Marion felt weakened by inexpressible agitation and with wrestling futile, gasped remonstrances which she could not even put in words. As she felt that masculine fingertip on the gauzily veiled sanctum of her sex, Marion could only shudder and lie against the bulwark of this physical strength which was being so boldly used for her discomfiture and agitation.
She raised dazed, gray eyes piteously to his in a mute plea for forbearance. But instantly his ardent lips were upon hers once more. She tried not to respond, and to wrest her mouth away.
Then she heard him whisper: “Darling, ah, but you’re so incredibly lovely, oh sister of mine! Let us see whether a lover is some day going to find passion as well as beauty in you.”
“Don’t-oh, d-don’t!” she sighed.
Convulsively her naked thighs clutched the finger which dwelt and moved between them. The finger bore upward. It was imperiously upon the thin strand which protected the wee split so inadequately that it could feel in clear outline the tender groove.
Panting breath issued from four lips, which were almost in contact. With arms still about his neck, Marion dropped the white lids over her eyes, which could not endure the glow of ardor in his face. Suddenly she trembled and swayed like a plant smitten with a breeze as she felt upon her parted lips the soft touches of a libidinous tongue.
With her ten fingers clasped upon the nape of his brawny neck for support, she withdrew the indelicately caressed mouth somewhat. But it was pursued. Gently and dismayingly the tongue of the man played upon the still-parted lips of the quivering girl.
Marion shuddered. She revealed glazed eyes for an instant and then the long golden lashes fell over the orbs once more. Her pinks lips closed upon the slippery intruder which played between them and then they opened again for a dismayed exclamation.
“Oh, how can you lick my mouth like that!” she quavered. “It’s shameful-like an animal. And please, please, take that hand away!”
“Instantly, almost instantly, precious,” he promised. “I just wanted to see whether the sister of the Cochranes’ is really as chilly as her sister and her friends have said. Open the luscious little mouth and see what Brother has for you and then the unwelcome finger will be withdrawn.”
Slowly the panting girl spread the portals of her lips. Anything was better and more endurable, she felt, than that his finger should continue to drive her almost to distraction.
Stanley relieved her of the agitating finger. But he caught her to him even more ardently. And his tongue swiftly invaded the pink, warm cavern of her mouth, where a coiled and apprehensive little tongue awaited it.
Marion swayed feebly in his embrace as she felt not only her mouth but her tongue gently licked. Emotions that bewildered her-since how could any pleasant sensations be expected from so disgraceful a contact-shot through her nerves.
Suddenly he heard her moan softly. She was trembling. And the moist warmth of her own tongue was in motion against his.
He thrilled to this activity, to this confession of reciprocal pleasure on her part in a caress of which she had never even heard. He strove to make his own caresses gentle, not too dismaying for this awakened virginal ardor.
He licked the warm little tongue, felt it respond with a timid sensuality. He withdrew his tongue to the portals of her lips and felt the other tongue advance almost eagerly, as if reluctant to say farewell to its guest.
He licked the delicate lips, the tip of her small tongue, and then suddenly his whole tongue writhed in the effort to surround the girl’s tender, moist organ of speech. Blindly, she gave him fullest access for this insidious caress, which had at first impressed her as so odious.
Soft, moaning sighs, catches of panting breath, revealed more clearly the tremendous effect upon Marion’s senses, even more so than the quivering of her lithe, young body.
She was hugging him passionately by this time. And when he slowly withdrew his tongue entirely, she opened languorous, suffused eyes as if regretfully.
He pointed his tongue temptingly, and slowly the rosy tongue of his sister-in-law emerged to touch and caress it as her own had been caressed.
From the man’s opened mouth her tongue retreated but its fiery, wet companion accompanied it eagerly now.
He took her by the oval cheeks with his palms. Like a lamb, Marion submitted now to his whims. He kissed softly and then licked gently her closed eyes, her cheeks and temples, the lovely dimples of her mouth’s extremities, the slightly tip-tilted, piquant little nose, the round, small chin.
“Just samples of my own private beauty treatment for a bewitching sister who has no possible need of it,” he whispered. “Maro, I wish I had a mirror to hold up for you now. You’re a dream of loveliness with your face flushed and your eyes dreamy but glowing. Maro, darling, I positively think that I shall perish unless I take off that fragile suit and see you as you really are, in all your beauty!”
“Oh-oh, God, Stanley, don’t. Don’t spoil it all!” she gasped, shrinking away from him.
“Spoil it all?” he murmured.
“Yes. We’ve been kissing in that funny, terribly exciting way but Mildred doesn’t mind our kissing. She encourages it. You know how she laughed at me and even scolded me for being bashful about kissing you night and morning. I-I suppose that was kissing-what we’ve just been doing, wasn’t it?”
“You can be certain of that,” he replied, amused and admiring. “Just a tender, affectionate species of emphatic kiss.”
