something beautiful about the barren forest. Not barren at all despite appearances. Not barren, but only sleeping. She sensed the sap under the bark, and the wood drinking up all the water in the ground from the days and days of December rain they’d had. Even bare the trees seemed brutally alive to her. They were bursting to wake up and release the green in them, counting the seconds until spring when they could stretch and bloom and eat warm wet air like candy.
Tamara found her favorite rock, a big chuck of limestone she liked to lie on in better weather, and used it to dismount. After tying Kermit to a tree trunk, she squished her way through ankle-deep mud and muck to the edge of the river. It was high today, higher than she remembered ever seeing it, and darker, too. Faster. It smelled different, a thick, pungent odor like dead fish and dirty metal. It made her nose wrinkle. As the water tripped over the rocks, it turned white like ocean waves. She’d inherited ocean fever from her father, not that he’d ever admitted that was where he went on his business trips. He’d never had to tell her, though. She’d found the sand in his shoes. When she told him to take her with him next time, he’d winked at her like that had been his plan all along.
Instead, he’d shot himself in the head somewhere in South Carolina three years ago while on one of those business trips, and she still didn’t know which beach that sand had come from.
“Come back, Daddy,” she said to the river. This river met up with the Ohio, which met up with the Mississippi, which met up with the ocean. And water could turn to vapor and rise up into the sky. There was nowhere water couldn’t go. If she gave the water her message, maybe it could find her father. “I miss you. You were supposed to take me to the beach, remember? You were supposed to take me with you.”
She sent the same message once a week at least. So far no answer, but today maybe...maybe the river heard her. Maybe today the river would find Daddy.
Tamara returned to Kermit, rubbed his chilled flanks, kissed his velvet nose before mounting up to finish her ride. Without Kermit and Levi, she might very well go haywire in her grandfather’s house. Girls at school envied her the brick palace she lived in, but they didn’t know about the fights. They didn’t know about Momma’s rules. They didn’t know about Daddy and the cloud his death had lowered around Arden House, shrouding it so that screams became whispers and whispers became silence. Her mother and grandfather were keeping secrets from her, secrets that set them to fighting nearly every day, even on her birthday.
Even on her birthday.
The rain had returned by the time she made it back to the stables, her hands cramped in her gloves and her cheeks chapped raw from the cold wind. She unsaddled Kermit and brushed him down, showering him with all the pets and scratches any horse in the world would want. She left to fetch a fresh bale of straw for bedding and found Levi waiting for her in Kermit’s stall when she returned. He’d turned the heater on in the stables and had taken his coat off. In his long-sleeved flannel shirt and jeans he looked more handsome than he had even an hour earlier. An hour from now he’d look even more handsome than he did right this minute. She wasn’t sure how he accomplished this feat, but she was quite happy to observe it in action.
“Here.” Levi held out a small red box no bigger than a deck of cards.
“What’s this?” she asked, taking the box from him.
“Your birthday present.”
Tamara’s eyes widened.
“How did you know it was my birthday?”
“You said so about ten million times today.”
“You got this for me today? While I was riding?”
“Well...no.”
“Then you already knew it was my birthday. So you must have gotten it earlier. Unless you keep presents for me hidden around here all the time. You do, don’t you?”
“George told me he bought you a Triumph Spitfire for your sweet sixteen. I don’t give a damn it’s your birthday. I just wanted to borrow your car.”
“I’ll trade you the car for a kiss.”
“Forget it. I’m keeping your present.”
He reached for the box and Tamara yanked it away, nearly biting off her fingertips in her urgency to pull her gloves off her hands. They were shaking by the time she got the box lid open. One of the girls at school—Crissy, God help her with a name like that—said girls should always play it cool with guys, not act too eager. Well, Crissy had never been given a birthday present by the most handsome man in the entire world, and Tamara couldn’t play it cool if she were sitting in an igloo.
From a bed of yesterday’s newspaper, Tamara pulled out a little gold horse on a little gold chain.
“You like horses,” he said before she could say anything about it.
“I like you,” she said.
“An hour ago you were threatening to turn me into a spaghetti strainer.”
“I only threaten to turn people into strainers if I like them. Is this a bracelet?” The chain was only a few inches long.
“Necklace,” he said.
“If you put this short chain around my neck, I’ll choke to death.”
“Exactly.”
She glared at him.
“It’s an ankle bracelet, Rotten,” he said. “Unless you have really fat wrists, then it’s a regular old bracelet.”
