Dan Simmons - Olympos

When they broke apart long enough for her to pull the tails of her blouse out of her skirt, dropping the shirt behind her—her body and bra pale in the dim reflected light from the sky and in the yellow glow of the dashboard radio and dials—she said, “My father says it could mean war.”

“It’s just a lousy quarantine ,” said Sam, both arms around her, his fingers fumbling with the still-strange hooks and eyes of her brassiere. “It’s not like we’re invading Cuba or anything,” he added. He couldn’t get the damned thing loose.

Alys smiled in the soft light, put her hands behind her, and the bra miraculously fell free.

Sam began nuzzling and kissing her breasts. They were very young breasts—larger and firmer than an adolescent girl’s little bud breasts, but still not fully formed. The areolae were as puffy as the nipples; Sam noticed this in the light from the radio dial, and then he lowered his flushed face to nuzzle and suck again.

“Easy, easy!” said Alys. “Not so rough. You’re always so rough.”

“Sorry,” said Sam. He began kissing her again. This time her lips were warm, her tongue was present… and busy. He felt himself getting more excited as he pressed her back toward the passenger door of the Bel Air. The front seat was wider and deeper and softer than the davenport in their parlor at home. He had to wiggle to get out from under the giant steering wheel and he had to be careful—even here at the end of Miller’s Lane, he didn’t want to accidentally honk the horn.

Lying half atop her, his erection pressing against her left leg, his hands busy on her breasts and his tongue busy finding her tongue, Sam became so excited that he almost ejaculated the first instant she set her long fingers on his corduroyed thigh.

“But what if the Russians do attack?” Alys whispered when he raised his face for a moment to breathe. The car was too damned hot. He turned off the ignition with his left hand.

“Stop that,” he said. He knew what she was doing. She’d chosen the track and line. She wanted him thinking about which one it might be. He wanted only to appreciate what the boy-Sam was thinking and feeling.

“Ouch,” said Alys. He had pressed her back so that her shoulders were against the large door handle. He was lowering his face toward her for more kissing when she whispered, “Do you want to get in the backseat?”

Sam could hardly breathe. That phrase had been their signal the last weeks for the serious stuff—not just getting to third base, which he had several times now with Alys, but going all the way, which they’d come close to twice but not quite achieved.

Alys went around her side—prissily pulling her blouse on, but not buttoning it again, he noticed—and Sam went around the driver’s side. The overhead light came on until they’d secured both the rear doors. Sam rolled his window down a bit so that he could have some air—he still seemed to be having a problem breathing normally—and also so he could hear any car approaching down Miller’s Lane in case Barney happened to come down here in his old black-and-white police cruiser left over from before the War.

The two had to get reintroduced all over again, but within moments, he had his shirt open to feel her breasts against his chest and Alys sprawled lengthwise on the wide seat, him half on her, half falling off, her legs partially raised and his bent strangely because they were both taller than the backseat was wide.

He slipped his right hand up her leg, feeling her own warm breath come more quickly on his cheek when he paused in kissing her. She was wearing stockings. Sam had never felt anything so soft. He felt the garter where the nylon stockings attached to the…

“Oh, come on,” said Ulysses, laughing and speaking through the boy despite himself. “This has to be an anachronism.”

Alys smiled up at him and he saw the real woman through the girl’s dilated pupils. “It’s not,” she whispered, giving him the full length of her tongue now and sliding her hand down, rubbing his erection through the slightly dampened corduroy. “Honest,” she said, still rubbing him. “It’s called a panty girdle and it’s what she wears. Pantyhose haven’t been invented yet.”

“Shut up,” said Sam, closing his eyes as he kissed her and pressed his lower body against her playing hand. “Shut up, please.”

He couldn’t get the metal ring out from around the round snap-stud that she later explained was called the “garter”—it just wouldn’t move. Sam kept moving his hand from between her legs—where the fabric was wet, he was sure he could feel her warming to him through the fabric—back to the goddamned sonofabitching garter thing.

Alys giggled. “I can take the whole thing off,” she whispered.

As she did so, Sam realized that they needed more room. He opened his driver’s side rear door—the light blinded them—

“Sam!”

He reached up and switched off the overhead light. For a minute neither of them moved, two deer blinded in headlights, but when he could hear the wind through the late-autumn leaves over the pounding of his heart, he leaned over her again.

The distraction had kept him from coming too soon. He tasted her lips, lowered his face to her breasts, and licked softly. She pulled his head closer. Her hand went lower, expertly undid his belt, unsnapped the top snap, and tugged the zipper down too quickly for his piece of mind.

He emerged unscathed and throbbing.

“Sam?” she whispered as he levitated into position above her. Her stockings and underpants were in a bunch under his knee. He almost panted as he shoved her skirt higher.

“What?”

“Did you bring… you know… a thing?”

“Oh, fuck that ,” he snapped through the boy’s voice, not even pretending to be in character.

She giggled but he stopped that noise with an openmouthed kiss. His heart threatened to break through his ribs as he shifted his weight and she opened her legs to him. He caught a glimpse of her dark skirt riding up almost to her bare breasts, of her pale thighs, of the vertical rather than triangular floss of darkness there between her thighs…

“Easy,” whispered Alys as she reached down and found him. She cupped his scrotum expertly, ran her fingers up the length of his penis, captured the glans with her fingertips. “Easy, Odysseus,” she purred.

“I am… Noman,” he whispered between pants. She was positioning him. The preseminal fluid at the tip of his penis was dampening her thighs as she maneuvered him to the best angle. He could feel the heat flow out of her.

She squeezed him—hard enough to make him gasp but not hard enough to make the sixteen-year-old him come. “How can you say that,” she whispered into his mouth, “when this proves otherwise?”

Alys set the swollen head of his penis against her moist and tight labia, then moved her hand up against his cheek. Sam caught the scent of her excitement on her own fingers and that alone almost made him come. He hesitated this perfect second before continuing.

The flash came from directly ahead of the car, beyond the drive-in movie screen, and it was not brighter than a thousand suns, it was brighter than ten thousand suns. It turned everything in the musky darkness into a photographic negative—all black-blacks and pure whites. There was no noise, not yet.

“You have to be kidding,” he said, poised above Alys as if he was doing push-ups, with only the tip of his erection touching her right now.

“The city’s forty miles away,” whispered Alys, pulling him down, trying to pull him. “We have a long time until the shock wave gets here. A long time.” She gave him her mouth and set her hands solidly on his back and butt, pulling him closer.