Behaving Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

  Jack stared down at her, not even understanding at first. That was something his dream Audra would say. “What?”

  “Kiss me until I'm drunk with it. Don't stop. I don't want you to stop, Jack. I love you.” .

  He continued to stare down at her love-hungry face, and his responding emotions, unparalleled to anything he'd ever felt before, nearly drowned him.

  She loved him. She wanted him to go on kissing her . .. not to stop. Did she even know what "don't stop" meant? Probably not. She loved him. Kissing her until they both felt drunk would be good, too, though. She loved him?

  “Please,” she whispered, and he lost any chance at self-control right then.

  “Oh, darlin',” he said softly. Then they were kissing too thoroughly to waste more words.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  A teacher's skirts may be no shorter than two inches above the ankle.

  —Rules for Teachers

  For the longest time—an infinity beyond time—they only kissed. Only? For once, they'd escaped not only prying eyes but curfews. Until dawn, the night was theirs, and the impassioned ease with which they explored every joyful facet of kissing took full advantage.

  Audra and Jack tried kissing with their heads at different angles, or not angling their heads at all , which made them bump noses, laugh, then kiss some more. Her arms draped behind Jack's

  shoulders and neck, Jack's bracing her back; they needed nothing but each other. They kissed with lips closed—chaste little kisses. They kissed with their mouths open, tongues teasing, exploring, thrusting ... but in that, some intensity that her body understood better than she did made Audra dizzy. Lips damp, she turned her face into Jack's sweat-salty neck.

  “I can't breathe,” she whispered, and felt his Adam's apple bob against her cheek.

  “You want to stop?” His words rasped out of his throat, horrified and dutiful at once, and oh, she did love him, and she laughed.

  “No. Oh, no!” And she meant it. “I just . . . perhaps we should sit down?”

  “Here.” Jack set her carefully against a support post, then glanced quickly around the stable, found and claimed the carriage robe, and spread it over some hay in the far corner. He also stripped out of his coat, down to his shirtsleeves, for which she was glad. He always wore such fine shirts.

  “There, now.” And, collecting her with a hand on each shoulder, he eased her onto the impromptu chaise, settling himself on one hip beside her, facing her. They weren't quite sitting, but they weren't quite lying down either. At least she knew that, should the world start swooping around her again, she need not spare any attention from the kissing to worry whether she would fall.

  “Will that do?” Jack asked, low and quiet, and she loved hearing his whisper. It made her feel intimate, special. So did the way he slid his hand around her waist and pulled her closer to him, the way he leaned his forehead against hers instead of immediately starting to kiss her again. "For a gal who doesn't wear a corset,“ he teased, ”you surely do your share of swooning."

  “I do not swoo—” Then the more shocking part of his statement struck her, and she blushed. “Jack Harwood! How would you know what I do or do not wear under my clothes!”

  His smile started in his eyes, lifted his cheeks, slowly widened his mouth—and he slid a slow, bold hand up her spine, obviously feeling her back through the calico of her dress and the linen of her shift. “My darlin',” he drawled, low, as she arched into the sensation of it, “a fellow wouldn't need a gambler's hands to tel you don't wear a corset.”

  Oh! She wondered if she should explain—her mother didn't approve of corsets—but as soon as Jack kissed her again, she let such thoughts drift away to somewhere, anywhere else.

  Kissing in the hay was even better than kissing standing up. It wasn't long before Jack had slung a leg across hers, his thigh hard and heavy, and was slowly levering himself over her like a human blanket, plundering her mouth in ways she could never have imagined she'd not only enjoy but...

  oh, enjoy so much.

  Over their shivering, tremulous breaths she heard tiny moans and whimpers that had to be their own. Jack seemed to enjoy her whimpers as much as she liked his moans. He began to move on top of her, gently pushing against her with the hardness she thought she recognized in his pants—

  she'd glimpsed animals enough to understand the basics of mating, though it surprised and intrigued her that humans might be so similarly . . . endowed. She wasn't sure Jack even knew he was doing it; he never did stop kissing her, chewing gently on her lower lip, changing the slant of his mouth on hers again. But she liked it very much.

