"There's nothing to think about," I said. "You know I'd never let you be alone tonight."
"Yes," she murmured. "I know. I could not have lived through this night alone."
Drawing back her arms, she slid them up my chest and circled them around my neck. I drew her close and our kiss was that of a man and woman totally accepting each other, mind and body.
She held herself against me, whispering words which seemed to pour from her lips in a heated torrent. "When you came up to me on the beach yesterday, I thought I was going to die-actually die. I couldn't speak, I couldn't think. My heartbeat pounded so that I could hardly breathe. I'd been in torment ever since I'd seen that beach outside and began thinking of you possibly coming. I'd been fretful, nervous, irritable, starting to cry, then holding it back. I've lost more tears in this week than I have in my entire life. I drove and overworked myself, trying to forget. I drove and overworked the company; I'm sure they thought I was losing my mind. I've always been so controlled before, always been secure, serene. Not this week. Oh, Richard, I have been a mad woman-a mad woman."
Her lips were burning under mine. I felt her clutching at my head, her fingers taloned in my hair.
She pulled back, breathing hard, her expression one of fear. "It's all so bottled up in me," she said. "I'm so afraid to let it out."
"Don't be afraid," I said.
"I am." She clung to me in desperation. "Love, oh, darling love, I am afraid. I fear it will consume you. It's so base, so-"
"It isn't base," I said. "It's natural; beautiful and natural. You mustn't hold it back. Express it to your heart's desire." I kissed her neck. "And to your body's."
Her breath was fiery across my cheek. "Oh, God," she whispered. She was, literally, terrified. Something volcanic inside her was threatening to erupt and she dreaded to release it, thinking it destructive. "I don't want to shock you, Richard. What if it engulfs you? It's so strong, so strong. I've never shown a sign of it to anyone. It's like a terrible starvation I have been negating all my life." She stroked my cheeks with shaking hands. "I don't want to swallow you alive with it. I don't want to repel you or-"
I stopped her words with a kiss. She clutched herself against me like a drowning person. She seemed unable to catch her breath. She trembled uncontrollably, convulsively. "Let it out," I told her. "Don't be frightened of it. I'm not. It's not something to be frightened of. It's beautiful, Elise. It's you. You're a woman. Let that woman have her freedom. Let her loose. Unbind her-and enjoy her. Feed, Elise.
Don't starve anymore. It isn't shocking. It isn't repelling. It's wonderful-a miracle. Don't hold it back another moment. Love, Elise. Love."
She began to cry. I welcomed it; I knew it meant release. She held herself against me tightly, sobbing, breathing in torturous gasps. I felt it coming, all the years of harsh confinement ending. She was, at long last, unlocking the door of that subterranean dungeon in which she had kept her nature imprisoned. I could have wept along with her, so deeply overjoyed was I by her release. Tears flowed with endless streaming down her cheeks, her lips trembled, and her body, close to mine, shook endlessly.
Then her lips were under mine and they were slowly, surely, demanding as well as responding, taking their due with honest need. Her hands were moving restlessly across my back and neck, stroking my hair, caressing me, massaging me, the tips of her fingers digging at my flesh. I loved the delicate pain of it. I wanted it to never stop. "I love you," she whispered. "I love you. I love you. I love you." She could not stop saying it. The words fell from her lips tempestuously, the key with which she opened up the inner chambers of her need.
She made no sound but that of heavy, shuddering breath as I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom; she was light, so light. I set her on the bed and sat beside her, starting to remove her combs. One by one, I slipped them out so that her gold-brown hair cascaded down her back and all across her shoulders. She looked at me in silence until I removed the final comb and began to kiss her cheeks and lips and eyes and nose and ears and neck, the while undoing the straps of her dress. Now her white, warm shoulders were exposed. I kissed them ceaselessly; kissed her arms, the back of her neck. Still, she said nothing, only breathing heavily and making tiny, pleading noises in her throat.
The sight of her skin as I undid her corset shocked me so, I groaned aloud. She looked at me in alarm as I stared aghast at the red marks on her body. "Oh, God, don't wear this!" I cried. "Don't mark this beautiful skin." Her smile of love was radiant as she held out her arms for me.
