The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [179]
“Oh—”
He tipped up her chin and kissed her. He kissed her, and she was his daughter, his flesh, and he loved her. He kissed her and she was every woman he had ever wanted, all he had ever wanted, and her arms were around his neck and her lips were parted and he was kissing her now with his heart pounding and his tongue in her mouth and his hands on her back, feeling her, caressing her, and her flesh trembled in response, and—
He broke the kiss. He stared at her and saw himself reflected in her eyes. Her eyes bored into his for a long moment during which he was conscious of nothing else. Then, without breaking the stare, she nodded her head.
He could not move.
“Yes,” she said.
He could not close his eyes. He could not move.
“Yes.”
It was very like a dream. He had the sort of awareness one has in dreams when one wants to change his course but is powerless to do so. He took her clothes off piece by piece. He kissed her and stroked her body. He removed his own clothing and lay full length on the couch with her and felt her flesh against his own.
He seemed to know her body. His hands knew how and where to touch her, and he sensed what her responses would be before she could make them. As if this were not merely a dream but one he had dreamed before.
When he entered her, she reached orgasm immediately. Her parts rippled in climax before he was fully inside of her. Her eyes were closed at that moment, but then she opened them and did not close them again.
He moved in and out of her slowly, lazily, entering her and leaving her in long liquid strokes, as if to make this last forever as he had wished to make the night last forever. He was lost, lost, drowned in her eyes, her mouth, her young warmth.
Until at last he came, and all his being spurted into all of hers.
Walking, pacing, his hand a vise on his forehead, pacing back and forth.
How? How?
“Daddy!”
How could this have happened? How could he have allowed this to happen?
“Daddy—”
How could he have done this to her?
“Daddy, look at me. Daddy, please, look at me.”
But he couldn’t. He felt her hands on his arm and he stopped but could not make himself look down at her. She put her arms around his waist and hugged him and his body went cold and stiff.
“Daddy, don’t hate me.”
He stared at her.
“Please,” she said.
“Hate you?”
“Please don’t.”
He stood there.
“I was the one who wanted it. I said yes.”
“Karen—”
“I knew what I was saying. I said it twice. Don’t you understand? I wanted it to happen.”
A wave of dizziness struck him. He got to a chair and collapsed into it. She stood at the side of the chair looking down at him and all he could think of was how beautiful she was. He had never seen her look so beautiful. He had never seen anyone look so beautiful.
“Daddy, I wanted this to happen. Oh, God. Not just tonight. I’ve always wanted it. I didn’t know it. I swear I didn’t know it. It was in my mind and I didn’t know it was there. It was out there on—” her voice broke—“on the edge of thought.”
Out on the edge of thought. And had he wanted it all along as well? And was that what the book was about? Had he written into it yearnings for her that he had not known he possessed?
God.
She said, “I’m going to have some coffee. Do you want some?”
“Coffee?”
“Don’t you want any?”
“All right.”
While she made the coffee he did not move from the chair. He thought of putting his clothes on but it did not seem worth the effort.
She had wanted him and he had wanted her. He could try to blame the liquor, the marijuana, the mad exhilaration of the mood they had shared. He could blame all these things, but none of them could alter the simple fact that both of them had wanted this to happen. She brought two cups of coffee. They sat in separate chairs and drank it.
“Can I say something?”
He nodded.
“Look, it happened.