Scott Spencer - Endless Love

“David,” Jade said, touching my face. She turned me toward her and put her mouth on mine.

I embraced her with all my strength; her vagina was against my knee, moving back and forth.

“I feel so much,” she said. “It’s scary.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m very frightened.”

“Only with you.” She ran her hand over my face. I caught one of her fingers in my mouth and sucked it blindly. It tasted of salt. “Only with you, David. It’s so strange.”

I rolled on top of her. Her legs flew apart; her hands gripped my slippery back and pressed me down.

“Don’t wait,” she said. “Come inside me. I want to feel you inside me.”

“I don’t want it to end,” I said.

“Inside me.”

I slipped in so easily. It was only when I pushed myself all the way in that I felt the tug of her flesh. She seemed to narrow, further in.

I came immediately. She was so wet and I didn’t make anything of my orgasm—no particular interest in it; it was something occurring on the side—and I remained just as hard so Jade scarcely knew it had happened. I stopped to rest for a moment and she looked questioningly at me. Then I began to make love to her. I was clumsy, surprised by the limitation of our bodies. Only our nerves, our imagination, and our desire were infinite; our bodies remained beneath gravity’s thumb, ruled by the stern congress of tendons and joints. More than once I misjudged how close together we were and our bodies slapped together with a hollow wet clap.

I could feel it getting a little out of control. Her arms were thrown out to either side, her legs opened wide, she was moving up and down and from side to side and we were slipping around quite a bit. There was no control. I held on to her and every now and then her hands would grab on to me. Then we’d be tilted to one side and in danger of falling out of bed altogether. The racket we must have been making. I wouldn’t be surprised if the front desk got a few calls of complaint. And if any single, lonely guests found themselves with an ear to the wall and a hand on their middle, I would have to forgive them. We turned slowly in the bed as we made love. A clock with one hand. The bedsprings were the very soul of indiscretion and at a certain point the headboard began to thwack against the wall. Jade had begun her high warbling hum, a tone like a sad, unendurably erotic pitchpipe. I felt another orgasm taking shape within me, locating itself not so much in my genitals as in my belly, the backs of my legs. I slowed the pace and this time Jade didn’t protest. She moved her head back and forth and said my name and I said hers.

Suddenly, I withdrew from her completely. She let out a whimper of surprise and, instinctually, brought her hand down onto herself and squeezed. I kissed that hand and then it moved away and I kissed her hair, her belly. I was straddling her, looking at her, knowing that my eyes looked glassy and half mad—like hers. She was panting and shivering and her body continued to move over the mattress, as if we were still joined.

“I love you,” I said. “It’s so much more, so much, but I don’t know what to say. Nothing’s changed. I remember everything, even the things that have changed. I love you, Jade. I love you.”

“Come in me,” she said. She lifted herself up with her hands around my neck and kissed me. Then she reached down for me and pressed the head of my penis into her. “I want to feel us,” she said. And when I lowered myself upon her and sank as deep as I could go, her voice was replaced by that high keening hum. I watched her face as best I could. Those strange contortions that would be so horrible under any other circumstances. Her lips parting, stretching, her mouth opening in a silent howl. Eyes closed and then suddenly open, staring up at me with real helplessness, mixed with hunger and surprise. The heel of her hand hit my chest; it seemed for a moment as if she were going to try to push me off of her. But it passed. She was rising toward me, levitating, holding on with her hard competent hands. I could feel her reaching her climax and I almost stopped because I didn’t want it to end. It was, after all, how we’d taught each other to make love: the sin of the Adamites; the psychedelia of the suppressed orgasm. Each time I stopped, the eventual come would be more powerful. Each interlude would send us streaming closer together. But as I slowed my pace she quickened hers and her grip had a sternness in its strength, an undertaste of fury. I thought that if I didn’t carry through she might actually punch me in the mouth. And so I slipped my hands beneath her rump so no matter what our bodies did they would be touching and I would stay in her as deep as possible. The hum became a kind of toneless noise, like the loudest part of a yawn stretched out indefinitely. Sweat ran off her back and new threads of blood came out of her: I could feel it pooling in the spaces between my fingers. I was totally soaked. The cut on the inside of my mouth had opened again and spawned in my drool to create a dark pink torrent. Jade’s eyes were wide open now and she was staring up at me: with her mouth turned down in an aspect of weeping, the stare seemed almost accusatory. She was shaking all over, not just her feet and legs, but tremors running like currents from her vagina, straight up her belly, and into her chest. I finally realized that half the noise I was hearing was my own: I was moaning like a dumbstruck giant, a low, clobbered, dizzy note. We were starting to slip off the bed, we were slick with sweat and blood. We were moving like mad and suddenly I could feel her inner walls in terrifying detail, as if I’d gotten fifty times thicker. We came, first Jade and then me, moments behind her, holding each other, and our voices joining, forming one wild and unbearably lonely cry.

The rest of that night is lost to me. I remember a slight, almost embarrassed silence, but it lasted only moments. Jade said her blood felt phosphorescent and at one point I burst into tears but I stopped myself fairly quickly. There was conversation but I don’t remember about what. We just talked. I started to fall asleep but then Jade said something. I don’t know what, but the sound of her voice made me roll on top of her and we made love again, for a long while. Jade said, “No, rest, rest,” and rolled me over and we made love with her on top. She held my face in her hands and held my mouth in a long open kiss and made love very slowly until we both came. More conversation. The windows bright gray. Almost falling into sleep like slipping off the ledge of a cliff. She was on her belly, with one leg almost out of the bed and her soft, flattish rump high. I entered her vagina from behind and only when I cupped my hands on her breasts did I realize she had fallen asleep.

A few hours later, a chambermaid unlocked the door and opened it as far as the safety chain would allow. The sharp metal bang awakened us both and we sat up in bed. The door was open three or four inches. We could see the sherbet green sleeve of the woman’s uniform.

“We’re still sleeping,” I called out.

Jade sank back down into the bed. The room was filled with dull white light now and I looked us over. We were both covered in dried blood. The sheets were stiff with it. If we hadn’t put the chain on, the poor cleaning woman would have walked in on us and perhaps fainted. Immobile, we would have looked like the victims of a savage crime. There was blood on our legs, our thighs, our arms and fingers. There was blood in our hair and in the corners of our lips. Our lips themselves were caked with it.

There was nothing to discuss. The next day I went with Jade to the Port Authority Building and when the bus left for Stoughton I boarded it with her. Jade’s overnight bag was bloated like a sick black fish: rather than leave the bloody linens behind, we’d stolen them. We did it to be polite, really, thinking that the small loss suffered by the hotel would be preferable to the experience of the chambermaid having to confront the stiff brown and red sheets. But even though our intentions were good, the moment we stuffed the sheets into Jade’s bag was a shaky one. She said, “Stealing from a crummy hotel,” and shook her head, as if this might reflect on us, our willingness to commit crimes both great and puny, our destiny to be always outside the proper way of doing things.