Then we were lying together on the bed, arms tight around each other, lips clinging. I pulled away and kissed her neck, her face, her upper chest and shoulder. She pulled me to her breasts and I pressed my face against their warmth and softness, kissing them, taking the hard, pink nipples in my mouth. Her groans were almost agonized. A wave of need enveloped me and, standing quickly, I removed my clothes and threw them down, looking at her as she lay there, waiting for me, making no attempt to hide from me the sight of her body. As I finished undressing, she reached for me. "Love me, Richard," she whispered.
To feel myself inside her, feel her feverish body under mine, feel her hot breath spill across my cheek. To listen to her groans of anguished passion. To feel myself explode inside her and to have her spasm up so violently against me that it seemed her back would break, her nails dragging down across my flesh, a look of exquisite ecstasy on her face as she experienced what may have been the first complete release in her life-all this was almost more than one poor human frailty could endure. Waves of darkness roiled about me, threatening my consciousness. The air was charged with pulsing heat and energy.
Then all was still, subsiding. She was lying by my side, weeping softly, happily. Whispering, "Thank you." Over and over. "Thank you. Thank you."
"Elise." I kissed her gently. "You don't have to thank me. I was there, in heaven, with you."
"Oh," she whispered. It was like a pent-up breath released. "Yes, it was. Heaven. "
She slipped her arms around my neck and gazed at me, a smile of sweet contentment on her lips. "If we hadn't been together tonight, I would have perished, Richard." She made a feeble sound. "Come to think of it, I did perish," she said. She kissed my cheek. "To be rejuvenated in your arms. Reincarnated as a woman."
"Oh, you are a woman," I told her. "Such a woman."
"I hope I am." She ran a feathery touch across my chest. "I was so-devoured by the madness you brought out of me, I didn't know if I was pleasing to you."
"You were pleasing to me." I smiled at her uncertain look. "I'll have that carved in stone, if you like."
She returned my smile, with love, then looked down at herself. "Am I terribly slender?" she asked.
I drew back and gazed down at her small, jutting breasts, her flat stomach, her waist so narrow that I felt I actually might be able to enclose it with the stretching fingers of both hands, her graceful legs-all creamy white and wonderful to look at. "Terribly," I said.
"Oh." She sounded so dismayed, I laughed and sobbed at the same time, kissing her cheeks and eyes 'with passionate love. "I adore your body," I told her. "Don't you ever dare refer to it as anything but perfect."
Our kiss was long and sweet and full. She looked at me when it was over, her expression one of absolute devotion. "I want to be everything to you, Richard," she said.
"You are."
"No." Her smile was gentle with acceptance. "I know how unskilled I am at-making love. How could I be otherwise?" Her smile grew faintly roguish. "I have had no background, sir, and no experience. I move too clumsily and forget my lines. I forget the very name of the play, I'm so involved in it." Her fingers flexed in slowly on my back. "I forget everything," she said. "I go berserk on stage and love it, every second of it." Her look was one of open sensuality now. She pressed forward suddenly and we kissed for a long time, hungry for the taste of each other's lips. I smiled as we drew apart. "The role is yours," I said.
Her childlike laughter so delighted me, I thought my heart would burst from happiness. I hugged her tightly to myself. "Elise, Elise."
"I love you, Richard, love you so," she whispered in my ear. "And you're going to hate me because I'm hungry again."
Laughing, I released her from my arms and she made me stand a moment while she unmade the bed. Then she ran into the other room, returning with two apples, and we lay beside each other on the cool sheets, eating them. Prying loose a seed from hers, she pressed it to my cheek, making me smile and ask her what she was doing. "Wait," she said.
After a few seconds, the apple seed fell off. "What does that mean?" I asked.
Her smile grew melancholy. "That you'll leave me soon," she said.
"Never."
When her smile remained as sad, I pinched her lightly on the arm. "Who do you believe?" I said. "Me or an apple seed?"
To my distress, her smile still did not brighten. Once again, her eyes were searching deeply into mine. "I think you will break my heart, Richard," she said.
"No." I tried to sound as reassuring as I could. "Never, Elise."
