A Feather in the Rain (14 page)

E
mpty plates had been pushed back on the low plank table in front of the sofa where they sat sideways as they had the night
before. Flamelight from the fireplace played across their faces. He knelt on the cushion and took her up into his arms and she flowed into his embrace. He felt the softness of her breasts against his chest as he stroked her naked slender arm. He stood, taking her up with him and held her close as he kissed her neck with small, light, sucking kisses up to her ear where his tongue flicked along its rim and her hair fell across his face. Then he took her hand and led her to his bedroom.

From the first moment of their meeting, she had positioned herself to know this half-man, half-beast with the searching eyes, and yet had armed herself to resist if he advanced. She had thought about him almost all the time, swinging back and forth between desire and curiosity and a need to preserve her isolated self. But now a strange and sudden thing had happened. All the armor and practiced coolness had dropped away from her and crawled back to their source. He seemed to have an uncanny instinct that told him just how far to go and exactly when to pause and wait and let a thing settle. It was the way he related to horses and dogs, to let his desires become their idea. He had swept her walls cleanly away.

Silver skeins of moonlight washed across the bed. She raised her hand slowly to his face and trembled as he stroked her arms and neck, then one by one undid the tiny buttons down the back of her dress. The frock slipped to the floor. Jesse felt that he had never seen a woman, before this moment. Her breasts, perfectly petite, rose lightly, powdered pale pink, on the faint sibilant intake of her breath her cocoa-hued nipples swelling.

He placed his hands just above her hips and sat her on the bed. Kneeling between her legs, he put his lips lightly to the top of her breast and like the flutter of a moth, circled slowly, the nipple waiting. A longtime, slow moving river of soft kissing.

He rose above her on the bed, arms and legs like braided ropes, molded by the mellow shadows of the moon, looking down at her. “I can't stop looking at you. When I'm close to you, I can't see you so well.” Slowly he lowered himself between her legs and taking the
band of her panties in his fingers, slipped them down.

He wondered if there were words to say the things he felt. He wanted her to know him. If he could open his body, she would see all the hidden things in him; things he didn't even know were there. He cupped her hips in his hands and lifted the hillock to his face.

On the edge of a precipice crumbling underfoot, she tumbled into space, spiraling down, leaving herself behind, and falling toward a Holly Marie she had yet to meet.

She saw him as a centaur as he rose above her and came down inside her with a gentle power that possessed and took her to the land of myths and magic where only legends dwell. He pressed against the length of her and felt her legs quiver against his thighs.

Deep inside her, his long, unconscious quest came to an end. His loneliness vanished like water spilt on desert sand. She wrapped him in her arms and pulled him into her and her into him. And in that last convulsive throb of consuming ecstasy, with the wick of her mouth between his lips, he poured milk and honey and foaming champagne into the warm sweet delta tide and knew he would never be the same again.

They lay entwined like tossed silken scarves. Her head cradled in his shoulder, he breathed into her hair. “I love you, Holly. I didn't know that such a feeling could exist…” She felt him shake his head as if to deny it. “I've loved you from the first moment that I saw you…two thousand years ago.” He kissed the corner of her parted lips.

He was deep inside her again when all motion ceased. They lay absolutely still and focused all their energy to the place where they were joined. They put their breath together and laced their fingers and held right there for the time of two lives. They were silent but for catches in their breathing and moaning kitten sounds from Holly's open mouth.

They made love the whole night through, talking, dozing, waking, whispering, and feeding from the centers of their souls.

Ricardo's rooster trumpeted the dawn. Jesse woke inhaling the
musky fragrance of their brewing in the night. Her breathing had the rhythm of sleep as he turned and cupped her perfect breast, the nipple, a berry between his fingers, instantly began to swell. His passion stirred. Soon they were lost in the pungent heat that, like a summer haze, had wrapped around them.

In the riverstone grotto of his bathroom, she stood under the water-spray while he covered her with lather and sat on the floor to do her feet. The water cascading over them, he looked up from where he sat and opened his mouth to catch the stream flowing from the delta. She shoved her fingers in his hair and pulled him to her.

