Off Limits(15)

"I don't know how you go about things, but this is unusual for me. In fact, I rarely sleep with men in general, not until there's a relationship involved."

"Me either," I replied, cracking a smile. "In fact, I never sleep with men."

"You've got a sense of humor to go with the rest of that package? I'm definitely saying yes if you ask me out on a date."

“Good to know,” I said. "But what about work or school?”

"Oh, I'm not working at the moment," Abby replied with a small shrug. "Just classes. That way I can catch up and finish quickly. I kind of lost a year right after high school."

"What happened?" I asked, thinking back to my post high school days. I'd done quite a bit of partying, some motorcycle riding, and had gotten myself into a bit of trouble before the Army became a way to start to get myself on the right path. Or at least I thought it would be.

She shifted in my arms, unconsciously putting the soft weight of her right breast in my hand, where I cupped it without thinking, not squeezing, but just marveling at the texture of her skin. It was flawless, soft and unbelievably silky. "Actually, I was sent to a finishing school, if you can believe it. My stepmother felt that it was important before I went off to college. I think at the time, she wanted to push me into a school like Vassar or maybe Ole Miss if I insisted on getting a real degree. You know, one of those schools where young girls are turned into attractive, pretty little arm ornaments for their husbands."

"Not your style, I take it," I chuckled. It was now confirmed. She came from money, but the fact that she had rebelled enough to pick her own university told me something, too. "What made you go to Georgia Tech?"

"It's close to home," she said, "and it's got one of the best hard science reputations in the South. Georgia Tech produces graduates that do things, not graduates that just talk about things. That's the sort of people I like. What about you? Where'd you go to college?"

I laughed. "I've got a BTM from HKU."

"A what?" she asked, twisting around to look at me again. My hand was temporarily upset with the now-missing weight of her breast until she was all the way turned over, pressing herself against me and making sure my chest was now ecstatic.

"Black Top Masters from Hard Knocks University," I expanded. “The only education I've gotten past high school was courtesy of the Army. I started college but left before I completed my degree. Financial issues mostly, though I did get in trouble too. I wasn't a very good student."

"You mentioned jump wings in the bathroom. How long were you in?" she asked, moving closer to me. We were both feeling it now, but were taking our time, exploring each other's mind as well as our bodies.

Still, there were so many ways to answer her question, and few that I was comfortable doing. "I enlisted when I was about twenty-one, a few years after I finished high school," I said instead. "After doing my training at Fort Benning, I was in the infantry for the rest of the time."

"Really? So you're a real soldier then, not one of those armchair paraders," Abby said in a way that told me she was impressed not so much that I had been a soldier, but that I was the sort of person who wasn't afraid of hard work. "You don't seem too banged up to me."

“Looks can be deceiving," I replied. "The top and bottom three molars on the right side of my mouth are artificial. I caught something to the jaw there one time, and they had to fix it all up for me. I was surprised the Army did a good job. Even if you took a good look inside, you wouldn't notice a difference."

"Not someone's rifle butt, I hope?"

I was impressed. This girl knew more than she let on. Either that, or she had a penchant for enjoying war movies. I hoped it was her intelligence, because I personally can't stand war movies. They gave me flashbacks. "No, not a rifle butt. Actually, it was a brick. They gave me a Purple Heart for that one. What about you? Why biology?"

Abby grew serious and looked up above my head. "My mom and my big sister were killed when I was little. Head-on collision with another driver. Mom was in her Honda that she liked for running us around town while the other driver was in one of those big Fords they used to make—the Expedition, I think? You know, the small tank they made for a while."

"Expedition, Excursion, Excalibur. I forget the exact name, but I know what you mean," I said, lowering my voice to a comforting level while she shared this painful memory. "They were pretty popular for quite a few years a while back. Was the guy drunk?"

She shook her head, tears coming to her eyes. "No, it was still early afternoon, and Mom was coming to pick me up from my Gymboree class. I took that while my sister took her piano lesson at the teacher's house two miles down the road. The driver was a diabetic who was trying to treat his disease through self-medication and trying one of those no-carb diets. He went into diabetic shock behind the wheel of his truck and drifted over into Mom's path. Even though they were both belted in, they hit each other going forty-five each. The crash . . . I don't remember the funerals, but the newspaper clippings Daddy kept said there wasn't much left. And all of it could have been avoided if the guy had known how to eat right for his diabetes. Later on, when I was in high school, Daddy had a small heart attack—too many Sunday breakfasts at Cracker Barrel. That made up my mind, and I decided to go into biology. Later on, I'm going to specialize in nutrition and really work to make sure things like what happened to me don't happen to anyone else."