“Well, I can excuse myself, then, for indulging in it-and liking it,” she whispered. “For it was terribly sweet-it went all through me. But we mustn’t do it often, I think,” she added with clouding eyes. “For it makes me feel as-as a girl shouldn’t-so funny and trembly. And it leaves me so very weak and shaky. But now that we are calmer, I must tell you something, Stanley. If we are to be dear friends-brother and sister-you must never, never treat me again as if I weren’t your sister by marriage. You know what I mean. You know the indecent treatment to which you have subjected me. I think it makes it all the worse that Mildred is my dear sister for there’s a kind of disloyalty to her in it. Oh, I know you didn’t mean that, any more than I did. But you must be able to see that I don’t dare risk being alone with you again if you are to play indecent pranks with me, even if the other folks think they are just fun.”
“I merely looked you over in that becoming bathing suit,” he smiled. “I know the suit is far from decent,” she said “You’re not entirely to blame perhaps. But you know you’ve done some unforgivable things, Stanley, which I’m forgiving nevertheless. We’ll forget them. But I’ll bathe with you in a dress like this in future only on condition that you promise not to manhandle me as you have done today.”
“But the kisses are not forbidden?” he inquired with a casualness which would have made a girl of more experience suspicious of what was in his mind.
“No, we may kiss since Mildred actually wishes it and since kisses appear to be regarded as quite unimportant among these young couples and girls and boys,” she conceded, almost eagerly.
And then she added slowly:
“I’ve learned from you something surprising, Stanley. That there are more kinds of kisses than one. I don’t know-I’m not certain-that we should do that again-what we just did. For it did such funny things to me!”
“Oh, it’s just a kiss after all,” he said stoutly. “And you have just conceded that we may kiss. You will not refuse me such kisses as I wish to give you-or to receive-Maro, dear?”
Deliberating, she nodded her head of dark gold.
“No,” she said. “I promise. But-and I know you will think me silly, but remember I’ve lived almost a convent life-are there still other kinds, besides the one I knew and the one you taught me today?”
“Quite possibly. I might dig out one or two other varieties,” he observed placidly. Inwardly, he was both amused and touched by the innocence of this girl of some twenty years.
He knew this innocence genuine for he knew from his wife and from Marion herself the cloistered upbringing which she had had under the Puritan care of a wealthy androphobe of a grandmother. She was some months past twenty, to be sure, but hardly entering adolescence in respect to knowledge of the emotions which sway mankind. From private and expert-but always carefully supervised-tutelage in the privacy of her California home, she had recently passed into the junior years of a girls’ college on the coast. And she was now passing a summer vacation with the recently wedded elder sister, whom she had but rarely seen in a decade or so.
They had been standing face to face. Marion was so absorbed in their conversation and so gratified that her fine-looking brother-in-law should agree to accept “mere” kisses and pledge himself to spare her the more flagrant transgressions which so dismayed her that she had entirely forgotten the continued nakedness of her round and lovely bottom.
She swung about just then, her attention summoned by the call of a bird. When her right hand chanced to drop to her side and slightly rearward, she gave a cry of shame as she touched the bare half-globe.
“You see?” she murmured, tugging at the silk, which had been shoved above the snowy heaps. “You see? It’s things like this which I meant. The idea of uncovering me-in such a place! But now that you’ve promised to be good-“
“In all respects save kisses” he reminded her, with a smile.
“Well, kisses aren’t fundamentally wicked, or even naughty or compromising, are they? I shouldn’t, of course, consent to our pact unless I were sincerely assured they were all right.”
“You’ve had some opportunity even in these three days of your stay to see how lightly such caresses are regarded by quite the best of the younger set in Chicago here on holiday,” he said. “Wedded or unwedded, they kiss as freely as affectionate children on meeting and on parting and between times. Of course, you understand that kisses lead to things-things not quite so simple and innocent-and such occurrences are far from rare in our pleasant little colony. But, in general, touches of the lips and a bit of warm spooning are very pleasant. They bespeak the absence, too, of foolish and harassing jealousies when exchanged among married groups, as you’ve already see done rather freely. Our young friends are a very splendid crew, don’t you find them so?”
“Oh, very likable!” she cried earnestly. “Of course they confuse me at times. I know only a few of them as yet. But, now that you speak of it, they don’t kiss in the way that you just showed me, do they?”
“Not so commonly,” he hastened to admit. “But they, well, that peculiarly delicious caress is more or less reserved for privacy, as in our case just now, Maro. It’s a kind of sweet intimacy that would rather-er-lose its zest if employed in a crowd, don’t you think? Not that any of these pink tongues around us are ignorant of the delicately exciting mingling.”
“Well,” she pondered, “I don’t see that it makes it any worse to kiss in isolated parts as we’ve just done, Stanley.”
“Not in the least,” he agreed heartily. “And some of the other kisses which I mean to show you, dear girl, are not really designed for any publicity.”
“Other kisses?” she murmured. “I forget. You did say there were other kinds, didn’t you? But none of them could possibly make creepy sensations run on one’s spine and all one’s nerves sort of tingle as it did when we did that to each other?”
“No,” he whispered.
“I’m certain of it,” she assured him, but was stirred to a sort of panic by something in the brown eyes over which hung dark-brown and curly hair.
“Well, we’ll see,” he said vaguely.