Will produced another beer from beside him in his chair and took a big gulp, then glanced at me. "Sorry. I need this worse than you do, because I'm a virgin."

He was still thinking about that? "No prob." I felt bad about my virgin comment, especially when we were talking about his friend hooking up. Boys were so sensitive about odd things. And sometimes I couldn't keep my mouth shut.

"What did John say about the camera?" Will asked.

"I haven't told him. They were supposed to install it today. But I doubt it will do any good. John has a short-circuit. Logic doesn't touch that part of his brain. It's going to take more than a camera to unchain him."

I wanted to hear what Will had to say about this, because he looked worried, and he was drinking fast. But John came back then with virgin (ha ha) drinks for us, frozen coconut and pineapple juice in plastic hurricane glasses with straws and paper umbrellas and monkey figurines stuck into the ground ice. Very spring break.

We sat with the cool tide scooting past our bare feet, sipping our drinks, watching the crush of dancers inside the tiki torches. Will chatted with us about the girl trouble Rashad and Skip had gotten into during the past four days, and the escapades of some of their other high school friends—now college friends, at least to Will. Then he made a Star Wars reference to John that was clearly boy-code for sex, and stood up unsteadily. "See you on Saturday at Rashad's party?" We both said yes and watched Will wander away into the crowd.

I settled closer to the John side of my chair. "You're not worried about him?"

John shook his head. "He'll go up to his room and watch movies, fall asleep. Rashad and Skip will come in with girls at about four a.m. and kick him out. He'll go run fifteen miles. That's what Will does on road trips."

"That's so sad!" Immediately I wished I could take it back. I didn't want John to think again that I was interested in Will.

I scanned his dark eyes in the moonlight. I thought I saw anger there, but no—it was lust. Oooh.

The throbbing dance beat inside the tiki torches transformed into a slow groove. John stood. "Don't be sad on spring break. Let's dance."

He led me across the sand and into the crowd of couples. This time, no mean girls gave my blue hair the evil eye. These girls were very intent on the boys they were with. More feeling up was going on than dancing.

I hoped John and I would fit right in for once. He put his arms around me, bent over with his chin resting on my shoulder, and swayed with me. As the song progressed, he slipped his hands to my waist and moved them slowly up my sides. So far so good. If his hands made it another inch, he'd be touching my boobs.

The next slow song started. Surely this would prove to be the boob song. But wait a minute. He skipped over my boobs to stroke the sensitive skin on the undersides of my arms. It certainly was titillating, but it wasn't the good old-fashioned feeling-up I wanted.

I wondered why he didn't touch my boobs. Maybe he was afraid I had Stockholm Syndrome after all, the kind where your captor makes your arms tingle. Maybe he was afraid of taking advantage of me. Or maybe I had read him completely wrong all this time. He liked me as a friend and didn't want to touch my boobs.

"Why don't you touch my boobs?"

He took his chin off my shoulder and looked at me. "Here?" He glanced around at the other couples. "Because we're not drunk."

"Right." I tried not to sound disappointed. But the air was charged with sex, positively sparkling with it. It didn't seem fair for us to be the sober ones and the pristine ones.

"And it's not very original." He hooked his thumbs on either side of the waistband of my jeans, and slowly, slowly dragged his thumbs across my skin until they touched in front, just below my belly button.

Oh, God. He didn't put his hands any farther down my pants, but there was no question now of what he wanted. And he kissed me exactly as I had kissed him in the car: along my jaw, then back toward my ear.

I should have been more careful what I wished for. The claustrophobic feeling crept up on me at the same time I opened and grew hotter for John. It was the best and the worst at once, and it was going to tear me apart. I couldn't stand it much longer. God, I wished I didn't feel this way. I wished I was a different person. But I would not get trapped in our town for the rest of my life. Not even for John. We needed to get this over with.

"Are you ready to go?" I whispered.

"You're not enjoying your spring break?" he murmured before he gently bit my earlobe.

"I am, very much. But if we left now, when we got back I'd still have a couple of hours alone with you before work."

