by Neal, Toby
I was tempted to run away from him like I’d done so many months ago. Run and run and run, away from my embarrassment, away from myself, away from what could possibly happen with him. I had a sense it was going to change everything.
Yet I couldn’t run. I couldn’t say no to what he was proposing. I had put myself in this situation, and now I was stuck in it.
Because I wanted what he was offering. Whatever he was offering. Even if it was less than the feast I’d pulled up to the table to partake of.
“Okay,” I said, and my shoulders sagged, and he laughed as he got up and took my hand. We gathered up the picnic things without letting go, an awkward endeavor. And then we walked down the battered stairs and through the old abandoned fort.
Damn him for being a gentleman and holding out for something more than sex.
It looked like I was going to be the last American virgin for a while longer.
Chapter 5
San Francisco is one of the most romantic cities in the world, and I, Ruby Michaels, was in the City by the Bay on a mission to lose my virginity. I was determined to be done with it by the end of spring break of 1989, in three days.
That big, withholding bugger Rafe stood beside me now, his muscled arms gleaming in the sun as we looked at the view of the city from Coit Tower. His elegant, capable hands, with a finger span ideal for surrounding my entire (substantial) breast, dangled loosely off the railing as he looked out at the Golden Gate Bridge.
We’d been doing touristy things all week, each day something new. The zoo and the carousel one day, walking across the bridge another, picnics in the park and kites on the bluff, a walk along Ocean Beach.
Rafe became animated and articulate when he’d brought me to the de Young Museum, where he’d taken the time to explain the modern art period when I was baffled by a roomful of paintings that looked cartoonish to my untrained eye. It occurred to me that I’d never asked Rafe if he had a degree. The lifestyle crewing boats, trimming coconuts, and surfing when there were waves might have led me to an erroneous conclusion.
“Did you go to college?” I’d asked.
“I told you I did. Boston College. Mixed memories of my time there.”
“Did you get a degree?”
“Of course.” But he didn’t say what it was in. I stared at his bronzy-brown, shoulder-length hair, fluttering in the breeze off the bay.
Of course? I thought he’d said he was on a mission to see and experience. That’s what he’d told me when I’d met him in Saint Thomas. Back then, he’d seemed just like so many rootless young men traveling through the Virgin Islands before him.
“What is your degree in?”
“Why are you asking me this now?” He narrowed those cobalt eyes on my face.
“I’m not sure. I’ve just been thinking…I might have been wrong about you.”
He cocked his head at me, his gaze full of secrets. “That’s exactly what I was hoping for by putting us on time-out.”
“Time-out sucks,” I said. He laughed.
I’d employed all sorts of underhanded tactics all week to wear down his resolve not to do anything sexual with me. I took every opportunity to snuggle and rub against him. He’d pulled away like I was leprous. I flirted outrageously, licking everything from straws to ice-cream cones suggestively, and he’d just looked away. I’d even slid a hand into his pants one day and incurred wrathful flashing blue eyes and a forceful removal of my hand.
“Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much,” I’d said, to which he did not reply.
I was so sexually frustrated that I wondered if it were possible to spontaneously combust, just start having a nonstop orgasm right in public. Right here at the railing. Eyes rolled back in my head, body twitching. I might be a virgin, but I knew about orgasms and knew when I needed one.
The thought made me smile. That would fix him for holding out on me.
He turned and caught my smile. “What?”
“I was just thinking that I’m so sexually frustrated right now I might just…start coming apart at the seams. Right here. Right now.” I held his eye.
The color rose like the red in a thermometer under my redhead’s skin as I blushed involuntarily at my own boldness, but I took a leaf from Meg Ryan in the new movie When Harry Met Sally. I began to pant.
To moan.
I arched my back, holding on to the railing, thrusting my breasts forward. I never broke eye contact with his hard blue gaze.
“Ohhhh…” I moaned. My breath hitched as I arched my back in invitation.
Rafe’s eyes widened in shock, then darkened as his pupils expanded. His nostrils flared. His hands gripped the steel railing hard.
