Chapter 5: A Lesson in Swinging
Bethany had ceased trying to reason it all out. Whether the surrender began at the tavern, or astride the roaring motorcycle, or with the first deep swallow of whisky, she could not now have said; the precise point no longer mattered. What mattered was that she had grown tired of holding herself so carefully. The room seemed to shift about her in a slow, indulgent sway, or else she swayed within it—the distinction dissolved as easily as her former restraint.
What mattered now was the warmth and the nearness and the way her body answered every sensation without argument. She knew Jason was there—she had not forgotten him—and the thought pleased her in a vague, satisfied way. This was what he had wanted to see. This was what they had talked about in whispers. She was proud that they were managing it so well, and that he was receiving something he had long imagined.
Beth drew a breath that did not seem sufficient to her, for he was there behind her with a persistence that allowed no forgetting—each advance renewing the startling sense of being so fully encountered, each withdrawal leaving scarcely a moment to collect herself before the next followed. The rhythm would not permit reflection; it carried her along, dissolving the careful intentions she had formed earlier in the evening into something far more immediate and ungoverned. The warmth of the whiskey still moved through her, softening the edges of doubt, turning what might have been alarm into a kind of heated resolve. She felt herself flushed and unsteady, conscious of having passed far beyond the careful limits she ordinarily kept; yet she was unwilling—utterly unwilling—to retreat. The very excess of it carried her forward. There was, she sensed dimly, no neat undoing of such a step; better, then, to go on. Inside her, Russ remained a constant force, neither hurried nor hesitant, and she accepted his steadiness and heat as part of the adventure she had so rashly desired. It was no longer something merely permitted to occur; she found, with a mixture of surprise and determination, that she meant to have it so, entirely. This was the way it went, with swingers.
Her attention faltered, divided between the steady insistence within her and the sudden intrusion of a voice that cut clean through the warmth clouding her thoughts.
“Christ, child. That’s the trouble, isn’t it,” he said. “All over before anything’s properly begun.”
The words, heavy with contempt, lingered a moment before reaching her through the muddled warmth that possessed her. Bethany’s head tipped sideways, slow and unsteady, and her sight, uncertain of its aim, wandered toward the chair where Jason sat collapsed in upon himself.
Her wandering gaze fixed at last upon him, and she perceived—through the dimness and her own unsteady sight—a pale trace of fluid upon his narrow thigh, and, beneath the edge of the chair, a darker sheen marking the carpet where it had fallen. His face was turned away, a portrait of abject misery, and the small, frantic movement of his hand had stilled completely. A confused stir of pity passed over her—dull, unfocused, scarcely formed—only to be displaced at once by a more immediate recognition, plain and practical: he had made a mess.
“Don’t sit there fouling the carpet,” Russ said, his voice low and untroubled, the cadence of it scarcely altered by the movement he maintained. “Find a cloth. And bring the bottle back.”
Jason started as though the words had struck him across the shoulders. He gathered himself upright with visible effort, one hand drawn reflexively across his smallness in a gesture that concealed the entirety of all his parts in the cup of his hand. He stood uncertain, then made for the doorway, each step stiff and ill-coordinated. She heard the uneven tread of his steps recede, faint against the hum of the television, and then even that was lost. The hand in her hair did not slacken. It held her where she was, with a firmness that admitted no distraction, and her thoughts, which had wandered for a moment after Jason’s gracile retreat, settled again into the narrower compass of the bed and the body pressing into her.
The motion Russ advanced upon her altered in its character, casting off the earlier show of regularity for a heavier and more insistent percussion, so that each advance drove her forward upon the bed with an audible force, the fleshy report of their skin clapping together answered only by the broken breath she could neither moderate nor conceal. A sudden heat drew the moisture from her at once; it stood upon her brow and slid in slow courses downward, tracing tracks between her breasts as she steadied herself under the continued strain. She uttered a deep, unshaped groan, compelled by the urgency of the moment rather than by design, as one overtaken by a sensation too immediate to be named and too strong to be refused.
Her voice faltered into a shallow gasp at the sound of Jason’s return and the soft agitation of liquid in the bottle. Russ’s motion went on unbroken, though she could hear the pause in his breathing as he took a sip, and then another, from the drink, the ordinary noise of it jarring beside the strain of her own belabored breathing in the cadence of their union.
