Chapter Sixteen

 

The Fourth of July dawned still. Every weather report called for extreme heat. Temperatures over the past two days had spiraled upward to the century mark and beyond, until Lucas shut the drapes and got out some fans. He put a box fan in the window to draw out the hot air from the bedroom, so Tessa woke to a steady roar. Lucas slept beside her, and she watched him with loving admiration. She adored the way his broad shoulders connected to his long, lean back. Her fingers teased through his hair and stroked the gray patches. He hated them, but Tessa didn’t mind. She saw them as badges of honor he’d earned.

When Lucas opened his dark blue eyes, Tessa smiled. “Good morning.”

“Hey,” he whispered back. “It’s the Fourth of July, right?”

“Uh-huh. We’re supposed to go over to my folks’ later for barbecue and fireworks.”

His hand slipped under the thin nightgown she wore and caressed her back, his fingers slow and tantalizing. “I think it’s time for something explosive right now. Maybe a firecracker or two, huh?”

Her skin tingled at his touch and desire kindled as a warm delicious anticipation spread over Tessa’s body, sweeter than the syrup drizzled over waffles. “Mmm,” she murmured and with one swift motion shucked off the nighty. Lucas, who slept nude as a newborn, buried his face between her breasts and kissed her. The heat of his breath intensified her yearning as she arched her back. He laughed as he moved his mouth until his tongue lapped circles around her left nipple. Lucas cupped her breast in his hand and let his fingers stray across her skin with slow strokes. Her nipple answered his call and perked into full blossom. He switched sides and suckled the other one, his lips tender and teasing until he made it bloom, too.

Lucas shifted position and radiated his hips until he poised above Tessa, but he held back entering although he had to know how much she craved his cock inside her. Instead, he brought his mouth up to hers and delivered pure passion from his lips with such heat Tessa burned. His insistent hot mouth evoked incredible sensations as he kissed, nibbled, then thrust his tongue deep into her mouth in a rich French smooch.

At the same time, Lucas rammed his dick into her pussy. The impact reverberated through Tessa with the force of a mighty tornado, destructive, devastating, and delicious. She savored the thrills rippling outward as the walls of her cunt hugged his cock and squeezed to increase pleasure for both. Lucas grunted with wordless bliss as Tessa scooted her butt to drive him deeper. At the same time she locked her legs around his back and thrust upward.

Erotic electricity crackled through Tessa’s body as they strained together, short of breath, toward the ultimate release. As he drove his hips hard and fast against her, she raked his back with one hand, her nails scratching the surface with tantalizing torture. Tessa stroked his cheek, then rifled a couple of fingers through his hair. Lucas balanced on his arms to keep from collapsing onto her and moved his torso with enough effort to propel them into physical paradise. As Tessa’s body spasmed with sensual delights, the intensity increased until she grasped Lucas’ shoulders and moaned with need for release. When it came, a rush of extreme delight and deep physical pleasure sent her into oblivion. For a few moments Tessa no longer existed, her body one with Lucas, her spirit united with his on a level beyond the ordinary.

They fused with joy, and when the climax peaked, then faded with slow stages, Tessa curled up in Lucas’ arms. Her breath slowed to match his and she sighed, contented as a nesting bird. “So far,” she told him. “It’s the best Fourth of July I’ve ever spent.”

He chuckled. “Well, it started out with a bang, honey.”

Tessa giggled at his play on words as her fingers stroked his chest. “I think I saw a few skyrockets, and I know I rode one home.”

Minutes passed as they dallied. “I don’t even know what time it is,” Tessa said after a lengthy silence. “Sometime we’ve got to get around to head over to my parents’ place.”

“What time are we supposed to be there?”

“It doesn’t matter, any time this afternoon. They’ve invited all the kinfolk. It’s always a family reunion with our bunch on the Fourth.”

His hand slipped between her legs to massage her still-sensitive muff. “If we don’t get up before long, I’m going to want to do this again, honey girl.”

