“Uh-uh,” she said, as if puzzled, “why?”
“I should think they’d cut into your skin,” he said. “I know mine do if I wear them too tight. See.”
He pulled up his trousers’leg and showed his young gartered shank, lightly spired with hair.
Louise looked, and felt the garter gravely with a plump hand.
“Mine don’t hurt me,” she said. She snapped the elastic with a ripe smack. “See!”
“Let me see,” he said. He placed his trembling fingers lightly upon her garter.
“Yes,” he said unsteadily. “I see.”
Her round young weight lay heavy against him, her warm young face turned blindly up to his own. His brain reeled as if drunken, he dropped his mouth awkwardly upon her parted lips. She sank back heavily on the pillows. He planted dry and clumsy kisses upon her mouth, her eyes, in little circles round her throat and face. He fumbled at the throat-hook of her waist, but his fingers shook so violently that he could not unfasten it. She lifted her smooth hands with a comatose gesture, and unfastened it for him.
Then he lifted his beet-red face, and whispered tremulously, not knowing well what he said:
“You’re a nice girl, Louise. A pretty girl.”
She thrust her pink fingers slowly through his hair, drew back his face into her breasts again, moaned softly as he kissed her, and clutched his hair in an aching grip. He put his arms around her and drew her to him. They devoured each other with young wet kisses, insatiate, unhappy, trying to grow together in their embrace, draw out the last distillation of desire in a single kiss.
He lay sprawled, scattered and witless with passion, unable to collect and focus his heat. He heard the wild tongueless cries of desire, the inchoate ecstasy that knows no gateway of release. But he knew fear—not the social fear, but the fear of ignorance, of discovery. He feared his potency. He spoke to her thickly, wildly, not hearing himself speak.
“Do you want me to? Do you want me to, Louise?”
She drew his face down, murmuring:
