Jack gave me a sardonic look and moved to the other side of the bed, kicking off his shoes as he sat down. “We have many more areas to cover, and you're not going to be able to experience the real comfort of this bed if you're in all those restricting clothes. Perhaps I could relieve you of some of them."
“If you think it's really necessary,” I said eagerly.
“Oh, I do.”
The buttons of my lemon-colored shirt were rather small, and Jack was marginally patient with them. When he tugged the shirttails out of my slacks he put his hands on my waist, massaging the exposed flesh with strong, inviting hands. He considered my bra for a moment, and shook his head. “Slacks first, I think."
I thought it would be awkward, his getting the slacks down, but nothing he did made me feel gauche. He kneeled in front of me on the bed, lowered the front zipper slowly with curious fingers, and proceeded to work the slacks over my bottom and down my legs. “You'll be able to experience the bed now,” he said.
“Like this?” I asked, astonished. “In my underclothing?"
“Definitely. The bed is, after all, just a solid support when you think of it. Here, slide down full length against the mattress and you'll see what I mean."
He nodded as I positioned myself flat against the creamy sheet. “Excellent. Now let me point out some features that may surprise you. You feel the way your buttocks press against the mattress?"
To illustrate he slid his hands under me, stroking my bottom and then down my legs. “That kind of pressure is perfect,” he said, drawing his hands up the inside of my thighs until they met at the apex. My flesh quivered with anticipation.
“The amount of pressure is important. Say, for instance, that someone were to be lying on top of you.” He moved to half cover me with his body. “The mattress needs to give sufficiently for you to be comfortable. Are you?"
I swallowed with difficulty. “Yes. Except there seems to be something pressing into me. Perhaps it's your clothing."
“I doubt it,” he said, bending to kiss me. “But perhaps I'm wearing too much for you to get the hang of this."
“You're definitely wearing too much for me to get the hang of it."
Jack knelt between my legs, and while he watched me he removed everything but his boxer shorts. “For modesty,” he explained.
“Oh, I'm all for modesty. For a very short while.”
His boxer shorts strained with modesty, or whatever. “Excellent. Sometimes one arches one's back when in bed.” He lowered his mouth to my bra and nudged the soft fabric out of his way. The touch of his tongue sent my whole body into an arch. “Precisely,” he said. “And you'll note how supportive the bed is during such a movement."
I groaned. He continued to draw on my breast, with the same effect. Obviously we'd lost track of who was seducing whom, but it was so delicious having him arouse me that I scarcely had the will to do anything except enjoy it. He made a terrific bed salesman.
“Maybe you went into the wrong line of work,” I suggested, before I remembered, in my distracted state, that he was in the throes of a career disappointment with which I'd meant to help him. I ran my hands down his back, slipping them into his shorts and over his firm buttocks. His penis strained against me. I loved the feel of him butting insistently at my groin. “Are you sure we need these pieces of cloth between us?"
He lifted his head from my breast and smiled slowly. “Now that you mention it, I believe they are a little superfluous.” Reaching behind me, he unhooked my bra and slid it off. “That's what I like,” he murmured. “A woman whose breasts don't disappear when she's lying on her back. But you probably have some objection to their size."
Frankly, I had no objection to them at all when he was cupping and nuzzling them that way. It made my throat tighten and need race through my body. Oh, God, how could I have lived without a man's touch for so long? Or without touching a man. I tugged at his boxer shorts, managing to get them down to the point of his erection. With a tsk of pretended annoyance I said, “You're going to have to help me here, big boy. Something's in the way."
Jack chuckled and abandoned my breasts to roll away from me. He didn't actually attempt to remove the boxers himself, just gave me enough assistance to make it possible for me to work them over his erection. Seeing him so ready to make love to me, I could have wept with joy, but I was afraid he'd misunderstand. I was also a little afraid to touch him, not out of innocence or embarrassment, but because it might be too much for him to control his ejaculation.
