The Other Side of Silence (5 page)

She pulled away, leaning her forehead
against his collar bone.  “Nice greeting,” she murmured.  “Walk?  What walk?”
and was gratified to hear his rumbling chuckle again.

“Oh, I’m serious about the walk,” he
advised, hoisting her off the railing and onto her feet.  “Come on, let’s go
before the moon is gone.”

He took her hand to lead her across
the grass, before releasing it to lever his arm across her back, fingers fitted
comfortably into the place where her neck met her shoulder.  She could feel
their warmth, the occasional sliding movement as he stroked her hair back from
her throat then resettled his grasp.  The atmosphere, as promised, possessed a remarkable
clarity, the stars bright, the narrow, sickle moon floating nearer the horizon,
the earthy, fresh smells of the night so much more heady without the
distraction of full vision. 

“It’s so quiet,” she whispered at one
point.  “You can’t even hear the road noise.”

“I imagine this was how it would have
been two hundred years ago.  Think about it.  This far from any town of
appreciable size, you’d hear nothing but the wind and the water running through
the creek bed, the nocturnal animals moving in the darkness.  You’d see no
ambient light except from the stars and the moon, nothing to distract your eye
from the candle in the window lighting your way home, if you were fortunate
enough to have someone waiting for you there.”

She felt his breath across her cheek
as he turned his head to speak.  She nodded in understanding.  “I can see it,
just as you’re describing.”

“I couldn’t live any differently,” he
said.  “I need the peace.”

“Even though it’s not as quiet,
that’s what the farm affords me.  I think that’s why I fought so hard to keep
it.  I often felt in the past like I was waiting for something there, but I
don’t for the life of me know what.”

“Waiting?”

“Yes.”

He smiled, his teeth bright beneath
the sky.  “I know exactly what you mean,” he said.

She moved closer to him with a little
sidestep, slipping her arm around his waist, hooking her thumb through his belt
loop.  He kissed the top of her head.  “When these fields are planted with
corn,” he went on, “and the growing conditions are good, the stalks in late
summer are taller than my head.  The wind through the leaves is like the
whisper of voices.”

“I know the sound,” she answered. 
“There’s nothing like it.”

Pulling her to a halt, he stepped
behind her, closing his arms across her mid-section, his chin propped lightly
on her crown.  “You wouldn’t consider marrying a man you’ve just met, would
you?” he teased.  At least she thought he was teasing.  His voice remained light,
not serious at all, but he held himself very still.

Leaning back against his chest, Sunny
turned her head to kiss the hard contour of his arm beneath the hem of his
sleeve, and then looked back out over the valley.  “There’s quite a view from
here,” she commented, avoiding any answer.

Spread below them, the lights of the
long streets of the town cupped in the valley twinkled as the trees between
swayed in the breeze, causing the pinpoints of illumination to wink in and out
of existence like faerie light.  Too far away for modern sound, for reality, it
felt to Sunny as though she looked through time from the past into a fey
future, and she didn’t feel exactly certain on which side she belonged.

“Once,” he murmured against her hair,
indicating the valley with a sweep of his hand, “you would not have seen even
that.”

“Do you wish you lived back then?”
she asked, mesmerized by the minuscule circles he’d begun to trace with the tip
of the pointer finger on his other hand around her left nipple through her
shirt.  After a moment he slid his fingers underneath the soft material,
running along the edge of her bra, and then he rested his hand against her
breast and held it still.

“Not anymore,” he whispered.

She let the implication of his simple
statement drift and settle in her mind.  When first she agreed to come here to
walk with him, she had thought to tell him about Scott’s drunken message, but
she realized there should be nothing of her ex-husband with them now.  Tonight
was about the two of them only.  Roger’s words had solidified that for her.

Closing her fingers over his, she
held them there against her, feeling the pounding of her heart through his hand
into hers.  “Roger,” she said. 

He kissed the side of her throat,
burying his face into her hair.  “Will you stay with me tonight?”

“Yes,” she answered without
hesitation.

*        *        *

The ceilings of the cabin were low,
retaining any gathered heat from the day.  Exposed beams sat so low, in fact,
that given another inch Roger would have been striking his head.  In his bedroom
the plaster between had mellowed with age to an eggshell color, stained with
the residue of wick and fire and oil over the course of many, many years. 
Books lined one wall, a small dresser and a wardrobe sat against another, and
in the center what appeared to be an ancient four-poster bed was barely
contained beneath the ceiling.  When Sunny asked him if the bed was authentic
or a reproduction, he assured her it was the real deal.  Piled high with quilts
and blankets and an odd assortment of pillows, the bed looked inviting and
comfortable and like an oasis one might call home. 

