A Summer Romance (9 page)

“Bill picked a fight with me,” Aaron
continued in the same monotone that he’d started with. “He accused
me of doing disgusting things with my little sister. Asked me why
she was sleeping in my room every night. He kept pushing and
pushing until I lost my temper. I hit him. I realize now that’s
what he wanted. He used that as an excuse to kick me out of the
house. I saw the terror in Katelyn’s eyes the moment he told me to
go, and my suspicions were confirmed.

“My mother took his side, believed the lies
he told. She told me to leave and never come back. Katelyn was
crying, begging me not to go. But what choice did I have?” He
looked at Maggie desperately as if she might hold the answer to
that question, one that had obviously been haunting him for years.
She had none, so she remained silent.

“I left like they wanted. But I didn’t go
far. I couldn’t leave her. I stayed in the woods behind the house
and watched. When the lights went out I snuck back into the house
through a broken kitchen window.

“My father’s shotgun was still in the
display case in the den. He’d taught me how to fire it when I was
younger. I took the gun with me to Katelyn’s room. My plan was to
take her with me. We were going to run away. I’m not sure how I
thought a fourteen year old and ten year old were supposed to
survive on our own, but I knew I couldn’t leave her there. I only
grabbed the gun because it made me feel braver. I hadn’t planned to
use it.” Aaron’s fists balled at his sides. His whole body radiated
with tension. Maggie’s chest tightened as tears came into her eyes
and she waited for the inevitable conclusion to this tragic
tale.

“He came to her room before we could leave.
He wasn’t expecting to find me there, but one look into his crazed
eyes told me exactly what he was expecting when he came to my
little sister’s room. She ran and hid in the closet the moment she
saw him. He tried to follow after her but I stopped him. I put the
gun to his chest and told him not to take another step. I told him
that I was taking my little sister, that we were going to leave and
that he was going to let us or else I was going to kill him. I
thought he would back down. For just a minute I actually thought
he’d let us go.” Aaron closed his eyes against the memory and took
a deep breath before continuing.

“He looked me in the eye and told me to pull
the trigger, told me if I didn’t kill him that he would kill me,
but first he would make me watch as he…” Aaron trailed off as tears
choked his words and he shook his head against the images. He
turned to face Maggie. His eyes were pleading.

“I pulled the trigger.” His tone betrayed no
emotion, but his eyes begged her to understand. She did.

“I would have too,” she answered, looking up
into his sad eyes and hoping that he could see the understanding in
her own. “Aaron, you were put into an impossible situation. You
were just a child. No one can blame you for…”

“Everyone blamed me!” he interjected
angrily. Maggie saw a hardness come over his features that she’d
never seen before. He took a step away from her, putting distance
between them again.

“My own mother testified against me.
Testified in court that she’d suspected me of molesting my own
sister! Said that
he
was protecting her! That I was still
angry from the fight we’d had, that I’d come back to settle the
score. They called it pre-meditated. They called me a murderer and
they found me guilty.” His rant lost steam about halfway through.
His shoulders slumped in defeat.

“What about Katelyn?” Maggie asked. “Didn’t
they ask her what happened?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head sadly. “I
never saw her again.” The first tears finally broke free and
slipped down his cheek.

“Never?” Maggie asked. Aaron shook his head
as silent tears ran down his face.

“I was sent to a juvenile detention center
until my twenty-first birthday. The last time I saw my mother was
in that courtroom. The last time I saw my sister was that night, as
the police were taking me away.”

She imagined what it must have been like for
him to have been so young and to be locked away, alone and
forgotten.

She closed the distance between them,
reaching up and grasping his face in her hands. His eyes met hers
and she saw in them the scared young boy he’d once been. She also
saw that he expected her to run now that she knew his secret, to
turn from him just the way everyone else in his life had. Anger
filled her, anger for the injustice of it all. There were so many
things she wanted to say, and she couldn’t think of any of them. So
she kissed him.

