Shakespeares Champion Page 0,59

a good day to start back to Body Time, considering my interrupted night. Nor a good day to resume karate. But I had to work today... Deedra, the peculiar Mookie Preston, the Winthrops, another afternoon appointment ... I waited expectantly, but I couldn't summon the surge of purpose I needed to feel at the onset of the working day.

What I felt instead was a surge of hormones. Jack Leeds had woken me the night before, beating on my door. Now he was waking me in an altogether different way. Jack was stroking my back and hips. I sighed, hardly knowing if it was one of exasperation or sheer desire. But I certainly didn't feel apathetic any longer.

I knew he could tell I was awake. When I didn't speak, he scooted closer, fitting his body to mine. His hand circled around, cupped a breast, resumed the rhythmical stroking. I had to bite my lip to keep silent.

"What happened to 'after this job is over'?" I asked finally, and my voice was more like a gasp.

"Waking up in a warm bed with a beautiful woman on a rainy day in winter" - and while he was speaking his hand never stopped - "has overcome my business instincts." His voice was breathy and low. His mouth began to deliver little sucking kisses to my neck, and I shivered. He began to ease up the pink nightgown. It was now or never. What did I want? My body was about to take over from my brain.

I turned toward him, putting up a hand to press against his chest and hold him at a little distance - I think - but at that moment his fingers slid between my legs and instead I wrapped my arm around his neck and pulled him close for a kiss. It was so dark and private in my room, like a quiet cave.

After a while, his mouth descended to cover my nipple through the nightgown. I reached down to touch him. He was swollen and ready. It was his turn to do a little moaning.

"Do you have ... ?" he asked.

I reached across him to grope in the night-table drawer for protection.

Jack began to whisper to me, telling me about what we were going to do and how it was going to feel. His hands never stopped.

"Now," I said.

"Wait a little."

I waited as long as I could. I was shaking. "Now."

And then he was in me. I arched against him, found his rhythm. My pleasure was instant, and I cried out his name.

"Again," he said in my ear, and kept on going. I tried to keep pace, once again matched him. I began urging him on, gripping him with my inner muscles, digging my nails into his hips. At last he made an incoherent sound and climaxed, and I did, too.

He collapsed on top of me and I put both my arms around him for the first time. I ran my hands over his back and bottom, feeling skin and muscles, planes and curves. He nuzzled my neck gently for a minute, withdrew from me, and rolled onto his back. The white gauze was spotted with red.

"Your shoulder!" I raised up on an elbow to look. My bedroom was getting a little lighter; the dark and secret cave had opened to the world.

"I don't care," he said, shaking his head from side to side on the pillow. "Someone could come in here and shoot me again, and right this moment I wouldn't care. I tried to stay away from you, tried not to think about you ... if they hadn't been so close, I wouldn't have come here, but I can't be sorry. Jesus God, Lily, that was absolutely - wonderful. No other woman... God, that was sensational."

I was shattered myself. Even more than by the physical sensations Jack had given me, I was a little frightened by the urge I had to touch him, hold him, bathe myself in him. In self-defense, I thought of all the women he'd had.

"Who are you thinking about?" He opened his eyes and stared at me. "Oh, Karen." I was frightened that he knew so much about me that he would read my face that way. His own eyes lost their glow, flattened, when he said the name Karen.

Jack Leeds had become a household reference right about the time Lily Bard had, in the same state, Tennessee; and in the same city, Memphis. While my name became linked with that of the