His quizzical look decided me. I brushed my fingers tentatively along the shaft, feeling its wild dance, and then over the smooth, silky head. His body trembled and his smile widened, but there was no adverse effect. For several minutes he allowed me to explore and tempt him, but eventually he whispered, “My turn now, Mandy."
My cotton underpants weren't long in place. Jack's fingers were like magic, touching spots I'd almost forgotten a partner could stimulate. The rhythm of his stroking—on my inner thighs, my buttocks, between my legs—left me breathless with urgency. Every part of my body felt luscious and desirable. That had never happened before in my life.
Jack spent generous amounts of time lovingly urging my swollen flesh to greater heights of arousal. If my breathing speeded up too much, showing I was right at the edge, he backed off and kissed me lightly, working his fingers through my hair, massaging my scalp, whispering sweet words of encouragement. “Oh, yes, enjoy every moment, Mandy. Don't you feel like you could explode? That's how I feel. Would you do one more thing for me?"
“Anything."
He laughed. “I'd like you to put the condom on me. I'd like you to touch me again—but not too much. Let's see if we can't work this so we're both at our heights."
The condom seemed to appear from nowhere. Perhaps he'd put it under his pillow to bring him sweet dreams. I had shown so many women how a condom worked that I had become an expert in application of them—to a plastic male model, at least. His warm, urgent flesh was much more rewarding. When the sheath was in place, I stroked him while he closed his eyes and drew a ragged breath.
And then he drew me close to him, my breasts pressed against his chest, and his hand once again tracing the line of my inner thigh and the recesses of my body that awaited him. Banked fire leaped again into roaring flame. He positioned himself so that as we rocked together he rubbed against me in a way that took my breath away, and quickly propelled me over the edge. “Oh, Mandy,” he sighed as he slipped into me.
Jack filled me in a way that made me feel complete, that made me feel whole, as though a part of me had been missing. I clung to him, simultaneously experiencing both a tranquil solidity and an amazingly effervescent release.
And all the while I gloried in the pleasure he seemed to take from being in me, and how simply he gave himself over to his own satisfaction. As he came he stared straight into my eyes, an exquisite look of pleasure on his face. We held tightly to each other as our bodies gradually quieted. I could feel an enormous grin on my face.
“I'll take it,” I said.
Sleepily he nuzzled me with his nose. “Take what?"
“The bed, silly. Everything you said was true. It's the perfect bed."
“Ah. Well, you know, Mandy, I don't think it had anything to do with the bed. It had to do with us."
If the appropriate answer to that was a kiss, I gave him the appropriate answer. We lay together side by side, still merged. Jack brushed the hair off my forehead and kissed me right where my brows met. “You have the most delightful eyebrows,” he said. “Did you know that one hair just dances off by itself in the most charming way? All the others are quite respectable and restrained, but this one has a mind of its own."
I knew the hair. It had resisted all efforts to smooth it down with the others. No one had ever referred to it as charming before. “And did you know that your eyes are the color of midnight when you're making love?"
He laughed. I could feel his laugh ripple through my own body. “Will you stay
all night with me?” he asked.
“If you want me to. But I should get back to my own room at a reasonable hour. Cliff is likely to knock me up at the crack of dawn."
“That's a great British phrase, knock you up. We mean get someone pregnant when we use it."
“I remember. Angel says Cliff wants to knock her up. Well, she didn't put it that way. Apparently he wants another child."
“And you think he has a lot to get sorted out before they do that."
My eyebrows reached their haughty best. “You don't?” I inquired in my starchiest voice.
“It's none of my business."
“And none of mine, either, you're pointing out. But it won't do. Angel has asked for my advice and anyone who does that is hopelessly caught in my toils."
“Have I ever asked you for advice?” he asked, sounding both amused and alarmed.
“I don't think so, but it's possible. I'd watch my step if I were you."
“Thanks for the warning.”
