Judy Gill

by Golden Swan [LS-377] (epub)

  His weight came down onto her, and her legs parted to make a secure place for him. Lifting against him, she murmured, "Please, please . . ."

  "What do you want me to do?" he asked, his face buried between her breasts, his voice a vibrant tone she felt as much as heard. "What will make it the best for you it's ever been?"

  "Cal, please, I ache so," she sobbed, but he only lifted himself on rigid arms and held her gaze, his eyes so dark with passion they appeared black. She saw herself reflected in them and thought how strange it was she had never seen herself that way before. It made her feel complete for the first time in her life, part of a circle, half of a pair, and she wondered if he felt the same, seeing himself in her eyes.

  "What do you ache for?" he asked, flexing his body so that his hips rocked against hers. "What do you want? Tell me, love, so I can give it to you just the way you want it."

  "I . . ." I can't, she had been about to say, but she knew she had to tell him, even though it would be the hardest thing she had ever done. But this was Cal, and he was going to make love to her—he was making love to her—and she was making love to him. So if she didn't say the words, maybe he wouldn't know how much she needed again what he'd just done, and she knew she would die if it didn't happen soon.

  "Kiss me some more," she whispered, feeling heat rise up over her chest and her face, and praying he wouldn't notice that she was blushing like a schoolgirl. "On my nipples. Like you did before. Fill your hands and mouth with me."

  "Oh, yes!" he said, then dipped his head to capture one hard nipple, pulling it fully into his mouth as his hand rubbed over its mate. She thought she would explode as she felt the tip of his tongue, hot and wet and rough, flicking at her nipple. Why hadn't she known it would be like this? Why hadn't she believed? Why had she waited so long?

  "Like that?" he asked after a while, lifting his head and looking into her face. He saw joy and anguish and wonder all mingled together as she gasped for breath and stared at him, bemused. "Is that what you like, love?"

  "I like it. Oh, yes!" She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. She did like it! She loved it! B.J. clung to his shoulders as her legs lifted and wrapped around his middle, drawing his hard shape closer, her entire body aflame with a kind of need she had never fully known before. And if she liked that. . .

  "What else?" he asked, rolling to one side and sliding a hand down between her thighs, cupping the throbbing mound there once more, moving with her motions, complementing them until she thought she would melt, or fly away, or fall apart, or scream. . . .

  "I think we have too many clothes on," she moaned, and he laughed against her neck.

  "You're right, love. You're so right." He undid the button at her waist, slid her zipper down and then her pants, tugging them off until they fell from her ankles. "Lift up again," he said, his mouth on her quivering belly.

  She shook her head. "You . . . have too much on, too."

  "Not for long," he said. "But you come first. Then I can look at you while I undress. Lift."

  He looked while he stood over her, dragging his shirt the rest of the way off and dropping it onto the floor. He looked as he slowly unsnapped his pants, Just as slowly lowered the zipper, and B.J. felt herself go rosy all over under his avid gaze. She wanted to roll onto her side and hide herself. She wanted to cover her breasts with one arm and her lower body with the other hand. But even more than that, she wanted him to go on looking at her the way he was. And she wanted to see him.

  "Take . . . them off," she said when he still hesitated, his clenched fists on the waistband of his pants.

  He smiled and did as she asked, dragging down his underwear at the same time, then peeling off his socks in the same motion. He moved toward her and she held up a hand.

  "No. Stay there." And as he had feasted his eyes, so did she. Slowly, she sat up and reached out a hand toward him, running it down his chest, over his stomach, her fingertips light as they traced the line of hair, explored his navel, feathered over the thicker, darker hair lower down, and then brushed over his rigid manhood.

  He stiffened, just barely clinging to his control, but when her hand encircled his shaft, he groaned and joined her on the bed. His hand stroked over her breasts, then across her abdomen to cover the tight, curly hair between her legs as his mouth made little forays from her lips, to her throat, to her ear. Nibbling on her lobe, he whispered, "Tell me what else makes you feel good."

