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  I bit a nail, wondering what the hell I should say. Sometimes it was just best to state the obvious.

  “God,” I said loudly. “What a cunt.”

  Rachel sat up. She wiped the tears from her beautiful face and smiled at me slowly.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I told you she was a cunt.”

  “You okay?”

  She nodded, then sprang out of the bed, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and leading me toward the door. “Come on, Miss Kasey Kira or whatever the fuck we’re calling you today. You’re having a drink with me.”

  ***

  Brandon and Teague didn’t talk to me much but they were forever lurking about. Once I happened to walk in the living room as Teague stood in a corner with a phone pressed to his ear. He scowled at me and stalked outside. I wondered if Orion was on the other end.

  Several times I had taken the basic cell phone he had given me and stared at it, touching the keypad lightly. It was the only link I had to him but he had warned me that calling just to say hello wasn’t an option. So I just held it like a talisman and did nothing.

  By the time the third day rolled around with no word my mounting tension had reached a nearly unbearable point.

  Rachel was showing me the washer and dryer in a small closet-like room behind the bar when I asked her the thing which had been weighing on my mind.

  “How do you stand it?”

  She cleaned out the lint tray, frowning at me absently. “What?”

  I folded my arms. A chill had risen on my skin even though the day was warm already. “Waiting. Just hanging out and hoping to god that there will be some hint. That he’ll even come back in one piece.”

  She thought the question was silly. “How do you stand it? You want to be with a man, and you just manage.”

  I shook my head miserably. When I was a kid Crest had left me often enough. For a while we lived in a basement apartment beneath a large Vietnamese family who would look in on me in his absence. It was after my mother took off.

  As I loaded the washer I thought about Anne Marie Carter. I’d long made a conscious effort to avoid doing just that. My most lucid memory of her is of the day she cupped my face in her soft hands and gazed at me with watery blue eyes.

  “You’re your daddy’s daughter,” she’d said sadly and kissed me lightly on both cheeks before she left, instructing me to sit at the kitchen table and not to answer the phone until Crest returned.

  The last time among the rare occasions I’d seen her since that day was when I graduated from high school. She’d grown heavy and had never had any children with the stern man who became the stepfather I didn’t know. But her face was alight with a serenity I didn’t remember from childhood. Back then she would wear out the threadbare floor anxiously twisting her hands as she waited for my father to roll through the door. Then they would scream terrible things at one another until they both tired of it.

  I leaned against the washing machine and pulled my hair back. Anne Marie took a long time to reach her tired point. I was tired already. It wasn’t Orion’s fault. The violence I’d witnessed had torn through something inside me. And Orion? I couldn’t expect that he would change who he was. But for the first time I dimly understood the weariness of my mother’s life. How it might have driven her to the unthinkable; abandoning her child.

  No, I wouldn’t forgive her. There was no excuse. But a tendril of sympathy rose in my gut for the years she’d put in with Crest before giving up. It wasn’t an easy lot and it took a tough soul to rise to it. I wasn’t sure I’d have in me if it came to that.

  Perhaps, I grimly reflected, I was more like my mother than I’d suspected. And that thought scared the living shit out of me.

  When I brought in the laundry Teague and Brandon were sitting in the living room. Evidently I’d interrupted a tense conversation. Teague ignored me but Brandon tried to catch my eye in a friendly way. I dropped the freshly folded clothes on the bed and returned to the living room. I didn’t expect that they would divulge whatever they knew but I was sick of tiptoeing around the place.

  “Hey,” I snapped my fingers and both men glanced at me. “It’s getting toward evening. I saw a box of spaghetti and a jar of sauce in the pantry. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll have a meal on the table.”

  Teague stared at me blankly but Brandon looked thoughtful.

  “I’ll take that offer,” he said. “Let me run down the road and I’ll get a loaf of bread of some wine.”

  “Wine?” Teague sneered incredulously. “What the fuck?”