Tessa put her hand over his. “As much as I like it, we’d better show up or Mama’ll get mad. It took a lot to get her and Daddy over me cutting out on Uncle Cal’s funeral.”

Lucas unwound from her and stretched with a wild groan. “All right, let’s get up then.”Somnolent with heat and sated with lovemaking, Tessa didn’t want to get up, but she uncurled and piled out of bed. Even after they shared a cup of coffee and some toast, fresh from a cool shower, a languid dreamlike quality clung to her. By midafternoon, when Lucas parked his truck behind the long line of other vehicles on her parents’ front lawn and drive, she hadn’t managed to shake it yet. As she and Lucas strolled around to the backyard where everyone gathered, Tessa wanted to hold onto the feeling. If possible, she’d bottle it up and save it forever like a fine wine.

****

“Hi, girl,” Tessa’s daddy yelled from behind his giant smoker grill. “C’mon, there’s plenty of food.”

Her mother’s dining room table rested on the grass, laden with platters of hamburgers and hot dogs, pans of potato salad and baked beans, hot rolls, and an aluminum foil container heaped with pieces of chicken breast and pork steak. One of Tessa’s preteen cousins waved a dish towel back and forth in an effort to keep the flies at bay. Lawn chairs were scattered over the yard, as plentiful as the mushrooms that popped up after a good rain. After she paused to kiss her dad on the cheek, Tessa stuck her head through the sliding glass door to holler “hey” at her mom. Then she grabbed a plate and handed another to Lucas.

“Let’s eat,” she told him. Each loaded a plate and wandered to find a place to sit. At a picnic table beneath the aged walnut tree, Tessa slid onto the bench beside Aunt Verna. Lucas sat down across from them both.

“Is it okay if we sit here?” Tessa asked her aunt.

“Of course it is, don’t be silly,” Verna said. “It’s good to see you both. I’d rather sit with you kids than half the people here.”

Lucas displayed a half-smile as he slapped a burger onto a split hot roll. “Thanks. I’m glad to be over here. You won’t pick at me and ask nosy questions like some of them.”

Tessa’s aunt nodded. “No, but I will ask how you’re doing. I heard you were awful bad sick.”

He picked up a plastic spoon and filled it with baked beans before he answered. “Yeah, I was, but I’m doing good now. It seems like I get down sick every time I do a sin-eating, Miss Verna.”

The older woman’s eyes narrowed to a squint as she studied him. “Then maybe it’s time to retire, son.”

When Lucas sent an inquiring glance her way, Tessa shook her head. “I haven’t said anything to her, Lucas, or to anyone else.” Although he didn’t say a word, Tessa knew he accepted it. Lucas turned back toward Verna.

“Truth is, ma’am, that’s the plan we’re working on, but it’s not as easy as you’d think.”

“I wouldn’t think it’d be easy at all,” Aunt Vernie said. She dipped a bite of burger into some steak sauce on her plate and chewed it. “I hate to ask since you said you liked it, and the fact that I don’t normally pry, but how do you plan to give it up?”

Tessa sketched out the short version of what they’d discussed. Her aunt nodded at the appropriate moments and asked, “So you want to let the good Lord take away all the sins Lucas managed to collect over the years, but he doesn’t want to do it in a regular church?”

“That’s right, and it presents a challenge. I haven’t come up with anything yet.”

The trio munched on the meal, and no one said anything to praise the food. Tessa watched Lucas clean his plate and although he wore a benign expression, she thought the discussion might’ve bothered him. No one else would see the signs of agitation, the way he bounced one foot with nervous energy or the tight grip he had on the plastic fork. She slid one foot out of her sandal and stretched it under the table to rest on his boot. He acknowledged the gesture as his lips flirted with a smile, but she noticed it never reached his eyes.

“Back in the day, a traveling evangelist with a tent revival would’ve been just perfect,” Aunt Vernie proclaimed. “But you don’t see many of those today. I suppose they’ve fallen out of style like a lot of things.”

