Part 5

"Tell Mrs. Green," Wayne told his daughter the next day after lunch, "that school is back in session. She can't have Wednesday and Saturday. Why don't you two just agree on Saturdays, anyway? It's better for school. Or some Fridays?"

"Well, she can get permanent second shift; but she can't get permanent choice of days." Besides, Fridays and Saturdays were date nights. But Mrs. Green had agreed to a limit of one day a week -- way back in the fall.

"I don't want to seem selfish; I don't think I've opened it in a decade. But when is Steven bringing the Shakespeare back?"

"Bringing it back? Isn't it where it belongs?" They looked, and it was on the shelf. "If that's not where you keep it, it's my fault. We didn't get to the footnotes last night. We didn't get anywhere near the amount of studying done that I had hoped for."

"Spend too much time kissing?"

"Didn't get near the amount of that done I had hoped for either." If her dad didn't want to know, Shannon figured, he shouldn't ask.

"When is the next meeting of your committee?" her mother asked. "Is there any preparation you have to do? Shannon didn't think so. It was hard to see where the plans were going, and she hadn't thought of it since walking out of the door of the school. Her mother's question, though, gave her an idea.

"Well, there is one thing I could do, Mom." She called up Heather Swenson, the girl who had been holding out about the decor decor she wanted to use. "Look, Heather, this is Shannon Bryant. I'm on the dance committee with you. You know those cupids you want to use?"

"And Ken ignored my idea completely. I campaigned for that, that..." (Heather obviously had parents within hearing range) "I carried the junior class for him. He called it a return favor. But when I have an idea different from his, see who doesn't return favors. Just watch!"

"Thing is," Shannon didn't know whether calm reason would penetrate that sort of anger, "I can't see how we would make them. They might look great, but people aren't going to vote for something when they have to do it and they can't see how. Do you see at all what I mean?"

"You're against me, too."

"I'm not against you, not really against your idea. But you could bring in a couple of examples and tell us how you made them. I might vote for it then. So might a lot of others."

"You think so?" Heather sounded a lot less attached to her design plan than she had been attached to the idea of being persecuted.

"Can't hurt. And Heather..." Shannon had seen some odd looking cupids in her time. "make them decent. Know what I mean? That Mr. Babaian talked like an awful prude."

"I'm not like Ken. Anyway, thanks."

At half-past three, She rang Mrs. Green's bell. Her employer handed her a check on the way to her car. Once the demons were in bed, she wiped up the worst of the mess on the kitchen table before having a second helping of the dinner she had fixed them. She left the kitchen neater than it had looked when she arrived. She scooped up the loose toys in the dining and living rooms, dumped them in the toy box, and managed to force down the lid.

She spread out her homework on the dining table and filled out her own cards. A little before Steve was due, she ducked into the downstairs john to remove her bra. She rebuttoned the shirt, tucked it back into her jeans, and checked herself out in the mirror. But Steve didn't come. Well, she had told him not to if he hadn't finished the homework. Still, she was worried; that edict had been supposed to motivate study, not prevent the visit.

An hour after she had given up hope, Steve knocked at the door. "Sorry," he said, "Mom's car wouldn't start."

"You walked here?" The snow and slush made bicycling impossible.

"Only from the garage." The guy had driven out a new battery in the tow truck. Steve had hitched a ride back with him.

But he still would have to walk home, she thought. Maybe she could prevail upon Mrs. Green to drive him.

Meanwhile, he had shed his coat and a sweater. He took her hands in his and kissed each of them. Then he kissed her left hand as elaborately as he had kissed her right the night before. He kissed her palm, licked it, kissed up the inside of her arm, finally licked the inside of her elbow. Not until she shivered and pulled her arm away did he pull her into a real kiss -- mouth to mouth.

Shannon was flustered. The shivers from Steve's kisses weren't only because his face was cold against her arm. When he kissed her, she opened her lips; but he ignored the invitation, licking her lips until she pushed her tongue to meet his. Then he pulled her hips forward until her groin pressed into his leg, and she could feel his hardness against her stomach. Letting that grip and her own hands around his neck support her, she slumped against him. Her sensitive breasts were pressed against his chest by her weight. His big hands were opening and closing on her jean-clad hips. Conscious as she was that he could bring her no relief tonight, she was deeply turned on.

