“Don’t talk.” Clasping his cheeks, feeling rough new whiskers beneath her fingertips, she pulled his head down and kissed him hard, parting her lips to let his tongue explore and ravish. When his hands slid to cover her breasts, she gasped and her knees weakened. Sinking, she pulled them both to the blanket, her arms locked around his neck. And she returned his deepening kisses, letting his hands sweep over her, letting her mind spin on wave after wave of sensation.
All her life she had been saying no to eager boys and men—although after her time on the boards, no one she knew believed it. But the truth was that before she’d always hesitated, had inhibitions that here with Dal dissipated into the wide spaces beneath the milky canopy of stars. What they were about to do was inevitable. Her body knew that, and so did she. They had been pulled toward each other from the beginning. On some level that she had fought to ignore, she had always known this moment would come, the question being only when and where.
He pressed her backward, his mouth hot and demanding and electric against hers, his fingers fumbling at the buttons on her trousers. Helpless, almost mindless, fighting for each gasping breath, Freddy surrendered to the vibrations thrilling down her body. She wanted to touch him, wanted to rip at the buttons on his trousers, too, but she couldn’t. What he was doing paralyzed her. His mouth nuzzled her breasts through her shirt and teased her nipples into hard buds. His fingers slid into her opened trousers, moving across her tense stomach and then he stroked her center and her mind exploded. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. His lips and his fingers aroused white-hot sensations that she’d never felt before. Mind swirling, she dissolved in fluid waves and she thought she would faint, believed she might die if he didn’t possess her now.
Thrashing beneath him, wild with the desire he skillfully aroused, she didn’t know he’d pulled off her trousers until she felt the night air rush over her legs and thighs, then he came to her again, covering a sudden chill with the heat of his bare skin. Instinct lifted her hips and her throat arched and her eyes closed. Gripping fistfuls of his shirt while shudders of pleasure trembled through her body, she whispered his name then tensed and cried out softly as he entered her.
“My God!” Lifting on his elbows he stared down into her face.
The heat and fullness of him inside her was unlike anything she had imagined. There was pain, but only fleetingly, and quickly replaced by an instinctual urge to move, to lift to meet him.
Her eyelids fluttered and opened. “Dal?” She licked her lips. Surely this wasn’t the end. Surely there was more.
“You’re a virgin,” he said hoarsely. “Freddy, for God’s sake. Why didn’t you tell me?”
It took a moment to understand what was happening. Then she felt a flash of anger fed by disappointment and a feeling of loss as he withdrew and rolled off of her. “I was right,” she said, sitting up. “Just like everyone else, you assumed—”
He dropped his head and pushed a hand through his hair, swearing softly. “You told me you were experienced.”
She had never felt so foolish in her life, sitting in the dark, half-naked, next to a half-naked man. Feeling half-ravished and wholly frustrated.
“This has nothing to do with some generalized opinion about actresses, so don’t put that on me,” he warned. “This has to do with you and me and that’s all. You said you were experienced, and I believed you.”
Embarrassment flooded her face and she peered through the darkness, looking for her trousers. “I meant that I’d been kissed.” She wasn’t really sure what had gone wrong, only that something disastrous had happened which left her feeling angry and empty.
He stood up, pulled on his pants, then threw out his hands. “Freddy, this isn’t how a man takes a virgin, damn it! There’s a responsibility that goes along with…” He planted his fists on his hips, and looked up at the stars, fading now toward dawn. “Damn it. I apologize. I’m sorry.”
“I can’t help it that I’m a virgin.” Where were her trousers? “Was a virgin.”
“You should have told me!”
“You know what makes me mad?” Standing up, trying to cover herself with the tail of her shirt, she stumbled around until she found her trousers, but she couldn’t find her boots in the darkness. “For years men have been trying to talk me into doing this. Then when I finally decide to go ahead, you jump back like I just handed you a poisoned apple!”
Dal placed his hands on her shoulders, but she angrily shrugged away from him. “Freddy, for God’s sake. A man doesn’t deflower a woman on the ground in the open air. That’s not how a gentleman does it.”
“Since when are you a gentleman?” Where in the hell were her damned boots? Later, she would let herself experience the pain of rejection and embarrassment. Right now anger prevented her from humiliating herself with tears.