Last Night's Kiss (21 page)

In a flash, he parted her legs and joined with her. Rosa cried out at the waves of delirium that bargained with her senses. Together they danced the primal dance. Adam filled her completely. She matched his rhythm, joining and unjoining in a cycle so sweet, so essential to her survival that she’d wouldn’t be able to breathe without completing the circle. Adam rode her, wildly increasing the pace.

His hands stretched with hers, raising them over her head as every inch of their bodies intimately touched each other. Rosa writhed beneath him, working without thought, only intent on giving, giving back to him the immense sense of wonder that he gave to her with each filling. His body seemed to pump life into her, complete her, show her in the most personal way that this was what she was made for, that this was the meaning of life. The language was loud and clear and Rosa didn’t doubt it for a moment.

And then she felt it, felt the waves pounding inside her and their imminent need to reach satisfaction. She could feel their rawness, their hunger, their strength gathering and building, climbing higher and higher until they exploded. Rosa shattered into a million pieces—each infinitesimal segment its own erogenous zone, a hedonistic incision that writhed with pleasure.

Adam shouted and together they passed through the portal to absolute rapture. Rosa clawed at the air, grasping it and dragging it into her lungs. Her heart pounded in her ears, cutting out any other sound. No on had ever made love to her like that before. She knew the experience was unique, that no one could have replaced Adam. She loved him. She wanted to shout it, to tell him that she didn’t think she could exist without him. She never wanted him to make love with anyone else, never wanted to leave this room, this bed, this moment. She wanted him completely, his body joined to hers, for always.

Rosa opened her eyes. She reached for Adam. The bed was still warm where his body had lain. Rosa stretched, lounging in the light of morning. Her body hummed with the aftermath of their lovemaking. Adam had held her, stroking her breasts as if the action somehow added to his satisfaction. She could still feel his hands. Her body was suddenly drenched in heat.

Pushing the covers back, Rosa got out of bed and headed for the shower. She’d better get moving before she was so aroused she’d have to go and find Adam. He’d left before daybreak to get home before Joel woke up.

Hot water sluiced over her, running through her hair and down her back. Quickly Rosa washed herself, deciding to go for a ride. It had been a while since she’d been out in the morning. It would be good to take her camera and go into the hills again. Each time she saw the landscape it seemed different, like some secret was being unveiled before her. In minutes she was dressed and on horseback. She hadn’t forgotten to take the rifle that Adam and Bailey insisted she carry. Since Rosa had had to use it once for real, she felt safer with it.

She hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards before she saw another rider on horseback. Instantly she knew it wasn’t Bailey. He was too small. She recognized Joel. Turning, she rode toward him.

“What are you doing here alone?” she asked.

“I’m all right. I was just practicing.”

“Let me see. Ride over there.” She pointed toward a clearing.

Joel pulled on the reins and the horse turned left. Clicking his tongue the way Rosa had heard Bailey do, Joel began to move at odds with the horse. It was a common mistake. He looked back at her after a moment. She rode next to him and stopped.

“You need to move with the horse. You’re moving against it. Watch me.” She demonstrated what she meant, then came back to him. “Each time you moved, the horse went one way and you went the other. After a short while you’d be in pain.”

He nodded, taking direction well. “Let me try it.” He rode again, this time working with the horse. Rosa smiled.

“That’s it,” she called, and caught up with him. “Keep doing it that way and soon it’ll be natural.”

“Where are you going?” he asked. “Can I come?”

“I was just going to go up in the hills and take some pictures. You can come. I won’t go that far.” She adjusted her plans for him. With only a few lessons under his wing, he needed to take short rides.

They rode for about twenty minutes and Rosa stopped to rest. She wasn’t as close to the mountains as she’d like to be, but this was a good spot to stop.

“Mind if I take some pictures?” she asked.

He shook his head. Rosa began snapping.

“Do you want me to do anything special?”

“Not yet,” she called. “Just relax and do what you want.”

She took several of him mounted on the horse. Then he slid to the ground and she snapped more.

“Are you just going to take my picture all day?” he asked as she was changing the film in the camera.

“Don’t you like having your picture taken?” She glanced up at him with a smile.

“Sometimes, but you must have used up ten rolls of film already. Only my mom used to take that many pictures.”

