Latimer's Law (9 page)

Abby sat, legs out stiffly, hands clenched in her lap. Cade leaned forward, pulled up the tailgate and brought down the hatch with a slam and a twist of the handle.

“What about your dog?”

“He prefers being outside. Three’s a crowd in the back of a truck. Gonna be hot enough in here without Mort. Plus he’ll keep an ear open, let me know if anything turns up.”

Abby blew out a long breath and wiped sweat from her face with her sleeve. “I can’t believe this is happening. You sure you don’t want to just drop me off with the nearest sheriff?”

“I’m sure. Shut up and go to sleep.” He lay down and shifted to get comfortable, shoving a clean pair of jeans at her. “Pillow. Sorry, it’s what we got. They’re not bad if you roll ’em up tight and put them under your neck.” He turned off the flashlight before setting it next to him in easy reach. “Good night.”

There was a long, still pause in which the insect noise outside and the sound of the river seemed to fill the camper shell, then Abby lay down, curled as far from him as possible, her back firmly toward him. She smelled of the acrid campfire smoke, sweat and old fear. And Cade wanted her, more than he could ever remember wanting a woman before. He laced his hands under his head and stared out the side window, where he could see the tiny green and gold glows of fireflies signaling to prospective mates in the darkness of the scrub woods.

After a while, he spoke again, knowing she wasn’t yet asleep. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand. Why didn’t you leave before now, Abby? Why did you wait so long? What stopped you?” The answers were never simple in domestic abuse scenarios. There were sometimes children, or the woman had no means of support, or her self-esteem had been so damaged that she never even considered leaving. In Abby’s case, he suspected it was the people at her day care, as vulnerable as children. Marsh had undoubtedly been a master at slipping the thin end of the wedge into her awareness, making her dependent on him before he began his campaign of making her over to suit himself.

Abby didn’t answer. Instead, she sat up again and drew her legs up the way she had at the picnic table. Cade realized he’d blown any chance at all of ever getting to know her better. Like her abuser, he’d made it clear he considered the abuse her own fault. Even if that wasn’t what he thought or meant, it was sure as hell what it sounded like. He clenched his fist in the darkness and shook his head at himself, but he didn’t apologize. Maybe she would at least give it thought, if she hadn’t already.

Chapter 6

A
bby wasn’t sure how long it was before she finally felt she could lie down again. She sat in the darkness, her mind churning. The events of the day played over and over in her head. Every slightest noise from outside caught her ear—the jingle of Mort’s tags on his collar. The change in pitch of the cicadas’ buzzing. A faint splash from the river, perhaps a fish jumping, or some animal coming to drink.

The truck cooled gradually, but the night remained too hot for restful sleep. She was still sweaty, and she wanted a shower and an enormous glass of iced tea. She stretched out carefully, trying not to disturb Cade, who slept quietly, hardly snoring at all, one hand on his belly, the other lying lax at his side between the two of them. She wondered where he had put his gun. Surely it wasn’t still in the back of his waistband—he couldn’t possibly sleep like that—but she hadn’t seen him deal with it in the darkness. He’d probably hidden it while she’d been at the toilets.

Gary had been a noisy sleeper, but Abby had thought,
I always know where he is. He’s right here beside me.

Marsh—well. At least she didn’t have firsthand knowledge of how he slept. He stayed in his own room, except when he woke in the night to use the bathroom or to stand in her doorway and stare at her in the darkness. She didn’t know whether he snored or not, and she was grateful not to know. When they were awake, he struck her, did other disgusting things to her, but so far he hadn’t forced her into the intimacy of sleeping in the same bed.

Somehow, the thought of that was worse than everything else he had done. It would have destroyed the last sweetness remaining from her life with Gary, had Marsh invaded the bed they’d shared. Silent tears rolled down the outside of her face, dribbling into her ears and making her itch. She bit her lip to make herself stop. What was done was done—no sense weeping again. In the morning, she’d find a way to convince Cade to take her back to Wildwood.

After a while, she saw the stars disappear one by one. The night was clouding up. The song of the cicadas changed, in concert with the dropping barometric pressure and the lateness of the hour. Abby hoped even insects had to sleep sometime, and would stop their ceaseless noise. She closed her eyes at last, dizzy and all but spinning with exhaustion. Her fingers twitched sleepily, and she felt them brush against Cade’s arm, fine hairs tickling. She drew back, but it was uncomfortable to hold herself at such an awkward angle, and each time she relaxed, their skin touched.

In the end she stopped fighting her own body and the slope of the truck bed. Her elbow pivoted, her forearm turned and the back of her hand lay against his strong wrist.

She told herself it was so she’d know if he moved; it was for safety’s sake. She counted his pulse, and after fifty, she forgot to count, she simply drifted. The darkness seemed to throb in time with his heartbeat behind her eyelids.

After a while, Abby admitted to herself she was touching Cade because she wanted to. The simple purity and comfort of a human connection, a touch that didn’t involve menace or pain.

