She studied him now as carefully as he studied her. “Brian, tell me something.” Her forearms were crossed atop her updrawn knees, and she picked at a thread of her knit sleeve, thoughtful for a moment, before turning to catch his eyes again. “Tonight at the dance you said that Felice reminded you of the groupies who hang around the stage and hope to ... to score with the guitar man after the dance. You said ...” She swallowed, amazed at her own temerity, but somehow finding herself unleashed in a new way. “Well, you said they were a dime a dozen, but that wasn’t what you wanted ...
tonight”
Again she swallowed, but he refused to help her along. He was going to make her voice her question if she wanted an answer. “Does that mean you’ve ... indulged with lots of girls like that ... on other nights?”
“Some.” The word was quiet, truthful.
“Then why ... I mean, I’m not ... experienced like those girls. Why would you want to be with me instead of them?”
He moved closer, his right elbow hooked on the back of the sofa, his hand gently stroking her arm. “Because bodies are not what love is about. Souls are.”
“Love?” Her eyes widened and met his in surprise.
“You don’t have to look so threatened by the word.”
“I’m not threatened by it.”
“Yes you are.”
“No I’m not.”
“If you fell in love, you’d have to face the inevitable sooner or later.”
“But I haven’t fallen in love, so I’m not threatened.” She’d had to deny it—after all, he hadn’t actually said he loved her.
“Fair enough. I answered your question, now you answer one of mine. And I want an honest answer.”
But she refused to agree until she knew what he was going to ask.
“Why did you go through all the trouble of buying new clothes, learning how to put on makeup and fingernail polish and going to the beauty shop before our date tonight?”
“I ... I thought it was time I learned.”
He smiled, a slow grin that appeared briefly, then was gone, replaced by his too-intense study. He moved nearer, until she had to lift her face to meet his eyes above her. “You’re a liar, Theresa Brubaker,” he stated in a disarmingly quiet tone. “And if you didn’t feel threatened, we wouldn’t have had the discussion we just had. But you’ve got nothing to fear from me.”
“Brian ...” Her breath caught in her throat as he moved unhesitatingly to encircle her in his arms.
“Put your damn knees down and quit hiding from me. I’m not Greg Palovich, all right?”
But she was too stunned to move. He wouldn’t! He wouldn’t! Not again. Her muscles were tensing tighter, and she’d just begun to tighten her hold around her knees when with one swift sweep of his hand, Brian knocked her feet off the edge of the davenport. His strong hands closed around her shoulders, and he jerked her forward with deadly accuracy, pulling her up against his chest with their arms around each other. “I’m getting damn sick of seeing you with your arms crossed over your chest. And I’m starting back at the beginning, where you should have started when you were fourteen. Let’s pretend that’s how old you are, and all I want is a good-night kiss from the girl I took to the dance.” Before Theresa’s astonishment could find voice, she was neatly enfolded against the strong, hard chest of the guitar man who’d had plenty of experience at seduction. His warm, moist, open mouth slanted across hers while one warm hand slipped up her neck and got lost in her hair. His tongue tutored hers in the ways of one far beyond fourteen years of age, slipping erotically to points of secrecy that started sensual urges coursing through her limbs and spearing down her belly. He lifted the pressure of his lips only enough to be heard while their tongues still touched. “I’m going to be so damn good for you, Theresa Brubaker. You’ll see. Now touch me the way you’ve been wanting to since we left the dance floor.” His tongue returned fully to her mouth, teasing, stroking hers with promises of delight. But he kept one arm around her ribs, the other hooked over the side of her neck, and his hands played only over her back, caressing it slowly but thoroughly while she let hers do the same upon him. Her hand wandered up his neck, to the soft, short hair that still retained the vestige of masculine toiletries she’d first smelled when she’d taken his cap. She thought of a line from the Newbury song: “Wandering from room to room, he’s turning on each light____” And it felt as if Brian was showing her the light, one small room at a time. Their kiss grew more intimate as he murmured wordless sounds of approval, and she wanted to respond in kind, to give voice to the new explosive feelings she was experiencing. But just at that moment, he pushed her back gently.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay, sweets? I can only be honorable up to a point.”
He got to his feet and tugged her along behind him. Looping a lazy arm around her shoulders, he sauntered with her to the stairway. There he stopped her just as she’d gained the first step. He stood on the floor so their eyes were now on the same level. In the deep shadows, his palms held her hips and he turned her to face him before he enclosed her in a warm embrace once again, found her lips for a last, lingering kiss, then turned her away with a soft, “Good night.”
