“Make love to me, dammit, Corbett,” she managed to gasp.
“Not your mouth or the carving or even your fingers. Finish what we started,
what you said, or so help me, I’ll sue you for breach of promise.”
“Sure you would,” he said with a light, maddening laugh.
“You’d take that note to court.”
He extracted his finger from her and spun her around, and
with a surge of energy and entitlement, he ducked down, grabbed her thighs,
lifted her out of the water, essentially flinging her over his shoulder, and
marched out of the river and onto the bank, where he lowered her down onto the
rough ground.
He stood over her; the moonlight sparkled on his glistening
body as water ran off his chest, down his stomach, down to the thatch of pubic
hair, down his cock. So potently beautiful she nearly cried with anticipation
of his next move.
“You know why this is going to happen between us, Tara. Not
because of any crazy sexual agenda, not because I have an unfulfilled need to
violate you, or because you have some unfinished business with my cock. But
because we both want it—with each other. Because the two of us together equal
more than the sum of our parts.”
The moonlight seemed to reflect off his soul at his words.
Oh…
“You’re right, Joe.” She held up a hand to him. “Come lie
down with me.”
He dropped to his knees, straddling her legs, and ran his
hand gently over her abdomen. The sticks and stones digging into her back just
melted away.
“Right now the only thing in my head—in my life—is the
prospect of what I’m going to do to you. With you.” He leaned in closer and
whispered into her neck. “
For
you. Better than you’ve ever imagined
about me, about us. And better than I’ve ever fantasized about you.”
Her mind went into meltdown mode.
“You know, I’ve imagined some pretty extreme things about
you, Corbett.”
He gave her another smile of assurance. “This will be
better.”
“You sound damn sure of yourself,” she observed casually.
“Because it’s real. Because when I’m inside you, I’ll know
I’m there, consumed by you and you’ll know I’m there, you’ll feel me
penetrating you right down into the edges of your soul…”
She shivered at the depth of this concept, and he shifted
himself off her just to grab his shirt and reach into the pocket again and
extract one small packet.
She lay back and willed everything to move forward as it
should. As it was always ordained.
Because even more than when he’d had her bound and helpless,
she now felt helpless and bound. She couldn’t move even the smallest muscle, so
ready was she to let him take her over entirely.
“Rough or smooth,” she gasped, her voice tight with
anticipation, “quick and hot or long and slow.
Just do it
.”
Corbett grinned. He gripped her thighs and jerked them
apart. No teasing prod at her clitoris this time. His fingers found her entry
point and spread her relentlessly open, and abruptly, ruthlessly the urgency of
his cock pierced her—unyielding, scorching, adamant, inexorable—tearing away
all that remained of her sanity, firing her into a dimension she’d never yet
fantasized about, hurling her beyond all limits of what was even human—
Her hips jerked up to meet him, twisting, as he drove ever
harder, driving her back against the ground, tormenting and surely bruising her
flesh, front and back.
Exquisite. Exquisite pain. The bizarre expression held real
meaning, as he inflicted exquisite pain and excruciating pleasure on her, in
her. She could no more suppress a cry of anguished rapture than stop her heart
from beating, as she left the earth and her brain tingled and her soul went on
fire.
And she took him with her.
“Now…” he murmured, as they sat naked together on the shore.
Ever resourceful—except perhaps in the matter of condoms—he
had gathered some kindling and driftwood, produced a matchbook from his jeans
pocket and lit a fire on the narrow beach.
He sat with his legs bent, leaning his elbows on his knees,
while she lay back on her elbows. The fire shed its golden light on his skin,
warmed her against the night. Their thighs just touched.
“Where do we go from here?” he said.
Good question.
“Still want me to saddle up and roar out of your life
forever?” she said. “Or do we proceed to do it all over again?”
He smiled. “Later. For sure.”
…
and then I never want to see you again.
Which had he meant?
For a few moments, they let the sounds of the night fill the
space between them.
“Why did you come here? After all these years, what made you
come out here and find me? Not, I’m guessing, because you suddenly had a yen to
tie up some closure between us.”
