by Jane Gentry
“My God, it’s hot in here,” she gasped.
“That’s because you’re wearing full-plate armor.” He sat her up and put his hands to the hem of the heavy sweater. “Raise your arms.”
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” she said. “I don’t want to start something we can’t finish.”
“We’ll finish it,” he said. His touch and voice were tender, but under the tenderness was energy held rigidly in control. “Hold your arms up, Elizabeth.”
She held up her arms.
Steve threw the sweater aside and leaned his back against one of the sturdy old chairs.
“Come here, baby,” he said, shifting her to face him. “Want to ride astride again? I liked the results the last time we tried it.”
“I rather liked them, myself,” she said.
She slung a long leg across him and slid into position. Her jeans were too tight; she felt tender and swollen. Her breasts seemed to grow and throb, needing the touch of his hand and tongue to ease them. The pressure of his body against hers made her want to grind herself into him to give her release. Every nerve in her body shouted hurry! hurry! and she fumbled with the buttons on her shirt, trying to unfasten them.
He curved her hands in his and kissed each fist as he leaned forward so that she could wrap her legs around him. Then he pressed her palms low on his belly and attended to her buttons himself. He worked quickly, but each small button seemed to Elizabeth to take an eternity to escape its fetter, and she occupied herself while she was waiting by working at the buckle of his belt.
At last the shirt fell open, and she shrugged it away. Her bra was a mere wisp of satin and lace, soon discarded. He reached for her eagerly, but before he could put his hand to her soft curves, she smiled impishly and said, “Hold up your arms.”
Goodbye to his rugby shirt; goodbye to the T-shirt underneath. She ran the flat of her palms slowly over his chest and polished gently at his nipples. They sprang immediately erect; he could feel the tight pull of them in his groin.
The fire inside him burned fast and hot; her teasing hands made it leap completely through him, in his chest, his throat, his mouth. He massaged her breasts, cupped them tightly together, kissed them slowly, covering them thoroughly with his open mouth, teasing at each pink areola.
“Steve!” she said urgently, wanting more.
He ran his tongue down the cleft he had created and sucked lightly at each nipple.
I’m crazed, Elizabeth thought. She wanted him to touch every inch of her, wanted to touch him, all over, everywhere, wanted his kisses, wanted to be loved by his body, and she wanted it all, immediately, impossibly, at one time.
“Lie down,” she said.
“That’s supposed to be my line,” he said, but he turned away from the chair and lay back on the floor.
She slid down until she was lying on top of him, and let her mouth search his chest. His nipples were as erect as hers, and as she teased them between her lips, she could feel his heart thundering under the thick muscle of his chest. He rose inside his jeans, splendidly hard and strong, and he put his arms around her and rolled her onto her side.
With one hand he held her head, and he kissed her deeply as his other hand slipped open the buttons on her jeans. His teasing fingers smoothed across the lace of her panties, traced the pattern of the woven flowers, followed the curve of the seams, slipped under the elastic—
And let it pop against her leg and grinned.
She opened her eyes and scowled at him, then grabbed a fistful of the hair on his chest and pulled sharply.
“Ow!” he said, prying her fingers loose.
“Try that again,” she told him, “and you’ll be bald as a baby from the neck down.”
“I’ll try something else instead,” he said. He stood and brought her with him. “It’s been a long time since I did this, but I just remembered we have to take our pants off.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Elizabeth. “I knew there was something else.” She unfastened his jeans and the snap on his shorts and pushed them down.
Then she rubbed her hands around his hard, flat bottom, loving the feel of it, before she moved her touch and her attention to the more entertaining anatomy of his front.
Steve kicked his clothes away and knelt in front of her. He removed her jeans efficiently. Too efficiently, she thought, disappointed: she liked to be undressed slowly, wanted his hands moving across her so thoroughly that he missed nothing in his exploration of her body.
Then inch by inch, he satisfied that desire. He rubbed his hands over every square millimeter of her silk panties, dipping his fingers under the waistband, under the elastic at her thighs, slowly, slowly drawing a line between her legs. And slowly, slowly, he pulled the whispering silk across her heated skin. His hot mouth followed the unhurried descent of his hands. At last, at long, long last, he pulled her down beside him on the thick carpet in front of the fire.
And turned away from her.
She gasped when his hands left her body. He turned back to her in less than two seconds. He kissed her tenderly, then showed her a condom, which he held lightly between the forefinger and middle finger of his right hand.
“Ah,” she said, understanding. “Do you always carry those?”
“Only since the day I met you,” said Steve. “I found a good discount, and I’ve bought a lifetime supply.”
He flicked the foil packet lightly across one distended nipple and she shuddered from the lightning flash that went through her.
“A lifetime supply?”
“Yeah. Enough for thirty years, with nine months subtractions here and there for additions to the family.” He grinned. “I figure after thirty years, we can resume skin to skin contact for the thirty years after that.”
“Sixty years?” Picturing them at ninety, doddering joyfully to bed, hoary-haired and wrinkled.
“Assuming I can bring you to your senses and convince you that marrying me won’t cause irreparable emotional damage to those two brats we’ve spawned.”
