Breath of Scandal (16 page)

Then Debra rushed in, five minutes late, blond hair windblown, checks rosy with embarrassment, apologetic for not being able to locate the classroom, and breathless from the exertion of running up two flights of stairs.

Dillon fell in love and lust instantly.

After class, he elbowed his way through the other students in pursuit of the one who had changed his mind about a schedule change. "Hi," he said, failing into step beside Debra Newberry. He had memorized her name when she gave it to the professor, who had been peeved over her interruption.

She looked up at Dillon with eyes the color of the Caribbean. "Hi. "

"Do you belong to anybody?"

They had reached the stairs. She stopped and turned to

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face him. "Excuse me?" Propelling her backward so they wouldn't cause a bottleneck, Dillon repeated his question. "I belong to myself," she replied in a manner that would have made Gloria Steinem proud.

"No steady boyfriend, husband, or significant other?" "No. Although I can't see what business that is of yours. "

"I was getting to that. Would you like to go to bed with me?"

"I don't know. Would IT'

She could have ignored him and simply marched downstairs. She could have gotten mad and slapped his face. She could have taken affront and given him a lecture on sexism. instead, her reaction was just what he had hoped for-short of total capitulation, of course. She had turned the joke on him. He had asked the question with such an engaging grin that she couldn't possibly have taken offense.

With very few exceptions, women liked his looks - Dillon modestly acknowledged this because, after all, he had had nothing to do with his handsome face. Genetics was responsible. He had always taken his hazel eyes for granted, but women seemed to think that the gold flecks in them were unusual and intriguing. They claimed to envy his long black eyelashes and the way his brown hair got sun-streaked in the summer.

When Debra gave him a once-over, for the first time in recent memory Dillon really cared what a woman thought of his looks. Apparently she found them pleasing and worth flirting with. Instead of going to bed, they settled on having coffee together and were almost finished with their second cups before she got around to asking him his name. From the beginning, it hadn't mattered.

It was Thanksgiving Day before they went to bed together. They had been seeing each other exclusively, their dates usually ending with steamy necking and manual stimulation. With tremendous self-control, Dillon had restrained himself from even asking for more.

That afternoon, following an enormous Thanksgiving feast, they were in the Newberrys' kitchen cleaning up when

Debra said, "Dillon, let's make love," fie wasted no time in hustling her out of the house, which was crowded with kinfolk, and drove her to the nearest motel.         he whis"You should have told me you were a virgin,"

pered afterward.

Seeing the uncertainty on his face, she nestled closer to him. "I didn't want you to think I was a freak.

"You know what this means, don't you?"

. "That you won't respect me in the morning?" she asked impishly.

"No. It means we've got to get married." "I was hoping you'd say that."

They postp6ned it for seven months, so that they could graduate first and because Debra had always dreamed of having a traditional June wedding. Besides, it took that long to make arrangements for a five-hundred-guests affair.

Now that the pomp of the ceremony was over, Dillon swept his bride into his arms and carried her to the bed, laying her down gently. "Don't you want me to take this off?" she asked, touching the front of her nightgown.

"Not yet. You probably paid a fortune for it. You should get to wear it longer than forty-five seconds. Besides," he added, "I like the way it feels."

He skimmed his hand over her belly as he kissed her receptive mouth. Beneath his large hands, she felt like a doll with movable parts that were always willing to be positioned just so. He never took advantage of her eagerness to please, and he was always careful not to hurt her. He was mindful not to press too hard now as his hands sandwiched her narrow ribcage and pulled her belly up against his face. He kissed it through the slithering fabric.

"Hmm," she moaned when he laid her back against the pillows. "Love me now, Dillon."

"I am." Though his erection was so full it was painful, he didn't want their first lovemaking as man and wife to be hasty and unremarkable. He had waited all his life to feel a oneness with another person. Debra was that person. The occasion must be solemnized properly.

