HERE IS WHAT Matthew would like to have happen now.
Belinda snaps the light off, turns toward Matthew. There’s mischief in her eyes and a wobble in her walk. She puts her finger to her lips. On her way to Matthew’s side, she seems about to lose her balance a couple of times. She giggles soundlessly, holding her finger to her lips. Matthew smiles. He’s intrigued. Why is she behaving so secretively? She squats beside his squashy tub of a chair. It swivels when she grabs it for support. They snicker and giggle and hush each other. With the smallest and briefest of smiles, Belinda begins undressing. She removes her blouse and drapes it over the chair, in just the way she has so many times on evenings when she and Matthew have returned here after dinner.
Matthew rises from his chair and begins undressing, with the same false attitude of familiarity, though in truth he is amazed. He would never have imagined that Belinda would do anything like this, never. There seems to be an unspoken pact between them that they will treat this as if it were perfectly normal, as if it were just another evening when they make love on the carpet in the living room. He wonders whether he has ever been so excited in his life. His heart is pounding. He is thrilled to his fingertips, exactly that: his fingers tingle, and his sense of touch is heightened.
They make love like furtive teenagers, the familiar flavor of sex spiced tonight with the danger of discovery.
Belinda has so astonished him that he feels he’s making love to someone he doesn’t know, or, to be accurate, that he is being made love to by someone he doesn’t know, since Belinda’s in charge, definitely. She knows what she wants, and she’s making sure she gets it. She’s abundantly wet, and she moves as if she doesn’t have full control of her muscles, all twitches and tics and shudders, with no rhythm that Matthew recognizes, like a piece of modern music. This is unlike any other time they’ve made love. Now and then Liz stirs, on the sofa, about two feet from them, and the slightest sound from Liz sends a shudder through Belinda. The whole thing is so delicious that Matthew can’t help smiling. It’s adventurous. There’s that thrill of fear — and of guilt, too. They’re using Liz, using her presence for their own purposes, and it makes them feel — it makes Matthew feel, anyway, and he’s pretty sure it must make Belinda feel — naughty. Naughty. That’s just what the delectable feeling is. He feels naughty.
Belinda collapses on him, exhausted. Her arms and legs seem to be quivering. She feels that she couldn’t lift them if she tried. She feels as if electrical currents have been sent through her, as if she’s undergone a kind of sexual shock therapy. She lies there, limp on him. He’s still in her, still partially erect, a condition that is not usual. Ordinarily, when he’s finished, he is quite finished.
Later, when she’s finally able to pull herself away, Belinda leaves, with a sense of slipping off into the night, still flushed with the pleasure of their love and deception.
It does not, however, happen that way.
[to be continued]
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🎧 498: Here is . . .