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  Although she had ached to be asked to go with them, Gemma had not really expected it. David was fond enough of her in his way, but the three-year gap between them, and the insistence their parents put on the differing roles in life of their two opposite sexes, had made it impossible for them to be really close.

  For the first time since she had met Luke, time seemed to hang heavily on Gemma’s hands. She couldn’t wait for evening to come and for the two boys to come back.

  For the first time since they had met, she didn’t go to meet Luke that evening. Instead, she stayed close to the house, waiting for David and Tom to come back. Only they didn’t. At least not until late. Gemma’s room overlooked the front of the house, and she heard them getting out of the car long after she had gone to bed. She slipped out from beneath her duvet and crept to the window to look down at them. Tom’s blond hair shone in the clear moonlight. He was smiling at David, and Gemma wondered in tremulous awe what it would be like to be kissed by him.

  She had heard the other girls at school talking about kissing, and other things, and she was suddenly impatient and despairing of her own inexperience. She was sure that Tom must have kissed lots of girls; even if he did kiss her she wouldn’t know what to do … not properly. She tried to imagine it, conjuring up images of what physical desire could be from all that she had read, but all she could think of was the paralysing embarrassment that would be hers if her nose got in the way, or worse still if Tom should guess that she didn’t know how to kiss properly.

  In the morning she overslept and got up just in time to see the two boys driving off.

  Her mother smiled at her over the breakfast table, and said breathlessly, ‘Tom is such a nice boy, and so good-looking. His family come from Scotland, and he’s invited David up there to spend the last two weeks of the holiday with him.’ A petulant frown suddenly creased her forehead as she looked at Gemma.

  ‘Oh, Gemma, why are you wearing those awful jeans and not one of your pretty dresses? What on earth must Tom think of you? You’ll have embarrassed poor David, as well. Why on earth can’t you be like other girls? You’re such a dreadful tomboy … not like my daughter at all, really.’

  That afternoon, in the shade of the clearing, Gemma had been so preoccupied that at last Luke had put his book down and asked gently, ‘What is it, Gemma? Is something wrong at home?’

  She shook her head, suddenly feeling nervous and tongue-tied, glad when Luke didn’t question her more closely.

  They had continued to meet for the rest of Tom’s stay, but something was different; Luke was different … more distant somehow but even though she noted this, it didn’t really touch her. She was living, breathing, thinking Tom, and at last, on the very last day of his visit, he said carelessly at breakfast, ‘Since it’s my last night here tonight, David, why don’t the three of us go out somewhere together?’

  At first she was too paralysed to say a word. It was like a dream coming true. Tom was taking her out. Rosily her mind blotted out the fact that David would be with them, too, and that until now her hero had barely addressed more than a single word to her.

  It was arranged that the three of them would go to a local barn dance that was held every week, and for the rest of the morning Gemma walked round in a state of ecstatic bliss.

  It was only over lunch, which she and her mother ate alone, that reality intruded.

  ‘I don’t know what on earth you’re going to wear tonight,’ her mother fussed. ‘You haven’t got anything to go out dancing in, really, apart from the dress you had for Christmas.’

  The dress in question was fussy and little girlish and Gemma hated it, but her mother was right, there was nothing else she could wear. She had spent the summer in jeans and shorts, refusing to go shopping with her mother when asked, and now she had no alternative but to wear the hated pink frills.

  And as the afternoon wore on, that wasn’t the only thing to torment her. Suppose when they were out that Tom did want to kiss her? She had learned from the girls at school that a goodnight kiss at the end of a date was very much the expected thing. From glowing anticipation she went to abject dread. As much as she longed to feel Tom’s mouth on hers, she also feared it. How awful it would be if he turned away from her in disgust, or worse still laughed at her. What on earth was she going to do?

  The afternoon stretched endlessly in front of her, and she was glad to be meeting Luke; talking to him would give her something to occupy her mind.

  He had been swimming, she saw when she reached the clearing. His jeans were splodged a darker blue where his skin had dampened them. They clung to his body in a way that made her aware of how much taller and stronger than either David or Tom he was.

  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.

  ‘Open your mouth, Gemma.’

  His eyes stared into hers, mesmerising her, making her lips open so that he could …

  Every reasoning faculty she possessed was suspended beneath the sensations rocking her. She had seen people kissing like this in films and on television, and privately she had always thought it faintly yucky, but now that she was experiencing it for herself … She clung to him eagerly, letting his mouth tutor hers, quivering in eager excitement when his tongue stroked hers. That same peculiar ache she had felt in her breasts before was back, and it seemed as though Luke knew about it, too, because he stopped kissing her, briefly, to take her more fully into his arms, so that her breasts were pressing against his chest. When he kissed her his whole body moved and it made her want to rub herself against him.

  She had forgotten why she had asked him to kiss her; she had forgotten everything but the sweet surge of passion flooding through her body, her eyes dark and heavy with the force of it, her lips moist and swollen. She wanted him to kiss her again, and again, but suddenly his body was tensing and he was drawing away from her, his chest expanding and contracting rapidly as he drew in air.

  ‘Luke.’ She reached out to touch him but he moved away from her.

  ‘I think you’ve learned enough for one lesson.’ He was looking at her as though he was angry with her. ‘Although I warn you, if you react like that to every boy who kisses you, soneone’s going to have to pin a notice on you warning them that you’re under sixteen.’

/>   It took a few seconds for his meaning to get through to her, but, when it did, she flushed blood-red, and stumbled clumsily to her feet. Suddenly everything seemed all wrong; the magic of those moments in his arms was spoiled and sullied, and she wanted to run from him and hide herself away. He was telling her that she had behaved wantonly. The reason for the tension she had felt in her body and her innocent desire to get as close to him as she possibly could suddenly became unpleasantly clear to her.

  He saw the expressions chase one another across her face, and frowned. ‘Gemma …’

  It was too late for him to apologise now. He had ruined everything between them; he had made her feel … dirty, she thought, choking, moving slowly back from him as he got up and came towards her, holding out his hand.

  ‘Gemma, listen to me.’

  ‘No.’ Her voice sounded strained and shocked. ‘I think I hate you, Luke,’ she said bitterly. ‘And I don’t want to see you ever again.’ She turned round and ran from him to where she had left Bess tethered before he could stop her, loud sobs tearing at her throat. She knew that he had followed her, and when she scrambled up on to Bess’s plump back he reached for her.

  ‘No … No, don’t touch me.’ She hit out at him wildly, tears streaming down her face. He had spoilt something that had been unbearably precious to her, something that her developing instincts told her was rare and special, and she couldn’t wait to get away from him.

  Wisely he let her go, sensing that to try and talk to her in her present state of near hysteria would do no good at all.

  By the time she was close to home, she had herself under proper control. She stopped once to scrub at her damp face with a grubby handkerchief, and luckily when she got back her mother was still out.