by Webb, Peggy
“But not as naive.” She curled her hands into the fine hair sprinkling his chest and pulled so hard, she wrenched a groan from him. “The old demons still drive you, just as new ones drive me. We’ll have our time together, Hunter, nothing held back, nothing denied. Then you will go your way and I will go mine.”
Her hips began a slow, seductive dance that brought him off the bed.
“Never.” He gripped her waist. “I will never leave you again.”
But she knew he would. The restlessness thrummed through him with the force of voodoo drums, and his skin carried the scent of far-off, secret places, of deep rivers and raging waterfalls and jungles rich with diamonds and ripe with decay.
The cadence of the drums beat through Kathleen, and she threw back her head and rode to their rhythms, rode until the drumbeats stilled and there was nothing except the velvet heat of flesh against flesh and the sweet, slow death of love.
Even as she sought to hold the driving secret forces at bay, she realized that Hunter had once more handed her the reins, given her the choices. With a subtlety born of instinct and genius, he’d passed the control to her. Heady with power, lost in passion, she carried them to the edge, so that their cries of release rose up simultaneously like two exotic birds taking flight.
She fell across his chest, hiding both their faces under her long hair.
“I didn’t have to muffle my cries in the pillow,” she said.
He caught her face between his hands and licked the sweat from her upper lip.
“You’ve dreamed of me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Tell me your dreams. I want to make them all come true.”
“Today?”
“This very minute. All of them.”
“My dreams are more sophisticated now than they were when I was sixteen.”
“I’m up for the challenge.”
He didn’t need words to tell her that. She could already feel him growing big inside her once more. She’d always marveled at his capacity for love, and it delighted her to know that in that area at least, he had not changed.
“Have you had many lovers, Hunter?”
“They were poor substitutes for you.”
“Who were they?”
“It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except you.”
“I’m jealous of them all.”
“I have ways of driving the jealousy from your mind.”
She held her hair back from their faces and arched her back, driving herself closer to the heat, offering herself like a willing sacrificial goddess in some timeless love ritual.
“Drive it from my mind, Hunter,” she whispered.
He rolled her onto her back, then stripped off her clothes, slowly, as if he were unwrapping a package he’d waited years to receive. Flushed and languid, she spread herself upon the bed, twisting her body at impossible angles to accommodate his questing tongue.
“I’ve always remembered the taste of you. Like clover.” His voice was thick, drugged, as he tore aside his own clothes. “I can never get enough of you.”
Spasms rolled over her like waves from the sea as he delved deep into her once more. Like the sweet red clover blossoms, she gave up her nectar and he sucked it with magnificent greed.
“I shall die of this pleasure,” she whispered.
“Not yet, my love. Not yet.”
He surged over her, ocean-like, covering her with breakers that tore her loose from her moorings and set her adrift. She caught him to her breast, content to drift through the sunlit morning and into the lazy afternoon, never giving thought to time or place. For her there was only the reality of Hunter and the explosive journey of the senses they’d embarked upon.
o0o
She lay curved against him, the sun through the blinds making patterns on her skin. Exhausted and flushed from an excess of love, she slept.
Hunter lifted her hair and kissed the nape of her neck, careful not to wake her.
You will leave me, she’d said.
Somewhere deep in the Congo was a faceless, nameless man who was his father. Hunter felt the old familiar tugging inside, heard the siren song beckoning him. He’d been so close, so many times. But each new lead had proved to be a wild-goose chase, a dead end.
The man who had given him life would never give him a name. Hunter would never know who he was, only that he bore a fictitious name his mother had found in a novel.
“Hunter?” Kathleen awakened slowly, her beautiful eyes focused on a point just beyond his face. Slowly she reached out and touched his cheek. “Thank you.”
He caught her hand to his face and held it there. “This is only the beginning for us, Kat.”
“Let’s not talk about the future.” She stretched with the languid grace of a cat, totally unselfconscious in her nakedness. “Let’s get dressed and prowl around the French Quarter in the sunshine. It is still shining, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. We’ll be Jack and Eddie Archibald.” She grinned wickedly at him. “Just brothers.”
“Which one are you?”
“I’m Jack. Remember Carl Sandburg’s Jack?”
They used to sit under their tree and take turns reading poetry to each other. Sandburg had been one of their favorites.
“I remember everything I ever did with you.”
Even in repose she had a ballerina’s grace. He traced the line of her body from breast to hip, delighted with the shivers that ran through her.
“Hunter, please.” She held his hands against her breasts for a moment, then forcefully pushed them away. “Would you keep me here in this bed all day?”
“Yes.”
“Next time, perhaps. But you have to bring food. Right now I’m hungry, and I want to go out into the streets and be a swarthy, swaggering son of a gun... and then I want to go down to the river.”
She felt the stillness in him. He knew without being told that she wanted to confront one of her demons.
“You’re certain?”
“I’m certain.”
Hunter left the bed, and she heard him scuffling around on the bedside table. “We’ll start with the mustache.” The bed creaked once more under his weight. “Allow me.”
