—37—

“DERMOT MICHAEL, whatever are you doing!”

“We have three hours before supper.”

She was quite dry after her shower. I continued to rub her with the towel, insistently, passionately.

“I know that. … Och, Dermot, you’re scaring me!”

“We can’t use dinner as an excuse to stop.”

“I don’t want to stop!”

I loosened her hair so it fell on her naked shoulders and breasts. She gulped and stiffened.

I ran a finger across her breasts, brisk, imperious, possessive. She moaned. Her mouth hung open. I ran my finger back, more slowly.

“Dermot! …,” she exclaimed, her shoulders sagging-

She was pale, hesitant, frightened, but, no, she didn’t want to stop. Maybe we were already half there.

My fingers worked their quick designs on her belly and then her loins. I had visited those wonderful scenes before but never in a context like this. Then they returned to her breasts, this time much more slowly

She threw back her head and cried out wordlessly.

“There’s a terrible fire inside of me, Nuala Anne.”

“Inside of me, too, Dermot Michael,” she gasped. “But I’m afraid.”

“So am I, but we’re not going to quit now.”

There is, I reflect now, few joys in life greater than to face a beautiful naked woman who desperately wants you to challenge her to the depths of her sexuality.

Was I up to it?

Damn right I was.

But my heart was beating rapidly and my throat was dry. I musn’t blow this opportunity.

“Och, no, Dermot, don’t ever stop. …”

“I won’t.”

“Aren’t you playing me poor body like it was a violin?” She was smiling now and her eyes were round and glowing.

“A rare and priceless violin.”

“A Stradivarius?” she asked.

“What other kind?”

Suddenly we both were convulsed with laughter. Whatever the inhibitions were that had stood in the way between us, they vanished.

Then I understood for the first time that sexual ecstasy is comic. We both started to laugh as we challenged each other and drove one another further and further away from the restrained sanity and the decorous propriety of ordinary life.

We were two pillars of fire dancing around each other, crossing back and forth, enveloping each other, possessing each other and being possessed by each other, soaring together to the skies. It was a scenario as old as humankind but new and fresh and young.

We both cried out, screamed, and laughed. It was on wings of laughter that we flew to the heavens. Then with final cries and final laughter we plunged back to earth, astonished, spent, exhausted but happier than we’d ever been in all our lives.

“Now that was nice, wasn’t it, Dermot Michael?” said my sweat-soaked wife as we huddled, breathing heavily, in each other’s arms.

“Woman, you’ll do till a better comes along.”

“It took us long enough to get here.”

“Not long at all, I think.”

“You’re right, Dermot love,” she sighed. “Not long at all.”

We hadn’t done it perfectly. We were new and inexperienced. But we’d done it. And we’d get better. We had not disposed completely of all our fears and hesitations, but we had routed them.

YOU SHOULD FUCK HER AGAIN, the Adversary insisted, JUST TO LET HER KNOW YOU CAN.

“I don’t need to do that.”

YOU’D STILL HAVE TIME BEFORE SUPPER. THEN YOU COULD DO IT AGAIN TONIGHT.

“That wouldn’t be fair to her. I don’t want to use her.”

ASSHOLE.

I fell asleep and then felt a woman on top of me, her demanding breasts pressed against my chest. What choice did I have but to respond?