Breath of Scandal (3 page)

She combed her fingers up through his hair. "I love you, Gary Parker. "

"I love you, too."

Kissing her with fervor and passion, he pressed his hand against the small of her back, bringing together as much of their bodies as was possible within the confines of the front seat of his car. He had parked in a remote spot on a road that bordered one of the tidal swamps.

Outside, the February evening was cool and damp. Inside the car, it was warm and getting warmer. Within minutes, the windows were fogged up. Jade and Gary were breathing heavily, their fine young bodies on fire with the kind of lust the preacher's sermon had condemned. Gary buried his fingers in her thick, inky-dark hair. He slipped his other hand beneath her sweater. "Jade?" She looked up at him, her eyes fluid with desire. "You know I love you, don't you?"

She took his hand and guided it to her breast. "I know you love me."

They had started dating in their sophomore year. Before

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that, Jade had been escorted to school dances and parties by boys whose parents served as chaperons. She had met boys at the movie theater on Friday nights, but Donna Dee had always been with her. Beyond some hand-holding and an occasional, chaste good-night kiss, Jade hadn't had intimate contact with the opposite sex until she went out with Gary. She hadn't wanted to.

On their second date, he had parted her lips and French kissed her. Some girls claimed to love that; others said the very idea of it was revolting. After that night, Jade firml

y believed that the latter group was comprised of those who had never been French kissed. Feeling Gary's tongue moving inside her mouth had been the most delicious sensation she had ever experienced.

For months, those deeply satisfying kisses were the extent of their necking. Their intimacy developed gradually, as their initial physical attraction matured into something stronger. She had yearned to feel his hand on her breast long before he had dared to place it there. From touching her through her clothing, he had advanced to reaching inside to caress bare skin. Now, her breast filled his gently kneading hand. They tempered the abandon with which they kissed so that they could fully experience the pleasure of their caresses. His lips whisked hers as she reached into his letter jacket and unbuttoned his shirt. Her hands moved over his smooth, hard chest. Reaching behind her, he unfastened her bra with a skill that he had developed from practice. He touched her nipples. They hardened beneath his stroking fingers.

Jade murmured her delight. When he pressed his open mouth over one nipple and applied his tongue to it, she gave a soft cry of longing. "Gary, I want to make love." "I know. I know."

Her pantyhose fit tightly, but he worked his hand beneath them and into the dense curls that had been mashed flat. Only in the last few weeks had they allowed themselves to go this far. It was still new and strange and wonderful to feel Gary's fingers caressing the most secretive part of her body.

She bit her lower lip to hold back her moans of pleasure. Her breasts were raised to sensitive peaks that he gently sponged with his tongue. She wanted to weep from the joy of sharing her body with him. Tonight, she decided to return the pleasure he so unselfishly gave her. She loved his tall, solid, athlete's body and wanted to know it more intimately. Reaching between his thighs, she awkwardly pressed her palm against the fly of his pants.

Gary's head snapped back. He sucked in a sharp breath. His caressing hand fell still beneath her pantyhose. "Jade?"

She was embarrassed, but resolutely kept her hand where it was instead of drawing it back. "Hmm?"

"You don't have to do that. What I mean is, I don't want you to think I expect it."

"I know. But I want to." Her palm applied more pressure.

Whispering her name repeatedly, he grappled with his belt buckle, a button, and his zipper, then tentatively guided her hand inside his trousers. Beneath his underwear his skin was hot. His shaft was hard. He folded her fingers around it. Jade was shocked by how big it was. She'd had indications, of course, but feeling an indistinct bulge against her belly through her clothes was far different from enclosing his fully extended sex with her hand.

While he kissed her fiercely, she bashfully explored his erection. Her hand made a sliding motion up and down that stopped his breath. He groaned her name and slipped his finger up between the fleshy lips of her sex.

The motion caused a friction unlike anything Jade had ever felt. She tilted her hips up, reaching for him, reaching for something that eluded her. Again he moved his finger. It was like being skimmed by Fourth of July sparklers. Her entire lower body tingled.

