Each night, though, they’d tempted fate, as youth always does, finding it harder and harder to halt the petting which step by hot step had approached a point of no return.
After graduation, Jack had gotten a football scholarship to a university more than a thousand miles away, while she’d enrolled at a local state college. By the end of September, Ruby had lost weight, and Jack’s telephone bill had increased astronomically. The two months until Jack’s Thanksgiving vacation had stretched ahead endlessly for them. Neither had been able to afford visits.
So Ruby had been surprised to open her dorm door one autumn day to find Jack standing there solemnly in his tight jeans and varsity jacket. The smell of the spicy cologne she’d bought him last Christmas hung enticingly in the air.
Jack’s blue eyes had held hers in an imploring caress. He traced the sharp plane of her cheekbone lightly with a finger but did not lean down with his usual kiss of greeting.
“Let’s go for a ride, Rube,” he’d said in an oddly raw voice, drawing her outside toward his old MG.
She’d been frightened, wondering if he’d come to break up with her. Maybe he’d met someone else. Jack had said little, despite her nervous questions, as he’d driven to the outskirts of town. Strangely distracted, he’d parked on a little out-of-the-way road leading into a secluded, wooded area.
“How’s football?”
“Okay.”
“Do your parents know you’re back in Pennsylvania?”
“No.”
“Did something happen? Are you hurt? Did you fail a course?”
“No. No. No.”
Jack had folded his arms over the steering wheel and had pressed his forehead down on them. Truly concerned now, Ruby had moved closer, but the gear shift on the floor had impeded her. She’d put her left hand on his wide shoulder and had felt corded muscles tense reflexively.
“Jack? Jack, honey, what’s wrong?”
“Rube, I love you. I love you so much,” Jack had groaned, pulling her into his arms.
Ruby had smiled broadly then, in relief and reaction to his loving words. He hadn’t planned a breakup, after all. She’d kissed him quickly on the lips.
“I love you, too, Jack. I was so scared—”
Jack had never let her finish. He’d put hands on either side of her face and pulled her toward him in a hungry kiss that had conveyed all the loneliness and unfulfilled wanting of the last month. “I… love… you,” he’d repeated huskily, and between each word, his breath had feathered her parted lips. His tongue ravaged all the secret, familiar recesses of her mouth, willing her to open all her intimate places for him.
Like a starving man, he’d passed his hands frantically over her body, grasping, caressing, never seeming to get enough. In his ravaging need, he’d jerkily unbuttoned her coat and lifted the hem of her sweater. When his fingertips had found the lace-capped tips of her breasts, she gasped, “Oh, Jack! A-a-h!” Instantly, he’d brought them to hard points of aching fruition with a mere grazing of the backs of his knuckles. Jack had moaned throatily then with his own intense pleasure.
This had been too fast for Ruby. In the past, it had taken them hours to reach this point of sexual frenzy. She’d started to get frightened, and excited, at the same time. Jack had tried to pull her onto his lap in front of the steering wheel, but Ruby had cried out in pain. The stupid gearshift had scraped her thigh.
They’d both started laughing then.
“Come on. Let’s go for a walk,” Jack had suggested in a hoarse, raw voice. His kiss-swollen lips and passion-glazed eyes had lured Ruby onto the multicolored carpet of crisp autumn leaves which had crunched under their feet. They’d walked, arm-in-arm, into the heavily canopied forest while industrious nut-gathering squirrels scurried out of their path, squealing in outrage at being disturbed.
Jack had stopped abruptly and twirled her round and round in his arms, happily. Like young, carefree children, they’d fallen laughing to the luxuriant bed of leaves. He’d leaned over her and brushed some of the errant leaves from her hair, then held her eyes seriously, “Let’s get married, Rube.”