Butternut Summer (35 page)

He finished unbuttoning her buttons, and then he stopped kissing her and looked down at the bra peeking out of her open blouse. Daisy squirmed a little, feeling newly self-conscious in the brightly lit kitchen.

But Will smiled and murmured appreciatively, “You wore it.” She had on the same shimmery, lilac-colored bra she'd worn that night in his pickup.

“I did wear it,” she said, and then she laughed. “I swear, Will,” she said, “you look like a kid on Christmas morning.”

“I
feel
like a kid on Christmas morning,” he said, kissing her again. “I'm just wondering, though, is your bra, is it . . . you know, part of a set?”

Smart boy
, she thought. But she didn't want to spoil the surprise for him, so instead she smiled and said, with a little surge of bravery, “Why don't you take me to the bed and find out?”

W
hen Will woke up the next morning, Daisy was asleep in his arms, her head resting on his chest, her breath tickling his bare skin. He lay there for a moment, getting his bearings, and then he gently disentangled himself from her and slid out of bed. He winced as his bare feet touched the cabin's cold floor, and he almost got back into bed to take refuge against Daisy's warm body. But he didn't.

He didn't because he knew if he did, he'd wake her up. He knew, too, he needed to be alone right now; he needed to think. So he groped around on the floor for his blue jeans and pulled them on. Then he went into the kitchen, let himself out of the cabin's back door, and went down the steps that led to the lake. He paused there for a moment when he reached the dock, struck by the almost surreal beauty of the scene. The sun hadn't risen yet, but there was the faintest blush of pink in the eastern sky, while a cottony white mist hung over the gray, glasslike surface of the water.

He walked out to the end of the dock and sat down, dangling his feet over the side. He shivered a little as the chilly air bit into his bare chest. But it felt good, bracing. So he stayed where he was, enjoying the almost eerie quiet of the morning and thinking about what had happened the night before. They'd made love twice before going to sleep, and in spite of her nervousness that he would see her naked, and his that her first time wouldn't be perfect for her, it had still been everything he'd expected it to be. Then sometime during the night, Daisy woke him up.

“What is it?” he asked, reaching for her. He was surprised to discover how much the temperature had dropped. “Are you cold, Daisy?” he asked. “Do you want me to get another blanket?”

“No,” she said, coming into his arms. “I'm not cold, Will. I want you. Again.
Now
.”

“
Oh, Daisy
,” he groaned, indescribably aroused by her words, and by her naked, pliant body beside his. “I want you, too.”

“Hurry,” she said. And he'd entered her, immediately, amazed by how ready she was for him. They'd started to make love with a new sense of urgency, and with a deep, raw need for each other that finally stripped away his nervousness and her self-consciousness and laid them both completely bare. Daisy moved with him, hesitantly at first, but then with increasing confidence, until her movements were perfectly synchronized with his. And Will held on to her as if he were holding on for his life, anchoring himself against her, bracing himself as they moved together, faster and then slower and then faster again, in some rhythm they had both instinctively agreed on, until finally, she arched her back, and tilted her head back, and cried out into the darkness, and almost simultaneously, he buried his face in the softness at the hollow of her neck and said her name, or something close to her name, anyway.

Afterward, they didn't say anything; they didn't need to. Will held Daisy, stroking her back and waiting for her ragged breathing, and her pounding heart, to slow down. When they did, when she sighed a deep, contented sigh and drifted off to sleep, her hair tumbling across his chest, Will lay there in the dark and felt more alive than he'd ever felt before. And in that moment he realized that what he and Daisy had done was make love. Now, for the first time, he knew the difference between having sex and making love. It had almost made him laugh, too, because when it came to making love, it turned out that he'd been as much of a virgin as Daisy had been.

Now, sitting on the dock, he wondered if it was possible that all those years ago, when he'd watched Daisy play volleyball, he'd known that no matter how different the two of them might seem to be separately, together they would fit together perfectly.

