Till We Meet Again (7 page)

“Of course I never tried. I don’t try to kiss a girl who sits with her arms folded across her body and her hands tucked under her armpits and her feet crossed so tightly at the ankle that a crowbar couldn’t get them apart, and her knees pressed together as if she were about to be attacked.”

A tear rolled down Eve’s cheek, but she didn’t dare move to wipe it away. But oh, she thought, his heart, his wildly beating heart. He couldn’t be so angry with her that he wouldn’t forgive her. She felt as if her own heart were about to break. In one spontaneous, swift movement she slid toward him, turned her body so that she could put a hand on each of his shoulders, leaned forward and quickly pressed her lips to his. She drew back abruptly at the sight of a waiter passing their table. His tactfully avoided head had brought her, mortified, back to the realization that not only were they in public but that customers at other tables, less discreet, were watching them with open interest.

“Eve, let’s go,” Alain said, putting money on the table and taking her elbow, leaving the plates of food untouched. Silently she let him lead her out of the café into the crowded street where the citizens of Dijon were taking the night air. She saw none of them, for she was spellbound, a girl who had just given her first kiss. All of her past life receded into the distance, she was thrown back into the dangerous sea of physical desire, the sea whose frightening undertow she had
been so carefully avoiding from the first night shed met Alain.

The two glasses of strong red wine, the lack of food to accompany it, had made Eve’s head spin as never before in her life. The street seemed like something in a hallucination, a painted backdrop, the crowd around them seemed like phantoms, without life.

“I want to kiss you again,” Eve heard herself say. “I want … I want …”

“This is impossible, ridiculous,” he said roughly. “There’s no place to go, no place to be alone. Come back to my boardinghouse with me. It’s not far. I have two rooms, it’s perfectly respectable.”

Mutely she nodded her dazed assent. For a moment the thought of what her mother, her aunt or Louise might have said if they knew tiptoed through her mind. She was in unknown territory, Eve thought dreamily, and then forgot everyone as she and Alain hurried to the theatrical boardinghouse.

The second room, which Alain, as a headliner, rated when the troop was away from Paris, was almost filled with a complete suite of dark red Victorian plush furniture, and it was there, on a wide, long, swagged and betasseled sofa that Eve sat down, looking as if she had come to pay a call and feeling as if she were falling through space, falling in fear, falling in delight, falling faint with curiosity and apprehension.

Alain threw his boater in a corner and took off his jacket, looking at her on the sofa with a mixture of erotic excitement and irresistible amusement, for Eve was still wearing the gloves she had put on automatically when they left the café for the street. Yet when he sat down next to her and looked into her eyes he saw, beyond her obvious terror, the obstinate lawlessness that had brought her this far.

Quickly he took off her hat, unpinned her hair and spread it over her shoulders. Quickly he stripped her gloves from her fingers and quickly he undid the top buttons of the collar of her blouse. She said nothing, even when he bent down and slipped off her shoes with their high Louis heels and pointed toes, nothing when he put his arms around her seated figure and pulled her down so that she was reclining on the sofa. If it had not been for the increased speed of her breathing, he might have imagined that she wasn’t paying attention.

Until he kissed her. The passionate innocence with which she met his kiss was like a slap in the face. Her lips were closed, yet they pressed against his strongly, with unconditional ardor and eagerness. There was no doubting that she wanted kisses more than anything in the world, and no mistaking the fact that she didn’t know how to kiss any more than did a child. Eve’s arms were clasped so tightly around his neck that he had no room to shift from her lips to any other part of her face. Her eyelids were screwed tightly shut. Both of them were locked in a position on the plush sofa that threatened to dump them on the floor if they moved a single limb.

“Wait,” Alain whispered, and in the moment in which she stopped kissing him, unwillingly but obediently, he gently disengaged her arms and drew slightly back. “Look at me, Eve.”

She peeked at him, impatient to return to his lips, to close her eyes and just concentrate on feeling his mouth, so different to the touch from anything she had ever known, firm yet swollen, tender yet so muscular underneath.

