Night Moves: Dream Man/After the Night (2 page)

Now that it was summer, he spent a lot of time at the lake, which was one of the reasons for Faith’s afternoon expedition through the woods. The lake was a private one, over two thousand acres, and totally contained by Rouillard land. It was long and irregularly shaped, with several curves in it; broad and fairly shallow in some places, narrow and deep in
others. The big, white Rouillard mansion was to the east of it, the Devlin shack on the west, but neither was actually on the lakeshore. The only house on the lake was the Rouillard summerhouse, a white, one-story house with two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and a screened-in porch that totally encircled it. Down from the summerhouse was a boathouse and a pier, and a brick barbecue pit had been built there. Sometimes, during the summer, Gray and his friends would gather there for a rowdy afternoon of swimming and boating, and Faith would slip along the edge of the woods so she could watch him to her heart’s content.

Maybe he’d be there today, she thought, aching with the sweet yearning that filled her every time she thought about him. It would be wonderful to see him twice in one day.

She was barefoot, and her threadbare shorts left her skinny legs unprotected from scratches and snakes, but Faith was as at home in the woods as the other shy creatures; she wasn’t worried about the snakes, and disregarded the scratches. Her long, dark red hair tended to hang untidily in her eyes and annoy her, so she had pulled it back and secured it with a rubber band. She slipped like a wraith through the trees, her big cat eyes dreamy as she pictured Gray in her mind. Maybe he’d be there; maybe one day he’d see her hiding in the bushes, or peeking out from behind a tree, and he’d hold his hand out to her and say, “Why don’t you come out from there and have some fun with us?” She lost herself in the delicious daydream of being part of that group of laughing, roughhousing, suntanned kids, of being one of those curvy girls in a brief bikini.

Even before she got to the edge of the clearing where the summerhouse was, she could see the silver gleam of Gray’s Corvette parked in front of it, and her heart began the familiar violent pounding. He was here! She slid cautiously behind the shelter of a big tree trunk, but after a moment she realized that she couldn’t hear anything. There were no splashing sounds, no yells or shrieks or giggles.

Maybe he was fishing from the pier, or maybe he’d taken the boat out. Faith moved closer, angling for a view of the pier, but the wooden length was empty. He wasn’t there. Disappointment filled her. If he’d taken the boat out, there
was no telling how long he’d be gone, and she couldn’t stay there waiting for him. She had stolen this time for herself, but she had to get back soon and start cooking supper, and take care of Scottie.

She was turning to go when a muted sound reached her ears and she stopped, head cocked to try to locate it. She left the edge of the woods and took a few steps into the clearing, closer to the house, and now she could hear a murmur of voices, too low and indistinct for her to understand. Instantly her heart swelled again; he
was
here, after all. But he was inside the house; it would be difficult to catch a glimpse of him from the woods. If she went closer, though, she could hear him, and that was all she required.

Faith had the knack of small, wild things for silence. Her bare feet didn’t make a sound as she crept closer to the house, trying to stay out of a direct line to any of the windows. The murmur of voices seemed to be coming from the back of the house, where the bedrooms were located.

She reached the porch and squatted by the steps, her head cocked again as she tried to catch the words, but she couldn’t quite understand them. It was Gray’s voice, though; the deep tones were unmistakable, at least to her. Then she heard a gasp, and a kind of moan, in a much lighter voice.

Irresistibly drawn by curiosity and the lodestone of Gray’s voice, Faith eased out of her squatting position and cautiously tugged at the handle of the screen door. It was unlatched. She eased it open barely enough for a cat to slip through, and wriggled her own lithe, skinny body inside, then just as silently let the door close. Going down on hands and knees, she crawled across the plank porch to the open window of one of the bedrooms, from which the voices seemed to be coming.

She heard another gasp. “Gray,” said the other voice, a girl’s voice, strained and shaking.

“Shhh, shhh,” Gray murmured, the sound low and barely reaching Faith. He said something else, but the words didn’t make any sense to her. They slid past her ears without triggering any understanding. Then he said,
“Mon chère,”
and the tumblers clicked into place. He was speaking
French, she realized, and as soon as she did so, the words became clear, as if it had taken that small understanding for the sounds to find the needed rhythm in her brain. Though the Devlins were neither Cajun nor Creole, Faith understood most of what he was saying. The majority of the people in the parish spoke and understood French, in varying degrees.