Steve finally broke the kiss because he had to breathe. Then, however, he headed reluctantly for the john. Shannon's responsiveness had been a joy, her tongue's reaction to his teasing no less than the hardness at the end of the softness against his chest. Her jeans were probably a message, but she had worn no bra under a blouse that could be unbuttoned. As he waited for his erection to soften enough to use the facilities, he removed his own shirt and undershirt. His shirt was buttoned and neatly tucked in when he came out, but he carried his undershirt in his newly-warmed hands.

"Put that in your backpack," Shannon told him. "We have a play to review." Shannon drilled him on the first two acts sitting in a chair halfway across the room from his place on the sofa. "And 'wherefore' means what?" she asked.

"It does? I thought it meant 'why?'"

"It does. I meant, 'What does "wherefore" mean?' You are right. It means 'Why are you Romeo?' She loves him. Her love would be easier without that name."

"Okay." They'd covered that in class, and less confusingly. When they had covered the first scene in Act Three, however, he rebelled. "Just because I did these at home doesn't mean that I don't get a reward." He walked behind her chair. He kissed the top of her head before pulling her chin upward to expose her face to his. While they kissed upside down, his hands cupped her breasts outside her blouse. The nipples firmed into his palms in the way he loved so well.

"Hey," she said when he moved his kiss to her ear. "If that is just for a scene, what reinforcement will you want for a whole act?" He pulled his face back to give her a leer. "Well, you can't have it!" He pulled a dramatically sad face and pouted. The faces were ridiculous upside down. He kissed her forehead while unbuttoning the second button of her blouse.

For Scene Two, he repeated the performance. Her breasts were so soft against his hands that he had to hold himself back from crushing them. When he unbuttoned the next button, she pulled the edges of the blouse forward, letting him see her hard nipples. Somehow, he resisted the impulse to grab them. While he returned to the sofa, she rebuttoned the one he had unbuttoned the first time.

The small gap from that loose button was more disturbing than the direct sight of the naked breasts. He swallowed and managed to go on. When they reached the fifth scene, she had only one button holding the blouse closed over her breasts.

"Boy!" Steve said. "He's as bad as TV. All those dirty jokes in the beginning, and then he deals with the love scene by having them come out early in the morning."

"You just have a dirty mind." Did he really believe that she hadn't thought about love, their love, in terms of a bed? She wanted that, she would have that, just not quite yet. And Romeo and Juliet had been married by that time, too.

They finally returned to studying and agreed on the information conveyed in the last scene.

Steve unbuttoned his own shirt while approaching slowly. She held both her hands towards him. He kissed each knuckle before helping her up. He pulled her blouse out of her jeans, undid the last button, and swept both of their shirts open. They were skin to skin for the next kiss, the first time since summer.

His hands were on her warm back, technically not an erogenous zone. He had sworn, however, to make love to all the parts he had neglected recently. If their culmination was denied him until the wedding night (and he was in no position to argue about that) he would rehearse the first act of that night until she felt as deprived as he did. The feel of the skin stirred some memory. When she broke the kiss to catch her breath, he scratched gently over that lovely warmth.

Shannon sagged against him. Her breasts warmed by his naked skin, her mouth explored by his warm tongue, even her back scratched by his nails, she was equally conscious of what was not happening. Her freely exposed breasts had not been grabbed -- for one thing. She had no objection to Steve's attraction to her sexy bits; on the contrary, she regretted that the messiness below would limit their making out. But Steve was interested in her. Feeling that, she grabbed his face between her hands to kiss him again, kiss him fiercely and possessively. She kissed him, in fact, the way she'd just been grateful that he hadn't kissed her.

If Shannon's kiss was even partly a response to her back being scratched, Steve was willing to scratch forever. He ran his fingernails up either side of her spine, then spread his hands to the corners of her shoulder blades. As the intensity of her kiss waned, he moved her towards the couch. He brushed his notecards onto the floor. To hell with the play, he thought. He had the real Juliet.