He pulled me through the crowd so fast that I got the giggles. Yes, everything would work out perfectly. We would have a one-night stand. And then, as long as I skipped Rashad's party, wore my helmet when I rode my motorcycle, and managed to stay away from the bridge until I moved to Birmingham in June, I would never see John again.

*

I did get some sleep in the truck on the way back, despite his hand softly stroking my shoulder. I think he meant it to be soothing, but of course any part of me he touched leapt to life.

I was so beat that I slept anyway. And had wild dreams about him on the dark beach.

The truck lurched over a bump. I sat up. We'd reached Chilton County, still about twenty minutes from home. Looming over the interstate was the water tower shaped like a giant peach. Or a giant ass, depending on how sleepy you were.

I lay back down on the seat with my head on his thigh, like before. But this time, I couldn't help myself. My hand slid up the inside of his hard thigh. I didn't quite dare, because I didn't want him to tell me no. But I got very close to touching The Place Prisoners Should Not Touch Policemen.

His breath caught. I thought he was going to pick up my hand and move it back to my side of the car, where it belonged.

He didn't.

I never really went back to sleep after that. I was so alive with thoughts of what I was going to do to him, and what he was going to do to me.

At least I thought I didn't go back to sleep. But his door slammed, and I started up. We'd already stopped at his apartment complex. He walked around to my door and opened it, bracing his big body inside the frame. "You're too tired for this," he said gently. "Come inside and sleep."

Drat, he was trying to get out of it. At least he wasn't offering to take me home.

I shook my head. There was no way I was going to miss this. Scooting to the edge of the seat, I wrapped my legs around his h*ps and pulled him into a full-body embrace. I ran my fingers through his short hair, pressed his head down to mine, and kissed him.

And then he took charge.

Oh. My. God. He kissed exactly like I thought he would. Slowly. Thoroughly. Styled for her pleasure.

And I'd been dead wrong when I thought he might not like me after all. I could tell from the way his hands grasped my hair and trembled on the back of my neck that he wanted this as much as I did.

When we pulled back to breathe, he guided me out of the car and up the stairs. Our footsteps echoed against the other apartment buildings. It was about four in the morning. Even the hum of traffic on the interstate had quieted.

He unlocked the door and held it open for me as I walked into the dark living room. Then he closed the door behind us with an official-sounding thunk and locked the dead bolt. And turned to me.

This was it. Almost a week of crushing on him—more like two weeks if I admitted to myself how interested I'd been in him the first night at the bridge. And today, fourteen hours of slow, grinding, up-close-and-personal pining for him. Finally, this was it.

Chapter 17

He backed me up a pace and pressed me into the corner. His big middle finger stroked down my cheek, across my chin, and up to my lips. In the softest filter of streetlights through the blinds, he touched me like he really did think I was beautiful. Or at least was determined to make a good show of it. His dark eyes were so tender that I was ready to believe it.

Then he kissed me again. I opened my mouth and let him kiss me as deeply as he wanted. His hands slid down my sides and started to wander, and I let them wander where they would.

It was all good, until I flashed hot in my very small shirt, too hot. My chest pounded like I was having a heart attack. Red warning lights flashed behind my eyelids.

I pushed him away, and held on to him at the same time to keep from falling.

Dazed, he looked down at me, panting. He couldn't catch his breath. "What is it?" he whispered.

"Not in the corner," I breathed. "Anywhere but the corner."

He put his heavy arm around my shoulders and guided me across the room. I thought: Couch? Couch? Couch? No couch. We passed the living room couch and crossed the threshold into his bedroom. I thought: jackpot.

Lois's voice crackled on the humming police scanner.

I ducked from under his arm, dove across the bed, and switched the scanner off.

In the silence, I felt a wave of relief. Then it occurred to me he might be weird about keeping his scanner on at all times, listening for trouble.

I sat up cross-legged on the bed. He still watched me from the doorway, beside the large drawing of the bridge.

