Chapter 1

“I pronounce you man and wife,” Pastor Hank said. Stu lifted her veil and kissed her. It was rather a chaste kiss, no tongue and rather brief. Jessie was thrilled, though.

She was a married woman. She had read the romance books for most of two decades, and she had decided years ago that those things didn’t happen to her. She had dithered between thinking that they didn’t happen and thinking that they happened, just not to Jessie.

They got to the reception hall and stood in line. A lot of other guys kissed her, but it wasn’t so special.

She had her first waltz with Stu, and he knew how to waltz. This was fortunate, because she didn’t. Then they went to regular dances, and she stayed with Stu. When she got tired of dancing, she circulated.

“Interesting friend your man has, Jessie,” Chief Watkins said. “I must say that if I didn’t know him, he and his buddy are both the sorts of guy I used to loosen my gun in my holster on traffic stops when I was in the cruiser alone.” Watkins was a retired state trooper and the chief of the town police force.

“You mean you think Stu looks like a crook?” she asked. She kept feeling that this was too good to be true; was this the catch?

“I’m not carrying,” Kevin, the best man, said from behind him. “I flew into here.” She, who had spent 20 of her 27 years in this town, had three bridesmaids and a dozen other guests from out of town at the wedding; Stu, who hadn’t spent two months in town, had one person from out of town, Kevin, there.

“Not like a crook,” the Chief said. “I’ve arrested guys I knew were crooks with my night stick in my right hand. It’s just that he and this guy both look like they know how to deal violence. The sort of guys who’d consider whether they’d be going through airport security before they decided whether to go armed to a wedding reception,”

Kevin laughed. “Good point. I’m Kevin Brighton. I’ve known Stu since Ranger school, and I’ve never known him to strike a policeman.”

“That what you guys have in common? Stan Watkins. I’m what this town calls its chief of police. Sounds important until you see the size of the force.”

“Meetcha. We met in Ranger School, got to be friends a little later. Cam’s not dangerous; he mostly handles Internet security now.”

Later, sitting next to Stu at the head table, she said: “You never told me that you were a Ranger.”

“Well, you never asked. If that’s a deal breaker for you, you should have. Were you ever a Girl Scout?”

“No. Were you a Boy Scout?”

“I was a Cub Scout and didn’t enjoy it,” he said. “When the family moved, I didn’t go on. But my point is that there’s lot about you I don’t know, and there’s a lot, maybe more, about me that you don’t know. It’s going to be fun finding out.”

Then everybody clinked their glasses, and Stu kissed her. She remembered why she had married him and forgot her doubts.

In the car driving back, an entirely new set of doubts arose. She knew what the wedding night involved, or, rather, her romance novels had told her what marvels it involved, and she didn’t know how much of that happened, how much didn’t happen, and how much didn’t happen to Jessie.

She was not an ugly woman, and she’d been a pretty girl in high school, when many girls are pretty. Her Dad had driven her on dates and watched approvingly as the boys had kissed her good night. Then, Jerry, her then boyfriend, had got his driver’s license. They’d parked and kissed a lot more. Jerry, who had no more experience than she had, had heard from the boys who did. After a few struggles, they broke up. Brock moved more slowly and more suavely. He had unbuttoned her blouse when Mom was first diagnosed.

For a while, she refused dates. Mom resisted the cancer for nearly a year, and she didn’t feel in the mood to dance or watch movies while she knew Mom was suffering. Then Mom died, and she mourned and sympathized with Dad who mourned more deeply. Then, when she was ready to accept a date again, she didn’t know how to tell boys.

Finally, she went to one of the last dances of the year stag. Guys saw her there and figured out that she was available.

She was not, however, as available as other girls in her grade were. She had parked twice with her blouse unbuttoned with a guy she’d dated many times and come to like. The new dates expected to get in the back seat and open her bra. Many of them expected to do that on the first date.

She got the reputation of a prude. She still had dates for her senior year, but not dates with guys who had great chances elsewhere. And those guys didn’t really turn her on, either.

When she went to UW Madison, she had another chance and she was ready to get into the back seat by then. The guys, though, certainly the hunks and the jocks, expected more than that. She had some dates in college, fewer third dates, and fewer still fourth dates.

She got out with a business degree with a concentration in the hospitality industry. She went on the desk of a mid level hotel in Milwaukee. After a bit, she got invited on dates. It seemed to her that first, there were fewer single men, and second, that her contemporaries had gone on again.

