of the old pharaohs. He looked lean and tall and strong and had his arm casually draped over Nash’s shoulder. Both men were naked in the picture but for their smiles.
So lo and behold, here was the reason Nash came down to Bride Island every chance he got. Levi could think of no other explanation for them to be together in such a pose in the picture. A black man in South Carolina did not sit around naked on a beach next to a white man without a compelling reason. If they were sleeping together, that was a very compelling reason.
Nash...his brother. His dead brother.
“Why’d you do it, man?” Levi asked the picture. “You look pretty damn happy. What happened?”
Levi wasn’t glad Nash was dead, but he was glad no one was around to answer that question. With the Maddox family involved, maybe Levi didn’t want to know.
Levi considered burning the picture but thought better of it. There were two men in the photograph, and while one of them was dead and gone, the other might be alive and he might want this picture someday. Levi found a flat tin cigar box full of ballpoint pens and stuck the picture in there, facedown. Whoever the man in the picture was, he was important to Nash, but there was no need for Tamara to see it.
His inspections over, Levi walked to the front porch and opened the door.
“No wolves,” he said. “Only one spider and he and I signed a peace treaty. You want to come in?”
Tamara gave him a wan smile. She came toward him and put her arms around him, which was unexpected.
“Thank you,” she said, and he slowly returned the embrace. Since she already had her arms around him, he lifted her off her feet playfully, swinging her over the threshold.
“The house looks good,” Levi said. “No electricity. Probably needs a new fuse. I’ll have to run into town tomorrow and get some stuff.”
“Mr. Berry said the place blows fuses a lot. Storm surges and bad lines or something.”
“We’ll be fine with the lantern for one night. But watch your step on the stairs. Bedrooms are upstairs. Bathroom downstairs.” Levi left her with the lantern and brought in the bags and duffel from the porch. The downstairs was pitch-black now. Levi saw only a slant of light sliding down the steps. Dammit. He’d meant to warn her before she went upstairs.
He hurried up the stairs and found her in the girl’s room—her room, or the room that ought to have been her room had fate hung a left instead of a right. It hadn’t taken her long to realize the room’s purpose. She sat on the bare mattress by the window, her fingertips stretched out and touching the nose of the horse statue.
The lantern sat at her feet and in the soft shaking light, with her feet barely grazing the floor in a room made for a child, she looked like a little girl. She had a little girl’s tears on her cheeks and a little girl’s heartache in her voice when she said his name.
Levi stood in front of her and Tamara leaned forward, wrapping her arms around him.
“He was going to bring me here?” Tamara asked.
“I guess he was.”
“Why didn’t he do it?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said, the term of endearment coming out before he could stop it. “Something happened and he couldn’t go on. But he must have loved you a lot to put this place together for you.”
“I wasn’t even his daughter.”
“But he loved you all the same.”
She pulled back and looked around. Levi handed her his handkerchief and she wiped at her face.
Then she laughed.
“What?” he asked.
“I haven’t read any of those books since I was ten. And I hate the color pink.”
Levi laughed, too.
“You can take the other room,” Levi said. “It’s blue. I’ll take your pink room. I think it suits me.” He grabbed the pink cowgirl hat off the doorknob and pushed it on his head. “My color, right?”
“You look like the Mad Hatter,” Tamara said. She stood up and took the hat off his head and pushed it down on her own. “I’ll sleep here. Daddy made this room for me, after all.”
“Come on, Alice.” He took the hat off her and tossed it on the dresser. “It’s been a long day. Let’s get ready for bed.”
Both bedrooms also had oil lanterns in them. Levi lit every lantern and candle he could find in the house until every room but the kitchen and office glowed with soft firelight. Tamara declared it her job to make up the beds and unpack their things—she was clearly doing her best to act like a wife. She shooed him away while she made the beds. Sore from the drive and his run-in with Kentucky’s finest yesterday, he ran a hot bath, took some Tylenol for his bruised side and soaked himself until the water turned cool.
He pulled on his jeans and dunked his sweat-soaked white T-shirt in the bathwater to rinse it out. He hung it and his towel over the towel bar to dry. He hadn’t wanted to put on his dirty jeans, which he’d been wearing since last night, but he also didn’t want to walk around the house naked or in nothing but a towel. Wife or not, Tamara didn’t need to see that. She was a virgin, seventeen, sheltered as a nun, and he planned on keeping her that way until she grew up a little.
On his way up to bed, Levi blew out the lantern downstairs and walked upstairs to the blue room.
When he opened the door, he found Tamara under the covers.
“Rotten, didn’t you say you were sleeping in the pink room?”
“I forgot how much I hate pink,” she said from the bed.
“Fine. Good night.”
He turned to leave her, but Tamara said his name again.
When Levi turned back around, Tamara had sat up in bed. The lantern was on the bedside table, and although she’d taken out her braid and her long brick red hair covered her, he could see she was naked.
