She let her eyes meander over him, from forehead to hips and back up. 'You’re blushin’, sugar, you know that? Must mean you’re hot… let’s see.' She reached to touch his face but he grabbed her wrist and held it away, squeezing hard.
'Dammit, Lula, I said leave off!'
Her eyes took fire, radiating excitement. 'Well, that’s an improvement. At least we’re on a first-name basis.'
'I don’t want you comin’ here again.'
'Some men don’t know what they want.' Like a cobra she struck, biting his knuckles and retreating in one flashing movement.
'Ouch, goddammit!' He nursed the hand and already saw blood.
'What’s it take, Parker, huh?' she challenged from the doorway, shoulders thrown back, hands on hips, eyes glinting with demonic glee. 'I know things that crazy wife of yours never dreamed of. You think about it.' She turned and ran.
He felt violated. And angry. And guilty. And powerless because she was a woman and he couldn’t level her with his fists as he had the men who’d tried to seduce him in prison. That night, returning to Elly, he held his feelings inside, afraid to tell her about Lula, afraid to jeopardize their new burgeoning closeness.
At the library he had always locked the front door. After Lula’s intrusion he locked the back, too. But she cornered him one night when he took the trash out to burn in the incinerator behind the building, slipping up behind him in the dark and touching him before he was aware of her presence. He shoved her harder this time, knocking her against the incinerator, cursing, raising his fist but halting himself just in time.
'Do it,' she goaded. 'Do it, Parker,' and he realized she was sick, driven by some twisted need that scared him.
'Keep outa my way, Lula,' he growled, picked up his trash can and ran.
He tried to put the incident from his mind, but found himself looking over his shoulder every time he stepped out the library door, every time he locked it at the end of the night. He grew closer to Elly, appreciated her more, soothed himself with her goodness.
Nights, when he’d return home, she’d awaken and stretch and watch him shuck off his outerwear and slip in beside her. And her arms would open and they’d lay kissing and murmuring until the hour grew wee and the moon began its descent. Though they were husband and wife, their embraces remained chaste. Sometimes he caressed her breast, but as her time grew closer she’d flinch and he was smitten by a wave of guilt.
'Elly, honey, I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?'
'They’re always a little tender, late like this.'
After that he kissed and held her, but no more. She always wore her long white nightie and he knew she was shy about exposing her distorted body. Though he was tempted to do more, he never pushed, but settled for kissing and lying with their limbs entwined, their hands safely removed from intimate territory.
Until one night in early December when he’d found a note from Lula on the back door as he left work. It was graphic, obscene, suggesting how she might thrill him when he finally broke down and accepted her invitation. That night he had a dream. He was walking through a dry wash in Texas. It was high noon and so hot the earth burned through the soles of his boots. His mouth felt parched and a dull ache bowed his shoulders. He labored up a rocky ridge, panting and tired, then halted in surprise at the sight beyond the crest. A layer of sky might have dropped from overhead, so brilliant was the valley below. Filled with Texas bluebonnets, it seemed to reflect the hard cobalt blue of the bowl overhead. A ribbon of sparkling water bisected the field as he wallowed through it in flowers as deep as a man’s boot tops. He knelt to drink, swashing his face and neck, dampening his collar and leather vest. He cupped his hand again, and as he knelt, sipping, a pair of feet waded into view beneath his nose. A gauzy yellow skirt floated on top of the water. He looked up into eyes as black as Apache tears, and hair to match.
'Hola, Weel-jew been lookin’ for me?' It was Carmelita, one of the women from the whorehouse in La Grange. She had Mexican blood, enough to make her skin dusky and her lips a ripe plum red.
He pushed himself onto his haunches and backhanded his mouth slowly, eyeing her as she caught her hands on both hips and rocked seductively. Her feet were widespread, thighs silhouetted through the yellow gauze skirt. She reached down and lazily wet her arms, bending forward until her breasts hung pendulously within the peasant-style blouse.
'’Ey, Weell Parker, wot jew lookin’ at, eh?' She straightened, still with legs spraddled, and wrung out her skirt, enticing him with a glimpse of bare skin and black pubic hair underneath. She laughed throatily and wallowed to the bank. Standing ankle-deep, she began washing his face with the wet skirt. He reached beneath it and gripped her bare hips. Immediately she shoved him away, scuttled backward into the swifter water, laughing throatily. 'Jew want Carmelita… come and get hur.' He was stripping off his vest before the words cleared her lips. Down to bare skin, he shucked, then plunged into the cold, rippling creek. She shrieked and ran, but he caught and spun her, took her down and himself, too, into the purling water that turned her clothes transparent. He bit her nipple through the wet gauze and she shrieked again, laughing, then squiggled away, fighting against the current while stripping off her dress and flinging it back in his face. He plunged after her, scraping the clinging gauze off his head, and tackled her as she scrambled up the bank, kissing her voluptuously while her wet black hair got between their tongues. His finger was inside her before their ripples disappeared downstream, and she bucked up lustily, chuckling in a rich contralto. They rolled wildly, collecting sand on their backs. When they stopped, breathless, she was on top, urging him with practiced hips.
'Jew like, eh, hombre?' She growled low in her throat and took him in hand with little gentleness and less pause. Firmly stroking him, she let her eyes flash wickedly. 'Jew will like this even more.' She dove down without invitation, opened her mouth and narrowed his world to a thin corridor where carnality was all that mattered.
'Will… wake up, Will!'
Disoriented, he opened his eyes to find himself not in a field of Texas bluebonnets but in an iron bed; with a face dampened not by creekwater but by his own sweat; not with Carmelita, but with Elly. His body was swelled like a cactus in a March rain and his hand was inside Elly’s cotton underwear, in her pregnant body.
Startled, she looked back over her shoulder. He held himself rigid, too near climax to risk even the faintest movement.
'I was dreaming,' he managed in a raspy voice.
'You awake now?'
'Yes.' He withdrew his hand and rolled onto his back, covering his eyes with a wrist. 'Sorry,' he mumbled.
'What were you dreaming?'
'Nothin’.'
'Of me?'
Afraid of hurting her feelings, he remained silent, damning Lula, and the dream, and his own body for needing release. 'Elly, you scared to let me touch you?'
'You touch me all the time.'
'Not there.'
Silence… then, 'I don’t want you to see me. Pregnant women aren’t so pretty to look at.'
'Who told you that?'
'They just aren’t.'
'I’ll see you when the baby is born.'
'Not for long. And afterwards I won’t look like this.'
He moved his wrist and stared at the ceiling, thinking,
No reply, so he reached over and lowered the wick. In the unaccustomed darkness they lay in the strong scent of kerosene smoke.
'Come here.' He reached, closed his hand over her arm and pulled gently. 'It’s time for this, don’t you think?'
'Will, I like it when you kiss me and hold me, but I can’t do any more.'
'I know.' He found her hips and rolled her to face him. 'But I’m dying every night, wondering. Aren’t you? I’ll be gentle as anything you ever felt.' He pulled her nightgown up and laid both hands on her. 'I want you to know somethin’, Elly.' He kissed her mouth, breathed on her, felt his heart drumming everywhere, everywhere. 'I wish
