Chapter 2
THE CLOCK striking three found them quietly close, relaxed now, the frenetic edge gone from their early eagerness. Only the occasional chirp of a katydid and the sleepy notes of a late-singing mockingbird relieved the silence. It was cool, but not cold, the air stirring outside in a gentle zephyr.
"I'll have to go now," said Cy, as he turned and kissed Fleur's pink ear.
"I wish you could stay, Cy. I was pretending you wouldn't have to go at all." She touched him, and tears came into her eyes.
"Please don't, Fleur," he said, caressing the curve of her hip. "I feel rotten enough about this, knowing that I can give just so much. Not what you want Not what you should have."
She shook him gently. "Shut up, won't you? This night has been another trip to our heaven, so don't spoil it. I'm pretty tough. I told you I'd take what was given-and not grieve for the rest."
"But you're crying," he accused.
"Why shouldn't I be, after having been made love to as I have been tonight? Tears of joy, Cy. Joy and wonder and thankfulness. When will I see you again?"
He chuckled. "You can't have a headache every evening."
"That's right. I can't. Actually, I hostess the restaurant so I can keep an eye on my investment. But I take off Sunday nights."
"Barring unforeseen circumstances-Sunday night. Okay?"
"Ten times okay. And I do want you to meet Kitty."
Cyrus Scott, like his father, was an enigma to many of the people of the county. This was a section of the South where folks generally held that work was second only to church as a saver of souls. Neither Cy nor old Steven had ever felt that way. Shrewdness, foresight and ingenuity were infinitely more remunerative than knocking oneself out with long, arduous labor-so the elder Scott had taught the younger. The elder Scott, further, had proved the point by buying quantities of land, and through thrifty and intelligent management providing for the future.
So Cy was a gentleman of the soil without much of it on his hands. He loved cattle, and the deep fastnesses of the forests, and the rambling spring creeks that threaded the Scott acreage. But he also loved good food, a good tipple and not-so-good women.
This last love had earned him something of a reputation not altogether undeserved. He admitted freely to himself that like his friend Buck, the stock foreman at Scottland, he found it difficult to resist a pretty figure.
For this reason, both men distrusted the wild infatuations which would spring up in their breasts occasionally, knowing from experience that these would last only until the next long-legged beauty came along. On the other hand, Cy had never crossed the color line, as he had heard some men did. He gladly left the dark girls to Buck-who had demonstrated that he could take quite adequate care of them.
As Cy steered his car around curves at a sedate pace, he let his mind dwell on Fleur's question about his running for sheriff. Where on earth had Lady Bergstrom-the Scotts' grand old neighbor on the north-come up with such an idea? Cy would have to talk to her about that. A rumor traveled quickly and Cy feared this one might be taken seriously.
True, Jake Jonas was no great shakes as sheriff. But he had been at it for twelve years and although he was crooked as a dog's hind leg, no doubt folks would return him to office in the coming election. He had the county organization behind him, and it was said that he was supported by gambling interests. Cy liked none of this particularly. Still, by no stretch of the imagination could he picture himself interposing as a corrective measure.
Jake Jonas was a sport. He wore beige uniforms with western-style hats, cowboy boots and a long Colt. He had expensive tastes and a camp on the south branch-this because Cy had refused Jake permission to build on Scott property where the fishing was better, the water colder and the forest more lovely. Steven Scott's acreage was his kingdom and such people as he allowed on it were those who had been born there. These comprised mostly a large Negro population warmly devoted to Cy, his father and the land. Long ago, Steven had ceased paying them wages. He paid the Negroes percentages that could not fall below a certain point. This took care of bad years and acts of God. His herders, in particular, prospered from this arrangement. Steve and Cy bought only the best in both blooded and grade stock and their animals always brought the highest prices. A good calf crop meant considerably more money for the herders, so they tended their stock with the greatest of care.
Fleur, Cy mused, was more pleasant food for thought than the sheriff's office.
Fleur was one in a million. Cy wondered why he had never gone completely off the deep end for her. Oh, he had always liked her well enough, had thought the world of her, in fact. He remembered her, at the time he had gone into high school, as a tall, leggy girl full of freckles and giggles, and crowned by masses of tawny-gold hair.
Cy had been a shy but bright lad of thirteen, and she sixteen, when it had happened....
A companion goosed Cy in the ribs one day as they were shooting goals, girls at one end of the school gym and boys at the other. "Say-look at that skirt act up when Fleur shoots!"
