Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [104]
He didn’t especially see the desperation in her eyes when she asked him if he would like to come in for a moment, and maybe have another drink. Her daughter wasn’t there, she added. She was sleeping over at a friend’s.
The moment he nodded and walked through the door they launched themselves at each other. They were both surprised they’d lasted so long. He wasn’t so much kissing her as consuming her, and she completely surrendered to it. They got no farther than the sofa just inside the door. They began to tug at each other’s clothing, but quickly realized it would be more efficient to undress themselves. Mark pulled impatiently at the buttons of his shirt and kicked himself out of his trousers. He was so hard he wasn’t sure he could wait. She was as thin naked as she had looked dressed. He could see her ribs in the half light, and her stomach was totally flat and smooth. He was kissing everywhere he could reach—her neck, her nipples, her shoulders. There was no plan beyond having her. She clawed at his back, equally fervent. He was inside her before they even lay down. She was hot and wet and he began thrusting fast, banging relentlessly against her sharp hipbones. Her kisses made his face wet. He left one hand under her and brought another around to squeeze her tiny breast. It felt unbelievably good to be fucking her. If he cared at all how it felt to her, she seemed equally into it. In fact, she came first, fast, her legs straightening out under him as though she had cramp, her pelvis suddenly still as she concentrated on the sensation. She kept shouting, “Oh God, oh God, oh God.” He kept moving, and then she moved again, her mind on him now, digging her nails into his buttocks, pushing him into her, kissing the side of his neck. When he came, it felt like the orgasm started from his spinal column, and it lasted forever.
Mark fell on her, so heavily that he forced a guttural breath from her. She stroked his back languorously, but she didn’t speak. Neither of them had the breath.
And that wonderful, thoughtless, “we’re not so different from the other mammals” feeling lasted exactly as long as it took for his breath to slow down and return to normal.
Mark rolled off her and lay awkwardly next to her on the sofa. He had a sudden, random thought about condoms. How stupid. And ridiculous. He hadn’t used one—and she hadn’t asked. Suddenly exposed, embarrassed and a little chilly, she pulled a blanket from behind her and covered herself. He couldn’t look at her straightaway, but he made himself turn and smile at her.
“That was…” She didn’t know what to say it was.
“Sudden?” They both laughed, a brittle, sociable little laugh, and fell momentarily silent.
“I haven’t had sex since my husband left,” she finally volunteered. “Nearly four bloody years. Unless it counts when it’s with yourself.” And, after all of it, that was what made her cheeks pink.
“It counts, but it’s not as good.”
“Four years. That explains my…”
“Hey, mine, too.” He believed her, but he was surprised. She surely could have slept with any number of men. The urgency had been pretty mutual. He put a hand on hers. The chatting seemed more revealing than the sex, somehow. He realized that he wished he was one on a list.
She had made him remember. The last time with Barbara. It hadn’t mattered how much she’d told him that he didn’t need to be gentle with her, that she wanted him to make love to her like he always had, to do all the same things, at the same pace, with the same pressure, to take his own pleasure as much as worry about her own, he couldn’t. He was frightened. Of the cancer, of hurting her, of it maybe being the last time, each time until it actually was. It was that way between them for almost a year—infrequent, too gentle, apologetic, incredibly unsatisfying physically, and completely overpowered by love. Once, afterward, he had felt her tears on his chest, and he’d asked her, as if he needed to ask, why she was crying. Her answer had surprised him. She said she was crying because the way he had touched her reminded her so much