He looked around and smiled.
"Hard?" He believed he understood the expression he had surprised in her eyes.
"I'm in pretty good shape. I'm pretty hard."
She made only a muffled attempt at reply. She found it, without speaking, hard enough to breathe.
Hard? Yes. Unexpectedly undeniable, like a billiard ball. Nor could she very well stammer that it was the smoothness of his skin which had stunned her. She dropped her head again. She could not have kept it up after that and kept her eyelids open.
When she finally lifted it Perry was already in the ring and English vaulting the ropes. English was as unclothed as the other, yet she found immediately that she could look at him without any disturbing mixture of ecstasy and guilt. And even critically, too. He was thick, bulky. He did not make one catch one's breath. And brown. And Perry's whiteness! She took her lower lip between her teeth.
"Time!" the trainer called.
She cried sharply aloud.
The sound came unsummoned, in spite of herself.
Why, they had just been standing there together—just talking—just laughing—just boys! But with that signal they had exploded into action. No other word could hope to convey that sudden burst of motion.