by Vella Munn
Yes, he is, Michon answered silently. “Do you want to try taking your hand out of the water again?” she asked. “It shouldn’t hurt once we put that ointment on it.”
A few minutes later a bandaged Shanna was wiping dirt off her knees as Michon carefully repacked the first-aid kit. The campfire had been replenished, and several attempts at roasting marshmallows were being made when Michon and Shanna joined the group. Shanna wandered off to tell her experience to several other girls, and Michon took refuge by sliding in next to Harry. She didn’t even look around for Chas; she was afraid her eyes would give away too much, should anyone see her looking at him. She wrapped her arms around her knees, trembling slightly from something that had nothing to do with the cold.
“Everything under control?” Harry asked. “I’m afraid I wasn’t much help. Not moving as fast as I should.”
“How are you?” Michon asked, grateful for yet another excuse not to think about what had almost happened in a homesteader’s house.
“As the doctors say, about as well as can be expected. Stiff. And it’s not going to be any better in the morning. Listen to me,” Harry laughed. “At least I’m an expert on bursitis.”
“I’ll give you a rubdown later if you’ll tell me what feels good,” Michon offered.
“You know how to give rubdowns? What are you, a nurse?”
“Hardly. But when I was a teenager I learned how to give them to my grandfather. He lived with us for several years until he died.”
Harry looked at her. “You miss him, don’t you? I can hear it in your voice.”
Michon nodded. Usually she didn’t talk about her grandfather, but Harry reminded her of him. “My parents were both working. They were in real estate and ran their own firm. Grandpa was always there when I came home from school. I was about twelve when he moved in with us. He was probably my best friend. He helped me through several cases of puppy love.” Michon glanced around. Chas was nowhere in sight, although the rest of the expedition was gathered around the campfire.
“Puppy love’s hard,” Harry observed. “I don’t know many people who are ready for it when it hits.”
Michon smiled. “That’s what my grandfather said. Not those words exactly, but he kept telling me that it would get easier as I got older. Of course, since I’d never been in love before, I had a hard time believing him. He said I’d learn to keep my wits about me, not to open up all of my emotions when I was around a boy I liked. He said people don’t get hurt as much if they keep their eyes open. He always told me to hold back a little, be a little cautious.”
“It’s good advice. We don’t get hurt as much if we can react that way.”
“But it isn’t always easy,” Michon whispered. “The heart can be pretty powerful.”
“So can hurt, Michon. That’s what puppy love is about. It’s painful when we’re in the middle of it, but we come out of it a lot wiser. Puppy love is designed to prepare us for more mature relationships. Hopefully most of us learn that falling in love isn’t like it is in the love songs. There’s no guaranteed happy-ever-after in real life. If we learn to settle for someone we’re compatible with, who we share common interests with, who we feel good around, that’s not too bad, is it?”
Michon nodded, but inside she was arguing. Compatibility? Shared interests? That was friendship, not love. Love was feeling a man’s hands on her body and wanting the moment to go on forever, to build until there was no stopping the ultimate outcome. Love was a shared kiss, eyes that saw through to each other’s core and stripped away the protective layers.
Love was making love in a decaying house and thinking it was the most perfect spot on earth. Michon stopped herself short. They hadn’t made love! Reality had pulled them apart before it could happen.
But what if Shanna hadn’t been burned? What would joining her body, her heart, her mind, with Chas’s have been like?
Michon stifled a moan, drawing away physically from the feelings her thoughts had ignited. It had almost happened. And—right or wrong—Michon knew she would never regret making love to Chas. There was something rare and special about him that went far beyond the physical. He might be scarred from his experience with April, but Michon was willing, hungry, to know the man April had turned her back on. Would she have the chance? Or was that no longer an option for her? Chas had barely spoken a word to her since they left the old house. His eyes sent her no private messages. He wasn’t even here now. Why? Did he regret that they’d shared that much? Michon didn’t have any answers. Neither was this the time to seek any.