Yes, it had to be that, she told herself, and when sleep came like a slow-rising river in flood, she went with it. Her last thought was of the furnace-heat of Cade’s long body, touching hers, and a vague, confused amazement that she was here at all, sleeping next to a stranger, and feeling safer than she had in many months, let alone finding comfort. It made no sense, but it was welcome nonetheless.

* * *

The hand was warm as it cupped the flare of her hip bone. Perceptibly warm, even in the blood-heat of the summer night. It made the rest of her feel cooler, and when the hand slid across her belly and curved to her waist, where she lay on her side in the bed of the pickup, she didn’t resist an automatic movement to relax into the heat of his body, curled behind her. In the humidity, it was only moments before she felt the hollow of her spine grow damp with perspiration, but still the heat was welcome. To be close to another body, without fear, without trembling...it was both all she had wished and more than she had dared to hope for in the past year.

Cicadas still droned their monotonous song outside the stuffy shelter of the truck. Abby had always wondered how the insects knew when to change pitch and tone, for they did it all at once as if a conductor directed them from on high. Did they sense a change in temperature, or a movement in the air? How could so many insects, in so many different trees, be so in tune? Was it the same sense that told her, now that she was awake, that Cade was awake, too, and aware of her in the same way she was aware of him? She listened to Cade’s breathing for a moment and knew in the darkness behind her, his blue, blue eyes were open, all pupil in the night, seeking her reaction.

His hand slid, as if in sleep, gently along her rib cage, and stopped just short of cupping her left breast. Abby wondered if he could feel the sudden slamming acceleration of her heartbeat, or the manic trembling that was turning her insides to liquid. Could he hear the tentative, silent, anxious thought-words about how she’d known this man only a few hours, and not because of good circumstances. He was a man with secrets, this scarred man with his dog like a weapon, his gun and his easy, casual strength. The trembling whispered to her of fear, of dread, but also of allure and excitement. Despite the surface appearance of Cade frightening her, there was the thing her instinct kept telling her: he was a good man. A considerate man. He’d shared his food with her. He’d given her privacy while she went to the pit toilet. He’d held her when emotion overwhelmed her and she’d spilled the story of Marsh’s treatment. He’d made a soft nest here in the back of his truck. Above all, he hadn’t turned her in for her crime, something she knew she richly deserved.

Mimicking Cade’s drowsy attitude, Abby rolled slowly toward him until she lay on her back, her left shoulder pressed snugly against his chest. The movement brought her hand in contact with his body, and to her surprise she felt the slight moistness of bare skin and wiry body hair against the back of her hand. Her breathing hitched, and she opened her eyes at last. Cade’s hand moved to her side and held her firmly.

“You’re awake,” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

How his mouth found hers in the utter darkness, Abby didn’t know. Its descent was unerring, its touch on hers sure and firm. A vision of Marsh shot like a meteorite across her vision and was gone in less time than it took for Cade’s tongue to stroke her lips apart. Kissing Marsh was never like this, never such a drowning pleasure, never a matter of give and take—only give. And give, and give, until it hurt and Marsh was ready to be satisfied with a few rough thrusts and his climax into her hand or between her breasts. In the darkness Cade’s hands shaped her, molded her, guided her. Above all, they encouraged her shy exploration, moving her sweat-dampened palm to his ribs, where she could feel his heart thudding like a jackhammer, and then starting her on a downward trek along the indentation of his midline. He opened buttons on her shirt before tugging it free of her jeans. When his palm flattened on her belly, gooseflesh rose over her entire body, a reflex of dread. She waited for his hand to slide upward and squeeze her breast, hard and then harder, but his touch remained lightly teasing, as he freed her breast from the cup of her bra. Her nipple tautened and crested in response to his touch, and she heard herself release a gasping moan.

“Am I hurting you?”

“No. No. It’s all right....”

Cade’s hand slid over the waistband of her jeans and followed the stitching of the fly. Down, and farther down, until he cupped her mound and his long fingers slid between her legs and traced the stitching where the leg seams met. Even through the multiple thicknesses of fabric, she could feel the scorch of his hand. Bright spangles of light played behind her eyelids as she screwed her lids shut tight. Cade kissed her again, slower than before, deeper, dreamlike and languid. His hand pressed against her snugly, and Abby felt herself needing to squirm against that touch and seek a pleasure she hadn’t known for too long.

Cade groaned as her hips moved, and he lifted his mouth to rasp breathlessly in her ear. “I want to touch you there. Will you let me? Let me touch you, feel you on my hands?”

Abby could have wept with the beauty of his voice, ragged with desire for her, and the urgent poetry of his words. She nodded, not trusting her voice not to break, and moved her hand to the waistband button of her jeans, only to meet his fingers there, already pushing the metal rivet through the buttonhole. When he nuzzled her neck, she shuddered. His cheek and chin were rough with stubble. A hot, sweet throb went through her abdomen, and a moment later the zip slid down. Air met her skin and she lost her nerve.