“Tamara, we’re not doing this,” he said, shaking his head. He should have known.
“Please,” she said. “I want to be your wife.”
“No.”
“You said you wanted to.”
“I said no such thing.”
“You did in the warehouse.”
“That was days ago.”
“Three days.”
“A man says things in an excited state that he repents of in his tranquillity.”
“You’re extra sexy when you use fancy words.”
“Good. Night,” he said again firmly, making two sentences of it. He marched into the pink bedroom. The lantern was still lit. By its light he saw the strawberry sheets on the bed, the pink-and-white-striped quilt, the horse in the window, the children’s books, the pink hat.
Levi turned and strode into the blue room. Tamara was still sitting up in bed, waiting and watching as he came over to her. He touched the waves of her hair loosened from the braid she’d worn all day. With a slow hand he brushed the strands back over her shoulder. Left shoulder, then right shoulder, uncovering her nakedness. She stared straight ahead and breathed quick shallow breaths through her soft parted lips.
“Levi?”
“You’re right. Pink really is an ugly color.”
17
Tamara had opened the window in the blue bedroom. Levi could hear the tinkling of wind chimes and smell clean salt air coming in from the ocean. He was George Maddox’s son. He owned an island. This house was little and beautiful. And he was about to make love to his wife.
One hell of a week.
Tamara rolled back onto the pillows as Levi sat on the bed next to her. He cupped her face, turning her to meet him in a kiss. Her lips trembled under his. He hadn’t expected virginal shyness from Tamara, but he sensed tension in her and vowed to go as slow as possible. His heart battered the inside of his chest, her fear infecting him. Wife or not, he knew he shouldn’t be doing this.
“Tell me to stop if you want to stop,” Levi whispered.
“I don’t want to stop.”
Levi kissed her forehead. Nothing could stop this train tonight. They were on a downhill track with no brakes, and God help anyone who got in their wa
y.
He sat up and pushed the covers off her completely and gazed down the length of her naked body. Her breasts were a good size, a handful for a man with big hands, her nipples pale red, not pink. Her navel was the barest little slit. Her hips weren’t very wide, but her waist was narrow, giving her a slim hourglass frame. Long legs and strong calves and toenails painted purple, not pink. He cupped her between her legs, feeling her soft curls against his palm.
“Scared?” he asked. She wasn’t aroused yet. Spite and gumption alone had gotten her this far; he could see it in the set of her chin and the fire of her eyes.
“No.”
“Yes, you are. You’re allowed to be your first time, you know, Rotten.”
“That’s not why I’m scared.”
“Then why, baby?”
“Because it’s raining.”
It was such an odd thing to say Levi didn’t know how to respond. He glanced out the window to see, yes, it had started raining. He hadn’t noticed, but Tamara had.
“Do you want me to close the window?”
“No,” she said, smiling up at him. “I love the rain.”
He’d learned a long time ago that when the woman in his life was behaving strangely, his best bet was to take his clothes off. Levi stood up and unzipped his jeans. He pushed them to his ankles and kicked them off into the corner of the room. When Tamara raised no protest, he slid onto the bed again, straddling her waist. Her eyes were trained on the ceiling, but the moment he took her wrists in his hands, she met his gaze.
“Feel me,” he said.
He brought her hands to him, wrapping her fingers around his cock. He wanted her to see it, to feel it, to know what she was getting into, what was getting into her. At first she did nothing but hold it in her hands, lightly squeezing as if afraid to hurt him. Not a chance. Nothing could hurt him now. He was bulletproof, invincible. He owned an island. Who but a god or a king could make such a boast? Tamara touched the tip with a gentle finger, stroked the full length of it. Nothing had ever aroused him like the look of her as she looked at him, making a study of him, every inch, every vein, every contour of the head. As she touched him, he touched her, taking both breasts in his hands. He squeezed them, cupped them, molded them against his palms. Her nipples hardened as he brushed his thumbs over them in soft circles, and the color turned to a deeper hue, brick red like her hair.
Tamara released him, but she found new territory to explore. She touched his stomach, her fingertips spider-walking along the muscles. She moved up to his chest, to his shoulders and all the way down his arms until her hands covered his hands, which were still stroking her breasts.
“It doesn’t hurt,” she said. Levi looked down at her, puzzled.
“This part’s not supposed to hurt.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Levi smiled. He took her hands again and lightly pressed them back into the pillow on either side of her head.
“Then I guess I’ll have to teach you.”
Bracing himself over her, he lowered his mouth to one nipple. She inhaled sharply and Levi smiled against her skin. He took the nipple in his mouth and sucked on it, lightly at first before pulling it deeper into his mouth. Sounds escaped Tamara’s lips, soft gasps and softer sighs. As he nursed at her other breast, he lowered his hips to hers, letting her feel the full length of him between her thighs. Without telling her to do it, she opened her legs for him and he relaxed into the cradle of her hips and discovered as he did so that he’d never felt more at home.