Fleur had not yet reached the lady stage. When she went for a basketball it was with the same savage, competitive zeal displayed by the boys. But her clothes were not made for it. When she came down from a leap, her short skirt would catch air and parachute up. Once it climbed completely past her waist to hang on the lush roundness of her developing buttocks. She laughed and casually pulled down the garment, managing to glance toward the boys as she did so. But the only eye she caught was Cy Scott's.
Cy's interest was so profound and his gaze so stunned that Fleur blushed all over. She went back, breathlessly, to shooting goals again, managing now to control her skirt better. But the incident stayed in both their young minds. As day after day passed, it began to tell on them. , Lurking in Cy's mind was the picture of Fleur's scantily clad rear-so round so breathtakingly curved that his heart ached when he happened to run into her around the high-school campus. She was the object of his dreams both day and night. Of course, since he had been old enough to ride around Scottland, sex had been no stranger to him. But though he knew much, he had had no actual experience.
As for Fleur, to her Cy represented the first male she had ever really slammed between the eyes. Others had glimpsed her derriere. But they had made coarse remarks, calling her the Indian princess, Fatty-in-the-Rear. Cy Scott had not said a word. He had just stood stricken and dumb. In his eyes she had read something she could not fail to interpret. But she was too shy, and he was, to do more than exchange idle words when they saw each other on the school grounds.
He was two months past fourteen when, after the school year, they met on a sand bar on the river's north branch, some three miles above her home and four below his. Hoping to catch a glimpse of her, he had ridden his horse south. She had once told him she often swam in the branch during the summer.
Fleur, bursting with hot-blooded, untried womanhood, was strolling, unbeknown to Cy, in the hot sun two hundred yards upstream. The sand was so white it hurt Cy's eyes. The sandstone banks and shelves were a golden beige, the water blue-clear and swift He succumbed to its call. Tying his horse to an ironwood bush, he took a short, active swim in the raw. Then he caught sight of Fleur walking slowly toward him.
Cy hastened into khaki shorts, but left his shirt lying on a log.
Fleur was making squiggles in the sand with a long stick. She was dressed in shorts of some faded material that fit with appalling closeness. She also wore a white sleeveless shirt bursting with sweet fullness.
Cy's heart did a flip. Ever since that day in the gym, he had been in a fever. But he was naturally reticent and shy. He could not boldly approach her with what he had in mind. Now that the object of his dreams was approaching, he had an overpowering urge to run. He clenched teeth and fists and forced himself to stand fast.
Fleur came on, walking slowly, feeling the sun hot on her thick, tawny hair. Trickles of sweat probed her privacy. She was thinking of tall, young Cy Scott and sensation tingled through her veins. She well remembered the rapt look in his eye that day she had exposed herself. What if he should come along now? Her blood ran faster and her breath shortened.
What would he do? Nothing, probably. Maybe it was too much to expect anything of such a kid.
Yet the deep ache in her loins and the heat of her young, red blood cried out for him. Fleur, stop dreaming, she told herself. You won't see Cy. Since school had closed, twice she had walked the banks of the river but had caught no sign of him.
She struck the sugary sand pettishly with her stick. Cy was such a clean, handsome lad. There was no foolishness in him. She had plenty of it, herself, but it was purely defensive and she did not care for it in others, especially boys. And he had such fine skin. It was richly tanned and as smooth as ripe fruit. His dimples were darling, too. His teeth, when he smiled, were even and white. But he did not smile too often. Cy was the serious type that Fleur liked.
Suddenly she glanced up and there he sat, not fifty feet away.
Fleur clapped a hand to her mouth and gave a little scream. Her face was dyed by rushing blood. She had been caught right in the act of thinking of him.
Her heart pounding painfully, Fleur walked toward him. "Well, look what I found! I think I'll take it home with me."
"Hi, Fleur." Cy got it out with difficulty. "Been swimming?"
"Yeah. You almost caught me with my nothings on." This bold speech seemed to come of its own volition. Cy caught his breath and flushed.
She giggled and flopped on the sand beside him, too close for his peace of mind. He could see the rounded tops of her milky breasts, and the sight took his breath away.
"Wish I'd caught you while you were in swimming," she said roguishly. "I would have sat on your clothes and made you freeze to death in that cold water."
He laughed and she laughed and it was great fun.
"What have you been doing?" she asked.
"Oh, riding, swimming ... Nothing much."
She turned big blue eyes on him and he felt scorched. "Been thinking of me?"
