Someone to Hold

She thought he was leaving her body and almost cried out with protest and regret. But he withdrew only to return—of course. And it happened again and again and again until it settled into a firm, steady rhythm in which a slight soreness and a pounding sort of pleasure and the sucking sounds of wetness combined into an experience like no other, but one she did not want ever to end. And it did not for what might have been several minutes or only just two or three. But finally the rhythm became faster and deeper, and he released her hands in order to slide his own beneath her once more to hold her firm and still. Pleasure swirled from her core to fill her being, though she willed him not to stop yet, ah, not yet. She did not want the world to resume its plodding course with this behind her, all over, to be lived again only in memory.

He held firm and deep and strained against her so that almost, for a moment, oh, almost . . . But she did not find out what almost happened, for he sighed something wordless against the side of her head, and she felt a gush of heat deep within, and he relaxed down onto her. She wrapped her arms about him and closed her eyes and let herself relax too. Almost was good enough. Oh, very much good enough.

After a few all-too-short minutes he moved off her to lie beside her, one bare arm beneath her head, the other bent at the elbow and resting across his eyes. The late-afternoon air felt pleasantly cool against Camille’s damp body. There was a soreness inside, though it was not unpleasant. He smelled faintly of sweat and more markedly and enticingly of something unmistakably male. She could sleep, she thought, if the bedcovers were over them, but she did not want to move to pull them up and perhaps disturb the lovely aftermath of passion.

“And I will not even be able to answer with righteous indignation,” he said, “when Marvin waggles his eyebrows and makes suggestive remarks about this afternoon, as he surely will.”

Camille felt suddenly chilled at the suggestion of sordidness.

“I am so sorry, Camille,” he continued. “I ought to have known I was feeling too needy today to risk asking you to come here with me. You must not blame yourself. You have been kindness itself. Promise me you will not blame yourself?”

He removed his arm from his eyes and turned his head to look at her. He was frowning and looking unhappy—and guilty?—far different from the way she had been feeling mere moments ago.

“Of course I will not blame myself,” she said, sitting up and swinging her legs over the far side of the bed. “Or you either. It is something we did by mutual consent. I wanted the experience and now I have had it. There is no question of blame. I must be getting back home.”

“Yes, you must,” he said. “But thank you.”

She felt self-conscious this time, pulling on her clothes while he sat on the side of the bed and began to dress himself. Self-conscious and chilly and suddenly unhappy. If her education as a lady had taught her anything, it was surely that men and women were vastly different from one another, that men had needs that must be satisfied with some frequency but did not in any way involve their emotions.

What had she thought while they were making love—Oh, that was a foolish, inappropriate phrase after all. But what had she thought? That they were embarking upon the great passion of the century? That they were in love? She did not even believe in romantic love. And he certainly was not in love with her.

Neither of them spoke again until they were both out in the hall, she tying the ribbons of her bonnet while he watched, and arranging her shawl about her shoulders and turning to the door. He reached past her to open it, but he did not do so immediately.

“I can see that I have upset you,” he said. “I really am very sorry, Camille.”

And she did something that was totally unplanned and totally without reason. She raised a hand and cracked him across the face with her open ungloved palm. And then she hurried from the room and down the stairs without a backward glance and without any clear idea of why.

Except that by apologizing and saying it ought not to have happened he had cheapened what for her had been perhaps the most beautiful experience of her life.

Oh, what an idiot she was! What a naïve idiot.

Fifteen

Before the morning was half over Joel had tidied and cleaned his rooms, hung the portrait of his mother in what he thought the best spot on the living room wall, completed the painting of Mrs. Wasserman, walked to the market and back to replenish his supply of food, and decided that he was the world’s worst sort of blackguard.

It had not been seduction—she had said herself that it was consensual. But it had felt uneasily like seduction after she left, for he had been needy and she had comforted him. Then she had slapped his face and rushed away before he could ask why. It was obvious why, though. She had regretted what she had done as soon as it was over and rational thought returned, and she had blamed him. It was not entirely fair, perhaps, but oh, he felt guilty.

He felt like the blackest hearted of villains.

Worse, he had remembered after she left that he had promised to dine at Edwina’s and spend the evening with her. He had gone there and stood in the small hallway inside her front door and ended it all with her, rather suddenly, rather abruptly, and without either sensitivity or tact. There had never been any real commitment between them and never any emotional tie stronger than friendship and a mutual enjoyment of sex, but he had felt horribly guilty anyway. She had had a meal ready for him, and she had been dressed prettily and smiling brightly. And she had behaved well and with dignity after he had delivered his brief, blunt, unrehearsed speech and made no attempt to keep him or demand that he explain himself. She had not slammed the door behind him.