Lisa Jackson - Confessions

“I should never have asked you here,” he said, breaking off the kiss and breathing hard.

Nadine’s heart dropped. “Why?”

“Because I want to make love to you, Nadine.” He sighed against her hair and all his muscles grew tight and strident. “Nothing else in my life is working and you’re all I think about and I...I want you. In the worst possible way.” He said the words as if they were vile.

“Is that so wrong?” Tipping her face up to him, she blinked against the rain.

He laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. “Not usually, but my intentions aren’t noble.”

Her heart began to break. “What do you mean?”

Gritting his teeth, he held her at arm’s length, his fingers digging into the flesh of her forearms, his eyes gazing deep into hers. “All I think about is making love to you. Here, on the beach, in my boat, in my bed, in some sleazy motel room. It doesn’t matter where, but I want you. More than I’ve ever wanted any girl. It’s driving me crazy. Right now, all I want to do is push you onto your back, kiss you until you can’t see straight and touch your body in places no one ever has. I want to pry your knees apart with my legs and I want to lie on top of you and make love to you until I can’t anymore.”

She knew she should be frightened, that his words were meant to scare her, but she wasn’t afraid. Even in the darkness she noticed the tortured expression on his face, the lines of self-loathing in the turn of his mouth. The wind lifted his hair from his forehead and blew across Nadine’s skin, but rather than cool her lust, the steamy breath of air seemed to further fan the flames of desire.

He rolled off her and sat on the ground, his arms slung over his knees, his muscular back to her. “I’ll take you home. Come back to the house and I’ll get the car and drive you—”

“I don’t want to leave.”

His muscles flexed. “Really, Nadine, this isn’t right—”

Reaching forward, she traced the outline of one wet muscled shoulder with her finger.

His breath whistled through his teeth. “Don’t!”

“I want to.”

Whirling, he grabbed her offending hand and held it tight in his. “This could go too far.”

“I don’t think it will—”

“Of course it will!” He dropped her hand and plowed ten fingers through his hair. “Are you a virgin?”

She felt as if she’d been slapped. “What’s that got to do with—”

“Are you a damned virgin?” His hands were suddenly on her shoulders and shaking her.

“Yes, but—”

He swore and shoved himself upright. “Get up.”

Suddenly embarrassed, she stood, but couldn’t hold her tongue. “Are you?”

“What?”

“Are you a virgin?”

He rounded on her. His eyes were black as the breathless night. “I don’t see that it matters.”

“You started this.”

His mouth tightened. “No.”

“Good. Then I don’t have to worry about ruining your reputation, do I?” Standing on her tiptoe, she threw her arms around his neck and tilted her head upward. With a groan, he kissed her again, and lightning forked in the sky.

“This is wrong, Nadine.”

“Only if you think it is.”

He was already lowering himself to his knees, kissing her chin and neck, drawing her down and slowly dragging his wet tongue down her breasts as thunder cracked loudly through the hills. As they kneeled in the pooling moonlight, he cupped her breast and placed his mouth around the nipple. Slowly he drew on the dark bud, and Nadine shuddered to her very core.

“Is this what you want?” he asked.

“Mmm.” She couldn’t think or answer.

“Oh, Nadine.” Every muscle in his body went rigid and he drew in a long, ragged breath. His arms surrounded her again and he held her close, resting his chin upon her head. “I think we’d better take this slow...or at least slower. If it’s possible.” He found her T-shirt and tossed it to her. “Take me for a ride...in your boat.”

“My brother’s boat,” she corrected, feeling slightly wounded. Had she done something wrong? True, she didn’t know much about satisfying a man or even turning one on, but she’d thought, from Hayden’s response and her own, that everything was right.

She fumbled with her T-shirt, then waded to Ben’s boat. Hayden helped her guide the craft to the open water, and once in the middle of the lake, he reached over, turned off the ignition switch and let the boat drift. They kissed in the rain, lips touching as lightning sizzled through the air.

Throwing his jacket over her shoulders, he said, “We’ve got to get home. This isn’t safe.”

“I don’t care—”

“You will.” He guided the boat to the landing and cut the engine again. Helping her out of the boat, he slung an arm around her shoulders. As they walked to the county road, he shoved a lock of wet hair from her cheek. “Aren’t you going to ask me about Wynona?”

“Do you want to talk about her?”

“Not particularly.”

Nadine wasn’t sure she wanted to hear about the other girls in his life and yet she was curious, about everything that touched him. Especially the women.

“She’s the one my parents have chosen to be my wife.”

Nadine’s heart did a free-fall and hit rock bottom. “Your wife?” She was suddenly sick inside. He was going to marry someone else? Oh, God, how could she have behaved as she did? How could he have nearly made love to her?

“That’s what the old man wants. That’s what the car was all about. He gave me the Mercedes as an ‘engagement present.’ Trouble is, I’m not engaged.”

“Yet.”

He touched her arm. “Ever. At least not to Wynona.”

“She’s pretty.”

He snorted. “Do you think so?”

“Mmm.” She shivered. What was she doing out here alone with him discussing the physical attributes of the woman he was supposed to marry?

“Well, so does she.”

“Does...does she think you’re getting married?”

He scowled. “It’s hard to know what Wynona thinks, but I have a feeling that she’d do just about anything to get a piece of the old man’s fortune. Marrying me would be the easy way.”

Nadine’s heart shattered into a million pieces. Hayden talked about marriage as if it were a prize with which to bargain. She considered her parents’ union and knew that wedded bliss was something straight out of fairy tales. Yet she was enough of a romantic to believe that somewhere true love had to exist. It just had to!

She thought of Hayden kissing Wynona, touching her as he’d caressed Nadine, and her stomach roiled painfully. A question loomed between them and she told herself not to ask it, yet she had to know the truth. “You said you weren’t a virgin.”

He didn’t respond.

“Have you...did you...with Wynona?”

Clearing his throat, he grabbed her arm, causing her to stop walking. “Never.”

“But—”

“There was another girl.”

“Trish London,” Nadine guessed.

“So the word got around.” He started walking again, his fingers linked with hers. “Don’t believe everything you hear, Nadine. At least in Gold Creek. People like to stretch the truth.”

She knew instinctively that the subject was closed.

* * *

HAYDEN WALKED HER home. Over her protests, he insisted on seeing that she was safely on her back porch where he kissed her gently, then jogged back toward the road. She watched until he disappeared into the night. After assuring herself that he was really gone, she ran through the drizzle to the tree and climbed to the branch near her window. Carefully, so as not to make any noise, she slipped over the ledge and landed softly on the bare floor.

Letting out her breath, she began yanking off her soaked Nikes, but stopped short when she heard the click of a lighter and watched in horror as her mother, leaning against the bureau, lit a cigarette. The tiny flame gave Donna’s face a yellow, haggard appearance, and her lips were pulled into a deep frown as she drew in on the first smoke she’d inhaled in over five years.