Fanchon's Book(25)

But my victory wasn't complete as yet; even as I kissed the feet of my beloved I had my sights set on a more intimate target. I kept peering up at it, the coral confection that I craved, so winsomely displayed in the shadow beneath its chevron of flaxen hair. Fascinating. I just couldn't take my"Fanchon, what are you staring at?"

"Oh!" What could I say? She had lowered the magazine and had seen me peeping. "Miss Kristi? You know… "

"I want your lips, not your eyes. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to hide it." Her body went into a slow, sinuous spiral and she rolled over to be upon her stomach. "I've still got some reading to do."

"Yes, ma'm."

"It won't be long, you greedy girl." Resting on her elbows, she brought the magazine in front of her face.

"Meanwhile, though… " And then she shut me out again, focusing all her attention on the printed page.

Meanwhile? Of course. No, I hadn't been shut out, merely diverted. Yes, that was it: a diversion-in every sense of the word-and more to the point, a rather daring challenge. Or so I assumed. But I couldn't be positive, considering the circumstances, nor was I even sure of my own reaction. It seemed simpler-or less hazardous, at any rate-to go on kissing her feet.

The heels were uppermost now; I nibbled them in affectionate greeting and then lapped at the soles with the flat of my tongue. But one foot kicked back sharply, like a little slap under my chin, a goading motion, coercive, authoritative, a demand for more extensive activity, and I knew I had been denied any easy course. Little Miss Machiavelli had turned her back on me, but there was method in her antisocial madness.

My lips grazed an ankle; I felt the responsive twitch, a sanction-involuntary but still compelling-and was momentarily wracked by a shudder of apprehension. Could I go through with it? Kiss her-there? I scarcely had courage to look. One glance was enough and I closed my eyes and continued kissing the remarkably unflawed surface texture of the delicately sloped rise from ankle to calf, relishing even the taste, the flavor, and doing it all with self-conscious application of every faculty, afraid of the letdown in concentration that might make me see it again. It. Up there. The obscene furrow, deep, deep, a dark mystery better left unprobed.

Oh yes, I had been close to it before. But only with little dalliances, tongue-taps, kisses in volatile flurries; never on a undetermined mission. Or preordained, rather, since the idea certainly wasn't mine. To me the whole business suggested a kind of bawdy indecency, a humorless dirty joke told for the sake of its dirt alone. Not unclean physically, of course: Kristi bathed religiously and always came to my bed immaculate-but I still regarded it as something smutty.

It. The nameless it…

But how long could I linger over the backs of her legs? oh, I loved the velvet-smooth skin that stretched from calf to knee to thigh; and higher? I tilted my face and peeked again, striving desperately to bifurcate my gaze, straining wall-eyed for a stereoscopic view (parallax, of sorts?) in the pitiful hope of inspecting the twin buttocks while seeing only a censor's black smudge in between. But my vision just didn't split that way. I saw it-uncensored…

My eyes snapped shut. I felt a billow of revulsion and yet my reconnaissance couldn't have been a total loss: behind sealed eyelids I recalled the precise location of the lovely domes and bent to drop a speculative kiss upon each. After a while, somewhat beyond the need for speculation, I browsed a little and luxuriated in the incredible softness, less fearful now and even a bit excited by the perilous proximity of that ominous and unsavory abyss.

The flesh stirred under my lips. I heard a small mutter, indistinct, indecipherable, and then the loud thump-and-rustle of the carelessly tossed magazine hitting the floor. And at last her voice, dripping sarcasm as it doled out the disjunct words in a deliberate drawl.