She felt so languid, so warm. His lips trailed down the open vee of her blouse and lingered there. Her breasts began to throb, anticipating his touch. She wanted more of him. Her fingers worked beneath his shirt. He pulled her hands away and clasped them gently between his own.
"Would you like some champagne?"
She shook her head. She didn't want any champagne. She didn't want him to stop.
But he got up anyway. He went to the ice bucket and fiddled with the bottle. It took him forever to get it open. First he had to dry it with a towel, then he made a big deal out of removing the foil neatly. He unscrewed the wire cage as if he were working with a delicate piece of machinery. She wanted to scream at him to just open it, for Pete's sake, and get back to her.
While he poured a glass for himself, she propped herself up against the pillows. He asked her again if she wanted some.
"All right," she replied grouchily. "As long as you've got it open."
He brought the glasses over and stood by the bed looking down at her. The narrow gold wedding band looked beautiful on his long thin fingers. Her body once again began to grow warm and her irritation faded. The mattress sagged as he settled on the side of the bed and put the glasses on the nightstand.
"Don't drink yet," he said. "I want to think of a toast."
And he sat there.
She couldn't believe it. She wanted him to kiss her again and touch her breasts, but he was sitting there thinking up a dumb toast. And while he was thinking, he began doing this thing with the palm of her hand. Just lightly stroking it with his thumb. She had never had her palm stroked in that particular way. It was so unbelievably exciting. Before long, she began to squirm.
"Did you think of it yet?" she finally gasped.
"A couple more minutes," he said, transferring his touch from her hand to the sensitive skin of her inner arm.
She closed her eyes. Her lips parted. What was he doing to her? The stroking on her arm continued forever, and then his mouth brushed over hers again in another of his delicious kisses. This was good, she thought. Now they were getting back to business.
She moaned as he kissed the base of her throat. His fingers played with the top button of her blouse. After another few years had passed, he opened it. He kissed the spot of skin revealed there and then unfastened the next button. A button and then a kiss. A button and then a kiss.
Her breasts where they rose above the scalloped lace of her bra were covered in a rosy flush. When would he get to her bra? To her slacks?
He stopped. "I think I have the toast now."
She gritted her teeth. If he didn't get his mind back on what he was doing, she was going to toast him.
He handed her back her champagne glass. "To my wife, the most beautiful woman in the world. I love you."
It was sweet-really sweet-but hardly original enough to be worth the wait. She clinked her glass with his, downed her champagne, dropped her glass to the carpet and threw herself back in his arms.
He gently disengaged himself and slipped off her blouse.
She wanted to give a whoop of triumph. Yes! He finally had the idea. He'd finally remembered what he was supposed to be doing. Now the bra. Don't forget the bra.
He didn't forget. His agile fingers unfastened the clasp so smoothly it seemed as if it had dissolved in his hands. He slipped the lacy garment off her and laid her down on the bed.
And then he just looked at her. She lay back and he inspected her with his eyes. Her nipples grew hard and beaded under his scrutiny. He bent forward. She closed her eyes, waiting for the heat of his mouth on her breasts, and felt his lips settle…
… over the curve of her shoulder.
She gave a little sob of frustration. Her hands knotted into fists at her side while he played with her shoulder for another ten years. My breasts! she wanted to cry. Taste my breasts, my bubbles, my pretty pretty boobies.
But the booby she had married had discovered a patch of incredibly sensitive skin at the inside of her elbow and he was sucking on it.
"Your slacks are getting mussed," he said finally.
"Yes," she agreed. "Oh, yes." She began to unfasten them, but again he pushed her away. He slipped them down over her legs and started to fold them.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "Just throw them across a chair."
"They'll get wrinkled," he replied, as if a pair of wrinkled slacks were some sort of monumental crime against nature. Standing, he held them by the cuffs, snapped the creases, and began matching up the inseams with a geometric precision that would have made Euclid weep with joy.
Paige wanted to weep, but not with joy. Why couldn't he understand how difficult it was for her to get aroused? Her excitement could vanish any second. It always did. He needed to take advantage of her arousal before it slipped away. Didn't he understand that?
Apparently he didn't. He had to carry the slacks over to the closet and hang them up. And not just any hanger would do. It had to be a trouser hanger.
She whipped off her underpants while his back was turned and lifted one knee just a bit so that the sole of her right foot was pressed against the curve of her left calf.
When he turned around and saw that, his eyes opened wider. Determined to gain the upper hand, she let one arm fall languidly to the side of the bed and began rubbing the sole of her right foot up and down her calf. Yank walked back toward the bed. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. He abruptly took a detour.
She shot up on her elbow. "Where are you going?"
He walked over to one of the tables and flipped on another lamp. "It's hard to see in here," he said. "I like to see what I'm doing." And then he returned to the foot of the bed. Sliding his hands up and down her calves, he gently pressed her knees farther open.
Her mouth went dry. She looked up at him.
His hands rose to his shirt. But instead of taking it off, he began slowly rolling up the cuffs.
Her eyes flew to his face. For the first time, she saw the amusement lurking at the corner of his mouth.
"You're doing this on purpose," she gasped.
"I think," he said, "that no one has ever taken enough time with you."
Paige lived through a thousand glorious lives that night. Yank had been trained in the lessons of patience, and he believed in careful craftsmanship. He liked to form hypotheses and then test them. For example, if he used his tongue here and his hand there…
He was an engineer, an absolute genius when it came to working with small parts. And every one of her small parts surrendered to his intricate inspection and exploded under his skillful manipulation.
Who could have imagined he would actually have to smother her cries of fulfillment with his mouth? Who could have imagined that this absent-minded genius could bring her the satisfaction that had been eluding her all her life?
When he finally came to her, his eyes were glazed and his breathing as heavy as her own. She was hardly capable of rational thought, but she dimly realized what his patience was costing him and loved him all the more for it.
Even as he poised himself to enter her, he took care. He was her husband, her lover. But above all, he was an engineer. And good engineers never forced parts together that were of unequal size.
"All right?" he murmured.
"Oh, yes. Oh, yes," she gasped.
"My wife. My love."
She cried out with joy and passion as he entered her. He caught her cries in his mouth and they began to move together, rushing in harmony toward a place of perfect fulfillment.
As dawn streaked the sky, they lay satiated in each other's arms. "Why did you act like it would be okay if I went to bed with Mitch?" she whispered.
"Because I knew Mitch wouldn't go to bed with you."
"He would, too," she said indignantly. And then she smiled. "No, I guess he wouldn't have." Her fingers played with the textures of his chest. "I thought you loved Susannah."