Dan, who worked at the same desk, seemed to like her more than he wanted to get into her panties. When Dad died, and she inherited the house and enough cash to fix it up, Dan was one argument against founding her own Bed and Breakfast. She was 25, and she figured that if she went on, she would be assistant manager of some mid level hotel by the time she was 50. Or, she could be owner of her own small B&B. Dan was going to stay in Milwaukee. It was much too early in their relationship to bring him to Fairfield. And what would he do? Managing a B&B was not work for two trained hotel managers.

In Fairfield, people remembered the prude, and most men of her age had married, moved away, or both.

She had guests, but guests were strictly off limits. She was Jessie, and they were guests at Jessie’s Bed and Breakfast. She would share the breakfast if they got up early enough, but never the bed.

Then Stu had blasted through all that. He’d come first to see the leaves turn. One morning, he’d stayed at the place until the others were gone. He’d come into the kitchen. She tried to keep the guests out, but she didn’t like to appear unwelcoming. Part of the package was that you were in a home rather than an institution.

“Look,” he’d said after some socialization, “I’m not going to compete ever; I’m in Internet Security, but businesses interest me. This one is beyond my comprehension, though you appear to have it under control. Is this one of your hot times?”

“Yeah. Lots of people like to look at the leaves. Then, there are ski places nearby, and some skiers stay here. They head out early, and I sell some box lunches. Serious skiers don’t want amenities; they want to ski. Then, of course, the summer is regular vacation time. We get less than our share, but that’s still a lot.”

“And when does it die?”

“Snow melt until school gets out. Can’t blame them. The kids are in school; the few couples going on honeymoons want warm climates; trees are bare. We make our annual repairs then. The lesser break comes between leaves and snow.”

He thanked her and made his way to his car. She recognized the name Stuart Cameron when another registration came in by e mail. It was for Friday, October 20, through Sunday, November 5. That would be two weeks that the place would have a guest every day during a season in which there were sometimes empty weekends. Even if she hadn’t remembered his name, the payment by ETF would have reminded her. Most people wrote checks or used credit cards at sign out.

There was a couple as well as Stu for the first weekend. Stu was downstairs when they left and offered to help with the luggage.

“Now,” he said when he came back in, “Miss Jessica Albright, would you do me the honor of having dinner with me tomorrow night? Do you like Italian? There’s an Italian place towards Madison which gets great reviews on Yelp.”

“I don’t serve dinners, only breakfasts.”

“As a means of deliberately misunderstanding the request, don’t you think that was fairly transparent?”

“I do not date guests,” she said.

“Well, I am only one guest. After all, in the first place, you might not serve me a dinner, but you have to eat one. In the second place, what you sell is not only your delightful residence and the friendly service. You also sell the ambience of the surrounding countryside. With the leaves gone, the ambience is reduced to the neighboring restaurants. I would find this one much more pleasant in your company.”

“That’s ridiculous sophistry. Yes, I shall eat dinner, but in the splendid isolation of my own kitchen. If you don’t enjoy your own company, then I pity you.”

“I didn’t say that I didn’t enjoy my own company,” he said moving to lean against the door into her suite. “I said that I would enjoy yours so much more. Since you enjoy it more, as well, you should sympathize with me. I don’t claim mine is of comparable worth, but give me a chance to prove that I’m not a crashing bore.”

“Well, up until now, I’ve enjoyed your company. I, however, make it a rule that I don’t date any guest. You wouldn’t want me to break my rules, would you?”

“Actually, I would. Who would know? Come to dinner, a discreet distance away, although that wasn’t my reason for choosing the restaurant. Live dangerously. How great is the danger?”

Well the danger of having a man interested in her sharing the house with her was obvious to her, but she couldn’t say so. It might give him ideas. Then, too, he already was expressing that sort of interest in her, and they were going to be spending the night in the same house for the next two weeks. She accepted, and he thanked her. More important, he moved away from the door into her suite.

The next night, he behaved like a gentleman. At the end of the meal, he drove her home. She thanked him for the date, and his kiss at the door to her suite was gentle, the first date kisses she remembered from the times when her dates didn’t have a license, if more expert.

Tuesday at breakfast, he asked her to dinner Wednesday night. The rule had been broken, and the world had not ended. Besides, she had enjoyed herself. She accepted. The kiss at the end of the date was a little warmer, but he left her to go upstairs by himself. They ate in a Chinese restaurant on Thursday.