She kissed him deeply and passionately,
feeling the overwhelming rush of anger, sorrow, and frustration
flowing into this one long, fiercely passionate kiss. He responded
with a need of his own, a need for love, for understanding, for
forgiveness. She gave it all to him. She gave him everything she
had.

She ran her fingers through his hair,
gripping tightly as she pulled him closer. He lifted her into his
arms and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He took a few steps
until he had her pinned against the wall.

She clung to him, not wanting to let go, not
wanting him to stop. He slid his hands up her thighs and under her
dress. She was reminded of her dream by the lake, but this was so
much more. This was real. She felt the wetness pooling between her
thighs, felt the painful pressure building. She needed him to ease
the pain, she needed him inside her.

“Maggie, if you want me to stop you need to
tell me now.” Aaron buried his face against her neck as he spoke.
He was breathing heavily and his voice was strained. He started to
pull away and allowed her legs to slip back to the floor as his
hands slid back down her thighs. She didn’t want him to stop, she
reached for him, grasping his face between her hands and kissing
him again.

“Don’t stop,” she cried against his lips.
She’d never been so bold before.

His hands were on her again as the last
remnant of his restraint snapped. He pushed her dress to her waist
and pulled her panties away with an urgency that took her breath
away. He reached down between them, freeing himself, and then he
lifted her again, grasping her thighs as he pressed her back
against the wall and pushed inside her.

She cried out, arching her back as he thrust
into her, filling her completely. She dug her nails into his back
as he drove into her relentlessly, over and over with a fierceness
that had her screaming out in passion. She had never known it could
be like this, that a need like this could exist. She never wanted
him to stop as he drove into her bringing her to the edge of
sanity. She needed him, all of him, in a way she never knew
possible. She cried out with each thrust until finally her world
shattered.

She screamed out in climax as her body
shuddered beneath him, a feeling she’d never experienced before.
Her final cries pushed him over the edge as he pulled away just
before his own release and they both slid to the floor.

Both of them lay panting and trembling in
the aftermath. Maggie felt as if she was floating above her body.
It had never been like that for her before.

“I’m sorry.” Aaron’s quiet apology broke
through her euphoric haze. “I didn’t mean for it to be like that
with you, Maggie.”

It took a moment for his words to register.
She turned to him and saw the concern on his face, the worry in his
eyes. She smiled as she reached over to place her hand against his
cheek.

“It was perfect,” she assured him as she
brought her lips to his once again, “but if you like we can try
again.” She felt his smile against her lips.

Maggie woke slowly the next morning as
images from the previous day filtered into her consciousness: the
barbeque, the scene with that awful woman Mrs. Bouchard, the
fireworks afterward with Aaron…suddenly she was wide awake as she
remembered with stunning clarity how the evening had ended. She sat
up in bed and realized two things nearly simultaneously; first, she
was completely naked, and second, Aaron was asleep in bed beside
her.

She looked down at the sleeping man and a
smile spread across her face. He looked so peaceful laying on his
stomach with his blonde hair a tussled mess around his face. She
gently reached over and brushed some of his blonde curls away from
his eyes as she watched him sleep.

She still couldn’t believe that this was her
reality. She’d dated during her undergraduate years, but none of
her relationships had ever lasted very long, none had ever broke
her heart, and never before had she ever felt the passion that
she’d felt with Aaron last night. She shifted in bed as she
registered the intimate soreness she felt. It had not been her
first time, but it had been several years since she’d been with a
man, although never before had it been anything like what she’d
experienced last night.

After she’d been accepted into medical
school, men were no longer a priority. She’d immersed herself in
her studies, even pulling away from the few friends she’d made in
Boston. Every spare minute she had was spent with her nose buried
in a textbook. By the end of her second year of med school she was
starved for human interaction that didn’t involve academics, but
she’d basically alienated every friend she’d previously made, and
making friends had never been easy for her. She’d always been
rather shy. Perhaps that had something to do with the unnatural
attachment she had to the fern she’d found.