Her head, drawn to one side, left the room tilted in her vision, and in that slant she saw Jason kneeling at the carpet with the cloth in his hand. He moved quickly, anxiously, his narrow back bent, the smallness of his frame made evident by the posture. The lamplight showed the slight fall of his shoulders, the gentle breadth of his hips, the pale, unmarked skin drawn smooth across them as he leaned and shifted. He seemed almost slight to the point of fragility in such an attitude, intent upon his task and wholly unconscious of being seen, while she, scarcely attending to him at all, felt a brief, wandering pang that he should be set to such work—down there with the cloth, occupied in mending what embarrassment he could—before the impression passed through her like any other half-formed thought and was gone again.
A new, sharp sound was punched from her with the next deep thrust from Russ behind her, and she clenched her teeth against it, a sudden, drink-sodden anxiety piercing the fog of her pleasure. The Millers came to her mind with unwelcome clarity. Their own bedroom room lay just beyond that wall, absurdly near, a partition no thicker, it seemed, than cheaply-paneled furniture; and Mrs. Miller, who kept her hours with unfailing regularity, would by now be settling into her nightly quiet. The thought came and went in fragments, for Russ’s movement allowed little space for reflection, and the sounds drawn from her, however she strove to master them, would not be governed.
Bethany, staring at the headboard, tried to master herself, to force the sound back into silence, yet her body answered each renewed force without consulting her will; the gasp she meant to swallow broke apart, escaping in a thin, unsteady breath through her nose while her mouth remained set in a futile show of composure.
“Don’t go swallowing it,” Russ said, as if correcting a minor mistake at work rather than speaking of anything intimate. “If there’s noise, there’s life in it. Man knows where he stands.” He pressed forward again, matter-of-fact, and the breath she had tried to manage escaped her despite herself. “There now,” he added. “That answers well enough.”
Russ paused, though he did not draw away, as if the interruption were no more than a moment taken to give some ordinary direction. “Boy,” he said, the word falling short and hard in the close, heated air, “the bottle. Put it to her mouth.”
There came a movement at her side—a cautious step, the faint stir of clothing—and Jason was kneeling there beside the bed, his face the tight, guarded expression of a man determined not faltered again. The chill rim of the glass met her lip and made her start; the sharp scent of the spirit rose at once. She parted her mouth without thinking, and the liquor was tipped toward her, running in with a coarse heat that followed upon what she had already taken, deepening the same unsteady fire.
She swallowed with difficulty—once, and again, and yet a third time—the spirit descending like a line of flame and spreading at once through her, so that its warmth seemed to rise even as it fell. Then, from above her, there came the brief word, “Enough,” and the bottle was removed.
The effect came upon her all at once, not as a gentle stealing-in but like a door abruptly opened. The warmth ran quickly through her, down into her limbs and back again, so that she felt at once heavy and unsteady, as though her body had been given more substance than it knew how to carry. The lamplight did not waver, yet she found it difficult to keep hold of the ordinary shapes of things; they seemed to matter less than before, receding to the edges of her notice. What remained was the immediate press of the moment—the closeness, the motion, the heat—each sensation enlarged by her inability to marshal herself against it. Thought, which had earlier attempted to keep pace, now lagged behind entirely, and she yielded to the feeling without attempting further order.
A heavy warmth spread through her, loosening her so that her limbs seemed slow to answer her own intention, inclining instead toward the mattress beneath them. She let out a drawn, unsteady sound, an exhalation of relishment she no longer fought to contain. Russ answered it with a brief, rough word of satisfaction, and the movement between them altered—less hurried, more deliberate, each motion felt distinctly and without relief from the last. The earlier sharpness softened into a deep, insistent fullness that claimed her whole awareness; she ceased trying to think it through and let it take her as it would.
