“Sucking my thumb. Come on, get in. It's still big enough for both of us.”
I climbed into the playpen and lay down against her, leaning my back against her soft thighs and resting my arm along her hip as I opened the book. She ran her long fingers up and down between my thighs.
I flipped the pages and stopped at a story whose name was familiar but which I had never read. It began: “During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”
The story seemed appropriately goose-pimply and harmless until the undertow of the tale started to drag us to a direct, if not wholly conscious realization that Roderick Usher and his sister, Madeline, were expiring, had expired, would expire, were doomed, by their passion for one another.
By the time I finished reading the story my voice had become funereal and the darkness (though it was still mid-afternoon) had so thickened I could hardly see the print.
“Terry, I don't like that story,” she said, pulling me down alongside her.
“Neither do I.”
“What's going to happen to us, Terry-are we going to wind up like them? Drying up together in an old house?”
“Don't think about it, Sandy-it's all too far off. Kiss me and black it out of your head.”
“Undress me first-take off these damn stupid ribbons-I don't want anything between us.”
I ripped off the two strands of silk from her body as she unraveled the bow from my penis and then pulled the ribbon off altogether.
She lay back, her eyes burning into mine with longing, lust, love, vulnerability and beauty. “Fuck me, Terry, please, fuck me and don't ever stop.”
I lowered myself onto her and slid my painfully hard, throbbing prick slowly into her hot, resilient vagina while we both gasped for air and shuddered with the first foretaste of the joys that lay locked between us now. When I had sunken in all the way up to the balls and our pelvic bones kissed lightly we began to move our bodies together and I felt as though my whole bloodstream and nervous system were immersed and thrashing there, and they were.
The rain was pounding on the roof right above us. We weren't in any big hurry to get anywhere- dessert could wait, we were concentrating on the meat. Our genitals-like a hand in a heavily lubricated rubber glove-fit perfectly and, fully immersed, touched at every point. We knew instinctively, to the last millimeter, how long we could withdraw without losing touch, did so at every stroke and never broke away.
She had drawn her legs up around my waist as a kind of restraint against my too violent sallies which threatened to end the game on the spot. My hands roved around and into her ass, up her back, around her breasts, up to her throat and in her hair. We kissed, moaning, until I couldn't tell the difference between her mouth and mine and our blended saliva tasted distilled. We sweated against each other, heavily, until my body was anointed with her sweet secretions and her body with mine.
I wanted to go on fucking her forever and never have to stop, or face anything else in the world again. But after about an hour or two or three — I have no idea how long it was except that the rain was letting up-I felt a tingling like pinpricks overtake my whole body and especially my prick itself, and I knew there was no way to keep from coming home.
“Sandy, it's happening, my whole body's on fire.”
“Mine too, Terry, don't hold anything back, give me everything.”
I went after her like an epileptic pile driver and she responded like an earthquake. After a few minutes of mounting intensity punctuated by warning gasps and yelps, we both came at the same instant, howling each other's names to wake the dead, kissing to suck out each other's tongues, one moment with pelvises grinding hard together, spines arched to the snapping point to savor what I thought must finally be the last quivering throes of complete orgasm; the next, wriggling together again and squeezing out yet one more full minute of shock-wave pounding through the blood, so good our groans would have sounded like agony to a blind virgin.
The rain had stopped. I lay a long time on top of Sandy, whimpering her name and my love and still feeling little ripples, like scattered brush fires, igniting through my nerves.
Later, when we had both caught our breath, I started to withdraw. Sandy's hands flew to my ass and held me in place.
“Not yet, Terry, please, don't leave me yet, let me have you there a little longer.”
I kissed her ear and told her again I worshipped her.
“Terry, it'll never be better than this, nothing will ever be.”
“It will too. We can make it better. We can do anything we want.”
“I don't think so, Terry, I'm scared of what will happen.”
“I don't care what happens, as long as you let me love you and you love me back.”
“Hold me, Terry, squeeze me to death!”
SEVEN
We lay there the rest of the afternoon, dazed and sated, our naked, sweating bodies loosely interlocked, occasionally exchanging long, slow, fluid kisses and caresses. Sandy's flesh was delicious to look at, to touch and to taste, so charged with beauty I kept on wondering if I were awake, or asleep and dreaming.
We didn't say much, we were so glutted with pleasure there wasn't much to say. A touch, a groan, unblinking stare said it all.
Grandma's dinner bell interrupted our lazy ecstasy. We jumped up and yelled that we'd be right down.
“Where did all the time go?” Sandy asked as we headed down to our rooms.
“I don't know. We must have been up there for hours. It doesn't seem possible.”
“We must have been asleep for a couple of hours,” she said.
“Not me.”
“I wasn't either.”
We dressed hurriedly and joined Granny in the dining room.
“Your mother called this afternoon,” she said as we sat down and began slobbering our food.
We both grunted disinterestedly. Mother was the last thing either of us wanted to think about.
“She's having a lot of trouble with your father's lawyers, it seems.”
We grunted again, not looking up from our food, not wishing to be reminded of the bitter, vicious legal battle that our two loving parents were engaged in.
“She's getting very tired of the whole mess.”
We nodded. We were getting pretty tired of the whole mess, too.
“She's also getting tired of being in the city this summer. Says she may come up here for a while. I don't blame her, that city is awful this time of year.”
Sandy and I sprung into alertness. “When?” I shouted out. “When is she coming?”
“She didn't specify. Just said she'd be coming up before the holiday.”
Sandy and I exchanged an ominous look, which Grandma spotted.
“What are you two looking so glum about?” she said. “I should think you'd be glad to see your mother. You don't get to see her that often. Why, I don't think either of you has seen her more than a few months out of the year since you were little ones, when you used to…” She looked back and forth between us again, caught the resigned sneers and shut up for a long minute.
“Well,” she went on after she'd finished her soup, “I won't pry into it. I guess you kids have enough problems as it is-with that awful father of yours, and the divorce…”
“We'd rather not be reminded of it,” Sandy said.
We finished the meal in silence.
Sandy helped the old girl clear the table and wash the dishes, while I went into the living room, turned on the TV and spread out on the couch. As usual, there was nothing worth watching and I nearly fell asleep.
When they had finished in the kitchen, a weary Grandma said goodnight and retired to her room. Sandy joined me on the couch, waking me up.