JEZEBEL'S BLUES Page 5

  For an endless time she lay in his arms, afraid to move for fear he was soon to awaken, yet afraid not to for fear she would explode with the hunger he’d kindled so innocently. It shamed her oddly to feel the rigidness of her nipples against the loose clasp of his arm, and she knew he’d awaken and feel it and know…

  His hand moved as if in time with her thoughts. His fingers slipped over her shoulder and traced the line of her collarbone and neck. Her heart thudded as he stroked the flesh above her blouse, then moved inexorably over the swell of her breast to that shamefully rigid peak. Her breath ceased as he expertly teased the sensitive flesh, and then gently settled his huge, broad palm over her breast, cupping her as if to gauge the fit of one to the other. Judging by the exquisite kneading of his fingers, it was a fit that pleased him.

  Celia could stand no more. “Eric,” she protested, her voice strangled and almost unrecognizable.

  “I’m not asleep,” he said, and his mouth opened on her neck, hot and fierce.

  A shock of sensation rocketed over her again. His tongue, silky and warm, lashed her neck and Celia made a half-strangled noise of arousal and protest.

  From a dozen points in her body, a whirl of explosions went up. His hair splayed over her jaw, cool and silky in contrast to the heat of his mouth on her neck. His fingers plucked expertly at her breast, and against her fanny, he pressed his rigid erection. His thigh moved restlessly over hers.

  “I felt you wake up,” he said in his raw voice. “You didn’t get up. You just stayed here and let me touch you.” He moved closer and sucked her earlobe into his mouth. “Don’t you know any better than to tempt a hungry man, Celia?”

  His voice. So dark and ragged and raw. His voice alone made her want to turn and push him down and turn his taunts to her advantage. She wanted to straddle him and disrobe and torment him the way he was tormenting her.

  The lustiness of her thoughts stunned her. Miss Celia Moon, teacher of algebra and calculus, mild mannered and disgustingly practical, wanted to straddle this rough-edged stranger?

  She grabbed his hand in panic and ducked her head away from his questing mouth. “Stop, Eric,” she said, a catch in her voice.

  Instantly he released her. One moment she was wrapped with him in a heated tangle. The next, she was alone and cold on the bed. She lay there for a minute, flushed with embarrassment and aching with the imprint of his hands.

  There was no place for him to go. After a moment, Celia turned to look at him, standing by the open window, his arms braced on the sill, head bent against the pale light of morning. His hair was impossibly black, alluringly tousled. She followed the line of his muscled shoulders down his back, over the firm, delectable curve of his rear end, down his long, long legs.

  The whistle of a magpie sailed in through the window and Celia jumped up. “It really has stopped raining!” she cried. The clouds overhead were thin, even growing wispy in places. A sense of jubilation rose in her chest. “Thank God.”

  As if on cue, the magpie she’d heard swooped close by the window, a twig with battered leaves in its mouth. Celia laughed. “Everything that happens around here has biblical overtones,” she said, delighted.

  He said nothing, and she turned. His dark blue eyes were bleak, his mouth set in hard lines. She touched his chest. “What is it?”

  Jaw drawn tight, Eric shook his head, and for a moment, Celia thought he was going to erect his walls of protection. Then he looked at her and before the opaqueness could hide it, she saw the loneliness in his eyes, a yearning of such intensity it nearly broke her heart.

  This time, she didn’t wait for him, nor did she care that her father would write this scene in just this way.

  She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his broad body, pressing her face into the soft flannel over his chest. After an instant of hesitation, his arms dropped around her, held lightly, loosely, as if he were afraid to accept what she offered.

  A dozen things ran through her mind as she hugged him. Things she should say, like everything is going to be all right. Things she should do, like rock him back and forth in the ancient rhythm of comfort.

  Instead she just stood there, still and calm, letting him absorb the warmth of her body, the warmth he’d so tentatively sought as he’d slept and couldn’t accept when he awakened.

  He was the loneliest man she’d ever met. She didn’t know how she knew that or why he’d come to this point. It didn’t matter.

