by Sandra Brown
The kiss changed character. It was no longer gentle. His lips slanted over hers, opening them. He pressed home with his tongue and it sank into the recesses of her mouth. His hand settled on her waist, squeezed lightly, then inched up slowly, slowly, until it covered her breast.
Nothing in his life, nothing, had ever felt so good and right as having her breast, still immature but already full, beneath his hand. He plumped the tender mound, pressed soothing circular motions into it. He explored with enough finesse not to alarm her but with enough technique to coax all the sensuality in her into play. She moved against him, each movement inadvertently seductive and inviting.
When his fingers found her nipple, her back arched off the soft grass. The sensitized flesh beaded with passion. His fingers played with it gingerly until it hardened more. And what his fingertips were doing to her nipple, his tongue was doing to the tip of hers. Sounds he wasn’t even aware of issued out of his throat and his breath was hot and quick on her face and neck.
His hand went to the buttons of her blouse and he undid them swiftly. Caroline gasped softly and clutched at his hand and the wet fabric he was loosening. “Rink. No,” she whispered, meaning yes. She flung her head from side to side. Her teeth made tiny dents in her lower lip.
“Baby, baby,” he murmured. “I won’t hurt you. I just want to see you, touch you.”
His mouth fastened onto hers again with a sweet suction. He drew life and love from her as he parted the blouse and slid his hand inside to cover the soft globe of her breast. When he felt her flesh against his palm, he exploded with new fire, hotter and more rampant than any sexual stimulation he had known in his life.
And he knew then that no other woman in the world would ever complement him as this one did. He had found her, the woman who would make him complete.
He fondled her, pushing her breast high with his hand, rubbing the nipple with his thumb. He inched down her body dropping light, quick kisses on her throat and chest. Then he took one rosy pearl into his mouth and sucked gently. Caroline sobbed. She grabbed handfuls of his hair and held his head fast. His heart burst with love at the moans of pleasure his loving elicited from her.
Her knees were raised, instinct having placed them so with no conscious thought from Caroline. He laid a hand on her bare knee and caressed it. Her thighs were long, silky, as his hand smoothed its way up. The full cotton skirt she was wearing didn’t deter him. He didn’t stop his quest until he touched the elastic leg of her panties.
Her back arced still higher and she gripped his shoulders. “Rink, Rink.” Her cry carried both rapture and panic and he understood both.
“It’s all right, sweetheart. I’d never do anything to hurt you. I swear I won’t.”
His touch was feather light. The strokings continued on and on until there was no longer cloth between them. His fingers touched the soft hair, the soft flesh, her feminine mystery.
“Oh, my God,” he moaned, burying his lips in her neck. “You’re so sweet. Oh, God.”
His fingers strummed, parted, discovered. When she quickened beneath him, he knew he had found the source of the magic. Deftly he applied just the right pressure as he circled and stroked until her throat arched, her head went back, the petals of flesh closed around his fingers and her cries mingled with the rustling wind in the rain-drenched trees.
He studied her face, gloried in its sublime expression. He watched as her eyes blinked open, as she righted her world and gradually returned to reality from that realm where all is bliss.
With the reality came confusion. She shoved down the skirt bunched around her waist. “Rink?” she asked on a high note. “Rink, what happened to me? Hold me. I’m frightened.”
He lowered himself over her, sheltering her with his body. He held her close, hands on each side of her head. His lips nuzzled soft kisses over her face as he reassured her. “Don’t you know what happened to you, Caroline?” Emotion roughened his voice.
She searched his eyes, pondered his mouth, touched it, as though she marveled over the miracle he was and what he had brought about. “But you didn’t… I mean… you weren’t… inside me.”
Groaning, he pressed his forehead against hers. “No I wasn’t. But I wanted to be. I wanted to be deep inside you, filling you with myself, giving you everything that I am.” He kissed her, making love to her mouth with his tongue, pressing it deep inside her mouth. But the kiss was too evocative a reminder of what he couldn’t do and he raised himself off her.
