Saving Savannah (7 page)

“Now, now,” Tante Lulu said, “they’re still yer family. Remember, it was St. Jude who brought you two t’gether, and he’s all ’bout forgiveness.”

“Not gonna happen,” Matt insisted.

“Don’tcha be worryin’ none. I’m plannin’ on havin’ a little sit-down with yer mother on Sunday after Mass. A come-ta-Jesus talk, ya might say.”

Oh, shit!

“I invited her ta lunch at Big Butch’s Crab Shanty.”

Oh, shit!

“I’d like to be a fly on the wall at that meeting,” Savannah whispered to him, a mischievous grin teasing at her lips. “If anyone can straighten a person out, Tante Lulu can.”

Or drive them bat shit crazy.
“Go for it!” he conceded, “but I’ll tell you up front, I won’t let them ruin a happy day. My dad’s not so bad, but my mother could make a scene.”

“Listen, boy, some folks have their minds mixed up and permanently set, like concrete. What we gotta do is chisel away.”

Good luck with that. My mother is chisel-proof.
Matt rolled his eyes. “She would stand out like a sore thumb among all you good folks.”

Tante Lulu nodded. “Like pickles in a praline.”

“Good example,” Matt said. He’d love to see his mother’s face if Tante Lulu made that comparison to her face.

“I know how ta turn a pickle inta a pecan. Leave it all ta me.”

And they did, which was probably a big mistake, but Matt had other things on his mind.

“One more thing,” Tante Lulu said.

He couldn’t suppress his groan. Savannah choked back a laugh.

“Here.” Tante Lulu handed him a key.

He frowned with confusion. “You already gave me the car key.”

“This is another key.” Tante Lulu waggled her penciled-in eyebrows at him. “I got you two a room at the Hubba Hubba Ding Ding Motel. I coulda reserved you a room at the Marriott or Comfort Suites in Houma, but the Hubba is closer, only ’bout ten minutes away.”

Matt liked the idea of closer. A lot.

“Plus, they got vibrating beds at the Hubba, I hear. You know, the kind ya put in a quarter and it shakes ya up like a milkshake.”

No, Matt didn’t know, but he was game for anything if it involved him and Savannah, horizontal, naked, etc.

He grinned.

Savannah blushed.

Tee-John stepped up then and looped an arm over Tante Lulu’s little shoulders. “Auntie! You never rented
me
any motel rooms.”

“
Thass
’cause you was boinkin’ every girl up and down the bayou.”

“Boinkin’?” Tee-John laughed and put a hand over his heart. “I am wounded.”

“Yer
gonna
be wounded if Celine gets her hands on you. Where is she anyways?”

“In the house. Peeing. For about the tenth time since we got here. Plus, she’s feeling nauseous.”

“I got herbs fer that. Do you think she’d take ground-up gator testicles mixed with frog spit and a little Pepto fer color?”

“Ab-so-lute-ly!” Tee-John said with a straight face. “But let’s not tell her the ingredients .
 . . until later.”

On that note, Matt and Savannah escaped .
 . . uh, left the party. Matt couldn’t stop kissing Savannah as they walked around the side of the cottage leading to the detached one-car garage. He pressed her up against the side of the cottage and kissed her until his knees about gave way, and he had really strong knees. She kissed him while he attempted to raise the old fold-up wooden door on the garage, and he almost dropped the blasted thing on her toes.

They stopped kissing then as they gaped at their transport. A huge tank of a car, so big it almost touched the sides of the garage. It was a 1960s era lavender Chevy Impala convertible. There was a St. Jude wobble head on the dashboard and a bumper sticker that read, “Not so close. I’m not that kind of girl.”

“We should have known better when she told us her car had a name .
 . . Lillian,” Savannah said.

“You named your car Betty,” he pointed out.

“That’s different.”

It took some maneuvering to get the vehicle out of the garage, but once on the way, they soon discovered one of the advantages of these old cars. Bench seats. The engineers who invented bucket seats hadn’t taken into account the benefits to a guy of one-arm driving with his honey sitting close. Real close. He would bet his back pay that Tante Lulu knew the value of those bed-like seats from experience back in the day. And maybe even later in her outrageous life. The old bird had game.

He was cruising down the one-lane road, driving with his left hand, his right arm around Savannah’s shoulders, hip to hip, Frank Sinatra crooning on the eight-track tape deck. With the rag top up, they were cocooned in their own private world, unseeing in the dusky light of early evening of the quaint countryside era passing by, redolent of another era. Crab shacks and one-pump gas stations. Neat cottages of pastel stucco. Homemade signs advertising, “Fresh Eggs. Sweet Butter. Okra.” An occasional derelict auto or kitchen sink sitting in someone’s front yard. A sofa on the front porch.

When Savannah put a hand on his thigh, he almost ran off the road. He hadn’t engaged in foreplay in a car since he was a teenager.

When his right hand happened to meander downward and touch her breast, she moaned. A sweet, poignant sound that acted as the most potent aphrodisiac. Not that his libido needed any jumpstart.

When Savannah raised her head and kissed his neck, pleasure rippled over all the fine hairs of his body like a warm breeze on cool grass.

When he kissed the top of her head and said in a voice husky with emotion, “I love you, Savannah. You are what kept me going in the hard days of captivity.”