It sounded as if he were trying to coax a scared dog to him, Faith thought. His voice was warm and crooning, the words scattered with reassurances and endearments. When the girl spoke again, her voice was still strained, but now there was a drugged undertone to it.

Curious, Faith eased to the side and carefully moved her head so that one eye peeked around the frame of the open window. What she saw froze her to the spot.

Gray and the girl were both naked on the bed, which was positioned with the headboard under the window on the adjoining wall. Neither of them was likely to see her, which was a stroke of fortune, because Faith couldn’t have moved then even if they had both looked straight at her.

Gray was lying with his back to her, his left arm positioned under the girl’s tousled blond head. He was leaning over her in a way that made Faith catch her breath, for there was something both protective and predatory in him. He was kissing her, long kisses that left the room in silence except for their deep sighs, and his right arm—it looked as if—he
was
—he shifted his position, and Faith could clearly see that his right hand was between the girl’s naked thighs, right there on her kitty cat.

Faith felt dizzy, and she realized that her chest hurt from holding her breath. Carefully she let it out, and rested her cheek against the white wood. She knew what they were doing. She was eleven, and she wasn’t a little girl anymore even if her breasts hadn’t started to grow yet. Several years ago she had heard Renee and Pa carrying on in their bedroom, and her oldest brother, Russ, had leeringly and graphically explained what was going on. She had seen dogs doing it, too, and heard cats screeching while they did it.

The girl cried out, and Faith peeked again. Gray was on top of her now, still gently murmuring in French, cajoling,
soothing. He told her how pretty she was, how much he wanted her, how hot and delicious she was. And as he talked, he was adjusting his position, reaching between their bodies with his right hand while he remained propped on his left arm. Because of the angle, Faith couldn’t see what he was doing, but she knew anyway. With a shock, she recognized the girl. Lindsey Partain; her father was a lawyer in Prescott.

“Gray!” Lindsey cried, her voice tight with strain. “My God! I can’t—”

Gray’s muscular buttocks tightened, and the girl arched beneath him, crying out again. But she was clinging to him, and the cry was one of intense pleasure. Her long legs lifted, one twining around his hip, the other hooking around his leg.

He began moving slowly, his muscled young body rippling with power. The scene was raw and disturbing, but there was also a beauty to it that kept Faith riveted. Gray was so big and strong, his darkly tanned body graceful and intensely masculine, while Lindsey was slim and shapely, delicately feminine in his grasp. He seemed to be taking such care of her, and she was enjoying it so much, her slim hands clinging to his back, her head arched back and her hips lifting in time with his slow rhythm.

Faith stared at them, her eyes burning. She wasn’t jealous. Gray was so far above her, and she was so young, that she had never thought of him in a romantic, possessive sense. Gray was the shining center of her universe, to be worshiped from afar, and she was giddily happy with the occasional glimpse of him. Today, when he had actually spoken to her, and touched her shirt, had been paradise. She couldn’t imagine herself in Lindsey’s place, lying naked in his arms, or even imagine what it felt like.

Gray’s movements were getting faster, and the girl was crying out again as she strained up to him, her teeth clenched as if she were in pain, but instinctively Faith knew that she wasn’t. Gray was hammering at her now, his own head thrown back, long black hair damp at the temples and the ends sticking to his sweaty shoulders. He tensed and shuddered, and a raw, deep sound burst from his throat.

Faith’s heart was hammering, and her greenish cat eyes were huge as she ducked away from the window, slipping through the screen door and off the porch as silently as she had arrived. So that was what
it
was like. She had actually seen Gray doing
it.
Without his clothes, he was even more beautiful than she had imagined. He hadn’t made disgusting snorting pig noises the way Pa did, whenever he was sober enough to talk Renee into the bedroom, which wasn’t very often for the past couple of years.

If Gray’s father, Guy, was as beautiful doing it as Gray was, Faith thought fiercely, she didn’t blame Renee for choosing him over Pa.

