Jennifer Greene - Ain’t Misbehaving

His thighs tightened around her and she closed her eyes. “Mitch…”

“So slow in water,” he murmured. “I can last in water for a hundred years for you. It’s like the friction of silk, and for you it’s going to go on and on until you can’t stand it…”

“Mitch…”

His lips caught the name, captured it, held it. He would show her. He could think of a thousand creative ways to give her pleasure; she just had to give him time to learn them all. A lifetime. For the moment, he had now, and there was no way she could escape from him before he’d erased the thought of any other lovers from her mind. Experience or no, there couldn’t possibly be anyone who’d ever love her more.

***

Kay smiled in the darkness, as wide awake as she had been sleepy an hour before. Mitch’s arms were warm around her. The feather bed felt like a cushion of clouds, and a freshly fed stove was sending out noisy little sparks that toasted the dark room.

She’d put on a long flannel nightgown moments before, modeled it for Mitch, and admitted she’d bought it for the trip north because it looked sort of north woodsy. He liked it very much, he assured her…as he stripped it off her.

The wolf howled again in the distance, and she wrapped her arm more tightly around Mitch’s waist. “You’d think it would get tired and go to sleep, wouldn’t you?”

She felt Mitch’s smile rather than saw it. “It’s just a boy wolf calling for his girl. Don’t get uptight.”

“Do I feel uptight?”

“No.” His fingers smoothed back her hair. When he tilted her chin up, she could almost see his eyes sparkling in the darkness. “You definitely don’t feel uptight,” he murmured.

“You can’t expect to come this far north without hearing wolves,” she whispered reasonably. “They provide…atmosphere.”

“And yet you dropped that extra log in front of the door just in case they got in through the bolted door.”

Her palm connected with his rear end, a love pat for his sass, and then lingered. How could a man with such broad shoulders have such a flat little fanny? Men were built very strangely. Her palms slowly rediscovered that strange territory, with sheer sensual pleasure. He felt good. Every inch of him felt good. And he’d just taken her to ecstasy and back again, to peaks she’d never imagined, to delights in intimacy she’d never felt before.

In silence, she stroked his smooth, warm skin, until she felt the whisper of his lips on her forehead, and her hands stilled. The way his fingers combed back her hair, over and over, the way he let the silken strands wind around his fingers, the way his eyes met hers in the darkness…it seemed a moment in time, always hers.

“Mitch?”

“Hmm?”

Her fingers touched his face, tenderly amused at the rapid growth of beard on his chin. “You could have told me,” she said softly. “I only love you all the more for it.”

“Tell you what?”

“That I was your first.”

Tension whipped through his body so fast that he could feel a tight knot forming in his stomach. Until that instant, he’d wanted to believe there hadn’t been anything that shouted inadequate, untried about his performance. “I wasn’t aware that…you knew.”

“I didn’t know, ”she assured him gently. “Not in any physical sense. It was something that I figured out because you’d been ill for so long, and at that particular time in your life-” He was quiet, so quiet and so tense, that Kay felt bewildered. “You’re a beautiful lover,” she whispered, “and I just wanted the chance to share that with you, Mitch. You made me feel all the more special because I was first with you.”

His arm dropped away from her, and he turned over on his back. “Is that what you felt?” he asked. Had she gotten a kick out of being his first? Before she moved on to more experienced lovers?

His tone could have chilled the tropics. A night that couldn’t possibly go wrong seemed to be going very wrong very quickly.

“You’ve been pulling back, Kay. Do you think I haven’t felt it? Your refusal to accept the necklace was only part of that. You’ve been pulling back from the minute I mentioned marriage.”

Something terribly thick seemed to clog her throat. “For your sake,” she said quietly. “I don’t believe marriage is what you want, Mitch.”

He gave her credit for trying to let him down gently. “Or what you want?”

His cold tone pierced her like a knife. “What I want? Mitch, listen. People…feel differently toward the first person they make love with. It’s not always a lasting thing… I mean, a lot of people have to test out other waters and-”

“I hear you,” he said roughly. “But I definitely don’t need to hear anymore. Enough’s enough, Kay. Leave it at that.” Maybe he’d been expecting to hear that, ever since she’d turned cool. Maybe she’d never felt anything lasting for him. He’d been a “first” for her-that was all.