“Wait. Cade, wait.” Where she found the courage to ask him to stop, she couldn’t imagine. Surely now he would be angry with her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have— I’m sorry.”

She could feel the tension in his muscles when he froze and held back. In that moment Abby realized there would not be anger. Nothing would happen without her permission. Nothing would knock her off-kilter, or surprise her, except perhaps her own overwhelming physical response. Cade was nothing more than a looming shadow in the darkness, a shadow that breathed and trembled. She knew he was looking down at her and wondered if he could see more than she could.

“It’ll be all right, Abby.”

She wanted to believe him. She thought perhaps she
could
believe him. When his hand moved gently, slowly, back to its task and slipped beneath the elastic of her panties, she didn’t stop him, and she didn’t speak. She had only to wait with held breath and shivering eagerness and that glittering edge of nervousness for the moment that would come,
must
come.

The moment
did
come, with gentleness and warmth, and a sweetness that was nothing short of total devastation. She knew exactly which of his slightly roughened fingertips slipped first into the crease at the apex of her thighs. She had studied those hands so often over the course of the day it almost seemed she could see the half-moon at the base of the neatly trimmed nail and the crisp sandy hairs on the last knuckle as they disappeared within her jeans and flesh. His other fingers flanked her labia and massaged deliciously while that middle finger pressed slowly inward to find the swollen pout of her clitoris.

“Yes,” he breathed. “Yes. Like that. So wet, so warm.”

Abby arched upward, gasping, when he found his goal. The jolt that ran through her at that single stroking touch caused every inch of her skin to flush with blood as if she’d been caught reading “The Song of Solomon” at church when she should have been listening to the preacher. Illicit, lushly arousing, and oh, so forbidden. Beyond erotic, leaping into wantonness and hedonistic self-indulgence. The powerful touch of a stranger, anonymous and deliriously debauched.

“Yes. Let me.” Cade slid a knee between her own and nudged her legs apart. Abby felt the hairs on his thigh rasping against her bare skin and realized she did not know how or when he had removed her clothing. Fear rose again inside her a moment later when she felt his weight settling above her. Then there was that most intimate of touches, the head of his shaft nudging bluntly, blindly, at her entrance, and she sat up, fighting and flailing.

Her own gasp startled her and she groped around her in panic. Next to her in the back of the truck Cade lay still, breathing deeply in his sleep. Her heart raced and perspiration broke out over her body. Quick flutters of her hands informed her she was still fully dressed. She swallowed hard and pulled her hair away from her sweaty neck.

She’d dreamed the whole thing, except for Cade’s hand, lying loosely over her upper thigh, where it had fallen from her hip when she bolted upright.

It was a struggle to control her breathing and refrain from panicked laughter. When they’d first lain down, she hadn’t expected to get any rest at all, much less sleep, let alone have blatantly erotic dreams of Cade making love to her. Her body still broadcast its need. Her nipples stood out in the cups of her bra, and her lower body felt far too warm. Exactly as if she’d been awaiting the fulfillment of an orgasm after sweet foreplay, a feeling she hadn’t experienced since Gary died.

Marsh pushed her into the angle of the kitchen counter. His breathing was harsh and erratic. She could feel his erection pressing against her hip, and was appalled. Had he always wanted her like this? Even before Gary died? She felt his mouth roaming over hers, and though he looked a little like Gary, and even smelled like him in the way that siblings could, she was not aroused.

But she felt obligated, and maybe this was all her fault. She’d been so grateful to him for helping pull the weight of the day care center. He’d even taken a leave of absence from his own job to help her out. And she...she’d gone on wearing the casual work clothes she’d worn when she and Gary were doing the grunt work of cleaning up after their clients had gone for the evening. Skimpy, much-washed T-shirts and soft, battered jeans that clung to her curves and had threadbare holes in places that perhaps were best kept hidden.

When he pulled her hand to the crotch of his trousers and mumbled, “Please touch me, Abby, just a little, I promise,” it was somehow the least she could do. Should do. She owed him. A few strokes, gently cupping, until he pressed his face into her neck and sucked hard there as he came, dampening his boxers and the crisp khakis.

He’d marked her in his excitement. In the morning a dab of concealer hid the red place that bruised to purple and then greenish-yellow before fading.

It happened again a few days later. They were on their knees in the kitchen—why had it been the kitchen so often?—scrubbing at some of the paint that had been spilled when James’s spastic hand disobeyed while they all did art together. They’d mopped up most of the tempera, but some had managed to stain the grout between the tiles and now she and Marsh were doing the detail work of bleaching and scrubbing. Marsh clutched at her from behind, grinding his pelvis into hers—both of them fully clothed. He had an erection, but only moments later she felt it softening. He shoved her away as if disgusted with them both.