kiss.”
“You were good at it.”
“I was?”
Levi slowly nodded, wide-eyed. “Rotten, if your mother hadn’t interrupted, you would have gotten that roll in the hay you’d been begging for. I was ready to strip you naked and have you right against the wall, which would have been my preferred choice of birthday present.”
“So what’s stopping you?”
“It’s not your birthday.”
“We can pretend it is...”
“Is that safe?”
“My doctor says it is. We can have sex all the way up to the last month if I feel like it. He said I won’t be, but he said we could. In theory.”
“Well, if we’ve got a fast coming in a few months, we better feast while we can.”
Before she could say another word, he’d lifted her off her feet and deposited her next to the back wall of the stall, right where she had been on her birthday.
He tilted her face up to meet his and kissed her. They’d made love fifty times or more since their first time and kissed a thousand. But this kiss burned her the way their first had, burned her right to the core. She was weak with relief that Levi was happy about the baby, overjoyed that they’d finally won and at peace that they could finally start their real lives together. It was right they should do this here and now, finishing what they’d started on her sixteenth birthday.
Levi reached under her dress and cupped her bottom, squeezing it in his large hands. He ran them up her back and down again as he kissed her neck, down into her panties, and then they were coming off, down her legs as he knelt in the straw. He lifted her dress up and Tamara thought she knew what he would do, but he surprised her. He didn’t kiss her between her legs. He kissed her stomach instead, massaging it with his mouth, pressing tender kisses from hip to hip. A soft sob escaped her lips. They would be happy together. They would be. After, Levi dipped his head lower, pushed her legs apart and found her clitoris with his tongue. He worked it gently until she panted, until her head fell back and her hips strained forward, silently begging for more. He lifted her leg up and rested it on his shoulder as he licked deeper in her, opening her up until she felt wetness release from her in little bursts. He stood up finally and kissed her mouth again as he slipped his middle finger into her and curled it forward, finding that tender sensitive place inside her that made her clench and cry out. He swallowed her cry as he stroked her insides and soon she was as wet as she’d ever been. Wet and burning for him. The last time they were here, she’d been a girl, a virgin, and she’d been too scared to do what she wanted. But she was older now, a wife, his wife, and she reached down and opened his jeans, pulling him free and gripping him hard with her hand.
“You want it?” Levi asked in her ear, his hot breath tickling her bare neck.
“I want it.”
“Take it, then,” he said, pushing his pelvis into hers.
Tamara guided him and he plunged inside her with a thrust, filling her completely, so completely she cried out again and nearly came from the penetration alone. He lifted her and settled her over his hips and thighs so that her feet were off the ground, pinning her with his cock to the wall behind her. He yanked the straps of her dress down her arms and pushed it all the way to her waist. He grasped her bare breasts in his hands the way she loved, tugging on her nipples, pulling on them, dipping his head to suck them and lick them. Tamara writhed on him, barely able to move, but moving as much as she could. Her vagina squeezed him and Levi gasped. He pushed into her with quick rough thrusts and she came hard, muffling her scream of pleasure by burying her mouth against his shoulder. He drove his own orgasm into hers, hard enough it hurt against the wall, but she didn’t care. Soon he’d be treating her like a glass doll, so she had to enjoy his lust for her while she could until she could have it all again. Levi slowed down, pulled out to the tip and slid back. He did it again, drawing it out and pushing it back as Tamara’s body throbbed around him. She was going to come again if he didn’t stop doing that, fucking her so slow and hard and deep. He didn’t stop. Tamara clutched his shoulders and arched her back to give herself room to move. She sank down onto him, moaning as he filled her.
“Show-off,” she panted. She knew Levi. She knew he was showing her what she could have had on her birthday if her mother hadn’t chosen that moment to ruin her life.
The wood behind her was smooth, painted and slick, and she slid up and down it as Levi worked her up and down on him, her breasts pressed to his chest, her nipples hard as stones and her body ready to burst from the mad ecstasy of being used like this. She couldn’t get enough of it, couldn’t get enough of Levi. They would be lovers forever and this child inside her was only the first of many they would have. Levi was beautiful and smart and the world needed half a dozen of him at least. And their children would be Shelbys, not Maddoxes, and because Levi was good, they would be good. Their sons would be generous and kind and their daughters would be wise and strong. And they would never ever meet their grandmother. And there on the cusp of perfect happiness, Tamara came again, rocking and shuddering in Levi’s arms as he pounded his own climax into her, filling her and filling her until she couldn’t take any more.
Carefully Levi let her feet down to the floor as he pulled out of her.
“You all right, Rotten?” He cupped her face, kissed her burning cheeks.
“Never better.” She grinned up at him, feeling drunk with her happiness. “I feel...”
“What?”
“Wet.” Tamara clamped her legs together. “Very wet.”
Levi laughed sheepishly. “We had gone a whole twenty-four hours without doing that.”
