Chapter 8

They finished the puzzle. There wasn’t much talking. Both were thinking about what had just happened. His thoughts were still disbelieving that so much of what he’d described seemed to be unknown to her. Hers were about how much she’d apparently missed, though it was difficult for her to imagine whether she would have liked all that or not.

When the last piece went in, they sat back. It wasn’t exactly tense, but it wasn’t as relaxed as it had been earlier either.

“I should go to bed,” she said.

“Me too,” he agreed. “I have to say something.”

She just waited.

“When you asked me to tell you all that ... I thought you were playing a game of some kind. I thought you’d know exactly what I was talking about.”

“It wasn’t that way with Harry,” she said softly.

“No one ever did those things with you?” he asked.

She realized how personal that question was, but, considering what they’d done in the last day, she couldn’t take offense.

“Not really,” she said. “Harry kissed me ... but not like you do. He put his hand ... down there ... but not like you described. He rarely touched my ... breasts.” She went silent.

“You said it hurt.”

She nodded.

“Every time?”

“Almost every time,” she said.

“That’s so sad,” he said. “It could have been so much better for you. It will be with the next man. I can almost promise you that.”

“Why?” she asked. “How?”

“He didn’t take time to get you ready,” said Bobby. “Most men will and if they don’t, you can slow them down ... tell them what to do.”

She flushed deep red. “I could never tell a man to do those things!”

“Of course you can,” said Bobby. “It’s your body. Making love should involve both partners equally. If he cares about you, he’ll do anything you ask him to. And if he won’t, then stop everything and throw him out.”

“I can’t throw my husband out!” she said.

“I’m not talking about after you get married again,” said Bobby. “I’m talking about before.”

She blinked. “But that’s ... that’s premarital sex!” she objected.

“If you’d known how Harry would treat you, would you have married him?” asked Bobby.

She had to think about that. Her impulse was to say she would have. But now, after the fact ... after hearing Bobby’s description of how things could be...

“I don’t know,” she said tiredly. “Things are so different now.”

“Okay, I understand that you believe premarital sex is wrong. I can live with that,” he said. “But you should at least find out if you want a man to keep going. If he doesn’t make you want more, maybe he’s not the right man. “

“You make it all sound so simple,” she said.

“I think it is. Things either click and feel right or they don’t.”

She stood up. Then she stopped. All those things he’d described ... he’d been describing them as if he were going to do them ... to her.

“Were all those things what you would have done with me?” she asked.

“If it seemed right, yes,” he said. “I wouldn’t have known until I’d tried some of them.”

“Like the kiss,” she said. “The kisses,” she corrected herself.

“Did they feel right?” he asked.

Her eyes darted to his. “You know they did.”

He nodded and grinned.

“If we hadn’t talked about ... all this. What would you have tried to do tonight?” she asked.

His eyes narrowed. It sounded like the game he thought she’d been playing. But he knew now there was no game.

“I would have tried to kiss you goodnight.” She’d handled everything else amazingly well, so he went on. “I would have come to your room, like I did last night. I would have sat on the edge of the bed, then tried to kiss you goodnight.”

“In bed?” She felt weak.

“Yes,” he said.

She walked past him, going to the bottom of the stairs. She felt strength come back into her knees as she climbed. Half way up she stopped and looked back at him. He was still standing by the puzzle.

“Give me time to change into my nightgown and get under the covers,” she said.

Then she went the rest of the way up.

Bobby stopped at her door. He really had no idea what to do. With women in the past, he’d gotten clear signals, usually. That wasn’t the case with Agatha.

He didn’t knock this time. He was already invited ... whatever that meant. She was lying just as she had been the night before. The only difference was that this time she didn’t pull the covers up to her chin. They were folded across her body, just below her breasts. Her hands lay folded on top of the edge of the covers. He wasn’t sure what that meant either. She turned her head to look at him. She didn’t look frightened tonight.

