Heather Graham (3 page)

Her footsteps took her to the shelf, and she sneezed as the dust whirled up her nose. She tried to pick up an old scrapbook, but she started sneezing again, and the sneezes were so violent she dropped the book.

“Great,” she muttered dryly.

A picture had fallen from the book. She hunched, down to pick it up. She smiled. It was an old picture—fifteen years old. It was from the day at the lake, the first day she had met Brian. Looking at the picture, she could remember it as clearly as yesterday….

He stood out on the float, and he happened to glance her way. She felt an instant reaction. Her hands, curled over the dock, went clammy. She could hear her heart beat, and it was pounding too fast and too loud. And it was all because his eyes touched on her. They were sky blue, framed by high-arched honey brows. His hair was a honey blond, streaked almost white in places by the sun.

He was tall and well built. In cutoffs he was nothing short of beautiful, tanned bronze, leanly muscled from head to toe. But it was his grin that seemed to cause her heart to catch in her throat; it was a smile both wicked and gentle, and it seemed to take the sun from beneath the clouds and add brilliance to the entire day.

“Sue, who is
he?
”

The two friends sat dangling their legs over the dock, their toes drawing patterns in the water.

Sue lowered her voice conspiratorially. “
That
is Brian Trent. He just transferred in; his folks moved from Arizona. He’s a senior.” Sue sighed long and low. “Have you ever seen such a groovy guy?”

Kim could only shake her head and then froze solid as she saw him dive from the platform.

“Oh, no!” Sue gasped. “He’s coming this way.”

“Gimme a cigarette,” Kim demanded.

“You don’t smoke,” Sue said protestingly.

“Yeah, but he was talking to Cindy McCready and she’s a senior and she smokes, and I don’t want to look like a kid.” She choked and gagged on her first drag of the cigarette, but then she got it together, leaning back with the cigarette emerging over the edge of her well-tended nails.

His head popped up in front of her dangling legs. “Hi. I’m Brian Trent.”

Say something, stupid!
she told herself. Her mouth didn’t want to work. It was dry, and she had to moisten it. “Kim. My, uh, name is Kim.”

He smiled again, and it was as if Sue, the dock, the lake—everything—had disappeared. “I know,” he said softly. “I asked around. Miss Kim Thielson, cheerleader par excellence and junior prom queen.”

Kim found herself blushing. She dragged on the cigarette and managed not to cough. “And you’re from Arizona?”

“Yeah. We just bought a new house on Mimosa.” He paused for a minute, that extraordinary grin still touching his features. “Well, prom queen, want to swim a bit?”

She nodded, then realized stupidly she didn’t know what to do with the cigarette. She shoved it into Sue’s fingers and shimmied off the dock. He caught her as she hit the water.

They spent the day together. Kim drank a little too much beer; all the kids drank beer at the lake because there were plenty of seniors who looked old enough to buy it if a store wasn’t too discriminating.

But Brian Trent didn’t drink too much. Nor did he smoke. So she started getting panicky when he watched her with those blue eyes narrowed shrewdly.

“I’ve got a car,” he told her. “We’re going to get some coffee into you. I don’t want your parents thinking I’m a bad influence.”

Feeling very young and very miserable, she agreed on coffee. They sat outside a fast food joint, and she kept turning up her nose at the taste. That’s when Sue had popped up with the camera….

Tears touched Kim’s eyes as she looked at the picture.

They both had been so beautiful, so young. He, with that sanding of blond hair just beginning to show on his chest, his bronze arm around her, his eyes so shockingly blue in the picture, his grin devilishly, wickedly endearing. She, her amber eyes a little wide, a little dazed, wearing the slightly risqué bikini that had distressed her father, her hair just drying, dipping over an eye with the red highlights somehow caught in the sun’s reflection. Slim but budding nicely…

Damn, could memories hurt! And they were suddenly very painfully clear! She could remember their first night at a drive-in and all the dates after that. By Christmas break of that year they had become a definite twosome. She had learned a lot about him. While others experimented with drugs, he steered away from them. And he had a hell of a temper. She had decided to try some pot one day with a few of the gang, and he had embarrassed the hell out of her, throwing her over his shoulder and dragging her right out of Sue’s house with everyone watching.