Beside it, on a low night table,
Roger lit a single candle.  He sat down on the edge of the high mattress, his
hands clasped together between his knees.  “Come here,” he said.

She did, moving to stand between his
long legs, her own fingers wrapped tightly together to keep her hands from
shaking.  He stared at the interlacing of her fingers for a moment and raised
his hands to her own, gently loosening her grip.  Turning her hands, he lifted
them to his face, kissing the inside of one wrist, then the other, pressing his
mouth to the place where the blood beat blue and rapid beneath the shallow
surface of flesh.

“Don’t be afraid of this,” he
whispered.

“I’m not.”

“No?  I am.  Inside I’m stumbling all
over myself with wanting you, with wanting to take you in every way imaginable,
hot and hard and fast, but I’m also afraid, too.  I don’t want to…to screw this
up, Sunny.  I don’t want this to be just one night.  I’ve waited a long time
for something I could weep about, and crow with joy over, something that makes
me laugh and want to share my innermost secrets, and I’m suspecting I may be
finding that something with you.  I don’t want to screw it up.  Do you
understand what I’m saying?”

Sunny swallowed over an unexpected
lump in her throat.  “Yes,” she whispered.

“I won’t hurt you, I won’t leave you,
I won’t run off and father a child with someone else—”

At that, she tried to pull away, but
he wouldn’t let her. 

“There’s still time if you want
children, Sunny.  If we reach that point in our relationship, I would be proud
and humbled to be that man for you.”

Ah, crap, she thought, I’m going to
cry.  Glancing up, he witnessed her tears and transferred both her hands to one
of his, reaching up with the other to wipe the sliding moisture from her
cheeks.  Sunny turned her face into the curve of his large, calloused palm,
reassured by the gentleness of his touch, the warmth.

“For now, though, there’s only one
thing I want.  Well, several things actually…”

Despite her efforts to control her
reaction, she smiled at him and kissed his thumb where it lay against the
corner of her mouth.

“What’s first on your list?” she
asked.

“Take off your clothes for me.”

She drew in a breath, short and
sharp, and felt the heat of it run down into her belly and out through her
pores.  He released her hands and she stepped away.  Stilling the trembling of
her fingers, she loosened the buttons of her blouse one by one.  Glancing up at
Roger’s face from beneath her lashes she saw the flicker of candlelight move
across his skin and in the depths of his steady, amber gaze.  She shirked the
blouse from her shoulders, letting it slide from her arms to the worn carpet on
the floor.  Roger made no movement but the momentary suspension of his breath.

Unfastening her jeans, she began to
slide them from her hips, but he stopped her, fitting his fingers over her
own.  Leaning forward from the mattress he pressed his mouth to the hollow
beneath her rib cage, then against the jutting bone of her pelvis before
resuming his former position of rapt attention.  Sunny pushed her jeans down
her legs, shoved off her sneakers with her toes and stepped out of her pants,
standing before him in her underwear and a pair of short, white socks. 
Self-consciously she crossed one foot over the other. 

Reaching out with his boot, he trod
gently on the front of her sock.  She pulled her foot out.  He did the same
with the other.  When he smiled at her, she saw the devil in his grin.

“Keep going,” he said.

The bra was a front fastener, and she
fitted her fingers to the clasp.

“Wait.”

Lifting his arm, he twisted the clasp
and let go.  Confined to nylon and spandex, her breasts popped free, round and
taut with yearning.  Roger made a noise in his throat.  “And these,” he said,
inserting a finger into the waistband of her panties.  However, he seemed
determined to hamper her efforts to remove them, gliding his fingers down into
her garment and between her legs where he stroked the moist folds of her flesh
with a light, maddening touch. 

“You are soaked,” he said in
deliberate enunciation.

“Ah, yup,” she agreed.

He laughed, sliding her underwear to
the ground.  “Come closer.”

She complied in willingness. 
Standing before Roger while he had not yet removed a single stitch of his own
clothing was suddenly the most erotic thing she had ever imagined.  It was like
being totally under someone’s control and yet wielding all the power at one and
the same time. 

He touched her with his gaze first
and his hands second, fitting his fingertips, the length of his fingers, the
expanse of his palms to every roundness and declivity, the arch of every bone,
the curve of every muscle.  “You’re still trembling,” he said.

“So are you.”

