Memory's Embrace (13 page)

Keith’s cry of surprise and pleasure was beautiful to her; he stiffened and moaned her name.

“What do you want me to do?” she whispered gently. “Tell me how to please you.”

He made a soblike sound. “What I did—Tess, oh, Tess—please.”

What he had done to her. Of course. She bent her head and her hair spread over him in a silken fan. At her first nibbling taste of him, he arched his back convulsively and cried out.

“D-Did I hurt you?” Tess asked, frightened.

He laughed, a hoarse, pain-filled sound that belied his answer. “No. God, no.”

Relieved, she went back to him. His groan and the tangling of his hands in her hair gave her a fierce sensation of triumph, of joy. Something within her sang
as she pleasured Keith, growing more and more bold as he began to writhe beneath her and call her name over and over again.

Finally, with a savage upward thrust of his hips, he stiffened and shouted something garbled and senseless and hoarse, and it sounded as though he was weeping as he sank, shuddering, back to the mattress. Tess followed him, ruthlessly holding him prisoner even in his defeat.

“No,” he pleaded finally, on a ragged, forced breath, “please—”

In those moments, Tess understood the mysteries of power. She knew why people sought it, fought for it, died for it. She was not going to give it up.

“Tess,” he choked out.

She was greedy for the power, hungry for the pleasure that his pleasure gave her. “I want more of you,” she released him to say. “Much more.”

He moaned, in submission, in anticipation, in hopeless defeat. She tongued him until he was hard again, shifted him somehow until he was above her, beautifully vulnerable. She nipped him and savored him, sampled him and consumed him, and she soared on the wild joy of his surrender.

When, at last, he pleaded, she drove him into an insanity of satisfaction, glorying in his cries. Cries of her name, and not Amelie’s.

Much later, when Keith lay on his back, his breathing under control again, Tess reached to touch his face, knowing what she would find. His flesh was wet with tears.

“Why?” she pleaded. “Oh, Keith, tell me why you’re—you’re crying?”

Keith caught her wrists in strong hands, forced her fingers from his face. And then he rolled away, laying stiff beside her, using his broad back as a barrier.

She was desperate to reach him, for she sensed that it was not anger or hatred that had undone him this way. but something else. “Keith?”

“What?” he fairly croaked the word.

“Are you one of those men who can’t let other people see them cry?”

He laughed raggedly and sniffled. “No. It’s fashionable in my family.”

“Then, what—”

“Why the hell did you have to come along, Tess?” he broke in, in a raspy whisper, rolling onto his back and then his side, so that he faced her now. “Why?”

Tess bristled; she didn’t know what else to do. “What an inane question! It isn’t as though I saw you in a crystal ball or something, you know, and said to myself, ‘Well, here’s this crazy peddler, throwing things at God and jumping into creeks because he doesn’t have any better sense than to stand in campfires. It ought to be easy to louse up his life. I’ll just set right out to do it’!”

“Damn it,” he hissed, “I was happy! I didn’t need anybody!”

“That’s no way to be happy,” Tess pointed out reasonably. “Besides, you weren’t. You weren’t at all. You were hiding. You were running. As far as I’m concerned, you still are.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, what the hell do you know about anything?”

If he hadn’t been angry before, he was angry now. And that was perfectly all right, because Tess had
worked up a fury of her own. “I know how to make you crazy!” she replied acidly. “I know how to turn you inside out!”

The silence that followed was long and it was awful. And it gave Tess plenty of time to regret what she’d said. She was about to say that she was sorry when he suddenly bit out, “That trick works both ways, woman.”

Tess tried to melt into the wall again and had, of course, no more luck at it than before. “Good night,” she dared to say.

“Good night, hell!” Keith snarled back, and wrenched her onto her back. “I’ve got plans for you. And we’ll see who makes whom crazy, who turns whom inside out!”

Tess pulled the quilt up to her chin. “Leave me alone.”

He laughed and got out of bed to light the lamp. Overwhelmed at the sight of his nakedness, despite what she had done in the dark, Tess wrenched the quilt all the way up over her head.

Keith tore it away again and pulled her out of bed to stand before him, trembling with fury and passion, her hair a wild tangle around her face. He looked at her in bafflement and desire, but not in anger, not now. “Come here, Tess,” he breathed. “Come to me.”