He eased Shannon down and back. Then he knelt among his spilled cards to kiss her. He started on her forehead and eyebrows. continued to her temple and ear, and reached her neck before she pulled his face into a mouth kiss. During that kiss, he smoothed his hand down her belly to her belt, slid it up again to cup her breast.

Then he kissed her in the same way he ate caramels; he feasted on the smooth skin of her neck and ribs and belly, but he mostly resisted the greater attractions of her breasts. Even when he yielded to that temptation, he kissed the slopes lightly instead of sucking on the peaks. He chose his spots like caramels from a bag, too, spending some time on each spot, but choosing the next one arbitrarily. He loved her, all of her. He wanted all of her, too. Tonight, the top half was his; and he was claiming it.

Shannon read some part of those feelings from his actions. She felt loved; he was kissing her everywhere. She also felt all tingly; the extra sensitivity of her breasts (she'd actually started the evening afraid that she would have to call off the making out) made these light kisses the more exciting. She felt dominated. At no time had his will clashed with hers, yet Steve was running this show in a way that he had never seemed to run any previous one.

Steve kissed the bridge of Shannon's nose, and then returned to her mouth. Her tongue greeted his eagerly, and the swirl of his desire almost made him forget to move on. He went all the way to her navel, where she wriggled provocatively to his kiss. When he moved his mouth up a little, he stroked her legs with his nails. He used the same nails-reversed stroke on inside of her thigh as he'd used on her back, figuring the denim would provide the gentleness.

"My belt is buckled," Steve said. "So is yours." He climbed between her legs on the couch and kissed her navel once more. This time Shannon's wriggle threatened to dump them both. She quieted as he kissed up her body. He was ready for his darkest caramels, her nipples. "Tell me when I am too rough," he said. He only used gentle licks and tiny, tentative, sucks on them. When his passion grew beyond that limit, he thrust his face between her breasts to suck the firmness there.

She shook as he kissed and licked her breasts. They felt a little sore, but the kisses felt a lot sexy. She took his kiss between them as an expression of gentle care combined with wild passion. When he kissed her mouth, his elbows barely on the cushion, his hardness pressed against her groin, she accepted him. Her hands stroked his back, her thighs hugged his, her mouth opened wider. It was finally Steve who broke the kiss.

He dropped back until his butt hit the armrest. He kissed her mound through the jeans, first at the zipper and then on either side of it. "Aren't girls' jeans supposed to have a zipper on the side?"

"Some do."

"You can't guess what I have."

"What?" Please, she begged silently, not some protection. Her first time wasn't going to be on Mrs. Green's sofa.

"I have notes on the fourth act," he said.

"I need a break," Shannon said

"Don't tuck your blouse in, please," he asked. And, while she took her break, he did a little adjusting of his own clothes in the kitchen. He retrieved the tissues from his coat, then returned to find his note cards a mess. They looked as if some fool had tossed them on the floor and then knelt on them.

She changed her Tampax, straightened her clothes -- obediently leaving her blouse out, and looked closely in the mirror. Once she'd cleaned up around her eyes, she looked a little strange but not too bad. Why messing around affected her eye makeup, she couldn't figure. Lipstick, sure, not that she wore lipstick to babysit, but why eye makeup?

She decided to leave it off. It would only get messed up again. And if Steve was going to run screaming when he saw her without makeup, she had better learn that now.

Steve didn't even seem to notice. After each scene, he would turn her so her back was to him, lift up her blouse to hold her breasts in his hands, lick and nibble some part of her that he could reach from that position. It was nice, sometimes it was very exciting; but when had he taken charge of the reinforcement?

When they had compared their answers for the last scene, he turned off the lamp next to his side of the couch. "We are ahead of the class. I can't believe it." He stowed his notecards carefully this time. Then he kissed her from behind once again.