“Don’t you think sixty years is a bit optimistic?” she said. “Not that I’d mind, you understand, but what makes you think you can hold up that long?”
He bent to kiss the breast he’d been teasing.
“My great-grandfather, God bless his soul, fathered a set of twins at the age of ninety-two.” He kissed her belly and toyed at her with his tongue.
“Gimme a break.” She was so liquid, she thought she’d melt there on the floor and miss the delight that was to come. Hurry, hurry, hurry! she urged him silently.
She tugged at him, and he resisted. Didn’t he want to make love? Why didn’t he hurry?
He circled her breasts with one lazy finger, spiraling a figure eight around them. “No lie. Both those babies looked just like him.”
“Bald?” she said, grabbing at his hand to force him into action. “And no teeth?”
“Right,” he said, smiling, and kissing as he smiled. “He had to marry the lady in question and support her for the rest of his life.”
“And how long was that?” she asked. “Did it take as long as you’re taking?”
The indolent spiral continued, farther and farther up the mound of her breasts, climbing inexorably but too slowly toward her tender nipples. She knew the electric pull that would occur when he touched their pink tips, the intensified desire which would lace through her. Why didn’t he hurry?
“My, you’re impatient,” he said. “Two years. I won’t be that long.”
“You’re sure about that?” she asked. Her heart was in her throat. She couldn’t breathe without panting. “Doesn’t seem like you’re moving very fast to me.”
“Not long. I promise.” He handed her the packet.
“I take it you want assistance.” She felt fumbling and uncoordinated; she didn’t see how she could manage it.
“No, I want you to do the whole thing.” He stretched out full-length on the carpet, all rampant male, before her. “I find it incredibly sexy.
”
She knelt beside him. Her hands trembled from the tension of her need, but there was nothing uncertain about her touch. When she was through, he beckoned.
“Come here to me,” he said, and opened his arms. His lazy hands covered her again, sweeping, caressing, probing, teasing, before he slipped his fingers between her willing thighs and rubbed gently at the little hooded peak he found so surely. It grew and throbbed and she pushed against his gentle hand, wanting, needing, craving the release which only he could give her.
He gathered her under him. His every move was exquisite. He filled her, swelled inside her, excited every nerve, inside her and out, until the very air around her body crackled like a wildfire.
The phone rang, rang and rang. Elizabeth moved restlessly, disturbed but not distracted. The ringing stopped for a few seconds and then began again.
“Forget that,” said Steve, into her ear. “Concentrate on me.”
She clung to him beyond speech, except for a gasping “Oh! Oh! Oh! Steve!” She held him fiercely to her, arching to meet him, the miracle inside her rising, rising, rising until it peaked and exploded and rushed beautifully through her belly and buttocks and thighs.
For a few seconds she lay spent and tingling, and then Steve kissed her deeply and moved inside her again.
“My turn now,” he said, his voice low and harsh.
He thrust hard and fast, his breath ragged, his heart pounding, until his unabated vigor exploded, and since she was still tender, still sensitive, the fine rushing came over her again.
They lay still for a minute, smiling at each other, their satisfaction complete.
“I don’t care what happens,” said Elizabeth. “I’m glad we did it.”
“I love you, did you know that?”
She linked her hands behind his neck. She was never, she decided, going to let him go.
“Yes,” she said. “I love you, too.” Her voice faltered. That was indeed a tentative, uncertain declaration. But she was worried about Cara and worried about the future. She cleared her throat and said it again. “I love you, too.”
He appeared not to notice how her voice had hesitated.
She reached across him and pulled an afghan off the chair to cover them. “It’s cold in here. Snuggle me up.”
“How could you be cold, my heart?” he asked. He was still burning up. But he spread the afghan across them and tucked it firmly behind her. “How about a postcoital kiss or two?”
“Or three or four or fifty?” She would never get enough of his fabulous, tantalizing, absolutely stupendous kisses, but she could try. She could try every single day for years and years.
He looked at her lips, warm and red and luscious.
“One,” he said, kissing her. “Two. Three. Four.”
“Are you going to count them all?”
“Five,” he said.
“These,” she told him, “are not adequate kisses. Quit counting. I think it distracts you.”
“Six,” he said. A slow, thorough kiss, sensual and delicious. “Was that adequate?”
“Yes,” she said, suddenly hungry again. “I want another one just like it.”
She got what she wanted, and then some.
“I hate to sound depraved,” she said, gasping a little. “But what’s your refraction time?”
“Fifty kisses,” he told her, running a hard hand from her hip to her breast. “We’d better keep working on it.”
He took her soft breast in his hand and began to massage it. He’d be ready for her, long before fifty kisses had passed. And he’d be sure that she was ready, too. Years of this, he thought, and a surge of joy made his heart dance.
“So far,” Elizabeth murmured, “you’re only up to twelve. I want another kiss.” Her hands behind his neck pulled his head to hers again. The kisses, she decided, got better as they went.
“Only one?”
“More than one.”
“How many more?”
“Fifty.”
He was well into the next one when his cellular phone blatted.
He raised his head and looked annoyed.
