Burning Dreams by Susan Smith

Author:Susan Smith [Smith, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: ! Yes
ISBN: 9781933110622
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2006-12-15T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

It was the pain that woke her. The spectacularly hideous bed in the lake house had moved from merely uncomfortable to agonizing in the space of a scant few hours. They had made love with a will to make the night eternal. Rosalind had thought that they would see the glow of dawn coming through the thin ivory-stained shade, but the moon held sway over the cold night. Rosalind held sleep at bay as she moved against the body of her lover, too involved in the newness of the experience to rest. There was reassurance in the emotional connection, but the sating of her body's hunger was pure joy. It had never felt like this, this surety. She knew that Taryn would be gazing down at her with such a look of pride and pleasure in another five years. Another ten. There was no lingering fear of having to take her fill now, in the moment, because this joy was too pure to last. The future had started to take shape in her imagination.

Eventually Taryn had collapsed, exhausted from the emotional and physical strain of the day. Rosalind could see Taryn fighting to keep her eyes open as they drifted shut. “Rest, baby. I've got you,” she whispered. Taryn murmured something unintelligible and rolled her head to the side, already gone.

The territory of the bed was made passable only by languor that followed hours of lovemaking. Satiety. What a lovely word. I'll have to start using it in sentences, Rosalind thought. She lazily traced the outline of Taryn's lips as she slept, until Taryn groaned in protest and moved her head. Rosalind had to be satisfied with wrapping her arm around Taryn's torso and fitting her body to her sleeping lover. It was too dark to make out the fine details of Taryn's face. She constructed them from memory, comparing the face of the Taryn she knew to the pictures she had seen of Taryn at seventeen and eighteen.

She'd been much thinner then. The flesh had been like a sheath over her bones. It took living with Rhea to start filling her out, giving the gauntness back a measure of life. At seventeen, she had looked savage, brimming with rage, in the few photographs that survived. At eighteen there was more of a sense of peace to her. She looked healthier, more often lost in thought. There were no photographs she had seen of Taryn at nineteen, the nebulous time between being Rhea's lover and being Rhea's friend. In that space of time Joe had moved in and Taryn had started working out with him as he transitioned. The weightlifting added the muscle that would be a part of the swaggering boy she knew. It wasn't until Taryn had turned twenty that a photograph was taken of her smiling.

Rosalind wondered what Taryn had looked like as a child, if any pictures of her survived. Taryn wouldn't have thought to bring any when she'd been thrown out of her home.

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