"Oh? Miss your ride?"

"I told 'Knuckles' not to save room for me in his brother's car, because my ma was supposed to pick me up. Now I found out she ain't coming, and it's a long way to walk. Gee, if you'd only drive me as far as your rooming house, that'd be a help, since you live over half the way to my place. Would you, Miss Frazer? Huh, would you?"

Joan stiffened at his request, sensing the hard-won control of a few minutes already faltering. In spite of herself, she could feel tiny butterfly-like sensations flitting suddenly through her stomach, and she blinked her eyes shut, trying not to allow the still smoldering embers of the fire the sex film had lit within her to grow any more heated. She realized haplessly that any wrong move could suddenly fan those glowing coals of passion into a roaring inferno that would consume her and whoever was with her at the time.

Yet what excuse could she possibly use to decline this handsome young boy's request? Montock was such a small town, that there simply was no way of hiding a curt brush-off behind a phony excuse. Wayne would see right through it, and she knew he'd be hurt and possibly hate her for the unexplainable lie. For some reason she still didn't fathom, young Wayne had been very cooperative in her class, contrary to his behavior in some of the others, and she hated to upset the delicate balance that had been struck so far. Moreover, she intuitively knew that one of the reasons she hadn't been as bothered as she could have been by Mr. Agnew Harrison Conroy and his Concerned Parents group was due to Wayne's talking down of the sex education class while at home. To repulse the boy and turn him against her could open up a nightmarish Pandora's box of harassment and eventual ruination.

"Of… course, Wayne," she said, licking her lips with the tip of her moist tongue. "I'll be glad to…"