* * *
“Kathleen?”
“Hm?”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
She snuggled closer against him and laughed softly. “What must I do to convince you? That’s the fourth time you’ve asked me that since we came in.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder and stroked the smooth skin, reveling in the feel of her. Ever wandering, his hand slipped under her arm and found the fullness of her breast. “I know. I just want to make sure you’re not uncomfortable.”
She laughed again. “Believe me, I’m comfortable.” Moving closer, she fit her hips against his abdomen as they lay on the narrow bunk in the guest cabin.
She had never imagined that love could be this consuming, this absolute. Even though an hour had passed since they lay together beside the river, the magnitude of the experience hadn’t diminished. She relived each second of it.
Erik had put his trunks back on, and Kathleen had pulled the T-shirt over her bikini bottom. They had laughed over the destination of her top and wondered who would eventually find it. After they had folded the blanket and began walking back to the Blazer, their arms entwined around each other, she had said, “Erik, it was wonderful.”
“For me it was.” He kissed her fleetingly on the forehead. “It will get better for you. I promise.”
How could it get any better? She thought it had been beautiful, though she didn’t feel that satisfied weightlessness she had read about. Her body still ached with some indefinable longing.
“Do you think we’d be expelled from camp if you spent the night in my cabin?” he had asked her as they drove through the main gate. He had extinguished the headlights of the car and was creeping across the compound at a snail’s pace.
“Not if no one catches us,” she said in a singsong voice.
“I knew I liked something about you, Kathleen Haley. You’re a lady of adventure.” He caressed her knee.
“Wait!” she said suddenly. “Pull around to the back of the kitchen.”
His grin was devilish. “Did you work up an appetite?”
As punishment for his question, she kissed him soundly on the ear. “No, but I want to get something.”
“Well, hurry up, or we’ll get caught.”
“I’ll be right back,” she whispered as she opened the car door.
In less than a full minute, she was back, carrying a brown paper sack. “What’s in the bag?” he asked as he quietly engaged the gears of the truck again and tried to find his way down the darkened drive toward his cabin.
“Wait and see,” she teased as he maneuvered past the last tree.
When they got inside and accustomed their eyes to the darkness—they didn’t want the disruption of bright lights—Erik declared that a shower was in order.
“I wish we had a deep bathtub, but we’ll make do with what we have,” he said in a voice feigning martyrdom.
The shower had been an orgy of warm water, soap, naked skin, curious hands and insatiable mouths. “Wash my hair, woman,” he commanded playfully as he dropped to his knees and tossed her the slippery plastic bottle of shampoo.
She laughed but fell to the task enthusiastically, working the soap into a rich lather and squeezing it through the strands of his hair. She was only distracted from the labor of love when his mouth relentlessly navigated her stomach. His hands caressed the backs of her thighs and hips as his mustache played havoc with her navel. When he stood up again, Kathleen was trembling.
The small reserve of hot water for the cabin began to run out and the water cooled. “Are you clean?” Erik asked her as he continued to massage her soapy breasts.
She leaned against the tiles of the shower stall, oblivious to anything but the gifted hands that touched her so expertly. “Squeaky clean,” she murmured.
“Are you sure?” Something in his tone caused Kathleen to open her eyes, which had fallen shut in sleepy contentment. That hungry desire she had come to know quickened in her again as his hand moved down her body to the tight auburn nest between her thighs. His eyes grew smoky with passion as his sudsy fingers stroked her.
“Erik,” she pleaded, lifting her arms around his neck and rotating her hips against the erection that had replaced his hands. She was pressed to the tile wall as he kissed her long and deep until the water became quite cold.
They dried off, but remained unclothed. Kathleen presented him with the paper sack she had picked up in the kitchen. “For you,” she said. The sack was full of ripe, luscious Arkansas peaches.