When she’d been about five or six, Tessa remembered her family had attended one. Images of the hot evening spent within a foul-smelling tent pressed shoulder to shoulder with strangers returned. She’d enjoyed the singing, but when she got tired the wild preaching and the religious rants upset her, and no one wanted to take her home. “I remember one or two of those,” Tessa said. She wished one would arrive in the area. Lucas would like the “here today, gone tomorrow” aspect of the event.

“I don’t,” he said. “But if they don’t have them these days, is there anything else that might work?”

The old woman tilted her head to one side in a birdlike fashion as she considered the question. “You know,” she said after a pause. “I believe there just might be. Cal and I lived down in Oklahoma when we were first married, and some of the holiness folks over there had a camp meeting every summer in mid-July. We went more for entertainment than religion, and it got awful wild. There was people talking in tongues, running in the aisles, dancing, and carrying on all kind of ways. Some of it scared me, and that’s a fact. But I still hear from Bessie Albertson down there, and she wrote me just last week that they still hold camp meeting. If you two didn’t mind going somewhere between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, it might work for what Lucas needs.”

“Camp meeting?” Lucas repeated. His expression indicated he had no clue what one was.

“Yes,” Tessa told him with a rising excitement. “It’s an old-fashioned church thing, Lucas. I wouldn’t have thought they’d have them anymore now than they do tent revivals. What happens is they have church, day and night for a week, sometimes more I think. All kinds of visiting preachers come in from everywhere. They take turns preaching the Gospel and saving souls. I think they used to have a big dinner, too, every night before the evening services. It’s like a vacation, sort of, but all church and religion.”

“That’s about the way it went,” Verna said. “Daytimes, it was more like Sunday school teaching, but the evening worship would just go crazy. The church down yonder offered up dinner. Some of the women and girls would start cooking after noontime. People come and camp—that’s why they call it camp meeting, I reckon. Some of them take time off work to attend, and some come home to where they’re raised for it. But a lot of strangers show up, too. You’d blend into the crowd, and that’s a fact.”

Keen interest lit Lucas’ eyes as he asked, “Where’s this camp meeting?”

“It’s in a tiny little town,” Vernie told him. “Big Corners, Oklahoma. It ain’t much more than a crossroads out in the middle of nowhere. A state highway and a county road cross, so a little town grew up there a long time ago. There’s the holiness church and I believe one other, and I think it’s Baptist. They’ve got their own church school, and the town used to have one, too, but I think Bessie wrote me it closed down. There just weren’t enough kids to keep it open. They have a convenience store and a flea market, about six little streets of houses.”

Tessa and Lucas exchanged a glance. “It sounds like just the thing. When does it happen?”

“I’ll have to ask Bessie if she knows the exact date,” Aunt Verna said. “Why don’t you kids come see me tomorrow and I’ll try to find out?”

“We will,” Tessa said. She patted the other woman’s worn, gnarled hand. “Thank you, Aunt Vernie. You’re about to save Lucas’ life, free him from sin, and put the devil on the run.”

A smile broke out among the wrinkles the way the sun bursts out of gray clouds. “Well, sounds like I’m still good for something.”

Peter Owens strolled up with a smoking platter of burgers in one hand. “Why, Sis, of course you are. Are y'all getting plenty to eat? I’ve got more hamburgers right here if you’d like one.”

“Thank you,” Lucas said and speared one. His grin lit up like neon, not just for the food, but also because they might’ve found a way to remove his burden.

Tessa made the rounds to visit with family members and old friends. Many of them she hadn’t seen since her return to the area, and some of them blurred between kin and neighbors. Most offered a handshake, a hug, or a peck on the cheek, but all of them avoided touching Lucas. Funny how they want him to take away their near and dear’s sins, but then they won’t touch him as if all the sin might rub off. They act like he might contaminate them. She saw what he’d endured for seven years. It would’ve happened a little at a time. When she’d left for Nashville, Lucas Rowlands was no different than any other young man in the county. Even his mistake, the one Tessa and his grandfather helped inspire, had been forgivable, just sowing wild oats. As the sin-eater, though, Lucas crossed a line from normal into the weird. Old Mr. Rowlands kept a solitary life, and now she understood why. Tessa wondered if things might change once Lucas retired. And she couldn’t help but notice a few people shied away from her, too, as if she were guilty by association.

