Instead of waiting for her answer, he turned her toward the edge of the dance floor, his palm riding the hollow of her spine while she led the way to the table, found her purse and couldn’t quite meet Jeff’s eyes as she and Brian said good-night.
He drove again, by tacit agreement. Inside her warm woolen coat, Theresa was shuddering throughout most of the ride home, even after the heater was blowing warm air. In the familiar driveway, he pulled the car to a stop, killed the engine and handed her the keys in the dark. She began pivoting toward her door when his strong grip on her wrist brought her up short.
“Come here.” His command was soft-spoken, but tinged with gruff emotion. “It’s been a long time since I kissed a girl in a car. I’d like to take the memory back to Minot Air Force Base with me.”
It had been easier on the crowded dance floor when proximity took care of logistics. Now Theresa had to willingly lean her half of the way across the console that separated them. She hesitated, wondering how women ever learned to perform their part in these rites that seemed to inhibit her at every turn.
He exerted a light pressure on her wrist, pulling her slowly toward him, and tipped his head aside to meet her lips with a new kind of kiss that, though lacking in demand, was no less sensitizing. It was a tease of a kiss, a falling rose petal of a kiss. And it made her long for more.
“Your nose is cold. Let’s go in and warm it up.”
Chapter Seven
INSIDE, THE HOUSE WAS QUIET.
The light above the stove was on again, and she hurried past its cone of brightness to the shadows of the hallway, knowing that if Brian got a look at her face, he’d see how uncertain and scared she’d suddenly become. She felt his hands taking the coat from her shoulders, though she hadn’t known he’d followed her so closely. A myriad of conversational subjects jumped into her mind, but scattered into pieces like the colors in a kaleidoscope. Unable to believe she’d sound anything less than petrified if she introduced any of them, she was preparing to wish him a fast good-night and skitter off to bed, when he turned from the closet and lazily took her hand in one of his.
“It sounds like your mom and dad are in bed already.”
“Yes... yes, it’s awfully quiet.”
“Come downstairs with me.”
Trepidation stiffened her spine. She tried to dredge up a reply, but both yes and no stuck in her throat. He threaded his fingers through hers as if they were setting out to stroll hand in hand through a meadow and turned them both toward the basement stairs.
She allowed herself to be led, for it was the only way she could approach the seduction she knew was in the offing.
At the top of the basement stairs she snapped on the light, but once downstairs, he released her hand, crossed to the ruffled lamp and substituted its mellower glow, then unconcernedly switched off the garish overhead beacon.
Theresa hovered by the sliding glass door, staring out at the black rectangle of night, while she chafed her upper arms.
Behind her, Brian noted, “It looks like your folks had a fire. The coals are still hot.”
“Oh,” she squeaked, knowing what he wanted, but unwilling to abet it.
“Do you mind if I add a log?”
“No.”
She heard the glass doors of the fireplace being opened, then the metallic tinkle of the wire-mesh curtains being pushed aside. The charcoal broke with a crunching sound as he settled a new log, and the metal fire screen slid closed again. And still Theresa cowered by the door, hugging herself while her knees trembled.
She was staring out so intently that she jumped and spun to face Brian when he reappeared beside her and began closing the draperies. He was watching her instead of the drapery pulls while he worked the cord, hand over hand. She licked her lips and swallowed. Behind him, the fresh log flared with a
whoosh
and she jumped again as if the puff had announced the leaping arrival of Lucifer.
The draperies drew to a close. Silence bore down. Brian kept his disconcerting gaze riveted on Theresa as he came two steps closer, then extended his hand in invitation.
She stared at it but only hugged herself tighter.
The hand remained, palm up, steady. “Why are you so scared of me?” His deep, flawlessly modulated voice delivered the question in the softest of tones.
“I ... I ...” She felt her jaw working but seemed unable to close it, to answer, or to go to him.
He leaned forward, balancing on one foot while capturing one of her hands and tugging her along after him toward the far side of the room where the sofa faced the hearth. The fire glowed brightly now; passing the lamp he switched it off, leaving the room dressed in soft, flickering orange. He sat, gently towed her down beside him, and resolutely kept his right arm around her shoulders while he himself slunk rather low, catching the nape of his neck on the cushion, and crossing his calves on the shiny maple coffee table before them.
