All for one. One for all.

What were you doing on the roof? Sarah? Who's Sarah?

She sat up straighter and said just that one word, and said it loudly, as though it had just come to her, which it had.

“Sarah!”

Was this why she was here?

“Who is Sarah?” He reached out and touched her by the side of her face, to get her mind to focus as he leaned in to kiss her again, jolting her further into awareness.

“Who is Sarah?” He repeated the question.

She recalled what she was doing here now, having momentarily forgotten, berating herself for daring to lose track of it when he had appeared and caused her to black out and to forget.

He saw the change in her eyes; in her demeanor with her body stiffening, and in her changing expression, now showing fear and horror, but not fear of him. Of something else. He recognized those changes.

Each second of delay in her telling him what she needed, could be the margin between Sarah living or not living.

She blurted out what she needed.

“I need you to come with me. Please.” She added the ‘please’ to make her insistence sound more like a request than the demand that it really was.

And he would go with her, just as soon as he knew more about what she needed.

Thank god she did not recall how he’d interfered with her. And she had red hair, and green eyes. Hell-of-a-combination!

Take warning man, she has a fiery temper to go along with her hair. But that was an old wives’ tale. Except when he told her what he’d done to her, and she would blow up at him. He would soon have to confess that to her.

He focused on her face and looked into her eyes to see what he could read from them. But that was dangerous, risking becoming drawn into them and getting lost in their depths again, and not getting the answers he needed before he wanted to make love to her again. He would always want to make love to her. It would not be anything less than that now, despite what had first happened between them, not with her, it would always be making love.

He held her shoulders. “Tell me where you want me to go with you.” She glanced around the room, then struggled to rise to her feet with his help as he stood with her.

“We should not be here!”

He was losing himself in those eyes, drawn into them to drown, wanting to stay with her like this for the rest of eternity, feeling an overpowering desire to kiss her again—the same feeling as before—rain hot kisses upon her face as he crushed her to his chest, penetrating her again, sending him further into insanity.

No world existed beyond this small island in a sea of nothingness extending to infinity, in an eternity as they stood together.

They should make love now, again. It was the logical thing to do, the way they both felt.

She’d never felt like this before either.

He held her close and touched her by her face, needing to bring her attention back to what seemed like an important matter to her. He could make love to her later.

“Look at me. Look into my eyes. Tell me about Sarah.”

She raised her head to look into his face and focused upon his eyes as he held her close.

He had gray eyes, full of promises, open for her to see down into the depths of his soul and for her to read everything about him, to drink in the love blazing from them. It was a two-way conduit. As much as she could see of him, he could see the same of her.

Her life, starting now, was laid out there as in a roadmap which she would willingly follow.

But Sarah, first!

“What should I know?” He kept dragging her back. It had to be something serious, but she was unable to say.

He waited. He couldn’t help her until she gathered her thoughts and told him something.

She broke down into a flood of words as it began to come back to her.

“It’s my sister, Sarah…she’s stuck on the edge…she’ll fall”—her voice broke— “and we can’t get her up, so I ran here to find you… anyone.”

We? Who was, we? And her sister. Stuck on the edge of what? The roof! She’d been on those metal ladders.

He knew the roof was out of bounds, and no one should be up there in the dark. Or would they? Some of the girls were too adventurous for their own good. He was the same. He had been up there when he shouldn’t have been, but unfortunately, there had been no girls on the roof then.

He reached out as he held her arm and put more lights on. She had no shyness with him, with her mind totally focused on this other issue. It was almost as though she wandered the earth naked like this all of the time to be so unconcerned about it now, having grown used to him, or not seeing him as she should, as she had seen him at first; a danger to her.

He touched firmly on her shoulders, to wake her up to him, but she was still in a far-off place.

“Your sister is in danger of falling, you said?” She nodded.

She was almost crying, unable to stand still.

“We must go. Please come, please help, we don’t have time to talk. Sarah’s stuck on the roof and is about to fall.”

“Which roof is Sarah on?” He almost knew, but he’d better be sure before he went anywhere. There were two access points onto the roof from inside the school.

Hearing him say her sister’s name, asking about her, she recovered and began to make more sense. He wanted to reach out and take her firmly by the shoulders, shake her to get her to focus, but if he shook her even a little…? Those breasts….

“Which roof?” He asked her again. “Show me on that photograph.” He turned her and moved with her across to a picture hanging on the wall, supporting her with his arm, as she pointed to the large aerial photograph of the school, taken from about a thousand feet of elevation. It was the same photograph on the front of the school brochure.

She turned as his hand followed her, her quivering finger reached out and touched the photo of the school buildings as he stood behind her and steadied her with his arm around her, his hand holding just under her breasts, touching them lightly, then holding more confidently, and his other on her hip toward the front of her body, his hand resting upon that reddish hair where he touched as he pulled her back into him, sensing, detecting the beginning of the crevice at the top of her vulva, and leaving his finger touching into her there and that other part of his fighting to push between her legs from behind. She did not fight him away, but clenched her legs together. He could feel how that touch excited her, undoubtedly sending more of him dribbling out of her. Except he wanted to get back in there again.

“Here.” He looked to where she pointed, his glance followed along her pointing finger as he kissed her on the neck, feeling her respond to his touch, and his face snuggling into her as he held her breasts more confidently.

She turned her head. “We must hurry. Sarah slipped, and she’s hanging on here with her toes in the gutter. That’s all that’s stopping her falling. Except for our nightdresses which Olivia is holding down to her to hang on to.”

Three of them! And he knew two of their names. Sarah and Olivia. Hopefully, there was only one of them needing his more specific help.

So that explained why this one was naked. They were using their nightdresses to hold her from falling. She had not been a scheming temptress after all, come into his house to waylay him as he’d mistakenly assumed. i***t!

They had been out on the roof after dark in only their nightdresses, and one of them had slipped and fallen. They had dangled their nightdresses—the only things they had—down to her to give her some support.

He had to be the one to do this, and now, considering what she said. Alerting anyone else would take forever and create more of a problem for them and would not help her sister. Time was running out in this rain and up on that roof, but at least he now knew.

Sarah was on the highest roof, sixty feet, at a guess. He’d climbed it more than once when the school had been asleep, and he knew how to get there without going into the school, which was locked now.

She’d come down that way in the dark, in a panic? No wonder she’d got scraped up and injured.