However, all of that had changed once she’d
come to Georgia. She thought of Andi and realized that she finally
had someone she could call a best friend, a girlfriend that she
could confide in. She looked down at Aaron, asleep by her side, and
realized for the first time she was in danger of falling in love.
She had come here to escape reality, but perhaps what she’d found
instead was a new reality, a better one. How odd to realize that
what had once seemed like the worst moment of her life had led to
this life, which was by far better than anything she’d ever tried
to plan on her own.

Maggie quietly slipped out of bed and
tiptoed to the bathroom to freshen up. She considered a shower, but
soaking her sore muscles in a bath was just too tempting. As she
slid into the frothy, warm water all of her aches and pains melted
away. She leaned her head back against the tub and allowed herself
to get lost in the memories from last night.

Aaron had been so tender, touching her in
ways she’d never been touched. She’d never known it could be like
that. By the time she stepped out of the bath every nerve ending
was zinging with sexual awareness, her memories of the previous
night had flooded her senses and left her wanting more. She wrapped
herself in a plush bathrobe and returned to the bedroom. She found
Aaron sitting up in bed looking as if he’d just woken.

“You shouldn’t just leave a boy to wake up
alone. It might make him feel cheap,” he teased as he saw her
entering the room. She smiled seductively at him as she sauntered
slowly across the room. He smiled in response, scooting to the edge
of the bed with only the sheet wrapped around his waist.

She stopped in front of him. “We wouldn’t
want that,” she replied, looking down at him. He reached over and
tugged on the belt of the bathrobe, pulling it away and letting the
robe fall open. She stood before him exposed, and he took his time
enjoying the view. She shifted nervously. She’d never allowed a man
to look at her this way. Sex had always been something that
happened under covers, in a dark room, certainly not pressed
against a wall like last night, and never in the light of day.

Aaron trailed his fingertips up her thighs
until his hands rested on the swell of her hips. He pulled her
closer as he brought his mouth to her breast. She whimpered as her
knees went weak. He held her firmly as he took his time suckling
and pulling at each tender nipple. His hands caressed and roamed
around her backside as he began to leave a trail of kisses down her
stomach. Her muscles quivered and her legs felt like Jell-O, and
then just when she thought he’d gone as low as he would go his
tongue flicked out and rasped against the tender fold between her
thighs. She cried out in shock and delight. No one had ever done
that to her before.

He grasped her thighs firmly, holding her in
place as his mouth explored her intimately. She felt that building
sensation that told her she was coming close to the edge again. An
edge she’d only just discovered last night. Could he do that to her
with only his mouth? Just when she felt that she couldn’t take
anymore he pulled away, lying back on the bed and pulling the sheet
from his waist. She looked down and saw the hard shaft of his
excitement. The size would have been intimidating if she hadn’t
known that she’d already been able to handle it.

She climbed onto his lap, straddling him.
This was new for her as well. He held onto her hips guiding her as
she positioned herself above him. She braced her hands against his
chest and felt the smooth tip of his erection rubbing seductively
against her opening. She looked into his shockingly blue eyes,
smiled coyly, and then impaled herself on him. She screamed out as
she felt him fill her, throwing her head back and closing her eyes
against the blinding lights that were exploding behind her lids.
She began to rock against him, moving in a primal rhythm that her
body demanded. He allowed her to set the pace as she moved over him
discovering her own needs and desires.

She rode him until her body was overwhelmed
with the sensations. She collapsed against his chest, claiming his
mouth in a passionate kiss. His hands continued roam as she found a
slower rhythm with their bodies pressed intimately together. He
kissed her tenderly and deeply in a way that brought her close to
tears. She’d never felt so close to a man before, so vulnerable, so
connected. Their bodies began to move in perfect unison, reaching a
new level of intimacy. He gripped her face as his kiss intensified.
She cried out against his lips as she felt a wave of passion flow
from her very core. He felt it too.