Everlasting by Nancy Thayer Page B

brought her hand up to press his neck. They wrapped their arms around each other and kissed as they danced. When they stopped kissing, she was breathless, eager, greedy. She wanted the people around her to disappear. She wanted to kiss him again, she wanted to undo the studs of his tuxedo shirt to see his chest, his belly. And more. At last.
    “Do you want to come to my room?” Kit asked.
    “Yes,” she said.
    Taking her hand, he led her out of the ballroom onto the terrace. She started to object, but quickly she realized that he was taking her the long way around the large house so no one would suspect where they were heading. He was a gentleman.
    Fortunately he was not sharing a room. It was tiny and spare, with only a narrow single bed, but that was enough.
    He didn’t turn on the light when they entered. Enough moonlight came in through the two open windows to paint their bodies and the bed in a silver sheen. Kit kissed her mouth, her face, her neck, and stroked her arms and back. He was being courteous, going slowly, gently, but Catherine was ravenous, almost ill with desire. She needed to go through with it before her courage failed. It occurred to her at one point to tell him that she was a virgin, but quickly she decided against it. She knew enough about him already to know that if she did, he might have second thoughts. He might tell her she should save herself for a husband or some such nonsense. And she did not want to ruin this.
    “Do I need to use something?” he asked.
    At first she didn’t understand the question. When she did, she grew hot with shame. If she said yes, he would know she wasn’t on the Pill like every other sophisticated female her age. If she said no, and he didn’t “use something,” she could get pregnant. Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes.
    “It’s all right,” he said, pulling her against him. She still had not managed to reply. “I’ll take care.”
    They undressed each other. Their clothes fell in silky piles around the floor. They stood together, naked in the moonlight, warm and aching, aching and soothing at once, like invalids with a fever that was lightened by a cool cloth. Everywhere they touched, the heat grew more intense, but that touch soothed the ache.
    He brought her to the narrow bed with its coarse white sheets and lay next to her, kissing her, stroking her, touching her. Finally he entered her. At once her desire abated as pain took over. It made her angry. She had to keep herself from crying out. At the same time the pain sobered her enough so that her natural curiosity took over and she thought: So this is what a man looks like, acts like, sounds like, when he is making love. She watched him. He looked as if he were in as much pain as she was. She had never heard that sex hurt men. His suffering looked so private. Suddenly he arched away from her, his chest rising up and back. He groaned and fell against her. She was suffused with a great boiling sense of triumph. Triumph?! She felt utterly smug about it. Gently she stroked his back and head, as if he had done something wonderful.
    “Do you want me to move?” he asked, murmuring, his voice so low she could scarcely hear him even though his mouth was next to her ear.
    “No,” she whispered. She luxuriated under the heaviness of his body against hers. As she turned, smiling, she saw through the window that day was dawning. The sky was filled with a golden-white light that glimmered and deepened as if reflecting the way she felt now inside her skin: warm, and shining, and infinitely full of beauty.
* * *
    K it slept, then made love to her again. This time he went more slowly. He watched her face and seemed to be listening to her body, as if trying to lead her on whichever path pleased her most. When they finished making love again, she knew she had not experienced the wild ecstasy she’d always read about, but still she felt satisfied, pleased right to the bone. Somehow, curled against each other on