Page 53 of His Virgin Vessel

I sat down on the edge of the tub.

"This may sting a bit."

She applied antiseptic to my wound, but I barely felt the sting as I lifted her top and kissed around her belly, my hands roaming lower.

"I'm sure they don't allow this in hospitals," said Corinne, trying to maintain her cool, although I could hear the catch in her voice and her breath quickening.

"They should. This is the best therapy. I've never felt better."

"Well, at least it ought to stop the blood from flowing out your head, if it's all going somewhere else."

Corinne began to bandage my head as I unzipped her jeans and peeled them down her legs. If I was going to be saying goodbye to her today, then I was going to do it properly. The instant the bandage was in place on my head, I was up on my feet. Corinne had kicked off the jeans, and she now sprang up into my arms, wrapping her legs around me and feeling me furiously hard against her. I pushed her back against the wall.

"We'll have to be quick," she murmured as she kissed me. "And quiet."

Though neither of us said anything, I knew that she was thinking the same as me—that this might be the last time for a long while. Corinne's nimble fingers made short work of my belt and buttons, and she was soon guiding me between her legs, though by now I knew my own way. I watched her pretty eyes widen as I pushed into her. She bit her lip to stop herself from crying out, and I covered her mouth with mine as I began to move inside her.

Although it was a destined to be a short and frantic encounter, and although the presence of Corinne's father just downstairs might have given it an air of the taboo, it felt nothing of the kind. Unconsciously and unwillingly, we were saying goodbye, and neither of us wanted that to be rough or lust-fueled. The circumstances were against us, but our feelings for each other made this more than the sum of its parts. It was tender, and it was loving. It was intense, too, of course, a world of sensation between us expressing the things we could not bring ourselves to say. And it was pleasurable. So completely in sync were Corinne and I that I felt we had perfected a way of communicating through sex. While I had struggled to say, 'I love you,' in words, I had managed to say it last night through my body.

When Corinne had desperately wanted me not to leave her, she had lied and made excuses, but in our love-making she had put forward an honest and heartfelt argument that I understood far better. Now, we said goodbye to each other. No matter that it was quick and fumbling, no matter that it was up against the wall of a bathroom that would leave Corinne with tile prints on her ass, no matter that her father was downstairs, that my movements were hobbled by the jeans around my knees, or that it had all the aspects of a desperate quickie. The meaning came through all of that.

One of those things that people say about great sex with a person is that 'every time is like the first time.’ I wasn't sure if that was true with Corinne and me. It would be truer to say that every time was like the last time, because it seemed that every time might actually be the last time. That was different, and that was special. If you knew that this might be it, then you made every time as good as it can be. Every time had to be the apex. Every time had to be an ultimate expression of what you felt for each other, told through sex. Every time had to be the perfect memory on which you would want to end. Corinne and I were very good at that. Every time was perfect. Even in the most imperfect of situations, it was still perfect.

As was so often the case with us, there was no need for words afterwards. Everything we might have wanted to say had been expressed through the act itself. We kissed tenderly, sealing our goodbye, before readjusting our clothes and heading back downstairs.

# # #

I was a little worried, as I was sure that Corinne was too, that Dugas might have been suspicious of how long bandaging my head had taken, or worse, that he might have heard the rhythmic thumps of his daughter's buttocks against the bathroom wall. We had not taken our time over sex, far from it, but it can be hard to finish quickly when you're enjoying yourself so much. As we entered, Dugas looked up irritably from the table, where he and Porter were seated, discussing the legal aspects of the deal on which we had all decided.

"That was quick. Give us another five minutes, will you?"

"Sure, Dad," Corinne said, and she and I retreated to the living room.

We exchanged glances as we left, and a lot of unspoken words passed between us. It would have been easy to say, 'I wish we'd known that we had another five minutes,’ but the truth was, nothing would have made it more perfect. If that was to be our goodbye, then at least it had been a good one. The best one. A perfect one.

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