Michon and Harry exchanged short conversations with several of the students and then retired to the rocky cove where Harry had set up his sleeping bag. Michon unscrewed the cap on the liniment she’d tucked in her pocket and began to gently rub his bare shoulder. The older man caught his breath several times but only suggested that she use minimum pressure. She felt uneasy about administering to a condition she knew little about, but obviously Harry was eager to have her continue. Finally he sighed. “I think you’re getting to it now. It’s about as loose as it’s going to get, and the pain is much less. Getting old is no picnic, let me tell you. I look at you and Chas and I’d give anything to be that age again.”
“You wouldn’t really, would you?” Michon asked as she continued to rub.
“Probably not. Especially not if I had to learn again everything it’s taken me so long to learn. There are some rocky roads no one wants to travel more than once. But you two young people have the rest of your lives ahead of you. You’re intelligent, healthy. You can make anything you want out of it.”
“You make it sound as if Chas and I are headed toward the altar,” Michon protested. “Believe me, we barely know each other.”
“Yeah? Well, then it’s time you got to know each other better, because I think there’s something between you two.” Harry sighed. “Let me tell you something. Let an old man impress you with his wisdom. I’d been married about six years when I met this woman. Don’t be shocked. I may be a teacher, but I’m still human. My wife and I already had two children and another on the way, but when Karla came to the school I stopped thinking about my kids, my job, the house I was buying. Karla was interested in the same things I was. We were both teachers, so I guess that was natural. But my wife, well, I was the guy she called when she was running out of milk and couldn’t get to the store. That’s what I was to her. She was the woman I made love to between night feedings and early-morning cartoons. We had a lot of commitment to each other but that was all. I couldn’t remember why I’d married her.” Harry sighed. “I knew it was all dreaming on my part. It was too late for a flaming romance. I mean, I was married. I had no intention of turning my back on my family. But Karla—Karla was special. We were on the same wavelength. I should have met her years before I did,” he finished softly.
Michon sat in silence for a few minutes, lost in the words Harry had spoken. Harry, the practical, aging, competent teacher was also a romantic man. He had just confessed to a hopeless, romantic love. Should she feel sorry for him? “The honeymoon can’t last forever,” she said finally. “If you’d married Karla she’d have become your wife. You’d be stopping off at the store for her. There’s an awful lot of the everyday in that kind of situation, isn’t there?”
“True,” Harry acknowledged. “But I can still dream, can’t I? Everyone needs dreams. Michon, I don’t regret being married. For the most part it’s been a good relationship. But I keep thinking that somewhere, somehow, things might have been different with Karla. Take a night like this with the stars and moon. And the silence. My wife would say we should get to sleep early so we could get an early start on tomorrow. Karla would have wanted to walk hand in hand in the moonlight. And make love in a sleeping bag. Or at least I can dream she’d want that. Do you see the difference?”
Michon nodded. She did.
Suddenly Harry chuckled. “I don’t know what I’m talking about. The truth of the matter is, I can hardly keep my eyes o
pen. Poor Karla might find me not up to her suggestions. You’ve certainly relaxed me, Michon. I appreciate it.”
Michon rose. “I hope you’re going to be all right in the morning. I still wish you’d let me tell Chas.”
“I’m not senile yet.” Harry grinned. “Let me make that decision.”
Harry was already unzipping his sleeping bag by the time Michon left his secluded quarters. She thought briefly about copying his actions, but knew sleep would escape her in her present condition.
Kneeling by the river with Shanna, and then the conversations with both the girl and Harry, had given her other things to think about, but still Michon’s heart hadn’t let go of what had almost taken place earlier. She searched her thoughts for some embarrassment, some reluctance, some sense of relief that their lovemaking had been interrupted and found none.
Michon had been—was still—willing to give herself completely to Chas. That they were unmarried, that he hadn’t declared his feelings for her, did nothing to alter her feelings. It mattered not at all that she wasn’t sure what it was she felt for him.
