Brian moved his body with the understated liquidity of a professional stage dancer. But he did it with a seemingly total lack of guile. When he rotated his hips, the movement was so subtle, so sexy, Theresa’s lips unconsciously dropped open. The supple twisting of his pelvis appeared to come as naturally to Brian as walking. His face wore a pleasant expression of enjoyment as he occasionally maintained eye contact with Felice. She circumnavigated him in a sultry trip that ended when she almost touched him with her breasts, shimmying her shoulders while the suspended offerings swayed, unfettered, within the folds of her halter-style dress. Felice said something, and Brian laughed.
The song ended and he placed a hand at the small of her back as if to guide her off the floor, but she swung to face him, pressing both hands on his chest, looking up into his face. He glanced briefly toward the table, and Theresa looked quickly away. The music gushed out in another jungle rhythm, and when Theresa’s eyes returned to the dance floor she was stung with jealousy. Watching the lurch and roll, the toss and pitch of Brian’s lean, oscillating body set up queer yearnings in her own, and it occurred to Theresa that she was as human as some of the men who ogled her when she walked into a room.
Felice managed to link her arm with Brian’s at the end of the song and introduce him to somebody on the floor, thereby commandeering him for a third dance. But as Theresa looked on, she saw him put up no resistance.
When the pair arrived at the table, Felice cooed to Theresa, “Ooo, if I were you, I’d hang onto this one. He’s a live one.” Then, to Brian, “Thanks for the dance, honey.”
Jealousy was something new for Theresa. So was the feeling of sexual attraction. Although Theresa no longer spoke in the teenage vernacular, a phrase of Amy’s came to her now:
strung out.
She suddenly knew what it meant to be strung out on a man. It had to be this hollow, gutless, wonderful awareness of his masculinity and her own femininity; this sensation that your pulses had somehow found their way to the surface of your skin and hovered there just beneath the outermost layer, as if ready to explode; this supersensitivity to each shift of muscle, each facial expression, even each movement of his clothing upon his body. She watched in a new acute fascination as Brian shrugged out of his corduroy jacket and hung it on the back of his chair. It seemed each of his motions was peculiar to him alone, as if no other man had ever performed this incidental task in as attractive a way. Was this common? Did others who found themselves falling in love feel such out-of-proportion pride and possessiveness? Did they all find their chosen one flawless, superlative and sexy while performing the most mundane movements, such as sitting on a chair and crossing his ankle over a knee?
“I’m sorry,” Brian muttered, taking his full attention back to Theresa.
“You didn’t look very sorry. You looked like you were enjoying every minute of it.”
“She’s a good dancer.”
Theresa’s lips thinned in disapproval.
“Listen, I said I was sorry I left you sitting here for three dances.”
She glanced away, finding it difficult to deal with her new found feelings. Brian wiped his brow on the sleeve of his sweater, reached for a glass with some partially melted ice cubes and slipped one into his mouth. Theresa watched his lips purse around it as he turned to study the dance floor. The ice cube made his cheek pop out, then she watched his attractive jaw as he chewed and swallowed it.
When his eyes roved back to hers, she quickly glanced away. Her forearm rested on the table, and his warm palm fell across the sleeve of her sweater.
Their eyes met. He squeezed her arm once, gently. Her heart lifted. Though not another word was said about Felice, the issue was set aside.
A powerful force, this jealousy,
thought Theresa, loving the feel of his hand on her arm.
When the tempo of the music slowed, Brian rose without asking her and reached for her hand. On the dance floor, wrapped close to his rag-knit sweater, she could feel how the exertion had released both heat and scent from his skin. The moist warmth radiated onto her breasts. His palm, too, was warmer than before. The keen scent of his after-shave and deodorant was stronger than ever since he’d danced with Felice, and with a secret smile against his shoulder, Theresa thanked the bold temptress for warming Brian up.
Jeff and Patricia danced past, and Jeff leaned toward Brian to ask, “Hey, man, wanna change partners on the next dance?”
“No offense, Patricia, but not a chance.”
He resumed his intimate hold on Theresa, who peered over Brian’s shoulder at her brother to receive a lopsided smile and a broad wink.
