Emma Holly (6 page)

"Sh." He blew her hair aside and kissed the back of her neck. When he dragged his tongue along her vertebrae, he tasted salt. To his relief, she wriggled pleasantly at the touch. While she might be nervous, she wasn't truly scared. "I won't do anything you're not used to until we're both sure you'll like it. I'd never hurt you, honey. I only want you to feel good."

"If that's the case, you should have taken off your shirt."

He laughed and reached for the oil. "Right now, there's only one part of me you need to feel."

"I could guess which one," she said, her words muffled by her tie-dyed coverlet. "But I think I'd rather let you demonstrate."

Charity
heard him oil himself. He was on his knees behind her, straddling her hips. She wanted to look but managed to hold back. The sound was extremely personal—like masturbation—his slippery hand rubbing up and down the contours of his hardened cock.

He was slow about it, as if he couldn't help liking what he did.

"I could help," she offered huskily.

"Wait," he said, which she was beginning to think was his favorite word.

He oiled her, too, massaging her buttocks until all that remained of his single spank was a pleasantly warm spot. She doubted she felt much like a guy to him, but he didn't seem to mind. The pads of his thumbs rubbed lingering circles over her tailbone, the pressure skillful and welcome. She felt as if he were stirring some unsuspected pool of sexual energy, one that went deeper than she had guessed. Sensation flickered inside her like swimming fish.

Apparently, the folks at Mosswood got all sorts of training.

She bit her lip as he lowered himself gingerly. Supporting his upper body on his elbows left the weight of his hips to press her down. His thighs turned slightly outward to bracket hers. Beneath their covering of hair, his muscles were strong.
Bet he's a rower
, she thought, picturing him and his college team skimming down a river with ivy-covered buildings rising from the banks. As if to draw attention to the sensuality of the image, his erection settled perfectly between her cheeks. His heat made her roll her head from side to side.

She felt too good to be still.

"Don't move," he warned, "or I'll have to stop."

Her arousal didn't lessen when he moved himself, one gliding millimeter at a time. The first well-oiled thrust pushed him upward, while the next pulled him slowly down. His shaft was so stiff she suspected going faster would make him come. By the sixth protracted stroke, her hands were fisted in her bedspread. She could feel both his tension and her own, his arms beginning to tremble, his breath growing loud and harsh.

She wanted him inside her with a toe-curling ferocity.

He must have sensed this, because his head dropped down to whisper in her ear. "Don't move," he repeated, though she didn't believe she had. "You feel so nice, honey. Smooth as silk. I can't risk letting go right now."

"Tell me about your first time," she whispered back, hoping to distract him enough to last. She didn't

want this to end a second sooner than it had to.

His motions paused, but he didn't pull away. "You mean my first time with a man? That would have been when I went away to college. Experimenting, I guess, out from under parental eyes. I'm afraid my first few experiences aren't worth a story. Mostly fumbling, if you know what I mean."

"I remember those days."

"I expect everybody does." He shifted his weight onto one forearm and let his other hand meander up her side. His knuckles caressed the swell of her breast. "People get more comfortable as they go along."

It occurred to her that he probably knew most everything she had done. She didn't have to agonize over whether to hide or divulge her sexual history, didn't have to worry about scorn or shock. The realization was peculiar but kind of nice. It made her muscles relax all at once, sinking her deeper into the bed. The change in her eased something in Eric. He groaned with enjoyment, not rubbing any more, just pressing his hips back and forth.

It might have been her imagination, but she thought his cock was fuller than before. When he pushed the tip to the small of her back, it left a trail of dampness behind.

"Tell me about your first
exciting
time," she said, her request coming out lower than normal. "The first time that really rocked you out."

"Ah," he said. "That would have been B.G."

Eric
had returned from his first semester at college extremely full of himself. Once he'd concluded neither lightning nor social censure would strike him dead, he'd screwed his way from one end of U.C. Berkeley to the next. Boys, girls, even a hot professor of philosophy fell to his charms. Eric might have left Southampton a kid, but he'd definitely come back a man. Who cared if his grades were tanking? He'd proved himself a stud to be reckoned with.

With all these triumphs to keep him busy, he hadn't realized how much he was looking forward to seeing his boyhood pal. He'd been home a day and a half when his mother ordered him across their yard
to
the Grantham's.

"Benjamin will want to see you," she said, puckering her face at the duffle bag of laundry he'd left for the maid. "Since you went to school, he's been stopping by once a week. To talk. To me! You know he must be missing you if he's doing that."

The idea of B.G. missing him had a strange and flattering appeal. Eric's old friend had reasonably good social skills—as long as the person he was dealing with was willing to take him as he came. He wasn't shy, at any rate, not like people tended to assume prodigies would be.

Pleased, but preferring his mother not see it, he shrugged on his beat-up bomber jacket and crunched across the leaves the gardeners had yet to rake. In spite of his desire to come across as cool, anticipation buoyed his step. Yeah, seeing B.G. would be good. Eric could show off his new sexual credentials, maybe even get up the nerve to finally test which way the boy genius swung.

He smiled at the thought as he shoved his hands into his pockets, then stepped onto the gravel path that curved up to B.G.'s door. B.G. was living in the matching Stratford-on-Avon cottage behind his parents'

house. He was too lazy to move farther and unlikely to be inconvenienced by the older Granthams'

absentmindedly permissive ways. He paid rent, according to Eric's mother, and was working on some hush-hush project with the physics geeks at the State University of New York.

Recalling this, a bit of wind sagged from Eric's sails. Not only had B.G. long since finished college—including graduate school—he was gainfully employed in a job that was probably more important than anything Eric was ever likely to do.

