Samson and Sunset (6 page)

  The drive there was a tense one. I
just kept saying to myself, Get the damn thing over with. Get the
damn thing over with.

  To my amazement, when I pulled up in
the circle drive, the lights were all on in the lower level.

  Well Cookie must be there, I thought.
I knocked on the door and Shay answered with a smile. “Hey,” he
said. “I really like your car.”

  ***

I don’t remember what we talked about that
first half hour. I was all nerves and trying to act calm. I think
Shay asked if I’d eaten and I said, ‘Yes,’ even though I hadn’t. I
was too nervous to eat. Then we went in and sat down, both on the
same sofa this time.

  “I made you some iced tea,
Callie.”

  “What, no warm milk?” I teased.

  “No, this has caffeine in it, I want
you awake!” He poured me a glass, grinning.

  (I’m thinking: Oh please let me just
sleep through it!)

  “Take off your shoes and stay awhile,”
he said. He was barefoot. “Do you want me to rub your feet?”

  “Hey, that’s a great idea!”

  I put my feet up on the sofa on his
lap. He gave me a nice foot rub, then gently ran his hand about six
or seven inches up my leg.

  “You really have soft legs,” he
said.

  “I have a very soft body,” I said.
“Some women like their bodies to be hard, I like mine soft.”

  “I like soft bodies on women,” he
said, moving his hands back to my feet, kneading the pressure
points. “A hard-bodied woman would make me feel like I was with a
guy…”

  “You’re sure you wouldn’t like that?”
I joked. “Sure you’re not…you-know-what?”

  This cracked him up. “I don’t think
so. But if you’d like, I can provide you with forty or fifty
references…”

  “Am I the next notch on that
king-sized bed post?”

  “Did you see any notches in there,
smart mouth? After all, it is my parents’ room, and I do have some
respect for them.”

  “Then why are we going in there? Isn’t
that the plan?”

  “You’re the exception to the
rule.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.” He got up and
turned the music on.

  He lit three or four candles. “Let’s
dance, Callie.”

  We began to dance slowly to the music,
making a lot of small talk. It was different than when I danced
with him at the club, where I wanted the correct slow dance
procedure. Now I had both my arms around his neck and his right arm
was around my back, his left arm holding the base of my neck like a
baby, the tips of his fingers in my hair. His touch was so tender,
and, man, he always smelled so damn good.

  After about twenty minutes of sweet,
slow dancing, the small talk faded away, and he brought his hands
around front and unbuttoned two buttons. A little more soft
dancing, a couple more buttons…

  I was holding my breath.

  “Calm down,” he said gently.
“Everything’s fine.”

  I guess I needed to hear this somehow.
I took a deep breath and felt myself relax a bit. Finally he put
his arm around my back and slipped my blouse off. Still dancing
close.

  “Callie, you can open my shirt if
you’d like,” he suggested. “Then we can gently touch our flesh
together.”

  I unbuttoned his shirt. He let loose
of me and slipped it off. Golly, what am I doing? I thought. Here I
am in my bra, him with no shirt on and his hand on my bare back!
Then like a magic trick my bra was loose and fell to the floor.
(Now I really did want to dance close—so he wouldn’t see me
topless!)

  During the next song or two, he
unzipped my jeans and slid them down as far as he could with his
hands, then just lifted his bare foot and brought them down to the
floor.

  “Step out of them,” he directed
gently.

  I did. He had me in a sort of
trance.

  Two people alone in a living room,
dancing slowly to soft music, one in just silk panties, the other
in jeans. He then danced me closer to the wall and when my back was
up against it, he pushed both of my arms up in the air and sort of
pinned them to the wall at the wrists, but not so tightly that I’d
feel I didn’t have control.

  He then ran his hands oh so slowly
down my arms, across my arm pits, gently around my breasts, down my
sides and my thighs, as low as his hands would go, all the while
looking me directly in the eyes with a treasured look I’ll never
forget for the rest of my life.

  I brought my hands down from the wall
and wrapped my arms around his neck. What on earth am I doing? I
thought. Something strange was happening to me. I might have run if
the feeling weren’t so erotic. I had never known what that word
meant before. He never took his eyes off mine. It was as if our
eyes were carrying this erotic spark and his hands were tending the
flame.