Several times during the remainder of the evening Felice tried to snare Brian for a slow dance, but he refused to be appropriated again. He and Theresa sat out the up-tempo songs together and danced only the slow ones. She was growing increasingly aware of the approach of midnight. When they were at their table she surreptitiously checked her watch as Brian slipped his jacket back on. The discreet time check proved that she’d been consulting her watch at the rate of once every two minutes or less.
They were on the dance floor when a song ended, and Theresa turned toward their table to be waylaid by Brian’s hand on her forearm. “Not so fast there, young lady.” When she turned back to him, he lifted a wrist, tugged his corduroy sleeve up over his watch.
“Only five minutes to go. Let’s stay out here until the big moment, okay?”
A flush of sexual awareness radiated through Theresa. Without realizing where her eyes were headed, they centered on Brian’s lips. His mouth was very beautiful, very sensual, the lower lip slightly fuller than the upper, those lips slightly parted now, glistening enticingly as if he’d just passed his tongue along them. She remembered the brief times they’d touched her own, and the maelstrom of emotions his fleeting kisses had created within her heart. The same reaction began again, just from her gazing at his lips.
Her eyes raised to find his upon her own mouth. The lingering gaze held sensual promise she’d never dreamed of finding in a man. She had kissed relatively few men in her life, and all of them in private. The idea of doing so in public heightened Theresa’s inhibitions. She glanced around the dance floor: there was a certain amount of anonymity when so many people were pressed almost shoulder to shoulder in a throng of this size and density.
Just then someone nudged Theresa from behind. She turned to find a waitress elbowing through the dancers, passing out hats and noisemakers, confetti and streamers. Brian got a green foil top hat that would have done Fred Astaire proud. He perched it on his head, then adjusted its brim to a rakish angle and pulled it low over the left side of his forehead. He touched the brim, looking as though he wished his hands were encased in formal white gloves, and cocked an eyebrow at Theresa. “How do I look?”
“Like Abraham Lincoln gone Irish.”
He laughed. “A little respectable and a little oguish?”
“Exactly.” The green hat set off his dark, handsome face and hair in a way that made it difficult for Theresa to draw her eyes away.
“Aren’t you going to put yours on?”
“Oh!” She lifted the tiara and turned up her nose in disgust. It was covered with horrible, shocking pink glitter that would clash abominably with her red hair. But she lifted her hands and gamely settled the circlet atop her head. As she felt with her fingertips to determine if it was on straight, Brian took over.
“Here, let me.”
He brushed her fingertips aside, then adjusted the gaudy headpiece on Theresa’s bouncy curls. His touch seemed to send fire straight down each hair follicle into her scalp. Just being near the man did the most devilish things to her senses.
“How do
I
look?” she asked, trying to get command of herself, keeping spirits light.
“Like the angels sprinkled you with stardust.” He touched a fingertip to her left eyebrow. It felt as if she’d received a 110-volt shock. “But there’s nothing wrong with a little stardust. Guess I’ll put it back.” Again he touched her, replacing the flake of pink glitter, this time on the crest of her left cheek, then running the finger slowly down to her chin before dropping his hand between them and capturing both of her hands without looking away from her astounded eyes. His own were penetrating, admiring and seemed to be radiating messages much like those she was unable to hide.
“You’d better close your eyes, Brian, or all this color will give you a headache,” Theresa warned, realizing how garish she must look in the gaudy vermilion tiara, with hot pink glitter highlighting her freckle-splattered cheeks.
The drummer began a drum roll. It seemed to both
Brian and Theresa the sound came from the opposite side of the universe, so wrapped up in each other had they become.
“Gladly,” Brian agreed, “but not because anything gives me a headache.” He was clutching her hands so tightly she completely forgot about everything except his eyes, reaching toward hers with a deep, probing knowledge of something she’d yearned to see in the eyes of one special man, a man just like the one before her now. Around them the crowd bellowed the countdown to midnight. “Five ... four ... three ... two ... one!” The band hit the opening chord of “Auld Lang Syne,” and neither Theresa nor Brian moved for the duration of several heartbeats.
Then she was being enfolded in strong, warm arms and dragged against his hard chest, against his belly, against his hips and his warm, seeking mouth.
