by Geri Krotow
“You just said I was never there.”
“Because you open up more when you get defensive. It’s one of your weird superpowers.” She grinned and he laughed.
“There’s nothing to open up about.”
“But if there was? Would you tell me?”
“You’d be the first to know, Lauren.”
They talked for a little while longer about work, and Lauren’s enthusiasm for his work at The Refuge made the spot under his rib cage warm.
“You know, it makes sense that you like working there. You’ve always been the family caretaker.”
“That’s just what I want to hear, after working so hard to not be like that anymore.”
“I don’t mean in a codependent way. I mean that you have a very caring, compassionate side. Not all guys are in touch with that. The fact that you are, and you have your financial background, makes you a perfect fit to help people with their budgets. And to make sure the social service center gets the funding it needs.”
“Thank you.” He never sat well with praise, but from Lauren it meant a lot.
She slapped his knee. “Come on, did you see the pile of dishes in the sink? Whoever cleans it up gets first dibs on taking leftovers home.”
He stood with her and followed her into the kitchen to help wash dishes. This had always been a comfortable place for him, but with Jena here, it was even more so.
Jena added to everything he did. He poured soap into the dishpan and sighed. Leaving for Atlanta would have been a lot easier before working with her.
Chapter 14
The day passed quickly, with few of the uncomfortable relationship questions she’d expected. Jeb’s family was the loving, kind sort that she imagined he’d lacked as a young child.
On the drive home she relaxed into the leather passenger seat of his car, watching the houses blur past the window. “It’s nice to not drive. I forget how much I love the colors here.”
Jeb stopped at a red light. “But you could get tired of the simple life again, Jena.”
She turned to him, met his searching gaze. “I’m where I want to be. If I were to get bored, I’d still stay here, in NOLA. This is home for me. Look at your grandmother—she’s lived here her entire life. I want to be her in fifty years.”
Jeb shifted the car back into gear and drove. “A nice sentiment, but with the weather changes I don’t know how many more storms before Grandma’s house is gone. We salvaged her china and heirlooms by moving them upstairs the past several floods. Fortunately, she hasn’t had water in the house again like during Katrina. But it’s a matter of time, I’m afraid.”
“I get worked up when I think about NOLA underwater.” She imagined the digitally redrawn city maps that projected into the next century. “The Refuge might have ten or twenty years, tops, if the climate and precipitation predictions hold true.”
“We don’t have control over that, though, do we? I say keep working at The Refuge, shore up its resources, and if the day comes that you have to move it, you will.”
“I suppose you’re right.” As if caused by their words, big raindrops splattered onto his windshield. He turned a corner where he should have gone straight to drop her at her place.
“Did you miss that turn on purpose?”
“Uh-huh.” A small smile came to his full lips. “I have something I want to do with you, but I wasn’t counting on the rain.”
“Do you have an umbrella in here?” She craned her neck to check out his backseat.
“Yeah, under your seat. We’ll be good.”
* * * *
Jeb felt the relief of storm clouds clearing when they walked out of Grandma Cormier’s place. Not that he’d expected his siblings to be jerks, but he wasn’t sure how they’d react to Jena, or how she’d react to them.
His mother couldn’t stop espousing AA jargon if she tried. He knew it was a good thing—a very good thing, as it had kept her sober all these years and allowed his youngest siblings to have a decent high school experience. They never had to worry if they brought a friend home that Mom would be splayed out on the stained sofa, passed out in a vodka haze. Or wake up with the sun because of Camellia’s Sunday hangover rage, ruining a much-needed rest.
Driving through the older part of New Orleans with Jena, during a pouring rainstorm, was comforting and right.
He parked the car on a street familiar to them both, then reached under her seat to retrieve his umbrella. Her fingers touched his scalp, then his cheek, and when he straightened, he leaned in to give her what she sought, what he ached for—he kissed her.
Jena’s lips were the softest thing on Earth, besides the undersides of her breasts. He alternatively licked and kissed her mouth, his tongue darting in and out, playing with hers. When she leaned into him and took over the kiss, her tongue stroking the inside of his cheek, pressing against his tongue with hers, he lost all sense of location. All he wanted was her in his arms. The rain shower turned into a deluge, the sound of the water hitting his car roof drowning out their verbalizations.
He pulled back, his cock throbbing for her, unable to take her the way he needed to in the cramped quarters. “Jena.”
“Move your seat all the way back, quick.” Her pupils dilated, her breath warm and sexy on his mouth.
He reached down and hit the button to ease the seat as far back as it could go, which wasn’t much. “There isn’t enough room, not with the steering wheel.” Fuck. He wanted her so badly.
“Sure there is. Come on over to my side.” She’d moved her seat back, too, and turned around and pressed her back against the windshield with her bottom on the dash, leaving a small space for him to maneuver over the center console and slide into her seat.
He groaned as his head hit the sunroof and his knee hit the gearshift.
“There you go.” As soon as his ass hit the passenger seat, Jena straddled him, her dress hiked up around her waist. He reached for her thighs and stroked down to her knees.
“Jesus, you’re going to kill your knees, Jena.”
