On the fourposter bed, in the soft glow of a single lamp, he held her and kissed her eyes, her nose, her lips. He kissed her chin, her neck, her turgid nipples.
“Please,” she said. “Now.”
“Yes,” he said against the hollow of her throat.
She opened her legs to him, and he entered her.
“Hilary,” he said. “My sweet, sweet Hilary.”
He drove into her with great strength and yet with tenderness, filled her up.
She rocked in time with him. Her hands moved over his broad back, tracing the outlines of his muscles. She had never felt so alive, so energized. In only a minute, she began to come, and she thought she might never stop, just rise from peak to peak, on and on, forever and ever, without end.
As he moved within her, they became one body and soul in a way she had never been with any other man. And she knew Tony felt it, too, this unique and astonishingly deep bonding. They were physically, emotionally, intellectually, and psychically joined, molded into a single being that was far superior to the sum of its two halves, and in that moment of phenomenal synergism–which neither of them had experienced with other lovers–Hilary knew that what they had was so special, so important, so rare, so powerful, that it would last as long as they lived. As she called his name and lifted up to meet his thrusts and climaxed yet again. and as he began to spurt within the deep darkness of her, she knew, as she had known the first time they’d made love, that she could trust him and rely on him as she’d never been able to trust or rely upon another human being; and, best of all, she knew that she would never be alone again.
Afterwards, as they lay together beneath the covers, he said, “Will you tell me about the scar on your side?”
“Yes. Now I will.”
“It looks like a bullet wound.”
“It is. I was nineteen, living in Chicago. I’d been out of high school for a year. I was working as a typist, trying to save enough money so I could get a place of my own. I was paying Earl and Emma rent for my room.”
“Earl and Emma?”
“My parents.”
“You called them by their first names?”
“I never thought of them as my father and mother.”
“They must have hurt you a lot,” he said sympathetically.
“Every chance they got.”
“If you don’t want to talk about it now–”
“I do,” she said. “Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I want to talk about it. It doesn’t hurt to talk about it. Because now I’ve got you, and that makes up for all the bad days.”
“My family was poor,” Tony said. “But there was love in our house.”
“You were lucky.”
“I’m sorry for you, Hilary.”
“It’s over,” she said. “They’ve been dead a long time, and I should have exorcised them years ago.”
“Tell me.”
“I was paying them a few dollars rent each week, which they used to buy a little more booze, but I was socking away everything else I earned as a typist. Every penny. Not much, but it grew in the bank. I didn’t even spend anything for lunch; I went without. I was determined to get an apartment of my own. I didn’t even care if it was another shabby place with dark little rooms and bad plumbing and cockroaches just so Earl and Emma didn’t come with it.”
Tony kissed her cheek, the corner of her mouth.
She said, “Finally, I saved up enough. I was ready to move out. One more day, one more paycheck, and I was going to be on my way.”
She trembled.
Tony held her close.
“I came home from work that day,” Hilary said, “and I went into the kitchen–and there was Earl holding Emma against the refrigerator. He had a gun. The barrel was jammed into her teeth.”
“My God.”
“He was going through a very bad siege of…. Do you know what delirium tremens are?”
“Sure. They’re hallucinations. Spells of mindless fear. It’s something that happens to really chronic alcoholics. I’ve dealt with people who’ve been having delirium tremens. They can be violent and unpredictable.”