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lightfooted as cats, conspirators who faced certain disaster if discovered.
    Once inside her bedroom, Jessica locked the door. Jack stared at the textured wallpaper and sumptuous carpeting, the twin closets, doors ajar, bursting with clothes. The matched furniture was all white and gold, stylized, as pretty and perfect as a doll house. She left this every day to join him, to embrace the drunkard’s son and murmur that she loved him? He shook his head. Maybe her father was right.
    Jessica turned to face him. “How did you get out tonight?” she asked as he unzipped his jacket, still examining his surroundings.
    “My mom is working the night shift. Dad is passed out and the kids are asleep. I think Lalage heard me leaving, but she won’t say anything.”
    Lalage was the eldest girl in the family, the ninth grader Maddy had mentioned. Jack took his jacket off and dropped it on a chair, and then they looked at each other, forced to confront the situation again. Jessica, attired in the floor-length nightgown she had donned to convince her father she was going to bed, appeared so miserable that Jack’s only thought was to comfort her. He tapped his lips with two fingers, asking for a kiss, and she flew into his arms.
    “Everything is such a mess,” she whispered. “I wish I were anyone else, some average girl with a sane father who could live a normal life.”
    “If you were somebody else I wouldn’t love you,” he answered, seeking her mouth with his.
    Jessica responded immediately, eager to lose the concerns of the moment in lovemaking. It was this state of mind that was their undoing. Always before she had stopped him, pulled away before things went too far, but now their whole relationship was threatened by a force beyond their control. Jack, ever impulsive, even reckless, pressed his advantage, unthinking, conscious only of the yielding woman who clung to him so passionately: Jesse, his Jesse. He lowered her to the bed and fondled her through the folds of the nightdress, his hands seeking and finding softness, curves. He groaned, moving on top of her, and she shifted to accommodate him, gasping as she felt him against her thighs.
    He was very strong. Jessica knew that from his prowess on the football field, of course, and from the way he lifted her as if she were made of lemon chiffon, but this was something more. Suddenly, there was nothing boyish about him any longer; he had changed, in the space of seconds, into a man. When he reached for the hem of her gown, she arched her hips to help him, enthralled by their mutual ardor.
    Neither one of them considered the consequences of the act, since at that moment the future did not exist. Jessica, much more than Jack, realized the peril her father’s enmity presented. It drove her to embrace what she could have now, before Portman moved to take it away.
    Jack pulled the nightdress over her head and tossed it onto the floor, gazing down at her, as slim and white as a china figurine against the backdrop of the patterned spread.
    “You’re so beautiful, Jesse,” he murmured, lowering his head to her breasts and seeking them with his mouth. “Si belle.” His face was flushed, his skin on fire, searing her as he caressed her eagerly. He luxuriated in her lovely body, desired and withheld from the moment he met her. When he rose to take off his clothes she followed him with her eyes, reaching for him as he joined her and moaning as she felt the weight of a man for the first time.
    He entered her inexpertly, almost roughly, and she cried out, causing him to clamp his hand over her mouth. Above his fingers her frightened gaze sought his, and he silently cursed his limited experience. A few frantic nights spent in the back seat of his car with some local girls of questionable virtue had not prepared him to handle this.
    “It’s all right,” he whispered, pulling her closer and covering her face with kisses. “It always hurts a little the first time. Just relax and it