“Shut up, Jeb.” She reached into her purse, behind her on the dash. “Here. Let’s get this on, shall we?” She ripped open the foil packet, and his erection strained against his pants.
“Wait.” He had to get his pants unzipped. He pulled out his cock, thick and heavy with desire for her, and took the condom from her hands. Close quarters called for desperate measures, and he was desperately on fire for her. The heat of her pussy wafted over his hands as he donned the condom, and he couldn’t help but stroke her wetness, plunge his fingers into her.
“Jeb!” She ground out his name as she clenched and unclenched around his fingers, her sex wet and wanting. For him. Her fingers dug into his shoulders and she writhed above him.
“Now, babe.” He removed his fingers and immediately thrust up and into her, gripping her hip bones through her skirt and holding on to guide her over his cock as he bucked, entering her to the hilt each time.
Her cries were muffled by the heavy rain, and he felt nothing but her pussy clamping around him, his sex throbbing as he pounded, she pounded, they slammed together in the small space while the world rained down around them.
“Oh. My. God.” She cried out his name as her pussy held on to his cock, making him crazy with lust, crazy for her. Within one or two pulses of her sex, he split apart, coming with a thunderous shout, heedless of her eardrums, only feeling his release, his connection to her.
It took them several minutes to come down from the high, from what they’d created together. Still joined, her forehead was on his shoulder and he turned into her nape, breathing in the scent of her hair.
“Jeb.” His name, whispered like a prayer, made something in his chest painfully constrict before it released in total relaxation. Total trust.
He stroked her back, kissed the side of her throat as their breath intermingled
, the inside of the car a cocoon of intimacy against the storm outside. They could be in the biggest bed in the largest mansion in NOLA and it would still be like this. Jena. Him. Together.
“That was…” She drifted, her nipples still hard and pressed against his chest.
“No words needed, babe.” He gently lifted her hips, slid out from her. “I don’t know if getting out of this will be as quick as getting into it.”
She laughed, low and throaty. The joy of a satisfied woman. It was trivial compared to the depths of his feelings for her, but he enjoyed a burst of pride in knowing he’d made her come, that he’d helped bring her to this satisfied state.
“We’re okay. I can get out of the car first, then you come. I mean, get out.” Blue eyes on his, full, swollen lips against her flushed face.
“Can you reach the umbrella?”
“Yes.” She leaned over him, toward the back of the car, and retrieved the bright green umbrella. Her breasts pressed against his face and he kissed them, sucked a nipple into his mouth through her thin blouse and flimsy bra.
“Jeb, stop.” But she didn’t move away. Reluctantly, he stopped with the nipple-teasing and eased her back, her spine a C-shape along the windshield.
“You’re lovely, Jena.” He unlocked the passenger door. “Are you ready?”
She nodded, then flipped the handle and let the door swing wide. Sheets of rain poured down, but the old golf umbrella gave them a bit of respite as they unfolded out of the car.
“You okay with wet feet?” He saw that there was no avoiding the puddles.
“Totally.” She smiled, her delight at a walk in the rain shining in her eyes. “I’m so glad you thought of this.”
He remained silent as they picked their way across the street and aimed between two larger homes. “This” was the Boudreauxes’ old house and property, and he knew she loved it here. The peace in the sheltered garden between the two older houses had been a playtime escape when they were kids, a place to sneak a beer as teens, and then, when they discovered the delights their bodies gave one another, they’d used it as their personal make-out place.
Jeb knew she’d love coming here, but he wasn’t so sure how Jena felt about what he wanted to look at together. He wasn’t sure if she remembered it, or if the memory was another piece of her former self tossed aside when she decided to take part in the highest levels of secret government operations.
Even if she didn’t mind the reminder of their shared history, would she be as thrilled as he was to see it again?
* * * *
The first thing Jena thought of when Jeb pulled in front of her old home was the tree. But he didn’t mention it, and their need had outweighed her curiosity. She wanted to ask him, point blank, if they’d come here to see the tree. If yes, why? What was the point of bringing her back here?
Was the tree even still here?
They walked under the arbor, past the benches that had held them at eight and ten years, ten and twelve years, fifteen and seventeen. Past the grove of trees where they’d dared one another to take their tops off the summer she’d turned sixteen. After that, they’d not been able to touch one another without igniting. And they’d kept it from her brothers, from both of their families.
Until today. Now Jeb’s family knew that he had her in his life. But what was she to him? He’d called her a good friend, held her hand in front of them. And he’d just made the most incredible love to her.
Love, deeply complicating their sexual chemistry.
“It’s way overgrown, isn’t it?” His low whisper sent shivers across her damp skin, arousing her as if they hadn’t fucked like rabid raccoons in his car only minutes earlier.
“It got this way sometimes, when my parents let it go.” Or when the gardeners quit, tired of Hudson and Gloria’s patronizing manner. “It’s hard to believe they’re the same people who lived here, isn’t it?”
He stared at her, his expression grave. “They aren’t the same. They’ve really changed, Jena.”
