by Sharon
He had prepared himself carefully for the moment when he would see her again, though he hadn't expected it to come by surprise, at a time when he was tired and low on resources. He must do this right. He took a breath and steadied himself.
"Good thing it wasn't my suitcase."
"I'm sorry," she said. "I heard someone outside and I thought it might be the cleaning woman coming back." Her tone was surprisingly prosaic. She started to get up. He backed away from her and turned on one of the bedroom lamps.
"Has something happened?" he said.
"Something happens all the time." She was putting her arms through the sleeves or his jacket, cocooning herself in the soft gray leather, not zipping it, drawing it tight around her. The satin lining must have contained the heat of his body as it slid against her skin; his warmth upon hers. He felt with panic the delicious response that thought gave him.
She went to the lamp he'd just put on, studying it, then put it out, staring at it as if it were a miracle. In the other room she did the same, her gaze rapt, amused by the game.
In front of one of the long windows was a silver branch of candles, never used, and she lit them. Tiny flames appeared like golden cherries reflected below her face in the window glass, making one bright strand across her breasts. Her reflected gaze lifted into his. "I hope you don't mind. The electric light hurts my eyes." She became motionless in that way she had. "You know why I've come?"
It was worse than he'd imagined, a thousand times worse, his mind a cacophony of trip-hammering emotion. Gently he said, "I know."
"But it doesn't please you." She turned.
He looked, not at her, but at her reflected back, at the flame beads strung from arm to arm, wreathing her like a chain. "It isn't a matter of what pleases me." His heart was in his smile. He could feel it. "But you have to go home just now. I'll call someone to drive you."
She rocked up on her toes, and back down. "Will you call someone to carry me out too?"
His gaze snapped to her fine-boned features, and this time he saw clearly what he'd missed in the smog of his fatigue and shock. She was dedicated. Like an apostle, she had consecrated herself to this night with him. Chills became steel threads in his nerves.
"Why are you doing this?"
Her hands moved impatiently, swathing herself more tightly in his jacket. "Don't try to figure things out. It's no good doing that. You can figure everything out just perfectly and things happen anyway."
"What's been happening to you that I don't know about?" His voice matched hers in softness and intensity. "Who's been cruel to you—besides me?"
She withdrew deeper into the jacket, as if she were cold, considering him. A sudden smile swept over her face. She lifted her hands to the heavy coil of hair under her kapp and one by one pulled at the pins, dropping them on the Oriental carpet.
He felt the blood rise in his cheeks. "Susan—don't do this."
She kept on. "Help me."
Her youth and optimism were enough to break his heart. Her wildness was a siren's voice. He went to the wall and flipped on a light, to a lamp and snapped on another. It was a mistake. Fuller light detailed her face in its innocent hunger, detailed the tender roundness of her breasts pushing against her gown where his jacket swung open.
Pouring himself Scotch, he stopped asking of himself that he do this right—Lord, only let me do it at all. His will was drifting from him like sand in an hourglass.
"You have to leave. It's that simple."
She tossed down another hairpin.
"Amish, don't force me to say things that will hurt you."
This time she tossed the hairpin at him. It landed near his foot. "Go ahead." Her smile cut to the depths of him. "Let's see how you do. Hurt me."
The level of her incaution frightened him.
"All this has been a fantasy for both of us," he said. "You were curious. I used your curiosity. That's all you and I ever were to each other. That was our history. This is the time to end it. Now. So we can part friends."
She ripped out a hairpin and chucked it through the bedroom door. Every nerve in his body felt as if it were beginning to fray.
"Susan, every qualm you had about me in the beginning was correct. I stripped each one of those qualms from you deliberately. I became what you wanted. I do that—I change. There are a hundred different people, in me. And not one of them is good for you."
"You know what? You start with the wrong assumptions." She passed her finger through the yellow spear of a candle flame, "Did you see? It's fire. But I haven't been burned."
"Hold it there a minute or two and you might change your mind."