  She held him. For now, for this moment, it was enough.

  * * *

  As the hours of the morning passed, it was plain the storm had passed. The sky cleared of even wispy clouds, and the floodwaters began to recede with almost astonishing speed.

  After a few moments of silence and awkwardness, Eric and Celia ate a breakfast of the last toaster pastries washed down with tepid water. Then, as if by common agreement, they each retreated to separate corners. Eric played his harmonica restlessly. Celia pretended to read her book.

  Toward noon, the attic began to heat up as the strong Texas sun beat down upon the shingles of the roof. Eric got out a deck of cards. “Come on,” he said as Celia poked through the provisions with a frown. “Play a hand or two of gin rummy while you eat and you won’t care so much about what you’re putting in your belly.”

  She nodded at this peace offering and settled across from him to play cards.

  But as the afternoon passed, the temperature climbed inexorably. Restlessly, Celia stood up to check the progress of the water. “How long do you think it’ll take until the water goes?”

  “By morning we’ll be able to get out of here, I imagine.” Celia heard him reshuffle the cards. “You anxious to get rid of me?”

  She heard the teasing note in his words and glanced over her shoulder ruefully, shoving wisps of hair from her face. “Yesterday you were the restless one. Today it’s me.” She leaned out the window. “I guess I just want to get out in the sunshine. Seems like it’s been raining for a year.”

  Eric stretched out on the wooden floor and flipped the queen of spades over the king of hearts in his solitaire game. “We’ll see how you feel about that pretty sunshine by tomorrow noon.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t mind the heat. It’s cold I can’t stand.”

  “You ever spend a summer here?”

  “Once, a long time ago.”

  He flipped the jack of diamonds over the queen, then looked at Celia with a gleam in his dark blue eyes. “Bet you won’t like heat much by the time you get through this summer.”

  She frowned. “You don’t know that. Maybe I’m naturally thin blooded and the cold makes me miserable.”

  “Maybe.” He raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you just don’t know about real heat.” As if his words had reminded him, he stood up and started to unbutton his flannel shirt.

  When he reached for a T-shirt folded on top of his pack, Celia glanced out toward the meadow across the water. She could do without the sight of his exposed torso, thank you very much. “Is everyone in Texas a know-it-all?” she asked.

  His ragged chuckle almost—but not quite—tempted her to turn around. “Don’t you know there’s not a Texan born who doesn’t know everything? ’Course, we all know a little bit of something nobody else knows.”

  She pivoted, unable to stop herself. He tugged the flannel shirt from his arms, pulling the sleeves inside out, and discarded it on the bed. Absently, he touched his chest in the way men will do, as if to ascertain all the ribs were still in place. It was a gesture Celia had seen a hundred times, but as his scarred hand moved over his taut stomach and broad torso, the hunger of the morning returned full force.

  She swallowed against the wash of desire, fighting it, yet staring as if bewitched. It was not just that he was so big and well proportioned or that his body spoke of time spent outside with a hammer or a hoe. It was not even the casual intimacy and comfort with which he touched himself.

  It was his skin—sleek and supple, tanned to a soft copper. Every i
nch of his flesh gleamed with a satiny sheen. Not a single hair marred the perfection. His hand slid away from his chest, and Celia looked up to his face to find him grinning at her—a devilish, knowing grin. “Wanna help?” he asked.

  “You think entirely too much of yourself, Mr. Putman.”

  He cocked his head and a finger of his dark hair fell on the long, taut muscles of his shoulder. He licked his bottom lip where the cut was, and his grin broadened. Standing there shirtless, in jeans that clung to his lean hips and long thighs and everything else with indecent exactitude, he was the very personification of the kind of exterior the devil would use to tempt a woman into selling her soul. “No,” he said, lifting his T-shirt and pushing his head through. “Just that I know my area of expertise pretty well.”

  Celia rolled her eyes, refusing to give him the satisfaction of asking what his area of expertise might be. She had a feeling it wasn’t the harmonica.

