One Summer (18 page)

“Rachel,” he whispered back. Even as she watched it, even as he leaned nearer and her arms flattened against his chest without even trying to hold him off, that beautiful masculine mouth came closer, blurred—then stopped, scant millimeters from her lips.

“Oh, God.” She couldn’t fight it. Couldn’t put up even a token resistance against the fierce tide of longing that swept her. Her lips, dry and hot, parted, sucking in the suddenly scorching air in ragged pants. Beneath the pink panties, her body quaked, wept.

“Last chance.” His words were low and thick, uttered as if he had trouble getting them out. He still leaned close, so close she could feel his breath against her mouth. But he didn’t kiss her. Rachel’s lids lifted, and of their own volition her eyes found his. His were hot, and dark, and wild, glittering with the promise of unspeakable deeds, unspeakable pleasures. Rachel could not look away as his hands slid down her lower back from her hips, down on either side of her spine to delve beneath the elastic edge of her underwear and close over her rump.

He held a cheek in each hand, palms flat, fingers spread, gently squeezing the soft, rounded flesh. Rachel thought she had never felt anything more erotic in her life than his hands on her bare behind.

His hands tightened, and he rubbed her against him, moving her back and forth over the bulge in his jeans so that the heat and the friction, separated from her quaking flesh by a single thin layer of nylon, drove her mad. Rachel gasped, her fingers digging into the front of his T-shirt, her back arching.

“You’re mine, teacher,” he muttered, on what almost sounded like a note of triumph, but Rachel was too far gone with lust to care. If he had tried to push her away from him then, she would have clung to him, whimpering with need.

Holding her against him, he shifted his position slightly so that when he eased her backward her spine was supported
by the couch behind her. He squeezed her bottom, then one hand came around, spread flat and burning hot against the quivering softness of her belly, to delve down into the hot wet darkness between her legs.

As his fingers caressed the crisp curls and tender mound and the cleft that pointed the way lower still, a funny little moan escaped her. Rachel heard the sound as if it had been made by someone else, someone she didn’t know, had never known. It was almost as if she were two people and could witness what was happening to her, even as her mind clouded over with passion and her body surrendered its will to a stronger, needier, greedier force.

In her mind’s eye she saw, as if from a neutral vantage point, what they must look like together: She was seated on his lap with bare knees spread wide on either side of his jean-clad hips, slender and petite, incongruously attired in a raspberry-pink T-shirt and a green golfing skirt that was pushed up to her waist. The hiked-up skirt and her semireclining position exposed her navel, and a belly with skin as smooth and white as vanilla icing—and a pair of pretty, lace-trimmed panties pulled down far enough to reveal the uppermost line of a triangle of dark auburn hair. Inside the panties, his swarthy, long-fingered hand, concealed from view by the pink nylon, stroked and explored.

A shocking picture. Especially if she added the flush that suffused her face with color, the wanting that turned her eyes from ordinary hazel to a luminosity as burning bright as a cat’s, the desire that parted her lips and arched her spine and made her quiver and squirm as he touched her where she wanted to be touched, where she had to be touched or die.

She saw him, too, his eyes hard and intent on her face, his mouth passionately aslant as he concentrated on her pleasure, on her need. The heat they generated between them hung in the air around them, setting more waves into his black hair, causing beads of sweat to pop out on his
forehead, adding its own sultry perfume to the light scent of white flowers that she always wore.

He was unshaven, uneducated, uncouth. She was meticulously well groomed down to the pink polish on her toenails, bared by her brown leather sandals. Everything about her, from her simple, chin-length bob to the discreet touches of taupe eyeshadow and rose lipstick, to the pristine delicacy of the expensive pink panties, spoke of money, and breeding, and the careful maintenance of a certain position in the world. Everything about him—the overlong hair, the muscles that bulged against the white T-shirt that was really no more than a Fruit of the Loom undershirt worn as outerwear, the too-tight jeans, the damn-your-eyes belligerence that he wore like a shield—shouted hardscrabble background, ex-con, dangerous.

He was Johnny Harris, and he had his hands in her pants. Rachel wouldn’t have changed anything about the situation for the world.