“I need a paper towel. Or maybe a beach towel.”
“There might be a towel in my old office. Stay here.”
Tamara straightened her dress and Levi went to the tiny “office” he’d made for himself at the other end of the barn. There’d never been much in his office but for a small desk, a telephone, all the horses’ medical records and a first-aid kit. Maybe the first-aid kit was still in there. She might need it. The barn was painted and the wood was sanded, but she had an itching feeling like she’d gotten a splinter in her back.
Tamara started to walk out of the stall, but she caught a glimpse of something on the ground. Kicking the straw aside, she saw a glint of gold. The ankle bracelet with the horse charm on it Levi had given her on her birthday. Tamara had dropped it when her mother had dragged her from the barn. She thought she’d never see it again.
“Levi?” Tamara called out. Levi didn’t answer. She ran from the stall to his office.
“Levi, you won’t believe it. I found the bracelet you gave me for my big fat wrist. It’s been here the whole—”
She stepped into the office and stopped dead, cold and scared.
Levi held a letter in his hands. An open letter. The envelope on his desk said “Tamara and Levi” in her mother’s handwriting.
“Levi?” Tamara heard the fear in her voice. “Remember, you said she’d try to hurt us. You said you wouldn’t let her hurt us.”
Slowly Levi looked up from the letter, looked at her. Then he bent over at the waist like he was about to be sick. The letter fell from his hands. Tamara grabbed it off the ground.
“Levi, what—”
“Read it.”
Tamara and Levi—
I left copies of this letter where you two were sure to find one. I have tried in vain for weeks to contact you through Daniel Headley’s office. In desperation, I have given up the legal suit in the hopes you two would finally come home. There is no easy way to say this, but just to say it. Tamara, I received your note about your marriage where you informed me that you knew the truth about Nash and that he was not your father. You said you knew Daniel Headley was your father. That is not the truth. The truth is that George Maddox is your real father. And he is Levi’s real father.
There is more to this story, but that is all you need to know. If you don’t believe me, I h
ave a letter from Nash, his suicide note he mailed me, that will tell you everything I have told you.
Please, Levi, let my daughter go before it’s too late.
The note was signed “Virginia Maddox.”
And it was already too late.
30
Tamara slipped a hand under her dress and pressed it between her legs into the wetness, cupping herself as if trying to staunch a wound. She pulled her hand away and saw Levi’s semen on her fingers. Her husband’s.
Her brother’s.
She rubbed it off on her dress.
“Tell me it’s a lie,” Levi said, his head buried in his hands.
“I...” Tamara fell back against the door frame. “I don’t know.”
“It has to be a lie. It has to be a lie.”
“I...”
“Did you know?” Levi grabbed her by her upper arms and stared into her eyes. “Did you know this?”
“No. I swear to God I didn’t know.”
Judge Headley hadn’t even taken his jacket off the night of the party where he and her mother had supposedly conceived her.
I’m tired of pretending that Tamara is my daughter. Even Virginia is tired of pretending. Did you know she told me that Tamara was Daniel Headley’s daughter, conceived at Eric’s going-away party? I laughed when she told me. Virginia is more a Maddox than I am. You’ve taught her well.
Daddy laughed.
Daddy laughed at her mother when she told him Daniel Headley was Tamara’s father.
Daddy laughed because it wasn’t true, not because it was.
“Your mother tried to send us a letter. You tore it up...” Levi’s head fell back and for a horrifying second his eyes were nothing but the whites.
“I didn’t know what it said, I swear. I didn’t know.”
“You said she beat you because I kissed you. She didn’t tell you why she hated me so much?”
“She didn’t beat me,” Tamara said. “That’s not what happened. She—”
“Oh, God.” The cry sounded like someone had ripped the words from his chest. He doubled over again, wheezing. Tamara couldn’t see. She was underwater and drowning. There was no surfacing for her.
Bone of her bone.
Flesh of her flesh.
Blood of her blood.
Tamara reached for Levi and he held up his hands in front of his face.
“Don’t,” he said, not looking at her. She had become Medusa and he would turn to stone with a single glance at her. She had become Sodom and with one look back he would turn to a pillar of salt.
She lowered her hand and pressed it against her stomach, the stomach he’d kissed with love and reverence only minutes ago, but now it was a poisoned cup.
It was like someone had lowered a bell jar over her body, muting all sounds and setting her ears to ringing. Outside the clear wall of glass she could hear the faintest murmuring, and she knew if the glass lifted, it would sound like screams. She could see clearly through the glass and she watched Levi from inside it, her hands raised as if pressed to the smoother curved surface inside. She watched Levi grasp at the wall, needing it to help him stand. She watched him push past her. She called his name, but he couldn’t hear her through the bell any more than she could hear him. His shuffling steps turned into a run.
