The Awakening Read online

  She tried to pull away from him but he held her hands. “I want to go home and burn my clothes and I want my schedule back.” Tears were coming to her eyes. “Let me go, I said! I want to go home!”

  As she struggled, he pulled her into his arms. “Go ahead and cry, Amanda. Cry all you want. You deserve it.”

  She fought against him. She didn’t want to cry and she didn’t want to ever see him again. “Let me go. I want to go home!”

  “I think maybe you are home,” he said, holding her to him, pinning her arms as she struggled. She didn’t have the strength to fight, and after a while she clung to him. He seemed so healthy. She’d seen sick people today, people who couldn’t afford a doctor. She began to cry in his arms, and he sat down, his back against a tree, and held her.

  “I worry about test scores while they have no food,” she said through her tears.

  He unpinned her hair and stroked it as it hung down her back. “You can’t blame yourself.”

  “But my father—”

  He touched his lips to hers to quieten her, and to the astonishment of both of them, it was like the setting off of a bomb. Amanda opened her mouth under his and pressed her body against his. Neither of them thought as Hank’s hand sought her breast and found it, and as Amanda felt his hand, her body went limp in his arms, opening herself to him.

  “Amanda,” he whispered against her lips, “we have to stop or I won’t be able to.”

  “Please don’t stop,” she said desperately. “I couldn’t bear it if another man turned me away. Make love to me. Make me feel whole and clean and as if I’m worth more than a test score.”

  Hank started to say no. She was upset and emotionally spent and she might regret this in the morning.

  “Please, Hank,” she whispered. “Please.”

  He had once thought that if Amanda ever asked him “please,” he might do anything she wanted. He’d guessed right. He couldn’t deny her anything, and all rational thought fled.

  He stood with her in his arms and walked toward the spring-fed pond. “How about a bath, baby?” He moved with her into the pond, clothes, shoes, wallet and whatever else was on their persons and all.

  The cool water sobered Amanda. “Dr. Montgomery,” she said nervously, “regarding what I said a moment ago—”

  He kissed her. “You can fight me or help me, but the result will be the same. You won’t be the same when you leave here tonight, Amanda.”

  She was standing on the bottom, the water to her waist, and she knew by the look in his eyes that he was telling her the truth. She wondered if she’d wanted him from the first moment she’d seen him. Tonight she was going to do what she wanted to do. Tonight she wasn’t going to rely on a schedule or someone else to tell her how to act.

  “Yes,” she whispered and began unbuttoning her filthy dress.

  Hank pushed her hands away and deftly unfastened the buttons, then slipped the dress off her shoulders. There was an intensity in her eyes that seemed to go through him like a knife.

  “I’ve never wanted anything in my life like I want you right now, Amanda,” he said and grabbed her to him, her feet coming off the bottom of the pond. Neither of them noticed her dress catching water and sinking.

  Hank opened his mouth over Amanda’s until he almost swallowed her, as his hands pushed the straps of her undergarments off her shoulders, and when they wouldn’t slide, he tore them off.

  Amanda was too bewildered to think. There had been an absence of passion in her life and she responded to him with all her pent-up desires. He was every flirtation she’d ever missed, every dance, every social, every romantic novel she hadn’t read; he was every piece of cake, every glass of champagne, every handholding she’d never experienced. “Yes, yes,” was all she could say, her head leaning back, her hands in his thick hair.

  When her breasts were bare, he fastened his mouth on the pink tip, drawing her into the hot, wet cavity of his mouth.

  Amanda’s knees gave way and he supported her, one hand clutching her firm, round buttocks. He picked her up and her loose, torn garments fell away into the water. She was wearing only black silk stockings and black, lacy garters.

  Hank put her legs about his waist, his hands cupping her buttocks as his mouth stayed on her breast, sucking, his tongue hard and firm, running across her hard nipple. He set her down in the grass, her back at an angle against a mound of earth. He ran his tongue down her belly, nipping with his strong teeth at the fleshy part around her navel.

  “Let’s see how all of you tastes,” he said, and he buried his tongue in the most intimate part of her.

  Amanda’s eyes came open; she grabbed the hair of his head and started to push him away, but then his tongue was moving, his lips sucking. She arched her back and clasped his ears with her silk-clad knees. His hands came up to clutch her breasts, his thumbs flicking at her nipples, which were hard and sensitive.

  Just when she thought she might die, he moved his mouth down to her inner thighs and his hands were rubbing on her skin, making her skin feel hotter and hotter and hotter. She moaned under him as he ran his hands down over her legs, over the silk of her stockings. Silk and skin.

  He paused with his hands on her ankles, then withdrew them from her body.

  Amanda opened her eyes in horror. Was it over?

  “Just a pause, baby,” Hank said huskily, reading her mind. He was removing his clothes, and Amanda turned her head away.

  “No you don’t,” he said and leaned into her, his body between her bent legs. She could smell herself on his face, and instead of repulsing her, it made him seem more intimate. “You don’t turn away from me,” he said. “You look at me like I look at you. You kiss me where I kiss you.”

  Amanda opened her mouth to say no to that, but he put his tongue in her mouth, ran it over her teeth, pulled her tongue into his mouth. She wasn’t going to say no to anything he said.

  He came out of his clothes quickly, and if Amanda thought she was going to die before, the feel of his bare skin next to hers almost did her in. His ribs were between her thighs as he once again kissed her breasts then began moving up. She kissed his lips, his chin, his neck, the soft spot in his collarbone; then the hair of his chest was in her face, and she turned her face back and forth, feeling the maleness of him, smelling him. His strong arms were by her head, big enough to crush her. He made her feel so small and yet so powerful because she could feel his heart pounding.

  He moved up and her mouth opened onto his hard, flat belly. She could feel his manhood prodding her throat, so smooth, so strong. And then it was at her mouth.

  “No,” she whispered and turned her face away.

  “I don’t believe in double standards,” he said throatily. “Taste me, Amanda.”

  She grabbed him in her hands and sucked him down her throat. He was hard and smooth, like hot marble, and she sucked on him until his skin nearly came off.

  She groaned when he moved away from her, but she felt his frenzy as well as her own.

  She was wet when he entered her, wet and ready, and he slid into her like a hand into a glove. Amanda bucked under him but he calmed her as he held himself back. He didn’t dare move because he was ripe to bursting.

  Amanda found her rhythm and began to move slowly while he held above her, supporting himself on his arms, his eyes closed and an expression of pain-pleasure on his beautiful face. Amanda was like a child with a new and wondrous toy, sliding up and down, in and out, gliding, silk and satin, hard and soft.

  And then her body began to tighten and her fingers clawed into his back and she pulled him down to her. She wanted him closer and closer to her. She wanted his hot, tawny, male skin next to hers. She wrapped her legs around his lower back, the black silk on his skin, and pulled him deeper and deeper into her.

  His reserve left him and he became an animal: a wild, violent, mindless animal as he thrust into her, holding her to him as if his life depended on her. Only she could give him what he had to have.