tumbling him over and over, rocking him, driving him on. He gasped. Shifted.
“Zack.” Stephanie‟s cool fingers wrapped his wrist. She tugged his hand from her naked breast. His fingers curled
reflexively. She felt so good, like satin, like velvet, like nothing he‟d ever felt before. She wriggled under him on the bench of
the swing, making the world sway and his boner very, very happy. “Zack, we gotta stop.”
He couldn‟t stop. He was going to explode. She liked it when he kissed her, so he tried kissing her again, warm, soft kisses,
deep, drowning kisses, trying to get closer, trying to . . .
“Zack, I mean it.” She pushed at his chest, moved his hand again. With her elbow this time, sharp against the inside of his
arm. The pain penetrated the rush in his head.
He swallowed hard and eased his weight off her. “I wasn‟t trying . . .”
“Sure, you were,” she said easily. She sat up and wiggled her breasts into her bra. His brain blanked again. “. . . got to get
in,” she was saying. “My mom‟s expecting me. And I have work in the morning.”
He watched her tug her shirt down over her flat, pale belly. He hadn‟t really thought she would do it with him in a swing in
her parents‟ backyard. He hadn‟t thought at all. His body throbbed.
Dickhead.
He looked up, into her eyes. “Work,” he repeated.
“You know, that thing you do to get money?” Her smile was warmer and softer than her voice. He really liked her. “I‟m
saving up for college.”
“I‟m getting a job,” he said.
“Yeah?” She pushed her red-black hair behind her ears, interest in her eyes. “Doing what?”
“I don‟t know.” Something that had seemed like the worst idea in the world when his mother proposed it was suddenly
acceptable. Desirable, even, because of Stephanie. “I have to find something.”
She stuck out her lower lip thoughtfully. The tiny silver ring winked in the moonlight. “My dad‟s looking for somebody to
stock shelves. I could talk to him for you.”
“You would do that?”
“Sure. Why not?” The swing swayed as she stood. “Maybe you could come by tomorrow.”
“To the store,” he said so there would be no misunderstanding.
“What, you thought I was inviting you back to the swing?”
He was silent.
“No reason you can‟t do both.” She smiled at him over her shoulder as she turned and walked away.
Despite the erection straining at his zipper, he lurched to his feet. “Stephanie.”
She waggled her fingers. “See ya. Tomorrow.”
He watched her skip up the back stairs and into her house, his face hot and stiff as if he‟d been crying, his body hot and
stiff from what they‟d done and all he hadn‟t been allowed to do.
He couldn‟t go home like this. He‟d explode. Suffocate. His mother would be waiting with questions, always with
questions, and he couldn‟t answer them tonight any more than he ever could.
“Where did you go, Zack?”
“Out.”
“What were you doing?”
Stephanie.
Her breasts were so soft and surprisingly firm, the nipples a miracle under his hand.
He breathed through his mouth. Okay, that wasn‟t helping. Think of something else. Do something else. He couldn‟t stay
here and jerk off in her swing. Suppose her parents came out? Or she did? He needed to move. Walk it off.
He pulled down the hem of his T-shirt and stumbled along the side of the house toward the street. A cool breeze washed his
face. The sky pulsed with a billion stars. He ran a hand through his sweaty hair, filling his lungs with sweet, clear, twilight air,
willing his body to settle.
“So.” The man‟s voice came out of the shadow of the trees, lazy and amused. “It was the sex after all.”
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