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Colony Theater, got out and hauled it out of the well and snapped the snaps down. Across the street the movie was Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, one of those low-budget horror pictures. But I guess there wasn't much business. Candy Bailey sat in the booth reading a paperback mystery. The streets were quiet.
     
    Casey walked over to me. I had my hand on the door handle on the driver's side, ready to let her back inside. She put her fingers down lightly on my forearm
     
    Necking in the streets.
     
    It felt pretty awkward at first. It was my town after all and there was Candy Bailey in the lighted booth a few yards away. The feeling didn't last, though. Only a few seconds before her mouth convinced me that it was a very good thing to do. After the first long kiss we parted and I saw how the tiny droplets of rain glistened in her hair under the theater lights from across the street. I saw the look on her face. The unexpected hunger there.
     
    We kissed again. Long and wanting and hard this time, an animal shifting of the muscles along her back.
     
    A man walked by behind us, walking a big mongrel dog, just ashadow in front of the closed-up shell of a drugstore that had failed three years ago. I was only just aware of him.
     
    Her body fit with mine like none I'd ever held before, every curve and hollow melting into a perfect whole. Her tongue tasted sweet.
     

It flayed the inside of my mouth until the only thing in the world I wanted to do was climb back into that car and finish it before I exploded at her. Drive to my place. Feel her naked on cool fresh sheets, damp with sweat.
     
    Her hand moved mine beneath the T-shirt to her naked breasts and belly.
    They felt hot to the touch. There was a fragrant woman-smell rising off her flesh. She moaned softly against my mouth and moved us back against the Chevy.
     
    "Lift me up."
     
    "You'll ruin the skirt."
     
    It was soft white linen.
     
    "I don't care."
     
    I moved my hands to her thighs and hitched her up onto the low front hood of the car. She wrapped her arms around me and kissed me again.
     
    The kiss was furious, amazing, touched with something crazy running between us like a thin white-hot wire. When it was over we pulled back and gasped for breath, chests heaving, hearts pounding. Her eyes glittered as she looked at me.
     
    The rain had begun to come down a little harder.
     
    My face was so flushed I felt we must have been steaming there, the two of us, boiling mists off the street. I'd never thought it possible to want a woman this bad. I could feel the ache for her in every bone in my body, through every inch of skin. And in a way just wanting her that much was enough, fulfillment of a kind. Had a car come along just then and plowed us down I'd have died in the rain slick streets a happy man. Just to have had the moment. That pleasure, that desire.
     
    So I wasn't prepared for the rest.
     
    I saw her eyes glance away from me, over my shoulder to the theater.
    The eyes were wide, her face wet and gleaming with rain. Her voice was a soft, passionate whisper.
     
    "She's watching. She sees us."
     
    "We can go to my place."
     
    "No."
     
    "Please, Casey."
     
    "No."
     

She pulled me close. She took my hand again and moved it slowly under her skirt. I felt the coolness of her thigh turn slowly to a sleek humid warmth as she moved it upward. Then there was only the soft thin tuft of pubic hair under my hand and the naked depth of her.
     
    "Here." Her lips stung my cheek. "Right here and now or not at all."
     
    Then suddenly she was all teeth and shifting flesh that turned and stroked and grappled with me.
     
    And suddenly the rain began in earnest.
     
    A flash of light and rain and wind that rattled the storefront behind me, followed by a distant thunder.
     
    And there on the rain-drenched glistening streets of my hometown I saw the strange wild pleasure in her face as she looked behind me and saw a girl I'd known since childhood watch me