The room was cool from the night wind, but he felt nothing but heat. Heat from his body, heat from hers. He kissed a path from her breast to her belly and lower and lower until his shoulders nudged her thighs wider. He kissed her stomach under her navel and above her curls.
“Levi?” His name sounded scared on her lips.
“This is what it is, Tamara,” he said firmly, but not coldly. He couldn’t blame her for being scared. “This is what happens, so better get used to it now.”
“I know.” Once again her eyes found the ceiling the most interesting part of the room. Not wanting to scare her, Levi sat up instead. He pushed her thighs wider and felt no resistance from her. He spread her inner lips apart and looked down at her, wanting to know what his wife looked like inside and out. He couldn’t see much in the low light of the lantern, but he could see she was wet finally. He pushed a finger into the hole and Tamara’s hips rose off the bed an inch, every muscle in her body seemingly tensing at once. But she had to get used to him inside her sooner or later and sooner suited him more than later. The heat inside her beckoned him, but he used only the one finger on her for the time being. He felt the softness around him, the inner folds ripening, swelling, opening up for him. He pushed up and right inside her and traced a straight line from the opening to the hard stop of her womb, where he could go no farther. As he moved in and out of her, her hips moved with him in slight pulses. Near the entrance he felt a tight knot of clenched muscle, and when he rubbed it, Tamara made a noise from the back of her throat—part whimper, part moan.
With his finger still in her and Tamara’s attention still focused on the ceiling, Levi lowered his head and kissed her curls again. This time she made no protest. She seemed beyond words now, lost to herself. She smelled like heat and tasted tart and he had to hold back from burying his tongue inside her. Without him telling her to do it, she pulled her knees to her chest, rested her heels on his back. She was open now, every part of her exposed to him. He licked the red flesh at her core, sucked her clitoris between his lips and massaged it with his tongue. Against his fingertip that knot inside her throbbed like a heart. He cherished the knowledge of it like a hidden treasure. No one on earth knew about it but him, not even Tamara.
Levi didn’t know if he should make her come yet or not. An orgasm might make her tighter even if it did make her wetter. He pushed a second finger into her and then a third without her protesting. His own body screamed at him to be inside her and the word it screamed was Hurry. His thighs felt like steel and his cock felt like iron. He was hard all over and she seemed as open and ready as any virgin could ever be. Rising up, he knelt between her thighs and draped her legs gently over his.
“Light on or light off?” he asked.
“Off,” Tamara said between breaths.
Levi had hoped that would be the answer. This was the beginning and everything worth beginning began in the dark. He positioned the tip between her folds right at the opening. As he leaned up and over her to blow out the wick, he went into her.
Tamara gasped. Levi blew the light out. The room went black.
At first he felt nothing but heat, burning heat, supple and soft, as Tamara enveloped him entirely. He heard a sound again like a strangled grunt and realized it came from him. He held her by her waist and pushed her down onto him as he pushed up and into her. He moved his hips in a roll, over and over, slowly, then even slower, not rushing or thrusting, not until she was totally open.
Levi didn’t know if his eyes were open or closed. In this blackness it didn’t matter. He didn’t need sight when he had touch. He could feel her all around him, a supple warm heat like melted candle wax. He needed to be closer to her. Carefully he eased his full weight onto her smaller body. He slid his hands under her, cupping her bottom to feel the muscles working.
“Like this,” he whispered into her ear. He used his hands to teach her how to move, how to raise and lower her hips, not up and down like a piston, but in a long slow sensual oval that allowed him to reach every inner inch of her. An apt pupil, soon she didn’t need his hands guiding her. He matched his rhythm to hers, pushing forward as she lifted to the apex, and withdrawing to the tip at the nadir. They were nothing but the coupling now. No other parts of them mattered. Tamara was ceaseless in her undulations, moving like she was made for him and this act that wasn’t an act but the opposite of an act. Masks removed. Pretenses stripped away. Roles abandoned in their abandon.
“Is it good, bab
y?” he asked her, needing to hear her say yes.
“This is what I wanted,” she said. “That day...on my birthday...this is what I wanted. Not—”
“Not what?”
“Nothing.” Tamara lifted her head and kissed his mouth. Immediately he forgot the question.
While they kissed and while he moved in her, he imagined what she felt and hoped it felt as good as he imagined it did—the penetration, the thickness of him spreading her wide over him, her burning lungs, her lips dry from hard breathing, her breasts full and heavy, nerves firing and dancing under her skin. He kissed a path down her neck and chest to her nipples because he knew she wanted them kissed and sucked without her telling him. And when he did, he felt her vagina clutching him in response. Her body was his body. His body was hers. He saw himself through her eyes—older, bigger, beautiful to her in that strange way girls found men beautiful, and knowing things she wanted to know. She envied him