Dinosaur Beach

16

She was waiting for me in the tent. She had undressed and put on a lightweight robe. She stood beside the field bed which she had deployed to its full forty-inch width and looked past my shoulder. Her expression was perfectly calm, perfectly cool. I went across to her and put my hands lightly on her ribs just above her hips. Her skin was silk-smooth under the thin robe. She stiffened a little. I moved my hands up until the weight of her breasts was pressing against the heels of my hands. I drew her closer to me; she resisted minutely, then let her weight come against me. Her hair touched my face, soft as a cloud. I held her close. I was having a little trouble drawing a deep breath.

She pulled away suddenly, half turned away.

“What are you waiting for?” she said in a brittle voice.

“Maybe it would be better to wait,” I said. “Until after dark…”

“Why?” she snapped. “So it would be more romantic?”

“Maybe; something like that.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, Mr. Ravel, this isn’t romance. It’s expediency.”

“Speak for yourself, Mellia.”

“I assure you, I am!” She turned and faced me; her face was pink, her eyes bright.

“Damn you, get on with it!” she whispered.

“Unbutton my shirt,” I said, very quietly. She just looked at me.

“Do as I said, Mellia.”

Her expression went uncertain, then started to firm up into a sneer.

“Cut it!” I said with plenty of snap. “This was your idea, not mine, lady. I didn’t force myself on you; I’m still not. But unless you want to make the grand sacrifice in vain, you’d better get into the spirit of the thing. Physical intimacy isn’t the magic ingredient—it’s psychological contact, the meeting and merging and sharing of personalities as well as bodies. The sexual aspect is merely the vehicle. So unless you can nerve yourself to stop thinking of me as a rapist, you can forget the whole idea.”

She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath and let it out and looked at me again. Her lashes were wet; her mouth had gone all soft and vulnerable.

“I’m… sorry. You re right, of course. But…?”

“I know. It isn’t the bridal night you dreamed of.”

I took her hand; it was soft, hot, unresisting.

“Have you ever been in love, Mellia?”

Her eyes winced; just a flicker of pain. “Yes.”

Lisa, Lisa…

“Think back; remember how it was. Pretend I’m him.”

Her eyes closed. How delicate the lids were, the pastel tracery of veins in the rose-petal skin. I put my hands gently on her throat, slid them down to her shoulders, under the robe. Her skin was hot, damask-smooth. I pushed the garment down and away; it dropped from her shoulders, caught on the swell of her breasts. My hands moved down, brushing the cloth aside, taking the weight of her breasts on my palms. She drew a sharp breath between her teeth; her lips parted.

She dropped her arms, shed the robe. I glanced down at the slimness of her waist, the swell of hips as she came against me.

Her hands went uncertainly to the buttons on my shirt; she leaned back, opening it, pulling out my shirttail. She unbuckled my belt, went to her knees, dragged the rest of my clothing off. I picked her up, carried her to the cot. Rounded, yielding forms moved against me; my hands explored her, trying to encompass all of her. She shivered and drew me to her; her mouth half-opened; her eyelids parted and her eyes glittered into mine an inch away; her mouth met mine hungrily. My weight went onto her; her hands were deft; her thighs pressed against mine. We moved as one.

There was no time, no space, no thought. She filled my arms, my world; beauty, pleasure, sensation, fulfillment that rose and rose to a crest of unbearable delight that crashed down like a long Pacific comber, roiling and surging, then slowing, sliding smoothly to a halt, paused, then slipped back, back, down and out and away to merge with the eternal ocean of life…