On her knees in the middle of the bed, she puckered her lips and presented them to Hunter.
“Ready,” she said.
His kiss was swift and thorough. Her response was wanton and wild.
“You certainly are,” he said. “We could wait until tomorrow to go down to the river. Or next week.”
“Hunter!”
“All right.” He applied the mustache, spending more time than was absolutely necessary.
“How do I look? Will I pass for a boy?”
She scooted off the covers and paraded around the bed. So sassy and self-confident was she that he’d never have guessed she was blind.
“Not with that body.”
“Well, I don’t plan to go down to the river naked.” With hands on her hips she faced him, full front. “But I make no rash promises about what I’ll do once I get there.”
Hunter laced his hands behind his head and leaned back on the bed to watch her dress. Safe in the cocoon of his cottage, he felt eighteen again. But somewhere deep inside was the nagging certainty that he could never be eighteen again, that no matter how hard he tried, he could never recapture the youthful dreams, never remold the present into the past.
Kathleen leaned over and twisted her tumbled hair into a knot, then tried to stuff it under her cap. Dark glossy curls escaped around her face. With the mustache, she looked like a beautiful Botticelli painting that someone had tried to desecrate.
“Did I get it all tucked in?”
“Not quite.”
He left the bed and carefully tucked all the stray hair inside the cap. Then he leaned down and kissed her lips one last time.
“Hmmm,” she said. “You taste good, Eddie.”
“Thank you, Jack.”
Her laughter buoyed
his spirits as he put on his clothes. Perhaps, after all, they could recapture the dreams.
CHAPTER SIX
Her mustache itched. But Kathleen considered it a small price to pay for freedom.
She sat on the St. Charles streetcar listening to the talk swirl around her. Two women on the seat behind her were engaged in a conversation about someone called Louise.
“And I said to her, ‘Louise, if you don’t stop that drinkin’ and carrin’ on, Henry’s gonna leave you, then what you gonna do?’”
“What did Louise say?”
“Why, she reared back and looked at me with them big ol’ blue eyes of hers and said, ‘Margaret, Henry ain’t never gonna leave me ‘cause he’s got better sense. Where else would he find a woman that’d put up with his gambling?’”
Their voices told her what the speakers looked like, midforties or early fifties, sturdy, salt-of-the-earth women with careworn faces and stout hearts.
Hunter leaned close. “Are you okay?”
“Exhilarated. A bit apprehensive. Is anybody suspicious?”
“Nobody’s given you a second glance—except that young woman who got on two blocks back. Do you think we should ask her to join us for a beer?”
“Don’t you dare.”
She didn’t expect to be scared, but she was. For months she’d lived in isolation under the watchful eye of Martha. She knew where everything in her house was. Nothing was ever out of its place. If she put down a Braille book, she could come back two hours or even two days later and find it in that same place. Until Hunter came back into her life, her routine had been strict. Nothing unexpected happened. Everything around her was familiar and therefore comforting.
Now, as they hurtled through the darkness in a streetcar, the world around her seemed chaotic. If she reached her hand out, she didn’t know what she would touch. She couldn’t see the people around her. For all she knew, they could be muggers or would-be assassins. She had no idea where she was.
“I’m here,” Hunter said, as if he’d read her thoughts.
“I know. I’ll be all right in a while. Right now I’m suffering from sensory overload.” She squeezed his arm. “I guess I’m not as brave as I thought.”
“You’re the bravest person I know, Jack, a swarthy swaggering son of a gun.” There was a chuckle in his voice.
“Thanks, Eddie.”
They got out at Canal, and she held tightly to his arm while they made their way across the noisy street and into the French Quarter. The sounds and smells were almost overwhelming, the clip-clop of horses’ hooves, the wail of a lonesome sax, the staccato of tap-dancing shoes on the sidewalk, vendors calling out their wares, tourists jostling and chattering, the sweet aroma of jasmine mingled with the smell of bourbon and the acrid scent of tobacco smoke.
“We don’t have to keep going,” Hunter said.
“Yes, I do. I can’t hide forever.”
That’s exactly what she’d been doing, hiding. All the months since the explosion she’d told herself she was protecting her identity until she was ready to return to the world on her own terms, but now she realized she’d been afraid.
The sight she’d taken for granted was gone forever. True freedom would not come until she’d learned to adjust to a world she could no longer see.
“Let’s eat something and then I want to start all over,” she said.
“From what point?”
“From the point where we got on the streetcar. And then I want you to describe each street as we pass by, including the number of telephone poles, and tell me precisely how many blocks to Canal.”
“You can’t learn everything in one day, Kat.”
“No, but I can start.”
“If you weren’t wearing that mustache, I’d kiss you.”
“If you could find a deserted alley, I’d let you anyhow.”
“Hang on.”
Laughing, he hurried down the street, then ducked around a corner. Suddenly she found herself in his arms, his lips on hers.
“I’ve always wanted to kiss a woman with a mustache.”
“Liar.”
