“Are we going to fuck or what?” Miranda would demand after one of their scorching arguments. Threats would thicken the air between them, vicious and palpable. Over the years, the atmosphere of hatred that followed their uglier battles more and more frequently ignited into sexual episodes. After a while Jason began to wonder if either one of them could become aroused without fighting each other first.
“I don’t think I have the energy for it, Miranda.”
“Fuck energy,” Miranda would reply. She loved to talk dirty when she was turned on. “All I need is a stiff cock and I can do all the rest.” She moved like a wave, one long gliding, swelling motion toward him. Her hands were like warm, small animals, rubbing at his crotch. He would feel his penis stiffen in his pants. Defeated, he would hear himself moan.
“You’re such a bitch.”
“That’s right,” she’d whisper, sliding down to the carpet and licking the bulging fabric around his zipper. She would weigh his balls in her palm and then knead them, as though they were soft mounds of dough, into his crotch until he was hard, tight, and thrusting against her lips and hot hands. Then she would pull down his trousers and jockey shorts and take him briefly into her mouth. But not for long. Just enough to wet him for her own pleasure.
“Come on down here where you belong,” she’d say as she pulled him to the carpet. Her eyes bright, her lips glistening, she’d struggle out of her clothes until she’d be wearing nothing but a flimsy strip of brassiere and a scrap of bikini underpants. “Touch it,” she’d tell him, thrusting the lacy mound toward him. “You see? It’s all wet … it’s all ready for you.” And she’d slip out of the pants and, straddling him, slowly ease her long body onto his. She would start to rock up and down, back and forth blatantly, blindly seeking her own rhythm and release.
“Suck them,” she’d tell him, frantically unhooking her brassiere and letting the small fleshy orbs droop toward him. He’d take the breasts, one after the other, into his mouth, working the nipples until they were hard as pebbles, as she started to buck spasmodically on top of him.
“Fuck me, fuck me,” she would whimper, her hair sticky with sweat, her lips stretched against her teeth in a deeply private smile. But in truth, it was really always Miranda fucking him. Toward the end, to heighten her orgasm, she’d pull herself off him an inch or two and lay with her cheek against his lightly matted chest. Could two people get any closer physically, he would ask himself, and yet remain so emotionally apart? Finally she would push herself upright again.
“Yes, oh, yes,” she’d mutter as she lost herself in her own rhythms, riding him loosely, jerking him roughly from side to side as she pulled closer to climax. What gave him pleasure in all this besides the raw, wet texture of unbridled sex? Only one thing, that thing a man knows instinctively: looking up through half-closed lids as his wife brought herself to orgasm, he knew, he was absolutely sure, that no other man could give her this. No, it was not love that they offered each other. And these protracted sessions could hardly be called lovemaking. It was more a kind of meting out of justice, almost a bloodletting. They would ride each other mercilessly. They would be cruel and crude as animals. But, in the end, only they could give each other the release they both needed.
The only difference between them was that for Miranda it was never enough. As restrained and elegant as she appeared in public, Jason knew how voracious and needful she was in private.
“I want to be sucked off,” Miranda would tell him not five minutes after she’d collapsed with a relieved grunt on top of him. “I want you to suck my cunt.”
“Jesus, Miranda, who taught you to talk like that?” he’d demand, then immediately add: “No, don’t tell me. I really don’t want to know.”
Because there were other men, of course. Almost from the beginning, there were others. He knew they existed, although he never bothered to learn their names. He would just feel their existence—sometimes even catch their smell—emanating off Miranda. She wore lovers like perfume; they were a constant, elusive, invisible presence in her life. She changed them frequently, dropping one as callously as an out-of-date handbag, picking up another simply because he was something new and different. But those men were never enough for her, either, Jason knew. In the end, nothing ever was.
“Don’t you want to fuck me, baby?” she’d demand after he’d slowly, carefully brought her to orgasm for a second time. She was always grateful when he—as she crassly put it—“sucked her off,” because her satisfaction depended so much on him.