  She moved under his hand, hoping that would indicate to him what she wanted. But he was waiting, his head lifted, looking at her, and her body was burning and there was no way out. Her laughter held something like tears, and she couldn't quite meet his gaze as she forced herself to say, "I don't know how to tell you. Or what to tell you. I'm great on theory, Cal, but damned short on practice. Just . . . just do . . . whatever you normally do at a time like this, but hurry!"

  He hurried, all right, but he hurried away from her and sat up, drawing her up beside him as he stared down at her, his fingers biting into her shoulder. "What? What did you say?" He shook her, his breathing harsh in his chest, his eyes wild, his hair standing up from her fingers having run through It. "Are you telling me you're a virgin?"

  "Is it a crime?" she flared, but her voice cracked with anguish, not anger. Cal groaned, pulling her close into his arms to rest his cheek on her hair.

  "No, darling, of course it's not a crime," he said after several minutes had passed while he stroked her back, kissed her flushed face, letting the agony of unfulfilled desire slowly seep from both of them until their breathing was less labored.

  "Then-—why did you stop?" She laughed, a short, nearly tearful sound again.

  He lifted her head and looked at her for a long time before he said quietly, "Because I love you, B.J."

  She jerked back, staring at him. "What? What did you say?"

  Holding her face in both hands, he looked into her eyes and smiled slowly. "I'm in love with you." He said it with such simple sincerity, she had to believe him. "I've been in love with you since you pulled your crash helmet off and fainted in my potato patch."

  "Oh, Cal ..." she said, and tears came to her eyes.

  "Don't do that," he said softly, kissing her eyelids. "I don't ever want to make you cry." Reaching behind her, he grasped the edge of the spread and pulled it up around them both, wrapping them in a cocoon of warmth. "Why didn't you tell me, sweetheart?"

  "Because I. . . didn't really know how. And I guess I'm a little bit ashamed of it."

  "You shouldn't be. Nobody ever said there was a time limit on virginity." Rolling down onto the bed, he carried her with him, still wrapped together in the spread.

  "We have dinner reservations," he murmured as her arms tightened around him and one of her legs slid between his.

  Her eyes went wide. "You're not going to make love to me?" she asked. She slid her hands up and down over his bare chest. "Not right now," he said, his voice thick. She looked up at him. "I loved everything we did so far, Cal. I really want . . . the rest. Books, as you might know, just don't do an adequate job of . . . instructing."

  She tried to laugh, but it was a weak attempt, and he felt the tremor in her fingers. His belly again clenched painfully with hunger for her, and he wanted to throw the cover aside and show her everything she wanted to know. And he wanted to take hours and hours doing it.

  "I promise," he said solemnly, looking into her beseeching eyes, stroking her hair from her crown to her nape, "we're going to make love, B.J. Just. . . not right now." He kissed her ear, then her eyelids and her nose. God, how he loved her nose! "I didn't come prepared for this, B.J., and under the circumstances, I don't suppose you're protected."

  She raised one hand and traced the outline of his mouth with a finger. "Do you mind? That I'm not . . . experienced?" .

  He didn't even have to think about it. "No. But I wonder how it can be. Can you tell me why? What stopped you? What made you not want to—until now?" He smiled gently and kissed her ear. "You aren't, as
you've often pointed out, a child."

  "And thirty-year-old virgins are about as thick on the ground as daisies in Death Valley. I can't explain it, Cal." She could have. She should have. But she wouldn't. Not today. Maybe not even tomorrow. She wished she could explain that terrible reluctance even to herself. She loved him. He loved her. Yet even with that miracle still singing in her blood, she couldn't tell him the truth about herself. There was, however, something she could do, would do, had to do.

  "I don't want dinner," she said softly, running a tentative finger around one of his nipples. She felt his hardness increase against her thighs.

  "B.J.," he said in a threatening growl. "We have . . . to have . . . dinner."

  "Have me for dinner," she said.

  He laughed. "Are you seducing me, Miss Gray?"

  "Looks like it."

  It felt like it, too, he decided, knowing he should put a stop to this right now. But it felt so good. Her hands moved over his body shyly, shaking slightly, yet growing ever bolder until she reached an absolute pinnacle of courage again and encircled him as she had earlier.