She did—she could do nothing else—and he kissed her, deeply, thoroughly. The spell was cast. When he removed her nightgown and flung it aside, even when he knelt and buried his face in her, she could not protest.

He enjoyed her until her knees were weak, until she trembled, until she tangled her hands in his hair and sobbed his name into the night. And when she could stand no longer, he laid her on the bed, her legs held apart by the broad strength of his body lying prone on her own, and enjoyed her again.

Chapter Eight

H
ARBOR
H
AVEN WAS NOT THE FORMIDABLE, GRIM STRUCTURE
Asa had feared it would be. No, it was a pleasant brick building, flanked by towering pine trees, overlooking Portland’s busy harbor.

His heart pounded as he made his way up the wide flagstone walk and through the front door, beating out a litany all its own. Livie-Livie-God-let-her-know-melet-her-love-me.

There was a broad-faced woman minding the reception desk, and she looked up at Asa, when he approached, and smiled. Good. This was a friendly place, a gentle place.

He asked after Miss Olivia Bishop and was led to a sunny room with windows looking out over the blue, blue water. She sat staring blankly, her body small and wasted now, her once-rich mahogany hair streaked with gray, her thin hands folded in her lap.

“Don’t expect much now,” warned the kindly nurse who had brought Asa to that room. “She doesn’t speak to a soul—not even her daughter.”

A fist clasped Asa’s innards and squeezed until he was breathless. Still, he rounded Olivia’s wicker invalid’s chair and crouched. “Livie,” he said softly.

Her hazel eyes were circled by dark smudges of misery, but there was a flicker of recognition in them.

He took her hands, cautiously, tenderly, into his own. “Livie, I’ve come to take you home with me.”

Olivia’s lovely mouth, now thin and colorless, moved slightly, and then her hands rose slowly, slowly, to cup his face. “Asa,” she said, in a dreamer’s voice. “Oh, Asa.”

Asa Thatcher wept without shame, kneeling now, his head in Olivia’s lap. “Livie,” he sobbed. “Oh, my Livie—”

“There, there,” she said softly, her hands moving tentatively in his coarse hair. “Don’t cry, my darling—you’re here. Oh, Asa, if I’m dreaming, I won’t be able to bear it—”

Asa recovered himself somewhat, lifted his head, placed trembling hands upon her precious face. For a moment, he, too, needed reassurance that this was not a dream. “I should have married you long ago,” he said hoarsely. “Long, long ago. Will you forgive me, Livie? Will you marry me now, today?”

“Yes, Asa. Oh, yes.”

Asa’s joy and relief were so great that he could not contain them; he wept again, noisily this time, caring not a whit that Livie’s nurse was looking on. Let the whole world see him thus, a broken man who could be mended by only one woman.

Tess was tired and her knees were still wobbly from the shameless, searing passion of the night before. The sun had been golden at the crack beneath the wagon’s door before Keith had let her sleep. Oh, she hated him for the paces he’d put her through—again and again he’d driven her to gasping release without ever actually taking her—but she loved him, too.

The ridiculous wagon came to a stop in front of Harbor Haven, Keith put the brake lever in place with a motion of his left leg and smiled down at his indignant passenger.

“I hate you,” she said.

“I hate you, too, dear,” he replied sweetly. “Except when you wrap your legs around my head, that is.”

Tess sprang down from the seat and glared up at him. “You might have a little respect,” she fumed. “A little decency—”

He tipped his stupid bowler hat and smirked at her, but the expression in his eyes was tender. “I’ve got some things to do,” he said, as though she hadn’t spoken. “I’ll come back for you in an hour or so.”

“You needn’t come back at all, Keith Corbin! If I never see you again—”

Keith sighed. “I know, I know. If you never see me again, it will be too soon.”

“If you will just give me my bicycle and my camera, please. And my valise.”

He arched an eyebrow, the reins still in his hands. “What are you going to do, put your camera and valise in the basket and wheel the bicycle through the halls of Harbor Haven? If you do, I guarantee they’ll nominate you for membership.”

Tess wavered, shading her eyes from the bright, rain-washed sunlight with one hand. “Well …”

“I’ll be back in an hour,” he repeated, with the patience of a man speaking to a drooling dullard. And then he drove away, with everything Tess owned in the back of his stupid wagon.