“Oh, Matt!” He felt her tears against his neck and hugged her tighter. “I never stopped loving you, even when I thought you were .
 . . gone.” He could tell she didn’t want to say the word
dead
.

“No sad times tonight,” he ordered with a mock growl.

By the time they arrived at the garish Hubba Hubba Ding Ding Motel five minutes later, Matt was thankful that, key in hand, they didn’t have to face any people at a registration desk. Not just because he and Savannah were loopy with lust for each other, but because he doubted he could have put two coherent words together, not even, “Room! Now!”

He had trouble unlocking the door with his shaking hands, but it finally opened, and he was vaguely aware of a dim light coming from a bedside lamp. They stumbled into the room, slamming the door behind them. Quicker than he could say “G.I. Joe With a Hard-on,” he had her backed up against the wall. At the same time, he was kissing her voraciously, even as he removed his jacket and stepped out of his shoes. Thank God for multi-tasking!

She was no better, undoing his shirt so fast buttons were flying.

He undid the back zipper on her dress.

She undid the zipper on his pants.

For a moment, Matt saw an explosion of stars behind his closed eyelids. G.I. Joe was going to end this game before it began if he didn’t get his act together. He inhaled sharply, then exhaled.

When he opened his eyes, Savannah was staring at him with sex-hazy eyes. Her lips were parted, and she was breathing as heavily as he was. Even better, he saw that Savannah’s dress had fallen to her waist with the straps hanging from her arms. She was wearing no bra, and her breasts were perfect twin globes the size of half oranges. The nipples were erect against the backdrop of rose-hued aureoles.

“So pretty!” he murmured, and couldn’t resist leaning down to lick one nipple, then the other.

Savannah released a long keening wail of carnal pleasure. “Ooooooh!”

That’s it! I can’t wait any longer.
He picked her up by the waist, turned, and almost tripped over his unzipped trousers that were bagging about his knees. Tossing Savannah onto the bed, he crawled up over her. Instinctively, even as he was back to kissing her, deep kissing, a wet exchange of tongues and teeth and hungry lips, he raised the hem of her dress and tore off her silk panties. Also, instinctively, he assumed since Savannah wasn’t usually so bold, she reached into his briefs and took his rampant erection in hand.

I didn’t intend to do it. Honest, honey, I didn’t!
But before he knew what was happening he was deep inside her hot, moist body where the inner muscles were clutching him in welcome, like a soldier just home from the wars. Which he was. But this was not the way for reunion sex to go. It should be a leisurely, exploring, re-acquaintance of familiar and yet strange bodies. A slow build-up of arousal. Lots of whispered avowals of love and promises of a future together.

Maybe I could do a bit of backtracking here.
He raised his head, arms braced on his elbows, about to apologize for his clumsy haste.

Instead of looking disappointed, or even angry, she smiled up at him and said, “Welcome home, soldier.”

Forget backtracking! It would appear that G.I. Joe just got hot damn lucky.
“Oh, baby!” Looking at her beautiful blue eyes, he recalled the precious sapphire pendant he’d purchased after his deployment but before being taken prisoner by those evil Taliban rebels. He’d seen it in a jeweler’s window and was reminded of her. “By the way, honey, wait until you see what I got for you!”

“In your rucksack?” she teased, wriggling her hips from side to side for emphasis.

He pinched her butt. “Not that. Back in my apartment at Fort Dix. Something I bought for you when I first arrived overseas almost six years ago.”

“And you kept it, even thinking that I’d left you?”

“Like you, I couldn’t stop the loving and maybe even, unconsciously, the hoping.”

She put a hand up to his face. “Oh, sweetheart. I don’t need presents. All I need is you.”

“Ditto,” he said and kissed her softly. Then not so softly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t wait. I need you, baby. I’ll do better next time, I prom—”

“I can’t wait either,” she admitted shyly. Then, not so shyly, she arched her hips off the bed and wrapped her legs around his waist.

Wait! Wait a damn minute!
“Oh, crap! I forgot a condom,” he gasped out. “A good soldier never forgets a condom. Where did I put them? How could I—”

“If you stop now, I might have to kill you, good soldier or not.” She glanced to the left. “I thought I saw .
 . . yes!” There was a condom sitting on the bedside table, compliments of the Hubba.

That was all the encouragement he needed. He withdrew, rolled on the condom one-handed, and plunged back into her clasping folds, long and slow. But only twice. Then his strokes became short and hard, and her clasping was a constant erotic signal that she was enjoying him as much as he was enjoying her. The friction of his erection against her folds was beyond bliss, erotic torture of the best kind.

Anything else that happened was by pure reflex. His hands caressing her everywhere. His lips kissing everywhere. Murmuring his appreciation of her various body parts, some of the words more graphic that he would use if he were in his right mind. Not that he was in his wrong mind. No mind, that’s how to describe him.

She was caressing and kissing and murmuring, too. “Don’t ever leave me again,” she pleaded.

“Never!” he promised.

Her body stiffened, and he sensed her approaching orgasm, not that she’d hadn’t already climaxed, but they were minis compared to what was coming up. He braced himself, holding off his own completion until she screamed and began to convulse rapidly around him. Only then did he throw his head back and roar out his own climax. There might have been violins playing with a whole orchestra backup, or maybe he was just high on supreme male satisfaction.

For several long moments, he lay heavily over her. When his rapid breathing slowed to a mere pant, he raised himself and said, “I love you, Savannah.”