  He groaned and snatched himself out of her hand. "Dammit, will you quit?" He tried to sit up, but he was tangled in her arms and legs and the heavy bedspread, to say nothing of his own desires, making him weak and unwilling to fight too hard.

  "No." She walked her fingers down his back, onto his buttocks, and pinched him lightly. "I won't quit."

  "B.J.," he said again, but with much less force. "I want to, love, but . . ."He forced himself to go on, forced himself to remember. ". . . no protection."

  His breathing, she noted, was rough and ragged, and his hands were no longer trying to push her away. "I don't care," she said, nuzzling him from his neck to his nipples and all the way back up, seeking his lips.

  "I do," he said. "Sweetheart, do you want to go to the altar pregnant?"

  "No one gets pregnant the first time," she murmured.

  He held her chin in his hand, grinning down at her. "If you believe that, I'm going to send away for Ann Landers's book about sex for the modern teenager."

  "I'm not a teenager and I don't care if I go to the—" Abruptly, she shoved him away and sat up, her eyes wide. "Calf" she said in a disbelieving voice. "Do you know what you just said?"

  "I'm going to send away for—" "No! Before. Altar?"

  "Of course, altar. As in church. As in marriage ceremony. As in husband. And wife." Gently, he laid her back down and clasped her hands over her , head with one of his while with the other he traced a line from her temple to her breasts.

  "Wife?" she whispered. "Cal, I don't know the first thing about being a wife."

  "You know as much about being a wife as I do about being a husband, but I'm willing to go for it if you are. Don't worry, darling. Experience isn't required. You're going to be the best wife a man could ever ask for." He bent and covered her mouth with his, gently, tenderly. "And I'm asking, B.J."

  "Me?" she whispered, feeling joy mingle with terror and reluctance so that she didn't know which was uppermost or strongest.

  "Of course you! I said I wanted to court you, didn't I? What else is the end result of a courtship, if not marriage?"

  "I. . . never gave it much thought. I guess, to me, a courtship is just that. An entity in and of itself."

  "Have I got news for you. A courtship, when I'm the courter and you're the courtee, leads only one place: the altar. Please, love? Many me."

  She couldn't speak around the tightness in her throat, and he seemed to take her silence for assent. She felt his big hands tremble as he held her tightly, his kisses roving over her face and neck and shoulders, until she finally captured his head and brought their mouths together.

  "I love you," she finally managed to say. "Oh, Cal, I love you so much and I'm at the end of my cycle, so I'm pretty sure I'm safe and I think if I have to wait any longer I might explode, so please, please make love to me right now."

  He laughed drunkenly and managed to untangle the spread, flinging it back and covering her with his body. "You bet," he said against her lips while his hands played lovely games down her sides. "Me too. And it isn't just 'might' explode. I'm gonna, and I'm going to do it deep inside you, B.J., where it feels the best."

  "Yes," she said, twisting her legs around his. "Show me, Cal. And tell me, and teach me how to be what you need."

  "You are what I need. Just you."

  But he told her, too, and taught her, and showed her. As his whispered words became actions, she cried out and rolled with him, bringing aching, throbbing parts together, stroking as he instructed, making up little variations of her own that left him gasping as she gasped.

  "Please, please," she heard herself begging. "Come into me now. Fill me like you said you would."

  "Not yet. There's more."

  "Oh, God, how can there be?" she asked, but then laughed in joy along with him when she heard herself add, "What? Show me, then."

  She felt wild and voluptuous and wanton and wonderful. "Oh, yes!" she cried when he kissed her more intimately than she'd ever expected to be kissed. "Cal! I didn't know it would be like this!"

  His hair was soft on the insides of her thighs and she rubbed against it, loving the sensations both there and where his tongue flicked. A great, rolling wave of something roared through her body, making her mind spin. She clutched at Cal's head so he lifted it, bringing himself back to her mouth, where she tasted herself on him.