Beneath his arms, Brian could feel Theresa’s shoulders tensed and curled. Everything had changed during their ride home. She’d had time to consider what she was getting into. Her withdrawal gave him a corresponding sense of hesitation, which he hoped he was hiding well. One skittish partner in such a situation was enough. He had misgivings about kissing her again in an effort to break down her reserve. She was pinched up as tightly as a newly wound watch, and he knew she hadn’t done anything like this very often in her life. Jeff had told him she was spooked by men, that she turned down most invitations or advances that came her way. And Jeff had told Brian, too, the reason why. That knowledge hovered above him like a wall of water about to curl in upon his head. He felt as if he was savoring his last lungful of air in anticipation of being sucked under when the tidal wave hit.
Brian Scanlon was scared.
But Theresa Brubaker didn’t know it.
She rested against the side of his ribs, with her head cradled on his shoulder and the crown of her hair against his cheek. But her arms remained crossed as tightly as if she wore a straitjacket.
With the hand that circled her shoulders, he gently rubbed her resilient upper arm. Her hair smelled flowery and created a warm patch of closeness where it pressed beneath his cheek. He pinched the knit sleeve of her sweater between thumb and forefinger and drew it away from her flesh.
“Is it true that you bought this whole new outfit just for tonight?”
“Amy’s worse than Jeff. She can’t keep
any
secrets.”
His hand fell lightly upon her arm again. “I like the new clothes. The color goes great with your hair.”
“Don’t mention the color of my hair, please.” She clasped an open hand over the top of her head, burying her face against his chest.
He smiled. “Why? What’s the matter with it?”
“I hate it. I’ve always hated it.”
The arm that had been circling her shoulders lifted, and what he’d done with the sweater, he did with her hair, lifting a single strand, rubbing, testing it between his fingers while studying it lazily. “It’s the color of sunrise.”
“It’s the color of vegetables.”
“It’s the color of flowers—lots of different kinds of flowers.”
“It’s the color of a chicken’s eye.”
Beneath her cheek she felt his chest heave as he laughed silently, but when he spoke, it was seriously. “It’s the color of the Grand Canyon as the sun slips down beyond the purple side of the mountains.”
“It’s the color of my freckles. You can hardly tell where one stops and the others start.”
His index finger curled beneath her chin and forced her to lift her face. “I can.” The way he lounged, his chin was tucked against his chest, and she gazed up across his corduroy lapel, feeling its raised wales digging into her cheek as she met his slumberous green eyes. “And anyway, what’s wrong with freckles?” he teased, running the callused tip of his left index finger across the bridge of her nose and the crest of one cheek. “Angel kisses,” he whispered, while the finger moved down the tip-tilted nose and the rim of her lips, over the pointed chin and on to her soft throat where a pulse thrummed in rapid tempo.
She tried to say, “Heat spots,” but nothing came out except shaky breath and a tiny croak.
His nape came away from the back of the sofa in slow motion while his sea-green eyes locked with hers. “Angel kisses,” he whispered, closing her eyes with his warm lips—first touching the left, then the right eyelid. “Have you been kissed by angels, Theresa?” he murmured. The tip of his tongue touched and wet the high curve of her left cheek, and the end of her nose, then her right cheek.
“Nobody but you, Brian.”
“I know,” came his final murmur before his soft mouth possessed hers. His kiss plucked at her reserve, encouraging a foray into the unknowns of sensuality, but her crossed arms still maintained a barrier between them. His tongue sought nooks and crannies of her mouth that it seemed her own tongue had never discovered before. It swept across warm, moist valleys from where tiny explosions of sensation burst upon her senses. He eased the pressure, catching her upper lip between his teeth, sucking it, releasing it, sensitizing the lower one next in the same seductive way.
Framing the contours of her open lips with his, he eased her back firmly against the sofa, twisting at the waist until his chest pressed her crossed wrists.
“Put your arms around me like you did when you were dancing.”
He waited with his lips near her ear, measuring her hesitation by the number of thundering heartbeats that issued the pounding blood through her body and raised a delicate pulsepoint at her temple, just beside her hairline. Just when he thought it was hopeless, she at last moved the first hesitant hand, and he lingered above her until finally her arms curved about his shoulders.
