More Than Friends Read Free Page B

that seemed to fizzle in the rising heat. She told herself to pull away, but her body wouldn't obey. She was a teenager back in Gullen, driven by a need long suppressed and overpowering.
    He was touching her. She smoked and smoldered and burst into flame. She felt a dire need for more.
    Somehow his trousers opened. She was helpless to keep her hands from slipping into his shorts, and once she touched him she couldn't think of stopping. He was fully erect, needing release, and she was was so desperate for the fulfillment of a dream that she opened her robe. They were both lost then. He tumbled her to the sofa, and while she tore at his shirt buttons and opened her mouth on his bare chest, he thrust into her again and again, with rising fervor, until, with a long, guttural cry, he came. She was on the verge of following him when a clap of noise broke into her pleasure. It was several seconds before an identification worked its way into her consciousness.
    "Oh, God," she cried, scrambling out from under him. She tugged on her robe and ran toward the door. "It was Michael! It was Michael! He saw!" She had barely reached the front steps when the harrowing squeal of brakes and skidding tires came from the street.
    "Michael!" she screamed as she ran, her heart thudding not in passion now, but alarm. She raced down the front walk, afraid to think. A mini forest of pines and rhododendron blocked her view of the street. It was only when she reached the sidewalk that she saw the dirty blue pickup that had skidded
    to a sideways stop. She darted around it and fell to her knees. Michael was on his stomach, a leg and an arm bent at odd angles. His eyes were closed. Blood seeped from beneath his head.
    Her heart hammered against her ribs. She put a terrified hand to his face but didn't quite touch, moved her hand to the back of his head, then his neck, afraid to land at those spots, too. "Michael?" Her voice shook. "Can you hear me, Michael?"
    He didn't respond. Fearfully she touched his head.
    Sam hunkered down on the boy's other side. "Don't move him. We have to get help."
    "I didn't see him," came a deep male voice from somewhere beside and behind. "He ran out of the trees. I tried to stop." Teke's pulse lurched. It was the voice, the voice she remembered. But it couldn't be. She had to be imagining it. No God in His right mind would do that to her. She was feeling horror, fear, and guilt enough without it.
    "We need an ambulance," Sam yelled toward the voice. "Go to the Clingers--"
    "I've already phoned the ambulance," called Virginia Clinger, who was jogging across her front lawn in a crinkly pink running suit and a cloud of Obsession. "It's on its way. What happened?" She bent her blond head over Michael's. "Is he alive?"
    "Yes!" Teke cried, desperate to believe it. She had a hand on Michael's back to monitor the shallow rise and fall of his breathing.
    "What can I do?" she whimpered, frantic with helplessness. "What can I do?"
    "Hold his hand," Sam urged softly. "Let him know you're here." Lightly he stroked the boy's shiny brown hair.
    "Michael?" Teke tried again, leaning even closer.
    "Can you hear me? It's Mommy, baby. Open your eyes."
    "He's unconscious," Virginia announced.
    "We told him not to leave school," came a new, frightened voice. "We told him not to. But he was sure he'd get home and back before lunch period ended."
    Teke glanced up into the ashen faces of Michael's friends, the twins, Terry and Alex Baker. While Alex gaped at Michael's inert form, Terry babbled, "We found out there were still some tickets left for Club MTV
    next week at Great Woods. Josh's dad agreed to go get them tonight, but only if we all paid up before. Michael figured he'd get his mom's permission and the money at the same time."
    "He was coming out of the house," Virginia announced. Teke's eye flew to hers, then, following her gaze, to Sam. His shirt was open and his belt unbuckled. He fixed the belt, but that was all before he returned his hand