“I don’t have fat wrists.”
“All I’m saying is if you did happen to have unusually fat wrists, it could be a bracelet.”
“I weigh one hundred pounds, Levi.” She draped the ankle bracelet around her wrist to show how loose it fit on her.
“One hundred pounds of wrist. I’m not saying it’s a normal place to carry extra weight, but it happens. Maybe you could do some wrist exercises or something...”
Tamara kissed him.
It wasn’t a cheek kiss this time. She wasn’t playing junior officer to his mon capitan. She kissed him like she meant it. Because she meant it. God Almighty, did she mean it.
Levi gripped her by the upper arms and pushed her back gently, but still, it was a definite move to put distance between them.
“Sorry,” she said, flushing slightly. “Got a little twitterpated there. You know, because I like horses.”
“You know you can’t go around kissing guys like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like me. You can’t go around kissing guys like me.”
“Why not?”
“You’re sixteen, Tamara.”
“I was fifteen yesterday.”
“That’s the opposite thing of what you should say.”
“What should I say?”
“Maybe that you won’t kiss me on the mouth again. Or anywhere else. I think that would be a good start.”
He crossed his arms over his chest.
“But it’s my birthday.”
“You don’t get to do everything you want to do just because it’s your birthday.” He sounded wildly exasperated with her, and wildly exasperated Levi was her favorite version of Levi. “Try telling a police officer you’re allowed to kill anybody and everybody you want just because it’s your birthday. That duck won’t fly.”
“I didn’t kill anyone. I kissed. Two S’s, not two L’s. Makes all the difference.”
“Rotten, I’m way too old for you. I work for your granddaddy. He’d have my hide if he caught me messing around with you.”
“I want a kiss, Levi, not a marriage proposal. I’ve never been kissed before. Not really. And that didn’t count because you didn’t know it was happening.”
“I think I knew. Parts of me sure did.”
She bounced up and down in her boots.
“Just one? Please? A real kiss?”
“What do you consider a real kiss?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders, shook her head. “I don’t know. Like the way they kiss on The Young and the Restless?”
“Which one am I? The young or the restless?”
“You’re the restless, obviously,” she said. “Because you’re so so so old, and I’m
so so so young.”
“Will it shut you up if I kiss you?”
“Can’t talk with a tongue in my mouth, right?”
He took the box from her hand and tossed it on the pile of hay. He took her hand and pulled her flush against his body.
“Finally,” he said, smiling down at her. “Now we have a persuasive argument.”
4
Tamara hadn’t expected him to go through with it. She’d only expected she would tease him and beg him to do it until he kicked her giggling and pouting spoiled rotten self out of the barn. Making him mad was the next best thing to making him laugh. When he actually took her in his arms, she froze in surprise. He didn’t kiss her—he did something better and worse at the same time.
Levi pushed her up against the rough wood of Kermit’s stall wall and held her there with his entire body.
“Your grandfather pays me to take care of his horses,” Levi said. “I am not paid to indulge you.”
“Then do it for free.”
Levi gave her a flat hard stare that scared her. Everything scared her right now. Being in such close quarters revealed the disparity in their sizes. Her shoulders spanned half his width. He stood a head taller. She could push against him with everything she had in her and she wouldn’t be able to budge the solid pillar of his body that held her pinned in place.
Oh, but she didn’t want to push against him. That was, in fact, the very last thing she wanted to do right now.
A teardrop of rainwater slid from Tamara’s temple down her face. Levi pressed his lips to that drop. They warmed her cold skin, and she’d never felt anything like that in her life, never felt something so sensual and threatening all at once. She closed her eyes and prayed for more rain, so much rain it would trap them in the stable. So much rain it would form a moat to keep the world out. So much rain everyone on earth would drown in it but her and Levi.
“Levi.” She pushed her hips against his. He had something she needed and her body had to tell him that.
“You are playing with fire, little girl,” Levi said into her ear.
“I’m not a little girl anymore,” she said, looking up at him. It was a brash thing to say, but it had to be said. Her voice quavered as she spoke the words. Tamara studied his face. She’d never seen him this close-up, inches away, close enough to smell him, close enough to see the freckle on his bottom lip. She could have counted his eyelashes.
Levi pushed his hips back into hers, and she felt something hard against her, something that demanded her attention.
Oh, dear. She had made a terrible miscalculation. Levi wasn’t a boy. Levi was a man. An adult man twelve years older than her. Older, wiser and so much bigger than she was. She really ought to stop him. She really ought to. Yes, she should do that.
