“You hold that thought,” I whispered. “You hold on to it for dear life, all right?”
He told me yes in a way that was half a dream and half a daze, and I leaned back against the tree as he worked at me, delighting in my own indolence and the way his body moved against mine. Once in a while, I reached out to palm the front of his trousers, but after the third or fourth time, he reached for my wrist, shaking his head.
“I won’t thank you if you make a mess out of me,” he said, and I was a little disappointed because I realized that was exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to make a mess of him, to walk him back in front of Jay Gatsby all red-faced and shattered. In some strange and half-formed way, I realized, I wanted to do him that favor, of showing Gatsby that there was more to life than just him. Of course, what kind of favor would it be if Gatsby never saw, and what kind of favor would it be if it mended Nick not at all? I sighed.
“All right, but I won’t always want to,” I told him warningly.
“Why, Miss Baker, I would never presume.”
Presuming actually wasn’t one of his flaws, so I let it go, knocking my head back against the cool wet elm bark and letting it dig patterns into my back and into my palms where I reached back to grasp it. I felt pastoral, like some kind of wild nymph come to enchant a human man from his world. I wondered if Nick liked my looks as well as Gatsby’s for all that they were of a different sort.
Then thoughts of pastoral nymphs and even Gatsby himself went straight out of my head as Nick’s fingers quickened on me and in me. I could feel my body hitching like a car whose engine wouldn’t turn over, that familiar tightening inside me that always took me at least a little by surprise.
While I still had the wit to do so, I tugged on his hair. He thought it was for fun at first, so I tugged harder, until he yelped.
“You might have said that you didn’t care for—”
He paused when he looked down at my face, his eyes bright as the foil around a candy bar, his mouth a tempestuous red. There was my answer to if he thought I was as beautiful as Jay Gatsby, and it made me smile.
“Get down on your knees,” I murmured, pushing down on his shoulders.
“Why?” The confusion in his voice was genuine, and I laughed. It was just a little mean, prep school girl to the boy who worked at the garage, and he flinched, biting his lip.
“You know.”
After a moment he did, and he dropped as pretty as you please. I stepped out of my silk drawers, stuffing them into the back of one of my stockings to keep them neat. I hauled up my skirts with one hand and with the other, I took hold of him by the hair and dragged him forward.
“I don’t … That is … I’m not sure how…”
He looked up at me, begging, and I stroked his cheek.
“Well, I’ll tell you if you get it wrong, won’t I?”
Eager. He was so damned eager. He might not have done it for someone with my precise looks between the legs before, but it’s not all that different overall. Skin’s skin, and he liked mine. His large hands curled around my thighs, and there was a kind of Middle Western, old religion fervor to how he devoured me. His people weren’t that far from the tent revivals that spoke of angels like spinning chariot wheels in the sky and demons under every apple tree, and he chased my pleasure like it might be his very own salvation.
I didn’t think I’d tip over. I might have done with his hand, but mouths were usually trickier for me, without the pressure I usually liked behind it. Then I remembered that I could do something about the pressure, or at least, I could with Nick, and I took a fistful of his hair and dragged him against me hard. His hands tightened on my legs, palms pressing my garter clips into my skin, and oh I didn’t care, oh it was good, so good, and he thought he loved me, and absolutely nothing else in that moment mattered but how good he made me feel.