Her effort to dispel the gloom was obvious. "All right," she said. She nodded. "I believe you."
"Well, you should," I said with pseudogrumpiness. "Whoever heard of apple-seed predicting anyway?"
There, that was better. Her smile had lost its edge of sorrow now. "I hope you do write a play for me," she said. "I'd love to act in a play you wrote."
"I'll try," I told her.
"Good." She kissed my cheek. "Assuming, of course," she added with a smile, "that I ever want to act again after this."
"You will."
"If I do," she said, "and I know I will, of course, it will be a different me on stage; a woman me." She sighed and pressed herself against me, clasping her arms around my neck. "I've always felt so unbalanced before," she said. "There's always been this conflict going on inside of me- mind versus emotion. The weight of your love has balanced the scale at last. If I was cold to you last night or today-" "You weren't."
"I was; I know I was. But it was only my final resistance to what I felt was coming; what I was afraid of: the release, through you, of everything I've hidden all these years."
She lifted my hand to her lips and kissed it tenderly. "I will always bless you for that," she said.
It began again, the hunger in her which had been unsatisfied so long that she needed to replenish it already. This time, she did not resist it but, with joy at all the broken shackles, gave herself to me and took from me, her love-making now so fiercely honest that, when her release soon came, she threw back her head, arms stretched out on each side, palms held up and open as she shuddered violently and groaned with unresisting fulfillment. Again, I flooded deep within her, hoping, as I did, that she would conceive our child inside that pure, lovely body.
Her first words, afterward, as we lay warmly and contentedly (I thought contentedly) against each other were, "You will marry me, won't you?"
I couldn't help it; I laughed out loud. "You won't?" She sounded stunned. "Of course I will," I said. "I'm laughing at the question and the way you said it."
"Oh." She smiled with relief, then love.
"How could you believe, for an instant, that I wouldn't?"
"Well-" She shrugged. "I thought-"
"You thought?"
"That . . . well, my lovemaking might be so atrocious, you-"
I pressed a finger, lightly, to her lips. "Elise McKenna," I informed her, "you're the most magnificent, exciting pagan in the world."
"I am?" Her tone and smile were delighted. "I am, Richard?"
"You are." I kissed the tip of her nose. "And I'll have that carved on stone if you want."
"It's already carved," she told me, placing a hand above her heart. "In here."
"Good." I kissed her firmly on the lips. "And after we're married, we'll live-"I looked at her quizzically "-where?"
"On my farm, please on my farm, Richard," she said. "I love it so, I want it to be ours."
"On your farm then."
"Oh!" I've never seen a face so radiant with joy. "I feel- I can't describe it, Richard! Bathed with love!" Abruptly, she was blushing happily. "Inside as well as out."
Turning onto her back, she looked down at her body, her expression one of incredulity. "I can't believe it," she said. "I simply can't believe that this is really me-lying on a bed, without a stitch of clothing on, beside an unclothed man I met just yesterday. Yesterday! And I am filled with him already! Is it me? Is it truly me-Elise McKenna? Or have dreams become hallucinations?"
"It's you." I smiled. "The you that's always been in wait- if slightly manacled."
"Manacled?" She shook her head. "More like locked inside an iron maiden. Oh!" She shuddered, making a face. "What a terrible image. Yet how true."
She turned to face me eagerly and we pressed against each other, legs and arms wrapped around each other as we kissed and kissed.
"Did you ever care for Robinson?" I asked. "Not as a man," she answered. "As a father, perhaps. I never really had a father, never saw him after a very early age. So I suppose he took that role in my life." She made a sound of surprised realization. "Amazing I should realize that after all these years. See what revealing thoughts you're causing me to think?"
She kissed me casually, a woman tasting freely of her lover's lips. "What I said before," she told me, "about being a perfectionist. I think it has been based not so much on a desire to excel as on dissatisfaction. I have never been truly pleased with my work or by my work. I have never been truly satisfied with anything in my life; that is the crux of it. Something has always been lacking. How could I fail to realize that it was love? It seems so obvious now. And I don't feel like a perfectionist now. All I want to do is cherish you; give myself to you completely." She smiled as though still baffled by herself. "Well, I have done that, haven't I?"