Chapter Eight
THERESA AND BRIAN
were not alone long enough during that day to speak of anything that had happened the night before, or to exchange touches or insight as to what the other was thinking of all that had passed between them. It was a lazy day. They’d all been up late and took turns napping, sprawled in chairs, on floors before the New Year’s Day football games that flickered on the television screen or tucked into their own rooms. It seemed to take until nearly suppertime for everyone to come fully alive, and even then, it was a subdued group, for with only one more day before Brian and Jeff would be gone, they all felt an impending sense of loss.
The following morning, Theresa awakened shortly after dawn and lay staring at the pewter frog Brian had given her. She recalled everything that had happened between them since the first night when they’d sat side by side with his elbow pressing hers throughout that extremely sensuous love scene.
Who was she trying to fool? It had almost been predestined, this feeling she had for Brian Scanlon. She was falling in love with him, with a man two years her junior who admitted he’d had sexual encounters with any number of admiring fans. The idea that he was fully experienced and worldly made her feel inadequate and puerile. Again she wondered why he’d want an introverted, frightened virgin like her.
She was daunted by his physical beauty, for it seemed to dazzle when compared to her ordinary-to-homely features, making her believe he couldn’t possibly be attracted to her, as he’d said he was. How could he possibly be? With women like Felice fawning over him, pursuing him, eager to share more than just a bump-and-grind dance with him, why would Brian Scanlon possibly pursue Theresa Brubaker?
She sighed, closed her eyes and tried to imagine lying naked with him but found it impossible to picture herself in that context. She was too inhibited, too freckled, too redheaded to fit the part. She wished she were shaped like a pencil and had russet skin and sleek, auburn hair. She wished she’d found at least one boy or man sometime during her life who’d have been able to break through the barriers of self-consciousness to give her some sense of what to expect if she allowed Brian more sexual liberties.
The pewter frog sat on the shelf, caught in a still life, fiddling his silent note and smiling.
I’m like that frog. My life is like a silent note; I play, but I haven’t felt the music of the heart.
It was seven-thirty. She heard her parents leave for work, but the rest of the house was silent. She dragged herself from bed, dressed and made coffee, and still nobody else roused. Tomorrow Brian and Jeff would leave, and the house would seem abandoned. The mere thought of it filled her with loneliness. How would she make it from day to day when Brian was gone? How unfair that he should be snatched away just when they discovered their attraction for each other. She wandered to the bathroom, collected the dirty towels from the rack, hung up fresh ones, went to her room and added her own soiled laundry to the pile. She wondered how long she should wait before starting the washing machine to launder Jeff’s clothes so he could take them back clean and save a laundry bill.
They had been running free all week, the whole bunch of them, and nobody had bothered much with homemaking chores. The pile of dirty clothes at the bottom of the laundry chute would be mountainous.
She waited until ten o’clock before creeping down the basement stairs like a burglar, sneaking onto each tread, afraid the step would creak and awaken Brian, who lay on his belly with both arms flung up, his ear pressed to one biceps. She halted in her tracks, gazing across the dim room at his bare back, at the outline of his hips and legs beneath the green blanket. His right leg was extended, his left bent with the tip of its knee peeking from under the covers. The only men she’d ever seen in bed were her father and Jeff. But seeing Brian there, listening to the light snuffle of his regular breathing, had a decidedly sensual effect upon Theresa.
She clutched her armload of dirty laundry and tiptoed to the laundry-room door, turned the knob soundlessly and latched it behind her with equally little noise.
She sorted out six piles of colors, dropped the first stack into the machine and grimaced at how loud the selector dial sounded when she spun it to its starting position—the clicks erupted through the silence like a tommy gun. When she pushed the knob to start the water flowing, it sounded like Niagara Falls had just rerouted through the basement. Soap, softener, then she picked her way across the floor between hills of fabric and opened the door to the family room.
She had just managed to get it closed silently again when Brian—still on his belly—lifted his head, emitted a snort and scratched his nose with the back of one hand. She stood transfixed, watching the light from the sliding glass door find its way across the ridges of his shoulder blades and the individual ones of his spinal column to the spot where the sheet divided his body in half. He cleared his throat, lifted his head again and intuitively glanced back over his shoulder.
Theresa stood rooted to the spot, holding onto the doorknob behind her, feeling the blood raddle her cheeks at being discovered there, watching him awaken.
