Blue Willow (30 page)

Coarse and elegant demand opened her, an instinctive knowledge that she needed him to fill her from the inside out. She lunged at him as he lifted his head, catching his mouth with hers and petting him wildly with her hands. They fell back together, bending and curving like one body. “This time it won’t hurt,” she said.

“I won’t let it,” he promised, his voice aching with tenderness. His hands shook as he prepared himself again; this time she was all over him, kissing his chest, pulling him down to her, winding her legs around him.

He swept both arms under her. His face over hers, his eyes holding her gaze, he eased his hips forward. It was a smooth entry, and he measured it slowly, scrutinizing her expression for any sign of pain or fear. There was none.

The rhythm didn’t control them at first. It was restrained, testing. He knew what he expected to feel, and she didn’t. He seemed to recognize that and experimented for her curiosity’s sake—with slow movements, then a fast burst, then halting—nearly motionless, watching her as
she carefully flexed upward, gauging the unfamiliar male flesh that connected them so intimately.

“Go on,” she whispered, satisfied. He kissed her. “Go on,” she said again, holding him tightly, her head falling back, eyes half-shut.

Artemas was caught between lust and concern, grinding into her fiercely, yet always holding back, afraid he’d add too much shock to the newness. But even in the dim light he read ecstasy in the dark flush on her face, watched her head loll to the side, saw the dazed concentration in her smoldering, half-shut eyes. Her hands clutched at his hips, then went limp, while her body stiffened, shuddering around him, driving him crazy with the tightness, the sight of her, the scent, and finally over the edge with the deep-throated moan that cascaded from her throat. He had never wanted anyone so much, never wanted to please someone so much, and most of all, had never felt that anyone cared so unselfishly about his own pleasure.

He called out something—it wasn’t clear to him what, but she gave a soft shout of happiness and took his face between her hands—then all he could think about was being lost inside her and never wanting to leave.

They took a long time getting to the point where words made sense again or seemed necessary.

“What did I say?” he asked finally. His head was pillowed on her breasts, and one arm curved possessively over her thighs. She traced the line of his jaw, his brow, stroking the damp hair back from his temple. “You said, ‘I wish, I wish to God.’ And then my name.”

Her hand lay still on his cheek. He felt the spasm in her breath. Artemas moved upward and took her in his arms. Her eyes bored into him accusingly, then filled with tears. She bowed her head against his. “I hate some things about you,” she said in a ragged tone. “And I always will.”

He shut his eyes. “I know.”

The dreamworld between half-sleep and awareness was filled with sorrow and erotic desperation. They touched
and held each other even like that. The night was almost gone. She was bending over him, her hands smoothing over his chest, his nipples, his belly, the hardness that surged there immediately, then along his thighs, pushing the quilt aside, moving inside and out on his legs, even to his feet, then returning along the same path, until her touch lingered on his sex.

He opened his eyes. Her breasts were silhouetted in the faint light; her hair hung in a thick screen over one shoulder, shielding her face, her thoughts. She stroked her fingertip over the tiny drop of liquid on him. Artemas rose to one elbow and reached for her. He pushed her hair aside.

She looked at him. Breathless tension hung
in
the air. She put her fingertip to her lips, tasted it. He thought his chest would explode.

“I wanted a little of your body for keeps,” she said. There was nothing coy about it, nothing deliberately flattering or provocative. She meant what she said.

Nothing he could answer would do justice to her. He drew the backs of his fingers over her cheek. Tears burned his eyes. She searched wearily on the mattress, found one of the packets scattered around their bodies, opened it, fitted it over him. “Like that?” she asked. He nodded.

She knelt over him and guided herself down on top of it, her eyes squinted shut, concentrating. She was sore. She’d told him so, some time ago. Artemas clasped her shoulders and folded her down. She burrowed her face against his neck and slid her arms under him.

He didn’t have to move. The rush was immediate and involuntary. A soft groan and the swift tightening of their arms in unison encompassed it. The drowsiness that followed was a sanctuary. Eventually her breathing slowed, her arms relaxed. He gave way enough to let her slip sideways, lying half on top of him, and he fumbled with the quilt until he pulled it over her, smoothing the edges, tucking them around her shoulders. His fingers felt thick and clumsy with emotion, but they were unable to give her his message. Spreading them on the side of her neck,
he absorbed the soft throb of her pulse. It drew the heart out of him.

Lily stood by the door, watching him sleep. The room was filling with the silver mist just before dawn. She clutched her T-shirt and panties in a bundle against her stomach. If she let herself hope, she’d lose her mind. She didn’t want to spend their last few hours fighting.

Trembling, she held out one hand, palm down, as if she could touch him. She had to hurry and be very quiet, or he’d wake up.
Good-bye
echoed repeatedly in her mind.

She backed out of the room, hunching over, trying to hold the ache inside. Out in the hall she leaned against the cool old paper and plaster of the wall, crying silently Self-preservation saved her, forced her to move. She slipped away.

He woke to bright sunlight glowing through the thin white curtains on the window beyond the bedstead. She was gone.

Artemas sat up, staring despairingly at the empty space beside him. He strained to listen, praying to hear some sound of her in the house. The silence mocked him.

He jerked his jeans on and his jogging shoes, searched the rooms quickly, upstairs and down, then bolted outside and trotted to the barn. She wasn’t in the loft. He’d suspected she wouldn’t be, but hadn’t wanted to believe it.