"Yes," he said, feeling faint at the admission.
It was at that precise moment that something happened within Fleur Manning. She had a keen ear for nuances. In Cy's simple one-word admission Fleur heard a golden note. So patently from the strings of his heart had it come that she looked away to hide the tears coming into her eyes.
"I think about you a lot," Cy said softly. Again the words were strung on golden thread. He had weathered the first admission better than expected-and so had been encouraged to attempt a further one. Cy's heart was beating a tattoo. He wished hungrily that he might touch her.
Fleur stretched lazily, her long legs extended, thighs glistening in the sun. Watching, Cy gulped noisily.
"And what is it that you think," Fleur prompted.
"I think of how much I like you." He quailed at his seemingly uncontrollable boldness. How could he say such things when every nerve in him was curling up from embarrassment?
Her blue eyes gave him a hot, moist bath. The sun made splintery outlines on her face. Her long, luxuriant lashes drooped becomingly. "And I think that you're swell, Cy," she said.
"You do?" His voice squeaked on the question, making him want to dive into a deep, dark hole.
"Oh, yes." She rolled over on her side. Now she was much too close. If he did the same thing, they would meet stomach to stomach. Their legs would touch and her breasts would prod his chest.
Fleur felt as though she would explode. Her breasts seemed to swell and the nipples protrude. There was a burning ache below her waist.
"I know a good place," Cy said, his stomach knotting. "We can play or talk there, or-you know, be where no one can see us."
"Where?"
He pointed north. "That hole where the branch meets the river. There's a cave in the wall of the bluff."
"Oh ... Sure, I know. That hole is good for swimming. Deep."
"Would you like to go?"
As Fleur stood up, she bent in such a way as to furnish him a good look at the creamy cleavage between her breasts. She smiled directly into his face. "You bet." She gave him her hand. A scalding shock ran through him at her touch. "Beat you to the hole," she yelled. She loosed his fingers and Cy was put to the test.
Instead of running with the saddling motion of the ordinary girl, Fleur dug in, got low and really tore out. She beat Cy by a good thirty seconds. They reached the edge of the water and pattered northward, stopping opposite the deep slash between the two hills where the creek surged into the mother stream.
"Now," said Fleur, her body alive with prickling sensation, "how will we cross?"
"Wade," said the practical Cy. "Isn't it pretty deep?"
"It can only get you wet."
"That's right." She started into the cold, clear water. What if she did get wet? This was adventure. She was not going to let the small matter of getting soaked stop her.
They waded out until the water was creeping up over her knees. To her hypersensitive skin it was like a man's creeping fingers. Instantly her vivid imagination was at work. Before they were halfway across, her body was pebbled by gooseflesh. Then the watery fingers reached higher and involuntarily she uttered a gasp that startled Cy.
He glanced at her. She was staring down at herself and pressing her temples with her fingertips.
"What's the matter? Cold?"
She lifted stricken eyes to his. Hardly knowing what she said, she replied, "No-hot." Then she turned scarlet with embarrassment and started to cry.
If she had stabbed Cy, his heart could not have been more pained. He did not know what to do, what to say. He was in torment. Then instinct took over. He faced her and placed gentle hands on her shoulders. "Don't be ashamed, Fleur," he told her, his voice a caress. "You said nothing wrong."
She gave a strangled sob and went into his arms.
Never in all his fourteen years had Cy been so shaken. Warm and fragrant and soft, soundlessly and helplessly appealing, Fleur needed him, the big, strong man. Immediately Cy grew one foot and three inches. Standing hip-deep in a southland creek, a boy became a man because in his infinite, intelligent sensitivity, he understood what to do in a sore emotional crisis.
And a slip of a girl, a finely wrought and excitingly contoured girl, became a woman. Fleur could sense the magnificent maturity her touch had wrought. From that day on, she never recalled that Cy Scott was three years younger than Fleur Manning.
Of course, there would be hurdles over which she would have to help him, but she thought it a privilege. It would give her unbelievable satisfaction to do something for him-and, of course, for herself. She glowed in the warm sunlight of his understanding. Her eyes held his and she urged herself against him. She felt the leap of the male. The sensation flogged her already jumping nerves to white heat.