"Lean over," he said, "there are still parts of you I haven't kissed." She leaned on a table while he pushed up her blouse. He sprinkled kisses all over her back. His position was awkward, but hers evoked some memory. He straightened and pushed his groin against the bottom of her jeans. When he scratched her back, she pressed back against him. Only the very bottom of his cock felt the pressure. "It didn't matter when I said that my belt was buckled. I should have said that my fly was zipped." He slipped his hands around her sides to hold up her breasts. "We could make love just like this." Well, he thought, not like this; her legs were awfully short. She would stand on something or kneel on a sofa. "Your pants down, but mine just unzipped."

She stood. Moving his hands to hold the bottoms of her breasts instead of the peaks, he pulled her back against him. "Not the first time," he continued very softly. "Our first time will be the full monty. Not standing, not the back seat of some car." He had a sudden vision of the back seat of his mother's Civic. "Not even the Cherokee. Y'know how, at the end of a wedding, the groom lifts the bride's veil, he kisses her, and they sort of roll the credits..."

She sidestepped his grasp, then turned to face him. She needed a bit more room. "Lutherans might roll the credits. Methodists have a recessional and then head for the reception." Not that the weddings that either of them had seen broke down on denominational lines.

"That's what I meant. Anyway, what it is is a symbol. In front of everybody, he removes one piece of clothing and kisses what is revealed. Once they get privacy...

"But that's not tonight. Tonight, that stays buckled." He reached out to tap her belt buckle. "Right?"

She nodded.

He took a deep breath. He so wanted her hands on him. "Well, one belt should. English is done for tonight. The question is whether you want to study math..." He tried to sound casual. "... or biology."

Did she, Shannon thought, want to see it again? She could still remember it jumping within her hand. And she needed to get back in control. He was watching her intently. She smiled and nodded.

He stripped off his shirt and then his shoes. Lying down on the sofa, he unbuckled and unzipped. He pushed his undershorts down to the base of his cock before covering himself again with a flap of his jeans. He'd lost some firmness during the pause in their playing, but now he was so hard in anticipation of her hand that he was afraid that he would shoot. "Want to explore?" he asked.

She used the weight of the belt ends to keep the fly wide open. So this was what he looked like: a head that looked a little like a heart -- more than she did really, a shaft that was the same thickness from the head to his groin, some blood vessels were visible in the shaft and one pale vein seemed to run its length. His thing was arched a little above his lower belly and his groin. The groin was covered with hair. None of this was really surprising. It wasn't as if she was some sort of Victorian girl; she'd seen pictures in sex-ed.

What was different from the illustartions in the books was that this was the bottom part. Things like the cleft in the head with the big vein running into it. She pulled it up between finger and thumb and moved her head to see the top. It jerked back. "Don't do that," she said.

"It's not my fault!" She was lucky that he hadn't blasted her in the face. "Or were you talking to him?"

"I was talking to you. Why do you treat it as if it were different?" She could almost see it as different, though. As some separate live animal. And, as she petted it gently, it jumped for her.

"He has a mind of his own; that's a fact. And he loves the way you touch him. Do you think you could give me a kiss before you bring this to a close?"

She adjusted her position and gave him a deep kiss. Their tongues played in a far sexier activity than the one she'd just left. "I like being kissed," he said as she raised her head. Well, she liked being the one kissing him, too. She attacked his right nipple with a sucking kiss.

His response would have surprised her; he murmured something and hugged her head to his chest. Except that her own response shocked her; there was something sexy in being the one giving the kiss. Her nipples got almost as hard as his did.

The break wasn't relaxing Steve's cock as much as he had hoped, but he no longer cared. "Oh Shannon," he sighed. "Oh Shannon, I love you."

"Nope." She rested her head on his chest. In this position, she could hear his heart thump. "Tonight, I'm loving you." She sniffed. He'd worked since showering, walked in the freezing weather, been chilled and overheated. He didn't smell bad, just a touch masculine, maybe a little Steve. His penis looked like it was lying down more; maybe she could see the top part.

When she tried, she could get it straight up away from his body, using her thumb and forefinger. The top part was no surprise, not heart-shaped at all -- maybe like those shields in old time history. But it stiffened while she was holding it, and she could hear his heart speed up.

