'You can love me if you don't look at me.'

'I do love you.'

'Yes, but keep your eyes closed when I'm this close. Please, don't look.' Hank's voice comes from a cold place inside him, travelling up his windpipe like a breeze chilled by stone. Some of Hank is still inside the voice, but only a sliver. His love has transformed too. When we love each other I tremble for the pain when he twists my limbs like a wrestler, and plumbs the depths inside me with the part of him I worship.

In the beginning, he was gentle.

When I was seventeen he used to read to me. After a day at high school, I'd crash at his place and he'd read to me. Reading his journals, he'd sit on a wooden chair, wearing a white vest that made his shoulders look brown as treacle sugar. Around his fine neck there was a silver chain made from little balls -- a plug chain with his dog tags clinking at the end. Braces would hang from his waist like the straps on a guitar when idle. Loose black trousers covered his legs and were turned up at the hem above his broad feet. I remember his toes. Tiny copses of golden hair would shine in the bright Texas sun by which he read to me.

In this pose, with black-framed specs perched on his bumpy nose, he told me beautiful stories with his resonant voice. Deep as a well, dry as white sand, but tobacco-smoker wheezy, it suggested wisdom to me, and sadness also. There would be a short reading when this instrument of his voice made me shiver and then relax into what felt like taking a hot bath with a sleepy head. Then there would be love.

Soft kisses and caresses from his dry-palmed hands. A flick of his lizard tongue between my buttocks before it travelled up the stepping-stones of my spine to the base of my neck, where the fireworks live. Still as the white-faced lady in the painting in my grandmother's parlour, I would lie in silence. But my skin would move; changing into a universe of tiny bumps.

'Beautiful,' he'd whisper in a voice that made me think he was going to cry. Somewhere between his reading voice and his serious voice, where the last of Hank the child lives -- a blond-haired boy standing next to my father on a photograph my mother kept in the kitchen.

Then I would feel the beast in him. Tensing up and taking quicker breaths, his lips would move down the back of my legs. Freshly shaven legs from my ankle to my knee, but left wild above. He liked my thigh hair, especially when he could see it through the pale shades of my nylons. And I made sure he saw lots of thigh.

His kisses would descend to my pink heels, where he would part his lips and place them on either side of my Achilles' tendon. Tracing his tongue across the soles of my feet, he'd taste what my nylons, socks, shoes and teenage sweat had left for him. His breathing would become ragged, following his tasting of my spicy feet, smooth leg skin, and the beef taste of my arse. Up the outside of my legs and body, the feathery touch of his fingers and thumbs would sweep. Inhaling my hair, licking my neck, biting my shoulders, he grew into the beast. Rolling me over, he'd get busy with my nips and I'd tell him to be hard with them.

Once he'd brought tears to my eyes, his face would roam down to my belly, to scratch my tummy with his whiskers before it travelled to my thatch; nuzzle, lap, tickle, suck, tease, pull out the lips, lick them back into brown folds, circle the best bit with the tip of his tongue, then lap, lap, lap on the same spot until my sphincter went tight.

I'd close my eyes. Hank was always more vigorous when I didn't watch. My young startled eyes used to make him feel guilty because my dad was his best friend before and after the war with the Germans. I knew my eyes made him feel bad so I kept them shut tight. Then I'd hear the unzipping sound and know it wouldn't be long. Not long before the fucking. That's what I called it when he was up inside me and really going, because the sound of that word made him go faster and he would push my legs back and suck my toes.

It was madness through the afternoon until I ran home, grinning, to my supper. Lunacy on crumpled sheets. Sweating, spitting craziness with Uncle Hank in his plain room where the sunlight lit up the dust falling through the air. But now it's different. We're both older and love has to adapt to survive.

Now we do things differently. This morning, before we leave the motel and go further down the highway, I want my fill. Making sure my face is turned to one side, I grin with satisfaction, like I used to when just a girl and I had done something wrong. After all these years I can still manipulate him. I've never lost my magic.

'I'm not looking, Hank,' I say. 'And anyway, I think you're looking more distinguished these days.' And he does; with a lean body gone all white, and his eyes looking like they've seen way too much, good and bad. Besides, for someone who's been alive for 73 years and has the looks and dexterity of a 30-year-old man, why is he complaining?

With a grip like handcuffs, he seizes my wrists and presses them into the mattress. Looming above me, his shadow covers my body and from the corner of my eye I can see his pale face and black eyes surveying the girl who will always be three things: seventeen, his damnation, and his own. Balancing his weight on the balls of his feet, he assumes the press-up position. Opening my legs, I form a five-pointed star with my feet, outstretched hands and tousled head forming the points. Slowly, he lowers himself to my body and I feel his hot breath on my neck. He sniffs around my throat and then tickles the outside of my ear with his tongue. 'Hard?' he asks.

'Mmm. But no bruises until tonight,' I instruct.

Leaning into one elbow he drops his face to my left breast and takes my nipple between his lips. Sucking hard, he draws the softness into his mouth, grating my skin across the tips of his front teeth. Saliva gathers around my nipple when his mouth moistens at the prospect of breakfast. Noisily, he pulls more of my breast into his mouth until his jaw is locked wide. Then, gently, he lets me slither from his mouth until my breast falls back to my chest where it quivers. I bite the sheets when his incisors clamp on my right nipple. Chewing it like a soft jelly, Hank breathes heavily through his nose and I cry out from the sting. Kicking out with my hot feet, I shove the white sheets down the bed until they tangle around my ankles.

