Chapter 16

I lifted my mouth and Shirley's lips came eagerly to meet mine. Her arm went around my neck to hold me there in the first excitement of the kiss, and then my own arms went gently hard around her, pulling her tight to me. Her mouth burned down onto mine, and my entire body and soul erupted into a raging tempest at the very touch of her exceedingly warm embrace. The moment I felt the hungry heat of her mouth over mine I began to tremble and tickle with desire.

Now I locked my muscular arms about her tender back and clutched her almost desperately to my broad chest. I couldn't lose her now ... I couldn't! She was back in my arms again, and I would never let her go and stray any more!

With the recurrent twitches on my awakening, Shirley pressed her body forward. I felt her hands traverse my back, and I supported her at the hips. I wanted her closer ... she wanted me closer to her. She pressed firmly and slowly undulated. I surged against her in a growing rhythm of need. Our clothed bodies groped excitedly to find each other as our kiss grew in fervor.

So far our mouths had moved back and forth, up and down in slow but meaningful motions. I pecked and nipped about her lips, enclosing them completely, then allowed her mouth to savor my lips. Her body started to shudder next. Every nerve was fired and ready, I knew. And so with our bodies crushed together as closely as our clothing would allow, I let my tongue tip venture gently between her lips. She sipped at it, savoring every morsel of its meaning. Her own tongue then touched mine and they intermingled. Now the embrace was complete. We stood swaying together, and both knew how deep the kiss was going into each other, for I could feel the tightening of her breasts against me, the rising nipples, and she pressed her tighs against mine. And I pressed my own hand against her right breast, and she moaned with rising delight when my fingers began a rhythmic stroking, lifting the breast and feeling through the fabric of her brassiere for the erect nipple. Our teeth grated together in the furious demand of the kisses.

"Oh, Steve ... Steve!" Shirley cried during a momentary gasp for breath.

I nibbled wetly along her throat and about her ear, my own breath gushing in and out frantically.

"Do you love me, Shirley?" I husked while tonguing the sweet pink hard-shell.

"Oh, yes-yes!" she cried softly in return. Her hand caressed the back of my head as she looked up plaintively into my near-misty eyes. "I do ... Ido!"

"And-you know what I want, don't you? Do you really want it too?"

"I do, I do! Honest I do," she assured me, practically breathless with anticipation. "I've wanted only you all along."

"You have?"

"Didn't you know?"

"Yes, I knew-deep down inside, somewhere, it was the thing that kept me going ... chasing after you. Because I wanted only you, too."

"And now I've faced the whole truth and I'm delighted to accept it," Shirley smiled. "I want to tell you something, Steve."

"I want to tell you a lot of things."

"This is something in particular. Perhaps there are a lot of things, too. Right now it's impossible to believe that I once vowed to-well-experiment with men and women, vicariously. I should have known it was impossible for me...."

"I understand, darling."

"No, no, I want to tell you," she insisted, then put her hands against my chest-a fragile barrier, yet enough to hold me from her. "I must have been completely crazy! I should have known that a girl like me couldn't dilute all moral convictions. That sometimes simple solution is beyond the bounds of my limits. And it struck home like searing lightning that nightmarish night on the schooner last week. The intimate and sacred act of sex was being viciously violated right before my very eyes, and I realized that I had contributed to the awful sacrilege by sacrificing you to totally degrading, despicable perversity! Your desecration was surely my syndrome and-and I could still kill myself over it!"

"Don't be silly! I'm all right," I said with a chuckle. "Of course I haven't hardly been able to sit down this past week...!"

"I know, I know!" Shirley cried desperately.

"Shush. It's all over." I brought a hand up and touched her cheek ever so lightly. "You're such a baby," I whispered almost under my breath. "Such a sweet little baby ... who must let devil dogs lie back down and go to sleep, now."

Shirley's breath was still heavy with guilt and self-recrimination. I felt it lifting her breasts high with each deep inhale. As we stood close to each other, I looked down at her, and she looked up-the magic of intimacy pervaded the dimly lit room. This time was good. It was a time of honesty. And now that Shirley had been honest and knew that she would have her lover, this time was very good ... and what I wanted her to feel was the intangible bonding agent behind marriage, the feeling of belonging to another ... with love, adoration, and security.

