Dead Until Dark

didn’t.
    “I used to do this for my sister, Sarah,” he murmured quietly, as if he knew how peaceful I’d gotten and was trying not to break my mood. “She had hair darker than yours, even longer. She’d never cut it. When we were children, and my mother was busy, she’d have me work on Sarah’s hair.”
    “Was Sarah younger than you, or older?” I asked in a slow, drugged voice.
    “She was younger. She was three years younger.”
    “Did you have other brothers or sisters?”
    “My mother lost two in childbirth,” he said slowly, as if he could barely remember. “I lost my brother, Robert, when he was twelve and I was eleven. He caught a fever, and it killed him. Now they would pump him full of penicillin, and he would be all right. But they couldn’t then. Sarah survived the War, she and my mother, though my father died while I was soldiering; he had what I’ve learned since was a stroke. My wife was living with my family then, and my children . . .”
    “Oh, Bill,” I said sadly, almost in a whisper, for he had lost so much.
    “Don’t, Sookie,” he said, and his voice had regained its cold clarity.
    He worked on in silence for a while, until I could tell the comb was running free through my hair. He picked up the white towel I’d tossed on the arm of the couch and began to pat my hair dry, and as it dried he ran his fingers through it to give it body.
    “Mmmm,” I said, and as I heard it, it was no longer the sound of someone being soothed.
    I could feel his cool fingers lifting the hair away from my neck and then I felt his mouth just at the nape. I couldn’t speak or move. I exhaled slowly, trying not to make another sound. His lips moved to my ear, and he caught the lobe of it between his teeth. Then his tongue darted in. His arms came around me, crossing over my chest, pulling me back against him.
    And for a miracle I only heard what his body was saying, not those niggling things from minds that only foul up moments like this. His body was saying something very simple.
    He lifted me as easily as I’d rotate an infant. He turned me so I was facing him on his lap, my legs on either side of his. I put my arms around him and bent a little to kiss him. It went on and on, but after a while Bill settled into a rhythm with his tongue, a rhythm even someone as inexperienced as I could identify. The nightshirt slid up to the tops of my thighs. My hands began to rub his arms helplessly. Strangely, I thought of a pan of caramels my grandmother had put on the stove for a candy recipe, and I thought of the melted, warm, sweet golden-ness of them.
    He stood up with me still wrapped around him. “Where?” he asked.
    And I pointed to my grandmother’s former room. He carried me in as we were, my legs locked around him, my head on his shoulder, and he lay me on the clean bed. He stood by the bed and in the moonlight coming in the unshaded windows, I saw him undress, quickly and neatly. Though I was getting great pleasure from watching him, I knew I had to do the same; but still a little embarrassed, I just drew off the nightshirt and tossed it onto the floor.
    I stared at him. I’d never seen anything so beautiful or so scary in my life.
    “Oh, Bill,” I said anxiously, when he was beside me in the bed, “I don’t want to disappoint you.”
    “That’s not possible,” he whispered. His eyes looked at my body as if it were a drink of water on a desert dune.
    “I don’t know much,” I confessed, my voice barely audible.
    “Don’t worry. I know a lot.” His hands began drifting over me, touching me in places I’d never been touched. I jerked with surprise, then opened myself to him.
    “Will this be different from doing it with a regular guy?” I asked.
    “Oh, yes.”
    I looked up at him questioningly.
    “It’ll be better,” he said in my ear, and I felt a twinge of pure excitement.
    A little shyly, I reached down to touch him, and he made a very human sound. After a moment, the sound became deeper.
    “Now?” I asked, my voice ragged and shaking.
    “Oh, yes,” he said, and then he was on top of me.
    A moment later he found out the true extent of my inexperience.
    “You should have told me,” he said, but very gently. He held himself still with an almost palpable effort.
    “Oh, please don’t stop!” I begged, thinking that the top would fly off my head, something drastic would happen, if he didn’t go on with it.
    “I have no intention of stopping,” he promised a little