leaves on nearby beech and cedar trees. Cool enough to make him aware for the first time that the dampness had been there in his palm all along. He looked down at it, then swiped both palms down the front of his britches. When Titus glanced back up, she was gone behind the boulder.
For an instant he thought of following her, just closely enough to watch her disrobe—a little miffed that she robbed him of experiencing her shinny out of her clothes. Then he quickly realized he would see all of her soon enough. And that set him to tearing at the bone buttons on his square-shouldered, pullover shirt, ripping it from his shoulders and flinging it onto a bush close by. He fought with the wooden buttons at the wide flap of his drop-front britches, then tugged them down his legs and crow-hopped out of them a foot at a time.
The water was cold when he stepped off the grassy bank and into the shimmering pond, cracking the surface of the placid waters that flowed peacefully toward the Ohio River less than two miles off to the northwest. He gasped audibly as the water met his privates, but on he sank as his feet felt their way across the bottom. Within heartbeats his skin grew accustomed to the feel of the pool, and he sank to his chin, arms treading slowly as he moved away from the bank, then turned back to the boulder that stood overlooking the grassy bank.
He stopped, stunned into utter motionlessness.
Amy slipped through the starlight, more silhouette than shape. Just enough starshine and nibbled moon for him to see the milky whiteness of her skin as she emerged from the shadows of overhanging branches, and no sooner had he gasped again than she was swallowed by that shiny black surface of the water, which reflected the night sky the way a tortoise’s shell shimmered like polished ebony. With his belt knife he had carved his mother a pair of hair combs from just such a shell for her last birthday.
Remembering that, he watched Amy sink slowly to her chin, her long hair trailing out behind her on the surface of the water as she slowly rippled her way toward him.
When she was a good six feet from Titus, Amy turned aside and stretched out her body, her legs bobbing to the surface, her feet kicking playfully at the water. Her white body merging with a distinct line against the black surface of the disturbed water, Amy rolled over and swam off toward the far side of the creek.
He watched her feet splash at the water, the curve at the back of her legs where the ankles ran up to meet her calves. There at the crook of the knees she moved up and down ever so slightly as she kicked in a great arc while turning back. And he stared transfixed at the tight mounds of her rump exposed above the water’s plane like a rounded hillock draped with the first snow of the winter in this silvery light. Against that black, glimmering slide of the roiling surface she plied back toward him.
Her legs ceased kicking, her arms no longer crawled through the water as she came close. A little breathless, Amy spoke.
“I forgot how good this feels. Been some time since’t I come down here. So busy helping mama with the chores, with all the rest of the babies.”
He only nodded, and swallowed hard. Unable to speak as she drew up to arm’s length.
She whispered. “I’m glad I come, Titus.”
“Me too.” His eyes sought to divine a vision through that black water. How he wanted to see bare what he had never seen before.
Inching closer, now well within his reach, Amy stopped and bobbed slightly as she settled her feet to the creek bottom. As her shoulders emerged, the tops of her young breasts broke the surface of the water. He felt himself stir, twitch, strengthen like nothing before in all those nights alone beneath his blankets.
“This … this is important to me,” she whispered, as if it were a secret that could not be shared even with the creekbank. “Important to us.”
“Us,” he repeated. Then reached out a hand, hoping to touch.
She felt it brush the underside of one breast, then seized it in one of her own, inching his down along her ribs to rest at the soft curve of her pelvis. Amy shuddered.
“There,” she said. “When you touched me … there.”
“I want to.”
For a moment she didn’t say anything, only stared back into his eyes. Then admitted, “It made me … not like you was tickling me. Just a … a nice tingle.”
“I want to, Amy.”
“Yes,” she replied. “I want you to.”
As she said it, Amy moved Titus’s hand up her ribs to place it on her breast. He gasped at the soft, slippery feel to it cupped in his hand. She closed her eyes halfway, and he sensed the shudder shoot through her.
Beneath the surface Amy sought out his left hand, pulled it to her, placed it on the other breast as she eased a step closer to him.
“That’s—oh! You’re making me shiver like I was cold,” she confided. “But it ain’t really like I’m cold. Shivering ’cause you’re making me warm there to touch me.”
Her palms brushed across the flat hardness of his skinny chest at the same time he felt a hardening of some of the skin at the middle of her breasts. She had to be made the way he was, Titus decided. Not all that different: with nipples just like him and the hogs and even the bitch hound that slept under the porch, out of the snow and out of the sun. But as he gently raised her breasts out of the water, he saw these were not at all the same nipples. Amy’s were something deliciously different.
And in looking at them, he felt all the more stirring as he rose beneath the surface of that tranquil pond.
Or perhaps it was the way her eyes half closed once more when she tilted her chin back and slowly slid her hands down below the water, just barely brushing the skin of his chest until she reached his belly and held there as Titus rubbed his hands across her hardened nipples.
With a groan emanating from the back of her throat, Amy’s hands inched on down—suddenly reaching his engorged flesh.
“Oh,” she said, opening her eyes and bringing them down to look squarely at him.
How they glistened in the starlight there as the moon rose.
“What’s this?” she asked.
When she ran a single, roughened finger down the length of it, his flesh quivered. “My. Did you feel what it did when I touched it?”
“F-feels good, Amy,” he begged.
Hurried, with one hand he traced a path from a breast down to her belly, and stopped as he felt the mat of curly hair. Made different from him, constructed perhaps like half of those coupling critters he had watched in rapt amazement over the past few years. He sought to go lower, finding that the hair ended and her privates parted in two soft folds of skin. Just like the cows he had observed. Of a sudden he realized it was there he was to put himself, to slip within as the males of other species mounted their females.
Her breathing had become ragged, short and raspy. Inching his finger farther down, he gently moved the skin apart. Amy gasped deeply. And clamped her hand around him, hard.
He felt his flesh jerk as if it were about to leap free of him, even free of her lock on him, a sudden constriction seizing his lower belly.
Titus had to bury himself in her. Now.
Clumsily he dragged her hips toward him, working his groin upward as he pulled her thighs apart. With her arms Amy tread water, her widening eyes locked on his, their faces marked with strained intensity. Time and again he thrust himself at her, his hands grappling violently at the small of her back, yanking her down on him, seizing hold of her buttocks as he thrust against the water’s buoyancy, which made her rise from him.
“N-not like this,” she ordered as she kicked her legs off his hips. Pointing, she added, “The bank. Up there.”
In despair he watched as she turned away, laying out on the surface of the water, kicking her legs and stroking with her arms, the long hair playing out behind her. Titus was within reach of her as they arrived at the grassy bank and stepped out of the pond, both of them trembling with the summer’s breeze as it kissed their wet skin.
With a sudden sense of how he was to mesh his body with hers, Titus was on top of Amy even as she settled quickly to the grass and rolled over from her hip. Barely lying back before he was atop her thighs. Legs that spread beneath the press of his weight.
Looking down at her, his long hair dripping into her face, Titus suddenly closed his eyes, dipped his head, and laid his mouth fully on hers. She sucked at his lips hungrily, thrusting her hips upward at the same moment. He