For a moment I released her and began to pull off my own clothes. As I did so, Shirley unhooked her belt and sat down on the bed. As I stepped out of my trousers, I watched her pause to feast her eyes on my body.

"I'm a very lucky girl, Steve," she smiled. "And I adore you!"

I was undressed except for my jockey shorts. "Flattery will get you everywhere with me," I grinned. "So on with it."

Shirley had removed her shoes but that was all. Now she smiled in acknowledgement of my suggestion and lifted her skirt. She undid her garters and slowly rolled her nylons down over her thighs and calves, then stood up and wiggled out of her sheath and slip. And in one sweep of her arm, it seemed, she pulled off her panties and bra, and she was nude.

I was practically transfixed in my study-approval of her figure. "Beautiful," I said with a sigh. My eyes drifted up and down her compact curves. "I think you have the most beautiful breasts I've ever seen! Come here, you...."

Shirley crossed the carpet silently and stood before me. I gathered my hands around her tiny waist and drew her closer again. I kissed her lightly on the lips, and then I kissed the pink tip of one breast and then the other.

"Angel nipples," I commented as my hands patted and weighted the firm flesh of her bottom.

"Do I look like an angel?" Shirley asked girlishly.

"Yep," I said, still enjoying the firm roundness of her breasts with my nibbling mouth.

Shirley giggled. "In that case maybe I should act like a real saint. I mean, I'll spend all my time just admiring your male perfection-and you can stand off worshipping me from afar."

"I don't dig that at all," I muttered, guiding her toward the bed and pulling off my shorts.

"Well ... you'd better not!"

She lay in the bed, her arms up on the pillow at either side of her head, in a position of complete surrender. Then I was upon her, and the kiss returned us to our earlier passionate fervancy almost at once, and her body arched in readiness, making room for me. Directly above her, I lifted my body on outstretched arms for final preparations. We both cried out at almost the same instant, and came together in a raging ferocity of love.

"Oh, darling!" she cried out at my instinctive dive for depth, and began to pound her fists against my back.

"Is it okay?" I gasped in alarm. I felt her body tense. "Should I take it easier?"

"Oh ... no!" she cried, clutching me and thrusting her hips higher. "Don't ever stop ... never ... never ... NEVER!"

Our bodies clenched and unclenched, beat together, parted, came together again. And when I seemed to retreat, even if for only the particle of an instant, she dug her fingernails into my shoulders, clawing me back to her, though I did not have to be compelled in this way, for I was back down before her nails drew blood.

Abruptly, there it was. I led the spastic course with Shirley following in perfect step-and it came in a high hot rush, and went on and on, and both of us cried out when it came, and this time her fingernails bit deep into my shoulders and raked down my ribs and she bit into my lip, and there was the salt-sweet tang of blood, while my big, muscular hands gripped her with convulsive strength, wrenching her, but not to hurt. In the last frenzied moment of reaching this peak, our legs thrashed and tightened, our arms constricted, our lips mashed together-capturing every vibration, every bodily nuance, until slowly subsiding passions drifted through our bodies like gently swaying palms.

Feeling a mutual lingering joy, we lay back, our bodies still touching at the hips and along the lengths of our legs, hers soft and yielding, mine muscular and hard, but slumped against hers. I was half-turned towards her, breathing, or rather panting, against the side of her face, and my hand lay across her breast, cupping it in my palm, but making no demands on it.

Shirley lightly kissed my ear and murmured, "Darling...."

She was making no demands, either. It was solely an expression of affection, for our highest heavenly joy lingered leisurely and its departure seemed an even greater kind of ecstasy.

Soon I had to speak out, though. "Shirley angel-" I began in a whisper. "Yes, darling?"

"Now I want to tell you something in particular ... important."

"What is it?"

"I've been-well-quite a devil stud, all my life."

"Oh, Steve! What difference does it make, now?"

