Free Caleb by Charles Alverson Page A

wearing a long white nightgown. Her hair, loosened from its usual neat bun, hung down to her shoulders.
    “Where’d you come from?” Caleb asked.
    “Down there.” With a sideways movement of her head she indicated the room at the other end of the narrow corridor. Caleb looked and saw that the tall door was open. He’d never seen it open before. When he looked back at Missy, she was smiling and holding up a key attached to a ribbon tied around her neck.
    “Master knows you have that key?” Caleb said.
    “Nobody knows about this key but me.”
    “And me.”
    “And you.”
    “What do you want?” Caleb asked.
    “You,” she said simply.
    “Well,” Caleb said, grabbing her by her slim wrist, “you’d better get in out of that hall.” He knew that nobody could possibly see her, but it still made him nervous. He pulled her into his room and wedged the door shut behind her.
    Missy was looking around Caleb’s room. It was lined with wooden boards, whitewashed, and as austere as a soldier’s barracks. The only thing unusual about it was the small shelf of books Caleb had put up next to the head of the bed. There wasn’t much else to catch Missy’s eye.
    “You read those?” she asked.
    “No,” said Caleb, “if I wake up in the middle of the night hungry, I eat them. It’s a long way to the kitchen. Can you read?”
    “What do I need to read for?”
    “You’d be surprised. The whole world is in those books.”
    “They look a bit small to me,” Missy said.
    Caleb changed the subject. “You know,” he said directly, “you coming down here is foolishness. We can’t be starting anything. You know Master didn’t bring you out here for me.”
    “I know,” she said simply. “That door is never going to be open again after tonight. But it is now.” She leaned forward and kissed him softly. “I want you to be the first.”
    “Ever?” Caleb emphasized the question with his eyebrows.
    Missy showed fine little teeth in a smile that carried all the way to her eyes. “First here,” she said.
    “Come on,” said Caleb, grabbing her wrist again.
    “There’s no hurry.”
    “The hell there isn’t.”
    “Blow the lamp out,” she said.
    “Why?”
    “Just do. Please.”
    “Down?”
    “No, out. Please.”
     
    It was near light when Caleb woke up. Something was fluttering at his chin and nose.
    “Hey!” Then he woke up completely and felt the warm, soft full contact of her naked body pressed against his.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Butterfly kiss,” she said, blinking rapidly so that her long lashes brushed his cheekbone. “Like it?”
    “It’s different, all right,” Caleb said.
    Morning light streamed in through the little window high up on the wall of Caleb’s room. The early sun colored a patch on the opposite wall.
    “It’s going to be a good day,” Caleb said, looking up. “A hot one.”
    “Aren’t you going to tell me how good I was?” Missy asked.
    “You know.”
    “But I still like to hear. A girl likes to hear it.”
    “Okay,” Caleb said, wrapping her in his powerful arms. “You are the sun, stars, and moon, and when I feel your skin against mine I explode with volcanic passion. I am your own Vesuvius.”
    “I don’t understand that, but it’s pretty,” Missy said. “That you or the books?”
    “A little of each,” said Caleb, kissing her hungrily, “but the more I think on it, the more me it gets.”
    “You ain’t thinking,” said Missy, kissing him back.

22
    Full light found her still locked in his arms.
    “Let’s just stay like this all day,” Missy suggested.
    “Sure, we’ll have Cassie bring us breakfast in bed. How many eggs you want with your grits?”
    “You’re not romantic.”
    “Not anymore, I guess,” Caleb admitted, “but you catch me later. You’ll get romance. But right now, I want to see.”
    “See?” Missy pretended that she didn’t know what he was talking about.
    “See!” said Caleb emphatically, taking a handful of the