Her fingers touched the mark he'd left last night.
"The man who put this here ought to have the courage to finish what he's started," she whispered. "I waited four long years for the right man, to give him the one thing that's always been mine, and I swear, Billy, if you don't take it tonight, I won't wait anymore. Forget our fathers. I'm here. Think of me. Do the one thing for me nobody but you can—"
He made a lunge upward for her, pulling her down against him, rolling her over on her back, imprisoning her under him.
"I hope to God this is really what you want," he panted, "because this is forever. No going back."
He kissed her throat, her face, her breasts, as he pulled the clothes from her.
"Billy, I-—"
"No, don't say any more." He caught her face in his hands, holding her still for his touch. "That mouth of yours is goin' to kill me."
So she told him without words, her hands yanking and pulling at the shirt, pushing it off his shoulders and down to his wrists where he impatiently shook it loose to let it fall on the floor, along with her dress that he dropped.
His hands skimmed her body in the darkness, touching, caressing, feeling.
"I knew you'd be like this," he whispered brokenly. "So many years dreamin' it. Maybe I'm dreamin' now."
Struggling against the pleasure of his fingers, she bit his shoulder a little, loving the salty taste of his skin; she kissed him, a long line of caresses across his chest. Her hands fell to his blue jeans, to the belt, and hesitated before they fumbled with the loops.
Then his own hands came down to unfasten the belt, and his lips returned to hers as he kicked the jeans away.
Shiloh was nearly delirious with sensation when he came down on her, his legs forcing hers apart. Then she began to shiver under the command and the power of his long, strong limbs. What had she done?
"You're afraid," he whispered, tenderly against her face. "Well, I am, too, baby. Scared of touching you, of ruining your life, of the way I'm hurting inside. It's like trying to keep on talking, but it's over a loud noise that won't go away. All I know is that I want you, Shiloh. I'm certain of that. That, and I love you. Oh, God, I love you."
She'd been waiting for the words for weeks, trying to get up the courage to say them herself. But here, tonight, she'd forgotten her need to hear them in her need to help him.
"I love you," he'd said. Given when she'd least expected them. Maybe given out of other emotions.
But he'd said them, nevertheless.
"Billy," she whispered the word against his face, tangling her fingers in his hair to pull him down to her. "I know it will hurt. It doesn't matter. Because I love you, too."
He laughed against her lips, an exultant, aroused sound.
Maybe it should have been fast and intense and maybe it should have ended in a quick burst of gratified passion on his part; that was what she expected. That would have been in keeping with the rest of the day.
But something in Billy had changed. He had calmed and focused on the here and now. She had his attention. He knew exactly what he was supposed to do. No rushing now. No panic.
Billy Bob Walker was a man with a slow hand—and the patience to use it.
Hadn't she known it? Seen it every- time he touched something living?
He meant to prevent any pain, trying so hard she fought back any sound that might have let him know he wasn't entirely succeeding. He was bold, too. Twice in embarrassment, she caught his broad, brown wrist to keep him back. Once he whispered a protest when she pushed his hand away, but he reluctantly obeyed.
And at last, when Sewell and Sam were both long forgotten, when his hair clung to his neck wetly, when his back was slippery with sweat, when her hands had quit digging into his shoulders from hurt and were clinging for another reason, he began to move, his actions strong and purposeful, compulsive, spasmodic, beyond his control.
"Shiloh, I can't . . . wait . . . anymore. Hold me. Hold me."
His desperation fueled what his gentling hands and warm mouth had started. Just as she relaxed against him, expecting nothing more than these pleasurable, tactile sensations, the low-burning fire inside suddenly sparked, and kindled, and exploded in one totally unexpected, passionate blaze of glory.
"Bil—ly." His name was a stunned, broken whimper of sound as she arched against him.
When it was over, she was wrapped around his long body, her face buried in his wet shoulder where he'd collapsed against her. She was shaking so hard she might have had a chill, and the tremors inside her seemed to reach to her toes. His heart thundered against hers.
They lay there a moment, afraid to turn loose of each other, afraid to face each other.
Shiloh was embarrassed at her own emotions. Above her, Billy wondered why she was so still.
Oh, Lord, she felt so good.
Then she moved beneath his heavy weight, and he loosened his hold on her to lift himself and try to see her hot face in the darkness.
"Billy." Her whisper was as shaky as she was on the inside. "I'm not sure . . . what happened—"
He felt relief spreading to his heart. Out of all this rotten, horrible day, he'd done one thing right. He'd given pleasure to his virgin bride.
". . . and I don't know how something that hurt so much in the beginning could end feeling like—like that," she whispered, her voice shy and flustered.
"Good," he said huskily, rolling on one side to cuddle her against him. "Good."
After all these years, he knew what it was like to make love to Shiloh Pennington. Shiloh Walker.
It was choking tenderness and roaring passion and peace. Peace, unfurling inside him like the leaves of a plant when it was left in the moisture of the greenhouse.
Outside, the rain burst from the sky in another torrential downpour, slapping the windows of the Dreamland Motel where two lovers lay wrapped in a warm bed, protected for a while from the storms of the world.
