Lily of the Springs (5 page)

No, he wouldn’t do that. He might leave
me
, but he sure as shootin’ wouldn’t leave his precious car. But what if…

Another thought stopped me cold, and a curl of fear snaked its way through my stomach. What if some wild-eyed old moonshiner took Jake for a revenuer, and decided to pistol-whip him and ask questions later? Lord Almighty, I’d heard stories about them moonshiners and how they protected their stills like a mama wolf protected her pups. Folks had disappeared in these hollers, never heard from again, or so the stories went.

The racket of the crickets and frogs grew deafening, pounding through my head with each beat of my heart.
Durn you, Jake Tatlow, what’s taking so dadblamed long
?

I reached out and turned on the radio to help muffle the scary sounds of the night. Bluegrass music blared from the speaker. I grimaced and fiddled with the tuner. Lord! What self-respecting 19-year-old boy listened to that old hillbilly music? That was a Tatlow for you. Hillbilly through and through.

It took a while to find a decent station; there wasn’t much to choose from out in the middle of nowhere—not if you wanted to listen to something besides hillbilly or static. But finally, I found a fairly strong station playing Kay Starr’s “Wheel of Fortune.” Probably Cincinnati or Louieville. I hummed along with Kay, trying to convince my nerves to settle down, but still, I found myself reaching for Chad’s class ring which was so conspicuously absent. I frowned and folded my hands together, tucking them into the folds of my dress between my knees.

Drat that boy! Drat
all
boys! Every last one of them is a low-down, good-for-nothing, no-account…

I stiffened. What was that sound? Some kind of rustling nearby.
Lord help me, what if it’s some kind of wild animal or something
? I knew for a fact there were all kinds of wild varmints roaming these woods. The Kentucky Wildcats hadn’t just pulled their name out of a hat, had they?

Warily, I looked out my window, then out Jake’s, but didn’t see a thing except the dark leaves of the trees and bushes swaying gently in the light breeze. The glimmer of a crescent moon cast dancing shadows on the hood of the Plymouth, and even though common sense told me there was nothing supernatural about it, it still gave me a spooky feeling. The Hatchetman loved nights like this when he was on the hunt for a victim. And even if there weren’t no such bogeyman lurking around, it was for dad-burn sure that a wildcat didn’t much care what kind of night it was, or even if his supper was all decked out in the prettiest red polka dot dress ever seen in Russell County, as long as she tasted sweet.

With trembling fingers, I reached over to the radio dial and turned the volume down. Head cocked toward the window, I listened for a moment, but heard only the rapid thud of my heart. That didn’t reassure me a bit, though. My sixth sense—or “the sight,” as Granny Foster called it, was working over-time tonight. There was somebody…or some
thing
…out there in the darkness.

Maybe Granny was right, and I
did
have “the sight,” because just like that, I saw a picture in my mind of Jake Tatlow gloating over the tom-foolery he’d pulled on me, and relief washed over me like a cool bath on a sticky August evening.

Jaw clenched, I glared out my window. “Jake Tatlow, is that you out there? Doggone it, Jake, why don’t you act your age? I ain’t scared, you hear me? And I don’t think this is one
bit
funny!”

I held my breath and listened to the drone of crickets and frogs, a distant hoot of an owl and the husky rustle of tree branches scraping together in the balmy breeze.

And then, unmistakably, I heard a sound that made my skin crawl—footsteps crackling through the underbrush. A jolt slammed through my heart, and I rolled up the window as fast as I could, and in the same movement, pushed down the lock button.

“
Jake! Help
!” I screamed, suddenly absolutely
sure
it wasn’t Jake out there, but a mad-dog killer, eager to slice me into little pieces and feed me to his German Shepherd. I lunged across the car to roll up Jake’s window and lock his door. Over the sound of my panicked breathing, I thought I heard a wild laugh somewhere in the underbrush. I gave another shriek.

With the windows up, it was stuffy in the car, and the heat combined with fear made my palms clammy and my armpits ooze sweat. My heart pounded hard against the cotton bodice of my dress; I could feel the fabric growing wet under my arms, and despite my fear, one tiny, vain section of my brain wondered if my brand new dress would be ruined by sweat stains. Better sweat stains than bloodstains, though. Still, the possibility of the most beautiful dress I’d ever owned being ruined added a big dose of anger to my fear, and that had the effect of reining in my troublesome imagination.

