Walk in Beauty (21 page)

He turned back, his hands in his pockets. “You know, Jessie, you aren’t the only one who’s afraid. I’m afraid, too—afraid that one morning I’m going to wake up again in a park and won’t remember how I got there.” He stepped forward, intense. “It made me sick to be that man, but I have to face my life one day at a time.”

Her throat felt as if it had closed completely. She couldn’t seem to get any air through it, much less the words Luke seemed to be waiting for.

For a moment longer, he stood there, staring at her intently. Then with a sudden, abrupt shake of his head, he said, “Go off and hide then. I’m tired of fighting.”

He strode off into the darkness. Jessie heard his boots crunching against the rocks until the wind blew to life again and stole the sound away.

A
s she walked back toward the house, Jessie tried to keep her mind blank, tried to concentrate upon the way the house looked against the vast night, how the wavering orange light of the fire spilled through the doorway of the hogan, looking warm and friendly. The wind quieted a little, though it still gusted in capricious bursts.

In Albuquerque, she had come to know Indians of many nations—Lakota and Yaqui and Pima, Cheyenne and Comanche. She had come to understand a little of each of their cultures, had learned to paint the differences in their faces. Each face, each culture, was different from the others, linked only by being the original nations of the continent.

But of all of them, she loved the Navajo, and not only because she had first loved Luke. There was something about the nation as a whole that somehow reflected her own nature, something essentially private and reserved—almost shy. And yet they were strong, relentless survivors, as she herself was. There was great beauty in the things that came from them, in the silver and the beads, and above all the weavings.

As she walked back in the wide, open darkness, she thought of the beauty prayer, made famous by writers.
Beauty all around me.
Yes. And here it was, the beauty. It was in the sheep and the women bent over the stove tonight at supper and the wavering light falling from the door to the hogan; it was in the lilting words she would never speak but would one day understand well. It was in the sky and the rocks around her, and in the sharp song of the wind.

Beauty all around me.

She found Luke sitting on the end of the truck gate, smoking. He glanced up when she approached, then turned his face away again without speaking. Jessie took a breath and sat down beside him, feeling the truck sink a little under the extra weight.

She didn’t speak, but when he passed his cigarette toward her, she took it and inhaled a breath full of the smoke, blowing it out into the cold night.

“I tucked Giselle in,” he said.

“Oh, maybe I ought to—”

“She said she’ll see you in the morning.”

Jessie gave him back the cigarette. “She loves it here.” He inhaled the night air, nodding. “Listen,” he said, inclining his head. “How quiet it is.”

From a distance, a coyote howled. “He must be hungry.”

“Or lonely,” Luke said.

Jessie thought about that, and then looked at him. “Mary told me you ran away when you found out you were going to move to Colorado.”

“Yeah.” The word was soft, self-mocking. “I took my horse and some food and rode to the mountains. I stayed there four days before they came to get me.”

“Wasn’t it lonely? You were so young.”

He shook his head and passed the cigarette back to her. “No. It seemed worse to leave completely. The city seemed so far away. So different.”

Jessie nodded, looking at the glowing ember of the cigarette for a minute before she lifted it to her mouth. The first hit had made her a little dizzy; this one seemed to shoot straight to her brain with a whirl. “That’s enough,” she said.

He gave her a cockeyed grin. “See? You’re learning.”

“Maybe.” She swung her feet back and forth. “Was it because your mother was sick that you left?”

“My father heard of the sanitarium in Colorado. They were just starting to give people the medicine they use now. Mom was pretty sick, and the doctors wanted her to go to the sanitarium.” He shrugged. “It worked. I can’t complain. She lived longer there.”

“Seeing Marcia and Giselle makes me wish I’d known her.”

He chuckled. “Do you know what your daughter told me this afternoon?”

“No telling. What?”

“That you never kiss Daniel like they kiss on TV.”

Jessie felt the heat of embarrassment spread through her cheeks and was grateful for the darkness. “He’s my friend.”

“He was my friend for a long time, too. It was Daniel who helped me run away that time.”

“Really?” She grinned, trying to imagine the two of them as children, plotting a doomed expedition. “I can see that.”

