But this time after their glasses touched it was he who did not drink from his. Instead his brow furrowed and he scowled slightly.
"What did you say?"
"I said, 'To Jesse DuFrayne who—"
"I know what you said, Abbie, I want to know why you said it."
Do you, Jesse, she thought. Do you? Or do you understand perfectly, just as I do, that you could have forced yourself on me any one of countless times, yet you always backed off. Must I tell you why? Do you understand so little of yourself? Abbie drew a deep breath and met his eyes.
"Because it's true. Perhaps because I have noted that when others are around you refer to me respectfully as Miss Abigail, no matter what you might call me when we're alone together. Maybe too because you—Oh, never mind." She didn't think she could go through with it and tell him what he couldn't see for himself.
"No, I want to know what you were going to say." He leaned forward now, bracing his forearms against the edge of the table, rolling the glass between his palms, the frown lingering about his eyes.
She considered a moment, sipped a little, then looked away from his mouth: he was chewing somehow on the fringe of his moustache, and she thought it might be a danger sign. "The truth as I see it would sound blatantly conceited were I to say it. I don't want you to leave here thinking of me in that light."
"You of all people are the farthest thing from conceited I've ever met. Self-righteous maybe, but not conceited."
"I'm not sure whether I should say thank you or spit in your eye."
"Neither. Just explain what you meant about me and your morals."
She sipped again for false courage, her eyes picking up some of the champagne bubbles and refracting the lamplight off them. "Very well," she agreed at last, looking into her glass to find it surprisingly empty.
He refilled it as she began. "I think that you find me… let us say, not totally unattractive. I also, however, think that my feminine gender in itself would serve that purpose for you, because you just plain
like
women
. But that's beside the point. I only mentioned it to point out that I do not say this in a vain way. I think you are attracted to me by the very thing that you seek to change in me. Unless I miss my guess, I am the first woman you've encountered in a good long time who possesses any of the qualities that the old beatitudes praise. And all the time you berate me for my inability to bend, you are hoping I will not do so. In other words, Mr. DuFrayne, I think that for perhaps the first time in your life you have found something besides flesh to admire in a woman, but you've never learned how to handle admiration of that sort, so you resort to breaking down my morals in order to feel at ease in your relationship with me."
He sat there with his shoulders lounging at a slant against the back of his chair, but the scowl on his lips belied the lax attitude of his body. He had an elbow propped on the arm of his chair and ran an index finger repeatedly along the lower fringe of his moustache.
"Perhaps you're right, Abbie." He took a sip, measuring her over the glass. "And if you are, why do you blush like a schoolgirl? Your beatific nature is all intact—everything right where it was when I first found you." Lazily he leaned and reached out that bronze finger that had been stroking his moustache, touched her lightly beneath the chin, and made her look up at him. But she stiffened, drawing her eyes away again, turning her chin aside to avoid the finger that seemed too, too warm and exciting. When she would not look up again he ran the callused finger lightly along her delicate jawbone. That at last made her eyes fly to his.
"Don't!" She jerked back, but something strange happened inside her head. For a moment things looked like they had fuzzy edges.
His eyes traveled over her open lips, noted her quick breath, the distended nostrils, then lazily eased back to the blue threatened depths of her wide eyes.
"All right," he agreed softly, "and this time I won't even ask why."
Panicked by the sudden change in him, she lurched up from her chair, but a tornado seemed to be whirling inside her She fell forward, hands pressed flat on the tabletop on either side of her plate. Her head reverberated. Her neck felt limp, and a lock of damp hair hung down across her collar.
"You've duped me again, have you, Me DuFrayne? This time with your innocent toasts." Her head hung down disgracefully but she couldn't seem to raise it, not even to look daggers at him for doing this to her.
"No I haven't. If so, I didn't mean to. Why, you hardly had enough wine to inebriate a hummingbird." He picked up the bottle and tipped it, looking at the lantern light through it. It was still half full.
"Well, this hum… hummingbird is in… inebriated just the same," she said to the slanting tabletop, her head sinking lower between her shoulder blades all the time.