His hands left her panties suddenly to yank her T-shirt out of the waistband of her skirt and pull it over her head. Caught by surprise, Rachel instinctively clapped her hands over the cups of her lacy pink bra. Not from modesty but from embarrassment that he should see how skimpily she was endowed. A picture of Glenda Watkins’s ripe body flitted through her head, and a sudden fierce flare of jealousy made her shake her head at him as he reached around her back to undo the clasp.

“All right,” he said, surprisingly obliging. Even as Rachel wondered at it, his hands closed over her waist, and he was lifting her without any effort at all and then setting her down so that she perched clumsily on the edge of the couch. She fell backward at his gentle push, her hands dropping away from her breasts to break her fall, though it was only into the thick cushions of the old couch. Before she could reorient herself he was pulling her panties, which had gotten twisted around her upper thighs, down her legs, and tossing them aside.

“What …?” she started to ask, struggling up on one elbow. But she never finished, because the intentions about which she had meant to question him were abundantly clear. He knelt before her, right in front of her knees, which she had instinctively pressed together as she fell backward, and his eyes glittered briefly at her before they dropped to the thighs he began to caress.

“I used to sit in class,” he said in a raspy voice that she had to strain to hear. As he spoke he ran his hands up the tops of her thighs, under her skirt, which at least covered the most vital part of her anatomy again. “And wonder if you wore pantyhose or stockings beneath your skirt. I always liked to imagine you up there teaching in a black garter belt and black stockings and no panties.”

“You didn’t,” she said, shocked at the very idea.

“I did,” he answered, meeting her eyes. They smoldered, the smoky blue irises almost entirely overwhelmed by the black of his pupils. Rachel realized with a shaky sensation in the pit of her stomach that he spoke the absolute truth. The notion that she had figured in the teenage Johnny Harris’s sexual fantasies while she’d taught him was enough to make her quiver. He must have sensed her reaction, because his gaze shifted back to her legs and his hands slid together suddenly as he drew them down her inner thighs toward her knees. When he reached her knees, he grasped them, pulling her down so that her bottom was at the edge of the couch and separating her knees at the same time.

“Johnny …” Slightly breathless, embarrassed by this blatant opening of her body to him, Rachel whispered his name. But even to her own ears, it did not sound remotely like a protest. She could not have protested at that point if her life had depended on it. A throbbing, building excitement held her completely in thrall.

“I used to imagine doing this to you. I used to imagine how you’d look and taste, and what kind of sounds you’d make.”

“Oh, please.…” Rachel hardly knew what it was she asked for. His confession and the pictures it conjured up turned her muscles to mush. Eyes glazing over with desire, she watched and trembled as he pushed her skirt the rest of the way up again, baring her below the waist to her gaze and his own. His strong, long-fingered hands, bronze-skinned and sprinkled across the backs with black hair, made an incredibly erotic picture as they slid down over her stomach to rest, burning hot, on her inner thighs. The wanting they generated, and the unbearable anticipation, made Rachel draw in a deep, shaken breath. Johnny dipped his head and did what she had known he was going to do, what she wanted him to do and was on fire for him to do and was embarrassed for him to do all at the same time.

At the touch of his mouth she stiffened, gasped, then sank back against the cushions, her eyes closing, her fingers curling into the upholstery and clinging for dear life. He was gentle, so exquisitely gentle, his tongue scalding hot as it searched out the delicate nub and made its acquaintance in a way that sent tremors coursing through her whole body. When he had her mindless with excitement, her toes curling against the flat leather soles of her sandals and her bottom arching up off the couch, he put his tongue inside her, and that was the most mind-boggling act of all.

Her hands tangled in his hair, trying to pull his mouth away from her before she tumbled headlong into the bottomless black pit that yawned before her, but he would not stop. With a cry she lost the last vestige of control and fell in.

When she made it back up to the world again, it was to find that his mouth was still between her legs, his tongue still performing its intimate tricks upon her person. Sated now, the fierce hot lust having caught her up and exploded within her, leaving her wrung out, she was able to absorb more of what he was doing to her. At her vivid mental
image of the picture they must present, she blushed and tried to sit up and push him away and close her legs against him. The sandpaper roughness of his unshaven cheeks scratched her tender inner thighs as he refused to be dislodged.

“Oh, no,” he muttered, shooting her a brief, sensuous glance even as he caught her by her hips and held her in place for his tongue.

