A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,98
sake,” I muttered. I swung myself onto his lap, straddling him. I pulled his jacket down and off his arms and yanked off his bow tie. I opened his shirt and shoved it down to his wrists and left it there, binding him just enough to make him feel it. He opened his mouth, but before he even said a word, I had his trousers unbuttoned and my hand inside.
It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t gentle and anybody who watched would have thought we were trying to kill each other. Maybe we were. I pushed and rocked and clawed at him, frustrated as I had never been that there was bone and sinew and muscle between us, and he answered right back, bruise for bruise and scratch for scratch. Bodies suddenly seemed like too much trouble when all I wanted was to consume him—or let him consume me, I didn’t much care which. I wanted to be burned up until there was nothing left but a small pile of grinning, ashy bones. I wanted to take him apart with my bare hands until I got right down to the core of him, something perfect and whole that I could carry away in my pocket and never turn loose of.
I lit a cigarette as we drove back to Fairlight. He kept one arm tightly around me, so I put the cigarette to his lips while he took a deep drag. I smoked the rest of it, and when we arrived at Fairlight, I took the last puff.
“Delilah—”
“You’re not stupid enough to think we have to talk about this, are you?”
“No. I know nothing’s changed. You are who you are. And that wasn’t about me, not really. You were scratching an itch and I was weak enough to let you.”
The words were bitter, but his tone was smooth. My hand shook a little as I ground out the cigarette on the sole of my shoe.
He went on. “I’m leaving again in a few days to take a trip up to Lake Macheo for some shooting and fishing. I won’t be back for a week.”
As I got out of the truck my heel crunched down on something. The little Masai bracelet Moses had given me. It had gotten torn off, although which one of us had done it, I couldn’t say. I picked it up and slammed the door, leaning in the open window. The inside of the truck smelled like burned tobacco and my perfume and the salty, sweaty smell of us together. Handfuls of beads from my dress shimmered on the seat and floorboard like glittering confetti.
“Safe travels,” I said lightly.
He stared at me for a long minute then shook his head. “It can’t happen again, Delilah. It won’t.”
“For such a big man, you seem awfully afraid.”
“You have no idea.”
“Why? Why do I scare you so much?”
He put one fingertip to my heart. “Is this where you notch the marks? One scar for each of us until there’s nothing left to feel with? You’ve put walls a mile high and a mile thick and nothing is going to batter them down.”
“You’re a fine one to talk about walls.”
“Mine have cracks, princess. And that’s the trouble. If I let you, you’ll bring the whole goddamn thing down around my ears.”
“And you can’t have that?”
“No,” he said flatly. “I can’t. There are some women and some places that get under your skin, through the blood and right down into the bone itself. And they never leave. Africa has already done that for me. I don’t need you there too.”
“How poetic.” My voice was low and smiling, but I felt chilled. He was thinking in the same metaphors that I did. And a man who spoke the same language was a dangerous man. “Maybe that’s our problem, Ryder. We’re just too damned much alike.”
He didn’t say anything, and I realised there was no point.
I gave him my most dazzling smile. “Try not to think about me when you’re gone. Distractions can be deadly out in the bush.”
He lunged toward the door and I danced backward, fleeing into the house. It was too late for anyone to have waited up, so I got myself ready for bed. I didn’t bathe. I stripped off my ruined dress and kicked it into the corner. The bracelet went into the jewel box on my writing table—next to the cold cream I didn’t bother with. I crawled straight into bed, far too wakeful for sleep. I felt like I