No Turning Back

by Nancy Bush

  One problem: Rich wanted to park. By this time, Liz had come to the conclusion that “making out” was basically boring. At sixteen she’d had her share of kisses and fumbling sexual moves and even a moment or two when she’d felt an actual thrill. But the thrills came from the danger of being caught by a parent, and the truth was Liz really couldn’t stand being manhandled at all.

  So while Rich made his obligatory moves, a scary thought circled Liz’s agile brain. Was it—could it be—oh, God, was she frigid?

  No way. Not a chance. Uh-uh. She just wasn’t a slut, that was all, and so she didn’t really like all the bumping and grinding Rich seemed to pant over.

  “C’mere, baby. C’mon, Lizzie. Please,” he breathed in her ear, fingers gathering up the satiny folds of her royal blue dress and attempting to drag it up her thighs. The two of them were crushed into one bucket seat of his parents’ Volvo sedan. Rich had managed to yank the lever of the seat release and Liz had been flung backward to where she could now count the tiny holes on the sedan’s ceiling. Above her, Rich’s body bounced and thumped and he started to make moaning noises even before he got his zipper down.

  Liz began to feel murderously stubborn. She set her jaw, but Rich, not picking up on the signals, clasped her hand and drew it to the swell at his crotch, moving it up and down in rhythm to his increasing moans. She opened her mouth to protest and he thrust his tongue inside. Strangled, she was momentarily surprised into paralysis. For all his previous blundering, he hadn’t been quite this determined, and it took her breath away. That, and his slimy tongue.

  A second later he drew back, threw open the zipper, plunged her hand inside his pants, and came in hot spurts inside her palm, gasping, “Oh, oh, ohhh!”

  Liz felt complete and utter revulsion. She thought about the little gift he’d left in her hand as Rich collapsed on her, and she had to fight the urge to wipe it on the back of his rented tux.

  He was polite enough to hand her a handkerchief. Thank God for small favors. On the way home, he caressed her knee through the folds of her dress while Liz smoldered and despaired at the same time. Was this it? The big mystery of sex? When it came time for a good-bye kiss, she murmured something about it being late and fled up the steps to her house.

  The following week at school, Rich was a rooster all fluffed up. On Thursday at lunch Liz finally heard the news. He’d told everyone they’d done “it.” He’d gotten the prude to finally give in. Now, other guys eyed her with lust. God, they were disgusting. She had half a mind to announce the truth of the evening over the intercom, but chose instead to freeze anyone who mentioned Rich with a cold glare.

  Rich, of course, was too dense to realize what he’d done. He not only believed he and Liz were still a couple, but was apparently convinced that because he’d prematurely announced their sexual relations they were now ready to do “it” without so much as a “please” anymore. On the porch at her parents’ house the following Friday night, Liz hauled off and slapped his downy cheek with a wallop that brought hurt and disbelief to his beautiful brown eyes.

  “What?” he demanded. “What?”

  “Get away from me,” she growled. “I don’t want to touch you.”

  His jaw dropped. “Well, you—you sure wanted to the other night!”

  Moron. Loser. Jackass. Liz wanted to weep aloud. High school boys! He was older than she was, yet she was eons wiser.

  By Monday morning she was not only a slut, she was a bitch, too. Well, la-di-da. Hurt me some more. But it did give her pause when Rich started squiring around Sylvie Steerman, whose popularity was even more pronounced than Liz’s.

  There was no sympathy at home. All Mom and Dad could think about were SAT scores for their only child, and whether Liz should pick that private college or a prestigious out-of-state university. No Washington state school would be good enough for their cherished star, so it wasn’t even offered as a choice.

  Liz waded through this minor hell with rebellion growing like a hot beast inside her breast. She wanted to rage and scream, though she couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. Unhappy to the point of depression, she walked home from school one afternoon rather than catching a ride with her girlfriends and kept right on walking until she’d reached the far side of town where the Elbow Room Tavern now stood, only then it had been a fairly quaint, quasi-respectable roadside stopover called the Candlewick Inn.