“Hmm.  You’re right.”

Cupping his hands around her
buttocks, he slid from the mattress to one knee on the floor, opening his mouth
across the heated flesh between her legs. 

“Oh, God,” she whispered, stretching
for the beam above her head, too far for her to reach, but only just.  She
lowered her hands into his hair instead, moving her hips in a rhythm of his
creation, feeling the pulse of her blood and the pressure of his tongue,
slowly, slowly, slowly stroking across her labia, then circling around the
engorged bud of her clitoris. 

“Oh my God,” she said again and went
to pull away, but he held her fast, one arm across her hips and the other hand
spread along the inside of her thigh to keep her steady, captive, within the
confines of his mouth as she came.  Afterward, he stood up and lifted her
beneath the arms, tossing her onto the bed.  He laughed with a sound of mirth
and satisfaction.

“That was nice,” he said.  “That was
very nice.”

And then he shed his clothes.

*        *        *

The candle had burned down to a small
guttering flame in its glass.  Shadows danced across the titles on the
bookshelves, revealing an eclectic mixture of volumes, mostly related to
history, and more of them pertaining to the eighteenth century than to anything
else.  Sleepily Sunny let her eyes close, soothed by the soft stroke of Roger’s
fingers through her hair. 

“There’s a lot I need to tell you,
Sunny,” she heard him say, voice distorted by a muffled yawn, “but not
tonight.  There are things you need to know…but not tonight,” he repeated,
sliding his long body further beneath the mounded quilts to curl beside her.

I could tell you things about that
guy…

Hearing again the words in Scott’s
message, Sunny’s eyes opened wide.  She turned her gaze to the bare window
where the last of the candlelight reflected in the running, aged glass.  In a
moment the wick had snuffed and the room plunged into darkness.  Roger’s body curved
warm and solid and comforting against her back.  She closed her eyes again.

CHAPTER SIX

If she hadn’t been running so late
from work, Sunny might have noticed sooner that things were not quite right in
her house.  There was nothing overt, nothing that seemed to be missing, no
evidence of break-in, just something that felt not quite as it should. 

Not bothering to put down her purse,
she strolled around with a critical eye and thought, did I leave
that
there?  Were her shoes where she placed them?  Was that book on this corner of
the table?  Surely that photograph had been facing the other way…nothing
definitive, nothing alarming, nothing even about which she could accurately
say, “aha!” and understand the reason she felt so spooked. 

For several minutes she stood in the
center of the living room, her hands on her hips.  She frowned.  In the center
of the burgundy throw pillow at the end of her couch was an imprint, as if
someone’s head had rested there.  Not Roger’s, even though she’d given him a
key.  Roger wouldn’t make himself at home like that, without her being there. 
He was too—respectful was the word that came to mind.

Letting her breath out, she went to
the phone and called Scott.

Kathy answered.

Startled, Sunny hesitated for a
fraction of a second before greeting her.  “Hello?” Kathy spoke again.

“Hi, Kathy, it’s Sunny,” said Sunny,
sitting in the kitchen chair.  She tossed her purse up onto the table.  “How
are you?”

Kathy didn’t need to ask Sunny who. 
There was never any need to ask Sunny who.  One unusual name, one Sunny in
Scott’s life.  It had to irk her.

However, she didn’t sound irked. 
Quite the contrary.  “Hi, Sunny!  Are you calling to RSVP to the invitation?  I
never did thank you for talking to Scott about all of this.  I wasn’t sure what
was going to happen.  Thank you.”

Sunny blinked, holding the receiver
momentarily away from her ear.  The sincerity of Kathy’s tone touched her. 
“You’re welcome.  He just needed a little sense smacked into that dense skull
of his, you know?  But as far as an invitation, I didn’t get one.  I know
you’re getting married of course,” she added, not bothering to mention how the
information had come to her in a drunken message, “but I haven’t gotten
anything in the mail yet.”

“No?  That’s odd.  They went out two
weeks ago.  I though Scott left you a message, too.  He said he did.”

Oh, he did, Sunny reflected.  It had
been a few weeks and until this moment she’d almost forgotten it.  Almost, but
not quite.

“I hear you’re dating someone,” Kathy
went on without waiting for a reply.  “That’s great.  Will we get to meet him
at the wedding?”

Sunny’s brows dipped.  “Scott knows
Roger already,” she said.  And that was exactly where the information regarding
her ‘dating someone’ would have come.  “You haven’t met him yet?”