A dollar to a doughnut that
was
Jake out there, just messing with me. He was so darn backward; that was probably the only way he knew how to court a girl. The thought brought me up short. Jake
courting
me? Where had that come from? Nevermind. That
had
to be Jake out there, and if he thought scaring the daylights out of me was going to make me sweet on him, he was a doggone jackass.

“I
mean
it, Jake!” I hollered. “This ain’t funny! Now you come on out and show yourself, you hear me?” I glared out the window into the dark woods.

Suddenly something thumped against Jake’s window, and I jumped, whirling around. The breath left my body and shock iced through me at the sight of a painted face wearing a feathered headdress leering at me through the glass. I screamed at the top of my lungs. The face disappeared.

Heart slamming, I flattened a palm against the car’s horn. It blared through the night in an eerie yodel accompanied by my screams. The figure outside the car appeared again, but this time, instead of grinning at me, the creature jumped up and down, waving his arms. I drew in a sharp breath. It looked like he had…oh, Jesus!...a
hatchet
in one hand.

“
Get away
, you
lunatic
!” I shouted, still pressing my hand against the horn. “Somebody
help
me!
There’s a madman after me
!”

“Lily Rae, stop your caterwauling! It’s
me
!”

My mouth clamped shut. I stared at the lunatic who’d stopped dancing around, and was now peering in through the window at me, the Indian headdress in his hand.

“It’s me--
Jake
. I was just funning with you.” Seeing that he finally had my attention, he flashed his familiar grin. Familiar, even with the war paint on his face. “Come on, Lily Rae, don’t be mad.”

My eyes narrowed. My heart was still racing even as relief coursed through my body, immediately followed by red-hot fury. I turned to my door, unlocked it, and threw it open. A second later, I was on my feet and flying around the back of the Plymouth. Jake stood beside his door, grinning his stupid ain’t-I-just-the-cutest-thing-you-ever-saw grin. My eyes raked over him. Lord above, he was dressed in nothing but an Injun loincloth, and I’d swear that was a real tomahawk in his hand. But that wasn’t as appalling as the fact that he was half-naked.

“Simmer down now, Lily Rae,” he said, chuckling as he backed up. “Can’t you take a little joke?”

That made me even madder. I stopped a few inches away from him, glaring into his mischief-filled eyes. Tightening my right hand into a fist, I punched him, just the way Landry had taught me, smack-dab into his stomach.

“
Ow
!” The tomahawk thumped to the ground as Jake clutched at his mid-section. Eyes flaring, he stared at me in amazement. “God
damn
it, Lily Rae, that hurt!”

Breathing heavily, I locked gazes with him. “Good,” I snapped. “I
meant
it to hurt.” And I started to punch him again.

This time he was ready for me. Laughing, he grabbed my flailing fists, one in each hand. His blue eyes danced with amused excitement. “Don’t get frosted, Lily Rae. I was just playing a little joke on you. Just like the old days.”

His grin infuriated me even more. I struggled to wrench my hands from his grip. “That was just downright
mean
, Jake Tatlow! You scared the dickens out of me!”

His hands tightened on mine. “Aw, come on, Lily, I don’t believe that for a minute. You knew it was me all along. Don’t you remember them summers? I’d tell you ghost stories, and jump out and scare you as you was walking home.”

I narrowed my eyes in a deliberate glare. He was still trying to use his charm on me. It wasn’t going to work. “Yeah, I remember, alright. I was eight and you were nine. Your body may have grown up, Jake Tatlow, but your dadblamed
brain
is still nine! Now, I want you to take me home right this minute!”

Again, I tried to wrench my hand free, and was surprised—and a little disappointed—when he released me. I turned to head back to the car, but before I could take a step, Jake grabbed me again and pulled me against his nearly-bare body. Our gazes locked, and suddenly my heart was beating harder than before. He bent his head and kissed me.

My first instinct was to struggle, and I did—for about two seconds. Until I became aware of the heat of his mouth, the silky, hot touch of his tongue darting between my lips, the damp, warm press of his palm against my back where my dress scooped low. Even when his mouth broke away to skim down the side of my neck, and then up my jaw to my earlobe, I could no more utter a syllable of protest than I could stop my heart from beating.