  She spread her legs to give him a little more room, and his weight atop her there felt— oh! —even better. She wished she were not wearing so many petticoats.

  Jack paused, panting hot air across her cheek and ear. “Kissing,” he muttered, voice rough. “We're kissing.”

  She nodded happily, and he arched back far enough to grin pure delight down at her.

  “I'm pleased you like it,” he whispered, and she nodded again, so he ducked back in and began to kiss her ear. And that... oh, my! Between the heat of his breath and the humidity of his tongue and the graze and press of his lips, much less the gentle scratch of his whiskery cheek against hers . . .

  She never knew an ear could be anywhere near so sensitive! When he kissed down the side of her throat, it felt even more... whatever wonderous thing it felt like. She writhed blissfully under the weight and whisper of him, wondering occasionally about the hardness in his pants and inhaling his musky scent and sometimes, when a bit of his chin or neck got close enough to her own mouth, tasting him. She explored his strong, taut back under his lovely linen shirt. She felt his ribs and his spine and the way his muscles softened and dipped where his arms branched off, and it felt wonderful, but she wanted . . . something. She wanted even more.

  When Jack's lips traced the collar of her dress, she whimpered in frustration. Why did he have to stop there?

  He rested his cheek on her shoulder, only his knee and one elbow keeping his full weight off her, and his exhale shuddered, tremulous, across her clothed collarbone. "Darlin', would it be too ...

  forward of me if I were to undo just a button or so ..."

  She nodded, then thought perhaps that meant she did think it too forward and so shook her head, then feared he'd think she meant for him not to, so then she just said, “Please?”

  He kissed her again, deep and intimate, and by the time he'd finished kissing her he'd somehow, one-handedly, unbuttoned her bodice to the waist. Perhaps she should have protested, but it seemed she'd spent all their time together on protests and shoulds. Not tonight. It felt too good, the cool night air against her throat, the way he looked at her camisole as if he'd never seen anything so pretty, to consider stopping.

  She loved him, after all. She loved all of him. And she loved this.

  Then Jack went back to kissing—kissing, and touching. While he explored the edge of her camisole with his mouth, dampening the lace trim and scalding her bare skin with his breath, his free hand crept into her open bodice, slid adoringly over her ribs, then continued to glide upward and forward until, before she knew it, he had a gentle handful of her—of her—

  And oh, it felt wonderful! He stopped kissing long enough to whisper, “Is that all right, darlin'? You can slap me again if it isn't.”

  She couldn't seem to form any words past the delirium of his touch, the way that part of her body thrust itself up, hard and eager, to fill his hand. She managed only a sort of negative grunt, and he breathed something that sounded like a prayer and proceeded, first with his fingers and then— oh, heavens—his lips, to stoke the fire he'd lit in her. He kissed one breast dampening it through the linen of her camisole, making it so hot and then, when he drew away, so rigidly cold. Meanwhile, his hand made love to the other, occasionally skimming her ribs with his fingertips, and he stroked her leg with the inside of his knee.

  Yes.


  At first she'd felt languid, boneless beneath his lovemaking, but at some point the urges deep inside her began to build a wanton energy. That energy helped her run her hands farther down his back until finally, boldly, she passed his belt and felt the hard perfection of his flank.

  He grunted and pushed his lower body harder against her, which she liked. She explored the dip where his thighs began, equally hard and heavy, then slid her hands back up across his flank to his strong, smooth back.

  Jack had stopped making love to her breasts—in fact, he had gone very, very still.

  “Would you . . . ?” Audra asked, and blushed. She felt like someone else, lying in the hay with him, letting him touch her in such salacious, wonderful ways—but she liked being that someone else, almost as much as she loved him.

  Jack stared, wide-eyed, and waited.

  “Would you mind ... taking your shirt off?” she whispered. “I don't know if I can manage the buttons—”

  Just like that he reared up over her, yanked the linen from his waistline, pulled the shirt over his head, and tore it off his arms. Goodness, but men had hairy chests! Attractive, though ...