They’d had a knock-down, drag out fight. And when she finished pummeling his chest and shrieking how she never wanted to see him again, he’d caught her wrists and calmed her wildness with his weight, lying over her on the porch couch. And she’d gone silent, because for all that they’d kissed and petted, it was the first time Kim had really become aware of her sexuality….

Kim smiled suddenly. Soon after that had come their first time together in bed after the senior prom. All the kids had taken rooms for the night, and she had known she would make love to Brian.”

She started shivering suddenly. She could remember the night well: word for word; action for action.

Kim closed her eyes and let the memory flow.

They faced each other across the room. He smiled the grin that meant everything to her, and she believed it all would be okay. He started walking toward her, and as he did, he stripped off his tie, then his tuxedo jacket, the cummerbund, the starched white shirt. He took her hands and placed them around his shoulders. “You know I love you, Kim,” he said very softly. His breath warmed and teased the lobe of her ear.

She drew away and gazed at him, searching out those blue eyes. She touched his cheek, looking at him, suddenly realizing she was very lucky. He was a cut above the rest not because of the football team, not because of the popularity that was his for the taking but because of the fabulous way his mind worked, the seriousness that lurked behind his sparkling eyes even when he laughed and joked.

And when he said he loved her, he meant he loved her. He loved her when he steered her away from the drugs that had caused real problems for some of the kids—and a couple of deaths. He loved her when he insisted she be only his….

“Do you want this?” he asked huskily.

“Yes,” she murmured, and it was barely a sound. She cleared her throat. “I—I’m a little scared. I—I’ve never done this—”

“I know. I’d have killed you if you had!”

She glanced at him curiously. “Have you?”

He nodded.

She started to jerk away, hurt. “Hey,” he murmured, “come back here.” He caught her arm and swung her back around. Then he lifted her into his arms and brought her down on the bed.

She was not to be mollified. “When?” she demanded. “Who?”

He shrugged. “Last couple of summers. Up in Daytona. And the whos don’t matter because it’s no one you know.”

He chuckled softly again, a sound that always stirred unknown things in her blood. “Hey, sweetheart,” he murmured with a great Bogart imitation, “this is one of those things one of us should really know how to do.”

She laughed but also chewed her lip nervously as she stared into his eyes, her own eyes torn with uncertainty. He smiled and rose, leaving her on the bed, to switch on the radio. Bob Dylan was softly singing.

“Want a glass of wine?” he asked.

“You’re always telling me not to drink.”

“Because you have the tolerance level of a bird and you’re too impressionable to be trusted under its influence.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly.

Undaunted, he smiled. “It will be okay tonight. I’m with you.”

He poured them each a glass of wine and returned to the bed. Leaning together, they sipped it. Finally he pulled her empty glass from her knotted fingers, and he kissed her, tasting the wine in the deep crevices of her mouth, running his tongue around her lips. A sizzling sensation ripped up and down her spine, and when he released her, she was staring at him, her eyes glazed, her lips damp and parted. Convulsively she stretched out a hand to touch his bare chest, and he groaned softly, catching her hand to press a kiss into her palm.

She thought again that he was perfect, tall, lean and sinewed, handsome and superbly powerful with his compelling eyes. His bronzed chest narrowing to the snug fit of the black tux trousers was an inducement she couldn’t deny. With the wine just taking away the rough and awkward edges, she slipped her arms around his neck and pressed against him, and he reached behind her to slide her zipper down slowly, then to pull the slinky silver knit over her head. She was shivering, but she didn’t protest or move. He unhooked her bra and pulled it from her arms, pausing just to stare at her breasts. He placed his palms lightly on the nipples and rubbed them into little peaks. She tried to press against him to hide the shyness she was feeling.

Very gently he forced her to pull back. “You’re beautiful,” he said huskily. “Just like a Playboy Bunny—and don’t go getting any ideas!”

She smiled at him, then nervously pressed against him again. “Please…” she murmured. “Trust me,” he whispered softly.

He slid her slip down her hips, and it floated, unnoticed, to the floor. Then he removed her stockings, sliding them so slowly that she began to shiver again, wondering at the little laps of flame his touch created on her flesh.

