Alice Orr - Key West Heat

Taylor searched for an answer. She didn’t really know anybody here in the Keys. She didn’t know the hotels either. And, she didn’t want to stay at Stormley. She wasn’t ready for that yet.

“You can come to my place,” Des said.

Santos glanced back and forth between them with obvious interest. For the moment, Taylor couldn’t think what to say, especially since the suggestion had tripped loose that flutter in her heart she’d felt earlier.

“There’s a room at the Beachcomber over the café,” Des said. “It’s quite comfortable and very private.”

He’d emphasized the privacy part. Taylor wondered if his offer might be her only recourse. She thought of asking Santos if he had any recommendations. She was wavering between taking a chance that he’d offer her a cot in the local jail and taking a chance on Des’s invitation when a flurry of motion turned everyone’s attention toward the door.

The woman who had swept in was dressed all in white, from her turbanned head to her slippered feet. Her clothes appeared to swirl around her—a loose tunic top, full-legged trousers and a kind of shawl or train draped over her shoulder—all in soft, mobile fabrics. Her skin was light by Key West standards, but brightened by dramatic makeup, as were her very round eyes, which were almost as dark as Detective Santos’s.

“My dear child,” she exclaimed as she advanced on Taylor with open arms.

Santos stepped into the path of this swirling, white onslaught. “Mrs. Starling,” he said. “I believe we’ve met.”

“Of course,” she replied. “I have met everyone on this island.”

Jethro appeared in the doorway, confirming Taylor’s guess that this woman was Winona Starling.

“May I ask what you’re doing here?” Santos inquired.

“I have come to the rescue of this beleaguered young woman,” Winona pronounced. “It is what my dear friend Netta would have wished.”

Taylor had spent entirely too much of her life being hovered over and protected and rescued. She had vowed that wasn’t going to happen anymore, but right now that vow felt less crucial than usual. She did her best to ignore the twinge of regret that it wouldn’t be Des Maxwell’s brown, muscled wing under which she would find shelter from what was left of this harrowing night.

Folds of dark trees, rolling and rippling, soft as velvet on her body. Sliding over her, along her skin, clinging to the roundness of her breasts, catching on the hard points of her nipples. Fingers of leaves, satin-smooth, slipping between her thighs, whispering there till a moan rose in her throat and her body rose to meet the lover.

In the background, like a rising wind, another moan, repeated in rhythm, first too faintly to be understood, then louder, Danger. Danger. Danger. Something spoke in her mind for a breath of a moment of her having heard that warning rhythm before. But that thought was being rapidly swallowed by sensations so intense that there was no possibility of thought left. The warning rhythm remained, but only as an echo now, far off at the edge of her beyond the sensations. At the center of her there was no longer room for anything other than the lover.

The leaves had suddenly turned to flesh. They were his fingers now, opening her wide and wider while she drew deep breaths, as deep as the probe of his touch. He moved astride her and plunged inside. She arched to meet him with a cry of triumph and pleading. They rode one another, desperate and groaning. The power of their thrusting slapped the bed against the wall to punctuate their passion— thump, thump, thump —drowning out even the faint remaining echo of the danger warning...

Thump, thump, thump.

Knock, knock, knock.

The sound was transforming yet again, to become different but the same. Taylor knew the ache deep inside her was real, but the man had melted away in the light that greeted her fluttering eyelids. He had been a dream. She could barely stand to discover that, the ache of missing him was so strong and torturing. The velvet leaves and folding trees retreated as well. Only the sound remained.

Knock, knock, knock.

Taylor’s mind began to understand where she was—in a guest bedroom of the Starling house. Yet, part of her longed to stay, if even for only a moment more, in the place of undulating leaves and plunging passion. The cool of the air conditioner chilled the damp places on her body and banished the warm satin that had stroked her skin only an instant ago. Still, the mood of it was with her. She had been making love with a man of power and lust. She even knew who that man was. It had been a long time since she’d made love in real life. Because of that, she had turned herself off till she seemed not to care much anymore.

One night in the tropics, and she was being tormented by erotic dreams of—

The knocking was more insistent now. Taylor’s gradually clearing mind followed the cadence of it to the wide doors, and through them onto what she guessed must be another veranda. There had been a veranda off her room at the guesthouse, but she wasn’t there now. The colors were different in this room—creamy-golden walls and doorways, rich floral patterns in the bedding and on the floors. A stained-glass skylight echoed those patterns in its design, refracting the morning light into pools of color along the walls. Winona Starling was obviously a woman of sensuous tastes. The thought nudged the longing ache to sharpness again. Taylor sat up straight from the rumpled pillows, intending that rapid movement to dispel the last vestiges of the dream as she calmed her still-ragged breath toward its normal pace. At this new angle, she could make out the figure behind the slanted slats of the wooden blinds at the veranda doors. She almost fell back onto the pillows in surprise.

“Oh, no,” she gasped, though something inside her was saying quite the opposite.

It was the man from her dream. There was no mistaking Des Maxwell’s silhouette. She knew instantly who he was. She didn’t know why he was here. She would have to answer his knock to find out. It was also the only way to keep him from waking the rest of the house. But maybe that would be best. Then Jethro or someone would send Des away. Meanwhile, the warning rhythm from her dream had returned. Its chant of danger, danger, danger droned beneath her thoughts. Still, as her head cleared she knew she didn’t really want a scene involving the entire household. She’d had enough of scenes last night. She eased out of bed and tiptoed to the veranda door.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered through the space between the blind and doorframe.

“I can’t hear you,” Des said, more loudly than she would have preferred.

She suspected he wasn’t telling the truth. After all, she could hear him. Why wouldn’t he be able to hear her? She also suspected he wasn’t going to go away without seeing her face-to-face. Maybe she would have a better chance of getting rid of him that way. She unlocked the door but kept her body behind the closed blinds that covered the glass. She was very aware that her nipples were still visibly aroused beneath the oversize, white T-shirt that Winona had taken for Taylor, along with a change of clothes, from the guesthouse. She definitely didn’t want him to see that. Just considering the possibility made her nipples harder still.

Taylor edged the door open a crack and was greeted by the soft, warm scent of the Key West morning. The sun was up, and already brighter than on the sunniest of northern New York days. She was tempted to throw the door wide and be embraced by the fragrance of jasmine and frangipani from Winona’s garden arbor. Taylor had longed for the exhilaration of pure freedom much of her life. In this first instant of her first tropical morning, she felt the proximity of that freedom sweep over her. Then, Des Maxwell stepped across her line of vision through the crack in the doorway, and the sensation disappeared.