“No…”
Now what? Proceed just as though the last few hours and
considerable amount of hard and lovely sex hadn’t happened? What did she want
from him now? And could she face it?
“Maybe this has something to do with it.” He groped about
the ground for his jeans and produced—shit—a crumpled business card.
“I found it among the condoms after I left you.” He held it
in the firelight to read it. “‘Leo Calloway. Calloway’s Fine Woodworking.’”
“Yeah…so?” Could anything on the card betray her?
“And written on the back…‘Joe Corbett, c/o King Children’s
Getaway, Lavinia Creek Valley.”
She held her hand out for it. Oh so casual, like it didn’t
matter. He lifted the card out of her reach.
“In Leo’s handwriting.”
Damn, he was observant. Even by firelight.
“So explain to me
Okay, girl, h
exactly
why you’re here, darkening my doorway, apparently with Leo’s
knowledge—blessing, even? Not for the sex. Leo would have your hide, and then
my balls, if he knew what we’d just done.”
“Consensually,” she pointed out.
“The last time I saw Leo, he never wanted to see me again.
And with good reason.”
“You mean because you left him in the lurch, or—did he find
out about our little farewell party?”
“Not that I know of. And as for my leaving—he’s never said
anything to you about why I went so suddenly? Why I had to?”
“Not a syllable.”
He let out a long telling breath and tossed a few more
sticks on the fire. It flared up.
“And you never wondered?”
“You mean, why you vanished off the planet?” She shrugged.
“I guess I thought about it now and then.”
Every day of her life for years.
“Leo said you found a better job. Left no forwarding
address.”
Corbett said nothing.
“Did you?” she prodded.
“No.”
“You left of your own accord?”
“No.”
She let the silence hang there.
“I broke my parole. Also Tim Jarmin’s jaw.”
“Jarmin!” Tara’s mind replayed that time she’d come home.
Jarmin—hell, she rarely gave him a moment’s thought—seemed to have had some
run-in with something bigger and stronger. Like a logging truck. She hadn’t
been interested enough to ask and no one had bothered elaborating. “I wish I’d
seen it.”
“Naw. Not a pretty sight. I also landed a highly
satisfactory blow to his gut.”
“I guess he deserved it.”
“He deserved worse.”
Really?
But she left it alone. For now.
“And you went back to jail.”
“Faster than you could cut a granola bar with a chainsaw.”
They sat silent for a moment as the fire flickered and
hissed.
“You know,” Corbett said, “sometimes I wonder if that was
his plan. He hated me, God knows why, since he was your dad’s star worker, and
I was just passing through on parole. But he made no secret that he didn’t want
any scum like me around the yard, so maybe he saw his chance to goad me into
attacking him, knowing I’d be back in prison like a shot, my future in ruins.”
“He took a big risk.”
“Aw, he probably thought he could handle a skinny guy like
me. He didn’t know I’d learned a lot about self-defense in Fermanagh.”
“You might have really hurt him.”
“I
did
really hurt him. And he sure didn’t plan on
the screwdriver in my hand.”
“Ouch…”
“I hadn’t realized it myself until too late. The puncture
wound was pretty serious.”
“And you never explained that he’d provoked you.”
“A lot of good that would have done. I had history.”
She let her mind be boggled, as if the earth had just
started spinning round the other way. Corbett’s supposed defection, her
father’s refusal to talk about it, Jarmin’s eventual fall from grace. Just one
thing, though.
“What
did
he say to you?”
“Not going there.” Door firmly shut.
But she knew, as if she’d eavesdropped on the whole event.
All kinds of sickness and shame and disgust assailed her. Jarmin had said
something unforgivable and gross and demeaning about her, so degrading and
offensive that Corbett had broken his jaw and punctured his gut without a
second thought. Or even a first.
She disembarked from that highly unpleasant train of thought
and boarded another.
“The letter. The promise to fuck me endlessly, hard and
merciless.” Her knees began to quiver again. So soon?
