“David,” she said, in that feverish, sliding way. She meant for me not to stop, or vary. Her opening was even larger now and it seemed to have a kind of undertow, a riptide. I remembered not to touch my mouth too hard against her tenderest parts but I increased the pressure, just a little. I felt something running down my chin; I didn’t know if it was her blood or my spit, or a combination. I caught my breath by opening my mouth still wider. She came forward at the same time and my teeth accidentally knocked against her wet insides. Sweat was rolling into my eyes and I thought it was tears. She clapped her legs closed; her thighs covered my ears. I heard her moan as something eerily distant. But I heard its pitch rise again and I knew she was about to come. I didn’t lift my mouth off of her but I held it still. The pace of her movements doubled as I stopped but I placed my hands on her hips to hold them still and then I moved away from her.
Her body quieted down but her breath came in explosions. Its sound filled the room like panic. Her legs thrashed; I looked at the smears of blood on her thighs, visible now through the first gray layer of dawn. I placed my hand on her, squeezing. She placed her hand on top of mine, closed her legs, and moved up and down.
“David,” she said, “I’m so close.”
“To me,” I said. I was lying next to her now, with my arm around her shoulders. She drew her knees up, rolled over, pressed herself against me.
“Inside me,” she said.
“No. I want to hold you.” I thought to myself: I may never be with you again. A desperate idea but it flew by like something blown about in a storm. Thoughts, images—everything seemed to be moving away from me, as if the contents of my mind had been stuffed into a cannon and fired. Dr. Ecrest saying he had no intention of reading my files forwarded from Rockville, dropping them into the wastepaper basket right before me. Arthur’s sad and anxious grin as he watched me talking to Barbara Sherwood at her bedside in Jackson Park Hospital. Chasing the ball, a big fat softball as pliant as dough, across the lawn at Rockville, rolling away, rolling rolling, coming to rest at the fence to The Outside, where two little blond townies stared at me, holding onto the fence but backing away as if I might try to grab them by their empty belt loops…
“David,” Jade said, touching my face. She turned me toward her and put her mouth on mine.
I embraced her with all my strength; her vagina was against my knee, moving back and forth.
“I feel so much,” she said. “It’s scary.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m very frightened.”
“Only with you.” She ran her hand over my face. I caught one of her fingers in my mouth and sucked it blindly. It tasted of salt. “Only with you, David. It’s so strange.”
I rolled on top of her. Her legs flew apart; her hands gripped my slippery back and pressed me down.
“Don’t wait,” she said. “Come inside me. I want to feel you inside me.”
“I don’t want it to end,” I said.
“Inside me.”
I slipped in so easily. It was only when I pushed myself all the way in that I felt the tug of her flesh. She seemed to narrow, further in.
I came immediately. She was so wet and I didn’t make anything of my orgasm—no particular interest in it; it was something occurring on the side—and I remained just as hard so Jade scarcely knew it had happened. I stopped to rest for a moment and she looked questioningly at me. Then I began to make love to her. I was clumsy, surprised by the limitation of our bodies. Only our nerves, our imagination, and our desire were infinite; our bodies remained beneath gravity’s thumb, ruled by the stern congress of tendons and joints. More than once I misjudged how close together we were and our bodies slapped together with a hollow wet clap.
I could feel it getting a little out of control. Her arms were thrown out to either side, her legs opened wide, she was moving up and down and from side to side and we were slipping around quite a bit. There was no control. I held on to her and every now and then her hands would grab on to me. Then we’d be tilted to one side and in danger of falling out of bed altogether. The racket we must have been making. I wouldn’t be surprised if the front desk got a few calls of complaint. And if any single, lonely guests found themselves with an ear to the wall and a hand on their middle, I would have to forgive them. We turned slowly in the bed as we made love. A clock with one hand. The bedsprings were the very soul of indiscretion and at a certain point the headboard began to thwack against the wall. Jade had begun her high warbling hum, a tone like a sad, unendurably erotic pitchpipe. I felt another orgasm taking shape within me, locating itself not so much in my genitals as in my belly, the backs of my legs. I slowed the pace and this time Jade didn’t protest. She moved her head back and forth and said my name and I said hers.
Suddenly, I withdrew from her completely. She let out a whimper of surprise and, instinctually, brought her hand down onto herself and squeezed. I kissed that hand and then it moved away and I kissed her hair, her belly. I was straddling her, looking at her, knowing that my eyes looked glassy and half mad—like hers. She was panting and shivering and her body continued to move over the mattress, as if we were still joined.
“I love you,” I said. “It’s so much more, so much, but I don’t know what to say. Nothing’s changed. I remember everything, even the things that have changed. I love you, Jade. I love you.”
“Come in me,” she said. She lifted herself up with her hands around my neck and kissed me. Then she reached down for me and pressed the head of my penis into her. “I want to feel us,” she said. And when I lowered myself upon her and sank as deep as I could go, her voice was replaced by that high keening hum. I watched her face as best I could. Those strange contortions that would be so horrible under any other circumstances. Her lips parting, stretching, her mouth opening in a silent howl. Eyes closed and then suddenly open, staring up at me with real helplessness, mixed with hunger and surprise. The heel of her hand hit my chest; it seemed for a moment as if she were going to try to push me off of her. But it passed. She was rising toward me, levitating, holding on with her hard competent hands. I could feel her reaching her climax and I almost stopped because I didn’t want it to end. It was, after all, how we’d taught each other to make love: the sin of the Adamites; the psychedelia of the suppressed orgasm. Each time I stopped, the eventual come would be more powerful. Each interlude would send us streaming closer together. But as I slowed my pace she quickened hers and her grip had a sternness in its strength, an undertaste of fury. I thought that if I didn’t carry through she might actually punch me in the mouth. And so I slipped my hands beneath her rump so no matter what our bodies did they would be touching and I would stay in her as deep as possible. The hum became a kind of toneless noise, like the loudest part of a yawn stretched out indefinitely. Sweat ran off her back and new threads of blood came out of her: I could feel it pooling in the spaces between my fingers. I was totally soaked. The cut on the inside of my mouth had opened again and spawned in my drool to create a dark pink torrent. Jade’s eyes were wide open now and she was staring up at me: with her mouth turned down in an aspect of weeping, the stare seemed almost accusatory. She was shaking all over, not just her feet and legs, but tremors running like currents from her vagina, straight up her belly, and into her chest. I finally realized that half the noise I was hearing was my own: I was moaning like a dumbstruck giant, a low, clobbered, dizzy note. We were starting to slip off the bed, we were slick with sweat and blood. We were moving like mad and suddenly I could feel her inner walls in terrifying detail, as if I’d gotten fifty times thicker. We came, first Jade and then me, moments behind her, holding each other, and our voices joining, forming one wild and unbearably lonely cry.