his neck, her head bowed protectively over his, her hair falling forward
and covering them both.
With the hard length of his body against hers, with the soft tugging at
her bosom, and in the knowledge that she was giving strength to the man
she loved, she realized she had never known happiness before
this moment. Then his body was no longer quiescent; she felt her own
mood change, a new urgency.
'Oh yes, Bruce, yes!' Speaking up into his mouth, his hungry hunting
mouth and he above her, no longer child, but full man again.
'So beautiful, so warm.' His voice was strangely husky, she shuddered
with the intensity of her own need.
'Quickly, Bruce, oh, Bruce.' His cruel loving hands, seeking, finding.
'Oh, Bruce - quickly,' and she reached up for him with her hips.
'I'll hurt you.'
'No, - yes, I want the pain.' She felt the resistance to him within her
and cried out impatiently against it.
'Go through!' and then, 'Ah! It burns.'
'I'll stop.'
'No, No!'
'Darling. It's too much.'
'Yes - I can't - oh, Bruce. My heart -
you've touched my heart.' Her clenched fists drumming on his back. And
in to press against the taut, reluctantly yielding springiness, away,
then back, away, and back to touch the core of all existence, leave it,
and come long gliding back to it, nuzzle it, feel it tilt, then come
away, then back once more. Welling slowly upwards scalding, no longer to
be contained, with pain almost - and gone, and gone, and gone.
'I'm falling. Oh, Bruce! Bruce! Bruce!' Into the gulf together - gone,
all gone. Nothing left, no time, no space, no bottom to the gulf.
Nothing and everything. Complete.
Out in the jungle the drum kept beating.
Afterwards, long afterwards, she slept with her head on his arm and her
face against his chest. And he unsleeping listened to her sleep. The
sound of it was soft, so gentle breathing soft that you could not hear
it unless you listened very carefully - or unless you loved her, he
thought.
Yes. I think I love this woman - but I must be certain.
In fairness to her and to myself I must be entirely certain, for I
cannot live through another time like the last, and because I love her
I don't want her to take the terrible wounding of a bad marriage.
Better, much better to leave it now, unless it has the strength to
endure.
Bruce rolled his head slowly until his face was in her hair, and the
girl nuzzled his chest in her sleep.
But it is so hard to tell, he thought. It is so hard to tell at the
beginning. It is so easy to confuse pity or loneliness with love, but I
cannot afford to do that now. So I must try to think clearly about my
marriage to Joan. It will be difficult, but I must try.
Was it like this with Joan in the beginning? It was so long ago, seven