By the time everyone finished eating, dusk deepened into full dark. Ted staggered out to their traditional staging area where a big piece of plyboard sat propped on top of a pair of sawhorses to start the fireworks show. Little kids waved sparklers and shouted “Happy birthday America” before they settled down for the main event. As always, Ted started with a few rockets. Their elegant trails lit the night sky and tapered into nothing. Then he lit some fountains and moved onto the larger fireworks. As the brilliant explosions of silver, gold, red, and purple burst into brief being, Tessa leaned back into Lucas’ arms and watched with the wonder of a small child.

Despite the way some had shunned Lucas, happiness radiated from Tessa’s heart. The Fourth of July represented the first holiday she’d spent at home in years, and she’d take the good moments to store in her memory. Last July and the year before it, she hadn’t seen any fireworks at all, not when she’d been parked inside Tootsie’s with her friends. Three years earlier she’d had a gig singing patriotic songs at some picnic, but she couldn’t recall who hosted it and it didn’t matter anyway.

“Here’s the big finale!” Ted called and everyone hushed to watch.

A huge boom preceded the incredible display. This one lasted longer than the others and featured ongoing explosions as part of the fireworks. Tessa gazed upward with the rest, aware of Lucas’ lips teasing the back of her neck with tiny kisses. When the last light faded, he whispered in her ear, “Are you ready to go home?”

She nodded. “Whenever you are. I’m tired.”

A huge yawn stretched her jaw to prove it. Lucas stood up and offered her a hand. Tessa took it, and linked together, they made the rounds to offer a few polite good-byes. Aunt Verna hugged them both and reminded them, “Don’t forget to come over tomorrow afternoon. I’ll find out the dates for you.”

“We will,” Tessa said as she embraced her aunt. “Thanks again.”

On the way home, beneath a sky filled with stars, Lucas drove with one hand and let the other rest on Tessa’s thigh. “Did you have fun?

“Sure. Did you?”

“Oh, yeah,” Lucas replied. “I think your aunt’s come up with something workable, this camp meeting thing. I’m willing to give it a try.”

“Me, too.” She rested her head against his shoulder and inhaled his male scent, so very Lucas. “I’m sorry people don’t want to touch you.”

“Aw, I’m about used to it,” he said with such simplicity she knew it bothered him on a deep level. “I guess the idea I’m walking bowed over with sin gets to them.”

“Well, I didn’t like it,” Tessa said. “Maybe it’ll be different after.”

Lucas didn’t sound as hopeful as she was. “We’ll see.”

****

The next afternoon, Aunt Verna offered them homemade cookies, Tessa’s favorite chocolate-peanut-butter-oatmeal no-bake treats, and the dates for the upcoming camp meeting down in Oklahoma.

“I talked to my friend, and the camp meeting at the Big Corners Holiness Church is July twentieth through the twenty-fifth this year. She said she’d be glad to let you stay with her if you want.”

With an almost imperceptible shake of his head Lucas rejected the idea, and relieved, Tessa told her aunt, “Thanks. I appreciate her offer, but I think we’ll be happier getting a motel room up close to the turnpike somewhere.”

“That’s fine. Now, Lucas, son, you do know it’ll only work if you mean it, don’t you?”

“If it means I have to want to get rid of the sins and I’m sorry I ever got them, I do,” he told her.

Tessa and her aunt nodded at the same time. “It does,” Verna said. “Here, have some more cookies.”

As they shared cookies and some of Aunt Verna’s strong, sweet iced tea, she told them more about the church and the tiny community. By the time they headed home, Tessa thought she’d gained a sense of the place and had an idea of what to expect. Halfway home, his cell phone rang. When Lucas pulled into the next driveway to talk, Tessa realized it must be serious. From his end of the conversation, she gathered Buddy had a new sin-eating request.

