midnight. It was all too easy to fall into that taste. She traced the corners and edges of his lips with her tongue and let her fingers fan open upon the planes of his face. At his jaw, there were tiny shifts as he moved to open his mouth, and against her index finger, his lashes swept down.

After a moment, he made a low, dark sound and swept Celia from her awkward perch into his lap. His fingers threaded through her hair. “Celia,” he whispered against her mouth, “you’re so sweet you’re driving me crazy.”

And then he kissed her again, thoroughly and deeply, leaving no doubt in Celia’s mind about his area of expertise. His naked chest met her fingers, and she sighed at the silky, supple feel of his flesh under her palms. She explored the rise of muscles and the length of his upper arm, moved toward his neck and hair and explored them, as well. And all the while, Eric kissed her as if he could not drink deeply enough, as if the brush of their tongues and the press of their mouths were all that anchored him to life.

After a time he lifted his head and looked at her, looked hard into her eyes, and with one hand, he traced the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw, the swell of her lip. He shook his head infinitesimally. “I’ve never met anybody like you, Celia.” He swallowed, and his hand slipped into her hair, smoothing it away from her forehead. Beneath her, his legs were hard, and against her hand, his heartbeat rushed. “I’m not much of a talker, but you’d never believe that when I’m with you.”

A wave of tenderness washed through her, and she buried her hands in his hair. It was thick and cool and smelled of shampoo. She leaned forward to rub it over her face, and as she did so, Celia felt Eric’s mouth fall into the hollow of her throat.

It was searingly unexpected. She stiffened at the instant, urgent bloom of her nerves. “Eric,” she whispered.

“I know,” he murmured, his voice rumbling through his chest into hers. He planted a trail of kisses over her neck, and his hands moved with sudden purpose. “I know you think I oughta quit.” He suckled hard at a spot just below her ear and a shimmer of sensation rocketed through her limbs. “Is that what you were gonna tell me?”

His drawl had slowed to a raw, dark-molasses rhythm. “You gonna tell me to stop, sugar?” His fingers teased the sides of her breasts and skittered away as his mouth slid along her jaw, as moist and slow as his voice.

Celia had no words. Her body was curiously taut and limp all at once, and she clutched his shoulders urgently, needing to somehow return his touch.

As his hand teased back to her breast, skimming over the aroused tip to the square, loose neckline of her sundress, Celia shifted against him and settled her mouth on his neck. She imitated the movements he had made, drawing circles with her tongue over his throat and suckling his earlobe and biting lightly at his jaw.

Where he’d been teasing and controlled, now he grew urgent. He tipped up her chin roughly to take his kiss and she could feel the hard thrust of his tongue. Against her hip, his erection was fierce and hot, and he moved against her almost unconsciously as he covered her breast with his hand, stroking restlessly through the cloth. A soft, deep noise rumbled through his chest.

Urgently, he pushed the strap of her dress from her shoulder and slid the fabric from her flesh. When his fingers plucked the bared tip, an electric shimmer bolted through her. She gasped aloud, clutching at him.

His mouth slipped over her jaw, over her throat and the swell of her breast. He uttered her name in a ragged voice.

Celia thanked the darkness that covered them, thanked the moonless sky as she helplessly let her head drop back against the crook of his elbow and felt his mouth fall on her breast to tug with feverish pressure at her nipple. A wildness built within her and she moved against him restlessly, grasping his silky big head in her hands, whimpering softly into the thick night.

And as if he could not get enough, he lifted her back to him, pressed her bared breasts against his naked chest and took her mouth with bruising, wild intensity. Celia could not think for the shimmering in her limbs, the heat pooling between her legs and deep in her belly as his tongue thrust and slid between her lips and over her tongue. His hands gripped her back and held her hard against the rigidness of his hunger.

She thought if a person could die of pleasure, she’d be dead ten times.

Who cared if he walked away? How many times did a woman have a chance to make love with a man like this, a man who looked like he ought to be on a record cover or in an ad for a motorcycle?

And not only that. He needed her—she could feel it. Not just physically, but in the very heart of him. It was his soul that urged her closer, urged her to kiss him, urged her now to move against him in greater invitation, move her breasts against his chest to make him moan softly, move her hips against his rigidness to make him clutch at her fanny.

All at once, Eric grabbed her tight and pressed her head into his shoulder. Celia felt the same trembling in his limbs she’d felt the day he left the farmhouse. It shivered in his arms and legs and deep in his chest. He held her so hard against him that she could barely breathe. His jaw was pressed into her forehead, his arms wrapped all the way around her.

“Lord have mercy,” he whispered.

Celia tried to move, about to answer him, but he kept her pressed to him so tightly, she felt a sheen of sweat break on their flesh, across her back where his forearms rested, on her arms where his wrists bent around her, against her breasts where they pressed against his ribs.

Slowly the ferocity of passion passed. The whirring roar of noise in her ears quieted until she could hear his breath and the rhythmic chirp of crickets in the bushes and the slowing of his heart against her body. The trembling in his limbs eased, and with it came a loosening of his hold on her. Gently, he pulled her dress back into place.

His words, when they came, shocked her. “Celia,” he said in a ragged voice, “please go.”

A rigidness had crept into his body. Celia stood up, puzzled. “Eric—” she began.

He cut her off, his dark head bent. “Please, Celia.”

So without a word, she turned and went down the stairs, walking into the night without fear, leaving Eric Putman behind on his porch.

By the time she reached the farmhouse, her calm had broken, and she sank down on the steps to bury her head in her arms. Her body ached with the lingering traces of his lips and hands, and her breasts were heavy with unfulfilled need.