  He laughed. “If you like the heat, sugar, I sure hate to see what the cold does to your temper.”

  She lifted her hair off her neck. “I just want to get out there and plant my garden, start my summer.”

  “Mmm.” He nodded. “All the same, you might want to find something else to put on. Those jeans have to be killing you.”

  For a minute, she wished she had something wicked, something so skimpy he’d be sorry he’d recommended she put on something cooler. Then she frowned. Why the sudden combativeness?

  She closed her eyes briefly, as if she could erase her desire and start afresh. But it even annoyed her that he was right: the jeans were uncomfortable, as was the long-sleeved shirt. Her waist was sweaty, her back beneath the elastic of her bra crawled and her calves itched. In the hurry to bring supplies to the attic, she had completely overlooked the need for fresh clothing.

  Eric had been digging in the trunk with her grandmother’s old clothes and he tossed a simple, sleeveless shift at her. “Go on and change,” he urged. Then more kindly he added, “We’re bound to be stuck here at least until morning. You may as well get comfortable.”

  With a sigh, Celia nodded. It wasn’t his fault he bewildered her. He hadn’t asked to be marooned in an attic with a skinny, boring math teacher. It wasn’t his fault that she was so vividly attracted to him. He probably thought he was being kind by keeping her at arm’s length.

  She grasped the dress and headed for the landing.

  * * *

  By sunset, the attic was stuffy, hot and still. Eric had found a pair of cut-off jean shorts—badly wrinkled and worn nearly threadbare—in his pack. He had exchanged them for his jeans and he was still uncomfortable.

  Celia sat by the window, eating stale bread. Her pale skin was flushed and dewy. Her hair, bedraggled by the day, without a wash and the effects of the thick air, clung to her neck. The shift she wore was a couple of sizes too big. It gaped around the arms and slipped around the shoulders. She had to keep tugging it up.

  She looked like a ragamuffin child in her bare feet and big dress and uncombed hair. It touched him inexplicably, and although he’d kept his distance all day with a combination of humor and silence, he reached now for the comb and a length of string in his pack. “Come here, Celia.”

  Her big, gray eyes met his and he saw again the strange combination of distrust and hero worship that he’d seen this morning. Ignoring it, he held up his comb. “Let me get your hair out of your way for you.”

  She seemed to consider this, then stood up and sat down in front of him, tucking the big dress between her knees modestly. He chuckled.

  “What?” she asked suspiciously.

  He began to untangle her fine hair, gently loosening snarls from the bottom up. “Wonder how old that dress is.”

  “At least twenty years. I remember it from when I was little.” She shrugged. “I know it looks silly, but I don’t care. It feels much better than those jeans.”

  He grunted in answer. The tangles smoothed, he simply combed through the fine mass, admiring the shape of her head and the shine of moon colors through the teeth of his black comb.

  For the first time all day, she relaxed. He could see it in the way her shoulders dropped slightly, letting the dress slide out of place once again, showing a spaghetti-thin bra strap. When she reached to pull the fabric again, he said, “Don’t worry about that. I’ve already seen it thirteen times. Just relax.”

  Surprisingly, she let her hands drop back to her lap. “That really feels good,” she admitted. “No one has combed my hair since this dress was new, probably.”

  The small confession plucked at him. “I used to do my sister’s hair before we went to school,” he said. “She liked to wear it in one long braid, and it took me a month of Sundays, but I finally got it right.”

  He divided the silvery hair, remembering Laura’s long, thick, black tresses as he began to braid. The back of Celia’s arms rested lightly against his bare knees and shins. “Bear with me, now,” he said. “It may take me a try or two. It’s been a while.”

  And because his fingers were no longer deft and nimble, the hair fell from his grip more than once. Celia didn’t move, and on the fourth try, he managed to weave a smooth braid that he tied with string.

  She touched the bow at the end and glanced over her shoulder at him, smiling. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  With a sigh, less restless now, she reached for the fat candle and lit it, then stood up and helped herself to the bottle of bourbon. “Do you mind?” she asked.

