by Pamela Morsi
If he was really going to do this, he could not allow himself one thought of his girlfriend back home.
A few minutes later she turned to look at him. From that glance, there was no danger of thinking of anyone else. It was as if she glowed from the inside. It was as if there were a radiance within her, so desperate to escape that it lit her up like a firefly.
Scott had to remind himself to breathe.
She smiled at him. There was so much in that slight curve of her dark pink lips. She was confident, sophisticated, worldly, physical.
Scott smiled back in an uncharacteristic act of bravery.
She’s out of your league, Scott, his inner voice warned him. You're a naive farm boy with little experience and none of it good. You don’t want to embarrass yourself.
He chose to heed his fears and turned to concentrate on the dancers on the floor. That worked until she was down there with them. Scott couldn’t take his eyes off her. She moved. She laughed. She flirted. And she was so sexy. Those long legs in those impossibly high heels, made that round butt in the tight black leather stand out like a sign blinking in neon. Do me! Do me!
He wanted to.
So, the inner voice prompted again, are you going to sit up here alone or go down there and try to get what you came for, before somebody else snaps it up.
He took a deep breath and then headed for the dance floor. He didn’t look left or right, but walked straight up to her.
“Oh... hi,” she said.
Her eyes were surprisingly shy. Shy, but at the same time audacious.
“I think you’re going to have to dance with me,” he said, almost daring her to reject him.
“Have to? Why would I have to?”
“Because you sparkle so brightly, I can’t even see anyone else.”
“Sparkle?” She thrust her chest at him, taunting him with her barely covered breasts. “They’re called sequins.”
That definition of plastic shimmer didn’t begin to explain the dazzle that she exuded.
He reached out to touch her then. Careful to only make contact with the flashy fabric rather than the flesh he feared might scald him. It was not an unfounded fear, he discovered. A fiery particle of static electricity visibly charged between them. It was so strange and unexpected Scott could only remark, “You don’t need sequins.”
“Be careful,” she teased him. “If you get too close you might get glitter all over you.”
It was a dare he could not, would not, ignore. He pulled her brusquely into his arms. As loud music pulsed all round them, what passed for dancing between the two was more of a hot embrace. Her body simply melted into his. It was the sensation that he’d waited for all his life, but had never experienced. This was how it was meant to be between a man and a woman. She filled all of the hard angles in his past with a balm that was both soothing sweetness and sizzling heat.
Warnings went off in his head. Don’t move too fast! Don't expect so much! Don't scare her off. All excellent advice gleaned over years of research, but he threw it out the window as he brought his mouth down to hers.
The touch of their lips brought the connection total.
It was never like this with...
His brain couldn’t even complete the thought. This was kissing as he’d thought it should be and he knew now that he had never been kissed before.
When they finally parted, he missed the contact so starkly, that he clutched her more tightly against his chest. He lowered his hands on her hips and she didn’t complain. He grasped her butt and lifted her slightly to press intimately against him. She moaned as if she liked it.
“This is so what I’ve needed,” he said to himself as much as her. His words seemed to be welcome. She wrapped her arms around his neck and wiggled against him.
“Don’t move too fast!” he warned himself again.
“There is no such thing as ‘too fast’ for me right now,” she whispered to him in a tone so thick with sensuality he could have slathered it on with a butter knife.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Hand-in-hand, they were practically running for the exit.
Outside in the night air, Scott sobered slightly. His body was urging him to back this girl against the nearest wall and take exactly what she was offering. But he’d had functional before. He knew what that was like. He knew about that kind of release. Tonight he wanted more. He wanted everything. He glanced over at her. In the garish neon of the bar’s flashing entrance, she looked even younger than she had inside.
“Are you twenty-one?” he asked her.
Surprisingly, she laughed. “Yesterday, I would have had to say no,” she answered. “But this is my birthday.”
“Happy birthday.”
She stepped up closer to him, her eyes narrowing enticingly. “I think you should give me a present. I’m hoping for something a little hotter than candles on a cake.”
She kissed him again and his body went into reverb over doing her standing up against the wall.
“Let’s walk,” he said, when their lips parted.
He took her hand and they started down the sidewalk. In fewer than ten paces, they stopped and kissed again.
Heart thumping, he clasped her hand once more and continued on down the avenue that led toward the beach.
The circuits in his brain appeared to be shorting out. He was incapable of coherent conversation. He heard himself saying, “You’re hot. You’re so hot.”
His thoughts ranged from Do her in the motel! Do her in the car! Do her on the beach! To the even less coherent urgings of Do her! Do her! Do her! Scott kept trying to recall even one of GQ’s Seven Steps to Sizzling Sex or any advice from The Performance Playbook from Men’s Health Monthly. He wanted to be anything but disappointing tonight. But he was completely on his own and the only help he could count on was his own sense that he wanted to make it good and make it last.
Conversation. Try conversation.
“I guess I should introduce myself. I’m...”
She reached up and set her fingers atop his lips. “We don’t need names or histories. Let’s just keep this exactly what it is.”