He smiled down at the part in her hair, thinking how appalled she'd be in the morning and how they weren't going to get out of this without another fight after all. Abbie drunk, imagine that, he thought, unable to keep from smiling at her.
"It must be the altitude," he said now. "Up this high it doesn't take much, especially if you've never drunk before." He came to put an arm around her and lead her toward the back door. "Come on, Abbie, let's get you some fresh air." She stumbled. "Be careful, Abbie, the steps are here." He took one floppy hand and put it around his waist and it grabbed a handful of shirt obediently. "Come on, Ab, let's walk, or you'll find your bed spinning when you lie down."
"I'm sure you kn… know all about… sp… spinning b… beds," she mumbled, then pulled herself up and slapped lamely at his helping hands. "I'm fine. I'm fine," she repeated drunkenly, thinking she was regaining a little decorum. But she started humming next and knew perfectly well that she wouldn't be humming if she were truly fine.
"Shhh!" he whispered, forcing her to walk.
She flung a palm up. "But I'm a… a hummingbird, am I not?" She actually giggled, then swayed around and fell against him, tapping him on the chest. "Am I not a hummingbird, Jesse? Hmm? Hmmm?" Her forefinger drilled teasingly into his chin, and he lifted it aside.
"Yes, you are. Now shut up and keep walking and breathe deeply, all right?"
She tried to take careful steps, but the ground seemed so far away from her soles, and so evasive and tipsy. They walked and walked, all around the backyard. And once more she giggled. And more than once stumbled so he'd grab her more tightly around the waist to set her aright. "Keep walking," he insisted again and again. "Damnit, Abbie, I did
not
do this to you on purpose. I never in my life saw anybody get tight on a thimbleful of champagne. Do you believe me?"
"Who cares if
I
believe
you
. Do
you
believe
me
?"
"Keep walking."
"I said
do you believe me
!" she suddenly demanded, her words ringing out through the still air. "Do you believe what I said in there about you and me!" She got belligerent and tried to yank away, but he steadied her close against his hip and she submitted to his strong, forceful arm.
"Don't raise your voice, Abbie. The neighbors might still be up."
"Ha!" she all but bellowed. "Carve that one on marble!
You
worried about what
my
neighbors might think!" She lurched and grabbed his shirtfront in both fists, shaking it, tugging till it pulled against his neck.
"Shh! You're drunk."
"I'm as sober as a judge now. Why won't you answer me?"
Was she drunk or sober when she reared back and began trumpeting in the most unladylike way, "Jesse DuFrayne loves Abbie Me—" and he plastered his mouth over hers to shut her up? Her arms came around his neck and he lifted her clean up off the ground, her breasts flattened mercilessly against his rigid chest. But once his mouth covered hers, he forgot he was only trying to shut her up. He took her mouth wholly, and there was nothing dry about it. She had both of her arms folded behind his strong neck, her toes dangling half a foot off the earth, and they stood that way in the silver moonlight, kissing and kissing, and forgetting they had vowed to be enemies, all tongue and tooth and lip and a soft, thick moustache.
Her mouth was hot and sweet and tasted of champagne. The smell of roses came from the fabric of her starched blouse and she made a small groaning whimper deep in her throat, her breath coming warm against his cheek. And in no time at all his body grew uncomfortably hard, so he set her down on her feet none too gently, pulled her arms away from his neck, and ordered fiercely, "Get the hell up to bed, Abbie. Do you hear me!"
She stood there drooping, conquered.
"Can you walk by yourself?" His warm hand still gripped her elbow.
"I told you I'm not drunk," she muttered to the earth at her feet.
"Then prove it and get inside where you belong."
"I, Me DuFrayne, am as sober as a veritable judge!" she boasted, still to the night earth, for she could not raise her head. He carefully released her elbow, and she swayed a little but remained upright.
"Don't judge me for this, Abbie, just get the hell out of here!"
