Chapter Four #2
THE PARENT DANCES WENT first. Big Jim and Bobbie-Jean, Houston and Stoney. Then the floor opened and the band found its feet and the tent filled in from the edges.
MeeMaw came past me. Didn't stop. Didn't look at me. Said it to the middle distance at a volume calculated for one recipient.
"Don't make her wait, Dutch. Your face has been telling on you since Friday afternoon and she's the only one who hasn't read it yet."
Then she was past me, already halfway across the floor, making her way toward someone she had actual business with.
Of course. She'd been watching this property and the people on it for fifty years, and she'd put that shirt on Jules that morning with the specific intentions of a woman who knew exactly what she was doing and had decided to do it. The only surprise was that she'd waited this long to say anything.
I set my glass on the nearest table and went to find Jules.
SHE WAS AT THE EDGE of the floor with the camera bag at her feet and the camera itself finally, finally down. Watching the dancers. Her hand rested at the hollow of her throat, just there, fingers light, and she hadn't noticed it was.
I crossed the floor.
I didn't say anything. I stopped in front of her and held my hand out, and I waited.
She studied my hand. Then she met my eyes. Color had settled high on her cheekbones and she wasn't fighting it, and she made a small motion toward the camera bag that wasn't quite picking it up, and then she let her hand fall.
She took my hand.
The song had room in it and I used some of it.
We were close enough that I could feel the embroidery of MeeMaw's rhinestone shirt against my jacket lapel, her hand settled on my shoulder, and I had her other hand in mine.
We found the rhythm. She was a good dancer, which surprised me and also didn't.
"Twenty-two rhinestone buttons," I said, low, near her ear. "I counted."
She went still against me. Then: "Twenty-four."
"I'll get an accurate count later."
She laughed. Then she stopped laughing, which was where I needed the moment to go, and I moved her closer and we finished the song.
THE FLOOR THINNED AROUND midnight. The band had eased the room down without being asked, playing it slow, and the string lights had dimmed to their minimum, just enough gold to see by.
I walked Jules toward the far end of the tent where the canvas was dark and the last guests were drifting toward the house. She had her camera bag on her shoulder and she knew where we were going. I hadn't said anything. She knew anyway.
I stopped at the edge of the dark. She turned, and I put my hand under her jaw, not gripping, just holding, and she went still the way she did when something had genuinely moved her. Not performing. Just stopped.
I kissed her.
She kissed me back with everything she'd been keeping managed all weekend, which was considerably more than she'd been letting me see, and both her hands came up to my chest and the kiss went from tentative to not tentative in about four seconds.
I walked her back one step until she was against the tent pole and her breath caught when I lifted my head and then my mouth came back, and when I finally pulled back she had the expression of a woman revising something significant.
I took a breath.
"My room?" I said.
Quiet. Just the one question.
She nodded.
We walked back separately through the dark: she went first, I gave her two minutes and followed, and she was on the back porch when I got there, sitting on the rail in MeeMaw’s rhinestone shirt with the moths working the porch light and the night warm and the property settling into itself.
I came up the steps and held the door.
SECOND FLOOR, CORNER room. I locked the door. The east window was cracked and the curtain moved.
She was standing in the middle of the room when I turned around.
The rhinestone shirt caught the lamplight off the nightstand and threw it in small directions, the same way it had been catching the afternoon sun all day—through the ceremony meadow, through the reception, through two hours on the dance floor.
She'd worn it through all of it and it had done its work and now we were here.
I took the bolo off first. She watched me do it. I set it on the dresser, then shrugged out of the jacket and put that there too, and she still hadn't moved, which I understood as her waiting, so I crossed the room to her and put both hands at her waist.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey," she said.
Her hands came up to my collar. Not hesitating—taking her time, which was different. I reached for the first rhinestone button.
"I can’t believe you counted," she said.
"I counted carefully." The button came free. "I had intentions."