She gained the safety of the woods and slipped silently through the trees. It was late, and she’d likely get a belting from Pa when she got home, for not being there to start his supper and look after Scottie, the way she was supposed to do, but it would be worth it. She had seen Gray.

•  •  •

Exhausted, elated, shaking and breathing hard in the aftermath of orgasm, Gray lifted his head from the curve of Lindsey’s neck and shoulder. She was still gasping herself, her eyes closed. He had spent the better part of the afternoon seducing her, but it had been worth the effort. That long, slow buildup had made the sex even better than he’d expected.

A flash of color, a tiny movement in his peripheral vision, caught his attention and he turned his head toward the open window and the woods beyond the porch. He caught only a glimpse of a small, frail figure topped by dark red hair, but that was enough for him to identify the youngest Devlin girl.

What was the kid doing wandering around the woods this far from their shack? Gray didn’t say anything to Lindsey, because she would panic if she thought someone might have seen her sneaking into the summerhouse with him, even if that someone was just one of the trashy Devlins. She was engaged to Dewayne Mouton, and she wouldn’t take kindly to anything screwing that up, even her own screwing. The Moutons weren’t as rich as the Rouillards—no one in this part of Louisiana was—but Lindsey knew she could handle Dewayne in a way she could never hope to do with Gray.
Gray was the bigger catch, but he wouldn’t be a very comfortable husband, and Lindsey was shrewd enough to know she didn’t have a chance with him anyway.

“What is it?” she murmured now, stroking his shoulder.

“Nothing.” He turned his head and kissed her, hard, then disengaged their bodies and sat up on the edge of the bed. “I just noticed how late it is.”

Lindsey took a look out the window at the lengthening shadows, and sat up with a squeal. “My God, I’m supposed to have dinner with the Moutons tonight! I’ll never be able to get ready on time!” She scrambled from the bed and began grabbing up her scattered articles of clothing.

Gray dressed in a more leisurely fashion, but his mind was still on the Devlin kid. Had she seen them, and if she had, would she say anything? She was a strange little kid, shyer than her older sister, who was already showing signs of being as big a slut as their mother. But the younger one had wise old eyes in that thin kid’s face, eyes that reminded him of a cat’s eyes, hazel green with flecks of gold in them so that sometimes they were green and sometimes looked yellowish. He got the feeling that she didn’t miss much. She would know that her mother was his father’s piece on the side, that the Devlins lived rent-free in that shack so Renee would be handy whenever Guy Rouillard wanted her. The kid wouldn’t risk getting on the bad side of any Rouillard.

Poor little skinny kid, with the fey eyes. She’d been born into trash and wouldn’t have the chance to ever get out of it, assuming she even wanted to. Amos Devlin was a mean drunk, and the two older boys, Russ and Nicky, were lazy, thieving bullies, as mean as their father and showing signs of turning into drunks as well. Her mother, Renee, liked the booze too, but she hadn’t let it get the upper hand on her the way it had on Amos. She was lush and beautiful, despite having borne five children, with the dark red hair that only her youngest daughter had inherited, as well as the green eyes and creamy, delicate skin. Renee wasn’t mean, like Amos, but she wasn’t much of a mother to those kids, either. All Renee cared about was getting screwed. The joke in the parish was that her heels were so round, she had been used as the pattern for Weebles. Unlike Weebles, however, Renee
would stay down, as long as there was a man ready to crawl on top of her. She exuded sex, raunchy sex, drawing men to her like dogs to a bitch in heat.

Jodie, the oldest girl, was pure jailbait, already on the lookout for any hard cock she could get. She had Renee’s single-mindedness when it came to sex, and he very much doubted that she was still a virgin, though she was only in junior high. She kept offering it to him, but Gray wasn’t the least bit tempted. He’d rather screw a snake than Jodie Devlin.

The youngest Devlin boy was retarded. Gray had only seen him once or twice, and each time he had been clinging to the youngest girl’s legs—what was her name, damn it? Something he’d thought a minute ago had reminded him of it. Fay? Fay with the fey eyes? No, it was something else, but like that—Faith. That was it. Funny name for a Devlin, since neither Amos nor Renee was the least bit religious.