It hit Rosa with the suddenness of an avalanche. Maureen had been a photographer. Of course she’d take pictures of her son.

“Joel, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring back bad memories.”

“It’s all right. I think about her a lot. I never talk about her because Aunt Lillian wouldn’t.”

Rosa sat down on a huge rock. Joel took a seat beside her. “Do you want to tell me about her? I promise I’ll listen and if you don’t want me to say anything I won’t.”

He waited awhile. Rosa stopped pointing the camera at him, although the look on his face was so poignant she really wanted to capture it on film. But that’s when he began to talk.

“She laughed a lot. It was only the two of us…and sometimes Adam would come by. But mainly we did everything together. She liked to take pictures and she taught me how to compose them in the viewfinder and develop them in the darkroom.”

“That’s wonderful,” Rosa said. “Maybe you’ll be a photographer, too.”

He didn’t react and Rosa thought it still hurt him to think of her and her cameras. She looked down at the Leica she held. It had belonged to Maureen.

“She would tell me everything. We used to visit all the monuments in D.C. and she’d explain why all those people were important. I really liked the FBI building. They have a whole roomful of guns. You should see some of them.”

Rosa smiled at his enthusiasm. She had been to the FBI building and she knew the room he talked about. “Maybe we can both go one day, and you can explain it to me.”

She got a smile for that.

“Course there were things she made me do that I didn’t like. She said it was good for me.”

“Was that like doing homework and eating your vegetables?”

“How did you know?”

“I had the same thing when I was twelve. And you know what?”

“What?”

“She was right.”

He frowned. “I’ll do it. But I don’t like it.”

Rosa laughed. Joel did, too. She was glad the moment of sadness in his voice was gone.

Joel didn’t say anything for a while. Then he spoke. “Mom was a good cook. She loved to make desserts. And I loved to eat them. She got on this kick once of making muffins. She bought a lot of muffin pans. And something she called a muffin top pan. It would only bake the top of the muffin. Every night she’d make a different type of muffin, lemon ones, bran ones, raisin muffins, blueberry. I liked the blueberry ones best.”

“She sounds like a wonderful woman,” Rosa said. “You’re very lucky to have had a mother who loved you so much.”

“I’m lucky to have Adam, too,” he said.

A tiny trickle of jealousy snaked through Rosa. Maureen must have been very special to Adam for her to trust her son to him. And for Joel to love Adam so much. Rosa knew that kind of love didn’t come from a casual relationship, but from years of being there, from attending the high points of a child’s life, from both the giving and the receiving of love. Her own family had that kind of love. She was the youngest of the group, and she’d never experienced the hardship that her brothers had. She was the recipient of all the love they could shower on her, but she also knew how that wasn’t true for every child. Joel was indeed lucky to have Adam.

“Adam came to tell me,” Joel began. He glanced up at Rosa and down again at the ground. “I knew right away that something had happened. I knew she was dead. The look on Adam’s face told me that before he said a word. I was at camp in Virginia, not the one Aunt Lillian sent me to. Another one. We were going to learn a new diving move that day. Then I saw Adam coming and I knew.”

Rosa felt helpless. Joel’s voice was steady, but she could feel the emotion underlying it. All she could do was sit with him. She couldn’t touch him, cradle him, or even offer him a supporting hand. He wouldn’t welcome it. He’d been surviving with his pain too long. But he needed understanding. He needed someone to listen, and for the time being, she was that person.

“I didn’t cry,” Joel said. “I didn’t feel anything, only this weird numbness like I’d suddenly been stung all over by bees.”

“Joel, have you never cried?”

He looked at her and slowly shook his head. “We left that day. I stayed with Adam. He took care of everything, I think. The station may have done something, even Aunt Lillian, no one ever told me. Then we went back to the apartment. I wanted to go there and Adam took me.”

Rosa wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. After her mother died, they all went back to the house where she’d been such a live person. Memories lurked in every corner, behind every shadow, but they were all adults. Joel had been ten years old.

“Then the custody fight began and I had to go live with Aunt Lillian. I didn’t want to, but Adam explained the reasons.”

“You understood them?”