Chas Carson was the kind of man Michon had been looking for since she’d discovered the difference between men and women. That’s as far as her thoughts went on a moonlit night by the John Day River.
Michon took a deep breath, held it, and then let it slowly escape. She was restless, trapped in her thoughts, her needs, acutely aware that only a return to the ancient house and a culmination of what had begun several hours ago would still her trembling fingers, satisfy her hunger for more oxygen. This was no case of puppy love, satisfied with holding hands in a school corridor. The schoolgirl had become a woman with a woman’s needs.
Michon, he’s turned you on. And no cold shower is going to take the place of his arms, his lips, his body.
Savagely she shook her head. Chas wasn’t around. She’d have to deal with her emotions on her own. After another deep breath she returned to the campfire, called by the pure, solitary tones of a single guitar caressing the night. As she came within the circle of light offered by the fire she recognized Shanna’s friend Skip as the young man fingering the guitar. Michon dropped to the ground where the fire’s heat could reach her. Shanna might be right about Skip after all. The skinny young man might not be the best looking male in the group, but he had the skill to turn the guitar into an instrument capable of turning thoughts into dreams. He knew more than chords. He could breathe life into the night. Michon settled herself cross-legged on the ground, leaned forward slightly, and closed her eyes. The fire warmed her flesh; Skip’s guitar warmed her heart and gave birth to dreams.
It was easy, so easy, to give way to her thoughts, to place herself once again within the old house, and bring Chas there with her. This time there would be no emergency to pull them apart. This time Chas would slowly undress her, his fingers playing her hungry body as surely as Skip handled the guitar.
She’d give herself to him willingly, thinking of nothing more, wanting nothing more than this moment. Reality, civilization, and April’s memory had no place in her dreams. In her mind Michon surrendered to the ecstasy that made a woman confident of her right to be called a woman. Chas’s body next to hers would feel right, totally right. He’d say the words she needed to hear, train their hearts to beat as one. Michon closed her eyes even tighter, blocking out the world as her fantasies took over. In her mind tonight would never end.
Michon didn’t sense the presence behind her until twin sets of fingers wrapped themselves around her shoulders and Chas pulled her toward him and her back rested against his chest. “Did I interrupt?” he whispered. “You look as if you were in another world.”
Michon started, flaming inside because her thoughts were private, and she wasn’t sure she could keep them that way with him around. He was sitting behind her, his legs spread so she’d fit between them and use his form as a backrest. “Where have you been?”
“Walking. Thinking.”
“What about?”
“Never mind. My thoughts don’t make sense. It’s been a wrestling match. I don’t want to inflict them on anyone else. How’s Shanna?”
Shanna? He wanted to talk about Shanna? How could she with him so near? “She’s okay.” Michon took a steadying breath. “See the boy playing the guitar? That’s the one she was thinking about when she picked up the skillet. She likes him.” Were they really having this tame conversation? He was touching her. Was her body revealing her emotions?
“I thought as much. I didn’t know who had distracted her, but I figured it had to be someone special. Where were you when I came up behind you?”
“What?” Michon tried to turn around to meet his eyes, but it would require leaving the shelter of his arms. She couldn’t bring herself to do that. She wanted to remain sandwiched between his legs, feel his breath on her neck. If she didn’t move maybe he’d never remove his hands from her shoulders. “I was here.”
“But your thoughts weren’t. What were you thinking about?” Was his voice usually this husky, or was she only imagining the change in it?
Michon kept her eyes open to reduce the risk of returning to her disturbing daydream. “I’ll borrow your words,” she sidestepped. “My thoughts don’t make much sense either. I was just listening to the music.”
“He’s good,” Chas said and then lapsed into a silence Michon didn’t break.