She was weeping. Her tears mingled with what remained of the rain. He wiped them off her cheeks with his thumbs. “Don’t cry.” He got to his feet and pulled her up with him, holding her close. Still she cried. “Why are you crying, Caroline?” God, if he had broken his promise and hurt her in some way, he would never forgive himself. Would she despise him now, be frightened of him? “Please tell me why you’re crying.”
“You won’t be back. Not after today. After what I did… you’ll think I’m trashy.”
Relief flooded through him. “Oh, sweetheart,” he whispered fiercely and gathered her even closer to him. “I love you.”
Slowly she lifted her head to look at him. “You love me?”
“I love you,” he vowed, because he knew it to be true. If he didn’t love her, they would still be lying in the grass and he’d be doing what his loins ached to do. “I love you and would risk hell or high water to come back tomorrow.” He hugged her hard, kissing her breathless. Then, as he held her with fierce possession, he whispered directly into her ear, “We’re in a helluva mess, Caroline.” Pushing himself away from her, he searched her eyes. “You see that, don’t you?”
“Of course!” she cried softly. “I’ve always known that anything between you and me was hopeless.”
“Not hopeless. I’m going to do something about the situation. Tonight.”
“Tonight? What?”
“I’ll see to it that we can go on proper dates, be with other people and stop all this hiding.”
She gripped his upper arms. “No, Rink, don’t do anything. Let’s just keep on as we are for as long as we can.”
“I’ll die if we keep on as we are.”
“Why?”
“When we’re all alone like this, it’s too hard for me not to finish what we start.”
She was still and silent for a long moment, staring at the base of his throat as her fingers lightly trailed up and down the collar of his shirt. She wet her lips. “Rink, I wouldn’t mind if you… I’d let you if you wanted to… uh…”
A finger tilted her chin up. “No.” His voice was quiet but adamant. “I don’t like the back street flavor of all of this. There’s no way I’ll complicate matters, risk hurting you, by making love to you.” He lowered his face to within kissing distance of hers. He closed his eyes tightly and released a breath between clenched teeth. When he opened his eyes he said, “I want to. God, I want to. But I told you, didn’t I, that I would never do anything to hurt you?”
“Yes. And I believe you.”
“Then leave everything to me. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll get this straightened out and then we won’t have to meet in secret like this ever again.”
“Are you sure, Rink?” The worry was still stamped on her face and he knew the worry was for him, not herself.
“I’m sure. Tomorrow I’ll have good news. Tomorrow, baby. Here. In our place.” His hands folded around her face. “Oh, God, Caroline, kiss me again.” His lips seared hers, but it wasn’t a lengthy kiss. He didn’t trust himself to uphold his promise. He wanted to take her and damn the consequences.
“Tomorrow, tomorrow,” he repeated as he backed away, stretching his hand to reach her outstretched one until the tips of their fingers finally fell apart. He ran through the rainy woods to where his car was parked, anxious to get home….
“You fool,” Rink said to the fogged mirror as he stepped out of the shower. His image was blurred, which he thought appropriate to describe what he had been like since that d
ay twelve years ago. “Whatever made me so naive as to think that it would all go as I planned?” He threw the last of his drink down his throat with no regard for its mellow taste. He only regretted that the ice had diluted the bourbon’s punch.
Thinking of that night when he had gone into his father’s study asking for an interview still turned him inside out. Like a residual poison, hate and resentment crept through his body every time he remembered how stupidly confident he had been. What a sap. What an idiot. He had been a young David facing Goliath. Oh, he had had the courage. But he hadn’t had the slingshot and stones. And Roscoe had had a cannonball.
He had stridden into the study and announced, “Daddy, I’ve found the girl I’m going to marry.”
