She didn’t attempt to offer an excuse for being there, nor did he request one. He simply said, “Charlie did it.”
“You should see a doctor.”
“I don’t trust doctors. Besides, it’s getting better.” He tossed the washcloth into the sink. “Do you make a habit of walking into bathrooms unannounced?” he said. “You could have walked in on something even less—”
“Venereal?” she said.
“Don’t mock me,” he replied. “I’m a crude seducer, I know. It comes from years of buying company.”
“Would you be more comfortable buying me?” she said.
“My God,” he replied, his look appalled. “What do you take me for?”
“A lover,” she said plainly. “My lover?”
“I wonder if you know what you’re saying?”
“What I don’t know I’ll learn,” she said. “I’ve been hiding from myself, Oscar. Putting everything out of my head so I wouldn’t feel anything. But I feel a lot. And I want you to know that.”
“I know,” he said. “More than you can understand, I know. And it makes me afraid, Judith.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she said, astonished that it was she who was mouthing these words of reassurance when he was the elder and presumably the stronger, the wiser. She reached out and put her palm flat against his massive chest. He bent forward to kiss her, his mouth closed until he met hers and found it open. One hand went around her back, the other to her breast, her murmur of pleasure smeared between their mouths. His touch moved down, over her stomach, past her groin, to hoist up her skirt and retrace its steps. His fingers found her sopping—she’d been wet since first stepping into the treasure room—and he slid his whole hand down into the hot pouch of her underwear, pressing the heel of his palm against the top of her sex while his long middle digit sought out her fundament, gently catching its flukes with his nail.
“Bed,” she said.
He didn’t let her go. They made an ungainly exit from the bathroom, with him guiding her backwards until she felt the edge of the bed behind her thighs. There she sat down, taking hold of the waistband of his blood-stained shorts and easing them down while she kissed his belly. Suddenly bashful, he reached to stop her, but she pulled them down until his penis appeared. It was a curiosity. Only a little engorged, it had been deprived of its foreskin, which made its outlandishly bulbous, carmine head look even more inflamed than the wound in its wielder’s side. The stem was very considerably thinner and paler, its length knotted with veins bearing blood to its crown. If it was this disproportion that embarrassed him he had no need, and to prove her pleasure she put her lips against the head. His objecting hand was no longer in evidence. She heard him make a little moan above, and looked up to see him staring down at her with something very like awe on his face. Sliding her fingers beneath testicles and stem, she raised the curiosity to her mouth and took it inside; then she dropped both hands to her blouse and began to unbutton. But he’d no sooner started to harden in her mouth than he murmured a denial, withdrew his member, and stepped back from her, pulling up his underwear.
“Why are you doing this?” he said.
“I’m enjoying it.”
He was genuinely agitated, she saw, shaking his head, covering the bulge in his underwear in a new fit of bashful-ness.
“For whose sake?” he said. “You don’t have to, you know.”
“I know.”
“I wonder?” he said, genuine puzzlement in his voice.
“I don’t want to use you.”
“I wouldn’t let you.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t know.”
This remark inflamed her. A rage rose such as she’d not felt in a long while. She stood up.
“I know what I want,” she said, “but I’m not about to beg for it.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“What are you saying?”
“That I want you too.”
“So do something about it,” she said.
He seemed to find her fury freshly arousing and stepped towards her again, saying her name in a voice almost pained with feeling. “I’d like to undress you,” he said. “Would you mind?”