“No. Although I can’t see what business that is of yours.”
“I was getting to that. Would you like to go to bed with me?”
“I don’t know. Would I?”
She could have ignored him and simply marched downstairs. She could have gotten mad and slapped his face. She could have taken affront and given him a lecture on sexism. Instead, her reaction was just what he had hoped for—short of total capitulation, of course. She had turned the joke on him. He had asked the question with such an engaging grin that she couldn’t possibly have taken offense.
With very few exceptions, women liked his looks. Dillon modestly acknowledged this because, after all, he had had nothing to do with his handsome face. Genetics was responsible. He had always taken his hazel eyes for granted, but women seemed to think that the gold flecks in them were unusual and intriguing. They claimed to envy his long black eyelashes and the way his brown hair got sun-streaked in the summer.
When Debra gave him a once-over, for the first time in recent memory Dillon really cared what a woman thought of his looks. Apparently she found them pleasing and worth flirting with. Instead of going to bed, they settled on having coffee together and were almost finished with their second cups before she got around to asking him his name. From the beginning, it hadn’t mattered.
It was Thanksgiving Day before they went to bed together. They had been seeing each other exclusively, their dates usually ending with steamy necking and manual stimulation. With tremendous self-control, Dillon had restrained himself from even asking for more.
That afternoon, following an enormous Thanksgiving feast, they were in the Newberrys’ kitchen cleaning up when Debra said, “Dillon, let’s make love.” He wasted no time in hustling her out of the house, which was crowded with kinfolk, and drove her to the nearest motel.
“You should have told me you were a virgin,” he whispered afterward.
Seeing the uncertainty on his face, she nestled closer to him. “I didn’t want you to think I was a freak.”
“You know what this means, don’t you?”
“That you won’t respect me in the morning?” she asked impishly.
“No. It means we’ve got to get married.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
They postponed it for seven months, so that they could graduate first and because Debra had always dreamed of having a traditional June wedding. Besides, it took that long to make arrangements for a five-hundred-guests affair.
Now that the pomp of the ceremony was over, Dillon swept his bride into his arms and carried her to the bed, laying her down gently. “Don’t you want me to take this off?” she asked, touching the front of her nightgown.
“Not yet. You probably paid a fortune for it. You should get to wear it longer than forty-five seconds. Besides,” he added, “I like the way it feels.”
He skimmed his hand over her belly as he kissed her receptive mouth. Beneath his large hands, she felt like a doll with movable parts that were always willing to be positioned just so. He never took advantage of her eagerness to please, and he was always careful not to hurt her. He was mindful not to press too hard now as his hands sandwiched her narrow ribcage and pulled her belly up against his face. He kissed it through the slithering fabric.
“Hmm,” she moaned when he laid her back against the pillows. “Love me now, Dillon.”
“I am.” Though his erection was so full it was painful, he didn’t want their first lovemaking as man and wife to be hasty and unremarkable. He had waited all his life to feel a oneness with another person. Debra was that person. The occasion must be solemnized properly.
Aligning his fingers with her ribs, he used his thumbs to stroke the undercurves of her breasts, then whisked their small centers. The silk layer between his flesh and hers only heightened the pleasure he derived from the caress and the degree of her response.
Reacting to her whispered appeal, he scooped one breast from her loose neckline and took the nipple between his lips. He sucked it rhythmically, then worked erotic magic with his tongue.
“Dillon, please…”
His hand slid into the vee of her thighs. She angled her hips upward and rubbed her mound against the heel of his hand. He probably could have withstood that if she hadn’t unfastened his trousers and freed his erection. “Christ,” he hissed as she rolled the ball of her thumb over the sensitive tip.
As a result, the consummation of their marriage took place with him still in his tuxedo trousers and her in her negligee. It wasn’t until afterward that they lay naked, entwined on the wide bed, their desire only momentarily sated.
“I have the most beautiful husband in the whole world.” Debra was sprawled across his chest, caressing it with her open mouth and nuzzling her nose in the springy hair.
“Beautiful?” he said skeptically. “Hardly.”
Stubbornly she shook her head. “Beautiful.” She kissed one of his nipples and laughed when he grunted with pleasure.
“I’ve corrupted you. Before you met me, you were a nice girl,” he teased.
“That was before I knew what I was missing.”