Chapter 8

"I knew it was you touching me like that. I knew it and I haven't been able to think about another thing but this," Francesca moved closer to him, the entire length of her body pressing against him. Warmly. Urgently.

Post accepted the passion at once. He needed it. After last night, that aching night alone on the couch, the thought of there being no one made him shudder.

"It's all right," she said. "Try to relax."

But instead of relaxing, Post found himself kissing her feverishly, running his lips over hers, kissing her chin, gripping the firmness of her shoulders and letting his hands sweep over her sides.

"We can only take an hour," she said. "Relax so that it can be good with us."

"I don't think it works that way with us, do you?" He continued to caress her thighs, while his other hand touched at her earlobes, just below the point where they were pierced for the tiny gold earrings.

She responded with a sudden, breathless enthusiasm. "I see what you mean," she said.

"Francesca," Stu said hesitantly, "I wonder if you would mind something."

"What, Stu?"

"I'm so excited, so, well worked up. Could we make love the other way. It's...."

Stu didn't get a chance to finish his sentence. Francesca smiled at him, the wisdom of men-wise Europe flashed in her eye and she bent her head and kissed him there. The touch of her lips brought a sensation so piercingly acute he bit into the pillow to keep from crying out.

She didn't stop with one kiss. Again and again and again he felt her lips move on him. Sweat poured from his glands. His body began writhing like a snake crossing a plain.

The moist friction stopped and his body cried out for more, but he was ashamed to ask. "I like to do this too," he heard Francesca say. "And this, and this. Her tongue, her teeth had also touched him. He sat up in bed gripping her tightly around the shoulders, "No more," he said hoarsely, "I'll lose control."

"No my dearest friend, it isn't losing control. You will experience the release you need. I know why you need this, believe me."

"You won't mind?" he whispered unbelievingly.

She didn't answer him in words. Her lips and tongue on him threw him in a whirlwind of pure feeling. Stu lost tract of what he was doing. His whole body became a receiver for the sharpest jolts of pleasure. When release came he shouted out loud and opening his eyes found himself on the floor. The bed was a shambles of torn bed-clothing.

They had come to the motel on North Sepulveda after meeting at the supermarket in the shopping center. It seemed like cloak and dagger stuff to both of them.

The owner had accepted the four dollars with a burst of homey philosophy. "Shame you people have to leave your nice homes to come to a place like this."

Post felt chagrined at having been so obvious.

Stu got off the floor and lay back down on the bed, Francesca had remade. He smiled his gratitude to her for what she had done. "You're a wonderful woman," he told her.

She took his hand and placed it over her bare breast. This simple gesture reassured him more than words could have done that it had really been all right with her.

Stu knew why he had asked that of her. June's frequent rejections together with the episode of last night created in him the need to know he was acceptable enough to someone to give him that kind of pleasure.

Strange how one woman can tear a man down and another can recharge him with confidence, he thought.

"I know," Francesca said, interrupting his thoughts, "that our affair is going to be over soon."

Post lay there, his eyes closed, his cheek resting against hers. "How do you know that?"

"I'm starting to gain weight, Stu. Pretty soon, it will be obvious that I'm pregnant. You'll feel strange about wanting to be with me under the circumstances."

He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to think about anything. He managed to lose himself in another investigation of her warmth and femininity. It always seemed to follow this pattern. There would be the frenzy, at first, of pent-up desires, followed by the more peaceful exploration and then the moment in which both of them were separate, distinct entities, lost in their own reflections that had been given energy and being by the force of what they had done together.

Lying there, stroking the softness of her pelvis, he was contented for a moment until he thought again of June and then the nagging need arose in him and, in less than a minute, the two of them were inflamed with their hidden needs, probing each other, moving together in practiced efficiency for that moment of warm loined, moist reassuring release that was, in itself, an irony.

"What do I give you that Ted can't?" IT had been on his mind to ask. But he knew she could have countered it with, "What does June withhold from you that I can give?"

And his anwer to it, if honest, would have to be this: This very act. Fraud, he thought. I am a fraud. And it surprised him that for a third time, he was hungry and eager for Francesca. This time when he took possession of her body, he remembered that it was filled with another man's child. He reacted curiously. Desire was as strong in him, but tenderness came too. Gently, very gently he probed her depths with his body. "Oh, that's good," Francesca murmured. "Softly and slowly, the way you're moving into me gives a different kind of joy."

They dressed in silence. Post found it enjoyable to watch her, now that his need of her had been sated. He could feel the inner rumblings, the inner knowledge of desire and know, almost smugly, that his own body could not be reasonably expected to respond, at least, for an hour or so, and by then he would be home with June.

He watched with interest as Francesca harnessed her attractive bosom in a light pink brassiere, then pulled sheer black panties tight over her round, shiny hips. Her buttocks pushed at the seat of her shorts, looking like two half moons. He was intrigued by the litheness of her body and the suggestion of muscle to her legs as she bent to tie the thong sandals about her ankles.

Their last kiss before parting: gentle, almost friendly, as though they'd met in a crowd of Coolaire Heights people and had not sought to reveal their intimate relationship.