A Month at the Shore (38 page)

"I don't know
anything
!"

"No problem; we'll work it out," he said, sounding amused.

She gasped. 
"Oh, Lord. Did I say that out loud?"

"Or I'm telepathic."

"I meant, not that I didn't know
anything,
just that I didn't know anything
... about
this,"
she said, struggling to explain herself.

Ken's voice was soft and low and sexy in his effort to help. "You mean, about making love under the stars?"

"Well, that too," she said in ongoing frustration. She had never been as fluent in describing her feelings as some of her women friends back in Portland. When they all got together, she was always the quiet one. It was the curse, she supposed, of being born a Shore; with the exception of Corinne, no one in her family had ever seemed very good at expressing words of love.

She tried again, because it was so important to her. She stopped on the path, in the middle of the stand of high- branched pines that separated the house from the beach and its ocean, and she took his hand in hers.

"I mean about
this,"
she said, laying his hand over the beat of her heart. "See how my heart is when I'm with you? Can you feel it? It lifts, I don't know how. But it does. That happens to Corinne, too, when she's with Gabe. I didn't
quite
believe her—maybe I was jealous—but now I do. And
,
I'm not jealous of her anymore."

It was a dark night, and in the narrow grove, darker still. Even so, she could sense a melting tenderness in his expression as he dropped the blanket and then cradled her face with his hands. "Laura
...
I want you.  You,
and no one else. I didn't even know I was hurting for you, not until I saw you come out of the house looking for Corinne that day.
  It was that immediate.
"

A shaky laugh caught in her throat. "I remember it well. I was a
muddy
mess."

"I wanted to kiss away every smudge on your face."

"I wish you had. We've wasted so many days
... years. Oh, God.
Years,"
she moaned, overwhelmed by the realization.

"We'll make up for lost time, I promise you," he
murmured
, tracing the delicate outline of her ear
with his lips. "I love you, Laura.  I
love you, I love you. Can you see yourself living out your life with a skinny geek from Chepaquit Elementary?"

A surge of surprised bliss coursed through her, leaving her schoolgirl-giddy at his apparent proposal. She arched her neck, offering it for him to explore; there was teasing laughter in her voice as she said, "Is this one of those male, before-we-have-sex assurances?"

"Marry me and find out."

Oh—no ambiguity there. She bit her lip against a stinging rush of
unexpected
tears. In the back of her heart was the realization that
this
was
how it should feel when a man wants a woman forever.
Happy and right.

But she wanted to be fair—because she
really did know
about men before sex—and so she said, "Ask me again
...
after
ward
."

"
Too long to wait." He pinned her in a new, fierce kiss that thrilled right through her and left her gasping
for breath
.

"Yes
, then
. I will," she said. "Yes. Yes."

"I'll take that as a yes," he said, smiling against her cheek. He picked up the blanket and threw it over his shoulder again, and they half-walked, half-stumbled the rest of the way to the beach, grabbing at buttons and stopping for passionate kisses along the way. By the time he snapped the blanket open and let it float down
to the sand
, her bra was undone, her breasts loose and feeling sexy under her tee. His own shirt was half in, half out of his waist; the belt that circled it was completely unbuckled.

They were a laughing, disheveled
pair
, an embarrassment to the neighborhood. Laura was gleeful at the prospect of making love under the stars on a Chepaquit beach. She had fantasized about it since puberty—such a doable fantasy, and still not done.

Ken took her in his arms and they kissed, then kicked off their shoes and fell to their knees, exploring, reaching, snagging fabric and pulling it up and away. His shirt went sailing, and her top, and when he slid her bra from her shoulders and tossed it aside, she felt the cool night air across her naked breasts and her desire went ratcheting higher, it was all so fresh, so new, so glorious.

"Take me, I am
yours
,"
she
said
, laughing and falling on her back. She threw out her arms and spread her legs. "X marks the spot," she
added
             
wantonly, happy and reckless in this respite of passion.

"I'll make a note of it," Ken said, grinning. He bent his head over her and kissed the zipper of her jeans and said, "Yeah, I think I can find my way back here."

He stripped away his slacks and underwear and she thought,
Almost there.
His nakedness was shadowy and alluring; even in the jet-black night, she could see how aroused he was.