Aligning his fingers with her ribs, he used his thumbs to

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stroke the undercurves of her breasts, then whisked their small centers. The silk layer between his flesh and hers only heightened the pleasure he derived from the caress and the degree of her response.

Reacting to her whispered appeal, he scooped one breast from her loose neckline and took the nipple between his lips. He sucked it rhythmically, then worked erotic magic with his tongue.

"Dillon, please

His hand slid into the vee of her thighs. She angled her hips upward and rubbed her mound against the heel of his hand. He probably could have withstood that if she hadn't unfastened his trousers and freed his erection. "Christ," he hissed as she rolled the ball of her thumb over the sensitive tip.

As a result, the consummation of their marriage took place with him still in his tuxedo trousers and her in her negligee. It wasn't until afterward that they lay naked, entwined on the wide bed, their desire only momentarily sated.

"I have the most beautiful husband in the whole world." Debra was sprawled across his chest, caressing it with her open mouth and nuzzling her nose in the springy hair.

"Beautiful?" he said skepticaffy. "Hardly." Stubbornly she shook her head. "Beautiful." She kissed one of his nipples and laughed when he grunted with pleasure.

"I've corrupted you. Before you met me, you were a nice girl," he teased.

"That was before I knew what I was missing-"

Once she had accepted his marriage proposal, Dillon allowed himself to believe that she might truly love him, though she had professed it countless times. It was too good a fortune to befall him. He didn't deserve someone as beautiful and unspoiled as Debra Newberry. He hadn't earned the unqualified acceptance of her family. His distress over it had eventually sparked an argument.

In the middle of the quarrel, Debra had demanded, "What terrible secret are you afraid I'll discover that'll make me stop loving vou?"

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"I've got a record," he had blurted. "Do you think your parents will want a son-in-law who's done time?"

"I won't know what to think until you tell me about it, Dillon. "

His parents had been killed when he was eight years old. "They were on their way to pick me up from summer camp. It was one of those freak highway accidents. A trailer truck jackknifed. Their car ran under it."

Because there was no one else to take him, he had been placed in the custody of his father's mother. "Granny Burke did her best, but I was an angry kid. Up till the time my mom and dad were killed, everything was okay. Dad was a good provid6r. Mom was attentive and loving. It didn't seem fair to them or to me that they should be killed.

"I started making trouble at school. My grades went to hell. I resented Granny for trying to take my parents' place, although, in hindsight, I realize what a tremendous burden I was to her at that time in her life. Eventually, I realized that this was the fate I'd drawn and that I had just as well make the best of it. For a few years, everything was fine.

"Then, when I was fourteen, Granny got sick. She had to go to the hospital. When I asked how serious her illness was, the doctors gave me a lot of bullshit about trusting in God's will. That's when I realized that my grandmother was going to die, too. To her credit, she told it to me straight, 'I'm sorry to leave you alone, Dillon,' she said, 'but it's out of my hands.'

"After she died I was placed in a foster home. I hated it. There were five kids besides me. I kept hearing about a war in a place called Vietnam, but it couldn't have been anything like the fighting that went on in that house, especially between the couple. I saw him hit her more than a few times.

"The day I turned sixteen, I split. I figured that living On my own would be better than staying in the foster home. There was supposed to be a trust fund waiting for me, but I Was given the runaround about that until I figured that someone, probably the foster parents, had gotten hold of it. I considered that nothing more than a minor setback. I was

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certain I could make it on my own, but of course I couldn't-not without     stealing to keep myself from starving.

"Eventually I got busted and was sent to a 'farm for troubled boys,' which is a euphemism for jail. From the day I got there, I devised plans to escape. I tried it twice. The second time, one of the guidance counselors beat the crap out of me. "

"How dreadful," Debra murmured sympathetically. Dillon gave her a grim, lopsided grin. "At first I thought so, too. Later, he explained that before anything he had to say could sink in, he had to get my undivided attention.

