Jennifer Greene - Ain’t Misbehaving

“As a kid. It obviously hasn’t been used in ages, but fifteen years ago the tower was always manned during dry summers. In fall and winter, it was deserted, making a terrific place to go just to…think.”

“Nonsense.” She took a sip of wine, loving the feel of the warm liquid soothing her throat.

“Pardon?”

“Don’t give me that ‘think’ stuff. You were a teenager when you came here. So you had a girl with you. And that’s why you came here. For the privacy.”

There was silence behind her, and then his palm brushed her hair to one side. Very straight, very white teeth took an unexpected but gentle nip out of the nape of her neck. “Nancy White,” he murmured.

“Ah-ha!” Kay said triumphantly.

“Her father was a minister. Nancy was so darned willing…and her father was so darned mean,” Mitch said morosely. “Darned near got me kicked out of school.”

“How old did you say you were?”

“Fifteen.”

“And you never got past first base?”

“Second,” he corrected immediately.

Kay chuckled.

“I didn’t always come here with a girl,” he insisted. His voice turned quiet, pensive. “It was one of the few private places I knew.”

“And beautiful,” she said softly. With her head resting in the curve of his shoulder, she was perfectly content. “I love it, Mitch. This is a thousand times better than going out for a drink and dinner.”

“Pardon?”

“Come on, Mitch. We’re both of an age. Just being with someone is the best way to get acquainted. The traditional date is a terrible way to get to know someone. It’s always the same old thing. You dress up and act stiff and talk about what school you went to and whether you like shellfish.”

Mitch choked on a swallow of wine.

Kay grinned. “Don’t you agree with me? The man’s always had it the hardest. Getting up the courage to ask for a date, then laying out the cash for a meal and wine, and finally having to worry about timing the first kiss. Unless you’ve been happily attached for a long time, you have to be sick of that routine. Admit it.”

She tilted her head back and caught a peculiar expression on Mitch’s face. “It can get boring,” he agreed.

“And how can a fire tower ever be boring?” she added contentedly.

“Particularly when the lady plans to stay up here for the next four years rather than risk the climb down.”

“Let’s not get sarcastic.”

He chuckled, and Kay loved the sound. Mitch sent her protective messages, whether he knew it or not. Never mind that at times he could suddenly turn reserved, and never mind that his lightest touch sent exciting ideas tumbling through her head. He sent out definite vibrations that told her just being with her was precious to him, and not that his sole interest was in bedding her.

“Do you have to be back at a certain time?” he asked.

“Not till nine-thirty. Poker,” she murmured irritably.

“Poker,” he echoed.

“The guys come over to play poker most Friday nights. Usually, they like five at the table, particularly when one of the group remembers to buy napkins and potato chips. As in the sole feminine participant. Me.”

“You like the game.”

“Generally, I beat the pants off them,” she admitted.

“And just who are…the guys?”

He folded his arms around her ribs and she snuggled back, setting down her wine, aware of his slight stiffening but assuming it was due to his change of position.

“Stix is one. He’s sort of a big brother-my first date way back when, but that never went far. He’s called Stix because he’s tall and skinny.”

“I guessed that.”

“John works for the health department.”

“You also dated him.”

She shrugged. “For a few months. Actually, Barker…”

Mitch didn’t want to know. She was comfortable with men; he already knew that. She was comfortable talking about sex; he already knew that, too. And undoubtedly she ended her affairs amicably, because she would have started them with honesty and terminated them that way as well. That was fine. Commendable.

But he had a sudden image of her, flushed with laughter, her hair disheveled and her lips parted, surrounded by a houseful of men who’d known her far too well…

“Hey,” she murmured.

He had tucked his long arm under her knees and swung her around into his lap. “You know, I like to play poker,” he said quietly. “In fact, as a kid, I could bluff as well as a Las Vegas hustler.”

She stiffened at the first pressure of his lips on hers, not in rejection but in surprise. She hadn’t minded hearing about his Nancy White; it was years before. And she hadn’t hesitated to mention her poker game; the men were friends, not ex-lovers. Actually, she’d tried to tell him subtly that it wasn’t a date that took up her Friday nights.