  “Not if you’ll pour me one while you’re at it.”

  “Of course.” She poured, then handed him one cup and curled her hands around the other. Settling opposite him with her back against the wall, she commented, “It’s a good thing this is almost over or we’d starve.”

  He sipped gratefully of the sweet whiskey and settled back himself, leaning his elbows against the mattress. “Yeah, I’m lookin’ forward to a big, fat, juicy sirloin, medium rare.”

  “Mmm.” Celia pursed her lips. “I want a meat loaf with ketchup, a pile of buttered string beans and about three pots of very strong coffee.”

  “Meat loaf?”

  “With onions and oatmeal.”

  He grinned, feeling the whiskey ease down his throat and pool in a dangerous lake of heat in his stomach, a heat he felt move in his blood as her dress slipped again. “Nobody loves meat loaf, Celia. Meat loaf is what your mom made and when you came in for supper you said, ‘Oh, no, not meat loaf.’”

  She laughed, showing the brilliant, pretty teeth. “My mother wouldn’t have come within three feet of a meat loaf. It was what my father and I ate when we were being rebellious.”

  “And I thought my childhood was strange,” Eric said. In spite of the danger, he drank again, feeling a little reckless. A sliver of her very ordinary, very plain white bra showed, and he wondered if she wore ordinary white underwear, as well. Probably. Why the hell should that be so exciting?

  “Did you have a strange childhood, Eric?”

  “Not like yours. No paparazzi following me around or anything.”

  “So what made it strange?”

  He saw that both of their cups were empty and he lifted the Jack Daniel’s bottle to refill them. It was their last night in the attic, after all. They’d been through a flood together. What was a little intemperance between friends? His pouring was generous. “It wasn’t exactly strange,” he said. “Just bad.”

  To offset the gloomy sound of that, he picked up his harmonica, but when he blew a few notes, they came out sounding just like his childhood: motherless and full of too much work. He put it down again.

  “How long have you played?” Celia asked.

  “Harmonica?” he asked before he remembered she didn’t know he’d ever played guitar. “Since I was about twelve or so. An old man gave it to me.”

  “Will you play something?”

  He held the harp between his fingers for a moment, hesitating. Then he propped his elbows on his knees and bowed i
nto the instrument, drawing softly. He let the notes lead him where they would. It was again a lonely sound that filled the air, a sound of train whistles in the middle of the night, a sound of empty all-night diners and hotel rooms just before dawn.

  His lips tightened and he put the harp down, feeling the old hollowness suck all the breath from his lungs. Celia was silent, but he felt her sympathy as clearly as if she’d wrapped herself around him. He didn’t dare look at her. Instead, he ran his thumbs over the engraved silver of the harmonica until the emptiness eased.

  How did she know? he wondered. How could she see inside of him the way she did? He didn’t like it, didn’t like anyone coming that close.

  He frowned and looked up. Instead of the flow of kindness he’d seen this morning, there was now a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. One corner of her pretty pink mouth curled almost impishly. Without a word, she grabbed the bottle of bourbon and unstoppered it, then poured a hefty measure in the empty cup near his foot.

  Then she returned to her original spot, lifted her cup ironically and took a sip. “I can’t help it, you know.”

  “Help what?” His tone was gruff even to his own ears.

  “Seeing what you play. Seeing that you aren’t that gruff bad boy you’re trying so hard to convince me that you are.” The small curl on her mouth broke into a full smile. “I’ve been teaching for five years. There’s always one like you.”

  The easy observation annoyed him. Deliberately, he eyed the smooth, long expanse of white thigh exposed by her new position. And for an instant, he remembered the feel of her body against his this morning, the easy pearling of her nipple against his hand, the small movements she made against her will. Instinctively, he knew she would be unlike any lover he had ever had.

  Lifting the whiskey, he drank it all in one quick swallow, then stood up. “I’m no teenager, Miss Moon.”

  The glitter of mischievousness in her pale eyes sharpened. She eyed his bared legs and chest, then looked him square in the eye. “I can see that.”