Kathleen Creighton - One More Knight

Troy. His name is Troy.

Oh, please, God, she prayed, don’t let me think about him.

Don’t let me think.

She could hear water running. She devoutly hoped he wasn’t going to be long; she needed the bathroom pretty badly herself. She needed a shower, too-probably a lot worse than he did.

Then she heard a new sound, this one coming through the paper-thin wall from the room next door. A heartbreaking, whimpering sound.

Oh, Lord, she thought, this is all I need.

She stood about a minute of it, then bounced out of bed, pulling the bedspread with her and wrapping it around her like a toga. Okay, she thought, now where in the hell did he leave the key?

It wasn’t on the dresser or on top of the TV. Pocket, maybe? Trying not to think about the intimacy of what she was doing, she snatched up Troy’s pants from the pile on the floor and plunged her hands into the pockets, one by one. Intimacy? The irony of that made her lips curl, but she didn’t feel like laughing.

The motel-room key turned up on the second try. Swearing and muttering and dragging the bedspread behind her, she threw open the door and swept through it into the muggy, dripping night.

When she opened the door to number 10, Bubba was there to greet her. A much chastened and humbled Bubba, wiggling and squirming and so glad to see her it was pathetic. And damn if she was going to hug and pet and sweet-talk the yellow-eyed beast the way Troy did.

“Well, all right,” she snapped, “don’t just stand there.”

Bubba didn’t need to be told twice.

When Troy came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, a meager motel towel knotted around his hips, there was his dog, lying right in the middle of the floor with his paws pillowed on Troy’s blue jeans and his muzzle pillowed on his paws, sound asleep. And in the bed next to him there was Charly, propped up on the pillows with her arms folded across her chest and the bedspread in a pile.

“’Bout time you got out of there,” she said, glaring at him with her whiskey eyes.

“Sorry,” he breathed. It was about all he could manage just then. He waved a hand at Bubba, who opened up his eyes just long enough to flick his eyebrows at him, give a great big sigh and close them again. “What-?”

“He was making noises,” she snapped. “Crying, for God’s sake. What was I supposed to do?”

Troy shook his head. He was trying hard not to smile, but it wasn’t easy when there was a big ol’ ball of something warm and sweet oozing like Southern molasses all through his insides. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he sure did know what had put it there. It was the challenge in her eyes, that belligerent thrust to her chin, and that rusty, go-to-hell voice that had done it. Because for the first time he saw those things clearly for the camouflage they were.

“Told you,” he said as he started toward her, letting the warmth he felt inside come into his voice and his smile. “He does cry when I leave ’im.”

She watched him come closer, and he could see the confusion building in her eyes, saw them darken as she fought to hold on to the belligerence.

“Yeah, well…I figured I might as well let him in, since you were taking so long in the shower.”

“Sorry,” he murmured again, sitting on the edge of the bed. “It’s all yours now, if you want it.”

“Thanks.” She stiffened, drawing the balled-up bedspread closer, fierce and battle ready as a rooster. “Look, just because I brought him in here, I don’t want you to think you have to stay.”

“You want me to go?” He reached out and touched away a strand of dark hair that had fallen across an even darker eyebrow. Her indrawn breath made a small, sucking sound. He let the backs of his fingers brush lightly downward, following the contours of her temple and cheekbone and jaw. Her skin felt warm and soft, like powder.

She lifted one shoulder, but except for that, held herself rigid and still. As if, he thought, part of her wanted him to stop touching her and the rest of her was afraid he might. She cleared her throat and said gruffly, “Just don’t want you to feel obligated.”

Obligated? He didn’t know whether to laugh or shake her. So what he did was tuck a knuckle under that belligerent chin of hers and lean over and kiss her. Just lightly, letting his mouth brush hers, like feathers over satin.

“Ol’ Bubba looks pretty comfortable to me,” he murmured as he drew away. “Maybe I better leave him be, if that’s okay with you.”

“Okay, sure.” Her breath flowed across his lips.

So he kissed her again, this time slow and sultry, pouring into her like warm molasses, savoring the sweetness of it. He hadn’t planned to take it any further than that-he swore he hadn’t, even though his belly was already curling and his body heating and tightening, stirring against the towel.

But he felt her arms relax and ease up on the bedspread she’d been clutching to her chest like a shrinking maiden, and it seemed a natural thing to slide his hand on down there and check the situation out And then her breast was filling his hand so perfectly, the nipple was hardening under his thumb’s circular stroking and her hand was a sliding warmth, creeping up his thigh. With all that, it didn’t really surprise him that the kiss should take on a life and rhythm of its own. Nor did it surprise him, when he finally ended the kiss, to find that he wasn’t wearing the towel anymore.

The only thing that did surprise him was when he pulled away from her. For the first time since he’d known Charly, he thought he saw fear in her eyes.

His heart stumbled and started again with a new and unfamiliar cadence. “I just want you to know,” he said, “if I stay…no obligation.” His voice, even his breathing, seemed bumpy and strange to him.

There was a pause-a long one. And then she slowly pulled her hand out of the tumbled folds of the bedspread and held it toward him,the fingers uncurling like flower petals to reveal the small foil packet in its palm.

“I found it,” she said in a hushed and stifled voice, “in your pocket. When I was looking for the room key.”

Again her eyes took on a whiskey glow. Troy, laughing low in his chest, leaned over to kiss her. It was easy, then, to convince himself that he’d imagined the fear.

July 4/5, 1977

Dear Diary,

It’s almost morning. So much has happened, but I don’t want to write about it. I just can’t right now. Maybe tomorrow. Right now I can’t even see straight, let alone think.

Thought for the Day: If you ask me, thinking is highly overrated.

Troy woke up in a state he could only think of as confused well-being. He couldn’t figure out how he could have behaved so badly and feel so good about it.

Here he was in a sleazy Alabama motel room, listening to the shower running in the bathroom and a woman banging around in there and dropping things, a woman he barely knew but had driven all the way from Georgia yesterday to bail out of jail and wound up spending what was probably one of-if not the most- incredible nights he’d ever spent in the company of a woman in his life. If that wasn’t reprehensible conduct, he didn’t know what was.

He just wished he could stop grinning whenever he thought about it.

About then Bubba, who’d been sitting at attention over by the door, happened to notice he was awake and came ambling over to give him a good-morning lick. And since Bubba hadn’t exactly been raised to be a house dog, Troy figured the first order of the day was going to be to take him out for a walk.

He was pulling on his pants when he heard the water shut off, and a moment later the bathroom door opened and there stood Charly with a little bitty towel knotted around her waist. She was holding another towel across her breasts and squeezing water from the ends of her hair with the end of it. Water droplets spangled her shoulders and arms and the fronts of her thighs. He hadn’t really had a chance to notice last night, but now he saw that her legs were long and looked as if she either walked a lot or worked out regularly. It was a sight to put a hitch in his breathing.