His feet leaden, he climbed back down and stood in the pasture, sweeping a dull gaze around the dewy, peaceful morning. Birds sang. The hum of cicadas rose and fell in a chorus. Not searching for her was impossible. He had to say—what? That he could change his life? Or that he would, at least, visit her at college and sleep with her—in secret—whenever he could? God.

He dropped his head in his hands. The rage and frustration she’d shattered last night came roaring back, now clouded with more grief than before.

He walked dully back to the house. As he passed
through the kitchen he saw the sheet of notepaper positioned in the center of the old Formica table, with his shirt folded neatly beside it. His hands were cold with dread as he picked it up.

I won’t come back until you leave. You can’t find me. Saying good-bye would only hurt us both
.

He staggered outside again, the note crumpled in one fist. Turning, he scanned the woods. She was there, watching. He felt it. “I love you, Lily,” he shouted, his head thrown back, the words torn from his throat.

Nothing moved, no one answered.

Lily stood among a towering grove of laurels high on the ridge. Her body shook. She made a low mewling sound. The curtain of dark green leaves let her catch only glimpses of him as he left the house for the last time. He stood by the rental car, his eyes searching the hills. He looked defeated.

When he got in the car, her knees buckled, and she sat down, hugging her legs, her head up and eyes shut. The rumble of the car’s engine streaked through her. When it finally faded, she said aloud, “I love you too.”

Part Two

Family is everything. It defines you
—
the heart of your spirit, the heritage of your smile, not only the color of your eyes but also how they see the world. You are bound by kinship. You add your own link to the chain, and than where you strengthen or weaken what you’ve been blessed
—
or burdened
—
with. That’s where you use the indefinable quality that belongs to you, alone, the bit of uniqueness you pass on to your children for good or bad, the part of you that will always be separate from those who share your name, your blood, and your past
.

Lola Shiner

Fifteen

Almost twelve years had passed since Artemas Colebrook had come to Georgia to visit Lily. Almost twelve years since he’d left Lily heartbroken. Maude wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to study the man for herself again. Since the tragedy, he was more dangerous to Lily than ever.

Huddled around the television screen in a darkened room, Maude and her sisters listened carefully for Lily’s movements upstairs.

“This is pure trash,” Big Sis whispered, stabbing a finger at the television. “If Lily knew we were watching it, she’d be sick.”

“Lily’s already sick,” Maude retorted. “Sick with grief and fear, half-crazy, probably upstairs right now talking to one of Stephen’s teddy bears again, telling it how much she misses little Stevie and Richard. We’ve got to keep track of what’s being said about the Colebrooks and her, so we can help ward off more trouble.”

Little Sis waved the remote control. “Besides, if she comes down here, we can just switch the channel.”

Maude nodded. They traded stoic glances, wise and protective, like owls around a damaged nest, then leaned closer to the television.

The reporter clutched a microphone and looked at her
viewers as though this were serious journalism no matter what the critics said, then continued to intone with lurid emphasis, “The decade of the eighties and the first few years of the nineties were one long,
fabulous
success story for the six Colebrook brothers and sisters. They built an empire in industrial ceramics. But are they destined to suffer for their fortune? Has the legacy of the Colebrook
curse
descended once again?”

The camera panned to the Colebrook office building. “The newest chapter in the curse that has plagued the Colebrooks for decades. That’s what some are calling the tragedy that ended the lives of a dozen people at this magnificent new office complex in Atlanta. Was it
destiny
that doomed a glittering crowd of several hundred guests in the midst of a gala celebration of this building’s opening?” The reporter paused for effect, turning to gaze across brown lawns and winter gardens toward the majestic stone tower.

Snow feathered down, casting the building and grounds in melodramatic patinas of January silver and white. “Many experts called the soaring bridge inside the lobby of this building a
masterpiece
of architecture. Now it’s a crumpled
tomb
of steel and concrete—a
Frankenstein
that destroyed even the two men who designed it. Inside the terrible debris rescuers found architect Richard Porter holding the body of his young son. Also among the
crushed
bodies pulled from the rubble was that of blond, beautiful Julia Colebrook, the youngest sister of the powerful and close-knit Colebrook family. Her brother James lies brutally injured in an Atlanta hospital, where doctors are attempting to save his mangled leg.”

The scene changed to the memorial service—the Colebrooks leaving a church in New York among a crowd of their employees and the families of the Colebrook executives who’d been killed. Despite dark sunglasses and bodyguards, they seemed vulnerable and exposed to the prying camera, which gravitated to Artemas’s harshly set face. He was guiding his sisters and the younger brother, Michael, into a long black limousine.

“Look at the power in him,” Little Sis whispered. “The
sexual energy is still there. It’s had over ten years to ripen. We have to warn Lily.”

Big Sis gave her a scalding stare, then said tartly, “I believe you could wait a little bit to talk about sex and Artemas Colebrook with Lily. Maybe just until the funeral flowers wilt on Richard’s grave.”

Maude shushed them both. The reporter began narrating. “Artemas Colebrook—a dynamic leader, a very private man, a man fiercely devoted to his family and its corporate
kingdom
. Now, he must confront the
awful
spotlight. Can he save his family from the Colebrook curse?” Taking a deep breath, the woman concluded, “Don’t miss our exclusive report on the tragic roller-coaster ride to wealth and power of one of America’s most elite families. Tomorrow, on
You Want to Know.
”

“Kiss my big pink butt, woman,” Maude said, and turned the television off. The three of them sat silently, brooding. Little Sis sighed. “How long ago was it that Artemas’s wife died?” She tapped her forehead to dislodge the information.