We lay silently for a while, then shifted into positions in preparation for sleep. He had his arm around my waist and I kept a hand on his thigh. The first mists of slumber were starting to fog my mind when he asked, “How many years, Mandy?"
Could I answer that? No tide of shame engulfed me this time. There was a deep sadness, true, and a quiver of anxiety, but no throat-tightening feeling of making myself too vulnerable. “Twelve,” I said.
“Oh, God.” Jack held me even more tightly against him. His lips brushed my hair. “I'm so sorry."
“So am I.” Which was all I found to say before I drifted off to sleep, secure in his arms.
* * * *
We overslept, having forgotten to set an alarm. By the time I noticed the clock two feet from my head, it was already seven. I yelped and leaped out of bed, then bent down to give Jack a good-morning kiss. But we both had to hurry, so I just pulled on my outer layer of clothing, not completely sure where my bra and underpants had ended up. I had barely made it back to my quarters when Cliff was pounding on the door.
“I'm not dressed,” I called. “I'll meet you in the living room in ten minutes."
He grumbled, shuffled a bit to speed me up, and eventually wandered off. This was certainly going to cost me breakfast, and I was starved. But I was also feeling absolutely intoxicated. No, no, I wasn't falling in love with Jack. That would be foolish.
But this was an interlude that each of us needed because of where we were in our lives. He had made me feel enormously desirable last night, and I would always bless him for that. And I hoped that he knew he had my total emotional and intellectual support during the trying times he was going through.
Still, above and beyond all that, it had been terrific sex. Playful and lush and powerful. And it had been all right to tell him how long I had been without a partner. I trusted him never to use that against me. And he had trusted me enough to allow himself to be vulnerable with me, too. We certainly were a pair of emotionally shaky middle-aged folks. But maybe everyone our age was like that, if they acknowledged how they really felt.
Cliff was chomping at the bit when I reached the living room, which meant he didn't appreciate the speed with which I'd showered, dressed and more or less put myself together for the day. “My room,” he said.
With a shrug I followed him, and my brows rose at the sight of two trays of breakfast on the sidetables. “Very well done, Cliff,” I praised him.
“I figured you wouldn't be able to concentrate if you were hungry,” he growled.
I laughed. “Good thinking. That's perfectly true."
“But you have to pay attention to me,” he insisted, following my lead and placing his tray on his lap. “I've got to be out of here in half an hour, and I have to tell you something before I go.”
“I'm listening.” I took a spoonful of yogurt with fresh blueberries on it. Very tasty.
“You and Angel think I'm just some jerk who can't be counted on to take care of Roger properly."
“I think the idea was that we don't think you do your share."
He frowned at the banana nut bread he'd picked up, then set it down again. “I've never told Angel what I'm going to tell you. That doesn't mean I'm saying you can't tell her. I just need to get this off my chest. Probably I should have called Jerry when it happened. Jerry's a psychiatrist friend back in San Francisco. He'd have given me sensible advice. But I didn't even want him to know."
If Cliff needed to walk around this issue, I wasn't going to hurry him. I listened and ate my blackberry muffin.
He lifted his gaze to mine. There were sad lines creasing what was ordinarily an aggressively strong face. “This happened when Roger was about two months old,” he said. “Really little, hopelessly helpless. He'd been crying a lot at nights, so that sometimes during the day he slept more than we'd expected. You know how that is."
I nodded my understanding.
“So Angel went out to do some errands. I didn't expect her back for a couple of hours. It was a Saturday. One of the rare ones when neither of us had been called out. Since Roger was asleep I put on the headphones to listen to some music. And I fell asleep, too, only waking when the phone rang."
Cliff ground his teeth at that juncture, and stopped talking. His head was turned slightly away. Maybe he was forcing back tears. It was impossible to tell.
“One of my patients was losing ground fast and the residents weren't able to figure out what was happening. The surgeon on call was caught up in a multiple emergency operation situation and said he'd be with them as soon as he could. So it was really up to me, you see?"