The kiss was intense and thorough. And it told her more vividly than words that she was not alone.
“Someday you’re going to be king of the world,” she whispered.
“And very soon you’re going to be the world’s greatest ballerina.”
They had shrimp po’boys at Napoleon House, then retraced their steps, with Hunter giving a running commentary all the way. Kathleen tried to remember every small detail. She couldn’t depend on Hunter forever, and she would never be truly free until she could make the journey alone.
She felt her Braille watch. Four o’clock.
“Do we have time to go down to the river?” she asked.
“Our special place is waiting there, just for us.”
This time they didn’t have to steal a boat to get to the bayou. Kathleen was almost sorry. She felt as if she’d stepped back in time. Alone with Hunter on the river, she put aside all her demons and let her mind drift in peace. Even though she could no longer see the sun on the water and watch the Spanish moss sway as their boat passed silently by, she could smell and she could hear. And most of all she could feel.
She felt wonderful, alive, full of possibilities. The boat rocked and swayed, and she lifted her face to the warmth of the sun.
“We’re rounding the bend into our private place, Kat. You can take off your hat if you want to. The mustache too. There’s no one to see except a pair of wood ducks floating around in the shallows.”
How like Hunter to understand that she needed to feel the breeze in her hair. She pulled off the mustache and the cap and immediately felt the lift of the wind.
“Let’s pretend, Hunter.”
It had been one of their favorite pastimes. You be king of the world and I’ll be your queen, she’d say. Or sometimes, when she was feeling especially sassy: I’ll be queen of the world and you’ll be my slave.
“What do you want to pretend, Kat.”
“That I see desire in your eyes.”
“We don’t have to pretend that. You do.”
They swayed to a halt and water sucked against the paddles as he pulled them into the boat. His hands were hot against her scalp as he wove them into her hair. She tipped her face up so she could feel his warm breath against her lips.
“I want to swim, Hunter.”
“You don’t have to do this, Kat.”
“Yes, I do. I won’t let fear win.”
Suddenly she trembled, remembering. The heat from the explosion had burned her skin and the waves had closed over her, black and frightening. She’d fought them, thinking it was her tears that made it impossible to see.
Hunter’s arms tightened around her.
“I won’t let you go, Kat.”
“Promise. Promise you won’t let me go.”
“I promise.”
They undressed, then he held her close as they slid into the water. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and buried her face against his neck.
“It’s all right, Kat. I’m here. I won’t let you go.”
“I feel like a coward.”
“Let’s get back into the boat. There’s no need to push yourself like this.”
“No. I must do this, Hunter.” She sank her fingernails into his upper arms. “I must.”
He kissed the droplets of river water from her face, starting with her eyebrows and working his way down to her mouth, all the while holding her in the protective lee of his body.
She took one last bit of courage from his kiss, then drew a deep breath.
“Now, Hunter. Let me go.”
“I’ll be within arm’s reach, Kat.”
But what if he weren’t? What if something happened, a sudden storm that separated them, or a heart attack or an explosion? She’d be left all alone in the dark water.
Kathleen bit her lower lip to still the panic.
“Now,” she whispered, and slowly
she felt herself drifting away. She fought the urge to flail her arms and cry out. One stroke, and then two. And she was swimming.
“To your left,” Hunter said. “I’m right beside you.”
“Don’t touch me. I have to do this on my own.”
“I won’t. Now... turn. That’s right.”
Even in the water, she could feel his reassuring presence. She concentrated all her senses on her task. Up ahead was the boat, a solid object changing the pattern of the waves. With increasing confidence, she swam toward it.
“Brava, Kat. Brava.”
Triumphant, she touched the side of the boat.
“One demon down, many more to go,” she said.
He slid through the water and wrapped his arms around her.
“Let’s forget about demons for a while, Kat.”
They came together with the force of a heat-seeking missile exploding its target. With Hunter buried deep inside her, the water became an ally. He slid against her, sleek and wonderful, and the water swirled around them, bathing them in mystery.
“I could float like this forever,” she whispered.
“It will be forever. I promise.”
In the darkest corners of her mind, where the truth dwelled, she knew it would not be so. Wanderlust filled him. She could smell it in the air and feel it in the sweet, hot jet he spilled in her.
But she kept her silence. She’d take the moment, and when the time came for him to leave, she’d pick up the pieces of her heart and pretend it wasn’t broken.
Hunter eased them into the boat, and she pulled him down to her once more.
“Feel the sun, Hunter? How long before it goes down?”
“About an hour, Kat.”
“Let’s not waste a minute of it.”
The rhythms of an ancient love song overtook them, and the boat began to sway. Kathleen opened her arms and her heart to the melody.
o0o
Rick Ransom was waiting for them when they got back home, his red hair gleaming in the feeble light from the naked bulb that hung over Hunter’s back door.
A sense of foreboding filled Hunter. Instinctively he put his arm around Kathleen, as if he knew that the news Rick brought would tear them apart.
“Hunter?” She tipped her face up toward his. “What is it?”
