Jennifer Greene - Man From Tennessee

Kern stopped just behind her, leaning back against the rough-barked surface of a hickory tree in the shadow. She glanced back once, all too aware of him, but he seemed no more inclined to talk than she did. Every limb gradually relaxed as she simply stared out over the water, absorbing the scene. The restfulness was so different from the city life she’d adjusted to-the life she had convinced herself was all and exactly what she wanted. But the convincing had taken a long time.

Finally she stood back up and dusted off her pants. She looked again to Kern. He hadn’t moved. His eyes had a gleam in the dusty shadows beneath the tree. She felt uneasy.

“You accused me of playing with you before.”

She nodded, pushing her hair back where the breeze was trying to curl it to her cheeks.

“I knew we’d see each other again sometime, Tish. For the first year after you left, I probably would have slammed the door in your face if you had come back.” He stepped out from the shadows toward her, and she dug her hands in her pockets. “It took a long time to accept failure. I blamed you first and then me…and then no one. There was certainly no way to take back those six months, was there?”

She shook her head, and he added quietly, “You were very young, Tish. I knew sooner or later I would want to know what you would be like when you grew up.”

She took a breath, still staring at him. “I kept expecting you to ask for a divorce.”

“I want children. If I’d found someone along the way I’d wanted to have children with, I would have gotten a divorce. Until then, it didn’t really matter.”

He might as well have said that she didn’t matter, beyond sheer curiosity as to what had happened to her. She felt an unexpected curl of pain in her stomach.

“And you have grown up, Tish.”

His tone was soft, and she shook her head when he started toward her. She knew why he was coming, what he wanted, but the mesmerizing hold in his eyes was difficult to look away from. Her hands trembled just from the brush of those eyes on her soft skin.

“I’m not asking or even suggesting fresh starts, Tish. I don’t even know who you are anymore, but I know damn well there’s something that you’re not leaving here again without… You can feel it…I can feel it every time I come near you.”

“No. There’s nothing, Kern, there’s…” She put her hands in front of her as if that would be enough to push him away. A shudder whispered through her from fingers to toes as his lips molded hers, gently, insistently persuasive. His fingers caressed her face and throat, like they had done the first time when she had fallen in love with him. His tongue flicked across her teeth and her lips parted for him, her eyes closed half in dread, half in anticipation. The leashed lovemaking was Kern’s sweetness, but unleashed there were old nightmares…

“Put your arms around my neck, Tish,” he whispered. “You did it last night.”

“No. Please, Kern. This is all wrong…”

“Just for a moment,” he coaxed. He drew her slim hands up himself, placing them around his neck, and his lips softly brushed her eyes closed again, brushed a sweet seductive warmth down the side of her face and neck. Her fingers crumpled in the rough thick texture of his hair. The need to hold on was there. She felt his strength beneath her fingertips, his flesh so warm, so responsive to her lightest touch. The earthy male scent of him enfolded her like a sweet drug she could not escape from, suddenly uncertain if she even wanted to. The panic that should have been mounting didn’t. She felt her breasts stiffen against his heartbeat, felt her thighs yield to the pressure of his own. So fierce was the growing awareness that she suddenly felt desperate for air but he would give her none. Her throat arched back as his mouth pressed on hers, a pressure that ached bruisingly against her lips, a pressure that echoed in the tightening spasms at the pit of her stomach.

She knew better. Kern had not spoken of a renewal of their marriage and there was no way she would ever surrender again to that old feeling of being on trial, risk that sense of inadequacy as a woman that had almost destroyed her. But for a sweet shivering moment that seemed exactly the point. It was over with Kern, so there was really nothing left to lose.

She molded her body to Kern’s, pressing her soft thighs to his sinewy hardness, as her tongue parried with his. Her hands kneaded the nape of his neck, his shoulders, the long, endlessly long stretch of his back to his waist. Kern matched fire with fire, his lips leaving hers only for breath before his teeth grazed her neck as if he were hungry for her taste. His bandaged wrist chafed the tender skin of her ribs under her blouse, summoning other fires. A work-roughened palm was impatient with the slip of bra, until it found the silky pale orb of flesh beneath, until the nipple tightened and swelled and strained beneath it.