"He told me that I had been dealt a pretty shitty hand all right, but that how I played the cards was up to me. I could either continue getting into trouble until I ended up in prison for life, or I could turn things around and start making circumstances work in my favor."

"Obviously you took his advice."

"I earned my high school diploma in that place. When I got out, he arranged a job for me at the public utilities company, drafting schematics and such. It paid for my college tuition and lodging. You know the rest. "

Debra gazed at him with mild annoyance. "That's it? That's the extent of your sordid, secretive past?"

'41sn't it enough?"

"Dillon, you were a child. You made a few mistakes." He shook his head stubbornly. "I haven't been a child since I was eight years old and learned that my parents had been decapitated. Since then I've been accountable for everything I've done."

"Okay, so some of your mistakes were more serious than standard and the consequences of them more severe. Don't be so hard on yourself. You've risen above the errors of your youth. I'd like to meet that counselor and personally thank him for setting you straight."

"I wish you could meet him, too. Unfortunately, shortly after I left, another kid knifed him during a counseling session, then stood by and watched while he bled to death.

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So," he had summarized, "I don't have anybody to invite to this fancy wedding your mother is planning. "

"You'll be there," Debra had said as she embraced him. "And since you make me so happy, that's all that matters to my family."

The Newberrys were old residents of an affluent community. Her parents came from large families. Debra had three brothers and two sisters. All but one of her sisters were married, so there was an army of aunts, uncles, and cousins at any family gathering.

Dillon had been welcomed into the fold by all of them. Initially, he had been aloof. It was a defense mechanism. He was afraid that if he acknowledged their acceptance, he would somehow jinx it, just as he had been afraid to accept Debra's unqualified love.

But now, as they Jay together in the peaceful aftermath of marital lovemaking, Dillon granted himself the luxury of basking in his good fortune. He had earned the college degree that was going to open doors of opportunity for him. He was part of a large and loving family, which Was something he had never had before. His bride was smart and sweet, funny and sexy.

He clasped handfuls of her hair and lifted her head off his chest, turning her face up to his. "You'd better stop that nibbling."

"Don't you like it?"

"I like it so much you might get more than you bargained for. "

"Impossible." Smiling, she lowered her lips to his belly and kissed it. "Dillon?"

"Hmm?" "Teach me how to, you know, uh, make love to you with my mouth."

His eyes, which had been drowsily half-closed, sprang open. Except for the time he had spent in the correctional institution, Dillon had always taken the availability of sex for granted. From the very first time, it had always come to him.

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One morning during summer vacation from junior high school, Dillon had answered the knock on his grandmother's back door.

Mrs. Chandler, their next door neighbor, was young and vivacious. She had big eyes, big breasts, and long legs, which she often showed off by wearing short shorts that separated and defined her cleft and bottom. Her husband drove a truck for the Safeway chain and was away from home more often than not. Boredom kept her a frequent visitor of the Burkes.

"Hi, Dillon. Is your grandma home?"

She knew damned well that his grandmother wasn't at home because her car wasn't in the driveway. Dillon, with thirteen-year-old recalcitrance, was tempted to point that out. But that would have been rude, and his grandmother had taught him some manners. He said, "Granny went to the store."

"Oh, dear." Mrs. Chandler distressfully batted her   s eyelashes. "She told me to stop by and get those coupon she clipped for me. Do you know what she did with them?" "They're on the hall table."

"Could I get them now, please? I was just about to go to the store myself when I remembered I didn't have them." Dillon read through that lie, too. She wasn't dressed for

grocery shopping. She was outfitted for seduction. Out of curiosity, he pushed open the screen door. She bounced in. He made no move toward the hall table.

Instead, he stood facing Mrs. Chandler. He was already taller than she. She commented on his height as she ran her hands up his bare arms and across his muscled but hairless chest. It wasn't fully developed, but it was showing tremendous promise.