“Look, I’m retiring from all of it,” Lucas blared into the phone. “You’ll just have to tell them, or give me their phone number and I will. This shit’s killing me and I’m getting out before it does. No, damn it, I can’t do ‘just one more,’ Buddy. Hell, no. I won’t change my mind. Yeah, I know.”

His thumb ended the call, and Lucas stared through the windshield and snorted. “Buddy’s being a pain in the ass,” he said after a few moments.

“He had a sin-eating set up?” Tessa asked.

Lucas snorted. “He thought he did, but I told him no. I thought he’d understand. He’s seen me sick. Hellfire, he was at the house this last time, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he was.” And he should damn well understand why Lucas refused.

“He’s not very happy with me, but I have to put an end to it sometime,” Lucas said. He banged one fist against the steering wheel. “This camp meeting thing, it’s the only chance I’ve got, but I can’t keep on sin-eating or it won’t mean a thing. I’ll be right back where I started, between a rock and a hard place.”

“I know,” Tessa said. “You’re making the right choice.”

His fingers remained in a tight fist, but Lucas uncurled them and offered her his hand. Tessa took it and rubbed the back of it with a soft finger. “I don’t want to piss Buddy off,” he added. “He’s been my best friend forever.”

“He probably doesn’t want to be the one to tell them there won’t be any more sin-eating. I don’t imagine there are many others left anywhere, are there?”

“None I’m aware about,” Lucas said. “I wouldn’t have done it in the first place except for my granddad. I couldn’t let him go to hell, could I?”

“Of course not,” Tessa said. Growing up, his grandfather represented all the family Lucas had. He had loved the old man very much.

“I almost lost you, though,” he added in a strained voice. “I thought I had for a long time.”

“I’ve always been yours. It’s simple fact. I’d have probably gone to Nashville anyway, but if you’d told me then about the sin-eating, we would’ve worked something out.”

“Honey, I should’ve,” he replied. “All that matters is you’re here now, and I’m getting out of this thing.”

In the distance, skyrockets streamed past the stars and lit the night sky. Tessa put her hand on the ignition and turned the key. His old truck fired up and purred like a contented cat. “Let’s go home. I’d like to end this day the same way it began.”

Lucas turned his gaze full on Tessa, and his eyes, deeper blue than the sky or sea, bored into her soul “I’d like nothing better, honey.”

He steered with speed over the winding roads, across the hills, and around the curves to the old house they called home. Tessa lost all track of time. She didn’t know if it might be midnight or three o’clock in the morning, but who cared? Lucas slid out of the truck, gathered her into his arms, and kissed her, his mouth sweet and hot, tasty and teasing. Then he carried her into the house and put her on her feet just long enough to strip away her shorts and tank top.

What started slow and delicious turned hot and urgent. Tessa kissed him with force and bit the edge of his lip in her overwhelming desire to connect. Lucas caught her wildness and didn’t attempt to tame it. Instead he grasped her around the waist, lifted her, and braced her against the ancient bureau. He took her with swift and certain force. His cock rammed into her willing heat like an invading army, but she didn’t surrender. Tessa met his charge with power and rotated her hips to drive him deeper. Body heat spiked between them until she burned. They’d climax now or she’d die.

Their bodies strained together, then they shuddered in tandem. Wild, wicked sensation began where their bodies met and spread. She cried out in a hoarse and guttural sound before sinking her teeth into his shoulder to stop a rising scream halfway up her throat. Lucas moaned with intense pleasure and filled her. Afterward, her legs went limp and she struggled to reach the bed to collapse.

“What do you think?” Lucas asked her. His hair was tousled in five directions, but his grin beamed bright.

“Best Fourth of July ever,” she told him. “You put on better fireworks than any I’ve ever seen.”

He grinned, white teeth visible in the darkness, then they slept.