He undid the brass button of her jeans, and then the zipper, and she lifted
herself
to help the disrobing. Peeling away her jeans and
undies
to just below her knees, he paused to slide his hands up the sides of her thighs, circling inward, heading for the spot marked X.

She held her breath as he lowered his head again over her, this time kissing the
soft
curls there. "I shall return," he promised, and he finished undressing her.

He came back to lie alongside her after that, and the
thrill
of her bare skin against his was made more so by the exquisite beauty of their surroundings.

"I've dreamed of you
... this, with you," he said simply. He kissed her, slowly at first and then again and again, warm, wet minglings of her mouth and his.
Between kisses s
he murmured his name, murmured her love, and he answered in kind, the low, sweet cry of one lonely creature for its soulmate in the scary vastness of
the
universe.

Down he trailed, heating her with kisses everywhere: her throat, the curve of her neck,
the tip of one
breast and then the other, then a hungry detour back to her mouth before resuming course again. But always, always, she knew that he was bound for the X.

He arrived. Writhing under the hot caresses of his tongue, she gripped the blanket's edge, found sand, rolled it through her fingers. Breathing deep, she sucked in the tang of the ocean. She opened her eyes: the scattering of stars had become a thick spill of glitter across a bolt of velvet. So much beauty, so much pleasure, all for her.

She was on that beach at last. Her heartbeat became a drumbeat and her moans crumbled into whimpers as he took her to the next level, and the next after that.
She was burning all over,
her eyes glazing as she arched herself into his kisses.
It became
an
effort to draw in breath. The
starry
swath in the sky above her pulsed blue and then red and then burst, showering her with licks of flame, consuming her completely.

She lay in a state of inertia, too spent to move.

Ken came back up alongside her and kissed the tip of her nose. "So. What do you think of making love on the beach?"

She sighed and said, "Oh
... you know what they say: location, location, location."

He laughed at that and smoothed her hair and seemed in no great urgency at all. But she knew he was
,
and so she said, "You do realize that you yourself are zero for two now?"

"Not by my reckoning; I look at it as two for two," he said gallantly.

To die for. Any man who put a woman first was one you didn't let go. She said softly, "Hey, how about letting me drive now?"

"Uh-h
, sure
... let me get the keys."

She could tell he was startled, and that gave her yet more pleasure.
She nudged him gently on his back, and he didn't seem to have any problem with it. At all. She leaned over him and with her tongue brought
him to a rock-
solid state, reveling in the aroused pace of his breathing.

"B
etter
... slow
... down," he said, his voice breaking on the breaths outward.

Because she wasn't used to walking around strange houses naked, Laura donned one of Ken's white T-shirts. The sleeves came down to her elbows, and the hem came down to the top of her thighs, but it did the job. More or less. She was staring into the refrigerator, looking for something unhealthy to eat, when Ken caught her from behind and slid his hands under the shirt. He pulled her to him as he nibbled the lobe of her ear, something Laura hadn't a clue that she loved until the night before.

"Mmm," she said, still thrilling to his touch. "Morning. I'm starved, and there's no chocolate cake in here. Orange juice, eggs, whole wheat bread—that's it? What gives?"

"Who knew?" he said, rocking her lightly in his arms. "I haven't had anyone stay here overnight since—well, how about that? I've never had anyone stay here overnight."

She looked up over her shoulder at him and said, "You lie."

"Honest. I bought the house from my mother only a couple of years ago, and
...." He shrugged off the rest of an explanation.

Which Laura was only too happy to supply. "And when you dated, you were the one who was invited inside for—shall we say—coffee, am I right?"

"Are you jealous? Cool," he said, burying his face in her hair. He nipped at the back of her neck, confident and possessing. "I'm seriously flattered."

"Can I be jealous retroactively?" she asked, sighing happily. "If so, then put me down for some of it."

He turned her in his arms and said, "That's one emotion you will never have to know. And that, lady, is the God's honest truth."

She had no doubt; she could see it in his eyes. "I
do
love you," she said, lost in that emotion for him. "Here's an awful clich
é
: I
didn't
know it could be like this."

Her gaze was drawn
to the gold band with its high-
pronged setting of a single, small diamond that she was wearing on her ring finger. Ken had got up in the middle of the night and had come back with it to bed; he'd had to wake Laura up to give it to her.

Bemused and enchanted and droopy with sleep, she had murmured, "Where did
this
come from?"