An Expert Teacher

The companionable silence they normally shared was missing today; she felt tense and on edge, barely aware of what he was saying to her, until, at last, he placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him.

‘Something’s wrong with you, Gemma. Why don’t you tell me what it is?’

She looked up at him uncertainly, blushing and then hanging her head.

‘Is it me? Have I said something to upset you? Have I?’

She shook her head. ‘No … no, it’s nothing like that.’ She looked at him and suddenly a solution to all her problems came to her. Relief spread through her, melting away her fear and tension.

She reached towards him instinctively, her hand on the warm, bare flesh of his arm.

‘Oh, Luke, you’ve got to help me … please …’

‘If I can.’

She saw him frown and was aware of the faint hesitation in his voice, and her courage almost deserted her. She took a deep breath and faced him bravely. ‘Luke … would you … could you teach me how to kiss?’

She could almost feel the shock that ran through him and closed her eyes against the shamed surge of humiliation that coloured her skin. In Luke’s company she had managed to forget that she was too tall and unfeminine, but now in his strained silence she saw all too plainly how little Luke or anyone else would want to kiss a girl like her. Of course Tom wasn’t attracted to her. How could he be? Hadn’t her mother told her often enough how plain she was?

Tears spurted into her eyes before she could stop them. She felt them squeezing through her tightly closed eyelids and splashing down on to her hot cheeks, but as she raised a clenched hand to rub them away, Luke caught hold of her.

‘Stop crying, little one. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ His voice was rough and yet soft at the same time, and her tears turned to a strangled hiccup of laughter in her throat at the thought of anyone describing her as ‘little’, although compared with Luke’s tall, heavy frame she supposed she was.

‘Why this sudden desire to know how to kiss?’ he asked her gently, but underneath his gentleness Gemma was aware of a certain tension within him, a slight withdrawal from her that she could sense but not explain.

One of his hands cupped the side of her face, his thumb wiping the tear stains from her skin.

‘There’ll be plenty of time for you to learn things like that.’

‘No, there won’t. Tom’s leaving tomorrow morning.’

The mournful words made Luke frown at her, the comforting movement of his thumb ceasing. It struck her suddenly that there was something extraordinarily pleasant about having him touch her. Her father was not a physically affectionate man, and she had never particularly wanted his touch, but now she had an inexplicable desire to move closer to Luke and to be held within the comfort of his arms.

‘Tom? Who’s Tom?’ he asked her sharply, dispelling her mood.

‘He’s a friend of my brother’s. He’s staying with us. The three of us are going out tonight, to a barn dance at Winston.’

She looked up just in time to catch the smile that curled Luke’s mouth. There was an expression on his face that she didn’t recognise. It made her shiver as though she had suddenly gone cold.

‘And it’s this Tom you really want to kiss you, is that it?’ His mouth twisted, the dark blue eyes no longer smiling at her, but frighteningly hard. ‘Then he’s the one you should be asking for lessons, not me.’

He made to get up, and Gemma knew instinctively that he was going to leave. She had made him angry, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. She could feel fresh tears clogging her throat, and she reached up blindly, tugging on his arm.

‘No. Please, Luke, you don’t understand. If Tom kisses me, he’ll know that I’ve never done it before. He’ll laugh at me …’ She shivered as he stopped trying to move away and instead looked down into her eyes.

‘I know that I’m not … not pretty, or anything … and you don’t have to kiss me if you really don’t want to … but … but …’ She was struggling against a fresh wave of misery, stumbling over the words as she fought against her fear that she had somehow angered him and might lose his friendship, and her need to explain to him just how much she needed his help.

Without being able to explain why, she knew instinctively that when it came to kissing Luke would know exactly what to do. What he did when he left her in the evenings, and where he went when he wasn’t working, was something they never discussed, but with an age-old female intuition that her body recognised, even if her mind could not yet do so, deep down inside Gemma knew that Luke was a man who would appeal to her sex.

‘No, you’re not pretty.’ He said it roughly, as though something had got stuck in his throat, and when she looked up at him in hurt misery, he veiled his eyes with his lashes. They were dark and very thick, casting shadows on the deep bronze of his skin. He smelled of fresh air and growing things, of sunshine, and something else she couldn’t define but that she liked, Gemma recognised as he moved slightly towards her.

