Night Over Water - Ken Follett [140]
The plane entered a bad patch of turbulence, and she had to hold on to the edge of the dressing table to avoid being thrown off the stool. Before I die, she thought morbidly, I’d like to have my breasts stroked again.
When the plane steadied, she went back to her compartment. All the bunks were still tightly buttoned up. She stood there for a moment, willing Harry to open his curtain, but he did not. She looked along the aisle, up and down the length of the plane. No one stirred.
All her life she had been fainthearted.
But she had never wanted anything this much.
She shook Harry’s curtain.
For a moment nothing happened. She had no plan: she did not know what she was going to do or say.
There was no sound from inside. She shook the curtain again.
A moment later Harry looked out.
They stared at one another in silence: he startled, she tongue-tied. Then she heard a sound behind her.
Looking over her shoulder, she saw movement behind her father’s curtain. A hand grasped it from inside. He was about to get up and go to the bathroom.
Without another thought, Margaret pushed Harry back onto his bed and clambered in with him.
As she closed the curtain behind her she saw Father emerge from his bunk. By a miracle, he did not see her, thank God!
She knelt at the foot of the bunk and looked at Harry. He was sitting at the other end with his knees under his chin, staring at her in the dim light that filtered through the curtain. He looked like a child who had seen Santa Claus come down the chimney: he could hardly believe his good fortune. He opened his mouth to speak, and Margaret silenced him with a finger on his lips.
Suddenly she realized she had left her slippers behind when she jumped in.
They were embroidered with her initials, so anyone could tell whose they were; and they were lying on the floor beside Harry’s, just like shoes outside a hotel bedroom, so everyone would know she was sleeping with him.
Only a couple of seconds had passed. She peeped out. Father was climbing down the stepladder from his bunk, and his back was to her. She reached out between the curtains. If he should turn around now, she was finished. She scrabbled for the slippers and found them. She picked them up just as Father put his bare feet on the airline carpet. She whipped them inside and closed the curtain a split second before he turned his head.
She should have been scared, but instead she felt thrilled.
She did not have a clear idea of what she wanted to happen now. She just knew she wanted to be with Harry. The prospect of spending the night lying in her own bunk wishing he were there had become intolerable. But she was not going to give herself to him. She would like to—very much—but there were all sorts of practical problems, not the least of which was Mr. Membury, fast asleep a few inches above them.
In the next moment she realized that, unlike her, Harry knew exactly what he wanted.
He leaned forward, put his hand behind her head, pulled her to him and kissed her lips.
After a momentary hesitation she abandoned all thought of resistance and gave herself up to the sensation.
She had been thinking about it for so long that she felt as if she had already been making love to him for hours. But this was real: there was a strong hand on her neck, a real mouth kissing hers, a real person mingling his breath with her own. It was a slow, tender kiss, gentle and tentative, and she was aware of every small detail: his fingers moving in her hair, the roughness of his shaved chin, his warm breath on her soft cheek, his moving mouth, his teeth nibbling her lips, and finally his exploring tongue pressing between her lips and seeking her own. Yielding to an irresistible impulse, she opened her mouth wide.
After a moment they broke apart, panting. Harry’s gaze dropped to her bosom. Looking down, she saw that her robe had fallen open, and her nipples were pressing against the cotton of her nightdress. Harry gazed as if hypnotized. Moving in slow motion, he reached out with one hand and lightly brushed her left breast with