Luckily, the self-doubt he might have wallowed in was cut short by B.G. poking his head out the front window. His narrow, slightly mournful face split in one of his rare smiles.

"Hey!" he called. "I've been hoping you would stop by."

They didn't hug when B.G. opened the door, but B.G. did squeeze Eric's arm as he walked through. The weird, zinging power his touch had always had was heightened by Eric's recent and more empirical knowledge of the fun men could have in bed. The inhibitions that kept him safe when they were younger had been erased.

He could make a pass at B.G. if he wanted. B.G. might turn him down, but Eric knew him well enough to be convinced he wouldn't let a temporary awkwardness ruin their friendship. B.G. simply didn't have the same prejudices as other folks.

I could do it
, he thought with dawning wonderment.
I could be kissing B. G. tonight
.

His mouth went dry from a sudden upsurge of nerves. Unaffected by his jitters, his cock thrust longer within his briefs, thickening and hardening until, within seconds, the cotton clasped it tight. Eric had always been quick to rouse, a trait he occasionally found inconvenient. He was glad B.G. had his back to him. Oblivious to Eric's response, he led him through a predictable maze of books and periodicals to the cottage's airy kitchen, the only part of the house he did his best to keep neat. B.G.'s mother's decorator was responsible for the gingham curtains, B.G.'s dad for the hand-built white cabinets.

"I'm trying to develop a concept of 'now,' " B.G. explained, "for a book I'm planning to write.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how well I'm communicating my idea. I think I need a better analogy."

"Uh-huh," said Eric, listening with half his ear, trying to recall if B.G.'s butt had been this cute before. His friend wore a pair of faded jeans, snugger than he remembered. Maybe, like Eric, B.G. had had a little growth spurt left.

Thoughts of where else he might have grown made Eric's palms go wet.

"There," B.G. said, pointing triumphantly at the counter of the breakfast bar.

Recovering his focus with an effort, Eric scratched his head. "Your concept of 'now' is a pair of placemats?"

" 'Now' is the little macaroni I've employed to form a bridge between the placemats. The quandary is that the pasta shell is too large. 'Now' may be the connector between past and future but, in truth, it's so fleeting that, given the limits of our brains' capacity to register events, it's virtually nonexistent. As soon as you're aware of it, it's the past. Personally, I'm not convinced the present exists in a real, measurable way. 'Now' could be similar to a neutrino, a particle so small it might as well have no mass."

"I don't think macaroni comes as small as neutrinos. I mean, if macaroni were massless, it sure wouldn't fill you up."

"No," B.G. agreed, "and where would you put the cheese?"

As always, B.G.'s jokes were delivered deadpan and came out of the blue. It took a second for Eric to laugh. "Only with you," he teased, "could I be having this conversation."

"But you see my dilemma?"

"I do." Smiling, Eric accepted a bottle of beer from his friend. He didn't recognize the label, but it tasted cold and expensive—probably the product of some arcane brewing process B.G. admired.

B.G. downed half of his in two swallows, then turned to Eric with a more customary sober face. "I missed you," he said, calm but watchful, seemingly prepared to let Eric read whatever he wished into what he said. Because he might mean anything, Eric strove not to blush.

"I missed you, too, man."

"Hm," said B.G. as though he doubted this. His thumbnail tore a strip from the label of his beer, after which he drew a breath and let it out without speaking. For B.G., this was practically a nervous fit.

"What is it?" Eric asked, leaning next to him on the breakfast bar. "Did something happen while I was gone?"

B.G. grimaced, apparently impatient with his own hesitation. A wave of his hand swept it away. "I lost my virginity," he said. "Afterward, I discovered I wanted to discuss the experience with you. I studied the process beforehand, of course. Psychologically. Physiologically. I used the most statistically reliable methods of prophylaxis. I'm reasonably confident my functioning was adequate."

There was no point in asking B.G. not to talk about this so dorkily. B.G. talked the way that made sense for him. If anyone didn't like it, that was their problem. Rather than waste his breath, Eric pulled a kitchen chair from under the table, turned it backward, and sat.

"So… how was it?" he asked. "For that matter,
who
was it?"

"Remember the theater arts student I tutored in calculus a few years back?"

"The redhead with the rack?"

"I ran into her at the SUNY bookstore. Because we no longer had a fiduciary relationship, and because she was interested in initiating me, we went to her apartment and had intercourse."

"Wait a minute." Eric set his beer on the table with a thunk. "You didn't
tell
her you were a virgin."

"Of course I did. If I hadn't, she would have noticed my inexperience. It seemed only fair to inform her beforehand." Troubled, he pulled out the chair next to Eric's. Unlike his friend, he sat in his facing forward. "Was telling her the wrong thing to do?"

"It wasn't wrong," Eric said. "Though most guys wouldn't have admitted it. I trust, uh, everything went all right?"

"It was… quite enjoyable."

He had a look on his face—a combination of pleasant memories and regret—that made Eric wish he could run back a film of the great event. He shifted in his seat at a sudden increase in his erection, realizing he really,
really
would have liked to watch.

"But?" he prompted, his voice just a little thick.

Lost again, B.G. paused to grip the top rung of Eric's chair. Like his newly mature physique, his hands were sexier than Eric recollected: long and flexible, with a light sprinkling of dark hair. Eric held his breath for B.G. to go on. After another restless resettling of his fingers, he did. "When we were finished having sex and I was dressing to go home, I realized—it came to my awareness that what I'd done wouldn't have been my first choice for a first time."

His dark eyes lifted and held Eric's, shadowed by insecurities Eric didn't think he'd ever seen in them before. To save his life, he couldn't have turned away. Every inch of his skin seemed to have broken out in hot chills.