The Honeymoon Ch. 01

It was when he started kissing her underwear that she started to giggle a little.

"What?" he said.

"Well... Why are you doing that? It's just cotton, it can't taste very good. And it's not a body part on me, so I don't feel anything."

"Well, it was an idea," he said. "We're supposed to experiment with each other, you know."

She giggled again. "Well, you can cross that one off the list."

He started kissing her tummy again, making her wonder if there was something about that area she should know about. This time, though, he began by stripping off her panties entire; now she was bare except for her bra. He let his kisses follow the contours of her body, down the curve of her hips and then down the crease leading inwards to her private area. Instead of going there, though, he made a detour down her left thigh, planting tickly kisses all over it. Then he moved to her other leg.

She watched his wanderings with growing amusement. It felt pleasant, sure, but... "Is this supposed to be going somewhere?"

"Well, with any luck, it's supposed to get you hot," he said. He gave her a smile, but she could sense his impatience.

"Maybe you should do what you did yesterday," she said. "That seemed to work."

He shrugged as he came to his feet. "I guess." Then, without warning, he scooped her up and carried to the bed. She gave a yelp of protest, but almost before she could react, he had plonked her down.

"Patrick! Unless you want your wife and the mother of your children to die of a heart attack long before any of that ever happens, you should warn me before you do that!"

He gave another casual shrug. "I just picked you up. You should learn to relax more, Amanda."

When I'm being manhandled by this giant ape of a husband of mine? she thought, but she kept it to herself.

He reclined on the bed next to her, and then reached to pull her lips down to his. She submerged her irritation. Relax, he'd said. Fine, she'd try to relax. She heard the whoosh of the sea outside, barely audible through the closed windows, and the hum of the air conditioner; she felt the scratchy cotton of the bedspread under her elbow, the heat of Patrick's hand in the small of her back. Her breasts were at an angle, a little bit uncomfortable in their bra.

He must have noticed, because his hand moved higher; and just like that, she was naked, her breasts now hanging free. She stifled an urge to cover them with a hand. That was an appropriate response to just about anyone else in the world... But before her was the one man to whom she should make an exception. She wondered what he thought about them. They were heavy and large--one upside to weighing as much as she did--but she thought they were too veiny, the skin too translucent. Surely he must prefer... What else could breasts be like? She didn't know, but surely he must prefer them.

Last night he had started with her breasts, and she knew he would move there eventually. She didn't know how to think of the feeling--a deep pulling sensation that seemed to go all the way down inside her, as though her breast was searching for milk for him. Would it be like that when a child suckled there eventually?--a child, hers and Patrick's, born out of union of sperm and egg and grown in her womb from his seed. She wanted one someday, and knew he did too. But they'd never get there if they couldn't figure this out first.

He laid her down to her back on the bed, leaning over her, kissing his way around her breast. Then he switched to the other one and repeated the same treatment--kisses, speckling the surface of her breast (now flattened by the tyranny of gravity), before laying one perfect kiss on her nipple, followed by his lips closing around it to suck in earnest. She felt again the deep pulling sensation, a little pleasurable, a little painful. She wondered what other women's nipples were like; hers seemed small to her.

"Just relax," he said to her.

"I am relaxing," she said, giving him a cheery smile. And it was true. She was relaxing, or at least trying to as best she could; it wasn't her fault that all these other things were whizzing through her head.

He gave a noise of skeptical assent, but he didn't stop.

Eventually he tired of her breasts and began to kiss his way down her stomach again. This time he did not detour around to her legs; this time he went straight between them, and for the first time she felt the sensation of his lips on her lips. They felt a little cold and fishy; even his breath, warm against the soft skin of her privates, grew cool where he had kissed. She felt his lips wandering, and then (of all things) his hands reaching up to the insides of her hips, to pull her private parts open (she spread her legs obligingly to give him room). Then she felt kisses--gentle ones, like the wings of a butterfly, more gentle than she'd thought possible--sprinkled across the terrain of her privates. It was ticklish there, but also--and there was no other way to describe it--red, in a strange uncomfortable way; it made her wiggle on the bed, made her feel like the skin of her hips had shifted like a pair of pants. It was a strange feeling, and she wasn't sure she liked it.

He looked up at her. "You're not relaxing."

"What makes you say that?" she said.

"Because something should be happening by now."

"Oh? What?"

Patrick covered his face with a hand.

"Patrick, what should be happening?"

He let his hand fall away. "Does it feel anything when I do this to you? Do you feel anything?"

"Well, yes," she said, "I feel you sucking on my nipple."

"Is there anything else?" he said.

"Umm..." She cast back through the last thirty hours--her entire life's experience with sex. "No, not particularly."

"Not last night either."

"No, umm... Well, when you put it in me, there was feeling. It was... Interesting."

Patrick's eyes screwed shut. " 'Interesting'."

"Honey, what's wrong?" she said, sitting up. (Unnoticed, her arm covered her breasts.)

"I..." He sighed. "Nothing. Nothing at all. Come on, baby, let's go to bed."

"But I thought... I thought we were going to have sex."

"Well, I hoped so too," he grumbled, "but if you're not..."

"Honey, this is what it was like yesterday," she said, reaching out to stroke his cheek with a hand. "We did it yesterday. I don't see any reason why we can't... Why you can't just go ahead and... I mean, we did it yesterday."

He made a grimace. "Maybe we did yesterday, but today it... I couldn't. Not today. Not knowing that..." He sighed. "I mean, look at me, I'm not even hard right now."

She looked and saw that it was true. That was troubling. When they dated, when they kissed... His erection had become so ubiquitous during those times that she'd almost stopped noticing it. For him to be so disenchanted now...

"Look, just... I'll talk to Winston tomorrow, and you talk to Kerri. Okay?"

"Okay," she said, feeling frightened. She'd had no idea that his happiness was so bound up in something she herself could not control. "I'll..." Needing to say something, needing to give him something more: "Anything for you."

He gave a wan smile at that.

"I love you," she said.

"I know," he said. "And I love you too."

"If you love me," she said, "and if I love you, then I don't... Love is all you need for sex, isn't it?"

"Maybe in the fairy tales," he said, and kissed her again.

Because of the church's rules on cohabitation, they had never slept in the same bed during their courtship. It was something she knew she would enjoy--hearing his breathing in the dark, being able to look over and see him when she woke up. And it was comforting to be there, his arms wrapped around her, the warm lub-dub of his heart against her back. But it was a long time before she could sleep that night.