“Noooo,” answered Kathy uncertainly. 
“Not that I recall.”

“Well, I don’t think they’re that
close, really.  I’m not exactly certain what their association is.”

Perhaps, though, the time had come to
find out.  Sunny made a mental note to ask Roger when she saw him next.  Thus
far, and not surprisingly, Scott had not been a topic of shared conversation
between them.

“But you will come?  It would mean so
much to Scott to have you there.”

Sure it would, Sunny thought, but she
said instead, “Send me another invitation so I can properly respond, and I’ll
be there with bells on.”

“Okay,” said Kathy, “I’ll do that.”

“Before I hang up, is Scott around by
any chance?”

“Not right now.”

“Do you happen to know if he came by
the house for any reason?”

“No,” Kathy answered after a brief
silence, “I don’t.  Why?  Is something wrong?”

Odd question, considering.  “No, no. 
I just thought someone had been here, but I’m not really sure.”

Another minute silence and then,
“should I have him call you when he comes in?”

“No.  It’s no big deal.  I’ll talk to
you later, Kathy.  Thanks.”

Hanging up, Sunny made another
circuit around the house, including the upstairs this time, and even ventured
into the attic.  Unfortunately, it was difficult to tell if anything had been
disturbed up there.  Recalling Scott’s last visit for paperwork, she strode
over to the boxes of stored papers, eyeing the trampled dust.  Well, that could
have been from weeks ago or this very morning, as anything stirred up would
have settled again.  She’d never followed through with getting all of his things
out of the house.  She had to make certain to take care of that, as well, just
so there’d be no further excuse for him coming to the house uninvited.

Shrugging off her unease as a figment
of too much stress during the work day, she went back downstairs to prepare her
dinner.

*        *        *

Restless, dreaming and not
remembering the dreams that kept her coming to the surface of sleep, Sunny
finally tossed the light coverlet off and sat up, running her fingers through
the tangled hair across her crown.  She pressed her eyes into the heels of her
palms, turning toward the dark rectangle of the window.

Someone was there.

She made a noise, less a shriek than
an expletive.  Almost immediately she knew who it was.  The silhouette sat too
tall for anyone else.

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he
said, his deep voice rougher than usual.

“Roger, what are you doing?”

He stood up, moving like liquid in
the darkness.  He wore a lightweight jacket, which he shrugged off, tossing the
garment over the foot of the bed.  Standing beside the mattress, he looked down
at her.  “I worked late and when I got home there was a message on my phone
reminding me that in case I was thinking about coming over, I had a key for the
door.  So I thought about it, and here I am.  I didn’t have to think twice,
actually.”  He paused, speaking more quietly.  “You haven’t minded my occasional
midnight appearance before.”

She could hear the slight bafflement
in his voice, as if he thought she was accusing him of some impropriety.  He
ought to know better.  She trusted him.  From the moment they met. Hence, the
key. 

Sitting up against the headboard,
Sunny rubbed her nose and reached for the glass of water she kept on the
bedside table.  She took a large drink before speaking, trying to collect her
muddled thoughts.

“I meant by the window.  Why were you
just sitting there?”

“I was watching you sleep,” he said.

The lack of inflection to his tone
gave her pause.  “Hopefully,” she said, “not like a stalker, but like a lover.”

“Not like a stalker, I promise,” he
responded.  She could feel the vibration of his voice like a delicate hum in
her bones. 

“I hope I wasn’t snoring,” she said.

“You weren’t.  You were talking,
though.”

Sunny halted in the process of
returning her glass to the table.  “I was?  What the heck did I say?”

She slid over to make room for him to
sit.  The mattress sagged a bit beneath the redistribution of his weight on the
edge, causing her to roll toward him.  She propped herself up with her hands to
either side of her hips.  Beneath the ratty tee shirt she wore her nipples rose
just from the scent of him.  Chemical heat.  Exactly what that was.  Slow,
chemical heat to be followed, the experience of the past weeks told her, sooner
rather than later by combustion.

“Well,” he said quietly, “it wasn’t
my name you were calling.”

“Oh.”

No wonder he sounded upset.  She
figured she knew whose name she had been utilizing in her disturbed sleep, but
she asked anyway.

“Your ex-husband’s,” he said.  She
could sense his tension in the dark and stretched her hand to him, opening her
fingers over the firm curve of his thigh in worn denim.  For several seconds he
didn’t move and then he lifted his hand and settled it over hers. 