That weekend, there were no other guests. He asked her to a play in Madison Friday night. The date also included another restaurant. The kiss at the end of the date was hot, and he lifted her by her seat and pressed her against her door before leaving her.

The next week went the same way. They did not make out, or even touch much, in his car. They ended the dates standing up with his tongue ravaging her mouth and his hands inflaming her body. She would feel him hard against her, and then he would tear himself away to head up the stairs.

Alone, in her bed, she would bring herself off wondering when he would push her to open the door to him. In the state he left her, she doubted that she would deny him.

It was in his car, though, that he shocked her. There were other guests that weekend, a honeymooning couple who couldn’t keep their hands off each other and made her jealous that Stu could keep his hands off her. When they were finally gone Sunday night, Stu suggested a picnic for Monday lunch. The weather turned wet, and they ate the lunch in his car.

“Jessica,” he started out. She loved that he used her real first name. Jessie had become something of a frump; she could believe that Jessica was beautiful.

“Yes, Stu?”

“Wonderful beginning. Stick with it. Jessica, will you marry me?”

“What!” She couldn’t believe that. That sort of thing didn’t happen to Jessie. Besides she had decided that the sort of novel where the couple has a wedding first and sex afterwards was old fashioned. It didn’t happen to anyone any more.

He answered her questions. He countered her arguments. She realized, much later when he wasn’t around to distract her, that she had been a lot easier to convince to marry him than to go on their first date.

He drove her to a jeweler in Madison. She chose a ring set, and he asked for a cash discount. He typed on his iPad, the jeweler checked with his bank, and they walked out with the ring set. In a rare break in the rain, Stu took her to a park. He got down on one knee on wet pavement and repeated the proposal more elaborately. She accepted, and he slipped the ring on her finger.

For all the time leading up to the wedding, time Stu had expected to be much shorter, the same rules applied. They ate dinner at a restaurant and got back relatively early. He kissed her and stroked her against the door, but he didn’t ask to go in.

And, now, they wouldn’t stop at the doorway.

“My room tonight, I think,” he said. He led her up the stairs by the hand. In his room, where the bedside lamp had been left on, he closed the door behind them before pressing her against it.

This kiss was as thorough as any he’d given her, and his hands made almost as free. They were inside the room, though, and they would not stop.

When he finally put her down, it was to walk behind her and pull down the zipper. He hung the elaborate dress in his closet, where his clothes had been shoved to one side to accommodate it.

He hung up both his tux and his shirt before returning to her. His kiss was as wild, if a little briefer, and the slip came off.

With her skin bared, he kissed that as well as her mouth. He’d never seen her breasts; well, a bit of cleavage, but not her nipples. Other guys had, but not him. When he did, he stroked them and kissed them.

When she was topless, he lay her down on the bed. It was neatly made with clean sheets he’d asked her for days before. He removed her shoes, kissed her, kissed her breasts again. He removed one stocking, and kissed up that leg, repeated his actions on the other leg.

He got his own shoes and socks, but not his trousers, off before returning to her mouth. He lay over her while his tongue wrestled hers. His chest pressed warmly, if ticklishly, against her breasts, his clothed legs were rough between her naked thighs, and his erection pressed through his trousers and her panties against her mound.

When he shifted, he got on his knees in the bed and pulled on the elastic of her panties. Other guys had seen everything else he had bared, but not this. Still, they were married. She was almost sure he would take his own pants off and not just open the zipper to stick it in her.

“Oh, Jessica,” he said, “you are so lovely.” She wasn’t lovely, and that certainly wasn’t lovely. Faces can be pretty; mounds can’t be. Still, his voice sounded sincere, and she wanted to be lovely.

He lay down beside her and kissed her again. His hand played with her breast. Then it stroked down, down further. She pressed her legs together, and she could feel his smile against her lips. He moved down her thighs, and then stroked upward between them. It tickled, but it was arousing. Well, this had to be done, and it was silly to resist. She forced her legs to part. He cupped her, and some fingers spread her labia. She clenched her legs together again, but that only increased the pressure on the finger.

He sprinkled kisses over her face, and by the time his mouth returned to hers, the excitement began to rise. She stiffened, and he stroked slowly across her clit. He was too slow, taking too long. She would have told him so, but his mouth covered hers.

And, then, she came, deeply.

It was more satisfying than it usually was, and she was ready for sleep now. Then she realized that sleep wasn’t the next step; next he would enter her.

