When Peter could stand, Whitney led him to the guesthouse.
Penitent, she sat beside him on the bed, holding a damp cloth to his nose until it stopped bleeding, then wiping the blood off his face. “I’m all right,” he said stiffly.
Whitney shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking, Peter. But he’s just someone I’ve gotten to know. He passed his physical today—he’s going to be drafted. He doesn’t want to go, but he has to. We both know what it’s like to worry about that.” She hesitated, then finished gently, “This was the wrong night to pick a fight with him, and you’re the wrong person. The one who’s safe.”
Peter’s lips compressed in a stubborn line. “This wouldn’t have happened if you’d stayed away from him. But you didn’t. Or maybe you didn’t want to.”
“I will now,” Whitney promised firmly. “I don’t want you to worry, or wonder. But I can’t say I’ll never speak to him again. He’s going away soon, and so will we—him to the Army, us to an apartment in New York City. I can’t just treat him like dirt on my shoe.”
“What about how I feel?” Peter demanded. “What’s more important to you—me, or this guy you say isn’t even a friend?”
“You are.” Whitney removed the cloth, looking him in the face. “If you didn’t know that before, tonight should make it clear.”
“Then why were you hanging out with him?”
“Because he’s in a bad place, and I’ve got some pride, too.” She paused, groping for words that could help him comprehend her. “I wasn’t there because I’m attracted to him. It’s more how I feel about myself, as a person. That’s different than how my parents feel about me, or even how you feel. Can you understand that?”
Peter wore the same unyielding expression. “I’m not sure I should even try. Not when we’re talking about my fiancée and this conceited prick who set out to humiliate me in front of her.”
“Not until you swung at him . . .”
“He wanted me to,” Peter insisted. “I know when someone hates me. That sonofobitch does.”
He was right about this, Whitney knew. “I understand,” she assured him. “If I were you, maybe I’d have swung at him, too.”
Mollified, Peter touched his nose. “He sure picked the right guy, didn’t he? I hated you seeing that, Whitney.”
Feeling his shame and vulnerability, Whitney took his hand. “Believe me, so did I. But only for your sake.”
Peter grimaced. “I don’t want your parents to know, okay?”
“They don’t have to—we can tell them you bumped into something. And I don’t think any less of you for losing a fistfight. I’m not marrying Muhammad Ali.”
“That’s for sure,” Peter replied with a rueful smile. “He damn near knocked me into tomorrow.”
Relieved at this glimmer of good nature, Whitney kissed him gently on the mouth. “So does that hurt?”
“Not at all.”
Kissing him more deeply, she felt him respond. “I am marrying you for your body, though. Any interest in reminding me why? Or do you need rest and rehabilitation, supervised by Florence Nightingale?”
Peter managed a genuine smile. “Depends on what she’s wearing. A nurse’s outfit, or something less.”
“Sounds like I’ve got choices. Why don’t you lie down on the bed, and see what happens.”
Peter complied, his head propped on the pillow. “Okay, Whitney. So what now?”
Standing at the end of the bed, Whitney pulled the sweater over her head. She saw his eyes move to her breasts, swelling from the thin black bra he always liked to see her in. “Keep watching,” she instructed.
Slowly, Whitney slid out of her blue jeans, letting them drop to the floor. Suddenly, bashful at what she was about to do, she wondered if some deep the sensual impulse that had seized her, or whether she needed to salve his pride, put this night behind them before they faced her parents. She had never stripped for him before.
Closing her eyes, she slipped one strap of her bra from his shoulder, then the other, bending forward to expose the tops of her breasts. Then she reached behind her back, unsnapping her bra, letting them free.
“Yes,” she heard him say from deep in his throat.
She turned from him, slowly sliding her black silk panties down to show him more, and then turned again, facing him, exposing the dark triangle of hair between her legs.
“Jesus, Whit.”
Her skin tingled now, feeling his arousal. She dropped her panties to the floor. “Take off your clothes,” she ordered in a husky voice.
He stripped in haste, his gaze rapt. Sliding onto the bed, she took his penis into her mouth. He gasped with pleasure while her mouth and hand worked on his hard shaft. As Peter tensed, she withdrew her mouth, sliding her breasts across his chest as she whispered into his ear. “I want you to fuck me, Peter.”