“No, I don’t want to,” Jason would tell her. “But I’m going to have to do something soon … or I’ll probably die. Turn over, okay?”
“Yes, baby,” Miranda would murmur, “please fuck me, fuck me…”
Jason couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in the guest room where Cassie was staying. Had he ever actually stepped foot in there before? he asked himself as he closed the door as quietly as possible behind Cassie and him. The first thing that hit him was how good the room smelled. He had become so accustomed to Miranda’s elaborate fragrances—orchid, mulled spices, Chinese tangerine—that the simple smell of talcum powder and new shoes in Cassie’s room filled him with happiness. Holding her against him in the dark didn’t hurt either. A pale sheen of light, reflected from the street, revealed the basic layout of the room: an overstuffed armchair, a cherry-wood desk stacked with books and neatly organized papers, a double bed blessedly free of lacy throw pillows, and a bedside table on which stood a reading lamp and a small silver-framed photograph. That was it. None of Miranda’s endless bric-a-brac. No artful flower arrangements. Not one single piece of chintz.
It was so quiet he could hear the sound of her heart beating. Or was it his? He kissed her forehead, that wide cool field of white, like a perfectly iced pond that nobody knew about but him. He kissed the bridge of her nose—such a precisely straight, elegantly long, definitely patrician shape. It was a nose that showed breeding, a classic nose, the kind that would look as wonderful at eighty as it did now. He kissed her chin and realized for the first time how sexy a chin could be. You didn’t expect it—becoming aroused by a simple chin—but this small, carefully crafted, softly mounded one did him in. He kissed her lips.
“Could we…” he said, breathing in the smell of her. She didn’t wear perfume that he could tell, but she had her own maddeningly seductive aroma: warm skin, clean hair, mixed with something altogether deeper and elusive. He realized she smelled like freshly washed sheets drying on a clothesline. Her scent made him nostalgic, remembering everything good about his childhood. She smelled like Christmas. He was afraid to let her go for even a second.
“Do you think it’s wise?”
“No,” he told her, “definitely not. But you’re a little too young to be wise.”
“Am I … are you … are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said. He’d never been more sure about anything. He’d known as soon as he saw her: she was the one. Not Miranda. Never Miranda. If he’d met both sisters at the same time, he would have chosen Cassie from the beginning. He’d made a terrible mistake but he was being given another chance. No, that wasn’t true. He knew how little he deserved this. It had been just weeks since Miranda’s death, and Cassie was still grieving. He knew he was stepping way beyond his bounds, that in a very real sense he was out of control. But he had to do this. He had to have her. He’d never been more sure about anything in his life. And then it occurred to him in a wounding flash: what if Cassie didn’t want to sleep with him? What if she wasn’t ready? He took her hand as lightly as possible in his own, ready to let it go, prepared to step away.
“But it’s up to you. Are you sure?”
Cassie had kissed many men in her life. She had always enjoyed the feeling: the tough warmth of a man’s lips, the lovely intimacy of shared breath, the sudden thrill of tongue meeting tongue. But what she was doing with Jason was nothing like that. True, all the sensations were the same. They just me
ant something entirely different. Deeper. Far more serious. From the moment they first kissed that night, Cassie accepted the fact that it was the beginning of something they had no power to stop. Or control. It just had to be. That’s why Jason’s question—are you sure?—made her laugh. A tidal wave was about to crash down on top of them; it was not as though they had the choice to step away.
Hand in hand, like two children, they walked slowly to the bed.
“Let me…” He brushed her hair back off her shoulders and leaned into the delicious task of unbuttoning the front of her dress. He planned on doing everything as slowly and carefully as he knew how; he was horrified to see that his fingers were shaking. Her fingers closed over his as she guided his hands from button to button. It was an ordeal that seemed to take eons and by the time it was done, the soft jersey dress open to the waist and curtaining her breasts, they were both a little breathless. They sat down together on the bed, turning to each other at the same moment.