“I want to show you how to kiss,” he muttered, and he took one finger of his right hand and traced the outline of both her lips with as much care, as much attention as if his burning finger were a pencil and he were making a drawing that must be perfect. Then he drifted his finger back and forth between her lips, not trying to part them but caressing them by pressing downward on the lower lip and upward on her upper lip so that gradually they no longer were so adamantly fastened together.

“Now,” he said, and bent toward her, “hold still.” With the tip of his tongue he retraced the steps of his finger, outlining her lips twice, three times, until she fought for breath, but his arms held her so that she couldn’t move her head. Then again with the tip of his tongue, as firmly pointed and hard as he could make it, he moved languorously sideways, straight across the tiny parting of her lips, sweeping across them only on their outside skin until he felt the moist inner edges of her mouth open to him. Now, with her mouth so sweetly relaxed under his, he returned to kissing in his own, educated rhythm, each kiss purposeful, each a conquest. Only when she stirred in his arms with an unmistakable fever of impatience did he finally use his tongue again, so gently that it was almost stealthy, an invasion that was so
brief, so slight and yet so piercing that she cried out in rapture.

“Let me feel your tongue,” he commanded. “I want it in my mouth.”

“I can’t! Oh, I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can, just once. Here, I’ll show you how,” he insisted, and plundered her more deeply with his tongue, but slowly, carefully, retreating as often as he pushed forward, until he felt the tiny, timid flicker that told him that she had gathered the courage to do as he wanted. He made no sign that he had noticed until the little touch came again, stronger and bolder this time, and still he did nothing. The third time that Eve darted her tongue into his mouth he took it between his lips and suckled on it as if it were her nipple.

Alain was voracious, and yet he held himself severely in check. Only her lips, only her tongue, he said to himself, first only that, he thought with savage purpose as he felt himself reeling. An hour ago Eve had not known how to kiss. Now he could tell by the involuntary movement of her pelvis that there was nothing he couldn’t do to her tonight. Gradually he made himself pull away from Eve, for she was faint with passion that she didn’t understand was passion, mad with lust that she didn’t know was lust, greedy with need that she didn’t know was need.

“No, Alain,” she begged, “don’t stop.…”

“Wait here. I’ll only be a minute.” He disappeared into his bedroom. There was always one sure way, he thought, as he opened the buttons of his trousers and released his hugely distended organ, always one way to keep from finishing too soon. He stood in front of the washstand in the corner and rapidly handled himself, while he thought of Eve’s still unseen body. In seconds it was over and he had gained time to enjoy in full the pleasure he had denied himself for too many nights. Trembling, he poured a little water from a pitcher, washed and dried himself, rebuttoned his fly, and returned to the other room where Eve still lay on the sofa.

Gently he took her in his arms and gently he began to kiss her again. It was possible to be gentle now. He was pleased with his self-control. The second time was invariably better, and took so much longer, even with a woman who knew what she was doing. His short absences from many a bedroom had gained him a reputation as a lover beyond equal.

Alain’s deft, experienced fingers undid more of the tiny
buttons that ran down the front of Eve’s blouse. Soon they were all open and he freed her from the belt that was clasped so tightly around her waist. She lay passive in his arms as he gradually undressed her between kisses. Her lack of knowledge, and the wine she had gulped, rendered her as incapable of helping him as she was unwilling to stop him. She had no idea what he was going to do to her, but whatever it was, she knew beyond question that it was her destiny to obey him.

Eve was too modest to look down at herself, but she felt that her breasts had been freed from her lacy undergarments and now had no covering except the unbuttoned blouse that he still let her wear. The filmy material grazed her naked nipples and they rose without her knowing it. She closed her eyes as she heard her skirt and her petticoat fall to the floor. Blindly she submitted as Alain gradually stripped her of everything but the blouse, taking time to slowly reveal each new and marvelous part of her young body, feeling himself grow steadily more excited with a focused, intent voluptuousness he could now prolong indefinitely.