  I laughed and returned to the kitchen, sorting through the mismatched collection of pots. I found some garlic powder and seasoned salt in the cabinet above the sink. Both looked as if they had been there since the last presidential administration but I figured it wouldn’t harm anything to add a bit to the sauce.

  Teague came in and stood next to the fridge. “I met your daddy a few times.”

  I stopped and leaned against the table, closing my eyes. “Yeah?”

  He pulled at his beard, his eyes forlorn. “Yeah, years ago. He was less of an asshole than most.” Teague sighed. I guess that was as close to a compliment as he parted with. “Look, this is all a shit show, that’s for sure.” He coughed. “I’m sorry.”

  In that moment when Teague seemed human and reachable I wanted to ask him where Orion and the others had gone. But I knew how it would go. His eyes would darken and he would smirk and then ultimately he would say nothing. They were his brothers. I was just some girl taking up space in the kitchen.

  “I think beer would be just as good as wine,” I finally said.

  Teague laughed coarsely. “Let’s just fucking humor him,” he winked, talking about Brandon.

  It turned out Brandon’s idea of wine came in a box. Or else that’s all there was to be had in Quartzsite. But I thanked him for the addition and he seemed pleased. Teague cut the bread into thin slices and Brandon pulled Rachel in from the bar to join us. Adele had gone home to check on her mother and Talia was still pouting so she stayed in the bar to serve.

  I had a smile on my face as I brought the steaming bowl of spaghetti to the table. It brought back happy memories of my girlhood among the Warlocks and I was glad. I didn’t want there to be only pain when I thought of them, when I thought of my father.

  Brandon belched and drank a large mug of box wine like it was water. “You throw it at the wall?” he asked, eyeing the spaghetti.

  Rachel laughed. “Holy shit, my mother used to do that. I don’t think she ever really got it though. She would just kind of stand there and watch as the noodles bounced off the wall and then she would shrug and serve it to us crunchy.”

  I mixed it all together one final time in the bowl. “Perfect pasta is about the only thing I know how to cook.”

  It was a pleasant hour and I found myself feeling content. The only moments I’d felt really at ease since arriving here were in Orion’s arms and even that was bound up in lust and emotion. Brandon regaled us with disjointed stories about being a Marine. Apparently it involved a lot of running and not much sleeping. The day he got out he vowed not to cut his hair until the turn of another decade.

  “You’ll want to rethink that,” Teague joked with his mouth full of pasta. “I just saw some shit crawling around in your beard.”

  Brandon filled his mug with wine again. “You’re a fucking liar. There’s no shit crawling around in my face.” Although before he finished speaking he’d already begun stroking the mottled hair on his chin and after a minute he exited abruptly and ran into the bathroom. Teague cracked up.

  “Man,” he laughed. “It’s so fucking easy.”

  A telephone ring pierced the air and I jumped. For a second I thought it was the phone Orion had given me, which I’d left on the kitchen counter.

  But no, it was Teague’s phone. He glanced at the face of it and his face darkened. Rachel and I exchanged glances when he pushed back from the table and ran outside.

  Brandon retur
ned with a big patch of hair gone from his face. He looked at me in drunken confusion. “I think I used your razor.”

  “That’s okay,” I muttered, staring at the door Teague had exited from.

  “Kira,” Rachel warned when I rose and followed him outside. I didn’t listen.

  Night was approaching and the wind was whipping up. Teague was standing behind Riverbottom smoking a cigarette. Whatever business that call had been about was over.

  “Rain will be here soon,” he said.

  I inhaled. An oddly sweet fragrance hung thick in the air. “How can you tell?”

  “That smell. It’s desert greasewood. Gives off this perfumy crap when it gets wet.”

  “Oh,” I said, shifting. Teague stared at me as the wind lifted my hair. “Are they coming back soon?” I asked quietly.