O
n an old cast-iron griddle, she made the best pancakes he'd ever tasted. He stuck his belly out, patting the exaggerated fullness as they walked to the barn. “Gonna let you ride a different one today. Got to keep you on your toes.”

They were ready to mount up when he said, “Wait a second, come with me.” He took her hand and led her to the end of the barn and up the stairs to Zack's loft and let her in. It was warmer and slightly musty, having been shut for a while. “This was were Damien stayed…when he was here.” He walked to a window and opened it. A pair of chaps hung from a peg on the wall. “Try these on.” She hesitated with a look of doubt. “He would love it if you wore them.” She started to buckle them around her waist. He was still pretty waspy when I got them. They might be just about right.”

He knelt to fasten the zipper at the top of her thigh and felt the heat coming through the denim beneath his hand as he swept it up to caress her butt. He stood and pressed her to the wall. He kissed her
long and deep and told her that he loved her. He moved his hand to just beneath her breast. “I want to make love to you right now.”

“No…no…” she giggled. “Let's wait…let's wait…we've got to ride…it'll be fun to have to wait.” She puffed out her breath and led him to the door.

He smiled, groaning, checking her legs. “Pretty good fit. Just need to punch a hole in the belt.”

“You're sure?”

“He's laughing right now. I guarantee it. If he could see your butt, he wouldn't sleep for a week.” He shut the door behind them and stroked his finger down her spine as she went down the stairs.

She could still feel his hand under her breast and the fingers down her spine as she watched him swing slowly into the saddle. She realized she was wet.

She loped the mare around the arena while he told her little things about horses. “They're as different as people are. If you listen, they'll tell you who they are. Then you'll know how to get along.”

He noticed the shine on the pouty lip. “This mare is a little more aggressive than Concho. Her turns'll be a little quicker. She's got more snap to her. Just relax, trust her, and have fun.”

She nodded her head. Her tongue was sticking out and her eyes in a squint, focused on the herd.

“Put your tongue in your mouth. If you bite it off, Blizzard'll eat it before I can get to it.”

She'd given him her camera. He talked to her as she entered the herd. She cut a cow like a longtime hand, and then she let the mare go to work. He clicked off a half dozen shots of her doing just right.

She rode out of the herd breathing hard, looking a flushed fourteen. Fugitive wisps from the thick braid were wet against her neck. It struck in him a tender lusty thought.

He was grinning and shaking his head. “I've seen people who've been riding cutting horses for ten years not have the feel that you've got. You ride that mare better than her owner does.”

“Thanks,” she said breathlessly.

Dr. Walter Nalls arrived in his dustproof aura in a sparkling white pickup. “Passing by. Thought I'd stop and see how the mare is doing.”

He shook Holly's hand and was instantly charmed. When no one but Jesse could see, he raised his brows over widened eyes and nodded with appreciation, admiration, and approval, all in one look.

But for Dozer, at their feet like a dropped coat, everyone had gone and left them alone. They sat on the porch, the sun seeping into the distant dun grass. The sky like the shimmering inner surface of an oyster shell darkened as night began to fall. A meadowlark flitted to a fence post and gurgled coupled notes. There was rustling in the grass, the warbles of the doves and crickets in conference under the porch. Ribbons of lightning curled down in the distant blackness and rain began to pelt the roof like tossed pebbles. She sat in a wicker chair, he at her side in one of plank and twisted willow limbs, silent in the thoughts the rain inspired.

T
he driving rain quit the laundered land and left it smelling of leaves, of wood, and of grass. The moon wore a veil of lingering clouds. Her hand moved to the arm of his chair. Her voice seemed to emerge from the night itself. “Do you think you could…tell me how he died?”