“What do you want?” he asked, stepping toward the bed.

“I don’t know,” she said. Her voice was calm, but soft.

He didn’t know whether to stand or sit. He was pretty sure she’d accept a goodnight kiss. He was less sure whether she had left her breasts out from under the covers for him to play with. He knew she was ... receptive ... but not for how much. He had, after all, covered the whole gamut of actions.

“I warned you about the kisses,” he reminded her.

“I know,” she said.

He decided to sit down on the edge of the bed. He sat facing the door and only turned his head to look at her.

“Can you describe to me how you feel right now?” he asked.

“I feel like I’m in some kind of dream,” she said, after a pause. “Or maybe like I’m in a foreign country, where I don’t know how to act, because I don’t know what the customs are.”

“It’s always scary to start off in a new direction,” suggested Bobby.

“I’m not scared, exactly,” she said. “Not like I was. I used to be terrified of you. But that’s gone, I think. Maybe it’s like when you know you’re going to taste a new food and you’re worried about whether you’ll like it or not.”

“That’s an interesting way to think about things,” said Bobby.

“And on top of it all, you’ve always been told that you shouldn’t eat that food in the first place. Like tomatoes.”

“Tomatoes?” he asked, not understanding.

“My grandmother used to tell me about the very first time she ever ate a tomato. Her mother swore they were poisonous. They come from the nightshade family, you know. And my great grandmother wouldn’t touch them because she’d always been told they were poisonous. Then one day, when she was visiting a friend, she saw someone eating a tomato. She laughed about it, because she said she screamed and ran to try to stop the person. That was when she found out her mother could be wrong about something. She said that, until then, she’d believed everything her mother had ever said. Just accepted it as truth.”

“I never knew that about tomatoes,” said Bobby. “People really thought they were poisonous?”

“Uh huh.”

“I assume she ate one,” said Bobby.

“Yes and her mother had a fit. Then, when nothing happened, her mother still wouldn’t touch a tomato. They argued about it for years. It makes me think of Ethyl. If she knew I kissed you today, she’d be absolutely convinced I’d burn in the fires of hell for all eternity. But I don’t feel like I did anything wrong at all. Isn’t that strange?”

“I don’t think a simple kiss is all that bad,” said Bobby.

“But you think about a lot more than kissing,” she said.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he said. “All that stuff ... downstairs ... I thought you were just curious.”

“I am curious,” she said. “Like my mother was curious about that tomato.”

He chuckled. “I’ve never been compared to a tomato before.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Those women you were talking about ... the ones you’ve ... done those things with...” She stopped.

“That’s not a question,” he said gently.

“I know. I’m just nervous.”

“Okay,” he said.

“None of them have ever complained.”

“That’s not a question either,” he said.

“Would you stop that! I’m trying to ask you a question.”

“Okay.” He grinned at her.

“Have there been a lot?” she asked.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked, instead of answering her.

“There are rumors,” she said. “And if the rumors are true ... why haven’t any of those women complained?” She was thinking about the unmarried women who’d had babies. If this man had dallied with them ... and a baby had resulted ... why hadn’t they complained?

“I guess they weren’t unhappy,” said Bobby.

She mulled that over. It wasn’t really an explanation ... but the common sense of it was obvious. You only complained when you were unhappy about something. How could you possibly be happy if a man got you with child ... and didn’t at least marry you?

“This is all so hard to understand,” she complained.

“What’s to understand?” he asked. “You don’t need to worry about other women. You need to worry about yourself. It’s hard enough to make your own way in life, without worrying about everybody else.”

He stood up.

“Get some sleep,” he said. “You’ll figure things out eventually.”

“Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight?” she asked. Her fingers twitched on the covers below her breasts.

“Is that what you want?”

“I can’t just tell you I want you to kiss me goodnight,” she said.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because I’m not supposed to want you to kiss me goodnight,” she said, as if that were the most logical thing in the world. “You said you wanted to kiss me goodnight.”