“But I—” she began, then broke off, her blush intensifying until it felt as if it must be suffusing her whole body as she contemplated and discarded various ways of telling him that, as far as she was concerned, there was no more need to continue.

“Came? I know,” he finished for her, the words thick and slightly breathless as he lifted his head away from her at last. Rachel heard the husky timbre of his voice, saw the fierce glitter in his eyes, the wetness of his mouth, the breadth of his shoulders, and the width of his chest wedged between her thighs, holding them apart, and she felt the slightest quickening. “Do you think I can’t tell? I want you to come again, and again, and again, for me.”

He caught her around the waist, pulling her down into his lap and turning with her so that she lay on her back on the beige carpet, her hands clinging to his shoulders, her legs spread as he knelt between her thighs. In her surprise, she forgot about her breasts, and before she could remember, he snaked a hand under her back, deftly unhooked the clasp, and removed her bra.

“Oh, don’t!” Instinctively Rachel covered her bareness with her hands, squirming to get away from him, but he would not let her go. He held her around the waist for a moment until she stopped wriggling, then turned his attention to her skirt, which was tangled around her waist. Except for that, and her sandals, and her hands over her breasts, Rachel realized that she was naked as a babe, while he was still fully clothed. Sudden embarrassment turned her cheeks as pink as the strawberries on her skirt.

“How does this damned thing come off?” He eyed her skirt with apparent bafflement while his hands felt vainly behind her for some sort of fastening.

“There’s a button—in the front.” Actually there were two, large, strawberry-shaped adornments on her waistband that she didn’t see how he could miss.

“Show me.”

Rachel reached down to comply—and realized that she had fallen into his trap even as his hands found the breasts she had left unguarded.

“No!” Her hands flew to catch his about the wrists, trying to tug them away. She was so small, scarcely more than an A cup, that his hands were almost flat as they covered her.

He let her pull his hands away, but then turned the tables on her by threading his fingers through hers and pinning them to the carpet. His eyes were on her, assessing the white swellings with their small pink nipples. Rachel almost cringed, so afraid was she that he would find her wanting,

“Shy, Rachel?” he asked, and the tender curve to his mouth made her heart turn over. Breathing suspended, she lay motionless as he bent to kiss first one stiffening nipple and then the other. The moist warmth of his mouth made her quiver, and her eyes shut of their own volition as he drew a nipple slowly into his mouth. Reaction shuddered through her. Small or not, her breasts possessed the full complement of nerve endings. Gasping, back arching with helpless pleasure, she once again gave herself into his care.

He bent over her, touching her only with his mouth on her breasts and his fingers entwined in hers, and she was as completely at his mercy as if he had tied her down. She lay spread-eagled beneath him, nothing of her hidden from his eyes or his mouth or his hands, once again so shaken with desire for him that she could deny him nothing. He touched her nipples with his tongue, sucked them,
bit them lightly until she was squirming with the sheer drowning wonder of it, until she was so shameless and needful of release that she was arching her body against the denim-covered iron of his legs.

“Ah, Rachel,” she heard him say, and then for the first time he lay upon her. She felt his weight crushing her into the soft carpet, and the abrasion of his clothes against her nakedness, and the rasp of his stubble against her smooth cheeks as he sought her mouth, and she dissolved once again into mindless pleasure even as she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him back soul-shattering kiss for soul-shattering kiss.

This time she had only a few seconds of relative lucidity in which to register clearer impressions. He was heavy, a whole lot bigger than she was, and quite amazingly strong. The concrete-hard bulge in his jeans was unyielding enough to hurt as he pressed it against her. The taste of whiskey, which she normally abhorred, was dazzlingly erotic on his lips and tongue. He kissed her with a voracious hunger, his tongue filling her mouth and claiming it and encouraging her to do the same to his. She did, abandoning a lifetime of inhibitions in an instant, clinging to his neck and wrapping her legs around his back and whimpering with impatience as he unzipped his jeans and freed himself at last and plunged into her. At the feel of him, huge and hard and hot and filling her to bursting, Rachel’s nails sank deep into his back, and she gasped. Then she couldn’t think at all, couldn’t do anything but feel as he rode her with wild abandon and she bucked and clawed and moaned like an animal in heat.