“Hell. I suppose it’s because you’re different.”
“In what way?”
“Just different, that’s all. Not like the others.”
“Who?”
“The girls at these dances for us-you know what I mean.” “No, I don’t.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then you must have a very sheltered life. Haven’t you heard why most of them come? It’s like being a pop star. You know.”
“You mean…?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
Count to ten slowly.
“No, you don’t. I’m not talking about that. Not exactly.”
“Oh?”
“Pen, I think I love you. Isn’t that crazy?”
One, two, three, four, five, six-“Why should it be?”
“Why should it be?”
Seven, eight, nine, ten.
Seven, eight, nine, ten.
“So you don’t think it’s crazy? Even if we only met tonight?”
“I–I cut your picture out of the paper last year.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re different, too, Jonathan. I’ve told everyone that.”
“How could you tell?”
“I know.”
He flipped the branch away into the bracken.
“Are you going to lie down again, Jonathan?”
“No.”
“But you said-”
“You’re different, Pen. Different. It makes me scared.”
“What does?”
“The way I still want to-kiss you, and that.”
“Perhaps I’m like them.”
“Don’t be sick! I told you the way I felt. Never happened to me before.”
“I meant… I love you, too, you know.”
“It’s a bloody mess.”
Her hand stirred from the leaves at her side.
“I’ve taken them off, Jonathan.”
Hell. Without her spectacles, Penny Jones looked suddenly very unlike a trainee schoolmarm. Now her thick, long lashes came into their own and so did the pert nose with its dusting of cute freckles. Myopia lent the finishing touch by introducing a wide-eyed, trustful innocence.
The total effect was really quite appetizing.
So Jonathan made a slow-motion descent, took the first part of the kiss with a wary pucker, worked gently at her jaw with his fingertips the way he did when giving a worm pill to his dog, and gained entry to her oral cavity.
For one terrifying moment he thought he would have to learn to talk with his hands. And then she abandoned herself to her first adult sensation and took his breath away.
Literally.
Using every muscle in his athlete’s torso to subdue a coughing fit, he went straight into the next stage. Once again his superb fitness was of paramount importance as it allowed him to rest himself gently on top of her right half while taking the weight on his offside limbs. All he had to do now was keep her lips occupied while his body heat sneaked across.
She melted rapidly right down the middle and his knee sank into her warmth. He began a restrained rhythmic movement. Her thighs clamped on his leg so hard he involuntarily broke the embrace.
“You’re strong,” he murmured.
“Riding,” she said. “I’m in the pony club.”
God, you had to laugh. They both did. Only she apparently found humor in the absurd, while he saw it in the unwittingly apt. His laughter was also the release of tension caused by a final anxiety-if she had been pounding about on a saddle, then there would be no need to deflower and that was always a relief. Especially if you had a date with the lads.
“I love you, Pen,” he said.
“Do you really?”
“All of you. Every bit. Can I look?”
Before she could lift her head, he weighed it down with his mouth and sent his left hand down the front of her quasi-Regency dress to twitch the long line of buttons free. His right skillfully disengaged her bra hooks through the thin material at the small of her back.
Then he sat up-startled.
Never, never look a gift horse in the saddle blanket. Underneath, she was incredible. Like cream poured from a jug-a continuity of changing shapes each retaining a perfection of form. It was impossible to note detail.
“You’re…”
Words genuinely failed him.
“Aren’t my bosoms too big? That’s why I always wear dresses like this one.”
“Hey?”
“But this isn’t fair, Jonathan.”
“What isn’t?”
“You looking at me. I can’t see you-can I?”
“Do you want me to…?”
“I mean-without my glasses.”
“Pen, I’m going to, though-all right?”
She nodded.
And when he was naked to his black socks she giggled and said, “You’re still just a blur. You’ll have to find them for me.”
“Touch me instead, Pen.”
She did so, hesitantly. Then like a sculptor running a hand over a work by Michelangelo; there was awe and an urgent lust to create.
He touched her, too, selectively, and forgot to keep saying how much he loved her.
Not that it mattered any longer.
She was drawing him down into her.
It was sheer instinct.
Instinct.
Like the primeval leftover that alerts modern man to a pair of staring eyes.
Jonathan brought his chin up onto her forehead and looked into the bushes.
The eyes stared back.
There was a face, too. The face of a youth with blond hair who was smiling at him through a low fork in a tree.
“Jonathan?”
Her voice was anxious.
A terrible rage lifted him from her and he rolled to one side. She grabbed at him.
“What’s wrong now? Please! We so nearly…”
