Well, get in between my legs then,” he suggested. “Legs may hug as well as arms, Maro.”
For a moment she resisted but presently she found herself, nevertheless, held by hard thighs which pressed her own. She snuggled against him now in an increased intimacy of contact which was very comfortable and very delightful, if only one could mentally ignore the great affair which made him male and which, she decided, he could not help having or even help its being so infinitely disconcerting and so agitating, so suggestive and thrilling.
She was pulling roguishly at the matted dark hair upon his great chest. “You licked my whole face like a puppy,” she said. “It made me feel so queer. But now I know why-all this fur shows that you are just a great St. Bernard-or maybe a splendid mastiff.”
He grinned boyishly. “Getting used to brother’s big body, aren’t you, Maro?” he commented. “Not so frightened over seeing me in this rag of a two-ounce suit as you were?”
She shook her head, flushing. “I guess I was silly about that,” she said. “But you did-you do-look so very bare in it, and you’re so big and white and hairy, only burned here and there. And I’d never seen any men this way, you know. But I do begin to like to see you this way-and you are splendid, you know. And I do begin to see, too, that it is rather foolish to be squeamish about being as unhampered and comfortable as can be-for swimming or for any sports. But all this hair-it’s just a trifle bothersome. Isn’t it the least bit indecent to have it all on display?”
“Oh, ‘all’!” he exclaimed. “Only samples, sweet sister. You’d be surprised!”
She flushed more deeply but continued to twist the dark strands playfully and even to rub the exhibited nipples with soft hands in a new forwardness which she failed to recognize as such and which hugely pleased the man. “It does make you like a great animal,” she murmured. “I’d be scared if there were more of it!”
“My blessed Maro!” he exulted. “You’ve found a sort of finger kiss that is extremely pleasant-and it’s your own invention, as far as I am concerned. When you rub me there and twirl my nipples under your palms it gives me sensations!”
“Sensations?” she queried ashamedly. “I’m not being disgustingly naughty, I hope. I-I sort of like to pet you here-and-since my fingers seem to please you-well-could I just…”
Her soft voice died away as, quivering, she found fortitude and courage to lay her warm lips on the pink circle and the rosier tip which imitated so absurdly the ornaments of her own swelling bust.
Stanley’s surprise, as well as his pleasure in this unexpected advance of his timid and modest sister-in-law, were very genuine. For it was a novelty to him to learn that the ardent kisses of lovely feminine lips on such a sterile spot could have an effect so very pleasant.
He yearned suddenly for more of those kisses. As if reading his thoughts, and content to thus assuage her own desires and his since surely this was a kiss she had been taught was permissible between them, Marion let a rosy, shamed tongue mingle with the movements of her lips.
For several minutes-she kissed each nipple and licked each tiny tip, too, with growing gusto and pleasure. “Oh!” she cried chokingly, showing him for an instant a rosy and intent face, “You’d be surprised, Stanley, dear, how very nice it is to pet you this way. And I’m going to do for you the same thing you did to my nose and my chin…”
Her voice died away, muffled by the flesh and hair of his chest. He shivered, to the gentle, and then to the feverish, suction which her dainty lips applied to each of his nipples. “My little precious!” he sighed tenderly. “That is absolutely delightful, and all your own, as I’ve told you. And since it feels so good I’m beginning to envy the women who have babies and nurse them.”
“I’m afraid it must be really very naughty,” Marion sighed, raising a flushed face reluctantly, “since it makes us both feel so-agitated. And Grandmother always said that we should be suspicious of things that we found very enjoyable, for the devil baits his traps with tempting sensations.”
“We’ve got a good many of the grandmotherly shackles still to break, haven’t we?” he smiled.
“Oh, I know she’s old fashioned, but she is a dear,” his companion conceded. “But until now I’ve had only her. Now I’ve got you and Mildred and I can’t tell you how happy it makes me! Don’t you think Mildred is a darling-in all ways, of course-but I mean for letting us, even coaxing us, to have such lovely ‘spoonings’ together?”
“She’s all of that!” he said fervently. “She’s a broadminded and clever old sweet, and she loves us both with all her heart.”
“But I just cannot understand,” observed Marion, as she pressed the narrow band of his bathing-suit into a mere wisp and laid her flushed cheek on his white, hard stomach, “how you can seem so indifferent or even amused when she lets everybody in sight kiss her whenever they meet-that Gerard Crandall and Charley Barlow and, oh, all the grown men and the boys too.”
