478: He wonders . . .
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 3 continues
He wonders if she’s sick. She doesn’t drink cognac well. “In here,” she calls, from the bedroom. Only the lights of the city light the room. Belinda has spread the coat out on the bed, fur side up, and she’s lying on it, naked, stretching, enjoying the fur against her skin, almost writhing. For her the foreplay has already begun.
She’s so aroused, so — charged. This is going to be better than the night she changed her name. Matthew climbs over the end of the bed, slides his arms under her legs, pulls her toward him by the hips, and puts his lips to her clitoris. He loves the musty odor of her down here, the acid taste of her. She’s abundantly, extravagantly wet. He laps at her clitoris with his tongue, like a cat, so that the bumps and dimples will make her tingle. Belinda is silent, as she usually is during sex, but Matthew can tell how much she likes being licked from the way she runs her fingers through his hair, grabs his head in her hands and pulls him tighter against her, the way she rises and pushes herself harder against his tongue. Liz was silent, too, completely. Belinda sometimes murmurs when Matthew’s licking her. Matthew supposes that the pleasure of sex embarrasses her, as he supposes it embarrassed Liz, so he considers the occasional murmur a big concession, the shy acknowledgment that his lapping, the tingling of those bumps and dimples, is working. Tonight, however, he hears more than murmurs — moans on top of murmurs — and quite suddenly Belinda thrusts herself so hard against him that he cuts his tongue on his teeth, and then she cries out, one short, sharp cry, as if she were the one hurt. Matthew starts to pull away. “No,” she says, clutching the back of his head. “Please don’t. More.” Matthew obliges, bending to the task with relish and pride. No mere adequacy here, he’s pleased to be able to tell himself. This is a first-class effort. Matthew’s so glad to be pleasing her, so proud to be the engineer of this transport of bliss, that he begins to suppose that she loves him.
When Belinda runs her hand over the coat, she can feel, through the soft fur and supple skin, the hard card inside, and when she touches it she can’t help smiling, wouldn’t be able to stop the delightful shiver that ripples through her if she tried. She read the card in the bathroom, before she came into the bedroom and undressed. It says:
Bèlla signorina —
Will I see you again?
Massimo
555-2162
“Now I want you in me,” she says.
Matthew undresses. Actually, since he pops a button from his shirt in his eagerness, it might be fair to say that he rips his clothes off. He’s naked. He’s erect. He’s ready. He remembers the condoms.
“Just a minute,” he says, starting for the kitchen.
“Oh, forget that,” says Belinda. “I’m not going to give you any diseases.”
Throughout what ought to be an ecstatic act, Matthew is nagged by the feeling that for months he has appeared foolish in her eyes, that she saw through him, understood that he was afraid of her, not for her, or that perhaps Belinda knows that he isn’t likely to impregnate her. Did Liz tell her? Would she do that to me?
[to be continued]
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