Spring fancy

by LaVyrle Spencer

  "Joseph, what have I done?" She spoke of the invitations, of course.

  But he wouldn't have her asking of them now. "You've made me fall in love with you. I love you, Winn. Take me home with you."

  "For the night, Joseph?" she asked uncertainly.

  "Yes, for the night, for only tonight if it's all I can have."

  "Yes, Joseph, oh, yes, darling. I think it's time I find out if you're right about a lot of things."

  He pushed himself from her, sat back on his haunches with one of his knees on either side of one of hers. Their eyes were polarized now, unable to break apart. He caught her hand and rolled to the balls of his feet, pulling her up with him.

  Chapter 9

  S he stood in the shower, listening to the spray echo through the ceramic enclosure of the deserted locker room. Her eyes were closed, her face uplifted, slick palms working the bar of soap. She supposed the guilt would come later, but now there was nothing except sweet anticipation and a painful ache in the center of her chest from sexual suppression. How many weeks had it been since she'd met Joseph Duggan and recognized the vibrant carnality trembling between them? Only eight, yet as each of those weeks had passed, it'd left her more and more certain that her body pined for his.

  She opened her eyes, stared at the nozzle of the shower, backed away from the warm liquid needles and ran the bar of soap around her neck and both breasts, down her belly, across her hips and down her legs. She disdained the cloth, using her own hands instead to cleanse her skin and feel the quivering nerve endings just beneath its surface. Her breasts felt engorged with eagerness, the nipples hard and pitted like steel thimbles.

  Oh, I want him. When was the last time I felt this way? This ready? She had repressed all her bodily urgings for Joseph Duggan until, now, after the stimulus of lying beneath him, they retaliated. Tonight there would be no denial. Tonight… she gasped. And bent quickly to wash her legs and feet instead. Hurrying now. Hurrying.

  Her shampoo smelled faintly of lily of the valley. She wrapped a towel turban fashion around her head and secured the loose end at her nape, then dressed in a pair of red nylon knit shorts and a simple white U-neck pullover, slipping these over panties only, no bra. She stuffed her shoes and socks into her tote bag and padded out barefoot to meet Joseph.

  He was waiting outside the door to the locker room, barefoot, too, wearing nothing but the pair of faded cutoff denim shorts he'd worn on the court. Her eyes fell to them, then to his right hand in which he held a wad of something cotton and white-his underwear?

  "I took off in such a hurry I didn't think about clean clothes," he explained. Oh, God-it was his underwear! Her dastardly eyes dropped to the fringe of the faded blue jeans. They were slightly stretched, untidy with drooping threads, and cut off so high that the tip of one white pocket peeped out at the leg line. His hard leg protruded from the soft blue cloth, creating an arresting contrast in textures and filling her imagination with what he must look and feel like naked inside the cutoffs.

  The surge of sensuousness she'd experienced in the shower magnified a hundredfold. She raised her eyes and found him studying her breasts, obviously unbound within the scoop-neck shirt, and even as he looked, they started puckering. He swallowed and raised his eyes to the towel wrapped around her head.

  When Winn spoke, her voice sounded as if she had strep throat. "I forgot my brush, so I'll leave this on till I get home." But neither of them made a move toward the stairs leading up and out. Then, when they finally did, they jerked as if they'd got a load of buckshot in the tail.

  Walking up the steps just ahead of him, she felt his eyes on her back, and the sensation was almost as palpable as a physical touch. In the lobby he slipped a hand along the bar of steel that crossed the heavy plateglass door at waist level. She saw nothing but his bare arm as he pushed the door wide and let her pass before him. His rusty pickup was parked next to her car in the deserted parking lot. Overhead a bluish light buzzed, and insects sent up a humming around it. Instinctively she headed for her own car, and just as she reached it, his hands clasped hers.

  "Winn, if you'd like, I can leave my truck here so it won't have to sit in your driveway all night."

  His offer brought back reality: they had made one conscious choice, and one only. To become lovers for the night. Beyond that, nothing had been decided. If she told him to leave the pickup, their liaison took on overtones of sordidness and dishonesty. And though she didn't want to consider her relationship with Joseph Duggan in that light, there couldn't be another pickup like his old junker in the whole metro area. She was forced to make a choice.