“Giselle thinks a lot of him.”

Jessie pressed her lips together for a minute, knowing this was a sensitive area. “He’s like her uncle, you know? He—” She almost said, “takes the time to be with her,” but knew it would wound Luke.

“I know.” He dropped the cigarette and stood up to crush it beneath the heel of his boot. “I guess we should hit the hay.”

A ripple of awareness spread through Jessie at his words, a slight, quivering heaviness in her breasts and belly. “I guess so,” she agreed, but made no immediate move.

He was very close, close enough for her to smell the scent of him, that foresty note of his skin. “Do you want me to sleep in the cab?” he asked.

Jessie hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“That might be the most honest thing you’ve said to me.” His gaze, dark and liquid, met hers. Against the night, the harsh planes of his face were shadowed, like the mesas all around them, and Jessie caught her breath at the wave of longing she felt. She had to consciously restrain herself from reaching up to touch his jaw.

Beauty all around me.

He took a step closer, and now his body was just barely between her knees. With one hand, he reached out to shift a lock of her hair over her shoulder. “We don’t have to make love.” His voice, quiet with the night, seemed more accented than usual, giving his English a hypnotically musical sound. “Let me hold you. Just for tonight.”

Jessie found she had no will to resist when he swayed forward, his fingers tightening on her shoulder, to kiss the side of her neck. She knew she should tell him to go to the cab, or volunteer to go herself. And yet… . and yet…

“Oh, Luke,” she whispered with a hint of despair, her body betraying her. “I can’t stop needing you.”

“Maybe you aren’t supposed to,” he said. Swiftly he gathered her close, wrapping his arms around her, lowering his face to her hair with a sigh. His hair brushed her mouth, coarse and cool.

Even just being next to him made her feel better, made the weariness slip from her shoulders and the anxiety of the past week seem far away. She lifted her arms and wrapped them around his back, hugging him close, unable to turn away from the one thing that would make her feel whole and right. It was only for tonight. One more time she could take what he wanted to give. One more time, she could love him.

Easing away, she scooted back into the truck. Luke waited at the tailgate, and she saw from the hard line of his jaw that he thought she was going to make him go to the cab. She held out her hand.

He stood there a split second longer, as if he regretted his choice; then he jumped into the truck, slamming the barriers closed behind him. An involuntary rush of pure need rippled through Jessie as he bent his head, and the light from beyond caught his hair. She reached for him, putting her hand on his thigh.

He smiled and lifted her hand to his mouth. “Kick off your shoes, honey. It’s gonna be a long day tomorrow.”

Jessie yanked off her boots and unbuttoned the heavy jacket, then zipped open one of the sleeping bags laid out on the pallet. He stopped her. “Let’s put them together.”

She nodded, lifting her end up so Luke could join it to his. It was a deeply intimate act, especially in the pure, unbroken silence of the desert. They crawled in together, one from each side. Jessie felt deeply shy and didn’t know quite what to do next.

“Come here,” Luke said, lifting the bag to make room for her to ease up next to him. From long habit, she nestled her head in the hollow of his shoulder, and once again all the tension flowed out of her.

He held her close. “That’s it.”

Jessie sighed, letting go. Only with Luke had she ever felt this sense of perfect ease, this perfect safety. Only with him had she ever been able to let down her guard and allow another human being to see her.

It had been so shattering to lose it.

Against her temple she felt a warm triangle of flesh at the opening of his shirt. One of her hands rested on his waist and the other was curled close to her. Idly, he moved his stockinged feet against hers.

But it wasn’t as easy as she had imagined to just lie there. His hands moved on her back, up and down. She found her own hand moving, too, over his ribs and back, to his upper arm below the cloth. The sound of his breath in her ear was intensely personal.

Slowly, he began to massage her scalp, a luxurious experience Jessie had missed. She let her head fall against his palm and smiled at the soft sound of amusement that rumbled from his chest. “Putty in my hands, woman.”

She made no reply.