Scott wasn’t sure what that meant, but he loved the sound of her voice when she said it and the feel of her tongue on his after the words were gone.
They walked until they couldn’t bear the absence of touch. And then they embraced until it was necessary to walk in self-defense. The crowds were thick and the music pouring out of cars and clubs and stores was loud. Drunken celebrants of both genders weaved to and fro. And other couples like themselves paused at irregular intervals for a fresh kiss or fleeting fondle.
A little cloud of smoke poured out of the door of the hippy shop. Scott might have walked right past, but in the window, he spotted a headless mannequin wearing a peace symbol bikini thong and a dozen styles of nipple rings on her breasts.
He wrapped his arm around the waist of the gorgeous woman beside him and urged her inside.
“I want to buy you a birthday gift,” he said.
He showed her the nipple ring, already imagining having her slip off her top to try it on. Scott watched her eyes widen. The naive expression contrasted sharply with the sophisticated hottie that he already knew her to be.
“It’s a fake,” he assured her, demonstrating the hinge on one side. “I’m not asking you to get your nipple pierced.”
There was so much relief in her expression that he wondered vaguely what other men had asked of her.
That was when he spotted the belly chain. The glittering rope of rhinestones and metals was more gold paint than gilt, but it shined in the fluorescent lighting. A tiny pink heart-shaped stone hung down like a tassel and drew the gaze to the sexy regions below.
“This looks like you,” he told her.
“It’s pretty,” she agreed.
“May we try it on?” he asked the hippy. He took the man’s unconcerned shrug for permission.
Scott fiddled with the cheap latch before circling he
r waist with the chain. He secured the clasp and then lovingly ran his fingers along the metal, careful not to touch the warm, tanned flesh beneath it.
She stood so close to him that his hand trembled. Then she turned with a flirty sway to her hips and walked down the aisle and back modeling the potential acquisition.
Scott had not thought that she could be any sexier, but the cheap piece of chain hanging low on her waist somehow made his mouth go dry. The shimmering glint suited her. She truly did sparkle, and he began to think of her that way, as if it were her name.
She came to stand immediately in front of him, cocking one hip to the side to give him a better look.
“I think you have to have this,” Scott said.
She laughed. It was a great sound. Low and soft and full of warmth. It went straight to his heart.
“You don’t have to buy me anything,” she said.
“I want you to remember your twenty-first birthday,” he replied.
He paid the hippy, who put a premium price on the tawdry piece of shiny. Not unusual in a tourist trap.
It was worth the cash when she gave him a wonderful thank-you kiss as the cashier counted out change.
Outside they continued down the street. Walking, laughing, kissing as her birthday gift winked at him in the streetlights.
By the time they reached the space where his car was parked, the teasing was being replaced by urgency. He perched her on the hood and spread her thighs so he could stand between them. The tiny black leather skirt slid up easily. And she had almost nothing on underneath it. That knowledge had him groaning aloud.
Her hand was on the back of his neck, her teeth nipping at the skin on his throat. He rubbed the taut bulge in his jeans against her intimately.
It wasn’t close enough. He couldn’t get close enough. He slipped an arm under her right knee and raised her leg to his shoulder. That was better. It was only when he heard a couple of frat boys cheering from the sidewalk, that he realized how crazy it had gotten.
This end of the street was not as busy and was less well lit, but he was still practically having sex in public. He’d never lost his cool so much in his life.
He stepped back and set her on her feet. Her legs were a little unsteady.
“This is my car,” he said. “Get in.”
He felt her pull away. “No, no. Not in a car.”
Scott heard the trepidation in her voice. They were sobering up. That might not be a good thing.
“How about a birthday picnic on the beach?” he suggested.
He had a blanket in the trunk. They bought provisions in the corner store. He set his purchases on the counter. A huge magnum of cheap champagne, not truly chilled but a little bit cold. A pair of paper cups from the fountain. Not exactly crystal, but perfect for toasting. He had to pay as much as if they were actually filled with soda. A package of orange cream-filled cupcakes. And a box of birthday candles.
As the clerk totaled, his date tossed an item on top. Scott’s mouth went dry at the sight of the flat square packages.
“I have condoms,” he whispered.
She gave him a sexy smile and held her body in what was almost a pose. “These are glow-in-the-dark.”
The clerk was grinning at her so lewdly it was all Scott could do not to punch the guy in the mouth.
“Great,” he said to her. But managed to sneak the clerk a dark, dangerous scowl as he accepted his change.
Escaping the lights and the worst of the crowds, they made their way toward the sound of the surf slapping against the shore. In little over a block they crossed Gulf Boulevard and the sidewalk turned into a well-worn pathway. She leaned against him to remove her incredibly high heels as they walked up over the rise of the dunes to the vast expanse of white sand beach.
Their conversation was minimal. She’d made it clear that she didn’t want to know anything about him. And although he was incredibly curious, he didn’t want to threaten the mood with a twenty-questions interrogation. Besides, his brain kept replaying the image of those glow-in-the-dark condoms thrown on top of his purchases.