“Theresa, don’t be afraid. I’d never hurt you.”
She began to say, “Brian, don’t!” just as his mouth stopped the words from forming, and she felt herself flipping sideways beneath the force of his chest and hands. He shifted and adjusted her without moving his mouth from hers, until she lay beneath him, stretched out on the long sofa, with one foot clinging to the floor for security. Panic and sexuality seemed to be pulling her in opposite directions.
Let him kiss me, let him lie on me, but please, please, don’t let him touch my breasts.
His body was warm and hard, and when he’d tucked her beneath him, Brian opened his knees wide, lifting one to press it over her left thigh, while the other flanked the outside of her right leg all the way to the floor. His belt buckle and zipper pressed hard into her thigh, biting through the thin gabardine of her slacks and bringing to mind images from the movie that was her chief frame of reference to a man’s physique. This was more than she had ever willingly let a man do with her. She remembered watching Brian on the dance floor, and his hips took up the same rhythmic tempo that had stirred her earlier. It worked an identical magic on her now, releasing a flood of inner enticement that answered the dance of his body on hers.
“Theresa, I’ve thought of you for months and months, long before I ever met you.” His eyes, as he pulled away only far enough to look into hers, held neither smile nor twinkle. To Theresa’s awe-struck wonder, they held what seemed to be a look of near reverence.
“But why?” she whispered.
His left hand contoured her neck underneath her hair, while his right meandered across her brow as he traced her bone structure with two fingertips. “I knew more about you than any man has a right to know about a woman he’s never met. Sometimes I felt almost guilty about it, but at the same time it drew me to you as if I’d been hypnotized.”
“So Jeff told you more than you let on before.” His parted lips pressed against the side of her nose, then he looked into her eyes again. “Jeff loves you as much as any brother could love a sister. He understands what makes you tick ... and what doesn’t. I had a picture of you as a sweet-natured little music teacher, directing freckle-faced kids for their mommies and daddies, but until I met you, I had no idea you’d look quite so much like one of them yourself.” She tried to turn aside.
“No.” He captured her chin, rubbed his index finger along her jawbone. “Don’t turn away from me. I told you, I like your freckles, and your hair, and ... and everything about you, just because they’re you.”
She stiffened involuntarily as his hand left her nape and slid between her shoulder blade and the cushion of the sofa. He felt her rigidity, so instead of slipping the hand around to the front of her ribs, he moved it to her shoulder, then down the length of her arm to entwine Theresa’s fingers with his. He forced their joined hands up between his chest and her breasts, his forearm now pressing against one of the warm, generous orbs.
Brian thought of the hours he and Jeff had lain in their bunks and talked about this woman. He knew about the times she’d come home in tears over the teasing of some boy, as long ago as when she was only fourteen years old. He knew about the time Jeff had beaten one of her persecutors and been kicked out of school on probation. He knew about the time she’d gone to the high-school prom but came home in tears after her date had proved he was only after two handfuls of the most obvious thing. He knew why she hid in an elementary school where she had to deal mostly with children who were too young and innocent to care about her accursed size; and why she hid inside dark, unattractive clothes; and behind sweaters; and beneath the chin rest of a violin. He knew he was in a spot where, to the best of Jeff’s knowledge, no man had ever been allowed before. And he understood that by making the wrong move, he could cause her interminable hurt, and himself as well.
He sought to relax her with soothing endearments, all of them genuinely from the heart. “You smell better than any girl I’ve ever danced with.” He nuzzled her neck, stringing kisses along her jaw like pearls upon a waxed thread. “And you dance just the way I like a girl to dance.” He dropped a kiss on the corner of her mouth. “I love your music ... ” On her nose. “And your innocence ...” On her eye. “Your Nocturnes. On her temple. “And your long, beautiful fingers on the piano keys ...” He kissed five knuckles in turn. “And being with you at midnight on New Year’s Eve.” At last he kissed her mouth, lingering there to dip his tongue between her soft, innocent lips, to join her in a celebration of a new year, a new discovery, a new awareness of how right they seemed for each other.