“Remember what we talked about,” I said. “If we die, we’re taking him with us.”
“So what?” she said. “So fucking what, Patrick? I don’t want to take Evandro with me. I simply do not want to die. I want him to leave me alone.”
“Hey,” I said softly. “It’s okay. Come on.”
She smiled sadly at me. “I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s the dead of night and I’m more afraid than I’ve ever been in my life and I’m not up to the tough-guy platitudes right now. They feel terribly hollow lately.”
Her eyes were moist and so were her palms as she pulled them down my cheeks, began to lean back on her haunches.
I caught her hands gently at the wrists, and she leaned forward again. Her right hand moved into my hair, pushing it back off my forehead as she lowered her body onto mine and her thighs slid in between mine and her left foot grazed my right as she pushed the sheet down to the foot of the bed.
A strand of her hair tickled my left eye and we both froze with our faces almost touching. I could smell fear on her breath, fear in our hair, on our skin.
Her dark eyes peered into my face with a mixture of curiosity, determination, and the ghosts of old ancient hurts we never talked about. Her fingers dug deeply into my hair and her pelvic bone drove down against my own.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she said.
“No,” I said.
“What about Grace?” she whispered.
I let the question hang there because I didn’t have an answer.
“What about Phil?” I said.
“Phil’s over,” she said.
“There are good reasons we haven’t done this in seventeen years,” I said.
“I know. I’m trying to remember them.”
I raised my hand, pushed it through the hair along her left temple and she nipped at my wrist with her teeth and arched her back, drove her pelvic bone even deeper.
“Renee,” she said and gripped the hair by my temples with a sudden anger.
“Renee’s gone.” I gripped her hair just as roughly.
“You’re so sure?”
“You ever hear me talk about her?” I slid my left leg along the edge of her right, hooked my ankle over hers.
“Conspicuously,” she said. Her left hand slid down my chest, squeezed my hip at the place where bare skin met boxer shorts. “You conspicuously don’t talk about a woman you married.” The heel of her hand nudged an edge of underwear over my hip.
“Ange—”
“Don’t say my name.”
“What?”
“Not when we’re talking about you and my sister.”
There it was. A full decade since we’d so much as broached the subject, and it was back out again with all its sordid implications.
She leaned back until she was sitting on my thighs and my hands had fallen to her hips.
“I’ve paid enough for her,” I said.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Yes.”
She shrugged. “I’m beyond the point of caring about it, though. At the moment anyway.”
“Ange—”
She put a finger to my lips, then she leaned back again and peeled her T-shirt off her body. She tossed it to the side of the bed and grasped my hands and pulled them up over her rib cage and placed them on her breasts.
She lowered her head and her hair fell over my hands. “I’ve missed you for seventeen years,” she murmured.
“Me too,” I said hoarsely.
“Good,” she whispered.
Her hair fell in my face again as her lips hovered over mine and her knees locked against my thighs and pushed my underwear down my legs. Her slim tongue flicked against my upper lip. “Good,” she said again.
I raised my head and kissed her. My right hand caught in the tangles of her hair, and as my mouth dropped back from hers, she followed it, closing her lips over it and burying her tongue inside. My hands dropped down her back, the fingers pressing either side of her spinal cord before they hooked under the elastic band of her underpants.
She raised an arm and gripped the headboard, her body rising up mine as my tongue found her throat and my hands turned her underpants into a silk coil that rolled tightly over her hips and the rise of her ass. Her breast sank into my mouth and she gasped slightly, pulled the headboard against the mattress. The heel of her hand ran roughly down my abdomen and into my groin and she kicked at the coil of underwear around her ankles as she lowered herself back down my body.
And the phone rang.
“Fuck ’em,” I said. “Whoever it is.”
Her nose bumped lightly off mine and she groaned and then we both laughed, our teeth an inch apart.
“Help me get these off,” she said. “I’m all tied up down here.”
The phone rang again, loud and shrill.
Our legs and underwear had become completely intertwined and my hand slid down her legs and reached for them and met Angie’s hand down there too and the sudden touch of it was one of the most erotic sensations I’ve ever encountered.
The phone rang again and she arched sideways on the bed as our ankles came free and I could see sweat glistening on her olive skin in the candlelight.
Angie groaned, but it was a groan of pure annoyance and exasperation, and our bodies slid against each other as she reached over me for the phone.
“It could be Officer Dunn,” she said. “Shit.”
“Tim,” I said. “Call him Tim.”
“Fuck you,” she said with a throaty laugh and slapped my chest.
She brought the receiver back over my body with her and fell away from me onto the bed, her olive skin further darkened by the white sheet below it.
“Hello,” she said and blew at wet strands of hair clinging to her forehead.
I could hear the sound of something scratching. Softly, but persistently. I looked at the window to my right, saw the dark leaves scrape the pane.
Scratch, scratch.
Angie’s right leg pulled away from mine, and my flesh suddenly felt cold.
“Phil, please,” she said. “It’s almost two in the morning.”
She pressed her head and shoulders into the pillow, crooked the phone between ear and shoulder, raised her lower back and ass off the bed, and pulled the underpants back up to her hips.
“And I am glad you’re okay,” she said. “But, Phil, can’t we talk in the morning?”
The leaves scratched the window again, and I found my boxers, pulled them on.