“Yes, I see."
“All the possibilities were racing through my mind. Was he bleeding internally, did he have an infection? Maybe we'd missed something really important when we operated. I grabbed my coat and ran out of the house. I jumped in the car and drove off. I forgot Roger."
Tears pricked at my eyes, for him, for the baby. I didn't say anything.
“I was halfway to the medical center when I remembered. I don't know why I remembered then. Maybe I caught a glimpse of the car seat out of the corner of my eye. I used my car phone to call home, in case Angel was back, but I only got our answering machine. I called the hospital and told them I couldn't make it, no explanations, just find someone else."
The lines of sorrow on his face had deepened. “And you know what I kept praying the whole way home?"
“Yes,” I said. “That Angel wouldn't be back before you got there."
He blinked at me. “How would you know? I mean, I should have been worried that there might have been a fire or something awful happening. And all I worried about was whether Angel would find out how irresponsible I'd been."
“Was Roger all right?"
“What's all right?” he asked, looking down at his large impotent hands. “He was screaming. I could hear him before I even got in the house. But I'd been so relieved that Angel's car wasn't there that it came as kind of a shock to me. He must have been crying for a long time, because his little voice was giving out and his body was shaking with sobs. I hadn't fed him because he was asleep the last I knew. And he was wet and dirty and I didn't think I'd ever be able to calm him down."
Cliff continued to detail what he'd done, winding up telling me that by the time Angel had returned Roger had been asleep once again. “I couldn't tell her,” he said. “I've told patients when I've made mistakes, they have the right to know. Angel had the right, too, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't bear for her to know that I couldn't be trusted to take care of Roger properly. I found the words would stick in my throat if I tried to say anything, and I tried for weeks. Eventually I simply avoided situations where I had to take care of him. It seemed safer for our child."
Cliff wasn't looking for absolution from me, as some men telling this story might have been. But he delivered his narrative in a way that told me he'd gone over it in his mind innumerable times, wishing he could make it different. And wishing that, at the very least, he'd be
en able to tell his wife, to share the burden. He'd been terrified that she would not have been able to forgive him, of course.
“You're going to have to tell Angel,” I said gently. “She'll be able to handle it, I think. Mostly you're going to have to forgive yourself, Cliff. I know it was an awful thing to do, but it wasn't done intentionally. You're going to have to build up some faith in yourself, too. Are you afraid Roger is going to hate you forever because of what you did?"
Cliff didn't answer me. His face indicated that there didn't seem to be any other possibility. No wonder the poor man wanted another child—so he could do it right with the next one.
“Talk to a pediatrician or your psychiatrist friend about that. Children are traumatized by a lot of things, but it doesn't have to screw up their lives. And he certainly isn't going to hate you. It probably took him a little while to trust that someone would come when he needed help, but Angel says he's not a clingy baby. And, frankly, Cliff, I should think what he most needs is to see that you will come sometimes to answer his cries. I think you owe him that."
“But what if I do it again? And why should Angel ever trust me with him?"
“I don't think you'll do it again, with this horrendous example in your mind. Whether Angel will be able to trust you...” I shrugged my shoulders. “That's something you'll have to find out. But Roger's your son, Cliff. You have to be a part of his life."
There was a knock at the door and Jack called, “Are you ready to go, Amanda? I have to leave."
Cliff nodded and rose. “Go. Thanks. It's helped to talk with you."
I gave him a hug as I left. “We all mess up sometimes, Cliff. You'll work things out."
Jack had already gotten our bikes down and come back to get me. When we were climbing on them, he lifted his eyebrows in a semi-questioning, but-don't-tell-me-if-it's-none-of-my-business look. “You don't want to know,” I told him. “But I'm glad I know,” I added, winking at him.
His eyes gleamed with amusement. “I'm glad we finally managed to make love last night, Mandy. I'd begun to think it wasn't going to happen, and I really wanted it to."
An Abundant Woman Page 17