“She’s very kissable,” said Stanley, unruffled. “And it’s a great treat for them to feel those lips of hers melt against theirs in that way she has of making a kiss a real event. It’s the custom of the country also, my sweet.”
“Oh, I know,” murmured Marion with just a touch of what she failed to recognize as jealousy in her tone. “I’ve seen how you lay your lips on those of Sylvia Crandall and Suzanne Barlow and all these other girls on a sudden impulse when something you have said or done has amused or pleased you. But, well, anyhow, you don’t go out with any of them and kiss and kiss and kiss the way you do with me, do you?”
“Not even with Mildred,” he laughed.
He took her head of dusky gold in his broad palms and, after rubbing his almost naked belly with her unresisting but reddening soft cheeks, he suddenly lowered the lovely head until one of the girl’s cheeks lay right on his enlarged and stiffened sex.
For an instant the maiden failed to recognize the nature of the contact. Then the warmth of velvet cheek and of swollen virility communicated through the thin black silk. He saw her lovely eyes widen and her face glow scarlet. Her white neck stiffened into revolt and he allowed her to raise her abashed head.
“Oh, my God, Stanley, how could you do a thing like that!” she gasped tremulously.
Her eyes started wildly into his and he saw that the maiden was shivering. It was clear that an episode which would have passed as a suggestive and welcome joke in the midst of the young colonists on the beach, and which would have aroused uproarious laughter and perhaps would have brought him a slap on the cheek and then a kiss from some young wife thus affronted, had torn this virgin’s spirit tremendously. “What?” he queried, with disingenuous innocence. “Oh, you mean the laying of your cheek where ‘little girls mustn’t touch!’ It was nothing to get so stirred up about. Just a momentary hard pillow for my small sister. Don’t you recognize the fact, dear, that this puritan and ‘chaste’ upbringing you’ve had has just succeeded in making you squeamish about bodies, including your own adorable body?”
Still wide-eyed, Marion pondered this for a minute. “Perhaps-“ she faltered, “you may be right, Stanley, to some extent. I see what you mean, at least. Since we’re all human beings together, why make ogres out of each other? Is it something like that? Yet certainly, for the sake of the race, we must maintain certain reserves, and you wouldn’t want girls of your own household to be entirely blase and hardened, would you?”
And Marion looked grieved. “I don’t think I’ve been as squeamish about bodies as you accuse me of being. I’m not conscious of having harbored bad thoughts about them or being unduly obsessed by them. Though, of course-“
She flushed again at her effort at a frank self-disclosure. “Of course,” she continued, “I’ve been affected by our ‘petting.’ That couldn’t be avoided, could it? But I think I was clear minded, at first anyway, in merely a keen admiration for your strong body.”
With a soft laugh, he caught her up for a quick hug and a kiss.
“You are the cutest thing, Maro!” he said. “But you’ll be the death of me yet! Listen, Mildred thinks you should pick yourself a nice, wealthy, attractive husband, and there will be plenty of aspirants. But consider this thought in case any man should strike your fancy strongly enough so that you accept his suit: You’ll be condemning him to an unpleasant destiny because I’ll certainly kick him all about the place and out the front door!”
“But good heavens!” gasped Marion, wide of eye once more. “I don’t want to get married! I haven’t the slightest notion of it!”
“You’d better not!” he growled with a smile in his brown eyes. “At least not until the real prince comes along, one whom I can wholly approve and think worthy of you.”
She paid no attention in her ardent desire to disclaim utterly her sister’s benevolent plans. “I’d far rather be just a sister to you and Mildred,” she said. “And maybe a friend to your very best friends.”
“A worse fate-for you and for us-could readily be imagined,” he smiled.
“Yet,” suggested Marion, calming a little and continuing a gentle massage of his belly as she lay in his arms, “yet, after all, it’s sort of tyrannical for you to assume to forbid me, in case I wished. It’s as if you were to announce possession of me, as if I were a conquered people or a newly discovered land.”
“Looked at like that,” he admitted, “it sounds detestable of me.”
“Oh, not detestable!” cried Marion softly.
