got the giggles, and couldn’t stop until Laurence kissed her again. These were new kisses, imbued with a searing intimacy, almost a desperation. It was a relief when he stepped back and peeled off her soaking wet dress, spreading it across a privet hedge. She needed this, needed to be close to him, skin-to-skin with nothing between them, nothing at all.
He laid his blazer on the deck of the gazebo and they sank down together, spellbound, intoxicated, consumed by urgency. He paused to grope in his pocket, coming up with a condom, which made Nina weak with relief. Thank goodness he’d spared her the embarrassment.
So this was it, then. Here and now, in the shadowy gazebo with the sprinkler system hissing all around them, the veil of secrecy was swept aside. She wrapped her arms around him and dropped her head back, opening herself to him, and then they kissed and fit themselves together, and it was more incredible than she ever could have imagined. More uncomfortable and awkward, too, but with a sweetness that brought tears to her eyes. And quicker. Laurence almost instantly made a surprised, strangled sound, and then shuddered, covering her like a blanket. Then they both lay still, their hearts beating as one, their bodies still joined together.
After a while, he drew back. “You all right?” he whispered.
She was intrigued, feeling as though she teetered on the edge of something big. “I’m all right.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have—”
“Hush. I wanted to. Maybe we can have another go at it.”
“I only brought one condom and—oh, shit.”
He wasn’t as experienced as he seemed. Somehow, the condom hadn’t gone where it was supposed to go. “Damn,” he said. “I’m sorry. I swear, I don’t have a disease or anything—”
“Me neither.” Suddenly embarrassed, Nina jumped up and struggled into her wet clothes. The issue of the failed condom put an end to the evening’s romance.
Laurence must have felt the same way as he shook out his clothes and put them on. “Hey, I feel bad,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Nothing’s hurt, but I’d better go,” she said, suddenly eager to get away. “My car’s at the far end of the parking lot.” Another lie. She’d brought her bike.
Carrying their shoes in their hands, they crossed the parking lot. “Tell me your phone number,” Laurence said. “I’ll call you.”
She was tempted, but only momentarily. The kind of lies she was telling tonight couldn’t be sustained for long. “I don’t think so.”
“You’re probably right.” Relief rang clearly in his voice.
“And you’re awfully quick to agree with me.” She was only half teasing.
“Look, I think you’re really something, but I got to think of the future. I’m a kid from the projects. If this doesn’t work out for me, well, let’s just say the options aren’t good. I better stick with the academy. As soon as I start, I take an oath of honor.”
“And I’m, like, this huge stain on your oath.”
“No, but—”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m not going to cause any trouble for you, and that’s a promise.”
“You’re no trouble, girl.”
Just then, a shadow loomed over them.
She stopped walking and looked up. Uh-oh. Maybe Laurence had spoken too soon. “Greg Bellamy,” she said with forced brightness. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Greg stood over the fallen cadet, wondering if he’d broken anything. It had all happened so fast. One minute he was getting a sweater from the car for his sister. The next, he was driving his fist into some cadet’s jaw. The guy was gigantic, but Greg had the element of surprise. Shock was more like it. Shock had cut off the oxygen to his brain, causing him to lose the ability to judge whether or not he was right to clean the guy’s clock.
One thing he knew for certain, he definitely had a problem with a West Point cadet banging Mrs. Romano’s underage daughter. Greg had met her that one time up at the camp, but he couldn’t remember her name. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was still a kid. Yet there was no mistaking that just-got-laid look of these two—the damp clothes buttoned crooked, grass in their hair, the sheepish, sated expressions on both their faces.
The girl’s face changed instantly, sharpening with accusation as she glared at Greg. “He’s hurt,” she said. “You had no right—”
“I had no right?” Now, that pissed him off. He gave a disgusted laugh.
On the ground, the cadet moved his jaw from side to side. Okay, thought Greg, so at least he hadn’t done anything permanent to the guy. He wasn’t sure he was relieved by that or not. He nudged the guy with the toe of his shoe. “Get up,” he said.
The guy frowned, blinked in confusion until he spotted the girl. “Nina? What’s going on? Who the hell is this?”
Greg made a mental note of the girl’s name. Then, treating the guy like a recalcitrant camper, he said, “Party’s over, pal. So get your ass up and go back inside.”
“Laurence, I’m really sorry,” the girl—Nina—said in a small, horrified voice.
She was sorry. Sorry. Greg rounded on her. “Do you have a ride home?” he demanded.
She hung her head, turned away from Laurence and mumbled, “I rode my bike.”
He almost laughed. A bike. She’d ridden a damn bike to the country club to get laid. “It’s pitch-black outside,” he said. “Were you planning to find your way home by radar?”
The guy called Laurence climbed to his feet. Damn, he was tall. And still a little dazed. Or drunk. Or both. “Nina?” he asked again.
“Shut up,” Greg snapped, ready to be done with the whole drama, and eager to send the guy on his way before he decided to fight back. “Get back inside, now, and pray I don’t report you. I’m taking her home.”
“Are not,” Nina snapped back, then grabbed Laurence’s hand. “He’s not taking me anywhere.”
Greg ignored her and glared at Laurence. “She’s fourteen, you moron. What the hell were you thinking?”
Laurence dropped her hand as though it was a red-hot coal. He even stepped back, hands up, palms facing out, as though Greg had a gun pointed at him. “Shit—”
“Fifteen,” she said defiantly. “I just turned fifteen last month.”
The guy’s panic was genuine. He truly hadn’t known, the same as Greg hadn’t known that day in the dining hall. Until someone had clued him in, Greg, too, had been fooled by her impossibly curvy body, her smoldering eyes that pretended to know things she had no clue about, her full lips that made reckless promises to morons like this one.
“Go back inside,” he repeated. “Like I said, the party’s over.”
The guy took a step back. “I’m sorry,” he told Nina. “I didn’t know, I—Girl, you should have been straight with me.”
“I said,” Greg reminded him, “it’s over.”
“Laurence, no,” Nina protested. “This … this person has no idea what he’s talking about.”
The cadet offered a wordless look of helpless regret, then turned and hurried back to the clubhouse. Nina started after him. Greg grabbed her arm and held her back.
“Let go of me,” she said. “I have five brothers, and I know how to defend myself.”
Greg relinquished her. “How many of those brothers would approve of what you’re doing here?”
“None