away and—there!—she was done. But Owney took forever. Owney had to take off his sweatshirt and the flannel shirt that was under that (with buttons at the cuffs that had to be dealt with) and the undershirt beneath it all. He had to take off a belt, unlace his tall workboots, pull off his socks. He took off his jeans and—this was taking forever—finally his white underwear, and he was done.
They didn’t exactly tackle each other, but they collected each other very quickly, and then realized this would be a whole lot easier if they were on the ground, so that happened pretty quickly, too. Ruth was on her back, and Owney was on his knees. He pushed her knees back against her chest and opened her legs, hands on her shins. She thought about all the people who would be outraged if they knew of this—her mother, her father, Angus Addams (if he knew she was naked with a Wishnell!), Pastor Wishnell (terrifying even to think of his reaction), Cal Cooley (he would lose his mind), Vera Ellis, Lanford Ellis (he would kill her! Hell, he would have them both killed!)—and she smiled and reached her hand forward through her legs and took his cock and helped him put it inside her. Just like that.
It is extraordinary what people can do even if they’ve never done it before.
Ruth had thought a lot in the last few years about what it would be like to have sex. Of all the things she’d thought about sex, though, she’d never considered that it might be so easy and so immediately hot. She’d thought of it as something to be puzzled out with difficulty and a lot of talking. And she could never really picture sex, because she couldn’t picture who exactly she’d be puzzling it out with. She figured her partner would have to be much older, somebody who knew what he was doing and would be patient and instructive. This goes here; no, not like that; try again, try again. She’d thought that sex would be difficult at first, like learning to drive. She’d thought that sex was something that might grow on her slowly, after a great deal of grim practice, and that it would probably hurt a lot in the beginning.
Yes, it is truly extraordinary what people can do even if they’ve never done it before.
Ruth and Owney went at it like pros, right from the start. There, in that shack on the filthy woolen blanket, they were doing raunchy, completely satisfying things to each other. They were doing things it might take other partners months to figure out. She was on top of him; he was on top of her. There seemed no part of each other that they were not willing to put into the other’s mouth. She was up on his face; he was leaning up against the child’s desk while she crouched in front of him and sucked him as he clutched her hair. She was lying on her side, with her legs positioned like a runner in mid-stride while he fingered her. He was sliding his fingers into her slippy tight cracks and licking his fingers. Then he was sliding his fingers into her slippy tight cracks again and putting his fingers in her mouth, so that she could taste herself on his hands.
Incredibly, she was saying, “Yes, yes, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.”
He was flipping her over onto her stomach and lifting her hips into the air and, yes, yes, he was fucking her, fucking her, fucking her.
Ruth and Owney fell asleep, and when they woke, it was windy and cold. They hurried into their clothes and made the difficult hike back into town, through the woods and past the quarry. Ruth could see the quarry more clearly, now that the sky was starting to lighten. It was a huge hole, bigger than anything on Fort Niles. They must have made cathedrals out of that rock.
They came out of the woods in Owney’s neighbor’s yard, stepped over the low brick wall, and walked into Pastor Wishnell’s rose garden. There was Pastor Wishnell on the steps of the porch, waiting for them. In one hand, he held Ruth’s empty whiskey glass. In the other, Mrs. Pommeroy’s flashlight. When he saw them coming, he shone the flashlight on them, although he really didn’t need to. It was light enough outside now for him to see perfectly well who they were. No matter. He shone