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The truth lay somewhere in between.
Tonight, he had unbuttoned her blouse and gotten his hand inside her brassiere. Heather permitted him to fondle her anywhere above the waist. Below it was where she customarily drew the line.
They were on the brink of a breakthrough, however. The gentle feathering of his tongue across her nipples had pushed Heather to a sexual height she’d never achieved before. Yearningly, she brushed her hand across the fly of his shorts.
He made a strangled, groaning sound. “Please, Heather.”
Tentatively she pressed her palm against the bulge in his crotch. Her friends had warned her that “it” got huge and hard. Even so, she was timid of his erection. Yet curious. And desirous. And her friends were going to start believing she was weird if she didn’t move things farther along.
“Tanner, do you want me to?”
“Oh God,” he moaned and began frantically grappling with his zipper.
He shoved her hand beneath the waistband of his underwear, and before she was quite prepared for it, her hand was filled with pulsing, adolescent lust.
Tanner muttered incoherently as she timorously explored his shape. She knew how this monstrous organ was supposed to couple with her body, although she didn’t understand how it possibly could. Still, it was exciting to imagine. Her mind drifted through an array of erotic images, intensified by recollections of some of Hollywood’s recent renditions of sex, movies that her mother had forbidden her to see.
Then he ruined it.
“Oh, God!” she cried. “What…? Tanner! Oh, puke!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he panted. “I couldn’t help it. Heather, I—”
She leaped up and headed for the lake at a run, refastening her bra and buttoning her blouse as she went. When she reached the pebbled beach, she knelt and swished her hand in the water. She was repulsed, not so much by the substance on her hand but by necking in general. It was so juvenile, so common, so unromantic. Nothing like the misty love scenes in the movies.
She moved along the beach until she reached the fishing pier, then walked out to the end of it, sat down, and stared out over the water. Tanner caught up with her there a few moments later. He lowered himself beside her.
For a moment he said nothing. When he did speak, his voice was ragged with emotion. “I’m sorry. Christ, I didn’t mean to. Are you going to tell?”
Heather saw that he was humiliated, and she regretted her adverse reaction to what she knew wasn’t entirely his fault. She stroked his hair. “It’s all right, Tanner. I didn’t expect it and overreacted.”
“No, you didn’t. You had every right to be disgusted.”
“I wasn’t. Truly. Anyway, it’s okay. Of course I won’t tell anybody. How could you think I would? Just forget about it.”
“I can’t, Heather. I can’t because…” He hesitated as though to gather courage, then blurted, “Because if we’d been doing it right in the first place, it wouldn’t have happened.”
Heather returned her gaze to the moonlit water. He’d never come right out and said he wanted to go all the way. He wanted to—she knew that. But knowing it and hearing him say it were two different things. Hearing it was much scarier because it forced her to make a decision.
“Don’t get mad,” he said, “but hear me out. Please. I love you, Heather. You’re the prettiest, sweetest, smartest girl I’ve ever met. I want to, you know, know everything about you. Get inside you,” he added softly.
His words shocked her in a pleasant way. They made her body tingle in secret places. “That’s sexy talk, Tanner.”
“I’m not just feeding you a line. I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
“Look around.” He gestured back toward the parked cars. “Everybody else does it.”
“I know that, too.”
“Well, do you think… I mean, don’t you want to?”
She gazed into his fervent eyes. Did she want to? Maybe. Not because she was passionately in love with him. She didn’t see herself spending her life with Tanner Hoskins, the grocer’s son, having children and grandchildren with him, growing old together. But he was sweet, and he clearly adored her.
She gave him a qualified yes.
Encouraged, he scooted closer to her across the rough boards. “It’s not like you could get AIDS or anything because we’re not strangers. And I’d make damn sure you wouldn’t get pregnant.”
