Meg was still in an introspective mood, only now for an entirely different reason. John made her feel special. She just couldn’t decide whether she was deserving of the pedestal he’d seemingly placed her upon. She felt like both a treasure and a fraud.
He kissed her as he stood to clear the dishes. Meg inspected him from behind as he stood at the sink, a bleach spotted towel tossed over one shoulder. His shirt was untucked in the back, and his collar was loosened. He wore the disheveled look well.
As he turned back around, he pushed his shoulders down and rolled his head from one side to the other, wincing slightly as bones popped and muscles strained.
“Are you all right?” Meg asked.
“Fine,” he replied, dismissing her concern with a wave of his hand. “Just a little stiff, that’s all. My shoulders tense up when I draw.” He flexed his fingers, grimaced a bit more. “And my hands.”
“Would you like a massage?”
The question was out before she could begin to question the wisdom of it.
He looked at her in surprise. Meg gulped. “I mean, I could help with your hands at least. I know how...sort of.”
He smiled. “I’d like that.”
“Have you got any oil?”
“Nothing that smells good, I’m afraid.” He opened a cabinet and retrieved a bottle of olive oil. “Will this do?”
Meg smiled faintly and nodded once.
They scooted their chairs together on one side of the table. John propped his elbows on his knees and proffered his hands, fingers spread. Meg warmed a small amount of the oil between her palms, then pulled his left into her lap. She began the way she’d been taught, loosening the thick cords of muscle from his elbow to his wrist. She rolled her knuckles beneath his palm and gently squeezed each of his digits from the joint to the fingertip. John’s eyes flicked constantly between her face and their interlocked hands. His breath leveled and deepened.
She repeated the same process with his other hand. Her fingers were tired and her wrists were sore from lack of practice, but she was driven by John’s occasional grunts of pleasure. She was nearly drunk off the way he looked at her.
When she finished with his right hand, she was unprepared for the disappointment she felt at being so. The cottage had nearly blackened, which further thickened the bulwark of intimacy surrounding them. “Come on,” she whispered, standing.
For a moment he simply gazed up at her, perplexed. When he finally stood, Meg walked toward the bed, listening to his quiet footsteps as he followed.
“Lie down,” she said, gesturing. “On your stomach.”
John walked obediently to the edge of the mattress. He paused only inches from Meg. “Should I...?” He pointed to the buttons on his shirt. She sucked in a quick breath, then nodded, knowing what she was up against. She didn’t bother glancing away as he slipped the buttons through their buttonholes and allowed the worn cotton to fall off his shoulders, leaving him bare chested. Nor did she avert her gaze when he crawled onto the mattress, his muscles flexing over his bones as his torso stretched and twisted.
He punched the pillow to fluff it, then lowered himself onto his stomach. He turned his face to look at Meg, and she in turn cleared her throat and blinked away errant thoughts.
She clambered onto the bed and straddled his denim clad rear with her knees bent and her shins pressed into the faded red blanket. Her hands found the base of his spine and stroked upward in circles of expanding circumference.
John moaned as she pressed her fingertips, then her knuckles and palms into the knots of tension beneath the surface of his skin. “My god,” he murmured. “Where did you learn to do this?”
“A girl in my dorm taught me,” she replied.
“I’ll have to send her a thank you note.” His statement was muffled by the pillow mashed against his cheek.
The girl’s name had been Karen. She was a philosophy major whose interests included Hatha yoga and the various forms of massage therapy. She was constantly in some degree of trouble with the resident advisor, Meg remembered, for burning incense in her dorm room. The day she’d persuaded Meg to come over for a lesson in massage technique, her eyes had watered from the overpowering fragrance of eucalyptus and patchouli wafting from the slow burn of it. The lamps were draped in silk scarves, and The Doors played over the hi-fi, rounding out the decidedly psychedelic milieu.
As Meg pushed and rubbed at the rungs of muscle lining John’s back and shoulders, she tried to remember everything Karen had taught her. Trigger points and transverse friction. Postural distortion, vibration and lymphatic drainage. Effleurage, petrissage, S compressions. She rocked the heels of her hands against his scapulae, loving the feel of his solid, unobliging muscles as they turned pliant and malleable. She imagined she was sculpting him from a soft hunk of clay, feeling his perfection take shape beneath her capable fingers.
When he shifted beneath her, she felt a throbbing warmth between her legs, that tingling rush of anticipation she so dearly loved. Gradually she eased the pressure in her hands. John flipped over onto his back and grasped her hips, pushing her into a seated position just over his pelvis. Meg’s hair spilled forward as she tipped her chin downward. She inhaled deeply as he cupped the side of her face, first with one hand, then with both. Slowly she rolled her spine, vertebra by vertebra, bowing toward him.
* * *
When their lips met, John slowly rolled her over, adroitly reversing their positions. His breath came heavily in her ear as he pushed and minutely writhed against her. Meg spread her legs, allowing him to fit his hips between them.
Without breaking their kiss, John sat up and plucked at the mother of pearl buttons on her shirt. His hands were no match for the rapid blur of his thoughts - they felt uncoordinated and clumsy, tripping down the front of her shirt. He was thankful when Meg stilled his hands with her own and took over the unwieldy task of undressing.
When she finished with the buttons, John stopped her before she could shed her shirt. He was too in love with the way she looked with the fabric gaping open, offering a shadowed glimpse of her cleavage and bra, the ivory skin of her stomach. He slid his hands around her bare waist and pulled her down to him, kissing her throat and the divot in her breastbone.
“On your stomach,” he said in a firm whisper.
She climbed off of him, and her shirt fell off one shoulder, drawing a muted gasp from John. Suddenly he had no further use for the shirt; he tore it off her with one hand while dexterously unclasping her bra with the other. He watched as the scrap of satin shimmied down her arms. From his vantage point behind her, there was only the suggestion of her breasts swaying free, the convex curve of flesh on either side of her ribs as she flattened herself against the mattress.
John propped himself on one elbow beside her and used his right hand to draw light circles against her naked back with the tips of his fingers. Meg quietly whimpered, and he squeezed his eyes shut, willing his body to stay the course rather than jump twelve steps ahead. He could almost palm the entirety of her lower back with this hand alone; he liked the feeling of being able to fit so much of her within his grasp.
A moment later she lifted her face off the pillow. “Your turn again,” she whispered. She used her hands to push off the bed but caught John’s hands before they could fondle her breasts. He arched an eyebrow at the teasing smile that slid into place. Soon, she mouthed.
Not nearly soon enough, he thought.
Her hands went to the zipper on his jeans. He froze, unsure whether to stop her, then decided he would let her set the pace. He helped her with the fastenings and kicked his legs while she tugged his pants down and over his feet. It was pure torture, seeing her half naked, the glint of desire in her eyes as she looked at him and his evident arousal. Seeing her at all, without the ability to touch her.
Again she straddled him. She kept her weight centered on her knees, hovering mere inches above him as she repeated her ministrations on his chest and down the hard lines of his sto
mach. This time when he slid his hands from her hips up the sides of her ribcage to her breasts, she didn’t try to stop him.
Determined to give her the attention she deserved, he flipped her onto her side and stretched his body out beside her, leaving just enough space to keep his erection out of the mix, knowing how near he was to losing his self-control. His eyes fixed on her face, he drew down the zipper on her shorts and dragged them down her legs. He smiled to himself at the sound of her breath catching.
His fingers trailed from her navel down to her underwear, dragging the fabric down half an inch or so before the elastic snapped back into place against her pubic bone. Meg gasped and her head tilted backward, her neck arching gracefully against the pillow.
“I want to touch you,” John murmured. His own voice sounded alien to his ears: low and rough, like someone who’s smoked too many cigars.
“You are touching me,” she replied.
“I mean here,” he whispered, very lightly touching the outside of her panties.
Instead of answering with words, Meg simply grabbed his hand and guided it to her center. He stroked the wet cotton, rubbing, listening to the sounds of her pleasure. Then he moved the material aside and felt her damp curls, delved deeper to press his middle finger against her clitoris. He moved in small circles, his pressure unremitting as he filled her with first one, then two of his fingers. Her fluid streamed down his hand.
When she jerked, John bent over her, kissing her neck and her lips. “That’s it,” he whispered. “Come for me, Meg.” When her insides clenched and squeezed, her eyes flew open, and her mouth opened in a silent scream that she refused to unleash. John continued his stroking until she trembled in a boneless heap.
Her eyes were sleepy as she gazed up at him. “So beautiful,” he said, smiling a little. He pushed her hair off her sweat dampened forehead before kissing it.
“Do you need a drink of water?” he asked.
Biting down on her lip, she shook her head. The corners of her mouth inched upward, and she pushed against his shoulders, driving him back down onto the mattress. Her eyes still held some degree of beatific peace, but there was an unmistakable spark behind the drowsy glaze of contentment.
Her fingers came to rest at the waistband of his underwear, and her expression morphed into a question. John’s heart thundered painfully in his chest. He felt he should stop her, but he was powerless to do so.
So weak, he censured himself. You’re no better off than the hormonal teenager you used to be.
But then, when his erection strained free of his underwear, all conscious thought was wiped from his mind, leaving only bleeding, pulsing need. In a matter of seconds, he sped from content to impoverished.
He watched Meg looking down at him, an admiring smirk on her flushed face, and suddenly it all caught up to him, like a line of train cars whose forward momentum has been interrupted by some cataclysmic event, sending them hurtling off track in various directions. A paroxysm of smoke and metal and mayhem.
He curled his fingers beneath her chin and lifted it. “Look at me,” he pled.
He half smiled at the frustration apparent in her wrinkled brow when she complied - she didn’t appreciate being sidetracked. John cradled the side of her face and placed his thumb over her swollen lips. Meg’s face softened. She parted her lips and bit down lightly on the pad of his thumb, causing his muscles to tense.
“What do you want, Meg?” he asked, needing to hear her say it.
“You,” she replied: quietly, although without hesitation. “I want all of you.”
Inwardly he cringed. He feared she was only giving him the answer she thought he wanted. What was it that motivated her, other than the desire to please him?
“There’s no going back from that. You need to be sure.” His tone was firm, yet gentle.
The lopsided grin fell from her face as her confidence faltered. “What do you want?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
He shook his head, denied himself the temptation to tell her exactly what he did want and the many ways in which he wanted it. “This isn’t about what I want.”
She shifted uncomfortably, and his erection, which had momentarily softened to some extent, stiffened once more. “I already told you,” Meg said. She wrapped her hand around him, campaigning to snuff out the last of his will to resist. His head snapped off the pillow, unable to look away as she milked him from base to tip.
“I’m a big girl, John,” she whispered. “I know what I’m doing. But I’d like to know you want it, too.”
He ripped his eyes away long enough to look into the depths of her emerald irises. He sat up abruptly and flattened his hands against her cheeks, then kissed her nose and each of her eyelids, pacing himself. “I want all of you, too,” he admitted. And then, because his conscience wouldn’t have allowed otherwise: “But I can wait. This doesn’t have to happen now.”
Meg rolled off of him onto her back, and for a moment he thought she was taking him at his word. He wasn’t sure which he felt more acutely: disappointment or relief.
But then she pulled on his shoulders with a strength he didn’t expect and slid underneath him, forcing him to cover her body with his. Scraping his gaze from her pinked cheeks to the way her breasts fell to either side of her chest, he felt the futility of his forbearance in every bone and ligament.
“Do you have any...protection handy?” she asked.
John came close to laughing. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I wasn’t exactly expecting to find you.” He touched the tip of her nose. “I was expecting solitude and introspection. You’re an added bonus I hadn’t anticipated.”
Her bottom lip protruded in a pout. She looked so young doing it - a fact that both thrilled and tormented him. “I know Faye brought some. I could go—”
He gave a vehement shake of his head, causing her to go silent with confusion. “Meg.” She raised her eyebrows in question. “Do you remember what I said about Catherine and me being unable to conceive a baby?”
Her expressive eyebrows slid downward, settling into a puzzled frown. “That could’ve just as easily been her fault as yours, John.”
“It could have been,” he agreed, “but it wasn’t.”
He waited while that sank in. Finally she asked, “You’re sure?”
Looking her in the eyes, he nodded. “I would never lie to you about that. I couldn’t do that to you.”
Meg’s countenance fell with a fleeting sadness that she quickly smoothed away. Lassoing her arms around his neck, she lifted her head to kiss him. When she plunged her warm tongue into his mouth, he groaned softly and fell into her, sliding his arms under her bare back.
“I’m ready,” she whispered.
He combed her hair away from her face and studied her, then silently begged her to look at him as he parted her thighs and ever so gently pushed inside.
* * *
Until now, Meg’s number was four.
Number one was a boy from freshman seminar named Edward, but he went by his family name, which was Dewey. She was new to Berkeley and eager to shed her virginity along with the rest of her girlish inhibitions. That night in Dewey’s dorm room had, frankly, led her to question whether she would ever have sex again.
Next was Michael. To say he had a healthy sexual appetite would have been a vast understatement. He enjoyed dominating her, pushing her to try new things, sometimes before she was ready. In the beginning she’d felt wanted; by the end, she simply felt tired and used up.
Number three was a junior co-ed named Tim. He’d pursued her with abandon, as if he had nothing to lose - and truly, he didn’t. Although initially flattered by his attention, Meg had come to regard their single encounter as a rebound of the nth degree. She didn’t think it had been terribly fulfilling for either of them.
Rick was, of course, her most recent conquest - or perhaps it would have been more accurate to say she was his. Their sex was fairly vanilla, consisting of soft grunts and invariable rhythms.
<
br /> This, though... This was different.
John looked at her as they made love: had that ever happened to her before? She couldn’t recall that it had. He was more reverent, less frenzied. Certainly more patient. Meg’s sense was that this act wasn’t simply a means to an end for him. It was, for lack of a better term, a journey. One he wholly intended on helping her enjoy. He was taking care of her, and she loved it.
He felt like an extravagance inside of her - thick and hot and rigid. Meg licked the salt off her lips as she watched him watching her. She listened to the measured thud of the bed against the wall, the creaking of the mattress, the moist slapping of skin against skin. She felt the ripples in his back and the tremendous tension in his shoulders.
Something furled deep inside of her, in a spot she couldn’t name, began to slowly unwind. She could tell when John felt it. His jaw tightened, and he looked away from her. He cupped and massaged her breast, then lowered his face to flick his tongue over her nipple. Her breasts bobbed and swayed as he rocked into her.
“God,” he breathed. “Meg, oh God.” His voice crescendoed from an edgy whisper to an impassioned cry.
Her climax caught her by surprise. It wasn’t a gradual upsurge for which she could prepare. It simply wasn’t, and then it was.
And then it really, really was.
Her arms and legs splayed apart as she let it take her, let it shake her body while the inside of her melted and dissolved. And when John collapsed on top of her, pulsing and quaking and breathing so hard, she was driven past the limits of conscious thought, into a filmy ether of felicity and light.
* * *
He rolled to the side so he wouldn’t crush her, but he didn’t pull out. They were cocooned in a peaceful fog, suspended in a chrysalis of vaporous warmth and gooey satisfaction.
For long moments, they simply gazed at each other. He took in her eyes, her lips, her throat. Not quite believing she was real.
Seventh Wonder Page 10