“Melody’s the only one who knows that number,” he said. “I can’t imagine why she’s using it. I told her I was going to be here, and she knows your telephone number.”
“Maybe she was on the other end of the ringing phone,” said Elizabeth. “Something must be really wrong. You’d better check.”
“I guess so—she ought to be in seventh heaven. Geordie met her at the door.” He got to his feet and grappled for the small phone in his jeans pocket. He frowned at the number displayed on its pager function; it wasn’t one he recognized.
Elizabeth’s phone rang again before he could dial, and he answered. “It’s Cara,” he said. “She’s upset.”
Elizabeth rose and wrapped the afghan around her.
“Cara?” she said, into the receiver.
Sobbing and incoherent, hysterical babbling coursed into her ear.
“Cara!” she said again, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
More sobbing. After a minute’s coaxing, Cara produced a few words of somewhat lucid speech.
“Come get me,” Cara gulped. “Right now!”
“But, darling, why?” Elizabeth asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t tell you over the phone!” Cara wailed. “Just come get me right now!” And she hung up.
“What’s going on?” asked Steve.
“I don’t have any idea,” said Elizabeth, rushing to dress. “But I have to go after Cara this minute.”
The phone rang again. Elizabeth was certain it was Cara with some kind of explanation, but before she could get to the phone, Steve said, “Melody, does this have anything to do with Cara?” A pause. “All right, honey, all right. Calm down. I’ll be right there.” He turned and Elizabeth tossed his clothes to him.
“Shall we go in one car?” he asked, jamming one leg after the other into his jeans.
Elizabeth stopped buttoning her shirt long enough to gape at him. “You must be crazy. Of course not.”
“Just a thought,” he said.
“Oh, do try to be sensible!” she said as a parting shot. She grabbed her keys and purse and bolted out of the house.
Steve locked the door after her.
“Tempest in a teapot,” he thought irritably.
* * *
Elizabeth drove too fast, ran yellow lights and slid around stop signs without coming to a halt. She couldn’t imagine what Cara and Melody had done. Terrible scenarios coursed through her mind; mutual verbal assault? Slapping? Down and dirty wrestling? A melee involving all the company of the dance? Nothing she could imagine was believable, but Cara and Melody had produced the unbelievable for several months now. She should be prepared for the worst.
She pulled up to the Harkness gym in record time. Outside the door were two knots of students, each harboring, presumably, either Cara or Melody. Elizabeth couldn’t see either girl, but Miss Westcott was in plain view, looking nettled.
Steve drove up behind her and parked. Miss Westcott pulled a whistle out of her dress pocket and blew into it with all the vigor of a semester’s frustration behind her breath. It was deafening. The children whirled, alarmed.
“Your parents are here,” she said.
The crowds parted. Melody and Cara appeared simultaneously, shot a hostile look at each other and burst into tears.
They were dressed exactly the same.
Their identical dresses shimmered as they rushed from the porch. Their identical slippers flashed as they ran, and the identical bows in their hair and the identical tears on their faces reflected the school security lights as they fled.
They both were wild with rage and humiliation.
“This is the wrong time to laugh,” said Elizabeth, chuckling in spite of herself. She could see Steve in the side mirror, trying to keep a sober face, as she leaned across the seat and opened the door. Cara spilled inside and tried to conceal herself from the gathered
crowd.
“I hate Melody Riker!” she sobbed, as they drove away. “I really, really hate her.”
Definitely the wrong time to laugh.
* * *
Cara shed the dress before she was out of the foyer, cast it to the floor and flew up the stairs in her underwear, weeping. Elizabeth hung the dress from the knob atop the newel post and followed.
Cara lay across the bed, crying into her pillow. Elizabeth was quite at a loss for words. She couldn’t think of one thing to say that wouldn’t increase the flow of gallons per minute all the way to the U.S.-Hydrologic-Survey-estimated flood level. So she sat on the bed and rubbed Cara’s back.
Finally Cara said, in a voice full of fury, “Melody did this on purpose to make me look stupid.”
“Come now, Cara,” said Elizabeth. “She is just as upset as you are. It’s just bad luck that you both bought the same dress.”
“It was not,” said Cara.
“Of course it was,” soothed Elizabeth. “It’s a very pretty dress, darling. Anybody who saw it would want to wear it.”
“I never want to see that dress again!” stormed Cara. “I want you to cut it up into bits and throw it in the garbage before I come downstairs.”
“Now, really, Cara.”
“I do!” she shrilled. “And I don’t ever want to see Melody again, either. I won’t see Melody again! You can drag me with you everywhere you go, and I’ll just squeeze my eyes shut and I won’t open them and you can’t make me!”
Great God in heaven, thought Elizabeth. They are surely going to drive me mad. She gave Cara a last pat on the bottom. “Come downstairs, darling. I’ll make us some popcorn.”
“I’m never coming downstairs,” said Cara. The hysteria was fading; she sounded sulky. “I’m never going to school again. I’ll just have to change schools.”
“You’ll feel differently about it once you sleep on it.”
Hysteria again. “I will not! And I’ll just go live with Daddy, if you won’t let me change schools, because I never want to see anybody from Harkness again as long as I live!”