Warm and Willing - Lawrence Block [14]
Then knowledge came, knowledge, awareness. She was not a cold woman. She was not frigid. She was responding, going soft and liquid inside in the silky mechanism of sexual response, and this response was a specific one, a special response to Megan.
There was a short period then of fear, of tension, of fright. For two years she had meticulously buried sexual response under a deadening blanket, and the sudden change scared her. She had spent too much time schooling herself another way, teaching herself that she was dead and empty inside. Now Megan was teaching her to be a woman, and she was afraid to give in either to Megan or to herself.
“Easy, baby. Easy, Rhoda, darling Rhoda. I love you and you love me and we are together. My flesh and your flesh. Easy my darling.”
Megan held her close, patted her, kissed her. And warmth bloomed again, less tentatively than before, coming with a rising tide of passion that swept her up and would not be beaten down. She did not fight it any longer. She was caught, caught as she now ached to be caught, and the sweep of passion held no fear and brooked no argument. She was alive, dizzily alive.
Megan’s hands moved all over her body, touching, petting, sending shivers of delight through flesh that had gone far too long without this sweet delight. They were friendly hands, they were familiar hands. They did not probe or invade. They came gently and they were welcomed by the flesh they touched.
“Rhoda, Rhoda.”
Until she was lying on her back, eyes closed, arms heavy at her sides, her whole body limp as fallen flowers. Megan touched all the secret parts of her woman’s body and made them open to the light of love. Megan held her breasts and kissed them. Megan’s hands and lips stroked desperate tides in her liquid flesh.
More.
The climax was beyond belief. She had never understood the mechanics of this glimpse of heaven, had never heard the word and been able to translate it into terms compatible with her own sexuality. But now it was happening—a sweet explosion, a lovely eruption, a halfway touch of death.
Megan’s voice, from far away, said, “Sleep, darling, sleep,” and she slept.
“What time is it?”
“Four-thirty.”
“In the morning? How long did I sleep?”
“An hour. Maybe a little more.”
She yawned luxuriously. A bedsheet covered to the throat and a pillow cushioned her head. Megan was sitting at the side of the bed, wearing a pale green robe and smoking a cigarette. Rhoda started to sit up in bed. The sheet slipped away and bared her body to the waist. She snatched at it in embarrassment, then realized the inconsistency of being embarrassed in front of Megan. She let the sheet fall.
“I can’t believe it,” she said slowly.
“It happened.”
“God, I know. I couldn’t have dreamed it. I don’t have such heavenly dreams. I never knew.”
“What you are?”
“And what I was missing. I can’t believe it, it’s a new world. I must be babbling like an idiot.”
“No. Like a girl who just became a woman.”
“Mmmmm.” She took a cigarette, let Megan light it for her. “I feel slightly sinful,” she said. “Is that bad?”
“Does it bother you?”
“No. I have the feeling that it ought to, but it doesn’t. I rather like it, this sinful feeling.”
She ducked ashes in the ashtray on the bedside table, then propped her pillow behind her and sat back against it and drew again on the cigarette. She closed her eyes and bathed in the memory of Megan’s lovemaking. She opened them and looked at Megan’s body concealed by the folds of the green robe. She had a sudden urge to see Megan unclothed, to know the blonde girl’s body. And she looked down at her own breasts, and then at Megan again, and she leaned over and put out her cigarette.
“I have to work tomorrow,” she said.
“On Saturday?”
“Six days a week, nine to five-thirty. Number One employee for Mr. Yamatari-san.”
“Then we