A Midnight Clear (7 page)

The expression on his face was one of abiding patience, as if he’d wait forever. But more than that, the set of his jaw and arch of his brow was controlled, disciplined. It said her opinion mattered. That he’d wait because she wanted him to.

“Where are we getting dirty?” she asked when she couldn’t take the silence anymore.

A smile cracked Joe’s focus. He threw back his head and laughed, his shoulders vibrating with amusement.

“You anxious to fly?” he asked when he’d calmed down.

“I don’t see a plane.”

“Oh Frances, there are many ways to leave the ground.”

He started off down a path and she followed.

“So this is a metaphor?” she called after him.

“I’d take you flying if I could, but the Navy wouldn’t approve. They wouldn’t approve of what we’re going to do either, but I figured you could keep it secret.”

She gasped in mock horror. “Are you asking me to conceal something from my father? How scandalous.”

Actually it was thrilling. Not the concealment itself, but that Joe wanted to give her something for herself, something that her father’s opinion of didn’t matter. Something selfish and private.

“You can tell him you met me, we went walking. That’s true enough.”

“What should I report about our conversation?”

“We talked about the weather. ‘It’s sunny out here.’” He said the final word with a New England accent. Where was he from? He turned and gave her a warm smile. “See? It’s true.”

“There’s a bank of clouds right there.”

“Hmm. I didn’t notice them. Sunny with clouds, then. You can tell him when I tried to make love to you, I was rebuffed.”

His smile evaporated, burned up by something much hotter. Frances’s mouth went dry. She’d always been a very practical girl. She’d never let men pour honey into her ears and the few words of love she’d heard almost by accident she hadn’t believed.

But with his smiles, his good humor, his quick wit, his persistence… well, she suspected that she’d be quite susceptible to Joe’s sweet nothings. Which was why she couldn’t let him speak them.

“The weather hasn’t been interesting enough for him to believe it,” she said.

They walked in silence then, neither of them speculating—at least not aloud—about whether she’d just admitted she wanted him to make love to her.

“It might have been a metaphor,” Joe said as he led her into a clearing, “but I can deliver on the flying.”

Sitting there was a motorcycle, small and chrome. Bits gleamed in the sunlight, though most of it was smudged and greasy.

“The brother of a friend of mine owns it. He’s been fixing it up, and he’s got a ways to go. That’s why I said the thing about the clothes.”

Frances plucked at her old tweedy cleaning trousers. She’d chosen well. “This is forbidden,” she said, giving Joe an assessing looking.

“Strictly speaking, it’s prohibited for midshipmen to own or operate one.”

“Strictly speaking?”

“You said you wanted to fly. And this was easier than sneaking you into the hanger. You’d never pass as a boy.”

“I could bind—”

“No.” He gave her bosom a quick but penetrating look.

He was risking his place in the Academy, his entire future to give this to her. In taking it, she would be selfish indeed. She turned back to the motorcycle. “Do you know how to drive it?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve driven it before?”

He laughed. “Yes.”

Well, that did put a different spin on it. He wouldn’t be breaking the rules only for her then. “How fast does it go?”

“Fast enough.”

“How do we—”

“First you need this.” He handed her a leather helmet.

Once she had it on her head, he helped her with the strap, his fingers warm and callused against the underside of her chin.

“You’re set now.” His words were rough around the edges, like he hadn’t had the time or control to polish them.

She understood the feeling.

He put on his own helmet, and then he walked over to the motorcycle and kicked his leg over it. He released a part that was standing it up on the ground and then turned a key. It roared to life.

Frances watched all of this appreciatively. Joe was easy on the eyes and he knew what he was doing with machines. She’d have to be blind not to know it. But this made her a bit nervous.

She’d never been offered her deepest, most secret dreams before. It made her woozy.

“Where do I…” She let the buzz of the engine eat the rest of her question.

“Slip on behind me.”

As carefully as possible, she did. But now she faced another hard choice. Should she put her hands on his shoulders… or his waist?

Over his shoulder, Joe called, “You have to hold on to me.”

She placed a tentative hand on his side where his body nipped in toward his hip. She exhaled. It was okay. This was just like dancing.

Sort of.

He took her wrist and tugged. She slipped forward over the machine into his back. He took her hand, flattened it out, and pressed it against his stomach.

“Like so.”

She felt his words more than heard them. The beating of her heart was blotting everything else out. He was so warm, so firm, and she was cradling him.

She slipped her other hand around him and brought Joe completely within her embrace. Should she hold onto her own wrist or set this hand against his body too?

She flexed her fingers and then rested her palm above her other one. He made a grunt of approval. Before she could process all of it, he fiddled with the controls and the motorcycle started to move.

For a few minutes, they crawled. She grew accustomed to the machine purring between her legs and to the press of Joe’s body against hers, his back against her chest, his ribs under her hands. She’d never touched a man like this, completely, intimately. She’d never been on a motorcycle. It was a heady day.

When she’d met Joe, she’d been introduced to this world of sensation. For the first time, she was attuned to another body. It made her more aware of having a body herself. From the Turkey Trot, to the chapel, to the bookstore, to the reception where it had all started, his eyes had made her breathless.

But this, this made her
ache
.

“Hang on,” Joe instructed over his shoulder when they reached the paved path.

And then, they started to fly.
 

They whipped around a path. The wind whooshed over Frances’s cheeks and made her eyes burn. She shut them and curled into Joe’s back. He was solid and she’d never get to touch him like this again. She probably shouldn’t touch him like this
now
, but she couldn’t help herself.