Once or twice in her life she’d been infatuated. As a teenager, she’d spun endless fantasies about an Austrian boy who had helped in the gardens. In college, there had been a long-term but rather hollow alliance with a fellow teaching student. She’d often dreamed of finding the kind of passionate relationship her parents had shared, a passion so deep, it barely left room for children.

The instant Eric had walked through her door, she’d known he was the kind of man who could awaken her in that way. She hadn’t expected she would awaken him in return.

Now she didn’t quite know what to do. She didn’t know what would happen if she gave in to that passion with Eric, didn’t know how she would feel when his restless feet carried him away from Gideon again.

A wave of hunger clutched her middle as she thought of his fiercely demanding touch. Maybe it would be worth it. Maybe this was her only chance to know what it was like to be carried away on a tide of overwhelming sexual passion. Maybe once she found out what it was like, she could settle in and find that farmer who’d be content to raise his children in Gideon.

She swallowed in fear and with heady anticipation; fear because she might just find herself burned completely raw in that fire; anticipation because she knew it was too late to draw back now. It had been too late the minute he had appeared on her porch in the storm.

E
ric awakened the next morning to the call of a noisy magpie in the tree outside his window. A jay joined in the squabble, which was then augmented by the chittering of a squirrel. At last came the reason for their noise: a long, annoyed meow.

He shifted, untangling himself from the sheets. Bright, golden sunlight streamed into the room as he slipped into a pair of jeans and wandered out onto the porch.

Sauntering down the road, his tail in the air, was the neighbor’s cat. The jay trailed behind, hopping from tree to tree to scream warnings to hapless mice and sparrows about the monster in their midst. The cat paused and swiveling his big head, glared at the bird with fierce and sleepy green eyes. His tail twitched dangerously. The blue jay sat on its perch for a moment, shrieking, then with a flap of wings, headed for safer ground. The cat, obviously satisfied, settled on the edge of the road to lick his paws.

Eric leaned on the porch rail, grinning, and even that small act pleased him, because for the first time, the cut on his lip didn’t split and bleed.

With a small, warm jolt he realized all the tight muscles in his shoulders had eased. His chest, so full of hollow worry the past week, felt normal. Even the morning seemed full of hope.

He would know if Laura were dead. He would just know. In the serenity of the gentle morning, he knew she was alive—not where she was or why she’d left her safe house here in the woods, but he’d find that out.

Yesterday he’d called every hospital and doctor’s office and sheriff’s office in the three-county stretch of the flood, and no one had seen anybody even faintly resembling his sister. The only thing he could do now was wait.

And in front of him stretched a fine summer day with nothing to do. He smiled and thought of a little spot on the river.

* * *

His supplies had been depleted with the storm, and worry over Laura had kept him from replacing them. Eric walked the mile into town, fishing pole slung over his shoulder, his empty backpack in his hand. As he walked, he found himself whistling in good humor.

Even the old buildings of Gideon’s six-block downtown looked good to him. He stopped at the Piggly Wiggly to buy some apples and hot dogs, Oreos and soda. The girl behind the counter smiled shyly at him, and Eric found himself flirting easily, chuckling to himself at the blush on her teenage cheeks.

A woman pushed her cart into his legs, gently but insistently. “Eric Putman, you incorrigible flirt, leave that poor girl alone and let me get my groceries.”

Eric turned with a laugh to see Mrs. Greer, who’d been his Sunday school teacher for more years than he could count. He chuckled. “Can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” he said.

She pushed at her basket again, backing him up out of the way. “You always were too good-lookin’. Now you think because you went out and got yourself famous, the girls will all swoon for you.”

Eric laughed, holding up a palm in defense.” I swear, I wasn’t doing anything!”

“When are you gonna settle down and get married anyway?” she asked with a hand on her hip. “We need some more Putman children to liven up this old town.”

He winked at the cashier and gave her a bill to pay for his small cache of food. “Well, Miz Greer,” he drawled, “you’re already married, and this pretty lady’s got a big old diamond on her finger, so I guess I’m out of luck.”

Mrs. Greer shook her head with a smile. “I’d sure like to see you hang around here, honey. Gideon needs its young.”

He gave her a mock bow. “I’ll give it some thought.”

“You do that.” She plopped a bag of oranges onto the conveyor belt. “You have any more records coming out that I should know about?”

He paused. She knew as well as anyone else in town that he wasn’t making music these days, but she never said anything without a reason. His mouth came up with an answer his head knew nothing about. “I’ve been working on a few things,” his mouth said, and his eye winked. “I’ll let you know.”

Mrs. Greer nodded. As Eric pushed out the door, he heard the cashier whisper loudly, “That was Eric Putman? Oh, my God! My fiancé’s gonna go crazy when he hears.”

Out on the sidewalk, Eric smiled to himself, feeling the same heady thrill he always felt when somebody he had never seen or spoken to knew about his work. Mainly what he felt was amazed. Delighted. How could anybody help it? Here in Gideon, it always meant that much more because it was vindication, not only for himself, but for his mother and his sister. Maybe even his unknown father.

He strolled past the diner and the hardware store and the drugstore, remembering little trips to each as a child, to spend money he earned mowing lawns. With a quirk of his lips, he realized there were things about Gideon he missed—not all the time, not with all of his heart and soul, but with a kind of sad aching that struck him at odd times. He knew every square inch of the land here, knew the rhythms of the way people walked and where to find what.

He knew the names of the people who stopped to chat with him politely. He knew who’d be behind the counter pouring coffee in the diner, who would sell him nails in the hardware store. He knew that when he stepped into the bait shop, Joe Terrell with his bald head and impressive paunch would be dressed in a striped work shirt and plain blue cotton pants that slipped down too far.