Chapter Twelve #2
“I would. You keep wine in your room?”
“I bought it today in a shop down the street. I sometimes like to have a glass.”
“I would like one, merci.”
He poured the wine and passed me a glass. I took a mouthful; it was red and bold.
“Is there anything you’d like to talk about?” He said, eyeing me over the rim of his drink.
“I’m not asking you for anything. I guess I should clarify.”
“Well, I suppose I am not asking you for anything tonight either, Vanessa. But if we’re clarifying, then I should say that, depending on how things go, I might ask you for something in the future.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this for you is, at least in part, about getting something over with. But I can’t promise that I will see it that way. I am even hopeful you’ll change your mind. Depending on how things go.”
“On how things go.” I took another big gulp of wine.
“And how we feel afterwards.”
How we feel afterwards. “I don’t think we should talk about any of those things right now.”
“Since we haven’t started yet.”
“Oui.” I put my wine glass down on a pile of papers on his desk.
This was enough of a starting flag apparently because he set his glass down too and then pulled me into his arms. We kissed again; a firm, confident opening to whatever happened next.
It’s true that I didn’t know what I was doing.
But when I envisioned doing this with a man, I always imagined his nakedness coming first, and then my own second.
I was comfortable with the idea of doing it that way, and when I wordlessly took over the situation and steered it in that direction, he complied.
He removed his hands from my body so I could slip off his jacket.
When it was free, I hung it over the back of his chair.
Then I untied the knot at his neck and slipped off his cravat.
The buttons down the front of his shirt allowed me to take my time.
And when I pushed it open and slid it off his arms, I touched the bare skin on his back.
He was warm and firm. Seeing him like this, chest naked and covered in dark, soft hair, surpassed anything I could have imagined.
His sharp intake of breath when I grazed my hand down the front of his pants eased my performance anxieties.
He liked what I was doing. Even experience, which I presumed he had plenty of, didn’t lessen these small pleasures of touch and sensation.
I started working his pants open and could feel him hard underneath.
And you don’t really have to know much to find such a state compelling.
When I grasped him, he groaned and his head dropped forward.
And suddenly I had never been so excited to do something in my entire life.
I wanted him and whatever might happen. When his pants fell and he stepped out of them, not a scrap of clothing left, he was glorious.
“Is it easy for you? To be naked in front of me?”
“As long as you’re next, I’ll be fine.”
“I am next.”
“Trés bien.” He stepped forward and pulled me in against him, kissing me fully and assertively, like a warm-up exercise.
And then he was working on the buttons at the back of my bodice.
It had quite a few. I had to put it on backwards and then spin it around when I had them all fastened.
He stopped kissing me to pull the garment away, and he placed it neatly over the back of his chair on top of his jacket.
Then he unfastened my skirt at the waist and helped me step out of it.
I’d kissed boys and gone beyond kissing even, involving various degrees of bodily exposure, but no man had ever seen me like this.
He admired the view only long enough to hang up my skirt.
And then he made fast work of removing my corset and petticoats.
The underwear and stockings, my frilliest, he took a little more time on, doing each leg one at a time with both hands and then taking down my underwear with both hands as well.
“I remember picking these up off the floor of the train station,” he said with a sultry smile.
“Very funny.”
“I’ve been thinking about them ever since. He kissed the top of my thigh as he stood back up.
We faced each other, right next to his bed, and not only were our clothes removed, but everything else between us was gone too. How had I ever hated this man? I didn’t hate him. Not at all.
Our eyes met, and we stared at each other for a moment.
He pushed me toward the bed, and so I climbed onto it and lay in the middle with my head on the pillow.
Then he climbed over me. When we were face to face, he said, “You’re so beautiful, Vanessa.
But now how do you feel being naked in front of me? ”
“It’s easier because you’re naked too.”
“Ah? See.” He kissed me on the mouth; a quick peck. “How nice it is, not arguing or competing. Being nice.”
“Are you going to be nice?”
“I am always as nice as you let me.”