But an unsettling thought intruded now: he and Daisy were going to be separated from each other soon. He'd always known she'd be leaving to go back to college, but now he knew
he
would be leaving, too. He couldn't imagine, though, what it would be like for the two of them to be apart.
Far apart
. He needed to talk to her about it, but he just hadn't found the right moment. Still, he couldn't keep putting it off . . .

“Will?”

He turned around in time to see her coming down the dock, wrapped, towel style, in a bedsheet, a bemused expression on her face.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked, coming to stand beside him.

“I didn't want to wake you up,” he said, reaching for her hand.

“I wouldn't have minded,” she said, with a shy smile, gathering the sheet around her and sitting down beside him on the dock.

“I'll remember that next time,” Will said, leaning over and kissing her gently on the lips. And then he pulled away from her and studied her thoughtfully.

“Are you blushing, Daisy?” he asked.

“Maybe a little,” she said, blushing even more deeply.

“Why?”

“I was thinking about last night,” she admitted. “I mean, the middle-of-the-night part of last night.”

He smiled. “That was pretty amazing, wasn't it?” he said.

“I thought so,” she said softly, looking down at the water as she dipped her pretty toes tentatively into it.

He studied her face again, then asked, “Do you always look so pretty in the morning?”

“Well, I've never thought so,” she said, smiling. “But I've never had a night like last night before, so maybe I look different this morning.”

He smiled back at her and ran a hand through her tousled strawberry-blond hair. Then he lowered her down onto the dock and lay down beside her.

She smiled and, turning on her side to face him, propped herself up on her elbow. “You know, Will,” she said, “we don't have to leave for a couple more hours.”

“I know,” he said, playing with her hair again. “I was thinking we could play one of those board games now. Monopoly, maybe. Or Clue.”

Daisy suppressed a smile. “Is that what you want to do, Will?”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Because I was thinking maybe we could do something else,” she said, and with that, she peeled open the sheet and flung it onto the dock beside her. Will swallowed, hard, letting his eyes travel over her. “You are so beautiful,” he breathed, unable to take his eyes away from her, and in that instant, he wanted her so badly he felt almost paralyzed by desire.

“You know, Will, you can touch me if you want to,” she said, smiling mischievously.

He shook his head. “I can't,” he said, still not taking his eyes off her.

She laughed. “Need a little help?”

He nodded.

She took his hand in hers and drew it to her body, then used his index finger to trace a line that ran down her buttermilk smooth skin, from the hollow at the bottom of her neck to her navel. But then she shivered violently and, dropping his hand, wriggled so that she was against him, her bare breasts pressing against his bare chest. Will moaned and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him and digging his body into her body. She wrapped the sheet around both of them then, closing them together inside of its cotton folds. And when Will bent to kiss her, and she opened her mouth to his, she tasted as sweet as the morning air.

D
aisy, are you feeling all right?” Will asked, looking over at her as they drove back to Butternut later that morning.

“I'm fine. Why?”

“You look . . . you look kind of flushed,” he said, glancing over at her again.

“I'm a little warm,” she lied, opening her window.

“Do you want me to turn on the air-conditioning?”

She shook her head. “No, the fresh air's nice.” But Will still looked worried. So she smiled what she hoped was a reassuring smile and turned to look out the window, so he couldn't see her face anymore. She'd been trying, all morning, to ignore how much pain she was in, but she couldn't ignore it anymore. So now, she'd settled for trying to hide it from him instead.

It had started several hours ago. After she and Will had come up from the dock, they'd gone back to bed and made love again. Twice. Afterward, Will had fallen asleep, and Daisy, tired but too full of the blissful sensations of their lovemaking to sleep herself, had watched Will sleep instead. It had never occurred to her before that watching someone sleep could be interesting. But watching Will sleep was; in fact, watching Will sleep was fascinating. She could have done it all day. She loved the way his dark eyelashes looked against his suntanned skin, the way his bare chest rose and fell to the rhythm of his breathing, and the way his mouth, which had so recently been kissing her mouth, managed to look both sensual and masculine at the same time.