  "Yes, you can ride with me. I'll drive you back over here in the morning."

  He dropped her hand, turned away and picked his barefooted way carefully around the tail of her car. He opened the back door, threw his racket and shoes inside, then slipped into the front seat beside her.

  She lived only two miles from the club, and it took little time to drive that far along deserted Seventy-seventh Avenue. But when they reached the intersection at Highway 52, the light was red. As they sat, waiting for it to change, he studied her face, lighted to pink by the reflected glow, her eyes refracting a pair of red dots from the overhead traffic light. He sensed guilt coming to give her second thoughts and slid across the seat, put an arm around her shoulders and turned her face to him with the pressure of a single finger on her jaw.

  "Winn, I won't be a hypocrite and tell you not to think of him. But when you do, and I know you will more than just once during the night, will you think of me, too, and remember that I love you?"

  The light turned green in her eyes. She clutched the wheel and left her foot on the brake. I love you, too, Joseph, she thought but could not say it. To do so would be unfair to both of them. Instead she lifted her lips to his, touching his jaw with her fingertips-it was rough in contrast to the sleek satin of his mouth as his lips parted and the tip of his tongue greeted hers.

  When the kiss ended, Winn said softly, "And I won't be a hypocrite and say I'm going to put him from my mind because he's there right now, and you know it."

  "Then I'll do my best to get him out of it temporarily if you'll just drive on through this green light, Winn Gardner, and take us to someplace a little less public than the intersection of Highway 52 and Seventy-seventh Avenue."

  But the light had turned red again, and they had a full three minutes more to blandish each other with lips and tongues.

  At the town house the For Sale sign was still perched on the boulevard. The lights illuminated it momentarily, then arced around and a moment later died with the engine. Joseph turned to study Winn, but now that the moment was here, she was nervous. She opened her door, leaving him to do likewise and follow her up the sidewalk and the three steps leading to her front door.

  There, he didn't reach to take the keys from her hand, but took her tote bag instead, leaving her with both hands free. Still she felt inept, and it seemed forever before she found the hole in the lock.

  Finally the dead bolt clicked back, and she led the way inside into the dark recesses of her tiny front foyer and the living room, listening to the soft thunk of the door closing behind him, then the almost imperceptible shush of his bare feet on the carpet. She reached blindly and found his hand. He followed, recognizing the direction in which she led him, turning right along the short hall leading past the bathroom to her bedroom. Another right turn and he knew he was standing at the foot of her bed with the high dresser to his left and the old-fashioned dressing table to his right. Her fingers clutched his rather frantically now, and he felt her trembling.

  Did she expect him to drop her on the bed in the dark, and afterward creep out like a clandestine debaucher? Did she think that if it happened under cover of darkness, it would be easier to forget later?

  He slipped from her fingers and found the wall switch in the dark. A pair of matched boudoir lamps flashed on, reflecting themselves from the mirror of the ancient dressing table.

  W
inn's face was in shadow as she whirled to face Joseph. His hand was still on the light switch. "If I'm going to have only one night with you, I certainly don't intend to have it in the dark. I want some memories to take away with me… of how you looked when you made love."

  She dropped her eyes to the floor, and he dropped his hand from the light switch. He leaned to set her bag on the floor, then paused expectantly, waiting for her to make some sign of invitation. Instead, she studied the carpet beneath her bare toes.

  "I'm very nervous," she admitted. Her voice wasn't its usual calm self. It was high and pinched.

  "So am I. Agreeing to go to bed together, then putting it off for the better part of an hour is a little nerve-racking, isn't it?"

  She glanced up shyly-he was grinning warmly-and laughed nervously.

  "I… I'm sorry this room is in such a mess. I'm afraid I'm not the best housekeeper. Other things always seem to come first."

  "At home my bed is made up only on the days when I change the sheets." He glanced at the tousled bed. Her sheets were white, the blanket army green and the spread a burnt orange-not exactly the boudoir of a vamp, yet it suited her.

