Chapter 20
"Nona, I almost forgot what I was going to show you," he murmured.
"Do you have to-now?"
"After what Ivy said, I think I should...."
"Oh, don't mind her! She's jealous ... I just want to be here, tonight!"
"I know," he whispered. "I'll be just a minute."
He left her, and she trembled, watching him step into another room. If it was some kind of gift, she didn't want it. He had obligations far away. He was starting out on a new career as a single entertainer.
That's why he had come to Craig in the first place, to perfect his routines.
She had happened to be there. He had played games, exposed her body. Only circumstance had kept her from a messy situation with Hugh. She couldn't expect Nick to consider her any more seriously than the others.
He would lay her tonight and then, by Monday, he would be on his way. She wasn't even sure she could please him totally, the way a girl was supposed to please a man of the world, a man who had been around ...
He came back, a look of intense emotion apparent in his expression, in the cut of his mouth, in his eyes. She didn't hide her naked, jutting breasts. She didn't push her skirt down-though it was already hiked clear to the tops of her nylons.
She would be his girl as long as he wished-beyond that she didn't care to think.
He sat down beside her, a small, black velvet box in his hand. It was a gift. Maybe earrings, a locket ...
"Nona, this is for you," he said tightly, opening the lid of the box.
The subdued light reflected from a stone bedded on a fold of pink. A ring! A diamond ...
She could hardly believe her eyes. Her heart expanded, her throat constricted. Tears filled her eyes, making even the sparkle of the stone wavery and uncertain.
"Ohhh-Nick," she wailed happily. Her heart seemed ready to burst. It was a dream and she didn't deserve this! "But-I thought.. . "
"Never mind what you thought, Nona. Let me put it on."
"Ohhh-yes!"
He did. The band fitted perfectly. She was still in a state of shock. She threw her arms around him, not caring that she was nude to the waist, her skirt halfway to her lips. In fact, she was glad of it!
Now his hands took charge. He cuddled her, molding her trembling breasts, bringing them into a heated prominence that made her dizzy with longing. His tongue bored into her mouth, promising, promising ...
She felt his fingers along the silky expanses of her thighs and spreading for his caresses seemed the most perfect and natural thing in the world. Zestful little tingles awakened with each manly touch. She had never been so keenly aware of him, not even there on the beach.
He loves me, rocketed through her mind. I'm not just a casual lay, after all! Now, if I can please him totally, I'll be the happiest girl alive!
His lips coasted along her throat, lower to the bountiful swells of her breasts. He kissed-the deep vale between them, his hand a magic thing that shot her desire in sparkly waves through her loins.
She reached out for him and he helped her. And just at the wonderful moment that she held him, glorying in his maleness, his lips captured an aching point of her need.
She cried out. She couldn't resist expressing her joy, her appreciation of his gentle fondlings. A melting kind of sweetness, slaking the edge of her hunger, possessed her being. He was bolder than before, shaping all the velvety contours of her thighs and hips, while stingy thrills chased from one pointy nipple to the other ...
She remembered how she used to fly back and forth in the high park swing near her home, sailing far out over the grass, then swooping down in an arc, her arms pumping on the taut ropes, her skirt recklessly back, enjoying the pure ecstasy of motion, until Louella had told her it wasn't nice to expose herself to the watching boys.
This kind of exhilaration in the spring of the year, when she was healthily aware of her growing body, returned to her now. Each of his touches and kisses seemed to hurl her higher and higher, only to drop her back in the lower pendulum curve, then hurl her even further from the ground on the back-sweep.
She could hardly wait through the dips.
She hung onto him, fiercely, floating high, then down, then high again ...
Finally he picked her up and carried her into another room-the one he had entered earlier in search of the ring. A light glowed at the head of a bed. He eased her down and she delighted in the luxurious resiliency of the surface beneath her.
His hands removed her frock, lifting her untied bra away. Her filmy slip and her nylons were next. She was in an amorous haze. She felt the wetness of her desire and the fullness of her response, as he drew her panties away, caressing all her secret places, filled her with hope.
He didn't talk now. His eyes told her all she needed to know. She had never felt so gratifyingly feminine, so wanted. She moved a pillow behind her head, watching him undress. First, the tanned expanse of his chest, then more and more, until he was completely naked.
The mark of his virility made her tremble. He wasn't ashamed of himself like Andy. He was all man and she was all maid, waiting for this test of her womanly cooperation. This was their wedding night, with all its connotations, and she knew she had to cast out all thoughts of what he had done before, and of what she had done, too.
It had been wrong for her to spy and peer and indulge in vicarious pleasures. She had been hurt. Watching him play with Lucy and Ivy had left a wound that needed healing. Her guilt bothered her. She wanted more than anything to be totally his, to respond passionately in his arms, because Louella had told her this was necessary for a man-and heavenly for the girl.
He sank down beside her, half-turning so that he lay on his side. He pulled the other pillow under his head. His right hand slid along her tummy. She drew her left leg up at the knee, spreading eagerly for his touch, his caresses.
