She brushed her fingers across her neck and felt the throb of her own pulse. “Well . . .”
“Yes?” he prompted.
She swallowed thickly. “I lived in sort of a backward area. They still gave corporal punishments back then. I might have been a little . . . overly focused on the idea of paddlings,” she said breathlessly.
He went still.
“And did you ever get one?”
“No,” she said quietly. She smiled. “I was a good girl.”
“A good girl wishing she could be bad once in a while.”
She laughed. “Trust me, I would have been terrified if I’d ever been called down to the principal’s office when I was a girl.”
“And now?”
She hesitated. Why was she so inclined to behave so raunchily with John? Even with Everett Hughes, who she considered to be one of her most serious boyfriends, she’d never felt so uninhibited as she did with John.
“Well, I’ve grown up, haven’t I?” she replied.
She couldn’t read his expression as he removed the stick from the fire. “Come here,” he said, holding out his arm. The aroma from the cooked rabbit now permeated the air. She walked next to him and came down on her knees.
“Maybe we can use a couple of the tissues you mentioned having. I’ll put the meat on them and you can start eating while I cook the rest.”
“I’ll wait for you,” she assured him, removing a plastic package of tissues from her pocket. She also took out her hand sanitizer. After she’d spread some on her hands, she lined one with several tissues. “I’m ready.”
She helped him remove the steaming rabbit from the stick. He immediately skewered more chunks and started to cook them. The odor wafting up to her nose made her mouth water.
“Go ahead. Eat,” he prompted. “I know you want to.”
She laughed softly. He must have heard her stomach growl. She picked up one of the steaming pieces and took a delicate bite. The outside was crispy, the juices surprisingly flavorful, tasting gamey and rich. She made an appreciative sound as she chewed.
“What do you think? Would it go over in a Hollywood restaurant?”
“It would. It’s delicious,” she said sincerely. “Here. Try it,” she coaxed, holding the remaining portion of meat to his mouth. She didn’t touch him, but he must have sensed the heat from the meat. He opened his lips and caught the rabbit with straight, white teeth, the image striking her as singularly erotic.
She blinked and went back to her kneeling position. “You’re really amazing,” she murmured, picking up the other piece of meat.
“How’s that?” he wondered as he chewed.
“This is nice—actually nice. We’re down here trapped in a hole and we don’t know when, or if, we’re going to be saved, and yet . . . I’m having a nice time.” Her cheeks heated when she recalled the way he’d made love to her earlier. “Better than nice.”
They sat in silence for a few seconds as she stared at his small smile.
“I’ve never told anyone that before,” she said quietly.
He paused in the action of turning the meat and glanced in her direction.
“What? That you were having a nice time?”
“No. That thing about the paddlings. Even in my most serious former relationships. I had a very special former lover who would have wanted me to be more . . . free with my admissions, my sexuality in general, but I just couldn’t.” He turned toward her. She again had the impression he could see her with those startlingly blue eyes. More than see her. She bit her lip anxiously.
“There must have been some reason why you confessed it to me,” he said. Her heart hitched in her breast. “If I can help you forget in any way, I will. I know why the dark makes you so afraid, honey.”
She just stared at him, her pulse throbbing harder at her throat.
He resumed cooking, and she eating, but it was like something had changed . . . altered. A message had been exchanged between them. She felt stronger, her senses more acute. Jennifer couldn’t figure out why that was, until she realized how connected she felt to a stranger in that moment. Her world had just grown sharper because John had given her some of his strength . . . some of himself.