“Don’t,” he whispered hoarsely, and I suddenly knew he wasn’t as indifferent to me as he’d been pretending all week, damn him for deciding to be a gentleman.
He was suffering, too.
Good.
Fellow park visitors yanked their kids away as I continued my performance.
“Oh, oh…I need you,” I panted huskily, and felt the flush of whole-body arousal tighten my nipples to diamond points and loosen my knees. Heat suffused and pooled in my lower abdomen. “Please. Please. I can’t wait any longer.”
What had started out in play had become a real confession.
He grabbed me by the arm and frog-marched me away from the view and the crowd. I could feel his anger and arousal in every powerful stomp of his feet, in the way his long fingers bit into my upper arm and in the rigid set of his shoulders.
I might have provoked him a little too far.
I was terrified and eager to see if this outrageous ploy had worked. I had only three days left in San Francisco before I returned to college in Boston, and I didn’t want to return to college still the virgin from the Virgin Islands.
He hauled me into a warm cranny beside one of the storage areas, pushed me against the wall, and bracketed his hands beside my head. His eyes, the color of the deep blue sea, promised retribution.
“Everyone tells me redheads are trouble,” he ground out. “And I’m beginning to believe them.”
He kissed me so hard I tasted blood, and I couldn’t have been more thrilled.
I gave back as good as I got, pulling him in to me with handfuls of leather vest and T-shirt. All six foot three of him was rock-hard angles and chiseled muscles, and he felt exquisitely right against my body.
This morning, in a final and blatant attempt at seduction, I’d left both bra and underwear off for our walk up precipitous streets to Coit Tower. It couldn’t have escaped his notice, because, even as his mouth ravaged mine deliciously against the warm stone, his hand tunneled under my shirt and traveled up my waist to cup my naked breast.
“Oh God,” he whispered, and bent his head to bite my breast through the thin T-shirt. “I’ve wanted to do this for so long.” His hand massaged the full round as his mouth dampened the shirt. His teeth connected unerringly with that incredibly responsive bundle of nerves that shot pleasure straight south.
I felt the first of what promised to be several very nice orgasms travel up my spinal column, lighting up pleasure points along the way so that I gasped, throwing my head back hard against the stone. My whole body rippled under his hand as heat dampened my thighs.
He lifted his head, eyes hazy with desire, cheeks as flushed as mine. “I can make you come this easily?”
“It would appear so,” I panted, and he reapplied his mouth with determination.
I remembered this thrilling feeling. Henry had made love to my breasts one afternoon in the chill autumn light of his apartment window and had given me my first man-induced orgasm with nothing more than his mouth and my breasts.
But it had taken a while, and both breasts, and no shirt, and some real attention to detail.
Rafe was able to take me to that teetering edge fully clothed, in public, against the side of the Coit Tower.
What more could he do to me, given a bed and a leisurely stretch of time?
/> I pulled at him and hiked one of my skirt-clad legs up to wrap around his hips. He ground against me, kissed and ravaged me up against that wall until the gasps and cries I emitted put Meg Ryan in her breakout role to shame.
“Yo! This is a public area!” someone hollered, and as suddenly as if ice water were doused over me, I remembered where we were—out of view, it was true, but only a few feet away from major foot traffic. I disentangled myself, peering around Rafe’s bulk to see who was snapping pictures to send to relatives of the weird goings-on in San Francisco.
“Now you grow a sense of propriety,” he said, closing and buttoning my jean jacket over my dampened shirt, where the material had gone transparent and suck marks were clearly visible.
I pushed away from the wall. The knee-length skirt I’d worn was rucked up where I’d lifted a leg against him, and I smoothed it down. “Sorry. I got carried away. I’m feeling a little better now.”
“Well, I’m not,” he muttered. “I think it’s time for a little relief for both of us.” He towed me back down the sidewalk and along the steep hill to where he’d parked his old black truck. “You’re going to pay the price.”
