Christian Romance: Heaven on Earth... [4 Beautiful Christian Romance Stories] by Joanne Sawyer Page B

she had never felt anything quite like this for
anyone.
    Her heart would jump at her throat at
a mere glimpse of a tall, lanky form, neatly trimmed brown hair
that fell to thick brows, eyes the color of moss. And when Charles
was near or was looking at her from afar, her body heats up in
places—starting from her chest, up to her shoulders and arms—while
another heat, quite separate, would begin pooling deep in her
belly.
    Once, during a rare time when many
separate groups decided to have a meal together on the big camp’s
widest clearing, Charles had had occasion to lean past her in order
to reach for something, and part of his broad chest was barely a
centimeter away from Lucy’s torso. The heat was so instantaneous
that when she drew breath for the shock of it, she found she
couldn't let it out again.
    Lucy had always thought it was an
exaggeration when people describe something as having affected them
so intensely, it stopped their breathing. But there, at that
moment, when the hot air coming out of Charles’ very skin and past
his shirt was mingling with the warmth her own body was also giving
off, she found out that it actually does happen…
    A feeling envelopes you, so quick and
powerful you didn’t know what was coming until it was happening,
and the next thing was you forget how to breathe. If this was what
charged but otherwise empty air did to her, what would happen if
they touched skin to skin?
    As she thought that, Lucy got herself
to look up. Charles had leaned away, but for a full second the side
of his face drew so near to Lucy’s eyes that she was able to
see—the expression on his face was one of relaxed nonchalance, he
didn't even glance at her—but there, on the lobe of his ear, a sign
that she was not alone in feeling this: it was hopelessly red, more
red than any ear had any right to be without tomatoes rising up to
have a say about it.
    Lucy didn’t know what to do with this
discovery. The two of them had never even talked to each other
beyond a polite nod or hello. Mostly they’d been too shy to even
look into each other’s eyes without a real reason.
    It would probably have been easier if
they’d been friends. If they’d become more than strangers before
they found out what close proximity does to both of their bodies,
then… then what would have stop them from finding out just how far
its influence extended?
    There was only one place
it could possibly have led, though Lucy didn’t know much
about that beyond
the basics. She’d never felt desire before. She had no real idea
about what would happen if she and Charles had been close enough to
want to find out what this was… together.
    That summer trip ended on a very sad
note. Lucy and Charles had never quite gotten past the
stealing-glances phase, and during the last night, after Charles
had gathered enough courage to sit beside her in front of the
camp’s bonfire with the obvious intention of talking to her, Lucy
froze up so terribly that she couldn’t even get herself to turn to
him as a signal that she was only waiting for him to
begin.
    Instead, she’d remained staring so
resolutely at the fire anyone would think this was her first time
seeing one and that, as far as she was concerned, nothing else
existed. She stared like she was enthralled by it, but was also
mortally afraid of it, or why would her legs tremble a great deal
even as she tried to hug it to stillness?
    Charles had not seen how Lucy shook,
or if he had he attributed the reason to something else. He had
turned his face away and, just as resolutely as Lucy, stared in
that direction for the rest of the night.
    But he didn’t get up and leave
her.
    No, they stayed that way for many
minutes, sitting without talking, as close as they could ever get
now to each other.
    Until all the families that shared
that last night returned to their tents, one by one, they sat
together. Just two sullen teenagers, determined to have none of the
others’ merriment. For how could