The glass suddenly shattered and Tamara could hear again, although the ringing in her ears remained. She heard sounds of metal and engines. Leaving sounds. He was leaving her. She let him go.
Tamara emerged from the stables into the evening sunlight, blinking and wincing. The light hurt and she shrank from it. Stumbling, she made it to tree cover and she wandered in the little woods where she’d played and ridden her horse as a child. There was the tree she had climbed when she’d fallen off her horse and lacked the height to mount him again. There was the stone she’d lain on half sleeping, half daydreaming the summer after her father’s death, the summer after she’d had her first period and pondered her future. On that rock she’d dreamed her dreams of love and sex and marriage and prayed God would give her a husband who could take away the pain of her losing her father by trading it for pleasure.
“I killed my own father,” Tamara whispered to the rock. Her hands pressed against its rough gritty surface. She waited for the guilt or shame to come to her, but none showed its face. God killed His own Son. Why should He judge her for killing her father? God’s Son was sinless. Her father was not. Neither was she.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered again, trying to explain herself to whatever being would bend an ear to her confession. “I didn’t know who he was. Levi didn’t know...”
They had sinned in their ignorance. But their ignorance had been willful. Her mother had tried to warn her and Tamara had not listened. She’d torn up the letter and scattered it in the ocean. She hadn’t been pregnant then. It hadn’t been too late then.
Tamara heard a sound she knew well and followed it. The sound of water, the river, trickling and skipping over limestone and tree roots. She followed the path down to the dock, where she’d sat with her father and dangled a fishing pole into the brown waters. Her father? Which father? Both Daddy and Granddaddy had been there. At the dock’s splintered edge, Tamara lay down onto her side to look at the water and take her comfort from it. Rise, she prayed. Rise and carry me under and carry me away. She couldn’t do it herself, not with a child inside her. But if the river wanted her, and if the river was where she belonged, it would come for her again as it had come for her before. For surely God had spared her that night to destroy her this day. It had not been her time then. But her time had come.
Tamara waited. She needed courage to do what she had to do. She waited and needed courage to throw herself in the river. The courage didn’t come. Hours passed. The sun set. Night arrived and still Tamara couldn’t do what she had to do. While waiting, she fell asleep, and even as she fell asleep, she prayed she wouldn’t wake up again.
Instead, she dreamed.
* * *
In her dream she isn’t Tamara.
Who she is she doesn’t know until she looks down at her stomach. Not two months along anymore, she is heavy with child now, ready to burst. She will give birth any day. Maybe today.
She’s been ordered to sit at the table in the kitchen and wait for Missus. She sits. She waits. Her stomach aches. Her stomach, her legs, her back. Everything aches. She wasn’t made to carry this much weight around. It feels like she’s been eating stones and has built a dam inside her body with them.
Phyllis, the other house girl, comes in and looks at her but doesn’t speak. She is scuttling about, getting this and that from the cabinets.
“Phyllis?”
“I can’t talk to you,” Phyllis says in a hiss. “She’ll whip me.”
“What’s she gonna do to me?”
“I can’t talk to you.”
“She’s gonna sell me?”
Phyllis takes the bottle she’s fetched and clasps it to her chest.
“I can’t...”
She gives Veritas a look of pity. There is no hope for her. Veritas lays her hands on her stomach. It hurts to the touch and she curses the thing inside her. Once Master had her that first time, he couldn’t get enough of her. He took her every chance he got, morning and night. He’d even keep Phyllis waiting outside in the dark and the damp and the mosquitoes while he took her in their slave cabin in the bed she and Phyllis had to share. After the first few times, she’d learned how to take it without getting herself hurt or bleeding after. But she hated it every time, especially after when he’d act sweet to her, tell her how good she was, how pretty. He’d kiss her forehead like she was his little girl, tug on the red ribbon in her hair. One day she tried to go without wearing it and he ordered her to put it back on.
Veritas puts her head down to rest. Most days she’d be cleaning right now—changing sheets, beating rugs. She wants to be cleaning and working, not sitting here waiting. Waiting scares her.
A few minutes pass and
she hears a commotion outside. A cart or a carriage. The jingle of bells, the rattle of gear and hooves.
Missus’s voice carries far, all the way into the kitchen. It might be her last chance to run. But she can’t run. Not with her belly so swollen and her legs so sore and weak. Whatever is inside is trying to kill her. No surprise to her. Everything outside her wants her dead, too.
Missus comes in the back door and Veritas lifts her head fast. There’s a man behind Missus, an ugly man scarred by years and pox. He doesn’t look clean to Veritas and she wished she’d tried to run when she had the chance.
“Up, girl,” Missus says, and Veritas pulls herself to her feet. It’s not easy to stand.
The man gets close, close enough Veritas can smell him. He smells like he’s rotting, like old meat in the sun. He looks her up and down, touches her hair, lifts her skirt to see her legs. She flinches when he puts his hand on her stomach.