“In that case, I want you to show me how nice you can be.”
He waggled his brows and moved down, stopping to kiss briefly each sensitive part.
His mustache raked against my skin. Then he was there at the absolute most sensitive part, which he found and gently took into his mouth for a kiss as well.
It happened fast, in a few deft tongue movements.
A rushing, pleasant agony that escalated to an eruption.
My vision blurred and the world went white for a blissful second.
A brief, fast explosion of sensation that made me pant and lace my fingers through his hair.
When the waves within me subsided, he crawled over me until we were face to face again. “I know how to be very nice.”
“I can see that.”
We stopped talking then. And after a few deep kisses nudged my my legs with his knees and nestled his hips there.
Then he pushed in slowly and kissed me on my neck.
It was a lovely, invigorating feeling that only became more pleasurable as he moved.
What was at first like scratching an itch became so intense I began to lose myself completely in it.
He stopped kissing me and we were face to face as we moved together, closer than we had ever been.
Though it occurred to me then that I’d been in his face many times by that point.
When you are that close to a person, every emotion bares itself in the flicks of the eye and the ticks of the jaw.
I had glimpsed his vulnerability so many times, and now here it was, on full display.
Mine was too, I imagine. Something primal and animal took over then until I was lost in another explosion that sucked me from my body completely.
I moaned involuntarily, and he silenced it with a kiss.
I was breathing heavy but quiet and pliable as he kept going.
And so I watched him close his eyes and grimace before he pulled away and his body clenched as he finished on my stomach.
I was too physically spent to wince or say anything about this unexpected completion, but I was pleased that he didn’t leave all of that inside me.
He rolled away and lay there panting for a few moments before getting up to find a towel.
He cleaned me off and got back into bed, curling into where I was still flayed and limp.
He brought his face close to mine and whispered, “Are you still here?”
“I am.” I turned to face him, though I wasn’t sure how to look him in the eyes. I just did it.
I smiled, and he smiled too. “I like being naked with you.”
“I like being naked with you too, it turns out.”
“Good. Because I hope that we can stay like this a while longer.”
And we did. For quite some time. Long into the night. Until we had seen what could happen in many different ways.
He was asleep on his stomach, arms curled under his pillow, breathing slow and steady when I got out of bed.
The sheet had slipped down, exposing the broad plane of his back and shoulders.
After marveling at his sleeping form for a moment, I dressed and crept from his room to mine in the dawning light.
Once inside, I opened my curtains to let in the pale new day.
I undressed again, having only put clothes on in case I encountered an early riser in the hall.
I hadn’t, thankfully. I would not flout propriety completely just because I’d lost my virginity.
Not that anyone cared much about that. I didn’t, but I’d lived with all sorts of girls who’d had all sorts of experiences.
And I’d heard many stories about how it might go.
I was pleased that it had been so satisfying and fun.
But in all the stories about sex that I’d heard, no one ever told me that it involved looking deep into the other person’s soul.
I had seen Benoit in a way I’d seen no one else.
And he’d seen me. That had felt more exposing than having his face between my legs, exposing in ways that I had not been prepared for.
I had never been so vulnerable in my life.
I had never given of myself or taken from someone else in that way.
It had all been quite stirring, and I still wasn’t sure what to make of it.
This was why it was best for me not to wake him before I left. I wasn’t quite ready to face it.
I had a friend at the Saint Genevieve’s who was my age, older than most of the other girls.
She had arrived a year after me. But she had been with a boy before, a neighbor she grew up with in the hayloft of his barn, before she was orphaned.
She told me they agreed to marry when they both came of age.
She said she couldn’t imagine marrying another man after what they’d done, and I had thought at the time that she was being a sentimental fool.
I believed sex was a purely physical act.
So why, now that I’d done it, did it feel more than physical?
Why did it feel like one of the most important things I’d ever done?
I had never been precious about my virginity.
The nuns, because the girls had come from such a range of backgrounds, had to be practical about it.
But now that I’d done it, the world did look brighter somehow.