Jeff smiled. "I'm glad to hear you're feeling fine and tingly, but-" He gently removed her hand from his chest. Before he could say any more, Bonnie whipped off her T-shirt and tossed it aside, leaving only the bracelets on her wrist and the Liberty scarf, which trailed down between her firm young breasts. Jeff gave a little sigh, as if he thought this act merely childish, and he kept his eyes on hers by sheer will power.
"Do you think your mother would be proud of this?"
"Come on, Jeff," Bonnie said, moving closer to him, her arms reaching around his neck. "I thought this was just between the two of us. Why are you playing hard to get? You know you want to do it. You came three thousand miles for it, man...." Then she kissed him, a long, hot, wet, open-mouthed, tonguefilled kiss, and she moved him back easily until they fell onto the bed. Jeffs drink splashed, and he barely managed to set the glass down on the bedside table. Bonnie was pulling his shirt out, unbuckling his belt, and continuing to kiss him energetically.
"Bonnie ... this isn't ... a good idea ..."
"Oh yes, it is," she whispered urgently. "I'm eighteen, Jeff. The drink's illegal; I'm not."
"Yeah, but..."
She smothered his mouth again with hers. At least one part of Jeffs body, far from resisting, was ready for action, and within a few moments he no longer wanted to avoid this situation. Aside from the obvi ous sexual arousal, strange feelings were sweeping through him. His eyes locked on Bonnie's perfect face while they wrestled each other out of their clothes but he didn't see her. He was in bed with Georgianne. The situation that had never occurred except in his dreams was now about to become real. He lost the ability to distinguish between Bonnie and her mother. The dream took hold of him, seized him, enthralled him, and he surrendered to it gratefully.
"Jesus, you're big." Her voice was a gasping exclamation.
Bonnie was tight, but moist. Jeff's body was beyond control, and he came convulsively as soon as he entered her. He didn't stop then, but continued moving back and forth in her, at a slower pace. He remained more or less erect, and Bonnie kept responding to his movements. A while later, a second, more powerful orgasm rocked him, and finally they lay still, resting.
"I guess you like me," Bonnie said.
Jeff found this kind of talk embarrassing, and it spoiled the illusion. He tried to ignore it, burying his face in her neck.
"Well, it-"
He put his hand over her mouth to shut her up. It worked, but not the way he expected. She began to suck his fingers. He tried to think. What now? He hadn't come to Boston to hop into bed with Bonnie Corcoran. He wanted information from her, and he hoped to win the girl's help with Georgianne. To make friends with her, so that she wouldn't develop a negative attitude to his intended relationship with her mother.
He had certainly befriended Bonnie, and then some. But he wasn't sure how it would change things. I guess she likes me, he thought, echoing her peculiar phraseology, but how will she react now to the possibility of having me for a stepfather? It seemed shocking to him-he wanted Georgianne, but he'd just screwed her daughter. Could the three of them ever get along together as a family, in the normal sense, after this? Would Bonnie be able to keep this a secret from her mother? Would she hold it over him indefinitely, threatening catastrophe at any time? Or would she find it simply too much to contain? I hate to tell you this, Mom, I feel ashamed of myself, but I went to bed with your friend.....Georgianne would be horrified, that was certain. Bonnie was only eighteen, which made her completely unreliable in Jeffs eyes. Why had he given in to her?
Perhaps he should have expected something like this, but he hadn't. Far from it. He'd thought Bonnie would be polite, moderately friendly, and busy studying for her finals. He'd hoped to spend a few hours with her, impressing her with dinner at a classy restaurant. Instead, she had taken the initiative. She hadn't been surprised to see him. She'd jumped him in his hotel room. In a short period of time all his plans had become irrelevant. He needed time to think. There was no way he could get out of this now. The damage was done. He might as well make a long weekend of it. Enjoy Bonnie. Enjoy the dream. It might be the best he could hope for, and it might have to last him the rest of his life.
Bonnie wasn't quite her mother. Lying there in bed with her, Jeff felt more acutely aware of his age and the difference in years between them. Bonnie's body was taut and firm, but supple, the skin so silky, her breasts still approaching their time of ripe perfection, her face so girlish. Jeff's heart ached at all the time he'd lost. He was thirty-nine, a year away from the start of his fifth decade. His body was slackening everywhere, it seemed. A softness in the upper arms, the sides, and the buttocks. Lines appearing on his face. Steel-gray stubble when he didn't shave for a day or two. Jeff had longed for Georgianne twenty years ago, and he still did, but in all that time he'd never accomplished anything with her. Now he had reached this strange point where, effortlessly, he'd fallen into bed with her grown daughter. There was something perverse and disturbing about it. No matter how exquisitely pleasing it was, it only seemed to underline his failure.
Bonnie got out of bed, shook her long hair vigorously, and went toward the bathroom. She glanced back at Jeff, who smiled. He liked the way she walked in the nude, obviously proud of her fine young body. Bonnie was bolder than her mother had ever seemed, more aggressive, more adventurous, and much more willing. Wasn't that how he'd always wanted Georgianne to be? He'd never been able to find or arouse those qualities in Georgianne. He knew that he liked a certain measure of assertiveness in a woman, the ability to take the lead when necessary. That's what he had needed so long ago: for Georgianne to make the first move. He had simply turned up in Harvard Square, and Bonnie had taken charge immediately. That was fine. But Georgianne had never given the slightest signal, and as a result Jeff had remained emotionally paralyzed. When he thought about it like this, he found it impossible to avoid the conclusion that Georgianne was as much to blame as he was. It was sad. It hurt.
When Bonnie came out of the bathroom, she retrieved her drink from the television set and sat at the foot of the bed. She crossed her legs Indian-style, letting her full fluffy hair hang forward.
"Let's talk," she said.
"Okay..
Jeff sat up against the headboard. The bedcovers were a rumpled mess, but he kept the sheet over the lower half of his body. He thought that a woman's body was beautiful, meant to be looked at, but that a man's, with its ugly dangling genitals, was not, and he always felt uncomfortable with his own nakedness.
"Let's talk about us."
"Okay. "
"You really came all this way to see me, didn't you?"
Bonnie smiled slyly as she said this, and Jeff could see that she was enjoying the sense of importance it gave her. But he wasn't ready to indulge it.
"As I said," he explained calmly, "I had to come to Boston on business. When I finished my business, I decided to see if I could find you. That's all there is to it."
"Uh-huh, yeah, right," Bonnie said, laughing briefly, as if she saw a joke that Jeff didn't. "I don't know why I find that hard to believe ... but I do."
He shrugged. "If you'd gone to Yale, you'd be in New Haven now, and I'd still be here. Actually, I'd be out at Logan, getting on a plane for L.A."
"Yeah, well ..." Bonnie's expression changed, indicating that she was back in her naughty-kids-together mood. "So, what are we going to do?"
"What do you want to do?" Keep tossing it back to her.
"Okay. I think that you and I should have a nice, torrid little three-day affair, you know? Today, tomorrow, Sunday, and then on Monday morning we say good-bye, you go back to L.A., and I go back to my books. What do you say?"
He smiled. She was too much, but he liked it. "I'd say we're already well on the way."