Something burst inside Trisha, a Pandora’s box of desire and need suddenly freed. She could not touch him enough. Her hands roamed feverishly beneath his shirt, up and down his sides and back, instinctively careful of the scar.

“Lord, I want you, Tish. I’ve always wanted you,” he murmured huskily.

She felt like crying. The wildness inside her would not stop building. She wanted to possess him and to be taken as she had never wanted to be taken before, not caring for past, present, future, not caring about the night or the rocky terrain or the dampness.

It was all so easy. Kern was urging her down, his hands and eyes compelling her to lie beneath him. But his eyes left hers for just that moment, closing when he tried to bend where his ribs would not yet allow him to bend, his right wrist taking weight it was not yet ready to take. In the moonlight she saw his face contort in sudden unwilling pain, and she froze.

The next thing she knew she was running. Stumbling on the rock-rough ground, tears blinding her, she made her hands try to put together blouse and bra and hair. Her chest was heaving in the chill night air. Shame, pride, memories…the internal ache was as sharp as a knife edge in her side when she finally reached the car and stopped, leaning weakly on the hood. She felt like fragments inside. From wanton to cold made no sense. Not to respond when he had loved her, to go on fire when there was only chemistry and no future. To completely forget that the man was hurt and in no shape for violent lovemaking, to forget every ounce of self-respect that had put her back together in those long years…

“Get in,” Kern ordered.

His shirt was flapping open. His eyes like icy coals as he opened the car door, he snatched at her arm and all but shoved her across to the passenger seat. The door slammed like a reverberating echo in her ear and Trisha huddled in the seat, eyes suddenly dry. His tall figure crossing in front of the car reflected a cold hard fury that frightened her. When he got inside he just looked at her tousled features long and hard and then started the engine.

They were at his place in minutes. The single light left on in the kitchen made a lonely circle of welcome on the grass outside. Trisha reached quickly for the door handle, but Kern’s arm shot across, pinning her.

“Tell me you intended to leave, just when-” he said harshly.

She shook her head mutely, and his grip imperceptively lightened.

“I told you I wondered what would happen when you grew up, Tish. Now I wonder how many men were part of that transition. You never took fire like that before. How many?” He grated. “How many men have you slept with in the past five years?”

She was frightened still, his eyes intense, smoldering anger inches from hers. She knew he wouldn’t believe the truth. It struck her as almost hysterically funny to think of telling him after what just happened that she had almost led a nun’s life, that she had accepted finally that she was simply emotionless in bed. She didn’t understand yet why she had responded to him after all these years. And, if it weren’t for the mortifying confusion and embarrassment she felt inside, the bitter scald of tears held barely in check, she would not believe she had indeed responded.

“Never mind.” His jaw was taut, but the longer he looked at her fragile feminine features contorted by anguish, the more the flame of rage in his eyes lessened. “We’re not done, Tish. It’s going to happen, and you damn well know it as well as I do. With us there’s only one ending or beginning, because of the way it was.”

She breathed out no.

He wasn’t listening. “You run this time and I’ll find you. Don’t even try it.”

She opened the car door and escaped. The kitchen door was unlocked and she ran through, past the living room and hall, up the stairs. In seconds she was leaning against the closed door of her bedroom, fighting to stop the flow of hot tears.

Sex was all he had been talking about, not love. He felt no love after all this time? Why should he was the silent cry inside.

She moved forward, removing her clothes in the darkness. The urge was to pack and flee. The urge was to forget Julia. But unfortunately she simply could not forget. Her pulse finally calmed. She was not running again. It was time for action, time to get them both out of their limbo of a marriage. Five years past time.

But she could never face going to bed with Kern again. Even after tonight, she didn’t trust herself. She would freeze and fail him. The last time, she had put herself back together. She knew she wouldn’t be able to do it again. Not again…

Trisha did not wake until nine, a late hour in this household, so she was not surprised to find the house empty and no sign of Kern when she went downstairs. Dressed in the new jeans and shirt, with a battered pair of tennis shoes she’d remembered to throw into her suitcase, she gulped down half a cup of coffee and carted a sweet roll outside with her.