He took a deep breath and hummed it out. She could see him pull his upper lip between his teeth and move his jaw side to side. Then, as if to throw the phrase away for lack of import, he said, “It was drugs.” It seemed that might be all he would say, but then he went on. “He had the disease. For ten years, I tried to save his life. Had him in every rehab place in the state. He tried. I guess he just didn't…I'd put him in the front door and he'd try for a while…and then he'd go out the back window. He was sixteen when I realized he had a serious problem. I remember I sat him down and told him if he didn't get his life together, he'd either end up in jail or dead.” He tightened his jaw and bit down on his lip.

“Was it an overdose?” She asked as softly as a breeze.

“No. Not really. It might just as well have been. I don't really know. All I know is what the paramedics told me. He was with some friends, I guess they got some bad stuff and it made him sick and he…and…and…he choked…they got him to the fire station and then they left. Nobody knows who they were. I tried to find out. I talked to the paramedics. They said their concern was the patient, not who brought him there. I said what if there was a crime involved? They said, we're not cops. That was it.”

“What drug was it?”

“Crack cocaine.”

She wanted him to talk about it. She sensed in him the desire and thought it might serve him well. “What did the paramedics do?”

“Well…he was unconscious. They put a tube in him to get him breathing and got him to the hospital. The doctors said he was in a coma when he arrived. His brain had been deprived of oxygen for some time.” He went silent and stayed that way for a while. “They put him on life support. When I got there they had him wired up like Frankenstein, tubes and IVs and…his chest was going up and down, but you could tell it was mechanical. That's the way he was for seven days. One doctor wanted to pull the plug after two days. Another said no, and that there was still a chance…and that's the way it went, back and forth, day after day. It's over. No, it's not. It's over. No, it's not. I just sat there praying and talking to him. I sat on the bed and kissed his forehead. It was cold.” He went silent again. “I had the feeling as I spoke to him, that he'd already quit that body. That's when I went and got a pair of scissors and cut a little lock of his hair. It was short then. When he was a kid he always wanted it long. I don't think he liked being in this world all that much.

“I'd seen him about a week before. He was working. He liked lifting weights. He looked really healthy. He'd met this wonderful girl, Melinda. Clean as a whistle, hard working, came from a real nice family in Houston. She was crazy about him. And he was nuts
in love with her. I thought she'd be the saving of him for sure. Thing was, he could make you believe anything he wanted you to believe.” Jesse made a little sucking sound with his lip before biting it again. He stood and walked to the edge of the porch, leaned against the post. He held his hand out and let a drip from the roof splat in his palm and brought it to his face.

Her voice filled the space behind him as she placed her hand on the back of his neck. “Why don't you go take a shower? I want to get pretty. Maybe we could watch a movie. I could make some popcorn.”

He was still looking up at the moon. “I don't have any popcorn.”

“I brought some.”

He turned around and wrapped her in his arms and kissed her softly, long and tender. His fingers in her hair, he looked into the lavender shadowed eyes as if to seek the answer to a puzzle. “You brought popcorn with you?”

“Yeah. It's a special kind that I bet you don't have in Texas.”

M
arcello Mastroiani and Sophia Loren cavorted in a lavish bedroom in nightclothes while sub-titles spelled their spirited repartee. Holly dug into the huge wooden bowl of popcorn with thin apple slices spread on top, then passed it to Jesse. “This is so neat. What's a Texas cowboy doing with all these foreign films?”

“I guess I was just born curious…specially about folks who aren't Texans.”

The phone rang. He let the machine answer. It was Walter Nalls calling to invite Jesse “and your charming young friend, Holly Marie, to dinner at our house on Sunday. Helen is looking forward to seeing you and meeting Holly Marie. Hope you can make it. Let us know.”

Jesse looked at her. Sunday was to be her last night in Texas. “Looks like you being here is giving me a social life. I don't want to share you with anyone on our last night. Do you have to
leave Monday?”

“I could put it off till Tuesday. I have to be there Wednesday.”

“I don't want to think about you leaving.” She folded in his arms, stirring the hellfire of lust in him as he lifted her hair and put his lips to her neck.