“Tell me what you like,” he said as he started to kiss her again; he then immediately forgot what he had asked. Words seemed so unimportant now. Thoughts, ideas—he knew he would soon be incapable of putting together the simplest sentence. With a swift acceleration of urgency, they had crossed over into the language of touch. He tugged the clinging fabric off her shoulders, exposing the delicious hollows of her neck. He explored the country of her throat—that long taut expanse of warmth that drifted like some desert isle from her chin to the hidden coves of her collarbone. His mouth lingered there as his hands massaged her shoulders with reined-back strength.
It felt so wonderful—rippling shocks of delight—that for a long time she gave in to the utter pleasure of his kisses. She drifted with the incoming tide of desire, feeling the slow, sure building, the waves cresting higher. Then she realized he was hesitating, holding back.
She pulled his hand from her waist and pressed it against her left breast—his rough hands scraping the delicate edging of her brassiere. He eased her down on the bed, watching her face intently in the darkened room. Then he sat beside her on the edge of the bed and ran his right index finger down her cheek and against her lips. She caught his finger between her teeth and sucked on it, her eyes locked on his as he unhooked the flimsy cotton brassiere and massaged her breasts.
He had not known that he had been subconsciously comparing her with Miranda until that moment, but it was then that he realized the essential physical difference between the two sisters. At a glance they had the same long, slim, athletic builds. But where Miranda had been all smooth angles and glistening edges, Cassie’s body turned out to be constructed of hundreds of secret curves and unexpected softness. Her breasts were larger and fuller, her skin softer. Her nipples were lush mounds that tightened under his touch. He leaned over and kissed her breasts, his lips moving in grateful pilgrimage from one to the other.
She cradled his head in her hands, running her fingers through his hair, breathing in his deeply masculine scent: warm skin, after-shave, something herbal and ferny in his hair. She felt herself arching beneath him, and from somewhere she heard someone groan.
“Yes … Oh, please…” She tugged impatiently at his shirt collar and heard a husky voice barely recognizable as her own ask, “Does this come off by any chance?”
“Just watch how fast.” He sat up, unbuttoned the top two buttons, and pulled the whole thing over his head. Then he shrugged out of his white T-shirt. He turned back to her.
“And is this a removable piece?” he asked, running his hands down the soft fabric of her dress. “No, let me,” he added as she started to unbuckle the suede belt at her waist. His hesitancy was gone now, need replacing caution. Within seconds the belt was on the floor, the dress was draped over the far side of the bed, and he was tugging down her panty hose and cotton bikini underpants. He ran his hands up the inside of her calves and her thighs and then let them rest lightly on top of the triangle of hair so light it was barely distinguishable from her skin. He slid his hands beneath her buttocks, brought his lips down to nestle in her hair, and allowed his tongue to explore this most hidden and precious territory.
Cassie had always enjoyed sex as a kind of healthy one-on-one sport. Lean, well muscled, at ease with her own nakedness, she rarely failed to have an orgasm; when she didn’t reach a climax she’d simply conclude that her game was a bit off. During the last year with Kenneth, she’d found her game slipping more and more frequently, but she’d managed to explain the problem away. Consistent sexual satisfaction was not all that important, she’d told herself, when compared with compatibility and shared mutual goals. She recalled her self-delusion with a shudder of pure pleasure as she felt the warm pressure of Jason’s tongue moving within her.
Now this, oh, this, was not something Kenneth had ever considered trying. His approach had been direct and clinical, almost as if he were still performing surgery. But this, yes, this, was not sport—it was the timeless, perfectly synchronized, totally absorbing process of mating. She felt her hips rise and fall; she felt the sleek warmth of Jason’s head in her hands as she guided him lightly, though he seemed to know far better than she where they were going. They were in a jungle of touch, a primal forest of sensation. She had never been there before—this place where every nerve in her body sang, where her blood hummed, where her heart ran like a wild animal. She heard someone cry out once, twice.
And then Jason was there with her, there within her, and they were riding together. He filled her completely, moved in her so knowingly. She could feel him trying to slow them down, make it last, but she was suddenly ready again, needful, shocked by the depth of her hunger.