She spread her legs for that, but his finger did not still, and his mouth left hers to inch down her cheek, her neck, and down to her breast. She was stiff by the time he reached her nipple. There he stayed, licking or sucking to the same slow rhythm as his finger made. She tensed more. She could not bear it; she would break if this went on.

And then she broke. Spasms wracked her.

“Yes, Jessica. Yes, darling,” he said. His finger stopped still for a minute, and his hand rested heavily on the bottom of her heaving belly. That was more profound than any climax she had ever felt.

He kissed down one heaving breast. Then, he kissed up the bottom of the other. His finger began moving again, and it stroked across her clit just as he sucked the new nipple for the first time.

The heat built, and she stiffened. His finger slowed and became gentler. Even his tongue touched her nipple more lightly. She stiffened more, but she hovered on the edge of her climax. She almost grabbed his finger to move it more forcefully.

“Stu, please,” she said, “please.”

“Yes, my love. Yes, my Jessica. Just a little longer.” But she couldn’t take longer, couldn’t take one more tightening of the rack.

Then she had to take another tightening, and then yet another.

Suddenly, she shattered. Her pain wracked body burst into fragments, but they were fragments of joy. She undulated under his hand, and she moaned her pleasure. He left her breast and kissed her ear.

“Lovely Jessica,” he murmured into her ear, “marvelous Jessica.” And she felt marvelous, felt like Jessica. In his arms she wasn’t plain, reliable Jessie. She was champagne Jessica, and if they played the waltz again, she would know the steps.

Then he was kissing her neck, kissing her shoulder and then the gasping chest between her breasts. He kissed down over her heaving belly.

She suddenly knew where these kisses were headed. A hundred novels had told her about the target of that line of kisses.

But men didn’t really kiss women there, did they? That didn’t really happen to women. Well, Stu was kneeling between her legs and licking her navel. It tickled, just as the books said, and men really did it unless Stu had read some novels, too. But they didn’t do it to Jessie!

“Stu!” she cried out. But she knew how that argument ended, and she’d never been able to stop Stu. But she was so dirty there, she could feel the moisture running down her outer labia.

There was one lick on the inside of one thigh, one lick on the inside of the other. Then he grabbed the pillow she wasn’t using. He lifted her butt, all her body below her shoulders, and thrust the pillow there. Stu was so strong, so masterful. He kissed her thighs.

His fingers parted her labia, and she could feel him lick her. It sent a thrill through her.

The first touch of his tongue on her clit was an electric shock. Her muscles warned that they couldn’t take that stiffening again, but they stiffened. She hung in the same agonizing limbo once again.

Then, with a groan, she shattered again. This time, somehow, she kept on shattering. Lightning blazed through her, blazed again, repeated yet again.

When Stu finally lifted his mouth, he left her no more than a limp dishrag.

She lay gasping while he moved on the bed apart from her. She heard his trousers drop to the floor and then felt the corner of the mattress bend.

He was between her legs and it was his hair, not the trouser cloth, which was tickling her thighs. Her labia were sensitive from their adventures and felt his fingers acutely. He spread them, and she felt something cool and slippery between them.

“Jessica,” he said from inches above her face, “say yes.”

“Yes.” He entered her, stretched her. Then he was sliding in and filling her. The cool lubricant was somehow soothing to her sensitized flesh.

“Are you okay?” She nodded. There hadn’t been any pain, maybe a mild discomfort. He was a hell of a lot bigger than a Tampax.

He moved in and out, slowly and then more rapidly.

“Oh!” he said. “Oh, damn!” He drove into her, shoving her half off the pillow. He throbbed in her and then dropped to her side. He only lay on her right arm and right leg.

The foreplay had been marvelous. She had come more intensely than ever before, and more often than some months before Stu’s visits.

The actual sex hadn’t been so exciting. Well, that part of the books didn’t happen; at least it didn’t happen to Jessie.

On the other hand, Stu, who had now got back on hands and knees and was extricating them from all the tangles, seemed pleased as punch. He’d been very good to her, and it was good that she could reciprocate. He got them nearly covered and turned off the lamp. He snuggled under the sheet and blanket and tucked her in.

“Love you,” he said.

“Love you, too ... Didn’t I say ‘yes’ in the service?”

“I think so.”

“Then why did you ask again?”

“Well, it’s nice to hear,” he said. “I said that I loved you in the service, too.”

It was a little too warm with both of them under the covers and next to each other, but it felt terribly cozy, too.

She woke up to someone getting into her bed. She was naked, and it was a man.