Her breasts didn't flatten out. They were firm, high globes, cherry-tipped, swollen. His kisses there had peaked her nipples. They had never been so large, so distended with trembling ferment.
His hand went around her waist, seeking out the dimples he had admired.
His touch there, feather-light, escalated her joy until she gasped. This zone seemed to excite her almost as much as when he cupped her breasts or cradled her femininity ...
And she had been hardly aware of their existence.
She couldn't help reaching out to hold him. Her hand was drawn as if magnetized. Provocative thrills curled along her spine and the sensation of being in her swing returned again. It was a floaty, wonderful feeling. Curious boys weren't watching her legs now. The man she loved was here, his hand exploring her with ever greater boldness, searching out all the quaking nerve-ends, fondling her, readying her for the test.
When she lifted to make herself even more exposed, her breathing uneven, his hand found the little point of her hot-blooded need.
She cried out again.
She felt his tremor of rising ardor communicating to the very center of her passion. Now his lips roamed along her throat, lower, all around the silky-hot slopes of her breasts, and with every swift beat of her heart a new tingle of delirious pleasure gripped her.
He moaned, then suddenly he was rising, bracing his weight on his arms, shifting above her.
The feel of him between her lifting thighs, the soft inner sides pressing the lean strength of his body, her hand still holding him, brought another cry from her mouth ...
His lips covered a rigid nipple. His tongue titillated her and stings of delight that made her tremble brought an answering sound from his own throat. Her breasts were on fire.
She became frantically eager.
She looked down, and as in a dream she saw the largeness of his manhood seeking the goal. Guiding him to the heated bower of her girlhood became a thing of beauty, as natural as the cry of a hawk high in the heavens.
A new kind of exquisite rapture claimed her senses. She felt the tender membranes widen and give to his searchings. The effusion of her love-flow attested to her searing need. Nothing-nothing-had ever been so keenly, so hotly wonderful.
This was the answer to her most fervent wishes-and she tried to thrust everything from her mind but the sensual filling emotion that claimed her being.
Suddenly the pain came. She had been afraid of it and this had given her uncertainty a new kind of reality. No matter how far the swing sailed, this moment had to be overcome. She tried not to flinch-but she couldn't help it.
"Darling!" he cried. "Is this really-your first?"
"Y-yes, Nick...."
"My God! Are you sure, darling?"
"Ohhh-yes!"
He paused. He held very still, while his mouth and lips cavorted across her heaving breasts. Nuances of honeyed rapture shot through her loins. She brought both of her hands up to his chest. She caressed him, feverishly.
He held so that he didn't hurt her. He whispered, tautly. "Darling-you do it!"
She nodded. She had a vision of a dancer she had seen once in a movie, hips gyrating, thighs spread in a compelling kind of mating ritual.
Her heart went out to Nick and his loving consideration. She felt moisture on his chest and shoulders. She began to weave her hips, working beneath him, lifting, straining ...
The voluptuous closeness, the searing contact, with his virile sword poised at the brink of her desire, made her quake and shiver. She dug her fingers into his shoulders and she made up her mind she would succeed. She had to!
She kept trying, pushing-until, at last the pain gave way to a heavenly deepening, an intoxicating freedom that let him through the gates.
I did it! she thought, wildly.
His moan of joy mingled with her own sharp cry. Their burning togetherness climbed to a new plane of erotic sensitivity! The wand went snugly deeper, deeper until she felt him take charge, and her swing commenced to hurtle higher and higher, the down-swoops deliciously enervating, the crest of the arc accompanied by furious little shivering, far inside at the core of her womanhood.
This was the mating game. This was what she needed!
Now, it was that-and that-and that ... and ...
The swing shot away up, almost into the sky. The doubts and worries commenced to fade from her thinking. He was making right all the things she had done that bothered her. Each swing drove another fear from her being until at last she was totally free, wildly happy to hurtle back and forth in the sweep of his arms, rising to meet him, sailing, floating-until the ropes of the swing broke and she rocketed out into a space that was filled with gaspy little nuances of quickening delight, with furious throbbing that answered and answered all the pent-up, long-delayed passions she craved ...
She cried aloud.
She felt the frantic, stormy gushing of his maleness and a wave of answering, spine-tingling spasms gripped her with vise-like intensity-she was throb-throb-throbbing out her love, her deepest rapture. She knew the totality of complete, bubbly climax ...
"I thought those dimples would do it, Dimples!" he whispered.
"You dreadful man!" she scolded happily.
They were still completely one, still warmly together. Little shivering, far within her, honey-sweet, slaking the hunger that she knew would rise stormily again, assuaged her emotions for the time being.
"Ohhhh, Nick! I didn't think anything could be so-far out!"
"Darling, we're barely started!"
She ran her fingers through his hair, and the sparkle of her diamond made her joy complete. Almost, until he moved again, and then again ...
She hoped the night would last forever!