It had been so hard that first time, and hot. Well, it was hotter than the rest of his skin now. She moved her fingers up and down the shaft. Again the skin moved on top of something harder. It was something much harder now, and his heart went "Kabump." But the shaft escaped her fingers to lie further towards her. She wrapped her whole hand around it. His heart was louder for another beat.

"I hope your father doesn't make you clean his guns," Steve said.

"He hasn't gone hunting in years, and he won't let me touch them." She thought girls should be allowed to handle guns, and she thought this an odd time to bring up the subject.

"Because you are staring straight down the barrel now." Oh, that. Steve laid a tissue down on his belly. "I have some more in my hand. I'll catch it, but you won't see me come from that position."

"How long do I have?" She probably should watch it shoot. After all, he wanted to do that inside her. On the other hand, listening to his heartbeat every time she made his penis jump was fun too. She squeezed a little and moved her hand back and forth. It sort of pushed back at her squeeze, and his heart jumped again. "What should I do?"

"Why ask me? It responds much more to you. The most sensitive part is on the bottom, just under the head." 'Bottom' and 'under' weren't the clearest words just then.

Guessing, she brushed her fingertips over the notch in the heart. The reaction of both penis and heartbeat showed that she's been right. Having decided that these experiments were fun, she brushed other parts at random. His breath was starting to come rapidly, too. Before getting into position to see the whole show, she kissed the nipple she hadn't kissed yet. His breath hissed at that. Too bad that she couldn't listen to his heartbeat while doing that.

Steve's hands were clutching the sofa cushions on both sides of him. Sometimes, he had tried to make it last. But even in the summer before Shannon's, when that had been his usual morning preoccupation, he had never treated his cock the way Shannon had. It was glorious; it was agony. "Anyway, when we do it for real, you will be around me, gripping me all the way from top to bottom. What I usually do," hint, hint, please! "is try to imitate that, moving my hand up and down."

Shannon knelt in a good position to see. She tried to do what he had said, holding it down on the base. However light her grip, however, her fingers seemed to bring the skin with them instead of sliding over it.

Steve was in heaven; Steve was in hell. Shannon slid her hand up to the top and tried again. The same thing happened, and -- anyway -- the thing was jerking around. She took a firmer grip and pumped a little harder. "Oh Shannon. Now. Now. Now!" And it was now; and Steve, feeling his whole body pulse out through her hand, reached the tissues out to catch it.

The sight of the drops squirting out didn't impress Shannon, especially as Steve was catching them very close to the source. What was impressive was the sight of his body as he clenched every muscle and rose off the couch. His head and feet must have touched, but Shannon saw -- even felt -- his belly and groin rise. His face looked odd as well. A minute later, all of him relaxed.

The part in her hand relaxed so much that it got some of the goo on her fingers. Babysitting had taught her not to mind bodily wastes. She dropped it and looked into Steve's smile. "I love you, Shannon," he said. She moved back to her old position where she could hear his heartbeat. It was strong, but slowed while she listened.

Steve had never come like that. And, in the aftermath, Shannon cuddled him where he lay. This was love; this was bliss. After a while, though, he had to get up to wash the mess off. That was fairly clumsy. He got to the bathroom with a lot of wet tissue in his left hand while holding up his pants with his right. When he came out, it was time to go home -- past time really.

He'd come to a decision, though. "When we really do it, I'm going to cuddle you all night afterwards. This having-to-leave bit sucks."

"I'll miss you, too," she said. "Can't you stay here and let Mrs. Green drive you home?"

"What if she won't? What if she does, and then says, 'Steve was a real burden last time; he can't visit you any more'? Besides my mother expects me home. They don't set a curfew like your parents do, but they do have their limits. Dad said once that your having a curfew was enough to get me home. Anyway, where do you sleep here?" If they could share a bed, even fully dressed, it might be worth the hassle.

"She has real trouble finding babysitters. I doze on the couch."

"I've walked it before. Just don't get dressed any more until I go. Do you want to see it limp?"

When he got it out, however, it was partly firm, angling down. "It's limp as a string most of the time," he said. "Just not around you."