  It was a warm spring night with flowers beginning to toss their heads in a rather brisk breeze. Azaleas, left to grow scraggly and wild, threw out brilliant clusters of rose red and lavender flowers. Liz stopped on the stone walk that led from the gravel parking lot to the front door of the Candlewick and fate dropped Hawthorne Hart in her path.

  He was the most gorgeous thing she’d ever seen, or so she consoled herself later. Tall, dark, and handsome, with maturity eking out of every pore, he gazed at her through gray-blue eyes clouded with pain. But Liz didn’t see that. What she saw was a serious, attractive hunk of male flesh. A hunk, moreover, who seemed light-years removed from the fumbling boys of Woodside High. He was a movie star, a hero, a mythological god. He was everything she’d ever wanted, and he was right in front of her.

  “Are you—staying here?” Liz asked breathlessly as he paused on the walkway that wound to the front door.

  He squinted toward the sky, surveying the area before glancing at the green-trimmed panes of the Candlewick’s front windows. “They’ve got rooms?”

  “A couple, I think. Attic lofts or something.”

  “No, I just drink here.”

  Had she been older and savvier, she would have realized he was dead drunk in the middle of the day and probably left him alone. But maybe not. He was just too perfect.

  “I live over there,” he added, sweeping one arm toward the section of land that dipped toward Hummingbird River.

  “You live here? In Woodside?” Liz could scarcely believe her luck.

  “I’ve lived here a long time,” he said with a trace of irony Liz couldn’t quite understand.

  “What do you do?”

  He half-closed his eyes, a small smile touching his lips. “I—don’t do much—anymore. What do you do?”

  She would rather burn in boiling oil than admit she was a high school student. “I teach,” she improvised.

  “Really?”

  Liz nodded. “Preschool kids. I have to finish some courses before I’m a full-fledged teacher. I’m, umm, thinking of going back to school at U-Dub,” she added for good measure, referring to the University of Washington in Seattle.

  “So, you’re not long for this town either?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Want a drink? I’m buying.”

  Liz finally connected that her newfound friend might have already been tipping the bottle, but rebellion, recklessness, and physical attraction stifled the little warning voice inside her head. “Sure.”

  She followed him inside the Candlewick, which was decorated to resemble a Victorian sitting room with cabbage roses on the carpet and dark stained wood beams and paneling. The pub took up most of the first floor, the rooms accessed by a narrow stairway winding behind a central desk that was a half bar itself. Liz had never been inside, and though there was a lot to recommend the Candlewick, somehow it fell just short of the mark. It strove for a country inn, bed-and-breakfast feel, but she got the impression this was just a lot of eyewash to cover up the regulars, who got sotted every afternoon rather than go home to their miserable lives. The men seated at the bar looked as if their elbows had permanently adhered to the marred surface, and they eyed her with speculation as she followed Hawthorne to a secluded table tucked under the slant of the stairs.

  “My friends call me Hawk,” he told her when she asked him his name.

  “I’m Liz.”

  “Well, Liz, what would you like to drink?”

  She shrugged and smiled. “Whatever you’re having.”

  His gray-blue eyes surveyed her carefully. She loved looking into them, enthr
alled by his physical appearance in a way she’d never known before. His face held character. He was still too young for lines, but his mouth seemed hard, almost cruel, although that small smile had started a quiver somewhere in her heart that was impossible to quell. His lashes were way too long and his nose was bent a bit, broken perhaps at one time. But the whole picture came together in a form that whispered Adonis to Liz.

  She was in love before the barmaid brought their scotch on the rocks.

  Liz had tasted champagne a few times. She’d even had half a bottle of beer with some friends one night before she’d decided it was the most disgusting beverage on the planet. But hard liquor was new to her, and she took her first sip with trepidation.

  But Hawk never gave up his intense scrutiny of her face, so she fought to act naturally, and either she succeeded or failed miserably. In any case that soft smile returned as if he’d discovered something about her that he found sweet and distracting.

