The linen sheets were cool and crisp and new. They had never been slept on but awaited some high-paying guest who had never materialized.
“Tell me what to do,” I said. It was the first and last time I would ever ask for direction. After that night, I always knew just what to do and how and when.
“Kiss me,” he said, and as he did, he kissed me softly, chastely, not like a lover at all, but more like a person at an altar, and this infinite gentleness surprised me.
He kissed my throat and I shivered.
“Are you cold?”
“A little.”
“I’ll make you warm,” he promised, and he did. His mouth went to my breast, and I felt his even teeth, but ever so lightly, and his hands reached down under the sheet to grasp the back of my legs, and he kissed my stomach. His fingertips pressed into my thighs, parting them, and I felt his mouth again and my breath caught.
“Don’t—”
“Don’t what?” His voice was muffled.
“Don’t kiss me there.”
“Why?”
“I—I don’t like it.”
“You don’t know it,” he said patiently, but ignoring the words, for he knew them for what they were, words of unreasoned shame. “And when you do, you’ll want it. You’ll want me,” he said knowingly. “You’ll want me as I want you, everywhere, in every way.”
I had no answer to give, so I closed my eyes and waited and that was as it should have been for nothing could have prepared me for what I felt then. A kind of excitement and anticipation so excruciating that I almost wanted to run from it, to escape it and him, because I suddenly felt that if it were to go on like this, then I would die, or be reborn, but born different and strange to myself. By some mysterious process, he was draining my will, drawing it into himself, controlling me as surely as he now controlled my limbs, raising them to bend at the knees, and if I let him, it would be the end of me, the beginning of someone new, but the end of me.
I would not die so easily, would not give myself up to him without a struggle. So I struggled from habit more than will, strained against him and tried to twist away, but he was the stronger, at least that night. I was truly losing myself, and not just to him anymore. But to some dark fathomless force that lay behind all life’s beauty and all its mystery, and I began to feel indistinct, my edges blurring, my bones becoming fluid and flowing to the sea, and the bed itself seemed as if it were moving in a series of undulating waves that would drown me if I let it.
“Please, stop—I—” My voice did not sound like my voice. It sounded strangled. But he didn’t stop until every muscle tensed inside me, and I held on to him as if he was at once my only link to the world and what most separated me from it.
He held me and stroked my hair and whispered, “It’s all right,” and I tried to believe him as the room spun around me. The room was very hot now, hot and sweaty and oppressive, as if it was summer instead of fall. I wanted to sleep. Sleep was the thing. I couldn’t remember ever having been so tired. Weary, but never like this, not with this feeling of having lost all desire or motivation to move. Always before there had been something, hunger or thirst or the need for amusement, or simply to be left alone. Now I wanted for nothing. Except sleep.
But he wouldn’t let me sleep, and as soon as the faintness began to subside, his mouth was on mine again, not gentle now, but with something like violence. Yet his violence was never to frighten me half as much as did his tenderness. The violence, I understood.
“Are you going to—?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Now?”
I felt him nod.
“Will it—?”
“A little.”
“What if—?”
But there was no time to ask because all at once he was inside me, the shock of fullness, of sudden wholeness. Unmoving at first, he sighed deeply and then began to move, slowly, then quicker, growing bigger with each thrust, heedless of me, of anything but the moment. The brass headboard of the bed banged against the wall loudly, but he didn’t seem to notice, so intent was he on his own motions. Nor did he flinch when I bit his lip and drew a drop of blood that I could taste, unaware of his own pain or of mine, a pain that increased as he grew within me. Surely he would burst me wide open, but it was not me who burst, but him, and I heard him cry my name as he did, like a curse or an appeal to God. He shuddered and held me so tightly that it cut off my breath, and then all at once he went limp against