“I said I wanted to do a lot of things to you,” he said softly. “But we were just talking hypothetically.”

“You said yourself that you can’t seduce me any longer,” she said. “Now that I know about your nefarious plan.”

“You think you’re safe just because you know what’s coming next?” He smiled. “Why do you think I wanted you to know what to expect? Men are all the same, Aggie. We all have a nefarious plan. And when you meet that man we were talking about, and it’s the right man, you won’t care about his nefarious plan anymore. As a matter of fact, you’ll become an accomplice to helping him make his plan work.”

“We’re only talking about a simple goodnight kiss,” she said.

“I warned you about that last time,” he said.

“I know.”

It was the first time, since he’d come into the room, that he had a strong feeling of at least one thing she wanted. She wanted to be kissed again. But she obviously still didn’t understand the power of passion.

He went to her, without saying anything else, and leaned over to put his hands beside her head. She was staring up at him and she licked her lips, in preparation for the kiss she was sure she was going to get. He lowered his lips to hers. He got another signal of acceptance when she lifted her head a little, to meet him. He kissed her hungrily and then moved his left hand to cup and squeeze her right breast.

She stiffened and, just as he found where he thought her nipple might be, through the cloth of her bra and nightgown he squeezed it gently. Her hand came to grip his. Hoping he was right, he rested enough of his weight on his left hand that she couldn’t just move it. He slid his tongue into her mouth and felt her nipple respond enough that he knew exactly where it was. He rolled the hard little knob of her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, very gently. He kept his lips pressed to hers, until her hand stopped gripping his hand and simply held it. Then he pulled his lips back and let his palm cover the breast, just lying on top of it.

“You cheated,” she moaned. “You skipped ahead!”

“Did I tell you there are rules?” he asked. “This isn’t some game you can play. The men you meet will not play by any rules.”

To punctuate the point, he kissed her again. He did it in exactly the same way and brought his fingers back to her nipple. When her hand began to hold him to her breast instead of trying to move him away, he pulled back, said goodnight and left.

Agatha felt like she should be unable to sleep. But the fact was, she felt warm and safe and snug. She had been shocked when his hand had gone to her breast. The feel of his fingers on her nipple had been so new, though, and so completely different than anything she’d ever felt before ... and so good ... that she’d given in. She didn’t remember giving in ... making the decision to give in. It had just happened. She could scarcely believe it even now.

And his kisses had been so warm and soft. She licked her lips in the dark. She knew she would let him kiss her for hours, if he tried ... wanted to. And her brain told her she would probably let him do other things too, even though they were wrong.

This wasn’t at all like she had thought it would be. She had steeled herself to receive his lustful looks and only as much physical contact as was absolutely required to snare him. She had known his touch would be disgusting, but had been willing to sacrifice her own wellbeing for the greater cause.

Now, as she lay in bed, she knew what a fool she had been. How could she go out into the wide world and succeed? She felt like a baby, with its eyes closed, thinking it knew what the world was all about because it could hear things. His kisses had been pure joy, an explosion of sweet sensation. And his touch on her breast, instead of making her livid, created something inside her that craved more of that touch.

She thought back to the shocking descriptions he’d given ... things he’d thought about doing with her! Her mind had told her, even while he was giving those descriptions, that she should be disgusted. But she hadn’t been. She’d felt the fear, but his calm delivery ... his openness about it all ... had soothed her somehow.

He’d warned her. Multiple times. And now that she’d felt part of it, even though he’d skipped way ahead, she was anything but disgusted.

In fact ... she wanted more.

Agatha’s departure created in her a range of emotions that astonished her. She was glad to be going home. At the same time she felt like she was losing something precious by leaving the B&B behind. Something had happened there that was rejuvenating. She had felt their honest welcome. She had been accepted as who she was and not required to think a certain way or act just so. It was the first time in her adult life she could remember that happening.