But when I wanted to begin again, Jessie wouldn’t hear of it at first:
“No, no”, she said. “You’ve hurt me really, Jim, (my Christian name, I had told her, was James) and I’m scared, please be good.” I could only do her will, till a new thought struck me. At any rate I could see her now and study her beauties one by one, and so still lying by her I began kissing her left breast and soon the nipple grew a little stiff in my mouth. Why, I didn’t know and Jessie said she didn’t, but she liked it when I said her breasts were lovely and indeed they were, small and firm while the nipples pointed straight out. Suddenly the thought came, surprising me: it would have been much prettier if the circle surrounding the nipples had been rose-red instead of merely umber brown. I was thrilled by the bare idea. But her flanks and belly were lovely; the navel like a curled sea-shell, I thought, and the triangle of silky brown hairs on the Mount of Venus seemed to me enchanting, but Jessie kept covering her beauty-place. “It’s ugly”, she said, “please, boy”, but I went on caressing it and soon I was trying to slip my sex in again; though Jessie’s “O’s” of pain began at once and she begged me to stop.
“We must get up and dress”, she said, “they’ll soon be back”, so I had to content myself with just lying in her arms with my sex touching hers. Soon she began to move against my sex, and to kiss me, and then she bit my lips just as my sex slipped into hers again; she left it in for a long moment and then as her lips grew hot: “it’s so big”, she said, “but you’re a dear.” The moment after she cried: “We must get up, boy! if they caught us, I’d die of shame.” When I tried to divert her attention by kissing her breasts, she pouted, “That hurts too. Please, boy, stop and don’t look”, she added as she tried to rise, covering her sex the while with her hand, and pulling a frowning face. Though I told her she was mistaken and her sex was lovely, she persisted in hiding it, and in truth her breasts and thighs excited me more, perhaps because they were in themselves more beautiful.
I put my hand on her hips; she smiled, “Please, boy” and as I moved away to give her room, she got up and stood by the bed, a perfect little figure in rosy, warm outline. I was entranced, but the cursed critical faculty was awake. As she turned, I saw she was too broad for her height; her legs were too short, her hips too stout. It all chilled me a little. Should I ever find perfection?
Ten minutes later she had arranged the bed and we were seated in the sitting-room but to my wonder Jessie didn’t want to talk over our experience. “What gave you most pleasure?” I asked. “All of it”, she said, “you naughty dear; but don’t let’s talk of it.”
I told her I was going to work for a month, but I couldn’t talk to her: my hand was soon up her clothes again playing with her sex and caressing it, and we had to move apart hurriedly when we heard her sister at the door.
I didn’t get another evening alone with Jessie for some time. I asked for it often enough, but Jessie made excuses and her sister was very cold to me. I soon found out it was by her advice that Jessie guarded herself. Jessie confessed that her sister accused her of letting me “act like a husband: she must have seen a stain on my chemise”, Jessie added, “when you made me bleed, you naughty boy; any way something gave her the idea and now you must be good.”
That was the conclusion of the whole matter. If I had known as much then as I knew ten years later, neither the pain nor her sister’s warnings could have dissuaded Jessie from giving herself to me. Even at the time I felt that a little more knowledge would have made me the arbiter.
The desire to have Jessie completely to myself again, was one reason why I gave up the job at the Bridge as soon as the month was up. I had over a hundred and fifty dollars clear in my pocket and I had noticed that though the pains in my ears soon ceased, I had become a little hard of hearing. The first morning I wanted to lie in bed and have one great lazy day, but I awoke at five as usual, and it suddenly occurred to me that I should go down and see Allison, the bootblack, again. I found him busier than ever and I had soon stripped off and set to work. About ten o’clock we had nothing to do, so I told him of my work under water; he boasted that his “stand” brought him in about four dollars a day: there wasn’t much to do in the afternoons, but from six to seven again he usually earned something more.
I was welcome to come and work with him any morning on halves and I thought it well to accept his offer.