She stiffened, and he noticed it at once.
“Lie still,” he said again. He touched her all over with his hands — her face, her lips, her breasts, her stomach, her thighs and her knees. Then he touched her where he had never touched her before and she opened up to him, ready for him, needing him, wanting him, her whole body and being hungry for him.
The shock of the initial stab of pain was almost too much for her and she wanted to cry out. For a moment there was only the pain and then she wanted to scream because she didn’t know what to do but lie still like a corpse. Then the pain lessened and pleasure came to replace it, and her body moved instinctively with her hips rolling and her thighs churning in a slow and perfect rhythm.
Slow. Slow and gently, and almost too slow at first, agonizingly slow, with their bodies moving together and the pleasure flooding through her like water through a ruptured dam. Her hands held him to her and her fingernails dug into his back.
Faster.
His chest was crushing her breasts and her legs were like a vise around him. Her breath was so labored that breathing was an effort and she longed to stop breathing, to cease everything but lovemaking itself, to make love forever and to have forever the pleasure she felt now.
Faster.
Nothing had ever been like this, nothing she had ever experienced before. Nothing could be like this, nothing in the entire world; and if it didn’t stop she would go crazy, but she didn’t want it to stop, not yet, not ever, because God it was so good, so good and so wonderful and so unbelievable and so perfect, so wonderfully unbelievably perfectly good.
Faster.
Faster...
They ended together. It was so good that she couldn’t even stop to think how good it was, could only enjoy it and love it and feel it in every part of her body and mind. Soaring all the way to the highest peak in the world and then pure peace, with him soft and limp and exhausted in her arms and so wonderful to hold, so hard against her softness, and their sweat making their bodies slippery and the tiredness leaving her completely at rest, completely at ease.
It was so comfortable. It was so good, and that was the only word for it. Good. Good, and there was no better and no best.
Good.
She said Don very softly and very quietly, and she liked the way it sounded. Then she said Donald Gibbs just as softly and just as quietly, and she liked the way that sounded, too.
Good.
Very good.
After a few moments he started to raise himself from her but her arms held him in place. He tried again and once again she held him.
“Don’t,” she said.
“I must be hurting you.”
“You’re not.”
“Aren’t I heavy?”
“I don’t mind.”
They remained that way for a long time.
He was standing by the side of the bed buttoning the cuff of his shirt and she smiled up at him sleepily.
“I have to go now,” he said.
“Don’t go.”
“I have to put out a paper.”
She groaned.
“Great business, newspapering.”
She raised herself on one arm, ready to accompany him, but he pushed her back down on the bed and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
“Stay here,” he said. “Sleep here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She closed her eyes and her mind started to spin lazily. There was something she had to tell him, something very important, but she couldn’t remember what it was.
Then she remembered.
“I love you,” she said.
But he was already gone.
Chapter Five
The days that followed were a period of change, change as complete and drastic as the change that had been consummated in Don’s room that night. Now that Linda’s virginity was a thing of the past, it was no longer fitting and proper that she live the life of a virgin. She was a woman now, a whole and complete woman, and it was time for her to begin to live like a woman instead of like a girl.
The following evening she told Ruthie. She went to her room looking for the other girl, anxious to tell her, aching to tell somebody of what she had done. Ruth was the obvious one to tell — a girl admittedly experienced herself, a girl who wouldn’t moralize or condemn, and a girl who was Linda’s best friend at school.
“You didn’t come home last night,” Ruth said.
Linda tensed at first. Then she relaxed and a smile spread over her face.
“I know.”
“Where were you?”
Linda smiled in answer.
“Oh,” Ruth said. “With a guy?”
The smile grew wider.
“Offhand,” Ruth said, “I would guess that something or other has been lost in the course of the past evening.”
“Not lost. It wasn’t worth keeping.”
“Okay,” Ruth agreed. “Sacrificed on the field of honor. Except I think honor’s a fairly confusing term in this context. What I’m getting at is that some guy finally got in your pants, right?”
“Right.”
“Who was it?”
“Guess.”
Ruth thought for a minute. “Must have been that guy you’ve been dating. What was his name — Joe Gunsway?”
She shook her head.
“Wasn’t that his name?”
“That was his name, but he wasn’t the one.”
“He wasn’t?”
“Nope.”
Ruth shrugged. “Better tell me then. I’m all out of guesses.”
“It was Don Gibbs.”
Ruth’s eyes went wide. “Honey—”
“He’s just wonderful, Ruth. I’ve never met anybody like him before. He’s sweet and polished and—”
Ruth took a breath. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe he’s Central Ohio’s answer to Marlon Brando. Maybe what I’ve heard about him is a lot of crap — I don’t know. But you better be careful, honey.”
“What... what did you hear?”
Ruth took a second or two before replying, choosing her words carefully.
“I’ve heard,” she said at length, “that he breaks girls’ hearts for the sheer hell of it.”
Joe turned out to be somewhat harder to tell. The big thing with him, of course, was not to tell him that she was no longer a virgin, but to clue him in on the fact that she didn’t want to date him any more. For a little while she considered just turning him down when he asked her out and letting him figure things out for himself, but this didn’t seem to be the right way to go about it. Even if Joe wasn’t the man for her, it was only fair to be decent to him. He was a nice enough guy, even if he wasn’t her stick of tea.
She didn’t even wait for him to call her. Instead she called him at his dorm, waiting impatiently while one of the other boys in the dormitory called him to the phone. The fact that he lived with others in a dormitory while Don had an off-campus apartment to himself seemed to her to sum up the difference between the two of them.
“Joe,” she said right away, “I’m afraid I won’t be able to see you any more.”
There was a long, stunned silence. When he finally spoke he sounded as though someone had hit him over the head with a sledgehammer.
“Why?” he said.
“There’s someone else,” she said, feeling like a character in a bad movie.
“But I don’t understand, Linda. I’ve been seeing you all the time. How could there be somebody else?”
“There is, Joe. And I’ll be seeing him regularly from now on.”
“But... how long have you known him?”
“Just one day.”