“I’m not surprised,” she said.  “I
wasn’t sleeping very well, as you’ll have noticed if you were sitting there
long enough.  Today when I got home from work I had the strangest feeling that
someone had been in the house while I wasn’t here.  Nothing definite, just a
feeling.  But I figured it wasn’t you.”

He remained silent for a minute,
thinking.  “Not one of the farmer’s hands?” he asked.

“None of them has a key.  Neither
should Scott, for that matter.”

“No,” he stated, “he shouldn’t.”

Sunny frowned at his tone.  “He
doesn’t.  I made him give it back months and months ago, when I realized he
still had one in his possession.  Of course, he could have made a copy at any
time, I guess.”

Roger said nothing.  After a moment
he let go of her hand and crossed his arms to grab the hem of his carelessly
tucked tee shirt and yank it over his head.  She caught her breath.  A trick of
the shifting gloom showed her the one side of his chest, the tiny bud of his
nipple hard with chill.  He enjoyed it when she touched him there.  For the
time being, however, she refrained.

“I want to ask you something,” she
said.  He nodded, a minimal movement in the darkness.  “Just what has your relationship
been with my ex, Roger?  Were you and Scott—are you and Scott,” she amended,
“friends, or what?”

Reaching down, he unlaced his boots
and kicked them off with a grunt of effort, after which he stood up and
unzipped his jeans, but he didn’t take them off.  He looked down at her again.

“We were never friends,” he said.  “I
don’t even remember exactly how we met, but I ended up helping him with a few
jobs, and he came over the morning after the storm asking for my assistance
again, here.  It’s not as if I don’t like the guy, but we’re not close.  I
don’t know him well at all.”

Well, that would explain Kathy not
meeting him, but it didn’t explain Scott’s animosity in his phone message or
his reference to ‘backstabbing prick.’  Obviously, Scott had taken things a
little too personally.  Now she thought of it, that particular message was the
last time she’d heard from her former husband.  She’d been so wrapped up in the
newness of her relationship with Roger and with work that she hadn’t realized
nor recognized the significance of that.

“I’ll change the locks for you, if
you want.  But I get the new key, too, right?” 

“Why wouldn’t you?” she asked.  He
said nothing, standing very still as he studied her in the darkness.  He seemed
a little uncertain, and she supposed he would, considering she’d been calling
Scott’s name in her sleep, no matter the reason.  She knew how she would feel
if he suddenly started mumbling another woman’s name from the depth of his
dreams.

“Have you ever been married?”  Odd. 
Why hadn’t she asked you that before?

His brow lowered, but he shook his
head.  “No, I never…no,” he said.

Her question had disturbed him in
some fashion, she could tell.  The night appeared fraught with strange moods,
first her restless sleep and now Roger’s response to it.  She lifted her hand
to grab the denim of his jeans between her thumb and forefinger.  “I like you
creeping into my room at night,” she said.  “Take off your pants, Roger.”

For a moment longer he remained
silent, and then, “I don’t creep anywhere,” he retorted, whipping back the
covers from around her legs and throwing himself down across her, pinning her
to the mattress.  He kissed her soundly, deeply, and she pressed close to the
welcome weight of his body, felt the solid heat of his erection straining
through his parted zipper behind the cloth of his underwear.

“Let go of my hands and I’ll help you
off with the rest of your clothes,” she whispered against his brow.  He shook
his head.  In a matter of seconds he had her few clothes off and strewn about
the room.  His breath raised a rill of downy hair across the skin of her lower
abdomen.

“What time is it, anyway?” she asked,
trying to fight free of him.   

“About two-thirty,” he answered,
pausing in his pursuit only long enough to speak.

“You did work late,” she said.  He
made no response.  She wriggled loose of his grasp, but quickly he had her
again and had deftly flipped her onto her stomach.  His mouth moved along the
curve of her cheek and up to the small of her back, where he rested his chin
lightly. 

“I adore the shape of you here.”

“Where?”

“Where your waist narrows and your
hips flare.  You have two wonderful dimples right here and here,” he added,
pressing his mouth to them both.

“I never noticed,” she said.  “But I
guess they’d be a little difficult for me to see.”

“No one ever told you?”

“Nope.”

Running his hand over the curve of
her right buttock, he bit her playfully.  “You’re awfully wet, my dear.  Are
you sure you were having nightmares and not some dream more prurient in nature?”

“If I had been having dreams of that
sort, it would have been your name I was calling out,” she shot over her
shoulder, squirming beneath the exploration of his fingers between her legs. 
“Take your pants off, Roger, would you?”