  A cuff link bounced off Audra's shoulder. Then Jack covered her again and he felt warmer, smelled more sensual than before. She rediscovered the planes and ridges of his back, the catch of her palms on his bare skin as arousing as anything she'd ever felt. Through the dampness of her camisole her breasts could feel the scratch of chest hair, the nub of a hard nipple.

  They kissed some more, lost in the natural ecstasy of it, for a long, long time. Then Jack asked,

  “How about you, darlin? Would you mind ... your bodice ... ?”

  She would not think, only feel, so she nodded and he helped her wrestle her arms out of their calico prison. Then she wrapped her arms around him, bare skin against bare skin. It felt so right, completely proper. It was Jack.

  Somehow, in the course of their kisses, his hands took an interest in her legs. He slid his palms appreciatively up her calves, under her knee—that tickled—and to the top of her stockings where garters held them to her thighs. Neither garters nor stockings lasted long; the hose soon dangled uselessly from her ankles, held by high-buttoned shoes that neither she nor Jack had the patience to tackle. Her feet hardly mattered, considering the sensations he wrung out of her just from the rub of his fingers up her legs. Her deep-down secret places controlled her now, had her praying that he wouldn't stop exploring at her thighs. He slid a hand over the edge of her frilly drawers, over her hip, and then finally, a mil ion kisses later, between her legs.

  Her underwear felt wet there, but he didn't seem to mind, and then his fingers did something that sent a jolt of pleasure streaking through her, and she cried out.

  She also, with unsuspected instinct, gripped tight to his flank again and tried to pull him more firmly against her most sensitive parts. Jack groaned—a horrible, deep, anguished groan— and stopped kissing her.

  She wriggled under him, increasingly fascinated by that hard, hot length in his pants. When he still didn't kiss her, she decided to see for herself, and laid her hand tentatively against that hardness, but snatched her hand away when he convulsed against her.

  “Oh, Audra,” he all but sobbed. “This is more than just kissing.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She kissed his chest, adored the dark hair there, traced his nipple with a tongue the way he'd done hers.

  “I don't know if I can stop,” he said with a gasp.

  “Don't stop.”

  “You don't even know what I want to do to you.”

  Since he insisted on talking, she stopped kissing his chest long enough to look up at him. "Then teach me. Just don't make a baby."

  He hid his tortured face in her shoulder. "I can't promise that, honey. Maybe some other time, if I'd come prepared, but not tonight."

  Something tugged at her memory, an embarrassing conversation her mother had insisted they have when Audra's first womanly time had come upon her, about when babies were most and

  least likely. Now Audra wished she'd listened more closely.

  “It hurts,” she confessed, wriggling under him again to ease the throbbing he'd kindled deep inside her. “Not in a bad way, exactly, but... Make it stop hurting, Jack.”

  He pushed himself up on an elbow so that he could see her fully, and even half-naked, he looked more serious than Jack Harwood ever had. “Marry me,” he begged, his voice intense.

  Yes yes yes yes yes yes ... the word thrummed with every heartbeat. He wanted her—wanted to marry her! And . . . she mustn't. Tonight, he could have. She might even risk her tomorrows. But to promise them to him, after everything she knew ... Even if it did not destroy her, she could not risk destroying him.

  She licked her lips. “Only in the basest sense of the word,” she invited.

  Jack felt so hard and tight—damned right it hurt—that he nearly embarrassed himself right there.

  Audra lay beneath him, disheveled and downright risqué on a carriage robe in the hay, and asked him to finish the exquisite job he'd started, without even the promise of wedlock?

  Yes!

  But beyond the screaming approval of his body, his mind— and heart—somehow kept him from falling on her right there. He'd never known either his mind or heart had that kind of power. Audra looked too tempting for mere morality to hold him back. She lay there with her arms bare, her slip of a camisole clinging and transparent since he'd finished with it, her dress crumpled both down and up to her waist, and her legs bare right up to the drawers. She was gorgeous. Her tender, pale skin was gorgeous, and the peach-fuzz hair picking up glints of lamplight off her legs was gorgeous, and her gently rounded breasts were works of art, and even the dark thatch of reddish hair in the shadows of her armpits aroused him. She was, after all , Audra. And he loved her.

