Frank Harris - My Life and Loves, Book 1

«Really?» she scoffed, smiling; «that's not a custom here.»

«Are you less generous than they are?» I asked, and the next moment I had taken her face in my hands and kissed her on the lips.

She put her hands on my shoulders and left her eyes on mine.

«We're going to be friends,» she said; «I felt it when I saw you: don't stay away too long!» «Will you see me tomorrow afternoon?»

I asked. «I want that dance lesson!» «Surely,» she replied. «I'll tell Lily in the morning.» And once more our hands met: I tried to draw her to me for another kiss; she held back with a smiling,

«Tomorrow afternoon!» «Tell me your name» I begged, «so that I may think of it.» «Lorna,» she replied, «you funny boy!» I went my way with pulses hammering, blood aflame and hope in my heart.

Next morning I called again upon Smith but the pretty servant («Rose,» she said her name was), told me that he was nearly always at Judge Stephens', «five or six miles out,» she thought it was. «They always come for him in a buggy,» she added. So I said I'd write and make an appointment, and I did write and asked him to let me see him next morning. That same morning Willie recommended to me a pension kept by a Mrs. Gregory, an English woman, the wife of an old Baptist clergyman, who would take good care of me for four dollars a week. Immediately I went with him to see her and was delighted to find that she lived only about a hundred yards from Mrs. Mayhew, on the opposite side of the street. Mrs. Gregory was a large, motherly woman, evidently a lady, who had founded this boarding house to provide for a rather reckless husband and two children, a big pretty girl, Kate, and a lad a couple of years younger. Mrs. Gregory was delighted with my English accent, I believe, and showed me special favor at once by giving me a large outside room with its own entrance and steps into the garden. In an hour I had paid my bill at the Eldridge House and had moved in. I showed a shred of prudence by making Willie promise Mrs. Gregory that he would turn up each Saturday with the five dollars for my board; the dollar extra was for the big room. In due course I shall tell how he kept his promise and discharged his debt to me. For the moment everything was easily, happily settled. I went out and ordered a decent suit of ordinary tweeds and dressed myself up in my best blue suit to call upon Mrs. Mayhew after lunch.

The clock crawled, but on the stroke of three I was at her door: a colored maid admitted me. «Mrs. Mayhew,» she said in her pretty singing voice, «will be down right soon: I'll go and call Miss Lily.»

In five minutes Miss Lily appeared, a dark slip of a girl with shining black hair, wide, laughing mouth, temperamental thick, red lips, and grey eyes fringed with black lashes; she had hardly time to speak to me when Mrs. Mayhew came in. «I hope you two'll be great friends,» she said prettily. «You're both about the same age,» she added. In a few minutes Miss Lily was playing a waltz on the Steinway and with my arm around the slight, flexible waist of my inamorata I was trying to waltz. But alas! after a turn or two I became giddy and in spite of all my resolutions had to admit that I should never be able to dance. «You have got very pale,» Mrs.

Mayhew said, «you must sit down on the sofa a little while.» Slowly the giddiness left me; before I had entirely recovered Miss Lily with kindly words of sympathy had gone home, and Mrs. Mayhew brought me in a cup of excellent coffee; I drank it down and was well at once.

«You should go in and lie down,» said Mrs. Mayhew, still full of pity. «See,» and she opened a door, «there's the guest bedroom all ready.» I saw my chance and went over to her. «If you'd come too,» I whispered, and then, «The coffee has made me quite well: won't you, Lorna, give me a kiss? You don't know how often I said your name last night, you dear!» And in a moment I had again taken her face and put my lips on hers. She gave me her lips this time and my kiss became a caress; but in a little while she drew away and said, «Let's sit and talk; I want to know all you are doing.» So I seated myself beside her on the sofa and told her all my news. She thought I would be comfortable with the Gregorys. «Mrs. Gregory is a good woman,» she added, «and I hear the girl's engaged to a cousin: do you think her pretty?» «I think no one pretty but you, Lorna,» I said, and I pressed her head down on the arm of the sofa and kissed her. Her lips grew hot: I was certain. At once I put my hand down on her sex; she struggled a little at first, which I took care should bring our bodies closer, and when she ceased struggling I put my hands up her dress and began caressing her sex: it was hot and wet, as I knew it would be, and opened readily. But in another moment she took the lead.

«Some one might find us here,» she whispered. «I've let the maid go: come up to my bedroom,» and she took me upstairs. I begged her to undress: I wanted to see her figure; but she only said, «I have no corsets on; I don't often wear them in the house. Are you sure you love me, dear?» «You know I do!» was my answer. The next moment I lifted her on to the bed, drew up her clothes, opened her legs and was in her. There was no difficulty and in a moment or two I came, but went right on poking passionately; in a few minutes her breath went and came quickly and her eyes fluttered and she met my thrusts with sighs and nippings of her sex. My second orgasm took some time and all the while Lorna became more and more responsive, till suddenly she put her hands on my bottom and drew me to her forcibly while she moved her sex up and down awkwardly to meet my thrusts with a passion I had hardly imagined. Again and again I came and the longer the play lasted the wilder was her excitement and delight. She kissed me hotly, foraging and thrusting her tongue into my mouth. Finally she pulled up her chemise to get me further into her and, at length, with little sobs, she suddenly got hysterical and, panting wildly, burst into a storm of tears. That stopped me: I withdrew my sex and took her in my arms and kissed her; at first she clung to me with choking sighs and streaming eyes, but, as soon as she had won a little control, I went to the toilette and brought her a sponge of cold water and bathed her face and gave her some water to drink-that quieted her. But she would not let me leave her even to arrange my clothes. «Oh, you great, strong dear,» she cried, with her arms clasping me. «Oh, who would have believed such intense pleasure possible: I never felt anything like it before; how could you keep on so long? Oh, how I love you, you wonder and delight. «I am all yours,» she added gravely.

«You shall do what you like with me: I am your mistress, your slave, your plaything, and you are my god and my love! Oh, darling! Oh!»

There was a pause while I smiled at her extravagant praise, then suddenly she sat up and got out of bed. «You wanted to see my figure»; she exclaimed, «here it is, I can deny you nothing; I only hope it may please you,» and in a moment or two she showed herself nude from head to stocking. As I had guessed, her figure was slight and lissom, with narrow hips, but she had a great bush of hair on her Mount of Venus and her breasts were not so round and firm as Jessie's: still she was very pretty and well-formed with the fines attaches (slender wrists and ankles), which the French are so apt to overestimate. They think that small bones indicate a small sex; but I have found the exceptions are very numerous, even if there is such a rule. After I had kissed her breasts and navel and praised her figure, she disappeared in the bathroom, but was soon with me again on the sofa which we had left an hour or so before. «Do you know,» she began,

«my husband assured me that only the strongest young man could go twice with a woman in one day? I believed him; aren't we women fools?