Pushing himself up and away with his hands, his entire body rises into the air so only his toes still touch the mattress. In mid-air, he claps his hands and I turn my head to see his teeth shine in the gloom above the bed. Falling down to me, he breaks his fall with his hands and comes to rest with his lips touching mine. I close my eyes and he says, 'Tongue.' Before my tongue is fully extended, he takes it and sucks it through his lips, pulling the muscle until I expect it to snap from out of my head. Moaning, he moves his face up and down, devouring my tongue, before his attentions move down to my musky pussy. All night she's been baking under the sheets and recovering from the hard time she had the day before. But Hank wakes her with his tongue. What a tongue he has. Longest tongue I've ever seen and it slides inside me, making me dewy in expectation of something bigger.

Lapping like a big hungry cat, he works me hard down there. Under my buttocks the sheets become damp from the pussy-honey I weep. Clenching my tummy muscles, I arch my back off the bed until the top of my head supports the weight of my upper body. First I bend my knees, then I kick my feet into the mattress, and finally I wrap them around his neck in case he thinks his mouth can leave without permission. Easing back on to my shoulders, I then lash my head from side to side and spit hair from out the side of my mouth. The end of his tongue beats my clit from side to side, as if it's slapping a prisoner silly. Then it flicks up and down and I know my chest has gone red from the turn-on, because I can feel hot patches burning like coals around my nips. Tiny lights flash on and off under my eyelids and I think I could faint. I can't feel my body any more -- just the lightning he's put into my pussy.

As I come, he lifts my bottom off the bed and bends forward so the thick strawberry of his cock is touching my heat. Dipping it through my salty dew, he shimmies his hips from left to right and opens me with his meat. Thick meat on a bone that I want to die on.

'Fuck me!' I cry.

He slips the fat head inside and pauses.

'Fuck me!' I shriek, and outside our motel room I hear footsteps stop in the parking lot.

Another inch and he stops again.

'Bastard,' I whimper. 'You bastard,' I say, and dig my heels into his back to try and tug him all the way up.

But all he gives me is another inch.

'Son of a bitch,' I swear, and hit his face with a pillow.

'Just fuck --' but that's all I get out. Seizing my hips, he pushes into me. A long moan warbles at the back of my throat. I slap one of my feet on to his face, but he moves his head and clamps his teeth on the side of the foot. Banging his crotch forward, while yanking me on and off him at the same time, as the bed smashes into the wall, creaking and screaming like it's on fire.

Lifting one of my legs, he grips my calf and switches it from one side of his head to the other and I turn, instinctively, rolling on to my tummy. Doing me like a doggy, he thrusts in and out so hard that we make a noise like a big steak being slapped on a marble chopping block, over and over again. Grunting, I push myself to my knees so my weight will form a shock absorber for his pummelling. Even then, I'm shunted up the bed until I'm tasting motel wallpaper.

From somewhere, probably on the chair beside the bed, he produces his belt -- black like a snake -- and seizes my wrists. Without a fight, I let him draw my hands together and bind them. While he makes these preparations, he slows the fucking down, until I'm only getting short, quick pumps. When my arms are tied behind my back, something passes over my head and slides down my face. As it drops over my nose, I realise it's one of my stockings. It goes taut and pulls the side of my mouth back. Now I can only produce moans. Hank ties it around the back of my head and then grips my shoulders. He slips his cock out of my pussy and I feel it nudging upward.

'No,' I try and shout, but he ignores me.

I thrash my head about and try to bite through the nylon in my mouth. If he goes in there real hard, I'll have to keep swapping from butt cheek to butt cheek in the car when we hit the road, and it could be a long journey. Hank laughs and I make a mental note to punish him later. Still, it's good. I love it in the ass. Especially when I can hear him greasing his pole with spit, but can't see him oiling up.

Ah, there it is. Screwing up my eyes and feeling my legs go weak, as he pushes inside me. On and on until I think I'm on the can, but this is passing motion in reverse. When his crispy floss tickles my cheeks, I know I have eight fat inches lodged inside me. He leaves it there and prolongs my joy at the splitting sensation. Clenching and unclenching the steel muscles of his fat cock, he works me subtly like he's massaging me from inside. I clench too, as much as I'm able to go tighter around him. Slowly, without moving in or out of my hot tunnel, he leans across my back and kisses my left cheek, which is wet with tears. 'Good?' he asks.

'Mmm,' I moan, and wiggle just a bit to renew the sensation that he's nailed into me. For a long time we sit there, squeezing each other with muscles we've trained like athletes; trained to pulse and ripple together when we're joined. One of his hands slips over my hips, disappears under me, and finds my pussy. Dipping my head, I open my eyes and watch his long fingers find my clit-pip.

As he rubs my puss with his fingertips, he thumps his cock softly through me and I start to croak. Soon, I have to close my eyes because it feels so good. When he rubs me to a climax, I start snuffling and sobbing into the pillow and I drum the top of my feet against the bed. As I lie waiting for the surf to stop rising and crashing in my head, he slips out of me and lets his fountain pitter patter over my bottom and back. One drop lands between my shoulder blades and goes cold after a glorious moment of warmth.

Sticky, and breathing like we've run a hundred metres and leaped over hurdles too, Hank and I lie against each other in bed. As my heart slows down, he unties my wrists and removes the stocking from my head. We smoke Winston reds from a crumpled packet by the bedside lamp. Sunlight has made the curtains orange. Outside someone walks away across the parking lot and then everything is quiet again.

'Clean yourself up, honey,' Hank says. 'Long drive today.'

'How close is he?' I ask.

Hank turns his head and stares at the inferno of the sun scorching the curtains. 'Hard to say.'

Copyright © 2000 by Lindsay Gordon