The following day, after the surgeon had left, Harriet remained at Richard’s side to nurse him through the few hours required for his recovery. It was she who with infinite gentleness changed the dressing on his tiny wound, and restrained him from rising from bed that day. For once his initial terror had passed off his trepidation gave place to such liveliness and high spirits that he was almost unmanageable. Now, seeing the last bar to their union removed, he was inwardly wild with impatience to bury his penis in the vulva of whose passionate responsiveness he was already so well assured from the events of the wedding night. In vain did Harriet try to persuade him to sleep.
“Oh Harriet,” he exclaimed for the twentieth time, “I am so happy, so excited, that I am sure I could not.”
Seated beside his bed, she surveyed him calmly. “But you must rest, my dear. Tomorrow will be quite time enough for you to get up.”
“Tomorrow?” His face fell. “Then I am not to–we will not sleep together tonight?”
Her face softened. “No, my dear. Then, you desire it so greatly? Already?”
He did not reply; but her hand beneath the bedclothes was already verifying the state of his passion. At this moment the temptation to test his sexual reactions after the operation was irresistible, and suddenly drawing aside the covers she bent down and took his penis in her mouth.
He observed the action with astonishment: never had he imagined the possibility of such a caress, and it struck both his imagination and his senses with all the force of the maddest and most voluptuous novelty. The moist heat of her mouth and the action of her tongue against the tender underside of his member, together with the almost incredible fact that it was the feared and idolised Harriet herself who was gratifying him in this unheard-of manner, made him almost lose his senses in ecstasy. When his sperm at last jetted in her throat it was released with an intensity of pleasure he had never known before.
“There now, Richard,” she murmured, patting his subsiding penis softly, “that was pleasant, was it not?”
His only answer was to throw his arms about her neck in a passion of tenderness: he was penetrated as much by overwhelming gratitude as by the sheer beauty of an experience so fraught with delight that he could barely believe in it.
Harriet stroked the yellow curls of the handsome young head pressed in the hollow of her neck: the boundless affection of his nature suddenly touched her to depths of tenderness which she had never suspected in herself. She passed her fingers softly over his cheek.
“Ah, Richard,” she said, “you are only beginning to realise what a delightful institution marriage can be, and all the pleasures open to man and wife.”
He tightened his embrace. “Then,” he whispered, “you will do this to me again?”
She smiled against his cheek. “I shall do it to you constantly, Richard, –yes, and many other things of which you as yet know nothing, but which I shall show you.
“Oh, Harriet,” he breathed, “then there are still other pleasures to come from you?”
“Yes, my dear, many others. But of them all, there is none better than the act of full possession, as you will find once your member is within me.”
They remained motionless, locked in each other’s arms. When Harriet spoke again her voice was trembling slightly.
“And now, my dear, that you have resigned your last male prerogative, now that you can never beget a child and no rival can ever come between us, now that you are the instrument of my endless pleasure and nothing more, now I can love you as I desire and as you deserve. Never think I will forget this sacrifice you have made for me, my dear.” She paused, and tightened her embrace still more to conceal the fact that she herself was close to tears. “It will not be long now, Richard ... And believe me, I am as impatient to be yours as you are to make me so ...”
“Oh, but when, Harriet?” he whispered. “When?”
She recovered herself, and smiled. “Why, I am at heart a woman of sentiment, you know,” she said with a lightness by which she sought to cover the depth of her emotion. “When you possess me I wish it to be in the surroundings where I first learned to love you; in the house at Christchurch. Yes, Richard, that is where we shall spend our honeymoon.”