"At the ceremony."
"A man has to do something while he waits." The second button. Her breathing had shifted already. "Although, accurate information required verification. Scientific process."
"That is not—" A breath. "That’s not what the scientific process is."
"Probably not," I allowed, and went to the third button.
She worked on my shirt at the same time, faster than me.
Got it open and pushed it off my shoulders, and her hands went flat on my chest and I felt it everywhere.
I let her take inventory, because watching Jules make up her mind about something was one of my favorite things she did and I was running a collection.
"Dutch," she said.
"Still here."
She ran her hands down my stomach and I caught her wrists. Not stopping her, just slowing her down.
"At your own pace," I said. "We're not in a hurry."
She raised her eyes to me, and the expression that crossed her face, past the flush, past the completely unmanaged openness she'd been showing since the FiFi incident, was an expression I was going to be thinking about for a long time. Then she reached for the next rhinestone button herself.
I helped.
The shirt fell open over the linen skirt and I pushed it back off her shoulders and it went—all twenty-four buttons, all that rhinestone and embroidery, the whole thing she'd been wearing since six in the morning—off her and onto the chair, and she was standing in a plain nude bra and her linen skirt and the wedges she'd never given up on, and the lamplight was warm and she was herself, specifically and completely, nothing withheld.
I reached around her. The bra clasp gave. She shivered.
"Cold?" I said.
"No," she said.
I laid her back on the bed.
She watched me: clear, direct, not pretending she was doing something else.
I stood at the foot of the bed and took her in and she let me, and I took my time with it.
She'd spent two days being composed and professional and specifically not letting me see anything she didn't authorize.
She was letting me see all of it now, and I wasn't going to be careless with that.
"You're worth looking at," I said.
She made a motion with her hand—impatient, a little wrecked. "Dutch."
"I know," I said. "Give me a minute."
I got the wedges off. The skirt. Her underwear. Then she was laid out in my lamplight and I stayed there for that minute, just because I could, and she held eye contact the whole time with the expression she got when she'd decided to stop managing something and let it be what it was.
I went to her.
I put my hands under her hips and my mouth on her pussy and I listened to what she did.
The whole weekend I'd been watching her face when she didn't know it—at the dinner table, at the ceremony meadow, at the cocktail hour with her hand stalled on the lens mount—and now none of it was controlled.
Every sound was real. I found the right place with my tongue and settled in and took it slow, because she was trying to move her hips and I had her and I wasn't in a hurry.
"Dutch." A breath. "You're very—I can't—"
"You don't have to," I said against her. "Stay with me."
She made a sound that had absolutely no professional register in it, and I kept going.
I read her the way you read a horse—not by doing the same thing harder but by adjusting until you find what works and then committing to it.
Her hand fisted in the sheet. Her thighs were tight against my shoulders and I held her through it.
“Stay with me,” I said. Her hips pushed against my hold.
I kept going—steady, paying attention, asking nothing from her except what she was already giving—and then the sound she was making changed, went higher and open, and she said my name like a question and I said yeah against her and kept going and then she came apart under my hands and against my mouth, hips lifting against my hold, and I kept her through every second of it and didn't stop until she put her hand on my head and pulled me up.
I moved alongside her. Her chest was heaving. She was staring at the ceiling.
"Dutch," she said, after a full count.
"I'm here."
She turned her head and looked at me. The dimples had arrived. I hadn’t made my peace with those yet.
"Your turn," she said.
"You don't have—"
"I know I don't have to." She sat up with the expression of someone who was not opening this to debate. "I want to."
I was in no position to argue with that.
I got out of the rest of my clothes while she watched, and she made a small sound when she got a full view of me—a soft, involuntary sound that hit me harder than it had any right to—and then she ran her hand down my stomach and wrapped it around my cock, and everything I’d held in check all evening went at once.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," I managed.