The sensations gathered and returned upon themselves in a steady, insistent cadence, drawing from her a low, unguarded sound; she had no thought to prevent it. She knew, in some distant way, that Jason had come to sit near her, and knew also—dimly, almost with surprise—that her voice had grown far louder than she would ever permit in any ordinary hour. Each of Russ's incessant, thrusting motions compelled another cry from her, unchecked, so that the room rang again and again with the same involuntary declaration. The repetition seemed to take on a life of its own, continuing past intention, past modesty; there was nothing for it but to let it sound. Behind her came no speech or instruction to be silent or to be louder, only the continued, drawing firmness that compelled it; beside her, Jason made no interruption. Her noises rose and fell, persistent as breath, marking her pleasure a way that could neither be softened nor denied.
The motion altered without warning, gathering into a swift, concentrated finish. Russ’s breathing, which had held steady until then, roughened audibly behind her. He drove forward once more and remained there, held in place for a brief, rigid interval, as though the moment required anchoring before it could pass. A choked, wordless sound escaped him, part satisfaction and part exertion, as he spent himself inside her, the flow of him sudden and evident and hot.
Then he was still, his weight settling heavily upon her, the only sound his slowing breath in her ear.
The pressure that had carried her along began to ebb almost immediately, leaving her unfinished and abruptly stranded. The sensation of being so abruptly abandoned within her own body was a physical shock. A low groan, thick with discomfort and thwarted ache, welled up from her chest as the full weight of him pressed her down into the mattress.
Her arms, which had held her up, buckled without strength.
She gave way forward, her face sinking into the disordered bedding, and he came down after her with all the heaviness of a body suddenly emptied of effort. For a brief interval he remained so, inert and burdensome, before shifting aside at last with a tired, indifferent sound and leaving her to gather herself where she lay.
Beth remained as she had sunk, drawing quick, insufficient breaths against the coverlet. A tremor ran through her, not of agitation but of spent exertion, as though the body, having been driven to an expectation, found itself dismissed before the conclusion and did not yet know how to settle.
He sat up onto the mattress’s edge, already looking about for the bottle. “That’ll do,” he said, as if concluding a piece of work. He shifted off the bed with a grunt, the mattress groaning in relief.
Beth lay as she had come down, her cheek turned into the dampened coverlet, the fabric cool against overheated skin. The tumult that had possessed her moments before did not vanish so much as recede unevenly, leaving her heavy and disordered, every limb slow to answer her own intention. She remained there without arranging herself, the bedclothes twisted beneath her, the room gradually returning to its ordinary proportions while her body had not yet done the same. She made a small, involuntary sound into the fabric, a wordless plea that even she did not fully understand.
Russ stood, fastening his jeans with a brisk, efficient tug. His cold eyes traveled over her sprawled form with the detached interest as he took his pull from the bottle.
“You’re still wound tighter than a spring, girl,” he said, as if remarking on some ordinary inconvenience. His glance shifted toward Jason, who had retreated to the threshold of the door. “Look at her. All that sound and fury, and she’s no nearer settled. That’s a thin result, wouldn’t you say?”
Jason’s gaze flickered from the soiled carpet to Bethany, heaving as she was for breath; he seemed uncertain what do with his hands, his gaze lifting and then failing, as though he had come into the room on an errand he no longer understood. The sight of him, so evidently at a loss, curdled her affections; but the sourness did not hold her, though he said nothing.
“Well, don’t hover there,” Russ said, with the easy patience of a man showing a boy to his task. “She's your obligation. Come along, then—see to her.”
A heavy stillness settled upon the room, disturbed only by Bethany’s uneven breathing. She raised her head with effort; the lamplight wavered and slid about the walls as though the chamber itself had taken to a slow turning. Jason remained where he was. His eyes were wide, fixed on the sheer measure of pearled issue Russ had left behind, bold upon her most private flesh.
“I said,” Russ repeated, the words dropping like stones, “see to her.”
Jason lingered yet, his hands lifting and falling at his sides in a helpless, uncertain motion. A rush of pity overtook Beth—warm, blurred by the spirit still coursing through her—at the sight of him. Her poor, wavering boy. Russ’s mouth thinned. The false patience he had worn like a mask of courtesy fell way. In two long strides he crossed the space between them and took Jason by the hair—not savagely, but with a steady, unarguable grip—and urged him forward, so that he stumbled toward the bed whether he would or no.
“None of that,” Russ muttered, his voice low and close to Jason’s ear. “You look your fill, but you won’t taste your own medicine? That’s a coward’s bargain.”