Thinking about that, she'd put out an exploratory hand and skimmed it, lightly, down his bare chest. He'd stirred, but he hadn't woken up. So she'd let him sleep, partly because she figured he'd earned it, and partly because it was about that time that she began to feel a dull, aching sensation, right around her navel. She paid no attention to it at first. But as the minutes ticked by, the pain migrated down, and to the right, and sharpened, so that by the time Will woke up a few hours later, with the morning sun streaming in through the cabin's windows, the pain had progressed from mildly annoying to just plain worrying.

But she hadn't told Will about it. She hadn't wanted to spoil his good mood. And he was in
such
a good mood. The moment he woke up, he reached for her, nuzzling her and kissing her, and Daisy had known he'd wanted to make love again, but she was in too much pain by then, so she'd reminded him that they needed to be getting back. Still, his good mood persisted, and as they showered, had breakfast, and tidied up the cabin, he was affectionate and sweet, teasing and touching her at every opportunity. Were all men in this good of a mood after sex? Daisy had wondered. But then it occurred to her that she would have been in a good mood too if she hadn't otherwise been so miserable.

Now, sitting in the passenger seat of his truck, she stole a look at him. He was smiling, and humming along to the radio, something she'd never heard him do before.

“We'll be back soon,” he said when he noticed her watching him, and he reached over and put a hand on her knee. “You sure you're feeling all right?” he asked again.

“I'm sure. I'm just . . . I'm just tired,” she said. “Tired in a good way,” she added quickly.

“Are you going to be able to get some rest today?” he asked, concerned

“I think so,” she said, forcing another smile.

“Good,” he said, giving her knee a final squeeze before he took his hand away, and Daisy found that even through her pain, she missed his touch, missed the warmth of his hand through the fabric of her blue jeans. She shifted around a little then, trying to find a more comfortable position, but she couldn't. Nothing felt right;
she
didn't feel right. She almost told Will then about how she felt, but he started humming along to a song on the radio again and she found that she couldn't.

So she gritted her teeth and tried, somehow, to tolerate the pain, the pain that was getting harder to manage with each passing minute.

What is wrong with me
, she wondered, tamping down a rising sense of panic and trying to evaluate the situation calmly.
I probably just have the flu
, she told herself.
As soon as I get home, I'll crawl into bed and stay there for a couple of days. And I'll be fine
. But it didn't really feel like the flu.
So maybe I have food poisoning
, she reasoned.
I've had that before. It's no big deal. It's inconvenient, but not fatal
. There was a problem with the food poisoning theory though. She and Will had both had the same dinner last night, and Will was fine. Better than fine, she decided, stealing another sideways glance at him. He was positively exuding good health.

So Daisy considered the possibility that something else was wrong with her, something having to do with, well . . . with all the sex they'd had: twice before they'd gone to sleep last night, once during the night, and twice this morning. She hadn't even known it was
possible
to have that much sex in so little time. She'd assumed that men at least had some kind of inherent limitation built in to how often they could make love. But that wasn't true, obviously, because Will seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of sexual stamina. Or maybe, she thought, Will wasn't like most men; maybe he was superior in this way. And thinking about the way he'd touched her, the way his hands and his mouth had traveled over her body, it was almost possible to believe this was true.

But still, she kept coming back to this question. Was it possible to have too much sex? And, if so, was that what was causing the pain she felt now? But she decided, finally, that it wasn't, that it couldn't be. After all, Daisy hadn't just paid attention in sex education class, she'd taken notes. And what was it one of her college professors had said in a biology class? He'd said the human body was designed for sex. In her and Will's case, obviously, lots and lots and lots of sex. So whatever was wrong with her, then, was something else—something that was getting scarier by the minute.