She stroked her thumb over the head of my cock and I put my hand over hers briefly, not to stop her, just to have a point of contact, because my system was reconsidering its options at a rate I found interesting.
She leaned in and took me into her mouth.
My hand went to her hair.
I put my hand on her shoulder when I was close.
"Jules." Rough. "Come here."
She came up and I pulled her against me and kissed her, and then I laid her back and settled between her and pushed forward slow, watching her face.
She exhaled. Her hands went to my hips. I went slow, feeling her take me, and she adjusted and then pulled me in closer and I understood that adjusting was done.
"Good?" I said.
"Very good," she said. "Keep going."
I kept going.
Slow to start, getting the measure of it, watching her face for what she needed and finding it there because she wasn't managing any of that either—her face giving me everything in real time.
‘Still think I’m the groundskeeper?’ I said.
She laughed. Punched me on the shoulder. I laughed too, and then I found the angle and she stopped laughing.
‘There,’ she said. ‘Exactly there.’
I stayed exactly there.
She was warm around me and every time I pushed in she made a sound at the back of her throat. I pressed my mouth to her hair.
‘I’ve wanted you since the first minute I saw you,’ I said.
She went still. Then her hands tightened and she pulled me in closer, and she turned her face into my shoulder.
"Can I—" she started.
"Yes," I said.
We worked out the logistics together. She ended up above me with her hands flat on my chest, and I had my hands on her hips, and I had my eyes on her, her hair completely Texas by now, her face open and unheld and fully hers, and said: "Take what you need."
She did.
I kept my hands at her hips, not directing, just there, and she found her rhythm and ran it.
She started slow, working out what felt right, and I let her work.
When she changed the angle my hands tightened on her hips.
She did it again. “What you’re doing to me, baby,” I began, and then she moved and I stopped talking.
She shifted. I felt that too and said yeah.
She did it again. “You feel so fucking good I can’t think straight,” I said. She did it again.
I watched her face. This was the part I was going to keep: Jules Tully above me in the lamplight with nothing managed, completely present, her own.
Her eyes found mine and we held that for a moment, the eye contact in the middle of it, nowhere else to look, and I knew exactly what this was.
I wasn't going to say it tonight. But I knew.
I got a hand between us and found her clit, worked it in time with her movement.
She said something that wasn't a complete sentence. Her rhythm got urgent and I stayed with it. “That’s it,” I said.
“I’ve got you.” She said my name and then she came—above me, head going back, one hand braced on my chest—and I held her through it, and when she was done she had her eyes on mine, completely there, nothing between us.
"Dutch," she said.
"Yeah," I said.
She started to move.
I put my hands on her hips and let the last of my patience go and then I was done holding anything back, and that was that. Twenty seconds, maybe a few more. Not my most measured performance on record and I was entirely at peace with it.
WE LAY THERE NOT TALKING for a while. She was against my side—her face against my collarbone, her hand flat on my chest, some combination of the two—and it didn’t matter which.
The curtain moved in the east window. The property was quiet out there. The band had finished. The cicadas were in full voice. The night was doing what May nights do in Texas when the day is finally done.
"Twenty-four," she said eventually.
"I know. I said I'd verify."
"You were very thorough."
"I appreciate the feedback," I said.
She made a sound that might have been a laugh and turned her face into my shoulder. I put my arm around her and she settled in closer and we stayed there in the lamplight.
HER brEATHING WENT slow and steady and then settled into the rhythm that means sleep has taken over for good.
The lamp was still on.
"I am not casual about this," I said, quiet, into her hair. "I want you to know that."
She didn't stir. She was asleep.
Myself, mostly. For the record. Because the logistics problem was real and I was the one who'd have to work it out, and it helped to get the words out, even if she couldn't hear them.
She made a small noise against my collarbone. The cicadas had finally quit. Somewhere east of the property a horse stamped, and I lay there listening to her breathe and trying to figure out how a man tells a woman he is not going anywhere when she has only known him three days.