“I will,” he whispered back, even as she wondered at the woman who had said this.
“Then stand at the end of the bed. I’ll show you where to go.”
Hurriedly, he did, staring down at her with his shaft in his hand, his face contorted with desire. Looking into his eyes, Whitney slowly opened her legs to show him everything, then slid one finger inside her. “There,” she told him. “Right there.”
As he gazed down at her, she touched herself with the tip of her finger, moving it gently until she felt the blood rush of stimulation and desire. For an instant she imagined herself as Clarice. “Do you want to fuck me?” she asked. “Or just watch me?”
“I want to fuck you,” he answered in a thick voice.
He knelt on the bed, hastily kissing her mouth before he slid inside her, tentative at first, then thrusting harder, Whitney pushing her hips against him, filled with a desperate need to drive away any thought but this, the muscles inside her tightening with a primal urgency she had never felt before, crying out, “Please, fuck me harder,” dazed and lightheaded now, her world going black, as though all the life in her had moved to the place of release until she tightened irrevocably, her body shuddering in an agony of pleasure, and her mind suddenly filled with the shocking image of Benjamin Blaine on top of her, feeling the warmth of his release inside her as his face replaced Peter’s and Ben’s name caught in her throat.
Peter slumped on top of her. “My God . . .”
Whitney’s eyes filled with tears. “That was beautiful,” she whispered.
For the next three days they kept busy as Whitney, contented on the surface, struggled to isolate one startling discordant moment. Each night, alone, she wished she could describe it to Clarice, so that her friend could put this in some safe category of the human and expected. During the day, she and Peter did the things that young people do. They went to the Agricultural Fair in West Tisbury, where livestock vied with the attractions of a traveling carnival, riding the Ferris wheel and eating pink cotton candy. Peter threw a baseball through a hole in the middle of a target, winning Whitney a stuffed bear. “My hero,” she told him. Giving her a crooked smile, Peter touched his tender nose. “Oh, yeah . . .”
Later they went out to see Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. Despite the liberties it took with Shakespeare, Whitney found herself caught up in the hunger of two young people, rebels against family and a social order that had no room for them. “A sexy movie,” Peter judged afterward. “But we have a better ending, don’t we?”
“Do you mean tonight?” Whitney asked. “Or later?”
They went home to make love, Peter pleased at her new ardor. But Whitney felt herself holding back, afraid to pierce the wall between her conscious thoughts and the outlaw image that threatened her peace of mind.
The next evening featured fireworks in Oak Bluffs. Peter and Whitney took blankets and a bottle of wine to Ocean Park, watching a glorious display that framed a moon glimmering through a thin layer of fog. “Remember the scene in To Catch a Thief? he asked.
Through the warm glow of wine, Whitney tried to recall this. “I’m not sure.”
“It’s where Cary Grant and Grace Kelly are lying on the couch, and the camera pans to fireworks in his hotel window. That’s when you know they’re making love.”
As though on cue, Whitney said, “Then let’s go make our own movie.”
Their days and nights together passed like that, Peter wanting her again and again, the elixir of male confidence refreshed, Whitney bent on pleasing him while being good company to her parents, who were disappointed that Janine had canceled yet another trip to see them. Though Clarice dropped by to visit, Whitney found no time with her alone. Instead, she was deeply attentive to Peter, still shadowed by the fear that the sudden release of her sexuality, the erotic jolt of a single night, came from a desire she must erase. At times she felt like a stranger to herself and those around her, her greatest solace the belief that, as with any strong but vagrant impulse, time would banish this as quickly as it had come.
When Peter had to leave, Whitney kissed him at the airport with a fervor that made him grin. “Sooner than you realize,” she told him, “I’ll be Mrs. Peter Brooks.”
He smiled at the sound of this. “All the unborn little Brookses are looking forward to that.”
“Let’s just practice for awhile,” Whitney replied. “Now that you’re in the reserves, you don’t have to be an instant dad.”
As he walked to the plane, blond curls glistening in the late afternoon sun, he turned to smile and wave, everything forgotten, it seemed, but Whitney herself. The swell of affection in her heart felt pleasurable and reassuring.
Less than four weeks, she told herself again.