  “Yeah.” He tossed the cigarette on the ground and stepped on it. It was a message. That was the only information he was going to offer. He started to walk towards the trailers. “Hey, thanks for the meal. Get the kid to wash the fucking dishes.”

  I assumed he was talking about Brandon. “I’ll see you, Teague.”

  He nodded, continuing to walk away.

  Rachel was already cleaning up. She kept removing dishes from Brandon’s drunken clutches and he kept grabbing more and dropping them. She wagged a finger at him. “You better not be thinking about riding around town tonight. You know Orion doesn’t have much of a sense of humor about you winding up in the drunk tank.”

  “Fuck, that wasn’t me,” Brandon yawned. “That was Maddox.”

  She slapped at him with a wet dishtowel. “Head on over to the bar and work it off or else really get going and pass out.”

  He thought about that. “Anyone interesting over there?”

  “Talia.”

  Brandon grimaced underneath half a beard. “That bitch. Yeah, Grayson’s got to figure that out sooner or later.”

  Rachel smiled sweetly. “Stay out of it. Gray was on lockdown for six years, right?”

  Brandon nodded. “Something like that. Fucks with a man’s sense of what’s good and what’s not, you know?”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  I joined Rachel at the sink and quietly began drying the motley collection of clean dishes she set on the counter. After a few minutes Brandon grew bored and headed over to Riverbottom, taking his box of wine with him.

  I stacked the dishes in the cabinet as Rachel finished washing and grabbed a towel.

  “It’s going to rain,” I said helpfully.

  She gave me an odd look. “Yes,” she said slowly, “I know.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The sky did more than rain. First a wild wind kicked up, bringing with it an impenetrable wall of dirt.

  “Dust storm,” Rachel had murmured, looking at the window to where Riverbottom was scarcely visible. She turned to me. “You should stay in for the rest of the night. If those washes start to flood into the house there’s a pile of sandbags in the garage.”

  “Okay,” I said, staring out the window with fascination at the ferocity of the desert storm.

  Rachel left and I locked the door behind her. The walls of the house shuddered under the fierce wind and just as I finished cleaning off the dining table the power snapped off. The darkness was now impenetrable both inside and outside.

  I remembered seeing some candles underneath the sink. Orion had left a cigarette lighter on his dresser so I fumbled my way in there to retrieve it. The glow of the lit candles cast eerie shadows as I moved around the house so I decided to stay in the bedroom.

  It was still early, barely eight o’clock, and I was far from sleepy. I had six candles lit on the small table in Orion’s room and combined they gave off enough light to read by. I opened the Dick Wick Hall book Orion had bought for me in Salome. I learned in the introduction he hailed from a cold Midwestern climate and when he came to the Arizona territory he promptly went about remaking himself, right down to his name. Actually, his name became entwined with the vitality of his new identity. Paging through the book, I was charmed by the detailed illustrations and quirky stories originally published in the Salome Sun nearly a century earlier.

  The rain began with a suddenness which startled me. It battered the house and fought with the wind. I remembered what Rachel had said about the washes and wondered how all the small creatures who dwelled out there were faring.

  Another brutal gust of wind sheered against the building and I thought about Orion. Teague had more or less confirmed he and the other Defiant members were on their way back from wherever they’d gone. My heart lurched at the thought of him trying to navigate the stormy roads. Traveling on his motorcycle he would be vulnerable to the ruthless elements.

  When I heard an echoing noise like popcorn popping I went to the small window and raised the frame. The wind was enough to nearly knock me over and I struggled to shut the window as pieces of hail barreled inside and stung my skin.

  So focused was I on sealing the window I took no notice of his entrance. The noise of the storm had evidently masked the arrival of the motorcycles and as he reached around me and shut the window his drenched clothes soaked me immediately.

  “Orion,” I breathed, turning around and touching him. His face, his shoulders, his chest. All solid, all too good to be true.

  “Baby,” he moaned when I felt between his legs.