“Oh, Lord, Lily Rae,” he whispered into my ear, his lips nibbling at my lobe. “Is this grown up enough for you?”

I couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, knew it would be impossible to string three words together. Delicious goose bumps prickled my arms, my neck, my back. My legs felt heavy, as if I were wearing Daddy’s steel-toed work boots through a mud-slogged field. The blood pulsed through my veins like warm molasses. I felt a yearning to have Jake’s mouth on mine again.

He must’ve read my mind, or maybe it was my body he was reading. I pressed against him, releasing a soft, shuddering moan. His head turned, and again, his mouth found mine, but this time, the kiss was softer, slower, almost teasing. The heat in my lower belly blossomed and arrowed directly to the part of me that was so shameful and dirty—the part that Chad had unsuccessfully tried to stroke just last night.

I was burning down there, wanting…
needing
to be touched. I’d never felt like this with Chad. Never,
ever
.

Then I felt it. A hot, hard nudge against my lower belly. His
thing
! The sword of sin, Mother had called it back when my first monthly curse had arrived, and we’d had “the talk” about boys and how they wanted only one thing from a girl, and how it was the girl’s job to make sure he didn’t take any liberties, and if she
did
allow him to take liberties, she was nothing but low-down trash like Pat-Peaches.

That’s how I was acting right now, I realized. Like Pat-Peaches! I tried to pull my mouth away from Jake’s, but he deepened the kiss, sliding both hands down my back, molding me against him so the brick-like object under his flimsy loin cloth felt like it was burning right through my dress. Alarmed and excited at the same time, I moaned what I intended to be a protest, but even to my own ears, it sounded like a cat in heat. He reacted by sliding his hands down until they cradled my bottom, nestling me even closer against him. I gasped sharply into his teasing mouth. He broke the kiss and gazed down at me, blue eyes luminous in the light of the crescent moon.

“Do you remember how we used to kiss down by the creek?” He whispered. Before I could respond, he drew my bottom lip into his mouth and nibbled gently.

My head spun. Over his right shoulder, I saw the big dipper glimmering in the sky like diamonds on black velvet. My heart raced, the fine hairs on my arms tingled, and my knees trembled. I’d never felt more alive in my life.

His teeth released their gentle hold on my bottom lip, and he rocked against me slowly, his gaze holding mine. The subtle pressure of his forbidden maleness sent hot arrows of flame shooting up into my womb. I knew I should push him away and demand he drive me home or, better yet, run as fast as my legs could carry me. But I just couldn’t do it.

“You were the first girl I ever kissed,” he said, a husky note in his voice. “And you said I was your first, too.” One hand moved leisurely from my bottom to my thigh, and with a sense of fascination mixed with something close to horror, I realized he’d taken hold of the skirt of my dress and was gathering the fabric up in his hand.

Another long, sweet kiss. His mouth tasted of Winston cigarettes and peppermint candy. I could feel his heart thumping against mine. His chest was warm and muscular, and that earlier glimpse of him half-naked had revealed a soft-looking carpet of light brown hair veeing down past his belly button. He smelled of gasoline, motor oil, Brylcreem, and something else that was pure male. His fingers skimmed the bare skin above my stockings, and a jolt of electricity jagged through me. I cried out in surprise. His mouth slid along my cheekbone, and slowly, he thrust against me, one hand molded to my left butt cheek, the other stroking my thigh. His thing is growing, I thought dizzily.
You’d better stop things right now, girl, or it’s going to get out of control
. That was the voice of the
good
Lily Rae talking in my brain. The one who went to church every Sunday morning, the one who earnestly cared about fire and brimstone and everlasting hell for bad girls who let boys touch their secret female places. But as Jake pressed his strong body against mine, nibbled at my lips and stroked his fingers closer and closer to that forbidden place between my legs, the
bad
Lily Rae moaned in delight inside my brain, inside every
tissue
of my body.

Oh, my good Lord, this must be what Heaven feels like, the bad Lily Rae thought.
His fingers touching me. His mouth…and oh, my word…his sword of sin pressing against me…no one ever said how good this would feel
. Was that why it was bad? Because it
felt
so good?