John Abbott - Scimitar

Alone with him in the car, alone with him and the stars and the night and the dark silence of the entire universe, she felt as if she’d known him a long, long time.

“Why’d you decide to become a doctor?” she asked.

Her voice softer now, almost a whisper.

“I wanted to help people,” he said.

“That’s totally amazing,” she said. “Because that’s just why I want to be a social worker. So I can help people.”

“I can’t think of anything nobler,” he said.

“I totally agree.”

“I just hope I never change my mind about it. I see so many doctors... well, I’m sure you know. They forget why they went into it in the first place. They forget the purity... the innocence... the dedication. They become nothing more than businessmen of another sort. I hope I never get that way.”

“That’s very beautiful,” she said.

“I mean it sincerely,” he said.

“You’re a very beautiful person,” she said.

“Well... thank you,” he said. “That’s very kind of you. Thank you.”

“Do you feel you’ve known me a long time?” she asked.

“Yes. Since at least this morning,” he said.

“Oh, stop it,” she said, and playfully tapped his hand. “I’m being serious.”

“Yes, I feel I’ve known you a very long time.”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“Because I do. I feel I can tell you anything I’m thinking... or feeling... or hoping... and you won’t laugh at me. I think that’s very rare. And very beautiful,” she said.

“I think you’re very beautiful,” he said.

“Oh, sure.”

“Gorgeous and intelligent and the youngest fifteen-year-old at UCLA.”

“You know, I really believed you?” she said, turning to him and putting her hand on his arm. “That you thought I was fifteen?”

“You didn’t.”

“I did, I swear to God. I kept wondering, does he really think I’m only fifteen? Do I seem that immature to him?”

“On the contrary. You seem very mature.”

“People are always telling me I seem older than nineteen.”

“Well, you do. There’s a very... serious and sensitive side to you, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“Which is in such marvelous contrast to your playfulness.”

“I love having fun, don’t you? Don’t you just love doing fun things?”

“I do.”

“Unexpected things.”

“Yes.”

“Things that... oh, you know!”

She took her hand from his arm, raised it suddenly, tossed it in a What-the-hell gesture, and then put it immediately on his arm again. He covered her hand with his own. She turned to look into his eyes.

“Elita?” he said.

“Yes, Sonny?”

“Would you like to sleep with me tonight?”

“Yes, Sonny,” she said, “I really would.”

She would always remember this night — or at least while it was happening she thought she would remember it always — as the night she stopped being a girl and became a woman. Because no matter what she and the other college girls her age told themselves about being women and wanting to be called women, she knew in her deepest heart that nineteen was still a girl, nineteen was still a teenager, and a teenage girl was simply not a woman, any more than a teenage boy was a man.

Sonny Hemkar was no teenager.

He’s no teenager, Mom. I thought you’d be delighted to learn that. Mom? Please, Mom, come in off that fire escape, okay ?

Until now — until this night in his sleeping compartment, the countryside flashing by outside, the train speeding through the darkness — until these deliriously empty hours of the night when she was full of him and full of herself, Elita had known only three men intimately, all of whom she now realized were merely boys, although one of them had been twenty-four years old. Until now—

There was something frightening about the intensity of his passion.

She found herself wanting to say No, don’t kiss me, even as his lips found hers and even though she wanted desperately for him to kiss her. She found herself wanting to protest his hands on her breasts, heard herself actually saying, “No, please don’t touch my breasts,” longing for him to touch her.

He unbuttoned her blouse...

“Please don’t,” she said.

... spread the blouse in a wide V over her bra, his hands cupping her breasts, urging them out of the bra...

Please don’t, she thought.

... her breasts overflowing the bra, “Oh, please no,” she said, her nipples stiffening to his touch.

She had already told him how much she really did want to sleep with him tonight, but now she kept repeating over and over again in her mind and aloud, please don’t, please don’t, breathless in his fierce embrace, terrified by her own response to his ardor.

Never in her life...

His hands were everywhere, her blouse and skirt falling away, dropping to the floor of the compartment in a clinging whisper of cotton and silk. There were suddenly lights outside, flashing past in a blur, some sort of village or town, traffic lights and street lights, window lights, bright circles and rectangles in an otherwise pitch black landscape. The lights flickered momentarily on her breasts and her belly. She was virtually naked now, standing before him in high heels and panties, her bra still fastened but pulled below her breasts. He did not remove the bra. He could easily have unclasped it to allow her breasts complete freedom, but he chose instead to keep them in partial bondage, lifted by the restraining nylon cups, their sloping tops and nipples elevated to his hands.

The lights of the town fell behind.

A new and deeper darkness enclosed them.

In the darkness his lips found her mouth again. His hands consumed her breasts. Her own hands hung limply at her sides. She could feel the nylon of her panties brushing the insides of her arms, just below the elbows. Her panties were wet, she was afraid he would touch her down there and discover that she was soaking wet, but she wanted him to touch her, find her, and she willed him with all her might to let his hand drop between her legs and into her panties where he would find her achingly wet for him, but he would not release her breasts.

She leaned into him, her hands still hanging loose at her sides, leaned into him with her nipples and her breasts, offering them to his passion as if in sacrifice, her entire body seeming to rush upward into her nipples, hard and burning and yielding to his hands where they worked her relentlessly. She was beginning to feel dizzy. She thrust her tongue into his mouth and jutted her hips toward him, searching for him, finding him hard against the nylon panties, don’t take off all my clothes, she thought, please don’t...

Reading her mind... seeming to read her mind... he did not, would not release her from the bra, choosing instead to keep her partially restrained, nipples bursting... did not, would not remove the bikini panties...

But yes, oh Jesus...

Yes.

... rolling them down now, over her hips, down to...

Yes, that’s it, she thought.

... just where the tangle of her pubic hair began...

Find me, she thought.

... the waistband pressing against the upper side of the blond triangle that defined her...

Please don’t, she thought.

She could not later remember how long he kept her poised between girlhood and womanhood. She could not later remember how long she stood there partially clothed, leaning into his questing hands, trembling as he probed her, discovering her wetness, exploiting her wetness, quivering beneath the onslaught of his incessant touch. When at last he lifted her onto the bed and spread her legs to the darkness and to the night and to his brilliant hardness and murderous passion she thought No, don’t fuck me, but he was already fucking her, oh yes how he was fucking her, and she knew she would never in her lifetime be the same again.