To Cy the touch of her firm young breasts with their shot-hard tips was like the blow of a club. His head rang with wild, discordant noises. If only he dared kiss her ... Why not? Obviously she wanted him to. Her eyes were half-shuttered, her lips parted, her body urgently close to his. Even if he wanted to retreat, he knew that she would not allow it. Cy bent and touched her lips. It was like throwing a switch to her electrical circuit. With a moan of pure agony, she went hard against him. A cry of anguish came from their lips. Cy's return embrace made Fleur's ribs crack alarmingly.
The world spun madly about them. Suddenly they lost balance and dumped into the cold water. Neither broke contact on the way down, or tried to halt the descent. As soon as their knees touched the sand, they parted and came up.
Cy's face wore a somnolent look. Fleur's was a pearl of loveliness. Her lips bore a strange, haunting smile. "Let's go to the cave, Cy," she said softly, her heart in her eyes.
Just around a shoulder of jutting, yellow sandstone was a pitted opening screened by undergrowth that also choked off the sand. Above it verdure trailed down the face of the bluff. The walls of weathered stone were covered by moss and lichen.
They had to stoop to go in, Cy holding her hand. It seemed pitch dark at first because they were accustomed to the brilliant sunlight. But soon their eyes adjusted and the cave walls took shape. An eddy at flood stage had eaten away the soft sandstone, leaving this circular chamber with a high ceiling blackened by fungus and moss. The floor was of soft sand. Only a few clusters of drifted debris marred its pristine surface. Moss made a bed in one corner.
Fleur turned and looked into his eyes. "Cy ... I've been waiting for this moment ever since that day in the gym."
He drew in a shaking breath. "You, too?"
She nodded, then brought an end to talk by coming into his arms, giving him her soft mouth to play with as he wished.
Cy suddenly felt that if he could not release his thundering emotions, he would lose his mind. Fleur's mouth was tantalizingly sweet. He tasted it. Their tongues met and beat a hasty retreat. With a smothered groan, she went limp in his arms. Anxious to prove his strength, Cy picked her up and carried her to the bank of moss.
They sank to softness together. With the sure heritage of Eve, Fleur urged herself close. They remained in silence for a long time, their bodies heating in harmony, their world gradually narrowing. The fascination of each for the other never once slackened. Cy, unashamed now of his male proclamation, laid siege to his female counterpart.
To Fleur, the idea of shame had never occurred. Loving Cy was her destiny, her all. She squirmed against him, her flame soaring. "What's going to happen?"
Cy pondered for some time. "I'm afraid I don't know too much, Fleur. Although I'm not totally ignorant."
She clutched him, then relaxed a little. "I want love, Cy. Your love. Oh, how I want to belong to you." She kissed him With terrifying sweetness. "I feel as if it were meant to be."
He caressed her hair.
She moved away from him and boldly began unbuttoning her shirt. When her breasts-rich, upthrusting mounds tipped with passion-hardened cherries-came into view, Cy caught her to him. He dropped his head and massaged the silken surfaces with his tongue.
Fleur gave one gasp of agonized joy and fell back on the moss, her body jerking with strange, involuntary rhythm. Once she wept.
"Did I hurt you?" he cried.
She turned her swimming eyes to his. "Hurt-?"
Her voice was thick. "Oh, no, Cy ... You're doing just fine. It feels so good-"
Her fingers moved down to the zipper on one side of her shorts. It gaped widely. A slice of fabulous hip surged through, glimmering palely in the wan light. She looked up at him, then guided his trembling hand to the spot. Tugging gently at the garment, he managed to release her from it. Thus he found himself, at last, staring at her deliciously nude.
Her eyes were begging him on. But he could only gaze hypnotized at her feminine flesh. A storm of emotion threatened to separate him from his senses.
She sat up slowly and pulled him into her arms. Their mouths fed upon each other. His hands wandered along down her satiny body and tasted the glory of her bared skin. Soon, under her guidance, they became one from lips to ankles. And she opened for him like that for which she was named, like a flower. A thrashing convulsion left them both stunned.
Cy was dragged inward toward the core of the world. Fleur then took all that was hers. A glad cry bubbled from her aching throat. Her world blew apart in streamers of colorful confetti. Again and again, in his youthful vigor, he took her to the heights. The volcano within her raged. Then in a final burst of wild delirium, they fell inert. Rest caressed their ravaged nerves.
Yes, thought Cy, guiding the car across the ancient span over the river branch. He thought the world of Fleur. He would never harm her or hurt her.
Just the same, he did not love her. Too bad.
He would have to go on looking. Steven was getting kind of anxious for his son to marry. Steven did not want to die without seeing his grandchildren.