Kay’s lips parted, with a dozen words trying to pour out. Anxiety and distress tore at her heart. “Mitch…”

“There’s nothing more to say, Kay. You’re absolutely right-I just hadn’t thought about it like that before.”

In time, she turned on her side, and a very long time later he finally heard her restless tossing turn into a restless sleep.

He stayed on his back and closed his eyes. He knew that she’d wanted to talk further, but he’d already heard the only thing that mattered. Being his first had been special for her, but she didn’t want him confusing that with something lasting. Now it all made sense; he knew why she’d pulled back the minute he’d mentioned marriage. More talk wasn’t necessary. Kay would only try to be gentle on the letdown.

He didn’t want her gentleness. If he couldn’t have her love, he simply wanted to extricate them both from the relationship as rapidly and painlessly as possible. For her, and for him.

She lay only inches from him. And yet miles distant. In the middle of the night, she kicked off the covers, and he firmly tucked them back around her.

Once he got up to add more wood to the fire.

At dawn, he had their things packed to return home. A fierce ache racked through his bones, like the loneliness of the north wind seeping through his soul. All the physical pains he’d suffered in his life were nothing next to this. He’d fought so hard for life, only to discover that it meant nothing without Kay.

Kay sprayed some perfume on her wrists, smoothed down the silver jersey tunic and stared glumly at the mirror. She couldn’t have been less in the mood for a New Year’s Eve party.

She was dressed to seduce the world, which didn’t help. The silver top was slinky and low-necked, and she wore it pneumonia-style-braless. Since she never went braless, she’d hoped that naughty feeling would transform a mood gone dismal; it wasn’t working. The eye makeup wasn’t working either. Or the perfume. The silver skirt should have at least given her some self-confidence; it hugged her hips and showed off her legs, but unfortunately she really didn’t give a damn.

The doorbell rang. She refrained from jumping a foot and a half, managing to walk to the door with reasonable sedateness.

“You’re early,” she remarked with a deliberately light tone and a smile as Mitch stepped inside.

“Only by a few minutes.”

She hesitated. “Mitch, this really isn’t necessary. You don’t have to follow through with this, just because we’d already agreed to go…” She devoured him with her eyes. He looked utterly devastating in his dark suit and red shirt, his hair brushed back and his eyes as cool as arctic ice.

“I said we’d go, and we will. You could hardly find someone else to go with at this late date.” He devoured her with his eyes, furious she was going out in public without a bra, entranced at the line of her hip as she bent over to pick up her coat.

“I could have gone alone.”

“And had explanations to make. Forget it, Kay. It’s nothing. You can go your own way when you get there and I’ll go mine.”

“Fine.” She spit out the word with a lethally polite smile. “That sounds wonderful. Exactly what I had in mind.”

“Good.” He stopped himself from yelling at her for not buttoning up her coat. If she wanted to expose her entire chest to the icy wind, that was her business.

He felt used, and he wasn’t likely to forget it. He hoped she’d enjoyed being someone’s first. He ushered her out to the car, opened the door, refrained with exacting precision from touching her and slammed the door in her ear.

Kay winced, crossed her legs nervously, arranged the purse on her lap and tried hard not to let her teeth chatter in the frigid air until Mitch could get the heater going. Chattering teeth would be a hint of weakness, of human feeling. She had no human feeling for Mitch. She felt used, and she wasn’t likely to forget it. The instant she’d brought up the subject at the cabin, he’d whipped out of the relationship like a man set free. He just hadn’t thought about it like that before, he’d said; maybe not, but as soon as she’d pointed out that first didn’t have to be last, he’d all too quickly agreed. He hadn’t been able to take her home fast enough the next morning. She’d been the first notch in his belt; she had no doubt there’d be thousands of others after her.

The heat hadn’t begun to work by the time Mitch had driven five doors down the street and parked the car again. They could have walked, Kay thought wryly. A car rolled up behind them, and they would unfortunately be pinned in. Mitch didn’t seem to notice.

“Listen, Mitch…” she said as he opened the car door. She glanced up at him, to see those frigid dark eyes glaring at her. Still, she tried. He wasn’t likely to know many people at Stix’s party; it was sort of an old friends’ reunion from high school. Why Mitch had insisted on keeping the date…but Mitch was stubborn like that. “Look, I’m sure you really don’t want to be here. I’m not in a mood for a party myself, and it’s not like-”