“Oh, good,” I said, bravado covering my thundering heart and stumbling feet. “Where are we going?”
“Not back to the house.”
Rafe’s room in a big old Victorian on the edge of the Cliffside neighborhood that a woman named Lisa rented out was a lovely high-ceilinged expanse at the back of the house. It seemed perfectly adequate for an afternoon of love to me, but apparently he wanted more privacy than we’d have there. I had been sleeping on a couch in a little sitting room, which, while perfectly comfortable, was not the place for my long-awaited deflowering.
He turned the key in the rusty old truck and I got in beside him on the bench seat. Bench seats always did something to me, and today was especially bad. I really wanted him to take me on the bench seat. If not today, maybe next week. Or any day, for that matter.
Rafe put the car in gear and set his hand, that long-fingered hand I so admired, with the slightly rough, calloused palm, on my smooth, bare thigh.
I gasped.
He took the hand briefly off my leg to shift gears, but other than that, without missing a beat, he slid the hand up under my skirt and between my legs.
“I could tell you weren’t wearing panties, you naughty girl. I can’t wait to see this up close. See if the hair is the same color as the hair on your head. It must be so beautiful.”
My cheeks were flaming. I tugged at his arm in embarrassment, to no avail. I gasped and wriggled, trying to get away and get closer at the same time. He glanced at me and grinned. “I’ve got a little education in store for you. You pushed me too far today.”
I clamped my legs shut, but too late as he located a spot that made me twitch and gasp.
“Aha,” he said with satisfaction, as if checking something cooking on the stove for doneness. “You’re going to have to shift gears.” We’d approached a stop sign, and he put in the clutch, but he apparently wasn’t going to remove his hand from where it was working some serious magic.
“Oh God,” I yelped, writhing, and I worked the shifter as his hand worked me.
I came for the second time that day, two blocks from the famous downtown San Francisco Fairmont Hotel. I was still flushed and panting with the seismic upheaval to my nervous system, only dimly able to focus, when Rafe pulled up with panache beneath the portico of the venerable hotel.
It looked like the mission to lose my virginity was finally going to be accomplished.
I rolled my skirt down, smoothing it toward my knees. I made sure my jean jacket was tightly buttoned. My feeble preparations didn’t help. I was intimidated by the valet in gold-braided uniform who approached the truck and opened my door. I glanced over at Rafe, astonished that we were going to such a classy place.
He winked as he blew me a kiss from the hand that had just been between my legs.
I was as shocked by that as by anything that had just occurred between us on the front seat of his rusty old black truck. It felt like everything we’d been doing was stenciled on my face and anyone who looked at me could guess, and my complexion couldn’t have been pinker if I’d been dipped in boiling water.
I stepped out of the vehicle and stood awkwardly on the sidewalk. Chilly San Francisco wind blew up my skirt and fanned my bare ass. My hair lashed my cheeks. I wrapped my arms around myself for warmth and comfort. I was embarrassed, terrified, and yet determined to get what I’d come for.
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” I muttered to myself, one of my mom’s favorite sayings. She’d be upset to see me here now, about to do what I’d decided to do after lying to everyone to get here. I thrust the thought of my family firmly out of my mind. Rafe shut the door of the truck firmly and said something to the valet, who got into the vehicle and drove off without batting an eye.
“Are you sure you can afford this?” I took Rafe’s arm and huddled against him, feeling seriously outclassed as we went into the famous lobby, sparkling with crystal and gleaming with wood and leather.
“I was going to bring you here for dinner. Now we’ll just go up to the room early.”
I was struck dumb by the splendor of the Fairmont. Rich carpeting, gold-framed art, refined lighting picked out seating clusters in the grand lobby. I clung to Rafe’s arm as he checked in, cool as creek water. “Reservation for McCallum,” he said. “And guest.”
“Yes sir, Mr. McCallum.” The voice of the concierge was respectful. That’s how classy this place is, I thought. They don’t even allow the staff to discriminate against drifter sailors checking in with penniless college students.
