Hers the Kingdom (29 page)

     She took off her blouse and stood there, her breasts bare, so he could wash it all away. And he did, with his hands he washed her, rubbing her breasts, cupping them in his hands. The water was cold but she did not feel it. And then his mouth was on hers; the water splashed and rocked and sucked at them and they swayed but did not fall, they held hard to each other. She felt the heat low in her groin, and a tightening, and his hard swelling against her; his mouth was on hers, his hand on her breast, and then he was walking, guiding her out of the water.

     They walked together to a place sheltered by a large rock where the sand was deep and soft. The mist was all around and the air was warm and the sand was warm. They stood facing each other there, his hands lightly on her bare waist, steadying her. He was looking at her, searching for something, looking inside of her, she thought. Then she took his face in her hands. Her breasts were heaving, the nipples hard and red from rubbing against the wet suede of his vest. She held his face steady in her hands and slowly, very deliberately, with the tip of her tongue she traced his lips. When he tried to press into her mouth, she had pulled him back so he would let her continue her exploration. With her tongue she felt his eyelids, one and then the other, and the lobes of his ears, and then her hands went to his vest and she took it off.

     She could hear his breathing, long and steady, as he loosened her skirt and let it drop. One of his hands went to her belly, the
other was on her buttocks and he was pressing and sliding them lower, down to the throbbing, until she felt his fingers tangled in her hair, and then he was touching the place that was wet and hot and inside.

     He clamped hard and held her there while she plunged her hands into his pants and found him, and freed him so that she could hold him in her hands and feel how hard he was, fully erect. She pressed him against her belly and held him there, while they explored each other's mouths, fingers and tongues plunging and squeezing and finding every tender place.

     Free of all clothes, they lay in the deep sand. She opened her legs wide to the air and the sea and the man; he ran his hands over her, fingers knowing and tongue knowing. And then she felt the power with which he entered her and she thought her heart would burst.

     She met him, pushing, probing, knowing that there was a center that he must, would, touch. His tongue was in her mouth, driving, sweet and hard. He was inside of her and she was in him, and she would be a part of it, know all of it, all there was to know.

     She pushed hard until he lay on his back and she climbed on top of him. She raised her hands high over her head, and he raised his, and their fingertips touched, and their toes. Then she sat up, erect, on him and arched her back as far as she could, and she moaned to the sky and the seagull wheeling overhead as he pressed both hands over her breasts and grew inside of her, farther and farther into the interior, into the very center of her.

     And she had always known it could be like this, always always. He rolled over onto her again, then, and began a slow and solemn rocking, a rhythm that she joined, pushing deeper and deeper, reaching in a surging rhythm until they were together, perfectly, knowing it was there and finding it together, touching it . . . she exploded.

     He waited to feel it with her, and then he exploded.

     When she pressed her face into his neck and whispered, "Yes," to him, he answered in thick Irish accents, "Oh, Lord, yes."

SHE WAS IN the office earlier than usual the next morning. Now that she knew what she was going to do, she wanted to get on with it. A light breeze played through the branches of the pepper tree that stood outside the window, sending a delicate tracery of shadows over the desktop. She held her hands palms up, as if to catch them, as if to hold the moving light.

     Too restless to sit, she moved to the window. The magnolia tree was in bloom. She had the urge to put one of the big blossoms in each room so the heavy, lush scent could permeate the house. She squeezed her arms together and tried to remember the fragrance of magnolias.

     She had left Connor at the beach. She tried to think, now, how he had looked. She clasped her hands to keep them still.

     "I thought you might not come," she said, not turning around, knowing he was neither in the room nor out, but poised in the doorway.

     "Ah, why would I not?" he answered, his tone careful.

     She wished she had picked the magnolia. She wanted its fragrance to wrap around her now; she wanted to breathe it into her.

     "Yesterday did happen," she said. Until that moment it had not occurred to her that she could pretend it hadn't.

     Connor moved into the room. He closed the door and then he looked at her carefully. She had turned and was facing him, but she had not moved from her place at the window and now she thought that she might not be able to move at all. He said, "Please, sit." When she did not move, he repeated the "please." She sat behind the desk; he stood across from her.

     "Yesterday, the terrible scene with the horse," he began, "you were distraught, filled with woe. You exhausted yourself trying to save the animal, we worked very, very hard together . . ."

     "Yesterday did happen," she repeated. Her fingers gripped the edge of the desk; she tried to keep the image of the magnolia in her mind.

     "Wait," he said, his voice urgent, "I want to tell you a story. A true story. Let me do that. I've never told this story to anyone before, but I want to tell you now. Then I'll hear whatever you want to say, I promise you that."

     Willa nodded, and for the first time that morning he smiled at her, a boy's sweet smile, without guile.

     "You know I have not been quick to talk about my early months in this country," He began, "I was but seventeen when I arrived, and I'd no experience in the world, none at all." He cleared his throat and began to pace, moving into and out of a square of sunlight thrown into the room. "I was sent to a ranch in Montana to live with a family, to help with the work. They were a man and his wife and their three little ones, the eldest but five years. The man was big and silent and he worked himself without pity, long hours from sunup until dark, with only time to eat and sleep and be up to work again, all day and every day. His wife was young, still, though you knew she wouldn't be young for long, not in that harsh land and what with the bearing of babies and all. But this woman, she was not reared for that kind of life. She had been a schoolteacher back East, I think she hadn't a notion of how
hard life on the frontier would be. She didn't complain, but you could see how lonely she felt. There was a gentleness about her, she reminded me of my sister Mag, a sweet girl for certain. So I taught this woman—her name was Susan—some of the songs my sister used to sing, and we talked together on those days I was to work with her in the family garden. She made life less lonely for a homesick boy. And it gave me great pleasure to make her smile. I came to adore her, the way a boy does when a woman is kind to him, the way I loved my sisters. I wanted to make her happy, make her laugh."