All the same, jealousy was in that first pressure of his mouth on hers. It wasn’t merely a kiss; it was also a claim.

When she closed her eyes, colors seemed to splash on her closed eyelids. The vibrant red of a summer sunset, the pale yellow of the early morning sun, the silky blue of a mountain lake. Between her coat and his were folds of material preventing intimacy. All she could really feel was the pressure of his lips, so warm, so precious.

The afternoon hadn’t been what she’d expected. His showing up, the woods, his fire tower… Maybe it was all a little crazy, but from the first time she’d met him she’d felt odd vibrations. Mitch wasn’t an average man.

Oddly, she felt a little afraid of him. Of the powerful feelings he induced in her, so fast, so unexpectedly. She also had a great faith in her judgment as a woman. Every instinct told her this was a man she could trust when all the chips were down. And there weren’t many such men running around.

Her mouth gave back tit for tat. With fingers spread, she slowly touched his jacket and climbed up to the collar, finally to the warm skin of his neck. With that touch of her fingertip to his skin, the kiss changed; his mouth turned soft and sensitive.

His tongue swirled, probing her parted teeth, then stole inside, suddenly tentative. Her tongue touched his, welcoming gently.

The wind nipped at both of them; darkness surrounded them like a hush. When his arms tightened around her, she slipped her hands inside his jacket, wanting to touch this man as she’d never really wanted to touch another. He was so…different. Kisses…darn it, at twenty-seven, she’d had dozens of kisses. The men she dated used kisses as preludes to the next step, but Mitch didn’t use a kiss at all. He savored it.

Her lips felt loved, stroked by his own. He tasted and tested and kept coming back for more. There was a smile between the two of them, when they both ran out of breath like teenagers. There was a smile, and then it vanished, because Mitch’s lips clearly hadn’t yet had enough.

Her legs curled up, and her fingers splayed in his thick hair as she exulted in his quick intake of air. As he supported her head with one hand, his other hand reached for the buttons of her coat. His breath fanned her throat as he managed the first button, then the second.

His lips nuzzled at the flesh he’d uncovered, above her sweater. He rubbed his cheek against her soft skin, and when his lips crushed hers again his hands were suddenly in a terrible, almost awkward rush to loosen the last buttons. She almost smiled, but couldn’t.

Her breasts ached inside her sweater. She’d waited years to feel the caress of those big hands. No one had ever touched her the way she knew Mitch was going to. Loving had always come as naturally to her as breathing, from expressions of simple affection when she was a child to demonstrations of sexual feeling for the two men who had been special in her adult life. In between, there had always been levels of physical contact that had felt right at the time to her judgment.

With Mitch, there wasn’t a judgment but an emotion. Everything and anything was right. It had to be. He tasted so sweet, her suddenly not-so-shy man. So hungry! His whole body was tense with urgency, his heart beating with it, his hand trembling with it. Yet it wasn’t the rough kisses that swayed her, but the gentle ones. The ones where he slowed down and made sure she knew the exquisite taste and texture of his mouth and his skin, the scent of him, the pleasure in her that shone in his eyes.

His loving promised a giving so intense, a potential for sharing so infinite that she really no longer cared if they were better than a hundred feet above the ground on a cold night on a hard platform without a cushion in sight. Her body surged toward his when she felt his hand slide beneath her coat.

His fingers rested just below her breasts, just below soft white flesh that swelled, waiting. All he had to do was move his hand an inch. His fingers roamed over her ribs, making her murmur with wanting.

The side of his thumb edged half an inch. Her nipples stiffened and heated up like hot pebbles, shamelessly pouting for him. He lifted his hand…

Mitch took one last nibble at her bottom lip and then drew back, clutching the lapel of her coat as he closed it. His breath was rasping in his lungs as though he’d just sucked in fire. “Your men,” he said raggedly.

“Pardon?”

“You have a poker game.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.” And if she thought he was going to leave her at the door to a group of other men, she was sadly mistaken.

Maybe he had a latent streak of masochism, but he needed to at least see his competition.

Kay crunched down noisily on a potato chip and saw five pairs of eyes turn irritably in her direction. She swallowed hastily.

“Do you by any miracle have just a little more of that dip in the refrigerator?” Stix asked.

“What’s it worth to you?”