  Around this time he scooped me up into
his arms, kissing me while he held me. Shay had the softest lips,
the kind that made you want to say, ‘Can I have some more, please?’
He was just yummy! I don’t think he could help it. He just
overflowed with animal magnetism. He was so damn sexy: lots of
beautiful brown hair, sharp features, big brown eyes and a
fantastic body.

  I was putty in his hands by this time,
and he knew it. He carried me into the master suite, opened the bed
and put the two of us in the center (no scarf.) He pulled the sheet
up to our waists. Well, the two kids, as Cookie called us, were in
the king bed. Now what? I thought this would have been over an hour
ago and it hadn’t even begun! I was feeling things I didn’t
understand and didn’t care to.

  “Hey Shay,” I whispered. “What if
Cookie comes over?”

  “I took care of that. I told her if my
car was in the drive, she was off for the night and the next day
too! And by the way, I also told Joe if my car’s here tonight, I’m
taking the day off tomorrow and he’s in charge of the whole
operation.”

  “Just tell me Shay, what would your
dad say?”

  “Well, I guess it’s good that he’s in
California,” he grinned.

  Things were moving pretty slow for
someone who wanted in-and-out like a flash. I was lying with my
back against his chest, and he was oh, so gently, rubbing slowly up
and down the length of my body, sending chills down my thighs and
legs. His left hand was rubbing my upper body, his right hand
rubbing where ever he felt like moving it; so slowly in places I’d
never been touched. My legs started to stiffen up and my toes
curled under so tightly you couldn’t see the nail polish.

  Shay must have felt my legs go stiff,
as he lifted the sheet and said, “Look at your toes! Uncurl
them.”

  “I can’t!” I said. “They’re locked
tight.”

  “I love that, that’s so cute.” He
turned me around, and starting kissing me. “You okay so far, curly
toes?

  Hell, who knew? By now my temperature
must have been 278.6 degrees Fahrenheit. I was at the point were I
just couldn’t take much more.

  “Aren’t you going to do anything?” I
asked him.

  “I’m waiting for the five little magic
words.”

  “Oh hell, I don’t know what they
are.”

  “Well, you just keep thinking about
it, we’ve got plenty of time.”

  Legs stiffened, toes locked up, heart
pounding, who could think?

  “Why don’t you just do me? Do me!” I
said.

  “Not the right words, princess, but
close.”

  Finally I said, with absolutely no
shame: “Make love to me.”

  “That’s four…”

  Being able to take absolutely no more
foreplay, I said loudly, “Please, make love to me.”

  “That’s what I’ve been waiting for you
to say, princess.”

  Well, it didn’t take but about five
minutes before something happened to me, I had no idea what it was,
but it went from head to toe. I wanted to grab the feeling, bottle
it, hold on to it and never ever let it get away.

  Oh my gosh…the feeling was leaving. I
wanted it back, but it was gone! I was breathing so hard I felt
there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. My legs started to loosen
up, my toes uncurled.

  Shay lifted his head and looked in my
eyes. “You just climaxed, didn’t you?”

  I didn’t even know what that meant. I
said, “How do you know?”

  “I felt it go through your body. Your
legs are looser, and…aha!” He put his foot down my foot. “Those
toes are uncurled.”

  “Well, then. It’s over. Whew! Well,
wow. I need a drink of water!”

  “Oh no, no, no, princess, there are
two of us here. You’re just going to have to wait a few minutes for
that drink.”

  I realized Shay had been waiting until
he was sure everything was good for me. Since I was quite
satisfied, I didn’t seem to care much about what happened to
him—now there’s a bit of selfishness. But soon all things seemed to
go as they should, and then two people needed drinks.

  ***

We had been at this little endeavor for
almost two and a half hours. Not even close to the Wham Bam I’d
expected. I guess Shay realized I didn’t know much about sex, and
he started explaining a few things to me—information I could have
used earlier. I wondered why my mom had never told me, but maybe it
was just too hard for her. As Shay continued, though, I realized it
meant something to him to be the one who was able to explain these
things to me. 