  They talked about nothing. She was afraid to give away her true age and Hawk was lost in some self-absorption and alcohol numbness that kept him from revealing anything about himself. There were huge gaps in their conversation. Huge gaps where they just eyed each other with the silent interest of chemical attraction.

  The afternoon wore on. The crowd increased. Liz began to worry someone might recognize her, but the men and women who showed up in twos and fours were younger than her parents and, from the looks of it, not nearly as well-connected and snobbish.

  “I could get a room,” he said.

  The idea was more tempting than Liz would have credited. A week ago, she was worrying she was frigid; now she could feel the heat of desire like a living thing within her.

  She couldn’t answer him. She was afraid she would say yes; even more afraid she’d say no. Life was so full of small choices with huge consequences. Liz pressed her trembling fingers to the smooth facets of the old-fashioned glass and begged her heart to stop running rampant.

  “I studied law enforcement,” he said suddenly. “It seemed like a good idea.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “There are times when nothing matters at all. When every move you make only takes up energy. There’s no productivity. But you think you’re making a difference until poof.” He snapped his fingers. “It’s all bullshit.”

  Liz gazed at him with more adult eyes. “What happened to you?”

  “I lost the only thing on this earth of any value.”

  “What was it?”

  He shook his head. “Forget it. It’s old news.”

  “No, what was it?”

  For an answer his hand suddenly darted across the table, grabbing her forearm. Startled, Liz half-gasped, then gazed, mesmerized, at the fingers massaging her skin in a small circle. “I don’t want to think anymore. You’re beautiful, and I—want something beautiful.”

  His touch was hard and insistent, and the spreading warmth within her was enough to make her head spin. Trying to hang on to the rags of her sanity, Liz made a mewing sound of protest. Either Hawk read her wrong or didn’t care, but either way his next move was bold and unnerving and devastating. He simply pulled her closer to him, leaned across the table, and kissed her for all he was worth with a scotch-scented mouth and a warm, persuasive tongue.

  Devastation. Seduction. Complete destruction of her defenses.

  She waited like a rag doll in the chair, limp and slightly inebriated, while Hawk got them an upstairs room. Liz sat in stupefaction, too full of unnamed wants and desires herself to recognize the danger of such self-destructive action.

  And she wanted to know. Know. Other girls did it. With jerk-off boys whom they thought were God’s gift. They raved about it. What it was like to be in love. To be loved. To be made love to.

  “I knew he loved me,” one of the bolder girls at Woodside had moaned one afternoon in the girls’ bathroom. She was sucking on a cigarette. “It just felt sooo goood!”

  At the time, Liz had been highly skeptical that there was any hope she’d ever have an interest in sex herself, but that day, with the clock gently ticking and the slant of afternoon shadows touching the corners of the carpet, she determined she wanted to find out.

  The upstairs room was tucked beneath the eaves, a faux Tudor with pink-flowered wallpaper and mahogany-stained slats. A double bed, wedged under the window and between the gabled roofline, was the only piece of furniture besides a rather beat-up dresser sporting a lace doily and a bowl and pitcher, as if the room’s tenants might actually use these to wash up instead of the bathroom sink down the hall.

  Liz took it in in a glance. Her heart beat a strange tattoo and her palms were moist with sweat. She was in over her head, but her head was spinning slightly anyway, a nice easing to an overly frustrated teenage mind. Rocking on her feet, she waited for a rush of romantic magic to decide her: should she stay or should she go?

  Her “date” seemed to be having second thoughts, too. He stood to one side, brow furrowed, his gaze alternating between the bed and the window, where a distant glimmer of the green waters of Hummingbird River could be caught between the dense firs.