We went up in an elevator gleaming with walnut and burnished brass, an attendant in the hotel’s uniform inquiring what floor we were on. I felt awkward shyness settling between us and stepped away from Rafe, losing my courage as I looked up at the changing lights above the door.
What am I doing? I’d surely regret this, and with Rafe who didn’t fit with my life goals. I had escaped the Virgin Islands through brains and willpower, but this man, who’d worked trimming coconuts off the trees on my parents’ management estate, was already rocking all my assumptions about life—and he had a hold on me I couldn’t shake.
As if sensing my uncertainty, Rafe reached out and took my cold hand in his large, warm one. I felt every inch of his height and frame dwarfing mine, and it was thrilling and intimidating. He smiled down at me.
“Glad to be with you,” he whispered into my ear. “Thanks for coming to San Francisco.”
I stared down at my feet in their impractical ballet flats. There was a smudge on my freckled knee, and I rubbed at it, reflecting on my folly. It wasn’t too late to tell him to stop the elevator, ask him to take me back to Lisa’s boardinghouse until my departure. Because I knew Rafe was a gentleman. He was doing this with me because I’d said I wanted it.
I had no one to call to talk over my ambivalence, because no one knew I was here. No one. Not my parents, not my roommate and best friend, Shellie, nor her brother Sam. Not my supposed boyfriend Henry, who I was “taking a break” from.
The elevator door dinged open. “Fourteenth floor,” the attendant announced.
I was highly conscious of our lack of luggage as we exited. All Rafe carried was a small black backpack, and I had my purse with a comb, my wallet, and a pair of underwear in it.
He grinned down at me at the door, a shiny black edifice. “The moment of truth,” he said, and slid the key into the brass lock with a definite snick. He must have seen me shiver, because he encircled my shoulders and gave a reassuring squeeze as he pushed the door open.
“Oh,” I gasped. “Wow.”
The room was a suite, with an incredible view of the Marin headlands and the lacy red struts of the Golden Gate Bridge, the graceful skyscrapers of downtown providing an architectural counterpoint. The carpeting was cream, the seating an elegant distressed brown leather, and the bed, the
very big bed—was a garden of Laura Ashley cabbage roses on fine sateen.
I walked hesitantly in. I’d never been inside such a fancy hotel room before. Rafe followed, setting his bag beside the door and making his way to the combination TV and music console against the wall as I walked to the sliding glass doors leading onto a tiny balcony.
The doors wouldn’t open.
“Locked permanently,” Rafe said. “Jumpers.”
“Oh, wow,” I said, stepping back, the charm lost on me at the grim reminder that all wasn’t happy for some, even in a magical setting like this.
He opened the shiny burled doors of the console. “Hmm. Got quite a selection here.” I came back to stand beside him, looking through a stack of CDs with everything from instrumental to classic rock. “I think a little mood music.” He put on some Otis Redding, which I recognized from my parents’ collection. “How about some wine?”
I wasn’t about to remind him I wasn’t legal to drink yet. “I’d love some.”
He went to a silver bucket and took out a bottle of champagne. “I ordered this ahead of time.”
“So you had this planned?” I paced back and forth in front of the sliding glass windows. I was feeling nervous and keyed up, all the confidence I’d pretended at Coit Tower evaporating in the light of Rafe’s apparent acceptance of my challenge.
“I did. I know you’re leaving in another day or so. Wanted you to have a special treat.” He popped the cork. I watched the shine of the late-afternoon light on tumbled bronzy hair that fell to graceful, muscular shoulders. He was wearing a black tee that hugged his body, and I spotted his tattoo curving around his deltoid muscle. It appeared to be some sort of claw, and I remembered it was a fierce eagle pouncing.
“That’s so sweet of you,” I said.
He filled a flute and held it out to me. “Nothing sweet about it. Making memories to tide you over until we see each other again.”
I felt an immediate wrench at the thought of leaving as I accepted the glass. Our fingers brushed and his touch was electric as ever.