She turned and hurried up the walk to the familiar door of the brick hospital, despairing as she went. How was she going to earn enough money to keep her mother here and support herself as well? How? Tears of regret smarted in her eyes. Derora had been right; she should have sent that wire, collected her share of the reward. If she had, she would still be pure and her mother would be assured of proper care.

Inside the hospital, Tess thrust aside all thought of the mess she’d gotten herself into and approached the desk.

The nurse, Miss Elmore, smiled at her. In fact, she beamed.

“Your mother isn’t here,” she said.

The first stop Keith made was at the telegraph office, and the message he dictated was terse, blunt enough that even his thick-headed brothers could be expected to understand.

After that, he sent a more polite missive to his banker, requesting funds. Since the bank in Port Hastings had a telegraph of its own, the reply came almost immediately.

P
RIVILEGES SUSPENDED ON THIS ACCOUNT
.

Furious, Keith crumpled the message that had been hand-copied before his disbelieving eyes and rattled off a retort that made the squirrelly clerk squirm in his swivel chair.

“We can’t say that in a wire!”

Keith paced the rough-hewn board floor, his hands in his trouser pockets. And even as he paced, the telegraph began to click out a new message, which the red-faced clerk hastily copied down.

When the clicking stopped, after what seemed like a long time, the squirrel set down his pencil as though it had the weight of a sledgehammer and mopped his brow with a bright red handkerchief. “I don’t believe this,” he said.

Keith knew that the message was for him, instinct had told him it was. Impatiently, he reached over the high counter and tore the sheet of paper from its pad.

S
TAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE, YOU LITTLE SON-OF-A-BITCH
.

I
’M ON MY WAY TO
P
ORTLAND TO KICK YOUR ASS
.

R
EGARDS
, J
EFF
.

Keith wadded the paper and flung it. It bounced off
the clerk’s forehead. “How come he can say things like that over the wire if I can’t?” he demanded.

The clerk shivered. “I guess you can, if you want to,” he conceded.

“Good,” said Keith, calming down a little, smiling even. His message was two words long, and it made the clerk groan, but he sent it.

“I’ll lose my job for this!” he complained.

Almost instantly, a reply came in.

T
HANK YOU BUT
I
LOVE MY WIFE
. A
DAM AND
I
WILL JOIN YOU TOMORROW
, G
RAND
H
OTEL
. Y
OU KNOW THE ROOM NUMBER
. J
EFF
.

It became a game then. Indulging in an evil smile, Keith leaned against the counter and dictated this answer:

I
WANT ACCESS TO MY MONEY, YOU BASTARDS
.
A
ND HAVEN’T YOU GOT ANYTHING BETTER TO DO THAN HANG AROUND THE BANK
?

Y
OU ARE BOTH IDIOTS
. T
HIS COSTS MONEY, DAMN IT
.

W
ILL ADVISE BANK AS REQUESTED
. W
ILL ALSO LOOK FORWARD TO BREAKING YOUR NECK
. A
DAM
.

Y
OU’VE GOT IT TO DO, BIG BROTHER
.

D
O IT
I
WILL, LITTLE BROTHER
.

By this time, the clerk was in a highly agitated state. “Mr. Corbin, I really must insist—”

Keith took pity on the fellow. He paid what he owed
for his share of the telegraphic argument and said, in parting, “I’ll be in the Corbin suite at the Grand Hotel. When you hear from my bank again, send a messenger right away.”

The clerk’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his skinny throat. “Yes, sir,” he said.

As Keith was opening the door to leave, the telegraph started clicking again. He paused, waiting, a half-grin on his face.

“M-Mr. Corbin?” The clerk called to him with anxious reluctance. “The party in Port Hastings wants you to wait in the woodshed.”

Keith laughed, shook his head, and walked out. But his jovial mood faded away as he drove his mule and wagon toward the Grand Hotel. Going there, as ordered, went against his grain, and sorely so. But he had no money left, to speak of, and he could stay in the suite his mother kept for nothing, putting his meals and Tess’s on her account.

He went to the Grand, he checked into the family suite. For Tess and only for Tess.

She was sitting on the front step, looking lost and forlorn. At the sight of Tess, Keith forgot the telegraphic row with his brothers, secured the wagon, and hurried up the walk toward her.