“I love you,” Tamara said instead.
“Do you?” Levi asked, barely batting an eyelash at her declaration, which made her madder than being pinned to the wall. How dare he not take her seriously when she told him she was in love with him.
“I do. I swear I do.”
“You don’t even know who I am. You don’t know who you think you love.”
“I don’t care. I know I love you. You’re perfect and handsome and I think about you all the time and I want you all the time and I love you.”
“All the time?”
She nodded. “All the time.”
She pressed her mouth hard against his, kissing him like she had a loaded gun pointed at her head and only kissing could save her life. It felt so good she sighed, and when the sigh parted her lips, Levi’s tongue slipped between her teeth. She’d been kidding about the tongue in her mouth, but Levi wasn’t laughing. Not anymore and not about anything. Levi dug a hand into the back of her braid and pushed her mouth harder against his. His tongue tasted so good she wanted to suck on it. When she did, he made a noise in the back of his throat, a dirty noise that made her want to make him do it again.
Levi pulled back from the kiss like he was ripping off a Band-Aid. And yet she remained pinned in place. He had her pushed so hard against the wall she could lift her boots off the ground and not fall.
“Do you have any idea how many girls I’ve fucked in my life?” he asked her. “Or do you think my entire life is brushing your grandfather’s horses and putting up with you?”
She didn’t know how to answer that. She panted and shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“You want to know?” he asked. His voice was menacing now, not seductive, and yet she felt utterly seduced. She didn’t want to be anywhere but here against this wall. “You want to know how many girls I’ve fucked?”
“Yes,” she said because she thought that was what he wanted to hear.
“Every girl I’ve ever wanted to fuck, that’s how many,” he said, and she believed him. Maybe yesterday she wouldn’t have believed that. Yesterday he’d have been just the horse groom with the pretty eyes and sexy smile. Today he was a man with muscles and a body and hands big enough to span her waist like they were doing now. “Every girl I’ve ever wanted to fuck...minus one.”
Tamara inhaled sharply.
His hands slid from her waist to her thighs. He lifted her off the straw-covered ground and wrapped her legs around him. She clung to him as if for life, hands grasping his shoulders, her boots wound together at his lower back and locked tight. The seam along the crotch of her jodhpurs rubbed against a soft and swollen part of her, and every time Levi pushed closer, she flinched with pleasure. Her head fell back when he did it again. When she raised her head, she saw him looking into her shirt. She had larger breasts than any other girl her age at her school, not huge, but full. She couldn’t hide them and neither could her bra. Tamara took her hand off his shoulder long enough to unbutton her shirt to the center of her chest. He wanted to look at her and she wanted him to see her. He lowered his head and kissed the top of her breast where it spilled out over the lace-trim edge of her white bra. Against her neck she felt his hair and loved, loved, loved the soft tickle of it on her skin.
“You like this?” he asked, grinding against her again, flint against tinder.
“Yes.” She could scarcely catch a breath with his chest pressed so hard against hers.
“You’re not scared?”
She shook her head no.
“You a virgin?” he asked.
“I told you, I’ve never even had a real kiss.”
“You can fuck without kissing.”
“That had never occurred to me.”
“I don’t recommend it,” he said. “I like to do both at the same time.”
“That’s quite...”
“Quite what?” he asked.
“That’s quite a thought,” she said. “I like that thought.”
“I like your thoughts. I’d like to give you more of them.” Again Levi pushed against that raw sensitive place between her legs and she let out a little cry that he silenced with a kiss. At first she froze in fear, but she thawed almost instantly. Then it went beyond thawing and into an immediate burn.
His mouth moved over hers and she sighed with unfathomable pleasure.
With her eyes closed she could do nothing but taste him and smell him and feel him against her, and it was even better than seeing him. He tasted like he’d taken a nip or two of her granddaddy’s Red Thread bourbon. A good taste like apples and licorice, but hot, not on the rocks. His lips were soft, too, but insistent, like he was trying to win an argument by kissing her. She happily conceded defeat. Oh, and he smelled perfect to her. Sweat and aftershave and the leather and oil of horse tack. He smelled like a man who worked hard, even on Sundays. Sundays should be a day of rest, a day to spend in bed kissing. Kissing, and more than kissing...
It was the strangest thing, being kissed. His mouth was on her mouth. His tongue was between her teeth and nowhere else. His hands were on her hips holding her up. And yet she felt the kiss in all