  His clothes were removed hastily and I licked the cold moisture from his skin, wanting to warm him. He groped around in the dark for the hem of my shirt and then ripped it impatiently when it took too long. I moved my hot breasts up and down his chest and then knelt between his legs, taking him in my mouth. He loved it when my tongue moved to the tender sac behind his organ; his hands seized my hair as he showed me how he wanted the rhythm.

  Orion didn’t want to finish that way though. He pulled me up and laid me down crossways on the bed. My legs spread on either side of him eagerly; none of that clenching tightness which had impeded us the first time. He entered me good and hard with one fluid thrust. I writhed underneath him, getting so close so quickly, but Orion had extreme control. He brought me to the brink and pulled out, then plunged in with a ferocity which grew deeper every time.

  When I came I was not in my own head anymore. I couldn’t do anything but thrash and plead as the throbbing orgasm lasted and lasted.

  “Orion, I love you so fucking much,” I cried and didn’t care that I’d said it because it was true.

  He moaned in an agonized voice. “Kira, baby. Shit, what have you done to me?”

  Then he climaxed hard, driving himself in so deep he consumed me.

  When we were both spent and panting, Orion nestled his head between my breasts.

  “James,” he whispered.

  “No,” I said, confused. “It’s me, Kira.”

  He laughed and propped himself up on one elbow. “It’s the name I was born to. James Cavanaugh Jackson.”

  I traced his face in the dark. “Orion suits you better,” I told him.

  He pulled my hand to his mouth and kissed the palm.

  I chewed my lip. “I meant it,” I said, referring to my passionate outcry.

  “I know,” he sighed and cradled me in his arms.

  We listened in silence for a long time to the noise of the storm. When I fell asleep it still hadn’t subsided.

  ***

  This time I woke up before he did. The sun was rising over the sodden landscape. It would dry out quickly. At some point during the night the power had returned and I flicked off the bedside lamp.

  Orion’s face was young and untroubled in sleep. None of the ferocity which hardened him during his waking hours was present as he breathed evenly through his dreams. I ran my fingertips over his jaw and then across his bare shoulder, skating over the angry tattoos which wound up and down his arms.

  The deep blue of his eyes often startled me. And as he opened them I felt that same faint sensation that he saw everything about me whether I wa
nted him to or not.

  “Hi,” I whispered, moving my hands across his chest.

  A shadow passed over his face and I would swear he was almost sad.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He shook his head, rising. “Just taking you in, that’s all.”

  I moved my touch lower. “I’d like to take you in.”

  Orion laughed and reached for a cigarette. “Give an old man a break.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t need one,” I said, proving it when I ran my tongue along his dick.

  Orion threw his head back with a groan. “Damn, you don’t know what you do to me.” He breathed heavily and blew smoke at the ceiling as I toyed with him. “Happy Birthday, Kira,” he said softly before flipping me over on the bed and sinking into me from behind.

  Afterwards I wrapped myself in a sheet and pulled him with me to the shower. Orion was as ardent as ever with every touch, every kiss. But still, something seemed a little off. The way he moved was strangely intent, as if he couldn’t get enough of me. Or, I feared, was trying to get his fill while he still could.

  Breakfast over toast and coffee was quiet and sober. I watched him, trying to read his mood. I still hadn’t asked him what had taken him away for three days. Because I doubted he would tell me. And because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know anyway.

  As I filled the sink with hot soapy water to wash the breakfast dishes, Teague wandered in. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him hand Orion a thick envelope. Orion talked to him in a voice too low for me to hear over the sink. But Teague nodded tiredly, touched Orion on the shoulder and stared at me for moment with his hands in his pockets.

  “There’s still some coffee,” I offered in an attempt at friendliness.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  Teague lingered for another moment but after a long look from Orion he nodded and left without saying anything else.

  Orion stood at the sink, his hands in fists as he looked out to the yard at the rapidly disappearing puddles. I wrapped my arms around him, kissing his broad back and letting my hands travel to the front of his pants.