The Wildest Heart

I was happy. Even when, following his instructions, I mixed salt and water and dabbed the strong solution on his wounds with a piece of rag, I was happy doing it. Even though I winced every time he did.

There were no ghosts between us then. Not Todd’s, not Ramon’s, not even Elena’s. We were alone, with the rain and the recurrent sound of thunder surrounding us. And we wanted each other, although we waited, because there was no urgency now. Time seemed to have stopped.

I swept the floor, and cleaned out the skillet with a wadded piece of newspaper, and filled the coffeepot again. Carefully taking off the shirt I had been wearing I braved the storm outside to see to the horse again, over Lucas’s protests. By this time the tattered remnants of the clothes I had worn when I came here had dried out in the fire’s heat, and I used them to rub myself dry.

Naked again, I went to him, and equally naked, he received me. We made love slowly and unhurriedly and inevitably. With Lucas, there was no holding back, no sense of violation. I wanted him, and he wanted me, and for the first time in my life I learned how it felt to be taken out of myself with longing, and to have that longing fulfilled.

Contentedly, our arms wrapped around each other, we slept. And awakened to make love again and sleep again.

I think that we had both lost track of time. We knew it was day when there was a gray light outside, and night when the light faded. I cooked the beans I had soaked with more slices of bacon and they tasted delicious. We got half-drunk on tequila, and explored each other’s bodies. The rain came down as if it would never stop, sometimes gentle, sometimes loud and harshly, like the way Lucas made love to me. I wanted it to go on forever.

But with the same inevitability of the passion that had brought us together, we began to quarrel. It was my fault. I wanted to know more about him, and he told me roughly that he did not want to talk about the past.

“Would you prefer to talk of the future?” My eyes glared angrily into his. “What will we do when the rain stops, Lucas? Tell me; I must know!”

“Must know what? Isn’t now enough for you?”

“Am I going to be just another one of the women you’ve used and then discarded? Is that it? Damn you, I have a right to know!”

“Rowena…” he expelled his breath in an impatient sigh that made me all the angrier.

“D

on’t! I’m not a child. I’m not as naive as Luz, nor as calculating as Elena. Why can’t you treat me as a person?”

“And how have I been treating you? You’re here—you came here of your own accord, didn’t you? I asked you once why you came, and you wouldn’t tell me. Now perhaps I don’t want to know. You’re here. I want you. Can’t you take each moment as it comes?”

“No!” I almost screamed the words at him, hating him at that moment. “No I cannot. Is wanting all that’s between us, Lucas? It’s not enough for me.”

“But what do you want of me? You haven’t told me. What do you want me to say to you? I can only say what is in me now. I want you. I think I have always wanted you. And you held me off.”

“You know why!”

“Why are you here? Tell me that, and perhaps I might have an answer for you.”

His body was over mine, imprisoning me.

“I don’t know. Yes—I do. I wanted you too. But Lucas, I’m a woman. There has to be more. I don’t know anything about you…”

“And I don’t know anything about you. For God’s sake, can’t you stop asking questions?”

I couldn’t bring myself to ask the question that trembled on my tongue. “Do you love me? What do I mean to you?”

Instead I said bluntly: “Why haven’t you asked me why I’m not a virgin? Ramon did. That night—he took me up into his bedroom, and he—he—”

“Oh, God! Rowena, it doesn’t matter. Do you hear me? It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I don’t want to hear about your past, or whatever’s done an’ finished with. It’s what’s happening now, and what’s between us now that counts.”

“And Elena?” I do not know what drove me to ask that particular question, but I saw his face take on a closed, forbidding look.

“Why did you have to bring her up?”

With an abrupt, savage movement that took me by surprise he stood up, tossing the blanket aside.

“Lucas…!”

“I’m going outside. Going to see to Diablo. Get some air. I’m beginning to feel stifled in here.”

I watched him snatch the yellow slicker down from its peg and throw it about his naked body. The door slammed behind him, and then there was only the sound of the rain and the rushing water and the crackling fire.