“Now,” he was saying, “if we want to climax
at the same time, we’ll have to concentrate on perfecting that by
learning to read each other’s body movements and getting into the
very same mindset.”

  When I told him about the shot through
my body, how I wanted to keep it and hold onto it forever, he said
with the cutest grin, “I think if you had been able to hold on to
it forever, it probably would have killed you.”

  I snuggled closer to his chest, warm
in the afterglow. I must have fallen asleep, flat on my back with
no pillow, because around 4 a.m. I woke to Shay’s face close to
mine, outlined in the low light from the amber sconce. He was
propped up beside me on his elbow, gently feathering my bangs back,
with this great, contented look on his face.

  “What?” I asked softly.

  “I love coming inside of your life,”
he smiled.

  He could not have said a more precious
thing to me.

  Thrills, Chills And Lies

  After that night, our lives changed.
We spent every minute we could together. I think we were trying to
prefect our timing. After that first night in the suite, sex didn’t
just become our middle name—it became our first.

  We had many dates and we often took
Kelly along. I remember one time we stopped to get a six-pack. She
was asleep in the back seat of Shay’s car and Shay threw the pack
of beer over the seat without thinking. We both yelled “The baby!”
at the same time, and Shay jumped out and pulled the front seat
forward. I just held my breath until I heard him say, “She’s okay.
It landed on the opposite side.” I guess Cookie was right. We
really were just kids.

  Our relationship was great; except I
was plagued by the many women who seemed to flock to him like flies
to honey. If we were at a drive-through, ordering food, the girls
would come up to the car and say little things like, “Well, Shay,
did you get stuck babysitting again tonight?”

  Shay would just be nice to them and
let it roll off his back, but these girls just seemed to
materialize out of nowhere, everywhere we went. I can’t say it
didn’t bother me.

  One day at the end of April, we went
to a car parts store. Shay grabbed my arm and stopped me in my
tracks.

  “Callie,” he said quietly, “Dane
Dalton is at the end of this aisle. Just walk by him and don’t even
turn your head. I’m going to hold Kelly in the opposite
direction.”

  Shay said he noticed Dane copping a
look, but Shay had everything blocked to Dane.

  In the parking lot, I asked Shay if it
bothered him to see Dane.

  “Hell no,” he said. “I pity him. He
has no idea what he gave up. I just don’t like him. I don’t like
that he touched you.”

  “You mean, he touched me before
you
did…don’t you? Well then, Shay, how does that make you
feel about Kelly?”

  He turned and looked at me as we were
getting into his car. “Kelly is mine and best you and everyone else
never forget that,” he said.

  He could be ever so tender, but he did
have a firm side that always let you know who was in the driver’s
seat.

  ***

After several months of spending nearly every
waking moment together, Shay told me something he should have told
me a long time ago: that he had joined the Air National Guard
before he met me, and on the 15th of May he would be going to boot
camp for six months.

  I was blown away. What was I going to
do for six months without him? The night before he left, things
were melancholy between us.

  “Callie,” he said, “I want you to wait
for me. I don’t want you to date anyone while I’m gone.”

  I had nothing from him that said
‘you’re mine,’ so this felt like a tall order. Especially since I
wasn’t sure he’d hold himself to the same standard.

  “Please wait.” He sat there for a few
minutes, just looking at my face. I think he was trying to read my
expression. “You want me to give you something that means I want
you to wait for me.”

  I just looked down, but he knew what I
was thinking. Then he got out of the car and looked around on the
ground. He found an empty matchbook cover and brought it back in
the car. Then he got his pen out of the glove box and sat there
writing on the matchbook cover.

 
Callie, will you please, wait for
me for 6 months. I love you, Shay.

  He handed me the note. No words were
spoken.

  I took the matchbook.

  ***

Shay called me every Sunday morning and asked
me questions like, “Did you have a good time at the Winston dance
last night?” And, “Did you enjoy your Cheese Frenchie at Kings?”
Or, “How did you like the baseball game at Knott’s Field?”