"Gary?" This was a marvelous discovery. She wanted to tell him about it, share it with him. "Gary?" Her hand closed tightly around his penis.

With a low, frustrated grow], Gary pulled away from her

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and sat up. He pushed her hand away from his lap. "Stop. If you don't, I'm going to make a mess."

"I don't care," she whispered.

"I do." Crossing his hands over the top of the steering wheel, he ground his forehead against his white knuckles. "Jade, I'm sick of this shit. I want to do it so bad."

The promising tingles that she had felt now blinked and went out. She regretted that. They had been stunning, breathtaking, almost scary, but she wished she could have found out what they led to. Was it an orgasm?

But her primary concern was for Gary, who she knew was far more frustrated than she. She moved closer to him and smoothed her hand over his head.

"I don't know which is worse," he said hoarsely, "not touching you at all, or touching you to this point, where I want you so much I hurt afl over."

"I think not touching at all would be much worse. For me anyway. "

"It would be hell for me, too. But we can't go on like this. "

"Then let's not."

He raised his head and looked at her. For several moments, his brown eyes searched her face. Then he lowered his gaze and shook his head regretfully. "We can't, Jade. You're the best thing I've got going for me. I can't ruin it. "

"Why would making love ruin it?" "What if you got pregnant?"

"I wouldn't. Not if we take precautions."

"You still could. Then our chances for getting out of this place," he jutted his chin toward the windshield, "would be shot to hell. I'd have to grow soybeans for Ivan Patchett, and you'd have to go to work in his goddamn factory. Everybody would say I had no better sense than my daddy, and they'd be right."

Because of the ever-growing number of little Parkers, the joke around town was that Gary's father, Otis, didn't know when to quit. That was just one of the stigmas that Gary was determined to shrug off.

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He drew Jade against his chest and propped his chin on the top of her head. "We can't gamble away our chance to make a better life."

"Making love now doesn't necessarily mean that our futures are doomed to misery."

"It scares me to tempt fate, though. The only time I really feel good is when I'm with you, Jade. The rest of the time I feel so alone. That sounds crazy, doesn't it? How could I feel alone with six younger brothers and sisters in the house? But it's true.

"Sometimes I think I must have been a foundling, that I don't really belong to my parents. My daddy is resigned to fields that flood and crops that rot and selling his produce in a feudalistic town like Palmetto. He hates being poor and ignorant but doesn't do anything to help himself. He takes whatever shit Ivan Patchett shovels him and is glad to get it.

"Well, I'm poor, but I'm not ignorant. I'm sure as hell not cowed by the Patchetts. I'm not going to be like my daddy, accepting things as they are just because that's the way they've always been. I'm going to make something of myself.

"I know I can, Jade, if I've got you pulling for me. He took her hand and pressed her palm to his lips, leaving it there while he spoke. "But in the meantime, I'm so afraid of letting you down."

"You could never let me down."

"One of these days, you might decide it's not worth the struggle. You might decide that you want a guy who hasn't got so far to go, who hasn't got anything to prove. A guy like Neal."

She pulled her hand away from his and blinked her eyes angrily. "Don't ever say anything like that to me again. It sounds like something my mother would say, and you know how angry it makes me when she starts planning my life for me. "

"Maybe some of the things she says are right, Jade. A girl who looks like you deserves somebody with money and social status, somebody who could lay the world at your

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feet. That's what I want to do. What if you lose patience with me before I'm able to?"

"Listen to me, Gary Parker. I don't give a flip about social status. I don't pine after a life of luxury. I have ambitions of my own, which would be in place whether or not I loved you. Getting a scholarship is only the first step of many. Just like you, I've got my own family disgrace to live down. The only world I want at my feet is the one that I create for myself." She softened her tone and looped her arms around his neck. "The one that we create together. "

"You're something, you know that?" He squeezed his eyes shut and whispered fervently, "God, I'm glad you chose me."