“Please … oh, please,” she murmured, pulling him tighter, moving beneath him. He hesitated a second, trying to gain composure, but she kept arching toward him, hurrying the pace, and soon he had found his rhythm, taken his path, soon he was beyond the thought of turning back. Furiously, gloriously, he crashed toward the hot dark horizon of his being, carrying her with him, pushing her to the edge with him until—with a sudden sound of shattering glass—he felt himself lose all control and pump violently into the sweet warm darkness beneath him.
Sixteen
Shameless. They were shameless. The way they looked at each other. The way Jason’s lips stayed curved in a secret smile, even as he shifted gears and pulled swiftly past a dairy truck on Route 17.
“Daddy, you’re going too fast again!” Heather cried from the backseat where she sat surrounded by her birthday presents—dolls, games, the beautiful musical jewelry box Jason had brought from Germany—to keep her occupied on the nearly three-hour trip to what everyone called “the Berkshire Cottage.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jason said, taking his foot off the gas pedal. Subconsciously he was thinking that the sooner they got to the house, the sooner he and Cassie could make love again. Yes, it was shameless; he had to force himself to keep his eyes on the road—and his hands on the wheel—so urgently did he need to touch Cassie. They had managed to brush fingers once or twice, but Heather’s eager voice kept interrupting their voluminous shared silence.
“And Mindy Faberstein wants me to come to her house next week,” she chattered on, winding up the jewelry box for the ninth or tenth time and opening the lid as the opening bars of “Für Elise” trilled through the car.
“You’re going to break that if you wind it too hard,” Jason said as he glanced in the rearview mirror. Was it his own newfound happiness, or was Heather looking somehow … more cheerful? Usually not much of a talker, she’d filled the last couple of hours with an almost nonstop monologue about her birthday party. She looked better, too, somehow. Miranda had dressed her in frilly dresses and insisted on rolling her naturally straight hair in curlers, but Cassie had let her wear jeans and a simple green cotton sweater. Her hair was pulled back from her forehead by a pretty cloth-covered band. Ignoring Jason’s warning, she rewound the box and opened the lid. A few tinny chords tripped out … then the music st
opped.
“It’s broken!” Heather cried. “It’s already broken. I hate it!” Tears stood out in her eyes as she slammed the lid shut.
“Your daddy told you not to wind it too much,” Cassie said, turning around to face Heather in the backseat. “It’s your own fault for not listening. And you don’t hate the box. It’s beautiful. Say you’re sorry.”
“I hate it. And I hate you,” Heather muttered under her breath as tears slid down her cheeks.
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Cassie said, laughing. “Come on, give me that box, and I’ll see what I can do with it. But I promise you that you’re not going to get it back until you say you’re sorry.”
Heather’s pouty silence and sniffles filled the backseat as Cassie fiddled with the delicately carved box. Jason glanced at Cassie, her golden head bent intently over her task, then into the mirror to see Heather’s tear-stained gaze trained hopefully on her aunt. He could not recall one instance when Miranda had disciplined Heather as Cassie had just done. As usual, Miranda had preferred others to do her dirty work for her.
“Let the nanny spank her, if you like,” she’d told Jason when he insisted that some sterner measures had to be taken to combat Heather’s increasingly obnoxious behavior. “I won’t have her despising me years from now, pouring her heart out to some horrible psychiatrist. I much prefer she hate her nanny.”
“But you’re her best example, Miranda. It’s you she looks up to … and wants to emulate. You’re single-handedly turning her into a little horror show, do you realize that?”
“Oh, Jason, please, can’t we agree about anything, darling?” The truth of the matter was no, they couldn’t. From disapproving of each other’s friends to disliking each other’s clothes, they were constantly at loggerheads. Tension and anger built up as each refused to give an inch. Their sense of humor and playfulness died. In the end they held on only because neither one wanted to give the other the satisfaction of escape. And Heather, of course, was the real victim. Jason had been so deeply infected by the disease of the marriage that it took him years—really, it took Cassie—before he realized just how sick the relationship had been.
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