16
Shiloh watched his face as he lay sleeping, this man to whom she had tied her life, and wondered with a panicky sense of fright how she could have known him so little.
Had she married a stranger?
She'd spent countless nights wondering—consumed with curiosity and something far deeper—about what it might be like to have Billy Bob.
Well, now she knew, and he was far more than she'd ever expected, even not knowing exactly what to expect. The lazy drag of his tongue across her skin, the shocking touch of his hands in a hundred places at once, the strength of his body—they were proof that Billy had the deeply sensual nature she'd always sensed without really understanding it.
It made him nearly a threat to Shiloh, unless he was willing to give his everything, just as he'd been demanding from her without words from the first second he'd touched her tonight. He'd allowed her no halfway measures, had somehow gotten her to act and react in ways that were not like her at all.
She had behaved like somebody new. She felt like somebody new. Freshly born, sprung out of the heat and the wetness of the lush night.
Not Shiloh anymore.
Somebody different, somebody whose skin stung and tingled from the feathery web in which he had spun her, a web of kisses and caresses and whispered endearments.
Almost afraid, she touched her fingertips delicately to the skin of her stomach, exploring, trying to find the source of the torching flame he'd created within her, the fire with which he branded her.
So ferociously dangerous to lie here like this, her nude body brushed only by the tangled sheets in the darkness of the room. So strange.
Then her fingers struck his as his hand rested heavily on her, daring even in his sleep. His palm was rough against the slight swell of her lower abdomen, and the calloused fingertips were spread open upon her, each hard pad leaving its own tiny imprint in her blood.
A wave of fiery heat swept over her, radiating from his fingers, part remembered passion and part pure embarrassment.
She had stripped her clothes
away for him, begged him to make love to her, trapped his hands above his head to try to hold him captive.
She rolled her head away from his sleeping face, from the strong line of his cheeks and his nose, from the sight of his hair as it capped his face instead of being brushed severely away, as it usually was.
Shiloh wondered if she'd ever be able to face him again. What she'd done—what he'd done to her— seemed suddenly too forward and too intimate to be borne.
How had her reckless act of rebellion—her joke of a marriage—brought her to this strange room, this motel, this bed, this act?
Billy Bob Walker himself was a confusing mass of contradictions.
A bruiser in a fight, but a coaxing, tender lover.
A careless good timer who cried harsh, racking tears.
Shiloh twisted in the darkness to look at him, her legs brushing his.
This close, his nose was not perfect after all. There was a tiny bump at its bridge that made it strictly masculine. She traced it tenderly with her finger.
He had made her see him in a new way, forcing a respect for him as a man out of her, forcing her to give way to his dominance for a while.
But it had been a gentle dominance.
It didn't matter that she'd bought him straight from jail, that he'd taken her forcibly out of herself during that painful, wonderful first lovemaking, or even that she was going to be embarrassed to face him tomorrow.
Billy Bob Walker belonged to her, and she meant to keep him.
He was sitting in a chair watching her when she awoke, the morning sun hot on her face as it flooded through the open, long windows at the back of the room.
Shiloh stared at the lush greenery outside where it still dripped from yesterday's rain, the drops glittering like jewels, and tried to orient herself. When she moved, the soreness of her body, the pain of muscles flexing against muscles—all of that brought memories of the night before.
Sitting up with a start, she met his eyes across the motel room and flushed hotly, scrambling for the sheet to hold up to her bare breasts.
In the silence, her heart pounded in her ears as she stared at him, wide-eyed.
He looked away, his own cheeks flushed. Was Billy— Billy—embarrassed by their lovemaking, too? she wondered dazedly before his face broke into a tiny, lopsided smile.
"Won't even let a man enjoy the view, will you?" he asked ruefully, standing to walk to the bedside and tower over her.
"Hello," she whispered, staring up at him.
He laughed. "Hello, baby." Then he raked his hand back through his hair. "I took a shower and got dressed before it hit me—I don't have a comb, or a toothbrush, or a razor."
"There's a comb you can use in my purse," she stammered, then drew a gulping, calming breath as he turned away to look for her bag.
He wasn't all over her, at least—that was good, wasn't it? And in his eyes, there was no hint of triumph nor of the knowledge he'd gained about her last night.
In fact, he seemed nearly reserved.
Billy Bob, reserved? The thought was staggering.
"Are you hungry?" He asked the question as he raked the comb roughly through his hair, not paying much attention to the way it fell.
"I guess so. But I'd rather get up and take a shower myself," she said tartly. He had a scrubbed-clean look;
Shiloh had a horrible feeling she looked like a grub worm. "Okay."
There was a long pause.
"Billy," she said at last, patiently, "would you turn around? So I can get up?"
"I'm not goin' to jump on you just because I see you without clothes, Shiloh."
"Well, that takes a load off my mind," she retorted weakly. "Billy, please, you're embarrassing me. You've got on all your clothes. I don't. It feels unequal, or something."
His teeth were a flash of white in his brown face as he laughed. "Want me to take off mine, then?"
