Chapter 7

1.
Her mouth moved down, then farther. He touched the top of her head, her fragile skull under wet hair, pulled her up gently. He wanted slowness, warmth, kissing. But she wouldn't.
She grasped him, though he wasn't quite ready; she wasn't either, she was dry, still cold. But she moved just slightly, sitting there above him, and after a few minutes he took the bones of her hips and pulled himself in until he'd fully stirred. She pressed down again, her body against his chest, and at last her mouth found his. He imagined the quiet street outside shining in the lights, the millions of souls warm and listening to the rain in their beds.
He couldn't stop looking at the side of her face, her eyes closed, the small shell of her ear, the scar in her nostril where the stud had been, her thin pale lower lip in her teeth. He was close but held off, until at last she whispered, Go. I can't come.

***

2. Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies

But his wife was saying, "Hello there, Sir Lancelot, you doughty fellow. Come out and joust." And what a beautiful way to fully awaken, his wife astraddle, whispering to his newly knighted peen, warming him with her breath, telling him he's a what? A genius. Lotto had long known it in his bones.
Since he was a tiny boy, shouting on a chair, making grown men grow pink and weep. But how nice to get such confirmation, and in such a format, too. Under the golden ceiling, under the golden wife. All right, then. He could be a playwright.

He watched as the Lotto he thought he had been stood up in his greasepaint and jerkin, his doublet sweated through, panting, the roar inside him going external as the audience rose in ovation. Ghostly out of his body he went, giving an elaborate bow, passing for good through the closed door of the apartment.

There should have been nothing left. And yet, some kind of Lotto remained. A separate him, a new one, below his wife, who was sliding her face up his stomach, pushing the string of her thong to one side, enveloping him.
His hands were opening her robe to show her breasts like nestlings, her chin tipped up toward their vaguely reflected bodies. She was saying, "Oh god," her fists coming down hard on his chest, saying, "Now you're Lancelot.
No more Lotto. Lotto's a child's name, and you're no child. You're a genius fucking playwright, Lancelot Satterwhite. We will make this happen."

If it meant his wife smiling through her blond lashes at him again, his wife posting atop him like a prize equestrienne, he could change. He could become what she wanted. No longer failed actor. Potential playwright.
There rose a feeling in him as if he'd discovered a window in a lightless closet locked behind him. And still a sort of pain, a loss. He closed his eyes against it and moved in the dark toward what, just now, only Mathilde could see so clearly.

***

3. Charles Baxter, The Soul Thief

Half an hour later, his eyes closed, then suddenly opened, tears and sweat dripping down onto her, he calls out her name, and in response Jamie comes at the same time that he does.
Her facial expression is one of pleasure mixed with horrified surprise. After a moment—she has broken out into quick shocked laughter—he looks into her eyes and imagines that her spirit, without knowing how or why, has suddenly disobeyed the force of gravity that has governed it.
Her soul, no longer a myth but now a fact, ascends above her body. Like a little metallic bird unused to flight, unsteady in its progress, her soul rises and falls, frightened by the heights and by what it sees, but excited, too, by being married to him for a few seconds, just before it plummets back to earth.

***

4 . John Casey, Spartina

He turned his head so his cheek was flat against her. He could feel her muscles moving softly — her coming was more in her mind still; when she got closer she would become a single band of muscle, like a fish — all of her would move at once, flickering and curving, unified from jaw to tail.

His mind was half in hers. He felt her still loose-jointed drift — only an occasional little coil in the current tugging at her harder, moving her toward the flood.

The tide came all the way up.

He felt all of her pass into him through his forehead: the effort of her body as if she was swimming upward, then the uncurling as she stretched out to catch the break, body-surfing a wave bigger than she'd thought, caught in the rush.

He felt it — she had an instant of fear — he didn't hear it but he felt a bleat from her as though her lips were pressed against his opened forehead. Then she breathed — he felt her body move as if her mouth opened on all of him — she took a breath and let herself go tumbling.

After a while they moved up the bank as though they had to escape the flood. They clambered onto the table of higher ground, onto the spartina. He sat to untie his shoes, and Elsie clambered on his back as if she couldn't get enough of clambering. He got his feet out of his pants and made a bed of them for her on the long flattened stalks.

Everything was brighter than in the creek — all around them the even tops of the spartina caught flat shadowless starlight.

He reached under her back to smooth out broken stems. For an instant he felt her feel his body, felt her register him, his inner sounds, the outer wave of them pressing toward her. And then they both fell into their own urgencies, overlapping disturbances, like waves from separate storms, at first damping, then amplifying each other.

They lay still in their pit of gray light. Her cheek moved against his. He had no idea what her expression was now — maybe smiling, maybe recovering herself the way she laughed at herself after she cried.

She moved her head and kissed his mouth. It didn't make her clear to him. Pretty soon she'd start talking.

She stayed quiet, though. She wasn't coming back so easily. He caught one more feeling from the heavy stillness of their bodies. Both of them this time — no matter what silly game she'd started — they'd both been caught and tumbled hard and carried this far. They were both stunned by sadness.

***

5 . David Lodge, Paradise News

Tomorrow there was more light in the room, and they split a half-bottle of white wine from the minibar before they began. Yolande was bolder and far more loquacious.
"Today is still touching only, but nowhere is off-limits, we can touch where we like, how we like, OK? And it needn't be just hands, you can also use your mouth and your tongue. Would you like to suck my breasts? Go ahead. Is that nice? Good, it's nice for me. Can I suck you? Don't worry, I'll squeeze it hard like this and that'll stop you coming. OK. Relax. Was that nice? Good. Sure I like to do it. Sucking and licking are very primal pleasures.
Of course, it's easy to see what pleases a man, but with women it's different, it's all hidden inside and you've got to know your way around, so lick your finger, and I'll give you the tour." He was shocked, bemused, almost physically winded by this sudden acceleration into a tabooless candor of word and gesture.
But he was elated too. He hung on for dear life. "Are we going to make love today?" he pleaded. "This is making love, Bernard," she said. "I'm having a wonderful time, aren't you?" "Yes, but you know what I mean.