With a grave, untroubled assurance, he pressed Jason down. Bethany felt the weight of him, slight and trembling, as his face was brought firmly into the humid moistures which had gathered between her legs. He stiffened, a muffled sound of distress escaping him. She wanted to tell him it was all right, that she didn’t mind, but her tongue felt thick and useless. Russ held him there, a hand planted firmly on the back of his head.
“There,” Russ said, almost soothingly. “There it is. Not so fearsome, is it?”
For a long, suspended instant, there was no alteration at all. Then—subtle as a shift in breath—the difference. A cautious touch of his mouth, in the mess of it, there and gone. The rigid line of Jason’s neck slackened, as though some inner resistance had quietly given way. Another touch followed, more certain, tracing its course with a gentler deliberation.
A fractured sound left Bethany’s throat, and her back arched before she had willed it. The thwarted strain that had lain sharp within her stirred at once at this renewed attention. It was a treatment she recognized well as his special manner—careful, easy, almost supplicant—and her body answered in advance of any thought she might have formed.
Russ observed the moment. He released his grip and stepped back, wiping his hand on the leg of his pants. “There now,” he said. “He remembers what’s expected of him.”
Her good boy did not stop. He continued with a focused, desperate zeal, as if he could, through this sole devotion, erase the earlier humiliations—the spilled seed on the carpet, the doctor’s long-ago verdict, the terrible, pitying word: inch. Even in her loosened state, Bethany imagined that his movements through the filth of their congress were not pleasant; but they were utterly earnest, and in her current state, earnestness was a gift beyond price. A soft, broken sound of gratitude escaped her. Her hand, heavy and uncoordinated, fumbled through the air until her fingers found the familiar softness of his dark hair.
She tangled her fingers in it, not guiding, but holding, an anchor in the swirling, warm sea of sensation he was building. Her touch seemed to spur him on. He could not impose a magnificent rhythm within her, but her Jason nevertheless followed the tremors of her breath. The focus contracted to only those crucial points of contact: her private self, his mouth, her hand in his hair, the slow, building tide within her.
“You two sort yourselves out,” Russ said; and with that he drew the door to behind him and shut it firmly, the latch settling into place with a quiet, decisive sound.
Beth paid him no attention. There was only his gentle, persistent pressure, the tightening of her pleasure, the rising her hips began to lift of their own accord to meet him.
Privacy now theirs, a thin cry rose from her unbidden, sharpening as the sensation—so lately thwarted—drew itself together into a single, intolerable brightness. Her hand closed in his hair, to keep him there, fixed at the very seat of it, as though she feared the moment might scatter if not held fast. She gave way at last, not in any single cry but in a succession of unguarded sounds that rose and fell beyond her control, carrying forward the same loose, heedless noise that the drink had first drawn out of her.
It came over her in several unsteady surges, each one loosening her further, until she was making noise without any thought of stopping it. She heard herself say Jason’s name—loudly, foolishly, with open relief—and could not have taken it back if she tried. She gave way at last, not in any single cry but in a succession of unguarded sounds that rose and fell beyond her control, carrying forward the same loose, heedless noise that the drink had first drawn out of her; afterward she sagged where she was, spent and unsteady, aware only that Jason certainly must have heard her gratitude.
He let his head come to rest against her thigh, the warmth of his breath settling there in quiet intervals. She passed her hand through his hair in slow, uncertain strokes, her own breathing easing by degrees until it fell into the same softened measure as his.
“There now,” she murmured, thick and low. “There, my sweet boy. That’s right.”
Her voice, when it came, was little more than a blurred murmur, thick with fatigue and the influence of all the drink she had consumed. She let her hand rest in his hair and moved it now and again without design, as though the motion had outlasted the intention behind it. A heavy languor had settled over her, dulling every sharper edge of thought and leaving only the bodily sense of warmth and nearness. Jason did not stir, his cheek still against her, his breathing by degrees falling into an even measure that she felt rather than heard. About them the apartment resumed its ordinary life—the faint stir of the refrigerator, the distant chatter of the television muffled through the door—small, indifferent sounds that seemed to go on quite unaware that anything at all had happened.