Never had she imagined a man taking as much time as he was now. He touched every inch of her back and stomach, running his hands up her sides and forcing her arms up to his own shoulders so he could run his hands under her arms and over her breasts. At some time while his vagabond hands roamed over her, her neck grew limp, her head lolled backward, and she groaned, 'Aaron, what are you doing to me?'
For an answer she felt a warm wetness on her breast, fol- lowed by the roughness of his tongue. He loved the sweet smell of her, and as he took his mouth to her other breast, could taste the cleanness of her firm flesh. Her small, hard body was as perfect as he'd known it would be, but he damned the darkness that hid what he could only feel.
It was so dark in the room that all he knew was what he tasted and touched. He felt her tight, small fists clutching the nightgown under his chest. So he stopped kissing her then and put both hands over hers, but he could feel her fists knot tighter at his touch. 'Don't be afraid, Mary,' he whispered. 'But I am, Aaron.' 'I'll teach you not to be,' Aaron promised. 'But Jonathan never…' She stopped, realizing what she'd said and wishing she could draw back the name. 'Jonathan never what?' he asked in the dark, and his voice held no rebuke. But she found she couldn't say it. This sort of frankness was totally new to her. In Jonathan's arms there was no talking and, so, no such inhibition. 'Jonathan never what?' he repeated, encouraging her. 'Say it, Mary, and don't be ashamed.'
1
She squeezed her eyes shut, as if he could see her in the blackness, and she kept her fists tight on her nightgown as she whispered, 'Jonathan never took all my clothes off…or talked about…this.' 'Then Jonathan is a fool,' Aaron said.
He found both of her wrists in the darkness and, grasping them firmly, stood up, pulling her with him as her gown slid to the floor at her feet.
She stood very still, her eyes growing used to the darkness now. She felt him release her wrists and move a step back from her, then heard a rustle of cotton pajamas falling to the floor. She could see the outline of his shoulders as he took her in his arms again and pulled her to him, tightly and at full length, his body hot and hard between them. And then Aaron began what he'd been doing before, but his hands had a greater territory over which to roam, and they did. 'I'm doing to you what you were made for,' Aaron said. Then lovingly, he wielded the magical touch that awoke what had slumbered so long for her. 'Please stop, Aaron. I can't stand up anymore.'
He laid her down on the bed on her back. She felt a subtle change begin to tighten her body as his hands continued re- lentlessly. And when the heat grew until it controlled her every nerve, her hands grabbed at the air, then clasped the metal rods of the headboard as her body jerked in a releasing spasm of warmth, and she heard a voice somewhere calling his name.
She lay then in weak wonder. In the sum total of her ex- periences there had never been such a feeling, such a myriad of feelings. Yet Aaron had not yet come to her in the way she'd thought he would. His shadowy shape was still leaning over her in the darkness, and she knew by his labored breathing and tense body that he had not yet found release.
He was kissing the soft skin of her temples, then moved across her face as if searching for the perfect place to stop. He tasted the salty trail tears had left on her temples. But he couldn't acknowledge them now, with his own body calling urgently for release.
Pulsing with the want of her, he rolled onto her body, his rigid phallus pressed into the hollow curve below her hip- bone. He tore his devouring mouth away from hers, and his voice came loud by her ear, his words jerked from between spasmic breaths, 'Mary, are you sure?'
Hands in his hair, her tears now on his own temple where it rested near her ear, she raised her one free knee, and he felt it rub against his hip, then fall aside as she opened herself to him fully. 'I want to know all of you,' she whispered shakily. 'It's what I was made for.'
He response sang through him as he shifted his body to enter the sweet, warm wetness of her, plunging in rhythmic force as she clung to his shoulders, their moans mingling together in the darkness until his final release.
10
It wasn't that it was any brighter in the room. Perhaps they themselves had a new brightness. Her head was in a spot where it fit beautifully, and one of his hands rested on a part of her where it utterly belonged. They'd been like that long enough for their breaths to cool, their pulses slow. 'Why did you cry, Mary girl?' Aaron asked. 'I didn't,' she denied, not knowing she had. 'There were tears on your face,' he said, and laid his lips to the outer corner of her eye to kiss it. 'There were?' 'Yes,' he remembered, 'I could taste them.' 'When?' 'Right after I made you feel beautiful.'
She reached an arm around his middle and squeezed him, saying, 'Oh, Aaron, you did make me feel beautiful…so it must have been a beautiful tear.' 'That's never happened to you before, has it, Mary?' 'The tears, you mean?' 'No. I mean what came before them.'
'No, Aaron, never before.' Her heart was beating rapidly again, realizing that she was openly talking about the act that had always before seemed, if not surreptitious, then at least beyond words. Aaron lay there holding her hand, gently rubbing her arm that lay over his chest, thinking of her body being denied its most precious birthright for her seven mar- ried years, and again, silently this time, he called Jonathan a fool. 'What was it that happened to me, Aaron?' she asked, and he pitied her ignorance, yet thrilled to it, knowing he was the first to teach her. He pulled her face close to his neck and moved his jaw across her forehead. 'The same as what happened to me later. Didn't you know, my darling, that for a woman it can be as strong and complete as for a man?' 'How could I know, Aaron?' she asked, pulling her head back to look up toward his face in the dark. 'I only knew what one man had taught me. I didn't know there was any- thing else.'
He rolled her onto her back then and leaned across her chest with both of his elbows on the pillow under her, his hands smoothing the hair back from the sides of her face. 'My beautiful Mary girl,' he said, 'You've come to me as innocent as a bride, and I can't thank Jonathan enough. But I pity him his ignorance and what he's missed in you.'
He kissed her face all over then, running its smooth, fine length and stopping at each closed eye to feel the flutter of it under his lips. He came to her mouth, and she reshaped it to fit his. But instead he touched hers in a silent command to be still. But when he lowered his lips near hers, she again was ready for his kiss. When he drew back a second time and laid a finger across her lips once more, her eyelids flickered open in puzzlement. But a curl of hair on his fore- head tickled them shut again as she felt the warm, wet tip of his tongue glide over her still upper lip. Her mouth relaxed as the warmth and its following coolness played across her bottom lip, then across one eyebrow and down toward her ear. Then, like hearing the ocean in a seashell, she heard the roar of loud deafness as he licked the inside of her ear.
She squirmed then and rubbed her ear on the pillow under her, and to her surprise, a giggle bubbled out of her.
He backed off a bit and said in mock sternness, 'Oh, so the lady laughs at my ardent persuasions.' 'I can't help it, Aaron. It tickled. Besides, it made me squirm, wondering who taught you all these wicked tricks.' 'Wicked tricks? Up till now my tricks have been making you feel beautiful, and suddenly they're wicked?' 'All right, so they're not exactly wicked…but how did you learn them?'
He thought of the women when he'd been to town, the ones who'd demanded no chivalry. But the woman in his arms now was different, more precious. 'Does it matter?' 'No,' she whispered. Yet having had what she'd had of him tonight, she wanted to own all his life that had gone before. She knew a vague regret at not having been his first, and he felt a bit of the same for her. 'Don't let it matter,' he said.
And Aaron's mouth set out to make it not matter. His lips began again their interrupted meandering until hers began the same 'wicked tricks,' and their roles subtly exchanged. Without knowing when she began, Mary was kissing him in the way he'd just taught her. His body's response hearkened again to the tune she played on him, and she learned with it that he was not yet finished being her mentor. Within a tightening arm she felt herself swung upward, rolled onto his stomach, his hands guiding her until she was astride him. 'Aaron…' she whispered, feeling