“I’d killed my chance at rehab,” he said, “any prospect I’d
ever had with your father, the one man who trusted me enough to give me that
chance. It was all blown out of the water, and to top it off, this was moments
after I’d been handed the prize of a lifetime—you. You wanting me. I dared to
believe you might even love me.
“I swear, Tara, if I hadn’t kept my head screwed on good and
hard that night, fighting my urges and your pheromones with every cell in my
body, I’d have had you down on the floor so fast, naked, your back covered with
sawdust, hard inside you, without a condom between us.”
Tara felt her throat tighten at the lost moment that would
have destroyed them both back then.
“I had condoms then, too.” She couldn’t help grinning as she
said it.
“Why am I not surprised?” A smile crossed his face, as
though also regretting the moment. “But hell, like I said, I was on probation
and you were on the brink of life, heading off to university, where you’d meet
every sort and condition of man, rich, smart, ambitious, all kinds of
advantages. I knew once you got out into the big world, you’d forget about me.”
“I wouldn’t. I didn’t. I mean, yeah, of course there were
other guys. Good men, smart, ambitious, loving. I had my pick of them. And I
took them, because I couldn’t have you.”
“And that’s why I wrote the letter. To blow away any
enchantment you might still feel over a dead-end loser like me. It worked,
didn’t it?”
“It worked.” She stared at the coals in the fire.
“And yet, six years later, here you are.”
“Here I am. And no, I never forgot you. After all the nice
guys and amazing lovers, I still dreamed about finding you. On bad nights, when
the world is old and in danger of drowning in all the evil and hatred inflicted
on it, I believe you wrote that note out of contempt and hurt. But on good
nights, when the moon’s in the right phase and I’ve had just enough good pot to
mellow out, I tell myself you wrote it to hide the love you felt for me,
forbidden fruit that I was.”
“But you didn’t come here today to find out which it was.”
“Leo sent me.”
“He sent you?”
She stared off into the darkness, just beyond the reach of
the firelight.
“Leo had a heart attack.”
“Shit! How bad? Is he—”
“He’s good. Better than we ever hoped. But of course he’s
got to take it easy. Forever.”
“And my guess is he’s nowhere near ready to retire.”
“He’s fifty-one. And just hitting his stride. The business
is doing better than ever, and part of it is due to what he started with you.”
“He’s still doing that? I thought after how that blew up in
his face—”
“It didn’t. Yeah, you blew parole and were history, but it
was still a good idea. He’s been doing it ever since. He arranges with
Fermanagh, and other places, to find young people—men and women—with potential
and give them a trial and training at Calloway’s. He’s had thirteen success
stories over the years and three, well, not so successful. “
“But what does he want with me?”
“When he had the heart attack, he and I sat down and worked
out how he could keep on going without it killing him, and out of the blue he
said, ‘Joe Corbett would be the one to do it.’”
“Do it?” Incredulity with a side of hope crept into his
voice. “As in, work for him?”
“Not just work for him. Work with him. Help run it. Leo
works hard at running the workshop and training the trainees and making it all
work out right. It takes just the right kind of guy, someone the trainees will
listen to and learn from. And Leo is, well, perfect at that.”
“Yeah. I remember.”
“And he remembers you were just like that yourself. He
always had his eye on you, back then.”
“Get out of here. It was never me. It was Jarmin—”
“It was
never
Jarmin. Yeah, he knew his stuff all
right, and worked hard, and he had it in mind to move up in the business, but
Leo never saw him as the right fit. For one thing, he hated the idea of having
you there, on parole from Fermanagh.”
“Don’t I know that.”
“So it fits. Jarmin figured you’d get a permanent job with
Dad once you finished your parole and move up the ladder. Maybe he did goad
you. Except for the screwdriver, he’d have suffered some aches and bruises and
come out smelling like a rose.”
“It certainly had the desired effect,” Corbett agreed
grimly.
“He showed his true colors about a year later, and he was so
fired, and Leo ran the place much more smoothly without him. And everything’s
been great. Until now, until the heart attack.”
“So, let me just get this straight. Leo hasn’t a clue about
anything that ever passed between us?”