"To me? I'll tell you-and this is only part of what I want to tell you. This studship, it was only my walk on the wild side ... through the personal hell of a phony rebellion against most things decent and normal. Because I thought the world owed me an easy life of luxury, and my rather titanic manhood was my passport ... until you showed me the nice bright light, Shirley! Granted, I was dragged back down into the black hellish depths again for a while ... but all the time, from the moment I laid eyes on you, I knew you were the only girl to salve my wounds and cure me."

"Thank you, darling," she whispered in breathless sincerity, and sighed her personal contentment at achievement.

And so I knew that I could never qualify any of this now ... even though, surely, others greatly compounded in their own way to this happy end result. Yes indeed! Certainly Barbara began my doubts and denial with a vengeance ... by driving me straight into the arms of Frustrated, who contributed the first saving grace: the notion that I could become the completely depraved, inhuman stud. And that took me into Satan's lair, where in the guise of Teddy that devilish bastard sacrificed me to the charade-players ... only Clara and Fritz Bartelme merely pointed up to me the fact that people need people, always! Backfire; a score for my sanity. Then, Smash! I rebelled against all involvement with Shirley and willy-nilly conjured up the sweet pleasures and delights of uninhibited orgy "fun." Until ... again, the twins Elsie and Delsie began to save part of my day with their foreboding warning of danger, perhaps blackmail. And then momentarily Satan came into his own with me as Shirley lost her senses and the monster-filled pits of passion yawned invitingly and would have swallowed us both up forever and ever, I'm almost positive ... if Helen Wallace hadn't come into the picture as the Good Fairy.

It was like fitting together the giant pieces of a great human jigsaw puzzle; everyone contributing a clearly defined piece to fit my sanity together in natural place ... many times against my distorted Satan-saturated judgement. But humans were my keepers ... and won out!

Now a week had unwound almost everything back down to a relaxing and enjoyable normalacy. After the schooner explosion, Madge Carpenter and her crew had been fished out of the Intercoastal Waterway and arrested almost at once when the Coast Guard instigated a rather thorough police investigation from blinking incredulously at their peculiar leather clothing. Then, from their spilling lots of beans, the Fort Lauderdale vice squad launched a probe into the beach-hotel scene ... and Teddy must have skipped town in the very nick of time. The devil's own luck! At least, his name was not included in the newspapers with a lot of the other whores, studs, and pool-boy pimps.

Miraculously-I know no other term for it-Shirley and I completely escaped the blood-bath of public retribution for our wanton involvement. Yet ... hadn't we suffered and paid a pretty high price in our own ways? I think so.

Now, after this joyous night, we would jet to Shirley's Indiana home in the glorious morning .' ... yes, to be married in her girlhood church, with all the festive trimmings-and Helen as the maid of honor. Meanwhile, ever since that last night of horror, we had been Helen's house-guests and-and-I had been thinking all of this against Shirley's cheek, and suddenly now I felt the movement of her lips lightly brushing my face, and it was like a series of small kisses, punctuating the final sweet happiness I was feeling throughout.

I lifted my face and kissed her on the lips. Then my arms were around her again, and she was there, right there, right down there, and her arms held me too, and she merged herself with me, answering my urgency and demands, wrapping her limbs around me so that everything would be there for me, and I could not slip away.

The acme was not so sudden as the preview before. The terminal violence was there again, of course, and it nearly drove her out of her mind when I triggered her and her emotions went off like fireworks. But it took longer and went to a height, and a depth, too, that the first performance had not reached. My voice was a hoarse gutteral shout when triumph came to me and glory detonated-from every artery and vein, or so it seemed to me.

"Oh, angel baby!" I panted as the last delirious, delicious drop became part of her. "That's what I call ... a shattering ecstasy!"

"And me, too." Shirley smiled, her hands still moving against the small of my back, stroking me, then she whispered, "Let's keep at it!"

We struck fire again ... building our incredible pleasure until all the past was forgotten. And we came to a crashing, pulsating, mind-dissolving conclusion ... in a Shangri-la where we planned to stay for a lifetime.