Needful Things - Stephen King [83]
She smiled. "No-stay here with me. Alan, do you think I'm silly to worry about Nettle so much?"
"Nope," Alan said. He stuck his left hand-the one to which he had transferred the fifty-cent piece-into his pants pocket, pulled it out empty, and grabbed a dishtowel. "You got her out of the funny-farm, you gave her a job, and you helped buy her a house.
You feel responsible for her, and I suppose to some degree you are. If you didn't worry about her, I think I'd worry about you."
She took the last glass from the dish-drainer. Alan saw the sudden dismay on her face and knew she wasn't going to be able to hold it, although the glass was already almost dry. He moved quickly, bending his knees and sticking out his hand. The move was so gracefully executed that it looked to Polly almost like a dance-step.
The glass fell and plunked neatly into his hand, which hung palm up less than eighteen inches from the floor.
The pain which had nagged her all night-and the attendant fear that Alan would tumble to just how bad it was-was suddenly buried under a wave of desire so hard and unexpected that it did more than startle her; it frightened her. And desire was a little too coy, wasn't it?
What she felt was simpler, an emotion whose hue was utterly primary.
It was lust.
"You move like a damned cat," she said as he straightened. Her voice was thick, a little slurred. She kept seeing the graceful way his legs had bent, the flex of the long muscles in his thighs. The smooth curve of one calf. "How does a man as big as you move that fast?"
"I don't know," he said, and looked at her with surprise and puzzlement. "What's wrong, Polly? You look funny. Do you feel faint?"
"I feel," she said, "like I'm going to come in my pants."
It came to him, too, then. Just like that. There was no wrong about it, no right. It just was. "Let's see if you are," he said, and moved forward with that same grace, that weird speed you would never suspect if you saw him ambling down Main Street. "Let's just see about that." He set the glass on the counter with his left hand and slipped his right between her legs before she knew what was happening.
"Alan what are you do-" And then, as his thumb pressed with gentle force against her clitoris, doing turned to do-ooooh!-ing and he lifted her with his easy, amazing strength.
She put her arms around his neck, being careful even at this warm moment to hold with her forearms; her hands stuck off behind him like stiff bundles of sticks, but they were suddenly the only parts of her which were stiff. The rest of her seemed to be melting.
"Alan, put me down!"
"I don't think so," he said, and lifted her higher. He slid his free hand between her shoulder-blades as she started to slip and pressed her forward. And suddenly she was rocking back and forth on the hand between her legs like a girl on a hobby-horse, and he was helping her rock, and she felt as if she were in some wonderful swing with her feet in the wind and her hair in the stars.
"Alan-" "Hold tight, pretty lady," he said, and he was laughing, as if she weighed no more than a bag of feathers. She leaned back, almost unaware of his steadying hand in her growing excitement, only knowing he would not let her fall, and then he brought her forward again, and one hand was rubbing her back, and the thumb of his other hand was doing things to her down there, things she had never even considered, and she rocked back again, calling his name out deliriously.
Her orgasm hit like a sweet exploding bullet, rushing both ways from the center of her. Her legs swung back and forth six inches above the kitchen floor (one of her loafers flew off and sailed all the way into the living room), her head fell back so her dark hair trailed over his forearm in a small tickling torrent, and at the height of her pleasure he kissed the sweet white line of her throat.
He set her down then reached out quickly to steady her as her knees buckled.
"Oh my God," she said, beginning to laugh weakly. "Oh my God, Alan, I'll never wash these jeans again."
That struck