“Mmm.” She relished the way her hand fit into his, snug and perfectly connected at their palms. No other man had ever made her so happy, given her the sense that she mattered.
“I hope they don’t have dogs.” He pushed through the small, hinged gate at the end of the arbor and into a garden that sprawled into long stretches of green, the short grass rough underfoot. Puddles of rainwater surrounded them and she gave the ground a closer look.
“I hope the snakes aren’t out with this rain.”
“Come on.” As if he’d scanned the path on the side of the yard, he led her to the red clay garden path that unwound into several hundred yards amongst the brown, dried out shrubs. “I’m counting on the rain to keep anyone from seeing us.”
They stayed close to where the trees grew, to the place they’d been told as kids to avoid. People have gone into those woods and never come out. Hudson had been clear about why they needed to avoid the very path they walked on now. She laughed. “Remember when my dad put the fear of God into us to stay out of here? It wasn’t about snakes or stalkers, was it?” she shouted over the rain.
She felt Jeb’s chuckle through her hand, the deluge drowning out the sound of his laughter. “It was more about my snake, if you get my drift.”
“Do you think he knew what we were doing back then?”
“We were two healthy teens. Your parents have a lot of skeletons in their armoires, but they were never stupid.”
They kept walking, drawing closer to where they’d once sworn to be friends forever.
A flutter deep in her heart let her know that what she’d hoped, what she’d been afraid to wish for, was true. Jeb remembered the tree. And that meant he remembered how sacred it had once been to them. As wonderful as the day had been—the last several days, in fact—Jeb was due to leave for Atlanta within a week. She had to look at this as a closure, as a way to let him go—but in truth she had no idea how she ever could.
Another five minutes of walking and they were upon it. The centuries-old oak reached its moss-blanketed arms to the sky, out on either side as a consummate hostess, and down along the ground, offering its oldest, lowest slung branches as steps to reach higher, away from the ground, away from family interference.
He climbed up on the largest bough first, then reached back to help her up. Jena could have easily climbed on her own, but she wanted to feel his touch, the urgency with which he wanted her to see it again. As if no time had passed, as if their lifetimes had passed.
“Here.” He stepped to the side, onto a wide, flat limb that easily bore his weight. “I don’t know if it’s dry enough to sit.”
She knelt on the limb she was balanced upon, not an ounce of fear in her at the height of ten or twelve feet. This was her childhood and adolescence, all here in this tree. Her fingers and palm pressed against the mossy upholstery of the branch and she looked up at him. “It’s perfectly fine.” She eased herself into a crouch before she shimmied onto her bottom and sat against the humongous trunk. Jeb sat across from her, on an equally sturdy branch. Their knees touched; the tree bore their weight as if they were no more than tiny, fragile hummingbirds. Her heart felt as delicate as one, its beats as swift as the bird’s wings. Her glance caught on Jeb’s gaze, and for a moment or twenty—it didn’t matter—they were once again thirteen and Jeb had climbed up here with her to show her what he and his Swiss Army knife had created.
She gasped when she saw it. It was as dominating a feature as when Jeb had first carved it. The heart was at least fourteen inches across—she remembered how he’d pulled out a wooden ruler and demonstrated how it could fit inside the shape. He’d been so exacting about numbers, even back then. The two rounded tops were smoothed with the years, moss covering all but the inside, where the wood had darkened. There, in faint lines made with the sharp point of his pocketknife, were their initials: JDV ∞ JB. Even then, Jeb
had been all about the math.
“It’s made it through a lot of years and weather, that’s for certain.” His voice sounded as if he were in a trance, caught in the Spanish moss web of the past. Jena reached out and felt it with her fingertips, letting the smooth edges tell her that through so much, the tree had lived.
“It survived Katrina.” A lot of trees had, of course, not just this old oak, but just as many guardians of the bayou had fallen, their stories crushed under the weight of the hurricane.
“And it’s still here for us now.” Jeb’s voice cracked and she shot him a glance. He didn’t look like he was crying, but she knew he felt the power of it, too.
The strength of the time that filled the air around them stood still while racing ahead. Forever. This was what forever felt like.
She jerked her hand back from the trunk and wavered on the bough. Jeb grasped her knees with his hands. She looked down and saw the contrast between the strength of his hands and her knees. She covered his hands with hers and raised her face to his.
“Shh.” His finger was on her lips, keeping her words inside. Did he think she was going to ruin the moment by saying something he couldn’t reciprocate?
“It’s the same, hear it?” Jeb’s voice reflected awe as he returned his hand to her knee. She’d never felt so safe, so protected. They each sat on their own limb, extensions of this ancient tree that joined at its trunk, making a secure seat big enough for several people. They weren’t more than twelve feet off the ground, but it could have been a hundred feet, surrounded by more branches and the hush that only this tree bequeathed on the garden. Then she heard it: the far-spaced but definite creaks as the huge oak swayed infinitesimally in the bayou breeze.
Their lovemaking in the car had been furtive and lust-driven, a quest to reach their climaxes as quickly and forcefully as possible. This was the antidote, in terms of touch and subtlety, and yet Jena felt like Jeb was making love to her all over again.