Defiant, fluent with the power of her own inventiveness, her small figure dramatic against the vast black gleam of the window, of the goblin blackness beyond, she moved to obey him.
Stress brought him half out of his chair. "That's enough, damn it. The point of the exercise is to spare you the lesson."
A smooth undulation of her shoulders sent the gray jacket slithering to her feet. Hypnotic as the flame, she released the final hairpin. In the astral darkness of the glass, he saw her hair tumble, uncoiling in a shining spiral until it caressed, through her skirt, the back of her thighs. He tried to think. Nothing came. Disorder. Nothing lived beyond the ravaged plane of his desire and his need to harbor her from it.
"You have to leave, Susan. I didn't want to tell you, but you haven't left me any choice. This afternoon in Los Angeles I met an old friend, a woman I was very close to once. She's coming in tonight on a late flight. She'll be here in about an hour."
She had no reaction, except that the dark, splendid eyes opened wide in thought. "I wonder what that means."
"It means that you have to go home. Unless you want to try being three in a bed." Less weary, he would have known better. There could have been no worse choice. This was Susan, uncorrupted, clear-sighted. She stared. She stepped back. She fought for control. Her control gave way, and mirth sprang into her eyes, making them like jewels. She began to laugh out loud, the music of it merry, chiding, shocked, gemmed with relief. Breathless, she collapsed on her knees among the scattered hairpins, dragging the soft jacket around her rib cage. When her eyes became clear enough, she saw that he'd propped his elbow on the chair arm, his brow resting in his hand.
"I lie well," he said.
"I know," she said kindly. But you're no good at being crude, she thought. You'd never bring another woman here when you had nothing to give her. Recovering from the laughter, she was no less breathless. Her smile felt as if it were becoming permanent. "Now you've got me curious. Have you really been three in a bed?"
He didn't move. "I've had to put up in some crowded hotels." After a pause, "If I told you I had, would that make you go?"
"No. If this is the best you can do for a display of vices… I can't for the life of me think what there is for a third person to do."
His observant blue-green gaze rose to meet hers, and took on the faintest edge of amusement.
Am I breaking through to him? She wondered. What must I do? Must I undress for him? This was hard for her, almost too hard, to offer herself this way. If there were subtler ways, she didn't know them. And, because the force of his will was so strong, subtler ways might not have succeeded. Inside she felt like broken china and soap bubbles, and jumpy from the explicit voice within her that demanded she give herself to him, the voice she had gone beyond knowing how to control. Only her unrelenting need for the comfort of his words and his body could have brought her this far. If she paused to think about how she was acting, her nerve would falter.
She stood and picked out a distraction at random, a machine on a table by the wall, one of those many sleek boxes of various functions English people filled their rooms with.
"Is that a computer?" she asked. "Why are you smiling?"
"Whenever you see an electronic appliance, you ask if it's a computer. It's a stereo."
"Stereo?"
"A record player."
; He apparently decided her nod betokened recognition, because he added, "Try it. It's one of our more harmless inventions, I promise. Touch the button on the far left."
She saw with amusement that the button was marked "power." Not "on-off."
"Power." So typical that they would have boxes with buttons called "power." She pressed. The box came alive with red and green lights.
"Oh. Very pretty." She looked for a way to turn it off.
"There's more to it. If you lift the cover of the turntable—to the right. That's it. Is there a record on it? The black disc. All right. You see the s-shaped metal arm?" She pointed. "That's it. Lift up the end nearest you and set it on the disc. Anywhere. It doesn't matter."
The disc began to rotate, the shiny black lines orbiting a silver center. She watched it politely, nodding. "It's nice. But wouldn't it get a little tiresome after a while?"
"Without the volume, yes. Try it with sound. The dial on the amplifier—the other thing."
Reared apart from volts and current and the vagaries of wattage, she approached the volume without hesitation. Like an infant, she immediately flipped the volume three hundred and sixty degrees. Sound attacked her from the wall, excruciating, roaring, undifferentiated noise. She shot back, helplessly trying to protect her ears. As quickly as he moved, it was an eternity of agony before he brought the room back to silence.