He nodded. Rosa wanted to make sure that if the courts forced him to return to his aunt, Joel would understand. Although at twelve, he was old enough to make the decision for himself. Yet she knew you could never be sure what a judge would do.

“We’d better get back now,” Rosa said. “I’m sure you didn’t tell anyone you were going riding and they might be wondering where you are.” She and Joel stood up.

“I left a note.”

“Did you tell them which way you were going?”

He looked at the ground. “I didn’t think of it.”

“It’s a big country out here,” Rosa said. “You shouldn’t ride alone. If you want to go again, don’t do it alone. It’s dangerous.” She felt like she was repeating phrases that Bailey and Adam had said to her.

They walked to where their horses were standing. “Did you really kill a bear?” he asked.

“Where did you hear that?”

“My grandfather told me.”

“Grandfather?”

“Adam’s dad. He told me I could call him that. He doesn’t have a grandson and he said he doesn’t know when, if ever, he’ll get one.”

“Adam isn’t that old. He could still marry and have children.”

“Are you going to marry him?”

The question hit her like the sudden stop of a fall. All the wind left her lungs. “I don’t think so,” Rosa said. It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought of marrying Adam before, fantasized about what it would be like to come home every night and meet him, what it would be like to sleep in his arms and wake to his embrace every day.

“He likes you. I can tell. Not the way he liked my mom. I think he’s in love with you.”

It’s a good thing Rosa wasn’t eating or drinking because she would have choked on the food. “Did he tell you that?”

Joel shook his head. “It’s the way he looks at you. I’ve seen people look like that before. You know, in movies and old people on the street.”

By old people, Rosa thought he meant young twenty-somethings. They were the ones on the street who often showed their love for each other.

“Adam hasn’t said anything like that to me,” she said.

“He might. In the movies, it always takes time, but it happens.”

Life is not a movie
, Rosa thought. She didn’t say it. She helped Joel mount his horse and then she mounted hers.

“So, did you really kill a bear?” Joel asked again as if the change in subject was natural and expected.

“I didn’t kill a bear,” Rosa answered.

Joel’s face fell. They started walking the horses back toward the ranch.

“I shot a bear, but I didn’t kill it. The gun had tranquilizer darts in it. So the bear went to sleep and Adam and I left it in its natural environment.”

“Oh,” he said.

“You don’t have to sound so disappointed.”

“I’m not disappointed. I wish I could have seen it.”

“Joel,” she called, a warning note in her voice. “The bears own this land. We are the trespassers. But they are dangerous. Don’t underestimate them. And don’t glorify them, either.”

“I won’t.”

“Do I have your promise that you won’t do this again? You’ll always ride with someone else?”

This time he studied his hands holding the reins. “I promise,” he finally said.

As they came across the rise, Rosa saw Adam astride his horse. Bailey stood on the ground next to him. She could see Adam’s body sag in relief when he recognized them.

“I think they were about to send out a search party to find you,” Rosa warned Joel.

“Do you think he’s mad?”

“Angry, yes, but he’s probably relieved, too.”

Adam got down from his horse and waited for them to reach him. Rosa tried to read his face. Joel’s words came back to her. Did he really love her?

Her heart was hopeful. More than anything she’d ever thought of or wanted, she wanted Adam to love her.

The morning sun was warm on her face. Adam’s expression was dark and drawn. They watched as Bailey and Joel disappeared into the house.

“Don’t be so hard on him, Adam. He’s a very lonely little boy.”

Adam looked at her. “Is he all right?”

“He told me about his mother. He loved her immensely, like any child would. They were very close.”

“I know. They did a lot together. Maureen was widowed when Joel was four. He barely remembers his dad. She’s all he’s known.”

“He’s known you, too,” Rosa said.

She glanced at the door where Joel and Bailey had gone in to breakfast. “Apparently his aunt didn’t talk about Maureen. I got the impression she didn’t allow any talk of her sister. Joel needed to do that.” She looked up at Adam, who had a strange expression on his face. She touched his arm. “Joel’s going to be fine, but give him some space and some understanding.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” he said. “And speaking of understanding, is there something wrong with your brain?”

“Not that I’m aware of.” She didn’t know where he was going with this, but he was obviously angry.

“The two of you are the greenest people in the Valley. I asked you not to go out riding in the hills alone.”