Susan Phillips - Hot Shot

"Open up," he whispered.

She was accustomed to obeying a man's orders, and she did what he said. After she had taken a small bite, he bit into the other side. "Is it good?" he said.

She nodded. He pushed the bread toward her for another bite. They ate without speaking, chewing slowly, looking into each other's eyes.

He picked up the honey bottle and lifted the yellow plastic nozzle to her mouth. For a moment, she thought he was going to feed it to her like a baby's bottle. Instead, he squeezed a curl of honey on her narrow bottom lip. She felt it hanging there, lush and heavy. Before it could drop, he leaned forward and sucked it off himself.

"I love honey," he murmured against her mouth.

His tongue stroked her lip. She whimpered and closed her eyes, knowing she was losing the battle for control of her body. He kissed along the curve of her throat, leaving a sticky trail. "Do you love honey?" he whispered.

"Yes. Oh, yes."

He pulled open her bra and pushed the fabric out of his way. The cool air feathered her skin; his fingers brushed against her. She could barely keep from crying out. She felt a rough scrape. Her eyes flew open in time to see him deliberately rubbing the yellow plastic nozzle back and forth over her nipple. As she watched, he squeezed a droplet of honey onto her pebbled flesh.

She cried out as his head descended and his mouth closed over her, sucking her clean.

The cry released her. She could no longer hold herself in check. She could no longer be a good girl-a pristine princess with deadened breasts and tightly seamed legs. She caught his hair in her fists and crumpled it, then she brought her fists to her mouth and tasted the long rough strands. She wanted to eat him, to devour his hair, his strength, his audacious courage.

With a wicked laugh, he lifted her from the table and pressed her against the ugly wallpaper. She caught the back of his head in her hands and pulled his mouth to hers. Opening wide, she took him in. The kiss was hot and bold, rich with peanut butter and honey.

He pulled the bodice of her dress farther down over her shoulders, so that she had to lower her arms. She reached for his buttocks and clutched him through the seat of his jeans, pushing the heels of her hands into the caves formed in the sides of his hard, young man's cheeks.

He began to murmur naughty words, dirty little phrases, what he would do to her, what she would do to him, crude, filthy, fabulously inventive sonnets of obscenity. As he talked, he pushed up her dress and tugged at her silk panties. Her bad-mannered hands rushed to his zipper. Because he was so hard, she had to struggle with it.

"I'm going to…"

"I'll make you…"

"Before I'm done, you'll…"

To everything he suggested, she cried yes.

And then he had her on her back. The ugly kitchen spun around her as she splayed her legs to act out her naughty girl dreams. His long bad boy's hair tickled the insides of her thighs just as she had imagined it would. His mouth encompassed her. She couldn't breathe. She was going to die. Only the smallest fragment of time passed before she shattered. She heard her voice as if it belonged to someone else, moaning and crying out again and again.

As she settled back to earth, she knew that this was what she had been missing. But her feeling of completion dissolved as she remembered the abandonment of her behavior. Whatever would he think of her? She would have to apologize, try to explain.

He kissed the soft flesh on the inside of her thigh. "You're starved, aren't you?" he said. "Poor starved baby."

A feeling of lassitude stole through her as he began to croon, "I'll take care of you, poor baby. I'll feed you." And then he pressed his mouth to her and did it again.

She had barely finished crying out the second time when he shifted his weight. "I want it like this," he said to her or to himself-she wasn't sure which. "I want you like this."

And then he thrust inside her. He was young and randy, fundamentally selfish, dangerously impatient. He plunged himself between her well-bred thighs and took her with all the vigor of a brash, blue-skies thinker for whom no part of life-not even sex-would ever be enough.

She cried out with every thrust, digging her hands into his flesh and begging for more. They rolled over and over on the hard floor, knocking away a chair and banging up against the cupboards. Her hair tangled with his, her long thin legs clutched his darker ones. When he spilled himself within her, he let out a roar of satisfaction.

Afterward, he let her rest for a while. She played with his hair and took the silver Easter Island earring into her mouth so she could avoid talking.

He made her get up to take off the rest of her clothes. She glanced nervously toward the kitchen window. He laughed at her as she pulled away from him and slid the caf‚ curtain closed on its phony wooden rod.

"There's nobody back there," he said, brushing his brown hand over his pale, flat stomach. "No one can see."

"Better safe than sorry," she said inanely.

He emitted a bark of laughter and consumed what remained of their peanut butter sandwich in one bite. With his mouth stuffed full, he said, "You crack me up. You really do."

Then he picked up the plastic honey bottle and came toward her again.

In contrast with the rest of the house, Sam's bedroom was almost monastic in its simplicity. It contained a sturdy antique chest and a simple bookcase holding a top-quality stereo system. The walls were painted stark white and were unadorned, and the top of the chest was swept clean of any knickknacks.

Susannah tossed restlessly in the double bed. Her hair, still damp from the shower she and Sam had shared a few hours before, tangled around her throat. The world she lived in had been turned upside down, and she was dizzy with the upheaval. Her logical brain-the brain that had made her excel at science and mathematics when she was in school-refused to let her sleep. It kept ticking off the crises that she faced.