"Well, you don't have to sound so mad about it," she said childishly, and knew somewhere in her bleary head just how drunk she really was to be talking that way, almost whining. Ashamed now of what she'd done, she turned and weaved her way to the house, gulping deep draughts of the stringent night ait On her way past the dining room table she gulped a whole cup of cold coffee. And by the time she made her way upstairs it was herself she was judging, not him. Champagne was no excuse, none at all. The pure, unadulterated truth was that she'd been wanting him to kiss her all night. Worse, she'd been wanting to kiss him back. Worse yet, she didn't think that was all she wanted anymore.
Upstairs, she flopped backward onto the bed, arms as limp as the excuses she tried to think up.
Heavens, that man can kiss! One finger wound around a tendril of hair until she'd curled it all the way to her scalp. She closed her eyes and groaned, then hugged her belly and curled up, suddenly tragically sure her mother had been dead wrong. Here she was, Abigail McKenzie, spinster, thirty-three and heading upward, never to know just what it was that her mother had so warned her against. Certainly it couldn't be kissing. It had been nothing short of a swift, sweet miracle, the way that kiss had felt. It had been so long ago with Richard that it was impossible to recall if it had been this good. And certainly David's kiss had not started such a volcanic throbbing in her But always before she had held back, afraid of what her mother had said. But when you loosen your reserve and put everything into it, kissing was a different matter entirely. It started such strange and pleasant rippling sensations shimmying downward through one's body.
Lying in the darkness above Jesse, she again pictured his body. Ah, she knew it so well. She knew the shape and hue and texture of each part of it, the valleys of his shoulder blades where strong muscles welled up to leave inviting hollows. His dark arms, long, strong, etched with veins at the inner bend of elbow. His legs and feet, how often she'd seen them, washed them. She knew his hands, large, square, with equal capacity for teasing and gentling. His eyes seemed to seek her out in the darkness, from beneath brows whose outline she traced on her stomach now from memory. Those eyes crinkled at the corners in the instant before his soft, soft moustache lifted with a lazy smile. She knew the spot where the skin grew smooth, down low where the hair of his broad chest narrowed and dove in a thinner line, narrowing, narrowing along his hard belly to his groin.
She rolled onto her stomach because her breasts hurt. She clamped her arms against the swelling sides of those breasts and squeezed her thighs together, locking her ankles, holding them tightly, tightly, trying to forget the image of the naked Jesse. But forgetfulness refused her She opened her mouth, waiting for the heat of his imaginary kiss. But she touched only the pillow, not warm, soft lips. She rolled to her side clutching a knob of nightgown between her legs, feeling what was happening there, this awful aching need to be filled.
Was this then how it was? How it ought to be? What her mother had known? What her mother had never known? It was fullness and emptiness, acceptance and denial, hot and cold, shiver and sweat, yes and no. It was the coming apart of scruples, ethics, codes, standards, and virtues and not caring in the slightest, because your body spoke louder than your conscience.
Jesse had been right all along, and her mother had been wrong. How could such compulsion be wrong?
Senses Abbie had never realized she possessed were now expanded to their fullest. Her body throbbed and beat and begged. How right… how utterly right… it would be to simply go to him and say, "Show me, for I want to see. Give me, for I deserve. Let me, for I feel the right."
The question no longer was could she do that and live with it afterward. The question now was could she not do that and watch her one chance walk out the door tomorrow to leave her ignorant and unfulfilled.
r
e
v
i o
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s
T
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p
N
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x
t
The moon was rich cream, high, melting down through the wide bay window, running all over him as he lay, sprawled carelessly, naked on the bed. His head and chin were screwed around at an odd angle, as if trying to see the headboard backward. She had listened to his restless movements for what seemed like hours, working up the courage to creep downstairs. But now he slept, she could tell by his measured breath and the one dark foot that dangled off the end of the bed where he had never fit and never would.
She came trembling to the bedroom doorway, afraid to enter, afraid not to. What if he turned her away?
Little tight fists pressed against chin and teeth, she eased closer. Her chest felt as if it were in a vise. How should she awaken him? What should she say? Should she touch him? Maybe say, "Mr. DuFrayne, wake up and make love to me"? How absurd that she didn't even know what to call him anymore.