She forced a flickering smile and slapped her fore-head. "Susan Peachey, that's a poor thing you've got for a brain."
"I thought it was harmless," he said. His hands came gently to enclose the sides of her face, his fingertips skimming the outer rim of her ear, and in that touch there was more sweetness than she could have explained in a lifetime. He had briefly forgotten his intention to send her away, that she could see. She became caught up in his eyes, the color of them clean and transparent. His thumbs lightly followed the crescents of her cheekbones.
Suddenly his hands left her. He crossed the room to the piano and pressed his fists on the lacquered hardwood, one knee slightly flexed, his shoulders taut with strain. In each tract of long, graceful muscle she could see the sharp effort at control.
"Please go, Susan," he said. "Please, little love."
She went to him, swathing his waist in her arms, rubbing her smile in the hollow of his spine. For a long time they stood so, she nestled to him, and at last the resistance shattered inside him and he began to accept that it would happen. He came with innocence, with gratitude, into the peculiar universe of peace and mystery they made together.
She sank against him, a slight erotic weight on the back of his thighs, her skirt enfolding his knees, her flat belly and breasts distracting sculpture against his back.
"What a warrior you are," he said.
"I was brought up to be that. Our ways aren't easy."
"I should make you go."
"Your shoulds. Your darned old shoulds."
He turned, taking hold of her upper arms, the heels of his palms moving in slow, shaken circles there.
"My darned old shoulds," he said, and drew her close.
"I know you're afraid I'll be hurt. I'd choose that over a lifetime of never knowing how it would feel to be a part of you. I need one warm hour to cling to."
"I need that too." One hand cradled her head, tucking her close; the other lovingly stroked her back. They stood that way, sharing the moment, the joy that they would be together. Holding each other was everything, unlike anything she'd experienced before him, unlike anything he'd experienced before her.
He made the box play, and sat with her on the carpet to listen, holding her from the back, closing her in the shelter of his thighs, his head on her shoulder, his lips soft upon the powdery warmth of her neck, his forearms crossed on her chest. Her hair fell in a swag of smooth filaments on his cheek and throat.
And the music… It came like something made on a late-spring afternoon, when the greens are at their richest, seen as they are at no other time of the day or year. Dulcet and stately, the notes came together like ribbons in the air. Among passages of spiraling tenderness, he turned her in his arms and placed his mouth very lightly on hers. He lifted his head. Close above her, she saw his face in a new way, eyes transformed by passion, the straight, dark lashes bright against his skin, the lines on either side of his face supple and smile-softened.
"Would you like to know how the music feels? I can show you."
Beside her at the piano, he took her hands, curving them over his, making from their four hands two. He began to play, the long, musician's fingers calling up sounds not of this world, carols to God. The pleasure of his fingers beneath her palms was heady, and she began to understand the startling strength there, the sensitivity, the subtle flex of bone and tendon, her hands floating as his above the keys, clad in rhythm and grandeur. He spoke to her in a language more perfect than words, more articulate, and they shared one vision, like a dreamer.
But then his hands left the keys and with the same sensitivity held her for his kiss. Cool and soft, their mouths moved against each other's, creating slight pat-terns, bolder patterns, silly, dizzy ones, their hands playful emissaries, sharing the wonder.
Rose-cheeked, breathless, she rode in his arms to his bed, covering his jaw in a mist of kisses, her hair flooding down his back. For the first time, they had set themselves free, to touch, to taste, to tumble like kittens. They didn't think to undress, to lie down. Happy and artless, he pulled her onto his lap, and she made a closed circle around his hips with her legs, awe whispering through her body at the joy of holding him so. Rocking together, they kissed until their breathing came in hard shocks, and then he laid her back in the magnificent halo of her hair and filled his mouth with the tip of her breast, his hand running up and down her sides.