     He took a long breath, moved out of the square of light so Willa could not see his face. He was, she thought, trying to raise the courage to touch a spot long sore. Finally, he went on. "One day we got word from a neighbor that a preacher was coming through—there were traveling preachers in those days, men who would go from settlement to settlement, and people would gather from miles to hear him. I was curious, having never been to another church save the Catholic, but I knew the Mister would never allow it. It would be twenty miles each direction, a long journey.

     "Well, Susan decided that all of us must go. She talked and talked on it, she kept after her man, every night talking at him, but he wouldn't answer. Wouldn't say a word. Well, I don't know how she did it, but one morning she told me that she and the young ones were going, and that I would go along to drive and watch after them."

     Willa sat quietly, waiting and wondering.

     "Folks did come from all over, it was a real gathering," he went on. "I was glad to see Susan talking with the other women, and I kept watch over the little ones to give her some visiting time.

     "The preacher got started about twilight, in a big tent that had been raised in a clearing between cabins. He was a strange, tall man with a voice that seemed to get into the head. I mean . . ." He paused, swallowed. "There was something in his voice that seemed to rouse people. It was summertime, and warm. The children were
put to sleep in the wagons. For a while there was some singing, some hymns . . . then the preacher began. His voice would get loud, and then it would get very soft, very soft. Then he would be shouting again and pretty soon the people—these good, sound farm folks—they got to shouting back, and everybody was swaying and swooning. Some of the women started to cry, and one fell on the ground and began to moan. People were, I don't know how to explain it, it was as if they were . . . possessed. And suddenly Susan was leaning against me, swaying and catching at her breath and then we were outside, under the wagon."

     Willa looked at his hands; the blond hairs stood out on his fingers. When he spoke again his voice was perfectly calm. "It was the first time I had been with a woman."

     Beads of sweat lay high on his forehead. "After that," he went on, "she didn't say a word to me. We drove home in silence. She never did speak to me again, except when her husband was in the room, and that was a false-hearty kind of talk so he wouldn't suspect. She couldn't look at me. She hated the very sight of me, so she erased me from her view. The shame must have burned bright inside of her, she was so full of disgust. I left as soon as I could, left with my bedroll and what was on my back."

     Willa stretched her arms out straight before her, holding to the rim of the desk with her fingertips. She tried to think of magnolias; she did not want to lose the idea of them.

     "Are you saying that yesterday's accident with Ranger whipped me into a frenzy that sent me reeling out of my mind and into your arms, are you saying that I didn't know what I was doing, that I'm like that farmer's wife?"

     "No," he answered carefully, "no. It's not that—though I'm not sure it would have happened without the accident. The thing I am trying to tell you is that I won't let a woman do that to me again, not ever."

     Willa looked at him then with astonishment. "Ah," she said, "I see."

     "What? What do you see?" he asked.

     "How foolish I've been," she answered, walking over to the window, looking out at the magnolia. "How foolish to have thought the decision mine alone. After I left you yesterday I went to the woods. I asked myself if it would have happened, between us, without the accident in the surf. I knew it was important. I finally understood that it would have happened, that I wanted it to happen. That I do want it . . . you."

     He said, as if to make certain she understood, "It was the shame I couldn't abide. I need never have touched her again, but that she could feel such terrible shame over what had been between us."

     "I am not sorry," she said, reaching across the desk, "and I will feel no shame." He took both of her hands in his. He kissed one, then the other, formally. But when she rose to move around the desk, to come to him, he stopped her. "Not here," he said, "not in this house. Now we speak of work. That is important. If I work hard enough, and fast enough, I will be able to leave when the men take their siesta."

     "Yes," Willa said, pleased that their plans had been the same. "I'll be at Escondido Canyon," she went on, and in a voice that was short of breath, gave him careful directions.

     Escondido—hidden, it meant. It was just one of the places she had discovered in her trampings over the ranch. There were springs there and a small waterfall where maidenhair fern grew in thick, lush clumps and where the water ran easy over smooth stones. There was no way at all for anyone who did not know where they were going to find Escondido Canyon. There was no place in all the world, Willa thought, quite so private as the Rancho Malibu y Sequit, and no one who knew its hiding places better than she.

     The springs at Escondido were only one of the secret places she would guide Connor to that summer. There were caves with Indian pictographs on the walls, and a grotto carved by the sea where they could lie in soft sand and look out at the ocean, where they could listen to the low rumble of the sea and know they were utterly alone. There were green and leafy places under the
sheltering branches of a giant live oak tree, shared with the nests of birds, and there were grassy high meadows on the tops of mesas, with only the hawks soaring above them in the limitless expanse of the sky. Their trysting places were without number, their privacy inviolate, and they were without shame for the acts of love consummated in the long spring afternoons, filled with the fragrance of magnolia oil she had rubbed onto her breasts and thighs. The great ivory blossoms with their delicate yellow stamens appeared in every room of the ranch house, to remind her, to sustain her. She knew, in those weeks and days, that she was alive.