He moved to take her lips again, and as he did, he feathered his fingers beneath the elastic of her bikini panties. She automatically clutched his fingers, but he shook off her hand and slipped his hand beneath the lace, massaging with that erotic feathering the hollows of her hips around to her buttocks. Slowly he lifted his mouth from hers, studying her wide amber-colored eyes. Then he knelt and peeled the panties from her. A sound issued from her throat, and he planted a light kiss on the pulse at the juncture of her collarbone before openly scrutinizing her, heat seeming to flame from his touch as his eyes roamed from her full, high breasts with their button rose crests to the slenderness of her ribs and lean, flat belly to the softly angled curve of her hips. He leaned beside her, running his fingers over the sleek length of her bare legs, her midriff, her breasts. Then he leaned over to kiss them, taking the nipples between his teeth. She was like a ripe and delicious fruit, ready for this moment of awakening, young and soft and lean and beautiful and now elementally his. As he nicked her nipple with his tongue and teeth, she emitted a strangled gasp and curled her fingers into his hair, stunned by the flash of quivering heat that took flight from a center low within her abdomen to spread like wildfire through her body.

“Feel good?” he murmured.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Tell me,” he commanded.

“I—I can’t…” she gasped.

“You can,” he replied huskily. And then he told her how beautiful her breasts were, how perfectly formed, how full, how feeling them swell drove him half-crazy.

“Now tell me,” he demanded huskily.

And she was murmuring things and writhing spasmodically against him. “It feels…good, oh, Brian, it feels wonderful….”

Her fingernails began to scrape lightly over the broad shoulders she knew so well; her hips set up a rhythm of slow rotation against him as his kisses lowered over her belly. He stood then, and she lifted her eyes to his as he shed the tux trousers and his briefs. As he had stared at her, she stared in return, fascinated and swallowing a bit convulsively at the full state of his arousal. He was lean and tight and beautifully firm, and she appreciated the narrowing of that blond chest hair down his middle to where it flared full again. She felt both on fire and jittery cold, and then he was massaging her hair against her temple and whispering again that he loved her, and she was thinking that this was Brian and she loved him. She didn’t think she could ever love anyone else because there could never be another man like him, strong yet gentle, determined yet always caring, very sure of himself, very sure of his love….

He brought his weight on top of her, and she flinched slightly. He kissed her, then smiled deeply into her eyes. And he started touching her again and kissing her again, adjusting himself to place moist, evocative lips against her knees, then nipping little kisses slowly up the soft and electrically sensitive flesh of her inner thighs.

He found the heart of the heat that radiated from her, and she cried out, shocked that she arched wantonly to his intimacy, again digging her fingers into his hair. He held her hips tightly, then slid his hands back to her breasts, and she felt as if the entire world had begun to spin, as if the sunshine of his eyes had permeated her entire being. She could barely breathe, and she couldn’t begin to control the quivering that racked her limbs.

“Brian!” she cried out softly, and he raised himself over her, slipping his hands between her thighs. They parted weakly, and he was between them, and he covered her gasps with his mouth as he slowly and carefully entered her, pausing as she went rigid with a strangled sound catching in her throat, then plunging deeply and once more merely holding still, allowing them to savor the moment, the feeling of being filled, the feeling of being beautifully enwrapped, sheathed, stunning puzzle pieces perfectly, naturally, fundamentally fitting together.

And he began to whisper to her again, soothing her past the initial shock, moving against her slowly, very slowly, then feeling her instinctively and sensually finding her own desire heighten. She arched against him, writhing, undulating, and he slipped his hands beneath her firm buttocks to hold her to him as he began a thrusting, demanding rhythm that she found herself following with awe.

Then there was nothing but the sweet need that built and built and built. Kim felt as if the stars had exploded around her, as if there were nothing but clouds and Brian. Brian, whom she couldn’t get enough of, who was the only reality. Brian, who had now claimed her completely, who was within her, hot and demanding and giving this strange beauty that she wanted to go on forever yet ever strove to complete because the end would be shattering, a pinnacle of feeling so volatile and sweetly delicious that she was loath to let go, afraid to open her eyes, afraid to have him leave when he had just made her wonderfully, rapturously complete.