The house Jade shared with her mother had been built shortly after World War 11 to accommodate the influx of military personnel based around the shipping channels. In the thirty years since, the neighborhood of white frame tract houses had declined. Their pastel trims no longer looked cheerful and chic but tacky and cheap.

Unlike the others on the street, the Sperry house was kept neat. The house was small, having only two bedrooms and one bath. The living room was rectangular, with narrow windows that were heavily draped. It was the only room in the house that was carpeted. The furniture was inexpensive, but everything was kept spotlessly clean because Velta Sperry passionately hated any form of dirt. She wouldn't even allow plants in her house because they grew in open pots of soil. The only amenity in the living room was a color television set, which Velta had bought on credit from Sears.

She was. sitting in an easy chair watching TV when Jade came in. Velta eyed her daughter critically, looking for telltale signs that she'd been misbehaving with that Parker boy. She couldn't detect anything amiss, but then, Jade was clever enough to cover the evidence.

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By way of greeting, she said, "You barely made it          by your curfew."

"But I did. It's just now ten." "Church has been out for hours."

"We went to the Dairy Barn. Everybody was there." "He probably speeded here to get you home in time." Velta disliked Jade's steady boyfriend and never referred to him by name if she could avoid it.

"He didn't speed. Gary's a very careful driver. You know that, Mama. "

"Stop arguing with me," Velta said, raising her voice. "Then stop criticizing Gary."

Velta resented Gary because, she claimed, Jade spent too much time with him-time that she and Jade could spend together. Actually, her dislike was based on Gary's origins. He was a soybean farmer's son. The Parkers had too many children already and continued, disgustingly, to turn out another baby every ten months or so.

Otis Parker was always in hock to the company credit union. Velta knew this because she worked in the credit office as a typist and file clerk. Velta didn't have much regard for anybody who didn't have money.

It would be just like that Parker boy to get Jade pregnant. She hoped Jade was too smart to let that happen, but, unfortunately, like her stunning good looks, the girt had inherited a romantic, passionate streak from her father.

Velta's eyes moved to the framed photograph on the end table, Ronald Sperry's laughing blue eyes-so like Jade's -stared back at her. The soldier's cap sat at a jaunty angle atop his dark curls. His Congressional Medal of Honor was suspended around his neck. Other medals were pinned to the breast pocket of his military uniform, attesting to his valor and courage during the Korean conflict.

Velta was sixteen when Palmetto's dashing war hero had returned home. The low-country town had never had such a grand distinction. The entire population had turned out to welcome his train as it chugged into the depot. The red carpet had been rolled out for the town's favorite son, who

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was coming straight from Washington, D.C., where he had been wined and dined. He'd even shaken hands with the president.

Velta was introduced to him at a citywide dance held in his honor at the VFW hall. That very night, while they danced to tunes by Patti Page and Frank Sinatra, she made up her mind to man-y Ronald Sperry.

For the next two years she pursued him shamelessly, not giving up until he popped the question. Lest something jinx it, Velta saw to it that they were married within a week of his proposal.

Unfortunately, there were no North Korean Communists in Palmetto. Years after his triumphant return home, Ronald was still at a loss as to what to do with the rest of his life. He had no grandiose ambitions. Though he was dashingly handsome, he had no desire to capitalize on the Medal of Honor the way Audie Murphy had. He didn't aspire to movie stardom.

Orphaned and penniless, he had joined the arrny only so he would have a place to sleep and food to eat. He had been an ideal soldier because there was always somebody telling him what to do and when to do it. His officers had ordered him to shoot straight and kill the gook commies and, because he was an excellent marksman, that's what he had done. On the afternoon that he wiped out twenty-two Koreans, it never occurred to him that his actions would merit a medal.

He was popular with people. He had a charisma and magnetism that folks just naturally gravitated to. Everybody liked Ron Sperry. However, hanging out with the guys and telling amusing stories in the pool hall didn't produce revenue. He drifted from one meaningless, futureless job to another.