Scott spread out the blue-and-crimson blanket that he routinely carried to tailgate events upon an isolated spot in the sand. He popped the champagne and they toasted her twenty-first year. He put the birthday candies into the cupcakes, but the sea breeze made them nearly impossible to light.
They drank, they laughed, they kissed and stroked. The beach was not as public as the hood of his car. But it was not exactly private, either.
At one point a naked girl, laughing and shrieking, ran through the surf nearby with a jean-clad guy in hot pursuit.
Everything Scott had read about being a better lover, and he’d read virtually everything, had encouraged the need for taking it slow, doing plenty of chitchat amid sexy foreplay. This girl seemed all good with the foreplay, but he didn’t get the sense she wanted him to take his time, to make it great. Her eagerness nearly routed his intent. He was here to test the skills he had and learn what he could. But the last thing that he wanted was the kind of failure he’d become accustomed to.
He loved kissing her. There was something about her mouth, the way she opened for him, the way she pulled him in. He’d never thought much about kissing. It was just something that a guy did. Something that girls liked. Stephanie had not particularly liked it. But then, Stephanie had never kissed like this.
A moan escaped the woman beneath him. She clearly did like it. And if Scott didn’t hang on to his control a little better, he’d be banging her too fast, too soon.
He sat up. She made a tiny noise of complaint as he made an effort to control his breathing by staring off into the distance. He saw the shimmer out on the horizon.
“Look, the moon is coming up.”
He had seen it so many times across the wheat fields around his hometown. He had never viewed it across the water, but new experiences were what this night was all about.
At first, she didn’t seem that interested in sky gazing. But Scott encouraged it by positioning her between his thighs. This gave him two hands free to caress her. He freed her breasts from their glittery confinement of the bikini top and scooted her skirt up, so that it was not in the way of his exploration. He nipped at her throat and whispered into her ear.
She tried to turn to him, but he wouldn’t let her.
“Watch the moon,” he told her, as he gently rubbed one of her upright nipples between his thumb and finger. “Don’t close your eyes. Watch.”
Scott barely glanced at the sight himself. But he wanted this to be all her while he was still in control.
“It’s so huge,” she said.
He hoped she was referring to his aching erection that he pressed into the firm flesh of her booty. But in case she was not, he whispered astronomy facts in lieu of love words.
“It’s called the moon illusion,” he told her. “For a million years people thought that it was magnified somehow, that it really was bigger looking on the horizon than in the sky.”
He slipped a hand inside the scarce bit of red lace that she was wearing for panties. Her sharp little gasp let him know when he’d found her clit.
“We think the moon looks larger, but it’s not. It’s an optical illusion.”
He nipped the skin on her neck as he caressed her intimately. It’s not a doorbell, he reminded himself from a quote from a magazine. It’s Aladdin’s lamp.
“It’s just how we see things,” he continued. “Not as ordinary as they are, but as grand as we imagine them to be.”
He was not looking at the bright silver orb arising from the edge of the sea, but at the woman in his arms. She was just as beautiful in moonlight as she had been in houselights. She was whimpering. And she couldn’t seem to decide whether to clutch her thighs together to help his hand or spread them wider to give him more access.
Careful, careful, he admonished himself.
“That’s it. That’s it,” he encouraged her.
The sounds she made were all new
to him. They seemed hardly human and came from deep, deep inside her throat. She dug her heels into the sand. “You love it. You love it. Just let go.”
As the moon burst free of the horizon, a cry of ecstasy came from her throat. Scott couldn’t believe the clenching and grasping of flesh beneath his hand. He kept up the pressure until she was all done. When she collapsed in his arms, he cuddled her tenderly, feathered little kisses on her hair. He’d made it happen. He had done it. He wanted to shout it from the mountain-tops. All his second-guessing and self-doubt had vanished in a flash. Or rather in a pulsing, vibrating clench. The questioning, the study, the effort, was all worth it. He had made her come. And female orgasm, it was the greatest. Totally spectacular. He loved it. The only thing better would be coming himself.
“Let’s go.”
“Huh?”
He retrieved her bikini top from the sand and began to dress her.
“Let’s get out of here.”
She looked up at him, suddenly almost scared and shy. “Are... are we done?”
He couldn’t stop an incredulous laugh. “No, ma’am. I’m taking you to my room and I’m doing you until I’m dead.”
She was up on her feet immediately. “What should I carry?”
Twenty
349.2 Law of Specific Jurisdictions
The word came down that samples now being brought to the elevator were dry enough to cut, so from now until the wheat was threshed and in the silo, it would be an uphill sprint with no relief. Farmers had to get their crop in before it rained or hailed or blew or... Really, there were plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong. Wheat was the bulk of the local livelihood and if it wasn’t secured and stored soon, it could be a disaster.
As usual, the phrase of reassurance was on everyone’s lips: “Combines are on the way.”
The combine harvester was invented in the nineteenth century for efficient, mechanized production of grain crops. It got its name from the three functions it provided. It could reap, thresh and winnow in a single process, reducing the time required for field labor and lessening the risk of a weather event amid the course of action.