"No." The thought dyed her cheeks; it had been bad enough to be so vulnerable with him in the dark. Broad daylight had to hold even greater fears. "Oh, never mind," she said in sudden determination, wrapping the sheet tightly to her, coming first to her knees in the bed, then to her feet beside it.
Shiloh winced a little as she moved away too quickly and Billy's laughing face quieted and stilled.
"I'm sorry," he said abruptly, turning from her.
Afraid to ask him why he was apologizing, Shiloh made her way over to the bathroom and into its privacy.
Why didn't he touch her?
She refused to make any more moves toward him today; God knew she'd made more than her share last night.
Like it or not, she was stuck with him.
The frustrated, aggravated thought hit Billy as he paced the long porch that ran the length of the motel and waited for Shiloh to finish dressing.
He'd acted like a jerk yesterday, and a big fool last night.
He'd broken down and cried—cried—like a blubbering baby.
Even his ears felt hot at the thought. Damn, damn, damn.
He wondered how Shiloh could bear to have such a sniveling idiot as he'd been anywhere near her.
Billy Bob was sickened by himself; it stood to reason she was, too.
He'd been awake since before dawn, trying to figure it out; along about six A.M., he'd fitted all the pieces together. She'd let him make love to her for one of two reasons: either she felt sorry for him, or she'd come this far with him, expecting him to behave like a man, that she felt she couldn't go back, and the only thing left to do was go all the way.
Which reason was worse?
He closed his eyes, letting the words she'd said—"I love you, Billy—" swamp him, letting the mad delirium she'd caused with her kisses and her body completely claim him.
So sweet, so wild.
He wasn't sure he believed she really loved him, but he knew that there was something in her, some emotion, for him. She was his wife. He had to try to build this beginning into something lasting, to make their worlds mesh. "
Could she live with him and like it?
Could she forget the wallowing mess he'd been last night and remember only the way they'd made love, the way he'd tried his damnedest to go slow?
Could he survive if she walked out on him? She might—that was his nightmare.
He hoped he would; he wasn't going to turn loose of her until he found out all of the answers.
Instead, he was going to take her to Mama, and to Grandpa.
To life the way real people lived it in Briskin County. And to his own bed, not this one in a rented, sterile room.
Today, he was going to take his wife home. He was going to be, not Sewell's bastard, but Shiloh's husband.
The blue dress was a little rumpled, and she hated putting yesterday's undergarments back on, but the fact was that Shiloh had no choice, and no other clothes, either.
What in the world was she going to do? There were eighteen dollars in her purse and three charge cards, probably already worthless if Sam had had his way.
She was frowning at her own dilemma when she walked out of the motel and'found Billy frowning, too, at the car.
"Is this yours?" he asked without preliminary.
"No. It's my fa—Sam's. I was saving my money to make my own down payment on my next car. He thought I had thirty-five hundred dollars, remember? I couldn't tell him I'd used the money for something else."
"Great. Now we're drivin' Pennington's vehicles." Billy raked his hand through his hair in exasperation. "Well, it can't be helped. We'll take it back to the bank as soon as we get the truck, okay?"
"You think Sam will want this car back?" She hadn't thought about it much; whatever her father had was hers. Had been hers.
Billy laughed. "Honey, I know it. And even if he didn't I wouldn't want you to keep it. You're my wife, aren't you?"
He searched her face quizzically for a minute before she nodded.
"Come on. Let's get some breakfast." He reached out his hand for hers, pulling her to the driver's si
de, letting her slide in before he followed her.
The July morning was unexpectedly cool rather than muggy, as yesterday had been before the rain. Along the two-lane highway that led west to Seven Knobs, late black-eyed Susans bloomed.
The pecan grove was the first sign of Walker Farm. It took up the acreage that bordered the road, and just beyond it was the fruit stand itself. Hanging baskets-fuchsia, begonia, ivy, spider plant, fern—dangling from the extended, wide roof of the stand greeted visitors with a blaze of verdant color.
And all around on tables and in crates was produce of the season; north Mississippi grew it in plentitude: ripe, red tomatoes; their yellow counterparts called Golden Boys; fresh, sweet corn still wrapped in its green covers, still dangling its silky white tassels; two kinds of peaches, spread into bountiful heaps of yellows and reds; baskets of bumpy brown cantaloupes and of crisp green fingers of beans and of sticky, fat, bullet-shaped yellow squash; watermelons sprawled on the floor, one round striped one cut open to reveal its wet, ruby-red sweetness.
And presiding over the harvest was Willie Walker himself, sitting in the rocking chair he kept on the corner porch of the place, under the shade of an overhanging pecan tree, right beside the money box that stayed hidden under an old upside-down washtub where he laid his fan when he got busy talking to visitors and customers.
Billy stopped the Cadillac just past his grandfather, pulling off the road into the shade. Then he looked down at Shiloh.
"Come on. Don't be scared," he coaxed, seeing the nervousness in her face. "Grandpa won't bite."
"Aren't you scared?" she asked.
"Nope. Things will be fine, you'll see," he promised, ignoring his own nagging little apprehension.
Billy Bob Walker Got Married Page 25