Falling backward, he pulled her with him, spreading her over him, her hair toppling like a sparkling curtain around his head. Massaging, lifting the fragrant sliding mass, he dragged her mouth closer, kissing her to openness, to moisture, until her tongue was honeyed and seeking in his mouth. His hands stroked down her back, tracing the dip, rising on her buttocks, making kneading circles, drawing her skirt upward to follow the curve of her bare legs up, onto the pliant cotton of her underpants, under them, surrounding the warm flesh, sliding her against his hips.
She gasped, took a breath, murmuring, "I've wished for this, and wished…"
"If only I could have been there, inside those wishes."
Holding onto him with her gaze, she put her hands on her gown to unbind the pins. His hands covered hers, warm as mittens.
"No. Let me. Teach me how."
She touched, showed him, again, again, his hands gentle and intimate on her clothing, her flesh. He had seen her only in the concealing dress of her culture, in the Victorian film costuming. He hadn't seen her arms, her shoulders, the strong classic beauty of her legs, the way her skin drank light like the undercolor of a pearl, every inch of pale skin a revelation.
Beneath she wore a white petticoat in soft cotton, the curved neckline laced in a dainty hand-crocheted edging.
Kneeling before her as she knelt also, he ran his finger along it, feeling both pattern and skin. His fingers spread out on her rib cage, swept upward to cover her breasts, lifting them under the fabric, lightly squeezing, and he bent to kiss the soft cleft he had made. His lower lip caught the edging, and in one breath he tasted her skin, the texture of cotton, the clean,-crisp, faintly spicy scent feeding his senses as flame. He looked up. "Your eyes shine like the cup of a poppy, and I'm so lost in them."
They kissed in lost ways, on their own path, as though this were a thing no one had taught them, that they had not experienced before. There was no one to be now. She had no cares. He had no identity except as her lover. They were too joy-filled to be proficient; too much in love to notice. She didn't care where she gave kisses or where she received them. It was enough to become shivery under the stroking of his mouth. She welcomed the harder strokes, the deeper ones, his tongue massaging her lips
, filling her. She welcomed his hands on her, under her, his fingers hooked under the straps of her petticoat, drawing them lower, uncovering her shoulders for his mouth, his hair catching hers. No thought entered her mind to have him turn out the light. Eager as he, she opened his shirt, discovering how he was naked, how beautiful, how vulnerable, bone knit just so with hard muscle, rich, vibrant skin, satin in places.
Her own hands eased her petticoat lower until the edging was just below her breasts, tickling the uprise. Many pulses fluttered in her throat and chest; her respiration and his came in hectic, rapid sighs. A flush of love heat flared like a sun mark on his nose and cheeks, touching his eyes, making them brilliant, rapturous. So gently, his breath breaking often, he lifted her, lying her down on her back. His mouth dipped to her repeatedly, tasting and kissing the erect nipples, pink as the chalice of a shell. Her fair skin colored unevenly, in bright fever spots, and he followed them downward with his mouth, only that part of himself on her, and his hair, teasing her nipples, brushed the underside of her breasts, her belly, her thighs, starting tremors, cool on the hot places.
In the delirium of passion they spoke to each other, incoherent, guileless words, half-sentences, elated phrases, the thoughts pouring out between gasping breaths.
"Susan, Susan, you have the sweetest skin… the sweetest, sweetest hair… wrap me in it… wrap me in you. I love you so much," he whispered. "I love you so much…" Slowly, slowly, by exquisite half-inches, blindly euphoric, he sank himself into her body.
He could hardly see her. She was wreathed in star points, her hair limned in silver light, and he wanted only to be one being with her, surrounding her, surrounded by her. How deep can I get inside you? he wondered, and had no idea he'd said the words aloud, until the lustrously shimmering mouth below his curled up in a hazy smile.
Huskily she murmured, "This would be about it, I guess."
He gazed down at her, and then began to laugh, and so did she, the flutter of her breath, her muscles, sending pleasure shudders through him.
She brought the back of her hand to her cheek. "I'm so hot."