She could feel that they’d gone around another corner and she could smell the Bay, brackish and cold.

“Open your eyes,” he called.

Slowly, she did. “Oh.”

The dappled sunshine on the water blurred into long streaks of lights. Leaves on the road spun up behind them and drifted into the woods and the water. A flock of geese in a tight V flew overhead.

She loosened her hands around Joe ever so slightly so she could enjoy it.

She felt… free. It was the world she knew, but at this speed—and to honest, with Joe pressed against her—it was different.

The world didn’t have to be a thing around her, a thing with rules and limitations and obligations that pressed in on her. She was part of it. And she could go through it anyway she chose.

Including flying on the back of a motorcycle with Joe.

With Joe
.

She squeezed against him and took in the blur of colors: the water reflecting the sky, the leaves dancing in the breeze, and the world gamboling from one season to another. It, all of it, could be different, could change in ways she hadn’t known. Hence she could too.

She still didn’t want what her parents had had—much as she loved them. She didn’t want to follow the rules, boost her husband’s career, and raise her children alone. She didn’t want to spend in her life in service as her mother had. But not every man in the Navy was an admiral, and not every wife died young.

Joe had done nothing except ask what she wanted and to try to give it to her. He was kind and thoughtful and aggravatingly attractive.

She liked him. And he said he adored her.

So as much as it scared her, it was time to take another risk.

Too soon, Joe slowed the motorcycle and drove it back to the clearing. When they parked, Frances clambered off and removed her helmet. She watched Joe do the same and then get everything stowed.

When he was done, he watched her intently for a few beats. “Did you enjoy flying?”

“More than I can possibly explain to you. I know how much trouble you went to. Thank you.”

“Frances, I would do anything for you.”

She believed him then. After all his declarations, he’d finally convinced her.

Joe gestured at the motorcycle. “Mike will come by it to get in a few hours. I borrowed a car too. I’d like to drive you home.”

“Let’s take the long way back. Over the bridge.”

Joe took her hand and led the way. Around them, the trees were mostly bare. Here and there, scarlet, orange, brown, and yellow still exploded on the branches, but most of the leaves littered the water and clung to the roots of the trees. The forest stood on exactly the knife’s edge between fall and winter.

Joe was humming, some song she didn’t recognize. He was pleased, but he was lost in his thoughts. As they crossed the white bridge spanning over the water near the bandstand, she tugged on his hand to bring him to a stop.

“Joe?”

He looked down at her, curious.

“Thank you again. It was a silly request, but it’s the first thing I’ve asked for myself in… forever.”

“You should have everything you want,” he said.

She took one hesitant step toward him and then another. She hadn’t released his hand, and she rubbed his knuckles with her thumb. She didn’t want him to misunderstand, so she set her free hand against his chest.

“You should too.”

She raised her face to his and waited.

She wasn’t certain how she’d even once thought he could be lying to her about his intentions: The whole process of his thoughts was written on his face.

He wanted this and it scared him to death.

He rested his hand on her shoulder, both drawing her closer to him and at once keeping her fixed a breath away.

“
Frances
.” It was a warning and a plea at once.

“You said you’d do whatever I wanted, do whatever would make me happy. Well, this would make me happy.”

A beat passed. He wasn’t going to make her say it, was he?

He nodded, the movement jerky as if he wasn’t quite conscious of it. His eyes were fixed on her mouth. He wet his lips and leaned closer. Or maybe he just thought himself closer. His eyelids drifted closed and then he swallowed, steeling himself.

His mouth touched hers.

The jolt of it was sharp, joy and pain and instant jarring rush.

He rocked back on his heels and then he swooped forward and kissed her again, this time on the corner of her mouth.

And again, her top lip.

And again, in the center.

Then his mouth opened and closed around her bottom lip. He pulled ever so slightly.

She gasped and the kiss became a whole other thing.
 

If the motorcycle had made her want, had made her cold and achy, this kiss promised that Joe had the remedy. It was everything warm and slick, a shuddering world.

In an instant, her spine melted and it was only Joe’s hands keeping her up, only the slide of the tongue against hers that made standing worth it.

She made some incoherent noise of both frustration and pleasure and he stumbled back.

“Too much?” Raw and shaky and a mirror of her own state.

“Not enough.”

And he was kissing her again, worshipping her, making every ounce of her feel as if she were safe and wanted with him.

They stayed locked together until the last golden moments before twilight were over. Somewhere in the park, a bird squawked and Joe finally released her mouth. He kept her in the circle of his arms, however.

“Frances,” he whispered into her hair.

“Don’t let’s talk now.”

And they didn’t.

Frances wasn’t surprised or disappointed when she ran into a boy in a blue uniform outside the cleaner’s. After all, she had asked him to meet her.

“No packages for me to carry?” Joe sounded disappointed.

She laughed and fell into step next to him. “That was an excuse. No, I had all of Father’s uniforms today, so they’re going to deliver.”

“I’ll have to find something else to do with my hands.”

They’d been seeing each other several times a week since the day he’d taken her riding on the motorcycle—and since he’d kissed her witless on the bridge. It had been the kind of kiss that had reduced every other kiss she’d been offered to ashes. Since he’d spent their subsequent dates squiring her around Annapolis on errands and taking her to the pictures to see Ingrid Bergman play Joan of Arc, he hadn’t touched her. Much.

Today, he extended one of his hands to her and she took it.