She had no clothes and no money. Her bank accounts would be closed by morning. She loved her father, and how could she ever make him understand what she had done? How could she ever make him forgive her? She turned her head toward the man for whom she had given up everything. Even in sleep he looked driven. His forehead was furrowed, his lips compressed. She should never have let him make love to her until they'd had a chance to get to know each other better.

But even the logical part of her brain couldn't make her regret what had happened between them. Their joining was everything she had imagined lovemaking should be. For the first time in her life, a man had praised her passion so that she felt joy in her sexuality instead of shame. It was a gift so precious she could barely absorb it.

He stirred at her side and reached out-lusty, insatiable, just like all the demon lovers she had ever imagined. He whispered her name. His eyes drifted open and he smiled at her.

She knew then that she loved him. It was more than lust that had made her turn her back on her family for this man. When she met him, she had been dying inside. Her attraction to him was as primal as a drought-starved plant drinking in a summer rain shower. She needed his wildness, his youth, his delirious optimism. She needed his freedom from fear.

Turning to him, she touched the earring that lay against his jaw. Within minutes, they were making love again.

The bed was empty when Susannah awakened. She found one of his T-shirts lying across the footboard along with a wraparound denim skirt he must have appropriated from his mother's closet. She lifted the T-shirt to her nose for a moment before she put it on, but it held the scent of laundry detergent instead of his skin.

After she had dressed, she went into the kitchen to look for him. No one was there, but through the window she could see into the garage. The side door was open, and she spotted him standing at the workbench. Part of her wanted to race across the yard just so she could touch him for a moment. Instead, she went over to the kitchen telephone. Her hands shook as she dialed the number for Falcon Hill. The line was busy. She hung up, grateful for her reprieve. She told herself that she had to try to reach Cal and offer some sort of apology. But she simply couldn't bring herself to call him.

After drinking a small glass of orange juice, she headed out to the garage. As she crossed the yard, she heard the distant sound of Sunday morning church bells and watched as a beat-up Plymouth Duster pulled into the drive. The engine ground to a stop and Yank Yankowski got out. He came toward her, all knobby wrists and bony face, rather like a stork wearing eyeglasses. His hair looked even worse than she remembered. He didn't have one of those tough, Marine Corps, go-to-hell crew cuts, but something that looked more like David and Ricky Nelson permanently trapped in the fifties.

His forehead was knotted in concentration. As he came nearer, she could make out his eyes through the lenses of his glasses. They were light brown and vague. She hadn't known until that moment that a pair of eyes could appear so completely unfocused.

"Hello." She held out her hand politely. "I don't believe we were ever formally introduced. I'm Susannah Faulconer."

He walked right past her.

Startled, she watched him disappear through the garage door. One of his socks was navy, the other white. What a curious person, she thought.

A few seconds later she entered the garage. He and Sam were engaged in a technical discussion. She waited for Sam to turn and catch sight of her. When he finally did, she searched his face for some sign that last night had changed him. He looked no different, but in the seconds that flashed by before he spoke, she imagined that he was remembering what had passed between them.

"Yank's invented a new game, Suzie. Come on over here. It's great! You've got to play."

She needed no prodding to move closer to him, and she soon found herself shooting at speeding targets while the men called out instructions. She was so absorbed in Sam's nearness that she barely noticed Yank. His comments were all impersonal, directed toward the game. Despite the fact that he was actually speaking to her, she had the sense that he still didn't really see her. She was only a disembodied pair of hands manipulating his precious machine.

"The other way," Yank said. "Go to the left!"

"There!" she cried. "I got one!"

"Watch out! You're going to get hit."

It really was fun, she decided, but that was all. Nothing more than a few hours' clever entertainment. She couldn't understand Sam's obsession with this impractical little toy.

"Come on, give me a turn," Sam said.

She waved him off. "In a minute. Let me play one more game."

Yank finally took the game away from them so he could do some troubleshooting on the circuit board. While he worked, Sam gave her a lesson in basic electronics. He pointed out components of the single-board computer to her-integrated circuits and multicolored resistors, tubular capacitors, a power transistor with a heat sink. He talked about miniaturization, and painted a picture for her of a future in which today's tiny microchips would be viewed as large and cumbersome. Some of it she already knew, much of it she didn't. It was a fascinating world, made beautiful by Sam's gift for creating word pictures.

When Yank asked for Sam's help, she watched them work for a while and then reluctantly slipped back into the house to try to call Falcon Hill. The line was still busy, and after several more tries, she concluded that the phone had been left off the hook. She thought about her father's battles with Paige and felt a wrenching inside her as she tried to imagine living without his love. In some families love was given unconditionally, but not in hers.

She called Cal but got no answer. Eventually she sat down and wrote him a letter, asking forgiveness for the unforgivable.

Sam came inside for her and announced that he was taking her to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. Susannah was about to say that she needed a few minutes to change her clothes, but then she remembered that she had nothing to change into.

As they walked out the back door, she spotted a dark blue Ford Pinto that had pulled in behind Yank's Duster. "Shit," Sam said.

"What's wrong?" Had Angela Gamble returned ahead of schedule? What was she going to say to Sam's mother?

Sam didn't answer her question. Instead, he stalked toward the garage like a man with a deadly mission. Reluctantly, Susannah followed him.