  That, he understood—and so he rolled off of her then and there. Only his love for her had power enough to hold him back after coming so far ... but he wouldn't place any high bets on how long that would last.

  “You won't marry me,” he repeated. Somehow that set up an ache in him even more painful than the throbbing arousal pressing against his pants buttons.

  “Not now,” she admitted, turning onto her side, running a treacherous hand up his chest. “I was thinking . . . But do we have to talk it out now?” She'd slid a leg over him, too, to match the arm, and before he knew it instinct had her straddling him, her eyes drifting blissfully closed. "I don't want to talk now," she admitted, still studying his chest, her voice husky.

  Could she be more perfect?

  Only if she married him. Even if she wouldn't, that didn't stop him from reaching up to the fine breasts that hung gently toward him. That didn't keep his thighs from tensing under her, readying to thrust upward at her wet, ready heat. He drew her down, hard, onto him, her linen-covered breasts against his chest, and he kissed her more roughly than before ... but somehow, against her willing opening to him, it didn't seem rough at all , just passionate.

  Al he had to do was yank off her lacy drawers, open enough of his straining pants buttons to release himself at last, and they could do this ... but as powerful as that urge was, another equal force forbade it. Not Audra. You'll ruin the very thing you adore about her.

  Ferris Hamilton's words echoed in his lust-fogged mind— She wouldn't stay respectable for much longer than it would take you to hike her skirts—and he refused to make the man right.

  “Oh, darlin'.” He moaned, shamed by the frustration that burned his eyes. “I'm not willing to gamble with you. You're the one thing I'm not willing to risk ...”

  She kissed him then, as deeply and intimately as he'd taught her to, and whispered, “I love you,”

  again, right against his ear. Then she whispered, "Isn't there some way to make the hurt stop without . . . without taking my . . . without making a baby?"

  And she didn't have to ask twice—which was lucky, as deeply as she'd blushed at her own

  boldness in asking t
he first time.

  “No more clothes come off,” he said in a growl, clinging to his last moments of sanity. “If anything else comes off, darling', neither you nor I will be able to stop me.”

  She nodded eagerly—his good-time girl, who would ever have guessed?—and he set about

  making love to her on top of her clothing. He rolled her onto her back, suckled at the cloth on her perfect little breasts while his fingers explored up under her pantalets, up against the wet, hot, furry core of her. It was all he could do not to slip them inside, but he couldn't risk it. She enjoyed it as much as he did, writhing and whimpering beneath him, but soon she was all but sobbing in his arms and he knew it would take more than that. He took the gamble of easing her knees wider and kissing them, kissing up the inside of her velvet thigh, tracing his tongue under the lace on her pretty, virginal drawers. Then he proceeded to kiss up those—Audra's readiness for him drew him, filled his nostrils—and, lapping up to the place where her own juices revealed near-transparent glimpses of more reddish curls, he began to suckle at her there.

  He'd never done anything so blissfully erotic in his life. She clutched at his head, her cries getting faster, higher, then erupting into a scream that made one of the horses snort in surprise. Jack drank even more of her delicious sexuality while her body convulsed beneath him. Her knees caught hard at his shoulders, and she rode him through her shuddering release.

  Then, even once her hips stopped swiveling against him, she was crying again, so he had to crawl back up to lie beside her, terrified that she regretted it now, that she blamed him for making her do something so completely improper.

  She looked at him through tear-glazed eyes and asked, “Is it always that wonderful?”

  “Never,” he assured her. “Just with you.” And he kissed her, and he almost wanted to let it end at that—with her—but his body insisted otherwise. She had said she loved him. So, as they kissed, he risked drawing her hand against the front of his trousers again. That felt fine, just fine, but not exactly . . . progressive ... and so then he drew her palm gently up, then down. She picked up on that quickly enough so that he could leave her to her own devices and turn his hands and mouth back to more tempting targets than himself.