Since I'd already turned the scanner off and he hadn't kicked me out of his apartment yet, I considered asking him to take the bridge drawing down and deposit it in the closet, just for the next two hours. I opted not to, lest he think I was a complete fruitcake.

Wait a minute. Who was the bigger fruitcake? He was the one with the bridge obsession.

Okay, I did not want to hold a fruitcake bake-off just then. I wanted John to do me.

T held out my hand to him.

He approached me cautiously, beams of moonlight through the windows blinds moving over him. He thought I was going to bolt. He sat in front of me, weighing down the bed so I sank toward him a little on the mattress. With a hot palm on each of my thighs, he leaned in until our foreheads touched. Then he brushed his sensitive lips up my cheek and toward my hairline.

Here was more of what I expected from John. Tortured self-control. Now I didn't have nearly as much self-control as he did. I leaned in and kissed him hard.

We played this game for the next hour and a half. He would take over and kiss me carefully, with attention to detail, like I was one of his drawings. It was the slowest, most thorough, most agonizing, best make-out session imaginable. Until he tried to take my shirt off, or my jeans. I couldn't allow that.

Then I would take over, and things would go faster. There was also a certain amount of fascinated experimentation on my part. After his show of being a big strong policeman, it really turned me on to find out he was a normal boy after all. An unusually well-built boy, granted, but still a boy who reacted in predictable ways. When I whispered in his ear, he shivered. When I touched him, he gripped me harder. I managed to get all his clothes off while it was my turn to play authority. His beautiful na**d body pressed down on me. wanting in.

I could have very happily spent a whole week in foreplay with him, but I had to leave for the diner soon. I needed to get what I'd come for.

One of the condoms I'd bought for Eric yesterday was in my pocket. If I pulled it out, I might look slut-whorish, like I was always on the ready. Anyway, I figured John was so uber-responsible, he had his own. Even if he hadn't intended them for me. I rolled out from under him, opened the side table drawer, and fished inside. "How lucky," I murmured. "An assortment." I spread them out beside us on the bed to look.

"Meg, I don't think we should do it."

His soft words stabbed me. The only other sound was the sheets slipping against each other as we breathed. Suddenly I longed for the hum of cars on the interstate, even the scanner. Anything to drown out those gentle words I'd known were coming all along.

"You could have fooled me," I managed.

"I mean, I do. Of course I do. But I think there's something wrong if you want to have sex with me but you won't even take your clothes off."

I moved my hands down to zip my jeans. "I have given you access."

"You've probably still got your shoes on." I felt him exploring with his bare foot at the end of the bed. "Yes, you've still got your shoes on. So you can run out the door."

"That's not why."

"Okay, then." He propped himself up on one elbow and gazed at me. "Why won't you take your clothes off?"

I shuddered at a little chill that slipped into the warm bed with us. "I would feel na**d."

"You would be na**d."

"Exactly."

In the soft light, I watched the worry lines appear between his eyebrows. He pulled one hand from under the covers and moved it to stroke my hair, but something in my face must have stopped him. He put his hand down. "You won't let me kiss you in the corner."

"I won't let anybody kiss me in the corner."

"Then you don't trust anybody. I'm not sure I want to have sex with a girl who doesn't trust me."

"You're not sure? Let me help you make the decision." I slid out of bed and landed with my shoes on the carpet, hard enough that the room shook, just to make my point.

He grabbed my wrist, his big hand tight and hot around me. "I mean, I do want to have sex with you, but I want you to trust me."

The red lights flashed behind my eyes again. "Never grab me."

I think a few seconds passed before the red lights faded and I looked at John again. He had let me go in surprise, dark eyes wide.

"I hope I got sand in your bed," I threw at him on my way out of his bedroom.

I built speed across his living room, through the door of his apartment, and down the stairs outside. By the time my feet hit the asphalt, I was running at top speed across the parking lot and onto the shoulder of the highway. It was only about two miles to Eggstra! Eggstra! And the jog would be good for me. I hadn't gotten my run in yesterday. I probably had leukemia.