After a time, he shifted a little, until he could touch her face, and applied the same exquisite pressure over her forehead and temples and along her jaw. The deft fingers were gentle and powerful at once. With her eyes closed, Jessie reached for the opening of his shirt, where the tantalizing warmth of his skin waited.

He caught her hand. “No. I have some discipline, but not that much.”

Jessie opened her eyes. “What about mine?”

He leaned closer, fingers brushing down her neck. “What about it?”

With one hand, she reached up and touched his mouth, brushing her fingers over the well-cut lines, feeling the firmness soften. “Kissing doesn’t count as making love,” she whispered and strained upward a little.

“No,” he said as he came closer. “No, it doesn’t.” He wrapped his hands around her and pulled her tightly against him. Their hips nestled together. Slowly he bent over her and brushed the lightest possible kiss over her mouth. “Like that?”

A pulse began to thump in her groin, in her breasts, in the lips he’d just teased. “No,” she said, and swallowed. “Try again.”

“Mmm.” This time, he hovered close for an instant, his lips bare millimeters away from her own, then his tongue brushed the edge of her lower lip and the corner and the bow.

He didn’t move away, but hovered again, close yet not touching her. Against her belly, she could feel Luke’s arousal pressing against his jeans, ready to burst the fabric to touch her, and she smiled at the way his teasing her aroused
him.
“Try again,” she repeated in a throaty voice.

“Hard to please, aren’t you?”

“Very.”

This time, he really kissed her, but with the same slow savoring he’d used a moment before. First his lips and hers, sliding and playing, then the slight opening and the barest brush of tongues. Jessie lifted her hand to his hip, unable to avoid touching him, and she arched a little against his erection. His hands clutched her shoulders tighter and his tongue unexpectedly plunged.

And suddenly, Jessie didn’t care anymore about the past or the future. Only now mattered. Only Luke and his hands and his mouth. “If we take off our shirts, it doesn’t count as making love, does it?” she asked breathlessly.

In the darkness, his eyes held a rich shine of light. He shook his head and reached for the hem of her sweater. Jessie lifted her arms and let him pull the fabric over her head. “Better,” she said.

Luke’s hands fell on the front clasp of her bra. “Wouldn’t you like to get rid of this, too?”

“Of course.”

He smiled as he released the clasp, then slipped it from her body. “Much, much better,” he said, touching her with both hands.

“Now you,” Jessie said.

“Well, if you insist.” He shed his shirt quickly and then he was against her, sleek and warm, his torso against her bared breasts. He held her that way, trapped between his legs and wrapped in his arms, skin to skin, their heads cradled side by side on the pillows.

“So now,” Luke said, his voice husky with a need he was trying to hide, “we have kissing. And bared breasts.” His hands cupped her lazily. “I suppose kissing breasts is out of the question?”

Jessie closed her eyes, knowing she was lost when he spoke like that, when he touched her like this… “I don’t know,” she managed to whisper over the clamor in her blood.

“Maybe I should try it, just to see.” His thumbs teased her almost irresistibly, and she felt him slip closer, felt his hair brush her chin.

And at last, at last, his mouth swept over the swell of her breast, edging close to the aroused tip. Wickedly, he barely kissed the aching point. “Like that?” he murmured, and his breath was as tantalizing as his touch.

Jessie could manage no more than a sigh.

“Or this?” As he had done with her mouth, he just tasted her nipple with small licks, tiny flickers of his tongue. But after a moment, it was as if he forgot to tease her, for he made a long, low sound deep in his chest and his mouth opened full and hot over her, took her inside.

She cried out softly and clutched his head, dragging him up to kiss him. “I think,” she said, reaching for the buttons of his jeans, “it’s getting too hot for any of our clothes.”

“Oh, yeah.” He groaned as she teased him, stroking his erection through the straining fabric of his jeans. “But I’m afraid that’s going to qualify—”

She didn’t let him finish. She kissed the words from his mouth, her hunger so deep she could not bear to think that it was anything but exactly right, exactly what she should do.

They knew each other so well, knew how to shift this way or that, to ease from the clothes in ways ungraceful but efficient. Socks and jeans and underwear were shed in haste, until there were only limbs entwined, and lips, and hands.