They sat together for perhaps half an hour listening to the music, watching the play of firelight and night. Michon struggled to control her breathing, acutely aware of Chas’s arms around her. His breathing registered along the length of her back, breathing that seemed to her deep and regular and undisturbed by the kind of thoughts she found hard to control. But she wouldn’t have asked him to leave for the world. He’d said he’d been off walking and thinking. Although she could only guess at what his thoughts might have been, she was deeply grateful that he’d returned. If he regretted what had begun between them earlier at least he didn’t regret it enough to avoid her now.
She became aware of his lips moving along the hair on the top of her head. “Tastes good,” he whispered.
Michon’s voice was barely audible. “It’s a new shampoo I’m trying out. I call it concentrated river water.”
“Stay with it. It suits you. Are you warm?”
“What?” Maintaining self-control was difficult enough. Did he really expect her to be able to talk with his body pressed against hers?
“Are you warm? Do you need the heat, or can we leave here?”
What was he saying? Did he want to take her back to the old house? If he did Michon knew that no power on earth could keep her from joining him. Wordlessly she rose to her feet and took the hand he offered her. Together they walked into the night, their footsteps the only sound. Maybe the teenagers saw. It didn’t matter.
Chas led her back to the sheltering old house, looked at her briefly before leading her through the doorless opening. “Say no if it isn’t right,” he whispered.
For answer Michon turned, stood on tiptoe and offered him her lips. Tonight, this moment, this man, was all she’d ever want. It was happening so easily, was so right.
They stood locked together for a long time, oblivious of the sounds of night birds, the wind playing with the waiting river. If Michon and Chas felt the cold trailing in through the openings between the old boards they didn’t acknowledge it. Other thoughts consumed them. Michon had put on a lightweight jacket but offered no resistance as Chas unzipped it. He kissed her softly on the forehead before removing her blouse. Their mouths locked together as his fingers freed her of her bra. Her breasts responded to the cold night air, to the expectation of what she knew would come. Michon groaned, eyes closed against reality, savoring every moment, giving herself up completely to the sensations coursing through her body. She tried to help Chas out of his shirt but her fingers refused to obey her commands. She had to stand, trembling, as he revealed his broad shoulders, muscled chest, tapered waist, to her.
�
�Michon,” he started.
“Don’t talk,” she moaned. Her shaking fingers traced the ridge of his ribs. She pressed her cheek against his chest, taking strength from the contact. “Chas, I want you. Not words.”
Now Michon knew where Chas had been earlier. Stretched out on the floor was his opened sleeping bag. She acknowledged his thoughtfulness, wondering briefly how he could have been so sure that they’d return here, dismissing the thoughts because he was too close for her to think of anything except him.
Chas again unzipped her jeans; all the time his mouth claimed hers. She shivered briefly when she was entirely naked, but forgot the cold as his hands covered her breasts and filled them with the heat in his palms. Her own hands were exploring the perfect outline of his ribs, recording the feel of a strong backbone encased in tanned flesh. Her lips touched and tasted the softly curled chest hairs bleached by a lifetime spent outdoors. The fire inside her made breathing nearly impossible.
Michon was ready, eager, by the time Chas drew her down to join him on the sleeping bag. It didn’t matter what he’d been thinking about while they were apart. Tomorrow didn’t matter. Neither did the rest of her life.
Tonight was all Michon wanted.
“It isn’t a real bed,” Chas whispered. “Does that bother you?”
A real bed? What did it matter where they were, that her nostrils caught the scent of decaying wood? Chas’s sleeping bag was part of him, part of what she wanted to become. “This is perfect,” she replied as he folded her in his arms.
Michon slid her foot slowly down the length of Chas’s leg, giggling because he was trying hard not to let her know he was ticklish. He stopped her play by lowering his head until his tongue found the valley between her breasts. Michon gasped, unprepared for the wave of pleasure that reached her toes. “That isn’t fair! You’re taking advantage of me.”
Chas lifted his head, his eyes twinkling. “I have every intention of taking advantage of you. You’re right. It’s perfect here.”