  With three unhurried steps he moved to stand before her, but when he reached to touch, she ducked aside and avoided him. Before the dressing table she reached up to remove the towel from her head. He took up a hipshot stance, hooked his thumbs in the back waistband of his shorts and watched as she bent forward at the waist, then rubbed her hair briskly. His eyes slid down the curve of her spine to the red knit shorts that magically rode up and down at the same time: up at the hem, revealing the gentle half-moon of skin where her white underwear stretched up to reveal a sliver of derriere, and dipping down at the waist as the elastic curved, revealing two knobs of her vertebrae thrown into shadowed relief.

  Silently he moved up behind her and placed his hands on her waist. She jerked erect and met his eyes in the mirror, her own framed by a shock of wet wild hair. He heard the catch in her breath, then they both held motionless. When she realized how unsightly her hair looked, one hand came up to drive it back from her forehead.

  Why, she's hiding. Of course. She felt vulnerable with her hair wet and tangled. No woman dreams of making love with a man for the first time looking less than perfect. Yet her fresh wet state seemed totally perfect for Winn Gardner.

  He captured her hand and lowered it to her side.

  "Sit down," he ordered softly. "Let me."

  Her knees quivered as she stood transfixed by his stunning brown eyes in the mirror. Blindly she stepped around the tiny boudoir chair and lowered herself to it, feeling first with her hand to check her aim.

  His eyes swerved away. "Which brush? This one?" A dark hand came into her range of vision, and she watched it select a brush from the three that lay on the vanity top.

  "Yes."

  It was a coarse plastic brush with a knob on the end of each bristle. As he lifted his hand, and the bristles bit into the hair at the top of her forehead, the knobs caught and forced her head back against his chest. Immediately his left hand came to press warmly against her forehead. "Tell me if I'm being too rough," he ordered, his eyes now on the top of her head while hers followed his every movement, mesmerized. Through her cold damp hair, his chest burned warm, then he backed away and completed the stroke, ending between her shoulder blades. He brushed slowly, lazily, and with each stroke her shirt grew wetter. An involuntary shiver shook her, and goose bumps skittered up her arms. Immediately he glanced up.

  "Are you cold?"

  "Yes."

  He ran his hands down her arms, pulling her back against his stomach while his eyes locked with hers in the mirror.

  "Your shirt is wet."

  She swallowed, the ache of anticipation intensifying across her chest.

  "Give me the towel again."

  She handed it up, and he transferred his attention once more to her hair, folding it between two layers of terry cloth and drawing the remaining moisture from it before tossing the towel onto the floor, then giving her hair a final smoothing. She closed her eyes and lolled in the sensuous delight of the brush massaging her scalp, then tickling its way down her back.

  "Put your arms up, Winn."

  At his soft command her eyes fled to his, and she realized he was deliberately taking this one slow step at a time to give them longer to get used to each other. There was no hiding the fact that her breasts peaked up into two hard points, nor the fact that they were rising and falling with torturous rapidity as she obediently raised her arms above her head. He grasped the hem of her shirt, inverted it, peeling it up and over her elbows, leaving her torso naked, lighted by the lamps and exposed to his adoring eyes.

  "You're beautiful, Winn," he breathed, "just as I pictured you." Her shoulders pressed firmly against his midsection, and she felt his hardness against the center of her back. His right hand still held the brush, but he seemed to have forgotten it. He slid both palms down around her neck, her collarbone, then outward to the top curves of both breasts, around their outer perimeter and finally to their soft lower swells, carefully avoiding the nipples, which stood out like twin rubies set in identical mounts. His eyes coveted them, but still he touched only the skin surrounding them. Her breasts were small, firm, conical, and she wondered how much space they would take up in his palms.

  His hands continued to tantalize. She felt the smooth handle of the brush circle her skin, so much smoother than the rough fingertips that rode the paired curves, too, then slipped beneath them like mirrored images before lifting both breasts sharply, pointing her nipples more directly at their reflected faces high in the mirror.

