Then, suddenly, I was inside her. I would have wanted to stop, to absorb the moment. She was straddling me, her hands on either side of my head, her forehead pressed against mine. She moved slowly, with her eyes screwed tightly shut, until I was all the way inside of her, and then she rocked back and forth, pressing herself against me with such huge power that I thought I might cry out. Yet it was not pain, of course—the intention of her pressure was specifically sexual and so potentially ecstatic that my nerve ends could only disregard their habits of response. The power with which she ground herself against me was awesome; it was all I really felt. I could sense the division in her genitals yet I could feel myself inside her only indistinctly.
To keep her balance, Jade planted the heel of her hand in a wedge of soft muscles beneath my shoulder. I felt surrounded by a membrane of pleasure, a huge, incandescent cocoon, brilliant and opaque for the most part but diaphanous at this curve or that. And through those patches of pleasure from which the color had somehow drained, I was intermittently aware of the shadows on the wall, the creak of the bedsprings, the peevish nuzzle of one prominent mattress button. Then, like a slowly revolving dome, the pleasure surrounded me in all of its opacity and I was lost again.
I was covered in sweat; my muscles ached as if knotted by fever. Someone somewhere in the hotel flushed a toilet and the sound roared through the thicket of my senses.
Jade moved back and forth, back and forth. I could tell she was not altogether with me. I’d never remembered, never thought of making love as something so private. The only commitment was one of need, but it seemed to stop there.
Jade kept one hand on me to hold her balance and placed her free hand on her belly. I noticed it dimly and wondered if she were in pain—a menstrual spasm, perhaps. But her hand slipped down, led by her extended index finger, and headed straight for her clitoris, lodging itself in that small space that existed between my pudendum and hers. She stroked herself with a rapid, circular motion while she raised and lowered herself on me. It seemed devastatingly expert of her. I could imagine it diagrammed in a book, explained at a symposium. Perhaps that sounds humorous, but it wasn’t at the time. Her up and down motions were steady but incomplete: she had somehow calculated the degree of withdrawal and repenetration that best accompanied her finger’s masturbatory spiral.
She was even too expert to forget me. She fixed her eyes on mine for a moment and then closed them, as if in a swoon. She bent low to touch my face with her lips—so dry, as if she were lost in a sexual desert and my face was only a mirage. But she did kiss me, and when I captured her retreating mouth with my own kiss she lingered, breathing the air out of my lungs and exhaling into me the pungent blend of our combined redolence—the flat red wine, the long night, and the radiation of our nervous systems.
The dome of pleasure my senses had crouched beneath was no less opaque but it seemed to have risen: it no longer enveloped me like a blanket but now sheltered like a tent. I could feel my own orgasm moving within me but it would suddenly dart in some new direction, like a fish hiding within a coral reef.
When her climax came—and it appeared suddenly, like an accident—Jade trembled and made a high whinny, as if in distress. Then she was absolutely still, like a startled animal etched in the brightening beam of speeding headlights. Her mouth was open; it seemed as if she might drool but she closed her lips and lifted her chin, breathing out so heavily that her belly swelled and made her look pregnant for a moment.
Of course when you love someone it is a tireless passion to experience their pleasure, especially sexual pleasure. Of all the many perversions, the one I found myself most capable of succumbing to was voyeurism—as long as the object of my voyeurism was Jade. I never failed to be moved by her expressions of sexual pleasure. When we were first learning to make love and I had some trouble in controlling myself, she had to be careful to keep as quiet as possible. Even heavy breathing would speed my climax, not to even mention moans. Later in our life together, when we were making love three, four, and five times a night (for our passion grew with our prowess), Jade would sometimes become impatient for my final orgasm—which would come with more difficulty than hers, because of the natural differences between the genders—and to bring us safely home so we both might fall asleep she would feign groans of pleasure with her lips right next to my ear, or say my name. It wouldn’t really take anything more than that.
And so it was that night. As soon as her body began to jerk and shudder in response to her climax, I found myself astoundingly moved—as if by choral music that surprises you, or a kiss from behind bestowed by your lover on tiptoes. Jade let out her high keening call and I felt an abrupt rush of my semen, racing through me like twin rivers, turning with an acidic twist but not slowing down. I grabbed hold of her back, instinctually afraid she might leave me, and I arched myself toward her as I came. I could sense my pleasure passing through me almost unnoticed and I tried to fix my entire concentration on it. A perceptual lunge—like trying to discover the silver arc of a shooting star whose dive through the sky you’ve just caught out of the corner of your eye. When Jade felt the blurry warmth of my climax, she moved up a little and tightened herself for a slow, deliberate slide down. Whatever semen I had surrendered at the coaxing of Jade’s fingers had left a prodigious storehouse behind—almost a creepy abundance. My scrotum, feet, hands went icy cold and my mouth—moments before filled with the slosh of desire—was dry as a wafer. My muscles were collapsing, my lungs shriveled like burst balloons, but I continued to come.
Jade looked down at me. Smiled. Her eyes were glassy, indistinct, like someone who has breathed in smoke. A burning room. She was about to say something but she didn’t. She leaned forward until I was no longer inside her and then she was flat out beside me. She was breathing deep, easy breaths and I suppose I was too, but the silence between us was troublesome, dangerous. It lay coiled like a sleeping cat, graceful in its way but liable to claw if stroked indelicately. I could feel Jade considering and rejecting possible things to say. Her leg touched mine but then moved away. She sighed: relaxed, slightly pleased.
I began to plunge into the static blackness of sleep, like someone who is staggering along and walks into a ditch. But I pulled myself short, dug my nails into my palm.
Jade reached down and switched off the fallen table lamp.
Finally, she broke the silence: “My bones feel like lead.”
I didn’t say anything for a while. I had prodded myself into a state of wakefulness and I was just realizing how furious I was. Then I whispered, “That was the first time I made love since the last time I was with you, you know.”
“Amazing,” she said, rather quickly.
“Why?” Because it’s so pointless? Because you’ve made love so many thousand times since?
“Because you’re so good.” She stretched her body and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Propaganda for sleep. Getting me used to the idea; pointing everything toward it. It was how my parents used to put me to bed. Arthur would check the time. Eight o’clock and both of them would break into extravagant yawns…
“Good? “I said.
“Yes.” She seemed to regret bringing it up.
“That’s funny,” I said. “I didn’t feel like I had much to do with it. Where’d you ever learn to do that?”
“Do what?” There was a real edge on her voice now.
“That thing with your hand. You were making love to yourself, weren’t you?”
“Oh God, David,” Jade said in an older sister accent.