He finished dressing: undershirt and shirt, shoes, and sweater. For their last kiss, he tightened and loosened his hands on her hips while pulling her against the near-firmness of his organ. He put on his coat, had one more brief kiss, and walked out into a serious snowstorm.

She shivered in sympathy, made sure that the door was bolted, and went into the john to get her bra back on. Dressing fully to go to sleep, she thought, was a silly act. She checked on the boys, who were -- unfortunately -- perfectly safe. She repacked her backpack, adjusted the lights, and pulled her coat over her.

After flicking a brief prayer upward about Steve's immediate future, she thought about his -- and her -- immediate past. How had he got control?

She remembered all his kisses, his tender holding of her breasts. Beyond kisses, she recalled those nibbles with his lips on the back of her neck and the corner of her shoulder. She shivered once again. What had he said about her rules? No, not yet, not now. Well, the jeans were a 'not now'; and he had conquered her by showing all his love to the parts above her waist.

You would never cast Steve as Romeo. He was more a can-do kind of guy. Configure Shannon's computer? Steve could do that; had done that. Reduce Shannon to a puddle of lust? That seemed one more task he could do. And, if he needed to do it without going below her waist, that only made Steve's problem more difficult. Or, she thought suddenly, did he think of that sort of problem as 'more interesting'? She'd heard him use that term.

Yet she had exercised control at the end. He always claimed that she made his heart beat faster, and now she had. With the hospital not far out of town, there must be some place you could buy a stethoscope around here. She wondered how much one cost.

Why did her alarm clock suddenly have a bell? She slapped out to shut it off and almost fell to the floor. She was on a couch; the ringing was a doorbell; She was at Mrs. Green's. She staggered to the door and peered out. It was Mrs. Green.

"Damn lock froze. I'll check the kids while you get dressed. The car's running." She trotted down the hall while Shannon struggled into her coat and gathered up her backpack. "Took you long enough to answer the bell. What if kidnapers had broken in?"

"You wish!" They walked out into a blizzard, the snow coming sideways at them. Steve! He'd walked home in this. "My boyfriend visited tonight," She said as they got in the car. "I told him that you would be glad to give him a ride home."

"In this? Why don't you put him up? Where is he?"

"Walking home... in this! Dad says to remember that I can sit for only one night a week." They were there.

"Get home. I'll call you in a few minutes." Shannon had to struggle to open her door as well, but she was inside and standing on the hot-air grate when the phone rang,

"Bryants'. Shannon Bryant speaking." Her mom had drilled telephone technique into her long ago.

"Hi. This is Mrs. Green. Look, I have a social life, too. What about if you sat for a few hours, not all night?"

"Eleven o'clock is my curfew, firm. And I have a social life, too. But I'll ask my dad. And we have a dance coming up this Friday. The big one is February. 10. And, of course, other customers can always get there before you." Driving Steve home in this weather would have been a big favor, but that didn't make Shannon happier about the refusal. She was glad to give her all the bad news she could think of right then.

She couldn't sleep without knowing that Steve was safe. She couldn't call at one in the morning. Well, there were only two choices. She called.

"Hello."

"Mrs. Anderson? I'm really sorry to call so late, but I just saw the storm outside. Steve walked home through that, and I have to know that he made it."

"A little late to worry. Yes he made it, and I gave him a piece of my mind. Shannon, the two of you haven't a brain cell between you. Normally, I wouldn't scold you, but you did call me up, What time is it anyway?"

"A little after one. I'm really sorry to call at such a time, but I had to know that he was safe."

"Well, I can understand that. Good night, Shannon."

Before she could respond the phone clicked.

And now Steve was really going to hate her for calling.

"Steve! Steve!" Rachel Anderson shouted outside the door of her son's room. She opened the bedroom door halfway. "Oh, Steve."

At that point, he would have screamed if he were even half awake. She marched up to the head of the bed. "Oh, Steven," she called in a saccharine voice, "time to wake up." She squeezed gently on the soaked washcloth she held. The falling water splashed off his forehead. He pulled the covers higher. Pulling them back down until his total face was out in the light, she squeezed harder.