  Silence spread through the room like a fog, enveloping them both. She felt choked by it. Shooting a nervous glance his way, she was disarmed to see his eyes were closed, the slant of his mouth full of unnamed misery. As if programmed from something beyond, Liz crossed the room and touched her fingertip to the curve of his lips. He swallowed and pulled her near, his forehead pressed to hers for a shining moment before he buried his face in the hollow of her neck, holding her like a drowning man, crushing her to him like he never wanted to let go.

  It tore through her defenses like a hot knife through butter. Though she didn’t understand his pain, she felt its searing emotion as if it traveled through his skin to hers. Comfort. That’s what he needed. She wound her arms around his neck and kissed the side of his throat, smelling a tangy male scent that was like an aphrodisiac.

  His first kiss was at the curve of her jawline. Liz’s eyes fluttered closed. His second was at the corner of her mouth. His third crushed against her lips, full of tormented need. It was beautiful. Perfect. Too sweetly seductive to even think of resisting. Liz went limp, and Hawk’s body gently pressed her down against the quilted coverlet on the brass bed.

  Bedsprings protested, but it was music. A soft accompaniment to his ragged breaths and her trembling gasps. His body seemed huge as it joined her on the bed, and for a moment Liz felt true panic. But kisses rained upon her face, and the shuddering of his manly frame made her feel strong and womanly. She wanted to make love to him. Curiosity ran through her veins and desire awakened, hot and full of mystery. The heat of him was like a warm blanket. She wanted to wrap herself around him and shut out the world.

  No words were spoken. His mouth found hers again, and when her lips parted he thrust his tongue between them.

  She half-expected revulsion again. Her last experience with French kissing had been less than successful. But Hawk was not Rich, and after an initial exploration, he returned to soft, tender kisses accompanied by equally soft and tender touches, and Liz found herself dizzily waiting to feel his tongue’s sweet invasion once more.

  She didn’t wait long. Sensing her growing interest and desire, he tasted her lips with his tongue until they parted willingly, eagerly. Then his tongue slipped inside to dance gently with her own. He lay beside her, then upon her, still fully clothed, but there was no question of his own desire as she felt the hard pressure of his manhood pushed against her flesh.

  She’d never been quite this intimate. Rich’s rumblings in the car had seemed annoying and comical, but now she felt the hot beat of her own desire so intently that all she could think about was the rubbing of his thighs against hers, his chest crushing her breasts, his tongue melting with hers.

  “You’re so good,” he muttered, and she wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that because she felt bad to the extreme.

  Her clothes disappeared as if by some magical
spell. Later, she couldn’t honestly remember removing them or having them removed. She could, however, recall the soft jingle of his belt buckle, the gentle thud of it against the carpet as it slid off the bed, dragging his trousers with it. His own nudity intrigued her. Through desire-drugged, hooded eyes, she caught glimpses of his muscled back and hard buttocks. His tan line was blurred by the passing winter months but was still visible, and she delicately ran a finger across, stopping as he shivered when her touch reached the small of his back.

  “I’ve missed you,” he groaned, almost on a cry, and Liz briefly surfaced. Missed her? Her? He was thinking of someone else.

  Before she could protest—before she could move—he thrust himself inside her, not all the way but enough for Liz to feel some pain. Ripples of fear ran through her like a shock wave. Her hands gripped into fists. But his second thrust broke through the barrier of her virginity, and when she bucked backward and bit off a cry of pain, he went completely still.

  “Laura?” he whispered in agony.

  Liz’s head whirled. She felt herself slipping, slipping, slipping into an endless, spinning void of blackness. It could have been moments; it felt like an eternity. Maybe it was.

  But then she didn’t have time to dwell on her misery because he began thrusting inside her, pushing forward in a rhythm as old as time. Pain lessened and Liz’s body responded with a will of its own. She moved with him, riding the sensation, gasping her own pleasure and reveling in the pure joy of sexual love. It was wonderful. Fabulous. Better than anything she could imagine, and as Hawk climaxed with a sexy low moan, Liz teetered on the brink of her own intense pleasure, falling over the edge into a cataclysmic sensation that had her gasping and clutching him close.