  "This is what I was meant for," she told him moments later, feeling the curled nest of his lower body hair tickling her lips and her nose as she nuzzled him. "Loving you."

  "Don't ..." he groaned, straining up toward her seeking mouth, wanting her intimate kiss even as he told her no. "Ah, love, stop now or . . ." He snatched her away and rolled her onto her back. "Now!" he grated, and she parted her legs eagerly, feeling the hot, wet tip of him probing at her entrance. "Yes! Now!"

  She lifted sharply and took him into her in one strong motion. The explosions came instantly, and they were grand, and mutual, and one right after the other, until she lay trembling in his arms, gazing up at him.

  "Well!" she said. "Oh!"

  "Did I hurt you?"

  "Hurt me?"

  Still holding her, he rolled to one side, nestling her head on his chest. "I love you, B.J. With all my heart."

  "Mmm," she said, and slept. When she awoke, Cal was sitting in the chair, the bedside lamp turned on. He wore only his underwear and had one knee bent, the ankle resting on his other knee, a sheet of paper on a broken piece of plywood against his thigh, and a rapidly moving, stubby carpenter's pencil in his right hand.

  Glancing up, he saw that her eyes were open. "Don't move any more than you can help, love," he said. "I've finally got you captured, the full beauty that's been eluding me all these weeks, you, golden and graceful—my golden swan. Smile at me and say, 'I love you, Cal.'"

  Instead, she paled and snatched the cover up over her, eyes wide. "No!" she gasped. "Don't do that! Don't draw me, Cal. I told you you couldn't!"

  He dropped the paper and pencil to the floor and came to her, sitting down, one hand on either side of her.

  "B.J.? Why not, love?" He smiled, a smile that made her feel cherished and broke her heart at the same time. "You can't say we don't know each other well enough now."

  "Oh, Cal. . ." Tell him! Tell him! shrieked a voice inside her. Show him the albums. Do it now! Now, before it's too late! "I'm sorry," she said in a tired voice. "I just don't want you to do it."

  "All right, sweetheart. I'll never force you to do anything you don't want to do. But I can hope that someday you'll change your mind, can't I?"

  She shook her head. "I . . . don't think so."

  "Maybe I'll ask you again when we've been married for fifty years."

  Panic bit into her. "Cal..." She sat up, clutching the cover to her breasts. "I didn't say ... I mean ..." God! How could she marry him when she couldn't even tell him the truth about herself? She buried her face
in her hands, unable to look at him, wanting to hide. What would he think of her when he finally knew what a liar she was? What a fraud? He wouldn't only not want to paint her, he wouldn't want to marry her and . . .

  "Hey, take it easy," he said, pulling her hands away from her face, enfolding her in his arms. "Am I moving too fast for you again, love?"

  Relieved of the necessity to think, to make decisions at the moment, she slipped her arms around his bare torso and clung to him. "I do love you, Cal," she murmured against his chest. "I love you so very much!"

  "That's all I need to know for now. For the rest, I can wait. Because, B.J., whether you're ready to admit it now or not, you and I have forever."

  She nodded. "Yes. I think we do. I hope we do."

  He heard the doubt in her voice and held her more tightly, wishing she could tell him what frightened her so much, but knowing that until she was ready, he couldn't press her for confidences.

  She lifted her head some moments later and smiled at him. "Cal? Know something?"

  "What's that?"

  She lay back on the bed and held out her arms to him. "We also have all night."

  Lowering himself beside her, he smiled slowly. "That's good," he whispered. "We're going to need it."

  10

  Despite her misgivings. B.J. found herself accepting the ring Cal wanted to put on her finger. She had never come right out and said she'd marry him, but since she'd never said she wouldn't, he assumed that they were definitely getting married. Not right away, of course, but in time. That, she learned, she could live with. As long as she knew there was time, time in which to find the courage to come clean, then the pressure to do it immediately was off her.

  And if being courted had been wonderful, being engaged was the most stupendous thing that had ever befallen B.J. Cal's tenderness and attention left her feeling like a pampered princess, but never more than the night of their engagement party. When he'd first suggested it, she'd objected.

  "We don't need that."