'She pulled
weakly at the buttons of her blouse. "Undress me, please,
help me," she said. I quickly removed all her clothes as she
wished. She guided me and assisted me. She sank deep in the
pillows, pale, but with a body as firm to touch as a young
woman's body.
'I kissed the calves of her legs, her thighs. The garden rustled
and sighed behind me. For the first time I heard a waterfall, its
gentle trickle, and then I listened to the sound of water
touching leaves, but my body was an engine of desire, and what
drove me was her naked breasts, rather small, with the pink
nipples of a girl, and the smell of death, rising sweet like a
crushing lily. It was not that the death attracted me; it was
that it made her all the more precious, something to be lost in a
moment.
'She lay back, heaving a deep sigh. The angles of her face were
tight and delicate and precise in the dimness.
"Let me see you without your clothes," she said. She
reached for buttons, but I gestured there was no need. I stood up
and back from her.
'Not an electric light burned in the place. It was the dreamiest
darkness.
'I stretched out my arms and looked up at the sky. Though
suddenly aware of a fatigue from all the night's tricks, I
nevertheless told my clothes to assemble themselves nearby and
await my command. I would be naked.
'It worked even more swiftly and completely than last time.
'I looked down for the first time on my own chest, pubic hair,
erect organ. I was too happy for humility, and to feel the sinews
in my arms tighten was to be among living things, and surely some
of those things must be good things.
'She sat up on the bed, her breasts amazingly firm, and the pink
nipples turned up. Her silver-and-black hair made a rumpled mass
down her back and displayed a long neck.
"Splendid," she whispered.
'A rain of doubts descended on me.
'But I had to do it. What was the point of warning her that I
might dissolve in the process? I was going to do it.
'I sat down beside her, embracing her. I felt the moist thin
silkiness of her skin, not healthy in a woman too thin, yet
delicious. Even the bones of her wrists were beautiful.
'She tugged at my hair, and kissed me with her eyes closed, all
over my face, and quite suddenly I realized with a shock that my
beard and mustache were on my face.
'She drew back, staring at it. I told this hair to go away.
'"No," she said. "Bring it back! It makes your
mouth sweeter and damper." I felt the hair return as if it
wanted to! I couldn't quite figure this out, why the hair had
come of its own, but that was the whole story so far, my body
came on its own, and in its own form. One lapse in my will, one
drifting into pride in my physical self, and the hair had come.
'Well, she loved it. I took a long breath, feeling the toll of
all this changing and magic, but I was as hard as a statue for
her. I wanted to pounce on her. Instead I let her bury her face
in the hair of my chest, and kiss my nipples, and the pleasure
went right to my loins.
'I took her breasts in my hands, enchanted by their smallness,
their delicacy. So pink, girlish pink.
'"It's all drugs, my love," she said, as though feeling
my wonder. She kissed my beard, kissing it along the bone of my
jaw. "It's hormones and modern science; I have a woman's
chemicals inside me, that's all. They can make me look young, but
they can't save my life."
'I kissed her and held her, my hands free and rough over her
thighs and stealing into the secret crevice, to feel there the
firmness of a young woman's secret body. Chemicals, was it?
Modern science?
'"Those things preserve," I said, "but you make
the beauty."
'"Sweet God," she whispered, kissing me all over my
face. I had my hands beneath her small backside, and cuddled it.
'"Yes," I said, "God, capricious as He is; he
lavished his blessings on you and on your daughter, Esther."
'"And you were the last thing," she breathed into my
ear, her hands clawing gently at my back. "You were the last
thing she saw. How good that was for her."
'A savage strength rose in me, the realization that I had her
completely at my mercy, this precious creature, and that no words
from anyone could command me away from her. Only her words would
hold sway with me now, and only because I would defer to her.
'It was like fruit between her legs, like peaches or plums, it
was just wet enough. I brought my fingers to my nostrils.
'"I can't hold back, my love," I said.
'She parted her legs, and lifted her hips, and this was paradise
suddenly, to be inside her, inside this hot throbbing fruit, and
to have her mouth at the same time, to have both her mouths, to
cover her, with hair and strength. I began the manly rhythm.
Alive, alive, alive. I was blinded. Pleasure drenched all my
senses.
'"Yes, now, yes, do it," she said. She lifted her hips
against me. I rose up on my elbows so as not to hurt her with my
weight, and looking down at her, I felt the seed explode inside
her. My jerking motions surely hurt her. But then I saw the blush
I wanted in her face, I felt the throbbing in her throat, and
knew she was as happy as I was. The tight little core of fruit
squeezed the last drop out of me, and I fell over on my back,
whole and alive, staring at the ceiling of this room, or staring
into airy dark.
'Whatever had been my life, spirit or man, I could not recall a
pleasure as delicious as this one, as totally humiliating in the
way it took over, in the way that it made me feel the slave and
the master simultaneously. I didn't ask myself what men felt.
'Her head turned from side to side; she was blood red. "Come
to me again, please, now," she said.
'Overjoyed, I rolled back on top of her and entered her. I didn't
need a rest. The fruity secret part was more luscious, tighter
than before, throbbing more fully. Again I came and her face
flooded with blood, and then finally she scratched my back hard
with both her hands, she beat on me with fists, and when I lifted
up to thrust, she came with me just far enough, and then lay back
to make it ecstasy.
'"Harder," she said. "Harder. Make this a
battlefield, make me a boy you've found, a girl, I don't
care."
'It was too inviting. I slammed against her, harshly, over and
over, feeling the seed spill again, the sight of her red face
filling me with an all-too-human sense of power. Yes, to have
her, to make her come, to make her come, yes, again, and again.
'I filled her up. I was so tight inside her, I dragged her hips
up off the bed with me, and then in her wetness she let me slide
back and forth, and like a brute soldier, I came down, driving
her into the silken pillows, and I saw through my half-closed
eyes that she smiled.
'"Surrender, that's what I want," I said through my
teeth. She could not stop the pleasure coming in her; it came and
came as if her heart would break. She was red and tossing, and I
wouldn't let her go, slamming again and again against her sweet
fruitlike lips, and then she lifted both her arms to cover her
face, as if she would hide from me.
'This sublime gesture, this maidenly gesture, this sweet gesture
stripped me of the very last control I ever possessed in this or
any other body, and I shot forth my seed for the third time,
groaning aloud.
'Now I was spent. And she grew pale in the light of the moon and
the white billowing clouds, and we lay there together. My cock
was dripping.
'She turned over and in the tenderest way, like a girl almost,
she kissed my shoulder. She ran her fingers through the hair on
my chest.
'"My darling," I said. I spoke to her in old languages,
natural to me, Chaldean, Aramaic, I spoke words of love and
testaments of fidelity and devotion, and cooed against her ear,
and she rippled with delight against me, and tore at my hair
again.
Copyright © 1996 by Anne O'Brien Rice.