“You’re damn right you have,” Roscoe had growled, rolling his fat cigar from one corner of his lips to the other. “Frank George called me this evening. Marilee’s pregnant. Three or four months gone. According to him she’s bawling her eyes out because you haven’t been around to see her. Congratulations, son. You’re about to become a husband and father.”
Even now his father’s words made his gut feel as tight as a steel spring. That bastard. That hateful, manipulative, conniving bastard.
And Caroline, his Caroline of the river and the rain, was his father’s wife. Now it was he she listened to, talked with, gave solace and encouragement to. With Roscoe she shared that sweetest of mouths, those breasts, those thighs.
Rink dug into his eye sockets with the heels of his hands as image after image of them together flickered like an obscene slide show across his mind. Thinking about it was almost more than he could bear.
Everything inside him hurt. And there wasn’t one damn thing he could do for the pain.
“Thank you, Steve.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Rink said that toaster was done for and Haney should just buy a new one. But she said there was no use getting a new one when this one could be fixed. Rink was going to fix it but he’s been busy at the gin. I said for him not to worry about it. I’d ask you to. You didn’t mind, did you?”
“Of course not. I’m glad I could get it working again.” He busied himself with straightening up the worktable in the garage where small tools were kept.
“Are you mad at me, Steve?”
He stopped what he was doing and looked down at Laura Jane. She was wearing a halter sundress and her skin looked as soft and creamy as a magnolia blossom. Desire hit him like a sledgehammer. He turned away brusquely. “Why would I be mad at you?”
She drew in a shaky breath and perched on the top level of a stepladder. Restlessly her fingers fiddled with the tie belt at her waist. Her head was bent so low her chin almost touched her chest. “Because I kissed you the other day,” she said softly. “Ever since then, you’ve been mad at me.”
“I said I wasn’t mad.”
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
He did then. Her shouted, angry demand brought his shaggy head around and he stared at her in speechless awe. He had never known her to lose her temper or raise her voice for any reason. There was little of the child in the face that was defiantly staring back at him. Her expression was that of a woman scorned.
He swallowed with difficulty. “I look at you.”
“Your eyes slide over me. They never stop to look anymore. Why, Steve?” she asked, getting off the ladder and approaching him. “Why? Don’t you like the way I look?”
His eyes gorged on her, taking in everything from the crown of her soft, heavy brown hair to her slender sandalclad feet. When his eyes lifted to hers once again he said huskily, “Yes, Laura Jane, I like the way you look very much.”
She smiled, but it faded rapidly. “Is it the way I kissed you? Didn’t I do it right?”
He slid his hands up and down the outsides of his thighs, drying his damp palms on his jeans. “You did it just fine.”
She drew her face into a worried frown. “I don’t think I did. The women on television kiss the men for a long time. They move their heads from side to side. I think they open their mouths when they do it.”
His whole body groaned. “Laura Jane,” he said on a hoarse whisper, “you shouldn’t talk about this to a man.”
“You’re not ‘a man.’ You’re Steve.”
“Well, you shouldn’t talk about kissing to me, either.”
She was genuinely puzzled. “Why?”
“Because there are some things that a man and woman who aren’t… aren’t… married shouldn’t discuss.”
“It’s all right to do them, just don’t talk about them?” she asked quizzically.
He snorted a laugh in spite of the seriousness of the situation. Laura Jane was making more sense than he was. “Something like that.”
She glided toward him and laid her hands on his chest. Her head fell back as she looked up at him. “Then let’s not talk about them. Let’s just do them.” Her voice was as light as the breath that landed on his throat.
His hands covered hers. “It’s not proper for us to do them, either.”
“But why, Steve?”
Anguish tore at his vitals. It took every ounce of discipline he had to pull her hands from him and gently set her aside. “Because it isn’t.” He went back to the table and picked up the bridle he had been working on when she’d called him from the tack room.
Disconsolately she watched him leave the garage and cross the yard. Taking up the toaster, which had only been an excuse to see him, she headed back toward the house. When she saw Caroline’s car turn into the driveway, she paused to wait for her.