A coil of pink paper came flying through the air and drifted across the brim of Brian’s green top hat, trailing down over his ear and jaw, but he was totally unaware of it. A shower of confetti settled onto Theresa’s hair and shoulders and drifted down the bridge of Brian’s nose, but they were lost in each other, aware only of the closeness they’d at last achieved. Their eyes were closed as they kissed with a full, lush introduction of tongues that sent shock waves skittering down Theresa’s spine. Her arms were threaded beneath his, and her palms rested on the center of his back while one of his pressed between her shoulder blades, and the other slipped up into the warm secret place at her nape, under the cloud of soft hair.
The interior of his mouth was warm, wet and compelling. The shifting exploration of his tongue brought hers against it in answer, as a river of longing coursed through Theresa’s body.
Brian started moving as if unable to be drawn from a deep spell—slowly, seductively—carrying her with him to the nostalgic rhythm and words of the song. Their hips joined, pressed and swayed together, but their feet scarcely shuffled on the crowded floor. He moved his head in a sensuous invitation to deepen the kiss and opened his mouth wider over hers. Her response was as natural as the evocative dance movements they shared: her own mouth opened more fully. She felt the sensuous drawing of his lips and tongue, and the moist heat of his mouth seemed to burn its way down the length of her body.
In her entire life, nothing like this had ever happened to Theresa. The kisses of her past had been accompanied either by timidity or groping, and sometimes by both in rapid succession. She let Brian rub her hips with his own, lightly at first, then with growing pressure until the side-to-side motion evoked images of further intimacies. Finally, he drew her against him with a possessiveness that made her ribs ache sweetly. And still the kiss continued ...
He began humming into her open mouth, and auld acquaintances were indeed forgotten by both of them while she answered by humming too. Before the song was half through, before the new year had been completely ushered in, before she could quite capture the realization that it was really happening to her, Theresa felt Brian’s body go hard within the blue jeans. But she remained against him, marveling that someone at last had unlocked her to the wondrous side of physical contact.
“Auld Lang Syne” drifted to an end, and somewhere in the reaches of her consciousness Theresa knew the song had changed into another as Brian lifted his head but not his hands. He held her in a warm embrace while they rocked, remaining hip to hip, breast to chest, gazing into each other’s eyes.
“Theresa.” He lifted his eyes to her hair, let them skim back to her enraptured face, which reflected amazement, arousal and perhaps a touch of apprehension. “This started before I ever met you. You know that, don’t you?” His voice was rich with passion. Her lips dropped open, and she found it very difficult to breathe.
“B ... before you met me?”
“Jeff told me things that used to make me lie in bed at night and wonder what you’d be like when I met you. I would have been the most disappointed man in the world if you hadn’t turned out to be exactly as you are.”
She dropped her eyes to the dusting of confetti on his shoulders. “But, I’m—”
“You’re perfect,” he murmured, lowering his head until his mouth cut off further words. Then, to her astonishment, he did something utterly provocative, and distractingly sexy. He loosened his hold momentarily and opened his corduroy jacket so that its bulk no longer disguised the state of his body—not in the least. Then he took her back where she belonged, inside the open jacket, with her hands between it and her sweater while they danced the remainder of the song.
When it ended, he backed away, but kept his arms looped behind her waist as their hips rested tightly together.
“Let’s get out of here,” he suggested in a low, throaty voice.
“B ... but it’s only midnight,” she stammered, awed by the suddenness of the sexual urgings she felt. He lifted his eyes to her hair. It was peppered with confetti. The glittered crown had tipped awry, and he plucked it from her hair, then smiled down at her open lips.
“Let’s go home.”
“What about Jeff and—”
“Are you scared, Theresa?”
She felt the press of blood staining her neck and pushing upward, but he lifted her chin and forced her to meet his eyes. “Theresa, are you scared of me? Don’t be. I want to be alone with you, just once before I leave.”
But, Brian, I don’t do things like that. I’m not like your groupies.
The words crossed her mind, but not her lips. She’d look like a complete idiot if she said them and his intentions were honorable all along. Yet he’d opened his jacket and made his sexual state unquestionably clear! And she was a twenty-five-year-old virgin who was both tormented and compelled by the traumatic first that might very well happen if she agreed to leave early with him.