With one bare arm she hugged his neck while her other hand trailed downward along the isthmus of dark hair which led from the grove on his chest. The hand nipped and pulled gently. It slipped beneath the fabric to follow that fascinating band of hair down over the navel. “Not detestable!” she disclaimed again. “Do you know; Stanley, I wasn’t the least bit peeved, really. I rather liked you so bossy.”
He held his breath, maintaining an utter silence lest he should disturb her little reverie. For in that reverie the girl did not observe at all that the primitive construction of his suit made the present location of her caressing fingers on his abdomen rather perilous.
In her interest in that trail of soft hair, she pursued it well below the indentation of his navel. And suddenly her fingers paused in brief bewilderment. Then she cried out chokingly in deepest shame. She snatched away her hand. She buried her rosy face in his neck.
For the isthmus of hair had ended suddenly in a regular thicket. And, pressed downward into that thicket by the confinement of the strained fabric, lay a bald, smooth, warm, hard something which her fingertips had momentarily touched-touched and then gropingly taken just the merest bit of its substance into a clasp which delighted him beyond words.
“Oh-o-o-o-o-h-oh, God-Stanley-!” she gasped in a wee wail. “I-I didn’t m-mean-I didn’t realize-can you ever forgive me?”
“Precious numbskull,” he soothed, the tan of his face suffused with red, “it was just a joke on you. I let it happen-with delight, I assure you. You haven’t committed the crime of the ages. No longer ago than last week, when we were having a beach picnic in the moonlight, a young schoolgirl of this colony performed the same exploration on my body. And Mildred, sitting on my other side, observed it and smiled at me. But this girl of whom I speak did it deliberately, out of purely sensual curiosity, all the while continuing to show me the naked bust which had escaped from her little suit and which had produced that swelling in my bathing costume in the first place. “She was not sure of impunity at first-she’s only seventeen-and her movements were very furtive and slow. But she soon saw she could act as she liked and she was too absorbed to notice Mildred’s amused, sparkling eyes. She did not just touch and run, as you did, Maro. No, she grasped and toyed and fondled. But suddenly she withdrew her hand. She kissed me hotly and furtively on the thigh and she rolled over and buried her face in her arms. She was shaking like a leaf in the moonlight and Mildred vows she spent. And that same lady swears too that it was undoubtedly the first time this small but lascivious Betty had ever had the opportunity to touch such a nude affair, which may be correct.”
“Spent-sp-spent?” whispered Marion. “Oh, yes-oh-d-don’t t-tell me-I think I understand. But how could you and Mildred let that go on! I should have cried out if I had been there and I should have lunged at her!”
“It was by no means an unnatural thing for her to want to do, the sensual, curious child,” observed Stanley. “And so, when she found by slow experiment that it was permitted to her, she couldn’t resist-any more than I could. Yet I think this small Betty comes nearer to being in what we call a state of innocence than any other member of this group of young people.”
“Well, I don’t like it!” announced Marion. “You should all be ashamed-you and Mildred and the girl-and I’d have done something about it if I’d been there!”
“Who’s being possessive now?” he laughed far from ill pleased by the manifest but unconscious jealously which moved his sister-in-law a jealously of which he knew that even Mildred had not been entirely free at the time of the episode he had narrated, but which that charming wife of his had found provocative of sensuality rather than sadness.
But this reflection stirred him to emulate the frankness of this beautiful maiden and to try to make clear to her the psychology of an earlier topic. “You are speaking-and you’ve been pondering on the matter-of the way in which we kiss and fondle and take even greater liberties without regard for ties of marriage or kinship or anything else,” he said. “That is pretty nearly universal nowadays wherever young people, married or unwedded, get together with a party of friends or even with a few strangers scattered among them. I’m not claiming it’s pure joy for me to see Mildred’s lovely lips crushed against the mouth of another man in a kiss from which each of them draws pleasure. But there’s such a thing-it’s a bit of rather abstruse psychology, Maro-as finding a queer enjoyment in what is theoretically an outrage and a grievance.
“It’s certainly a brazen pilfering of my property by the man-a brazen delivery of it by Mildred-with no account taken of me in the transaction whatever. And the woman may as well find that-often without her being able to explain or analyze it-she gets a thrill out of being robbed of her exclusive rights to the man’s caresses and affection.
