tasted like a deep, musky wine with a hint of cinnamon. He wanted to be in her, could feel the blood rushing to make him turgid and ready as he fought back a rush of urgency.
She spread her legs and he used his tongue and finger with the mastery that came from knowing a woman's body well; so many lovers before her had given him an education no formal institution could provide. Soon he felt the familiar clench as she seized with ecstasy and then something more, a new sensation he'd never experienced with any woman, a rush of fluid from her, a sweet liquid that spotted her sheets with plate-sized circles. Her nipple was rock hard under his fingers and the taste of her fluid filled his mouth. The sudden warmth and wet enveloping him so swiftly and abruptly that he nearly came himself that second.
Not like this, though; he didn't want to come like this. He wanted to be in her, but he couldn't control himself for much longer.
Lilith sat upright and nearly died from humiliation, forcing James to pull back and shoot her a perplexed look.
“What was that? Did I? Oh, my God!” Hands flew to her face, covering it to spare her the embarrassment of having James look at her.
She had urinated during sex. How horrid. Whispers about such incontinence were common among her mother's friends; she'd heard them discussing the need for pessaries after a fifth child, or how to fold a cloth napkin discreetly to catch small indiscretions of the bladder. But Lilith had an unstressed uterus and, until her trip to McLean seven years ago, had not had an accident since she was a wee child being trained by her nanny long before memory.
In her brief interlude with Jack Reed she'd done no such thing. What a monstrosity. She couldn't even succeed at the most basic, instinctual act of all mammals. Her father was right: she was a complete fraud as a woman. The wetting incidents had been confined to night time, a once-a-month affliction that brought the sweet-scented fluid, the spot of shame so great that it transferred from her sheets to her soul. Passion and frustration seemed to bring them out after fitful dreams that lured her in but never remained in her memory when she awoke, chilled by a sticky release and contentment that quickly turned to horror when she wiped sleep from her eyes and found evidence of the night's reveries.
If she'd been a man, she'd have understood the affliction. But in a woman, this was physical madness, undocumented in any physiology book she'd examined at Wellesley. Her father was right: she should have been a man. Nature said otherwise, however, finding ways to make her freakish episodes a visual and sensorial reminder that she was, no matter how hard she tried to the contrary, abnormal.
And now James stared at her. Hands covered her eyes but she could feel him, inches away, naked and glorious, here in her bed where her broken womanhood made a spot that marked her inadequacy.
“Lilith,” he said gently, one hand touching her knee. She flinched. Please leave, she thought, but the words were wrong. Leaving wasn't what she wanted. A giant sinkhole that would make her disappear would do the trick, though.
“Lilith.” The voice was more a command this time, and she peeked out at him through her fingers, then looked down once more.
“You did nothing wrong.”
“I've, oh, I can't speak. It's unbearable.” Slick, bitter tears filled her mouth as her eyes joined in, the moment ruined, all arousal drained in a flash.
As if Lucifer himself studied this surreal scene and added a dose of cruelty, Lilith watched James lean down and sniff the sheet where the large wet spot screamed her name. “It's not – it's not what you think.”
“Then what is it?” she cried.
“I don't know.” He reached toward her and then stopped, seeming to think better of it. His hand stayed in place in limbo, uncertain.
“It can't be anything but – you know.”
“But it isn't. Sniff for yourself.”
Where was that sinkhole?
Lilith stood, pulled her nightdress on over her head, and reached for her robe, modesty overcome by the need to crawl out of her skin, to evacuate James, to run away and throw herself into the Charles River at once in an effort to end this mortifying moment.
“Please leave,” she implored. Don't leave. Her heart ripped in two, the pain worse than any she'd felt at McLean.
To her simultaneous chagrin and