  "When I first met you, I wanted to do this. I told myself that someday I would, and that when I felt your flesh for the first time, it would be as hard and firm as mine is." He allowed her breasts to fall free, then ran one hand down to her ribs while stretching to set the brush on the tabletop. Then both hands were spanning her ribs, sliding down into the hollow above her navel as he dipped his head low and kissed her naked shoulder. "Your skin is perfect, not soft like most women's. Whoever said soft skin was sexy?" His thumbs circled and dug into the backside of her ribs as his hands rode back up and sheltered in the hollow just beneath both overhanging breasts again.

  Will he never touch my nipples, she thought, wondering how long she could endure the agony of expectation. But still he didn't. He bit her shoulder tendon, and his tongue tickled it, making her give a one-shouldered shrug, followed by an involuntary shudder.

  Against her skin he said, "You smell too much like me from the soap at the club. All these weeks while I imagined you, I thought you'd smell the way you did the night of the wedding."

  Every word he said fueled her libido. He straightened. His palms cupped the lower halves of her breasts, his thumbs within a quarter inch of their crests now. "Are you self-conscious, having me look at you this way?" Let her say no. Let her be proud of her well-cared-for body.

  "No," she whispered.

  "Are you self-conscious looking at yourself this way?"

  "No." She covered the backs of his hands with her own. "Only impatient." Then she guided them up, up, until her distended nipples seemed to drill into his palms like diamond bits. She gently moved from left to right, her eyes sliding closed. Her shoulders shifted back and forth, too, and behind her she felt him moving in complementary motions.

  "Oh, Joseph, Joseph, you make me so impatient."

  "I've been impatient for a good eight weeks. What's a few more minutes?"

  Her eyelids lifted, and she met his gaze in the mirror. "Have you? Have you really?"

  His palms contoured the outer rims of her breasts while he gently twisted the nipples between thumb and forefinger, sending currents of tension zigging downward to meet the fire between her legs that seemed to connect the two disparate parts of her body.

  "Right from the start. I wanted you that first night, I think, but after you talked me out of pressing the issue in the gazebo, I decided you
just might be right. It might have been spring fancy and nothing more… what with you in your finery and me in mine, and everything setting the stage for romance. But even though I backed off, I didn't stop thinking about you, wanting to do what I'm doing right now, wondering how to go about wooing a woman with another man's ring on her finger."

  "Are you wooing me, Joseph?"

  His one-sided smile brought the devil's sparkle to his eyes. "What does it feel like to you?" He bent to probe her ear with the warm wet point of his tongue.

  "I thought we were having a one-night affair because I was in need of comfort."

  His hands flattened her milky white orbs with their tips pinched against the edges of his hands. "Be honest with yourself, Winn. Yes, you needed me, but this has nothing to do with comfort. This is something we saw coming from the first time we laid eyes on each other, isn't it?"

  She gasped slightly and arched her back against him. "You're hurting me, Joseph." Her hands pulled at his.

  Immediately his hold lightened. "I'm sorry," he whispered gruffly. His head dropped down, and he kissed her shoulder again, then her jaw and the tip of her ear, caressing her breasts now with the consideration of a penitent. She tipped her head back until it rested on his bare shoulder and covered his hands again with her own, following his explorations with her fingers, which lined his and learned the texture of hard knuckles, hair and blunt nails.

  Into her neck he murmured, "Ah, Winn, I love you. This isn't just some crazy spring fever, this is the most terrible thing I've ever gone through in my life."

  Her heart seemed to swell and her blood raced. She wanted to confess her love, too, but in lieu of the words she was not allowed to say, she could only offer, "I know, Joseph, I know. I've been going through the same misery."

  He forced her face to turn and lift, and kissed her with an ardency that fired her blood anew. His tongue tempted with provocative ministrations, circling, probing, riding along her teeth and within the most intimate confines where cheek met lip. He suckled her tongue the way she longed for him to suckle her breast, raising a deep yearning that beat against the inner walls of her femininity and made her arch back in delight and quest. She had to have more or die, it seemed. Unable to tolerate the constraint any longer, she swung up off the chair, then surprised both herself and him by ordering, "Now you sit." She grabbed up the brush. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander."