Seventh Wonder (13 page)

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 stomach. 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.

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.

“I’m sort of thirsty,” she croaked.

John chuckled. “Me, too.” He leaned toward her and sucked her bottom lip into his mouth, kissed her hard. Then he dismounted.

He left her with her eyes closed, resting her cheek against her sandwiched hands. In the kitchen, he poured a tall glass of water, then ran warm water from the spigot on a clean cloth and wrung it out.

Meg blinked up at him serenely as he proffered the glass, then sat up to gulp greedily from it. She tugged the sheet up to cover her chest.

John eased his hand between her legs, nudging them apart. She eyed him uncertainly but didn’t resist as he swiped the damp cloth over her folds, cleaning her.

He settled back beside her, tucking his arm beneath his head and resting his hand on her sheeted hip. He would have rather seen her naked, but if this was her preference, he wouldn’t push the issue.

“When are you leaving?” he asked, stroking his thumb over her hipbone. It was a question he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to.

“Leaving... Tonight, you mean?”

He shook his head. “No. I mean to go back home.” He kissed the back of her hand. “Tonight I hope you’ll stay.”

She smiled, but then sighed. “Saturday is when I leave. The fourteenth.”

A barb of something icy and sharp penetrated his chest. “Six days,” he mused. It might as well have been six minutes, for all the crushing disillusion he felt. Not nearly long enough.

Her eyebrows sloped downward in an inverted V of sadness. “I wish I could stay longer,” she whispered.

He reined her in with his hand at her back, drawing her soft curves up against his hard angles before planting a lingering kiss on her forehead.

“When will your friends be back?” he asked as he pulled away.

“Sometime tomorrow. I’m not sure when.”

He frowned a little, gave a faint nod.

“What is it?” she asked.

He exhaled his frustration. “I just... I suppose I’ll have to share you, that’s all.” The left side of his mouth drew up in a rueful smile. “I’ll confess I don’t relish the thought, but—”

Meg pressed her fingers over his lips, silencing him. “I’d rather spend time with you.”

He pulled her hand away from his mouth and shook his head. “Meg, you came here to be with your friends, not some stranger. I couldn’t think of monopolizing your time that way.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not some stranger. In fact, I think you know me better than any of the people I came here with.” She paused, contemplating her words. “Before I met you, I wasn’t sure why I even came to begin with.”

He couldn’t help the flutter of joy that warmed his stomach as she spoke.

Then another thought occurred to him, and again his forehead puckered in a frown. “Meg, you should know... You” - he swallowed - “you’re brilliant. And I would never in a million years trade what just happened between us. But I don’t want you to think that has anything to do with my wanting to spend time with you.”

She leered mockingly at him. “Really? It has
nothing
to do with your wanting to spend time with me?”

He chuckled at the teasing lilt in her voice. “Christ, you beautiful woman, you know what I mean.” Pointing to himself, he said, “Do you see? This is what you do to me. I’m tongue-tied.”

Giggling, Meg propelled herself forward and kissed the corner of his mouth. “Uh huh,” she said.

He sighed, composing himself. “Honestly, though. I couldn’t bear it if you thought I only suggested spending more time together because I expect anything more from you. We can just...talk. If that’s what you want.”