“There are plenty of cases in which this tendency to gain a perverse delight out of being outraged may grow to an extent which a maiden like you would find incredible. I have known-I know now-a very highly placed man who was visited at his home by an old college mate in whose utter reticence he thought he could confide, and he carried his naked and squealing young wife to the bed of his guest and left her there. I know another who performed the unspeakable act of drugging his own unmarried sister-with whom I’ve always thought him to be unconsciously in love-and allowing his closest male friend to help him strip her to the skin. And they made of it a rite lasting more than an hour, not counting the subsequent two or three hours during which, at some risk of the girl recovering sufficiently to know what was going on, the two rascals did everything except take her virginity.
“This first man-he’s a wealthy single man-whispered the tale to me himself at a club. And I hardly knew whether to feel the more flattered that he should so highly rate my trustworthiness or to feel insulted that he should feel I would not violently resent what he had done.”
Marion was squeezing her soft lips with the fingers of one hand as if to choke back agitated words. “What-oh, my God, how foul! What else did they do to her?” she whispered shakily.
“I’d better not tell you,” he said. “You’re pretty overwrought already, sweet sister. But what I am driving at is that all the sensuality which really sways the world in shot with perversity. And these chaps were not roughnecks at all but very respectable and respected citizens impelled by lust to sudden rampage.”
“Tell me,” he heard in a faint whisper.
“They removed their clothing,” he went on, “and they coiled her fingers about their excited members. They lay beside her, pressing her between them. They lay upon her. They rubbed their excited tools-“
“Stanley!” expostulated the girl feebly.
“-upon her naked body, he continued. “You’ve asked for this, Maro! They raised her loins and dragged her to the edge of her bed. Then they parted her legs to permit themselves to rub their stiff organs right in the groove of her sex. They laughed to see her face redden and her white body grow tense as what they were doing affected her nerves and gave her lecherous dreams even in her unbroken unconsciousness.
“The brother heard his maddened friend gasp out a plea that the girl should be violated and an offer of a fortune for the privilege. He laughed, more than half-crazed himself, and he vowed that he himself would give much more than that if he dared possess her.”
“No-no-no!” gasped the trembling Marion, her voice rising into a little shriek. “No more-don’t tell me more! It’s like a glimpse into the inferno of human-inhuman-foulness and brutality. Oh, Stanley, it hurts me somehow-wholly aside from shocking me unspeakably. For something of horror now seems to rest even upon the gentle, tender caresses which are so lovely since they lead to passion and passion leads to such excesses.”
“You’re passionate, aren’t you, old sweetness?” said Stanley happily. “I must confess that I didn’t think you were until I saw your marvelous response to my kisses.”
“Mildred says-“ whispered Marion shamefacedly.
She paused, hesitating, and then laid her lips to his ear. “She says I am very passionate by nature-like her-like our parents-like you. I don’t know how she knows or even whether she’s right. I didn’t know it myself. If she is correct-“ she breathed.
“Yes Mildred told me you would be a darling volcano if aroused,” he said indiscreetly. “She explained that she was sure you were passionate by nature.”
“How dare she tell you that and then go on to encourage us to be alone together and to pet!” cried Marion indignantly. “Why, it’s just as if she had said to you: ‘Here’s my hot-blooded young sister. Kiss and hug her and she’ll get very excited and you’ll see how very naughty she can be, though she poses as such a prim thing!’ I don’t think it was nice of her at all, really, I don’t.”
“You know she just wanted to pry you out of your otherworldness, to counteract your upbringing, to make you one of the young set to which you were born,” he said mildly careful not to caress her in this guarded mood. “And your fortunate brother-in-law is the chosen instrument of the process.”
“Are you just an ‘instrument,’ Stanley?” she asked. “Don’t you really mean any of the sweet things you have done to me?”
“You know whether I mean them, sweetness, little beauty with the exquisite face and the dear dimples and the shining hair!” he whispered.
He was half lying upon her now as they both turned suddenly dangerously tender. And Marion, looking him full in the eyes, was trembling, disconcerted, happy, unresisting.
He buried his face, his moving lips, in her lovely neck. He kissed her upper arms, the shaven nooks beneath them. He let his lips return to her for a torrid kiss.
And his mouth sank to a bare and comely shoulder, so very poorly protected, like its mate, by the loose, scant garment she wore. “You would kiss and pet my body, would you, trying to outrage a poor, delicate creature when all I had done was to kiss and caress your sweet face!” He raised his head to observe with her loving mockery. “Well, there is such a thing as revenge in this humdrum world, as dainty pirates like you may discover!”