His hands curved round her upper arms, his fingers pressing against their bare flesh. He had touched her like this several times before, but now she knew immediately that this was different.

‘All right, little girl, if this is really what you want.’ They were both sitting down, but now Luke was leaning towards her, blotting out the sunlight. He wasn’t wearing a shirt because he had been swimming, and he was so close to her that she could feel the heat of the sun coming off his skin.

His hands moved up her arms, his thumbs probing the firmness of her shoulders beneath the thin covering of her T-shirt.

For some reason her heart had started to pound heavily, and she couldn’t drag her gaze away from his face. He looked different somehow, not the Luke she knew. He was looking at her mouth, she realised, with a sudden jerking leap of her heart. She opened it to say his name and then closed it again, reminding herself stoically that this was what she had wanted.

Her heart was pumping frantically against the wall of her chest; with every breath she took, she half expected it to leap into her throat and choke her. If she felt like this in Luke’s arms, how on earth was she going to feel when she was with Tom? She closed her eyes and shivered.

‘Open your eyes, Gemma. It’s not him who’s teaching you to kiss, it’s me.’

The harshness of Luke’s voice made her obey his command immediately, her own eyes registering the shock of seeing the brittle fury in his.

‘That’s your first lesson,’ he told her softly. ‘No man likes the woman in this arms to pretend that she’s with someone else.’

‘I thought I was supposed to close my eyes,’ Gemma protested chokily. ‘They always do in films.’

‘Maybe, but I like to see the effect I’m having on a girl when I kiss her.’

Although it was still rough, something about Luke’s voice seemed to have changed; now it was like the throaty purr of a lion, Gemma thought dreamily: hypnotic and ever so faintly dangerous.

His face came nearer, and her fingers clutched nervously at his arms. His hands moved, sliding beneath her, one cupping the back of her head, the other holding her waist. Her lips felt dry, and yet somehow swollen. She swallowed nervously and then exhaled in shaky relief as she felt his lips move gently against her forehead, his breath warm on her skin.

His mouth was as delicate and gentle as a summer breeze as it teased her skin. She could feel the hard pad of his thumb, stroking against her jaw, and caressing the soft skin of her throat. He moved away from her a little, studying her flushed face, his mouth …

She shivered suddenly as she stared at his mouth, her hand lifting so that her fingers could touch it, her eyes looking wonderingly into his. When he drew the soft tips of her fingers into his mouth and gently sucked them, her wonder changed to stomach-jerking shock. The oddest of sensations burst into life inside her. Her breasts … She tore her eyes from his, dragging air into her compressed lungs as she looked down at her own body.

As though Luke knew everything she was feeling, he drew her into his arms, soothing her.

‘It’s all right … don’t worry …’

How had he known what had happened to her? She could feel herself shaking as he rocked her gently. Her whole body felt flushed and strange, her wide-eyed, half-frightened gaze meshing with his as he held her away from him.

‘Would you like me to stop?’

Would she? Could she endure to go all through this again with someone strange, someone who wouldn’t understand like Luke did? She shook her head in dogged determination, her voice husky and strained as she whispered, ‘No … No … I want you to go on.’

Trust replaced the fright in her eyes as she looked up at him. ‘I know you don’t really want to kiss me, Luke, but if you won’t teach me, how can I ever learn?’

‘The usual way,’ he told her drily, ‘by trial and error.’

‘But boys don’t like me.’

She felt the all-too-easy tears rise inside her again, and buried her head against Luke’s hard shoulder. His skin smelled faintly male and alien, and yet conversely the contact was also reassuring. She felt Luke move her and opened her eyes to find that his mouth was only a whisper away from her own. She could feel her lips trembling and she pressed them together firmly, trying to get the trembling to stop.

Suddenly panic seized her and she wanted to tell him that she had changed her mind, but it was already too late, his mouth was touching hers, his lips caressing the closed, tight line of hers. His mouth felt warm and soft, but firm, too, and she quivered beneath the sensations clamouring inside her. He was stroking her mouth with tiny, teasing kisses that made her lips swell and soften. When she felt his tongue run along their tightly closed outline she quivered visibly, curling her nails into his flesh.