From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [485]
She leaned back in the chair, her eyes still shining with that lovely light that was never in them except when she was talking about love in theory, the fragile fine-boned hands lying lax along her hips on the chair.
And then he, Milt Warden, 1st/Sgt Milt Warden, was on his knees. Beside the chair.
“I cant lose you,” he, Milt Warden, whispered. “I need you.”
He put his hands up, touching her on her bare thighs.
“Dont,” Karen said restlessly. “Please dont do that. Please dont spoil it.”
“I dont want to do it,” he, Milt Warden, lied. “I just want to touch you.”
“You’ll get all excited,” she said, almost irritably. “You know you will.”
“No I wont.”
“You always do. And I dont want that. I dont want sex. I want love.”
“I just want to touch you,” he lied. “Thats all.” He put his face down onto the solid three-dimension firmness of the long thighs under the green skirt.
“Its been so lovely, Milt. Please dont spoil it now.”
“I wont,” he promised. “I wont spoil it for you. I promise. But cant you feel me love you? Cant you feel it through my hands?”
It was a very strange experience, in a very great many more ways than one.
She submitted gradually reluctantly to his caresses, as a suspicious tame doe only submits by gradual easy stages to the petting, until finally her hands were on his hair, his face, his neck, his shoulders, down his back, and he raised himself up to the chair arm sitting half beside her half on the arm so that he might kiss her, and they were engaged in an ecstasy of sexual love that was sexless.
“I love to touch you,” Karen whispered, “to cuddle you, be fondled by you, love you. But it always leads to sex. You’ll never know the times I’ve wanted to touch you, but not done it, because it always leads to sex.”
“No it wont,” he whispered. “It wont this time.” And went on loving her.
And then finally, she whispered lovingly, “Let me turn the covers back. I dont care. Really I dont. I know you want to do it. We dont want to mess up their bed after they’ve been so nice, though.”
Up to that point, it had all happened before, many times.
But this time, when she offered, Warden refused. Maybe it was partly out of his humility and gratitude that, even knowing, she still had come down anyway. Maybe it was partly something else.
“I wont care, really,” she offered lovingly givingly. “Its different now. It wont spoil it now. And I know you want to.”
But he refused again. Apparently there were unsuspected depths of something in him that even he did not know. But the thought of doing it to her now actually offended him. Apparently he had not exorcised his Catholic moralism after all. Apparently he had not outgrown his virgin mother any more than any of the rest of the great race of American males.
“If you want to, its all right,” Karen smiled. “I wont care. I want you to know I wont care.”
“I’d rather not,” he said, at least fifty percent truthfully.
“Oh, my darling!” Karen cried, throwing her arms around him. “My darling darling!”
It was a very strange thing.
She relaxed back into the chair, her hands on his hair, his face on her breasts, and they went on making potent love to each other, touching each other, talking without hearing, saying the stupid inane words that were not even meant to be a conveying of thought but only a self-expression of emotion expressed to the self only, as a man who has been punched in the belly will grunt “Oh!” or a man hit with a bullet will cry out, “I’m hit!”
It was a love-making of a caliber and muzzle velocity he had never experienced, and a greater intensity and a higher peak than he had believed in. It was tremendously satisfying to something.
At the moment of the highest intensity, as if feeling it instinctively, he got up and left her and lay on the bed and lit a cigaret, while Karen smiled at him from the chair brimmingly. He felt exactly as if he had had an orgasm physically, except that he hadnt. He was not frustrated, nor thwarted, nor did he feel unaccomplished. He lay on the bed smoking the cigaret, relaxed, peaceful, and ready