His hair was standing up at odd angles. His cheek and jaw wore the shadow of a night’s growth. His eyes were still swollen from sleep. “Good morning,” he managed in a voice raspy from disuse. The greeting was accompanied by a slow over-the-shoulder smile that drew up one side of his mouth engagingly. Lazily, he rolled over, crooking one arm behind his head, presenting an armpit shadowed by dark hair and a chest sprinkled with a liberal portion of the same.
“Good morning.” Her voice came out a whisper.
“What time is it?”
“After ten.” She flapped an apologetic palm at the laundry-room door. “I’m sorry I woke you up with the washer, but I wanted to get the laundry started.
Jeff’s clothes ... are ... he ...” To Theresa’s dismay the words chugged away into silence, and she stood staring at half of a naked man, one who made everything inside her body go as watery as the sounds emanating from the other side of the wall.
“Come here.” He didn’t move; nothing more than the beguiling lips formed the invitation. His right arm cradled the back of his head. His left lay flat on his belly, the thumb resting in his navel, which was exposed above the blanket. One knee was straight, the other one bent so that its outline formed a triangle beneath the blankets. “Come here, Theresa,” he repeated, more softly than before, lifting a hand toward her.
Her startled expression warned him she’d dreamed up an excuse, even before she began to voice it. “I have to—”
“Come.” He rolled to one hip, and for a horrifying moment she thought he was going to get up and come to get her. But he only braced up one elbow and extended a hand, palm up.
She wiped her own palms on her thighs and advanced slowly across the room but stopped two feet from the edge of his mattress. His hand remained open, waiting. Upon it she could see the calluses on each of its four fingertips from playing the guitar. He had very, very long fingers. And he slept with his watch on.
It was so still just then she thought she could hear its electronic hum.
He moved himself up just high enough and strained forward across the remaining two feet to capture her hand and drag her toward him. Her kneecaps struck the frame of the bed, and she toppled down, twisting at the last minute to land half on one hip but coming to rest at an awkward angle, half across his bare chest.
“Good morning.” His smile was thorough, teasing and warmed places inside Theresa that she’d never realized hadn’t known complete warmth before. He slipped one arm between her and the mattress and rolled to his hip facing her, managing to maneuver her stomach flush against his. She recalled in bemused fascination that she’d read that men often wake up fully aroused, but she was too ignorant to know if it was true of Brian this morning. He brushed her cheek with the backs of his knuckles, and his voice was charmingly gruff. “I find it hard to believe there’s one woman left in this world who still blushes at age twenty-five.” He dipped his head to touch her lips with a nibbling kiss. “And you know what?” He ran the tip of an exploring index finger across the juncture of her lips, causing them to fall open as she caught a breath in her throat. “Some day I’m going to see you wearing only that.” He dipped his head again, but when their mouths joined, he rolled her over on her back and lay half across her body. His back was warm, firm, and beneath her palm she felt each taut muscle across his shoulders, then explored his ribs, like a warm, living vibraphone upon which her fingers played.
His naked chest was pressed against her breasts, flattening them in a way that felt wholly wonderful. She was wearing a thick wool hunter’s shirt of gold and black squares, buttoned up the front, its deep tails flapping loose about her hips, which were squeezed tightly into a pair of washed-out denim Levi’s. The shirt left her totally accessible—she realized that just as his weight bore down on her, and he lifted one knee across her thighs, rubbing up and down repeatedly, slowly inching higher until the inner bend of knee softly chafed the feminine mound at the juncture of her legs. Still kissing her, he found the arm with which she was protecting her breast and forced it up over his shoulder. Then his hand skimmed down the scratchy wool shirt, up under its tails and onto the bare band of skin between her jeans and bra. He drew a valentine on her ribs, then cupped her breast with unyielding authority, pushing on it so hard it caused a queer but welcome ache in the hollow of her throat. She felt the nerves begin to jump deep in her stomach, but controlled the urge to fight him off. The caress was brief, almost as if he was testing her, telling her, get used to it, try it, just this much, a little at a time. But, to Theresa’s surprise, when his fingers left her breast, they skimmed straight down the center of her belly, along the hard zipper of her jeans and cupped the very warm, throbbing spot at the base of the zipper. Within the constricting blue denim her flesh immediately responded with a heat so awesome it caught her by surprise. She sucked in a quick, delighted breath, and her eyelids slammed closed. Her back arched up off the mattress and fire shot from the spot he caressed down to her toes. He clutched her with a hard, forceful palm, pushing upward until she was certain he could feel the pulsebeat throbbing through the hard, flat-felled seams of the Levi’s. He stroked her through the tight, binding denim—once, twice, almost as if marking her with his stamp of possession.