“Hello, Laura Jane. What are you doing with that out in the yard?” Caroline asked, gesturing toward the toaster as she alighted.
“Steve fixed it for Haney. I was on my way back to the house.”
Something in the girl’s tone caught Caroline’s attention. “How is Steve? I haven’t seen him in several days.”
Laura Jane’s slight shoulders lifted in a shrug. “He’s okay, I guess. He acts funny sometimes.”
“Funny?”
“Yes. Like he doesn’t want to be my friend anymore.”
“I doubt that.”
“It’s true. Ever since I kissed him.”
Caroline stopped in her tracks. “You kissed him?” She glanced around worriedly, hoping that no one else had heard and offering up a small prayer of thanksgiving that Rink wasn’t around.
“Yes.” Laura Jane’s eyes were guileless and calm as she stared into Caroline’s dismayed face. “I love him.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Yes. Was that bad?”
“Not bad, exactly.” Caroline knew that she must choose her words carefully. This was Laura Jane’s first and probably only romance. How did one caution and yet keep from intimidating? “Maybe you were too hasty. You probably took Steve by surprise. He might have wanted to kiss you first.”
“I don’t think he would have and I couldn’t wait.”
Caroline smiled. “Given enough time, I think he would have gotten around to it.”
“Do you think Rink will get around to it?”
“Get around to what?”
“Kissing you. He wants to.”
For the second time within the same sixty seconds, Caroline was dumbfounded. “Laura Jane, you mustn’t say such a thing! He wants nothing of the sort.”
“Then why does he stare at you?”
Her mouth went dry. “Does he?”
“All the time when you’re not looking. And he works so hard at the gin for you.”
“Not for me. For everybody, for the workers and the planters who use it, and for your father.”
“But you’re the one who asked him to. I didn’t think he was going to at first, did you?”
Caroline thought back to that night after he had repaired the gin stand. She had tried all afternoon to establish a new rapport with him and thought that she had succeeded. But after they’d returned home, when he’d come down to dinner after his shower,
he’d been more hostile than ever. She’d refused to acknowledge it. What little ground she had gained, she wasn’t about to surrender.
During the evening meal and later in the living room with Haney and Laura Jane, she had killed him with kindness until he no longer scowled each time he looked at her. Finally she’d garnered enough courage to ask him to check out several more things that she’d thought warranted attention at the gin. He had grudgingly consented. For the past three days he had worked as hard as any of the salaried laborers.
“I’m grateful that he’s here to help out while your father’s sick. He’s working hard.”
“So are you. You look tired, Caroline.”
She was tired. Very tired. She was still walking a tightrope with Rink, hoping to keep the channels of communication open between them without hinting at intimacy. And Roscoe. His verbal abuse became more vitriolic every time she visited him, which was at least once a day, twice if she could stand it. She didn’t tell him about the work Rink was doing at the gin because she knew he wouldn’t approve. Nothing else she did suited him. He criticized her on everything from the way she was dressed to the way she took his doctor’s orders as law engraved in stone.
“I am tired,” she admitted to Laura Jane. “About Steve,” she said, returning to the original subject, “maybe he’s just in a bad mood. Don’t crowd him. Generally men don’t like that. I think the next time you kiss, if you do, it should be his idea, not yours.”
“I guess,” she mumbled, her head hanging low.
Caroline thought she knew the reason behind Steve’s sudden coolness. Apparently he was in love with Laura Jane but didn’t want to do anything to encourage her at the risk of incurring Rink’s wrath. Her sympathies were with all of them. “Let’s go get some supper,” she said kindly, taking the younger woman’s hand.
“Where’s Rink?”
“I don’t know. He said he’d be along—”
She was cut off by the loud honking of a horn, and when she and Laura Jane turned around they saw Rink pulling a shiny new pickup truck to a stop behind the Lincoln. He bounded out of the cab.
“Well, what do you think?”