He was careful not to stop kissing her lips at length, preparing her gradually for the removal of each piece of clothing. Any haste could cause him the loss of his pleasure. Alain knew that Eve was so uninformed that kisses would keep her hypnotized, and the years during which nakedness had been taboo could be forgotten. He let her keep the blouse on because it would reassure her, and even with it covering her shoulders and arms he could clearly see her surprisingly full breasts with their small, pink, excitingly puckered nipples springing out from between the wide open edges of the cloth. She was perfectly made, he thought, as he explored with his eyes the luscious curve of her lower belly, the blond hair that covered the meeting of her firm, shapely thighs, soft hair, and curly, yet thick enough to be to his taste, for he liked a well-covered mound.

“How beautiful you are, how beautiful,” Alain murmured.

“Alain …” Eve whispered.

“Say nothing. I won’t hurt you, I promise. Let me show you … I understand that you know nothing … I understand … just let me love you.”

Alain glanced down at her thighs. Without knowing it, she was pressing them back and forth on the plush of the sofa and moving them so that they rubbed together. No, she
could not be allowed to continue to do that, he thought, or again he could be robbed of his pleasure. “Lie still, darling,” he muttered, and touched one hand to her thigh for a second so that she would know exactly what he meant. She went limp and he could see her blush mount into her cheeks. “You were made for love,” he said into her ear. “How have you lived so long without it? No, say nothing … let me show you.” He made his whole hand flat and rubbed it over her swollen breasts, taking care not to do more than pause slightly at the nubbins of her hard nipples and pluck them lightly between his fingers, enjoying his mercilessly self-inflicted restraint. Eve gasped each time he pulled. She doesn’t know it, he thought, but she wants my mouth there. She doesn’t know it yet.

He wet his fingers in his mouth and surrounded the pink points with a maddeningly swift caress, repeated over and over until he had to put his hand restrainingly on her thigh again. “Do you want me to kiss your breasts?” he whispered in her ear. “I won’t do it if you don’t want me to.” When she nodded her bewildered, helpless assent it was almost with reluctance that he finally bent his dark head toward the virgin flesh.

Her mouth was sweet, her nipples would be sweeter, and if there were more time to remain in Dijon he would have chosen to postpone this next step for another day, chosen to drive them both to further heights of frustrated wildness, for once he fastened his mouth on her nipples he knew he would become so rigid himself that he could no longer retreat.

With one hand Alain supported Eve’s right breast so that her nipple was captive between his lips, exposed to the ravishingly light and random attack of his flickering tongue, and with the other he slowly ran his fingers, as if they were wandering aimlessly, down over her belly from her waist to the top of the curly blond hair between her legs. He knew that she would be so mesmerized by his tongue that she wouldn’t be completely aware of what his hand was doing, for this movement downwards must be gradual. She must become accustomed to it, tamed to accept it, or she might still shrink away, and, with her timidity, his pleasure could still vanish, even now.

He sucked, gratified at how much harder and bigger her nipple had grown, while the other hand indolently explored the delicate skin above and below the blond tangle, taking
care not to encroach on the hair itself. At first, Eve had tightened her belly and thigh muscles at the touch of that deferential hand and squirmed slightly in protest, but now she was too absorbed in the strange and wonderful sensation of a hot, intoxicating heaviness that she felt between her legs to dream of doing anything that might make Alain withdraw his hand. She didn’t know what its purpose was, but each time it touched her she wanted to open her thighs in unthinkable invitation.

Alain now turned his attention toward her left breast, and the new, piercing sensations in that nipple served to further distract her from the work of his lower hand, which moved with infinite leisure and touched her so lightly on the flesh of her mound that she wasn’t sure it had done so before it had moved away. Craftily he waited for minutes before he touched her again, as lightly as before, but with a knowing precision of placement that enabled him to introduce his longest finger for a startling second to the
center
of her sensations. He withdrew the finger, certain that it had done its job, and waited, hovering, until he felt the mound of curly hair nudging unconsciously upward, questingly. Again his finger touched her, finding the expected reward of wetness, and this time he stayed a moment longer and rubbed her almost questioningly before he took his finger away. He lifted his head from her breast. Her eyes were still closed, her lips had fallen open, and for a second he thought she had fainted.