LaVyrle Spencer - Spring Fancy

When the kiss ended, Winn said softly, "And I won't be a hypocrite and say I'm going to put him from my mind because he's there right now, and you know it."

"Then I'll do my best to get him out of it temporarily if you'll just drive on through this green light, Winn Gardner, and take us to someplace a little less public than the intersection of Highway 52 and Seventy-seventh Avenue."

But the light had turned red again, and they had a full three minutes more to blandish each other with lips and tongues.

At the town house the For Sale sign was still perched on the boulevard. The lights illuminated it momentarily, then arced around and a moment later died with the engine. Joseph turned to study Winn, but now that the moment was here, she was nervous. She opened her door, leaving him to do likewise and follow her up the sidewalk and the three steps leading to her front door.

There, he didn't reach to take the keys from her hand, but took her tote bag instead, leaving her with both hands free. Still she felt inept, and it seemed forever before she found the hole in the lock.

Finally the dead bolt clicked back, and she led the way inside into the dark recesses of her tiny front foyer and the living room, listening to the soft thunk of the door closing behind him, then the almost imperceptible shush of his bare feet on the carpet. She reached blindly and found his hand. He followed, recognizing the direction in which she led him, turning right along the short hall leading past the bathroom to her bedroom. Another right turn and he knew he was standing at the foot of her bed with the high dresser to his left and the old-fashioned dressing table to his right. Her fingers clutched his rather frantically now, and he felt her trembling.

Did she expect him to drop her on the bed in the dark, and afterward creep out like a clandestine debaucher? Did she think that if it happened under cover of darkness, it would be easier to forget later?

He slipped from her fingers and found the wall switch in the dark. A pair of matched boudoir lamps flashed on, reflecting themselves from the mirror of the ancient dressing table.

Winn's face was in shadow as she whirled to face Joseph. His hand was still on the light switch. "If I'm going to have only one night with you, I certainly don't intend to have it in the dark. I want some memories to take away with me… of how you looked when you made love."

She dropped her eyes to the floor, and he dropped his hand from the light switch. He leaned to set her bag on the floor, then paused expectantly, waiting for her to make some sign of invitation. Instead, she studied the carpet beneath her bare toes.

"I'm very nervous," she admitted. Her voice wasn't its usual calm self. It was high and pinched.

"So am I. Agreeing to go to bed together, then putting it off for the better part of an hour is a little nerve-racking, isn't it?"

She glanced up shyly-he was grinning warmly-and laughed nervously.

"I… I'm sorry this room is in such a mess. I'm afraid I'm not the best housekeeper. Other things always seem to come first."

"At home my bed is made up only on the days when I change the sheets." He glanced at the tousled bed. Her sheets were white, the blanket army green and the spread a burnt orange-not exactly the boudoir of a vamp, yet it suited her.

With three unhurried steps he moved to stand before her, but when he reached to touch, she ducked aside and avoided him. Before the dressing table she reached up to remove the towel from her head. He took up a hipshot stance, hooked his thumbs in the back waistband of his shorts and watched as she bent forward at the waist, then rubbed her hair briskly. His eyes slid down the curve of her spine to the red knit shorts that magically rode up and down at the same time: up at the hem, revealing the gentle half-moon of skin where her white underwear stretched up to reveal a sliver of derriere, and dipping down at the waist as the elastic curved, revealing two knobs of her vertebrae thrown into shadowed relief.

Silently he moved up behind her and placed his hands on her waist. She jerked erect and met his eyes in the mirror, her own framed by a shock of wet wild hair. He heard the catch in her breath, then they both held motionless. When she realized how unsightly her hair looked, one hand came up to drive it back from her forehead.

Why, she's hiding. Of course. She felt vulnerable with her hair wet and tangled. No woman dreams of making love with a man for the first time looking less than perfect. Yet her fresh wet state seemed totally perfect for Winn Gardner.

He captured her hand and lowered it to her side.

"Sit down," he ordered softly. "Let me."

Her knees quivered as she stood transfixed by his stunning brown eyes in the mirror. Blindly she stepped around the tiny boudoir chair and lowered herself to it, feeling first with her hand to check her aim.

His eyes swerved away. "Which brush? This one?" A dark hand came into her range of vision, and she watched it select a brush from the three that lay on the vanity top.

"Yes."

It was a coarse plastic brush with a knob on the end of each bristle. As he lifted his hand, and the bristles bit into the hair at the top of her forehead, the knobs caught and forced her head back against his chest. Immediately his left hand came to press warmly against her forehead. "Tell me if I'm being too rough," he ordered, his eyes now on the top of her head while hers followed his every movement, mesmerized. Through her cold damp hair, his chest burned warm, then he backed away and completed the stroke, ending between her shoulder blades. He brushed slowly, lazily, and with each stroke her shirt grew wetter. An involuntary shiver shook her, and goose bumps skittered up her arms. Immediately he glanced up.

"Are you cold?"

"Yes."

He ran his hands down her arms, pulling her back against his stomach while his eyes locked with hers in the mirror.

"Your shirt is wet."

She swallowed, the ache of anticipation intensifying across her chest.

"Give me the towel again."

She handed it up, and he transferred his attention once more to her hair, folding it between two layers of terry cloth and drawing the remaining moisture from it before tossing the towel onto the floor, then giving her hair a final smoothing. She closed her eyes and lolled in the sensuous delight of the brush massaging her scalp, then tickling its way down her back.

"Put your arms up, Winn."

At his soft command her eyes fled to his, and she realized he was deliberately taking this one slow step at a time to give them longer to get used to each other. There was no hiding the fact that her breasts peaked up into two hard points, nor the fact that they were rising and falling with torturous rapidity as she obediently raised her arms above her head. He grasped the hem of her shirt, inverted it, peeling it up and over her elbows, leaving her torso naked, lighted by the lamps and exposed to his adoring eyes.

"You're beautiful, Winn," he breathed, "just as I pictured you." Her shoulders pressed firmly against his midsection, and she felt his hardness against the center of her back. His right hand still held the brush, but he seemed to have forgotten it. He slid both palms down around her neck, her collarbone, then outward to the top curves of both breasts, around their outer perimeter and finally to their soft lower swells, carefully avoiding the nipples, which stood out like twin rubies set in identical mounts. His eyes coveted them, but still he touched only the skin surrounding them. Her breasts were small, firm, conical, and she wondered how much space they would take up in his palms.

His hands continued to tantalize. She felt the smooth handle of the brush circle her skin, so much smoother than the rough fingertips that rode the paired curves, too, then slipped beneath them like mirrored images before lifting both breasts sharply, pointing her nipples more directly at their reflected faces high in the mirror.