The Invitation (Montgomery/Taggert 19)

That’s what I wanted to do. What I did was flick my tongue across his lips.

The gesture startled me, and it startled him. Well, I guess it more than startled him. Actually, it turned him on.

One thing I like about being female is that the evidence of se

xual excitement isn’t known to the world. Oh, a woman’s face may turn red and her breath may get a little weird, but she can always say that she’s having a hot flash. But men can’t hide what they’re feeling—or maybe “wanting” is the correct term. And right now I knew that that cowboy wanted me, because the evidence of his desire was about to cut into my left thigh.

Now, I thought, would be the perfect time to roll away from him and laugh at him. Ha-ha-ha, I’d say. You want me, but I couldn’t care less for your passion.

But life never works out the way one plans it, because I wanted that man more than I’d ever wanted anything—except for my first book to be published—and there was no way I was going to roll away from him.

I think all first sex should be candlelight dinners, little kisses inside the elbow, that sort of thing, but there wasn’t any chance of sex like that between this man and me. We didn’t even kiss but started tearing at each other as if we meant to kill one another. It was like sex in those black-and-white foreign movies where the people talk and talk and talk and all you can think about is how full your bladder is; then suddenly he shoves her against the barn door and you forget all about your bladder.

We started on each other with all the fury and anger that we spoke to each other with. His shirt came open with one pull, and I found out what I’d always wanted to know: why cowboy shirts have snaps instead of buttons. Makes for speedy hayloft trysts.

I don’t know how he got my clothes off. I was wearing jeans with one of those annoying short zippers that, in order to get them on, you have to stick your butt out and wiggle. But this time I didn’t have to wiggle to get them down. He slid them over my hips as easy as you please and then, like a magician, he ran his hands over my lace-on boots and they fell away—just fell off, no struggles.

When he moved his hands back up, we were both naked, and God, what a body the man had! I couldn’t see much of it, but I could feel it. Think beautiful athletes. Think about smooth, warm skin covering that body. When his skin touched mine, I drew in my breath as though someone had doused me with ice water—only it wasn’t cold that sent that sensation through me.

Muscle wasn’t the only thing interesting about the man. I’ve heard that the skin is the largest organ in the human body, but with this man, I thought some measurements were going to have to be taken to be absolutely sure.

He entered me with all the ease and expertise of a cat burglar slipping into a twenty-first-story bedroom.

Now came the part of sex I hated—not that I’d had that much experience, but three minutes seemed to be a man’s limit. Sometimes I’d read the history of man trying to break the four-minute mile and wonder why a man didn’t try for something important, like the four-minute screw.

At first I just lay there, ready to be disappointed when he grunted and collapsed on top of me and said, “That was good, baby,” then started snoring. But this guy didn’t stop after three minutes. I’m not a good timekeeper in such circumstances, but it’s my guess that after six minutes he was still moving in and out of me, slowly, smoothly, as though he didn’t mean to stop before next Saturday.

I can’t really explain what began to happen to me, but all I can say is that I began to wake up. It was as though there were this woman inside me—no, correction: this tall, blonde, beautiful goddess inside me—who began to unroll from where she’d been asleep all her life. Languorously she uncurled, stood up, rubbed her eyes, and looked around her. And when she was awake, she began to expand. She grew bigger and bigger and bigger until she began to fill me, fill me out to my fingertips and my toes. She filled my head so completely that for the first time since I could remember I didn’t have stories inside my head. Instead of stories I had this man in my body, and I was awake, really, truly, fully awake, for the first time in my life. Every nerve ending, every pore, every cell in my body was alert and sensitive and alive.

I’m not sure what I did. I mean, I don’t remember where my hands went, where my mouth went. I remember at one point he turned me over and with two hundred pounds of male propelling me, I went sliding across the floor and had to put my hands on a hay bale to keep from moving.

I remember I was shameless. I remember I had no dignity, no thoughts. I remember I was closer to being an animal than to a thinking, rational human being. I remember that I at last understood what people meant when they said that sex was a basic need, like food and water. Up until that day in that loft with that man, I hadn’t believed that old saw. I’d believed people needed food and water but they didn’t need sex. I was wrong.

He turned me over again and pulled my ankles up around his shoulders and kept on. I think I was a cheering section. I don’t think I was making sexy, ladylike little moans, and I can guarantee that I wasn’t saying anything rational. On the food chain, right then I was way below the human level that had the ability to talk.

After a while I began to feel as if I were going to explode. Okay, I know that’s a cliché. I know it’s been said a million times, but the first time it happens to you it’s almost scary. I guess it would be scary if the explosion were something you wanted to stop, but it was like those salmon fighting to go upstream. It was something I was driving myself toward.

I wrapped my legs around his waist while he was on his knees, and I began to move with more strength than I actually possessed. At that moment I could have moved a train with my pelvis, but I couldn’t move this man who seemed to have the strength of a couple of ocean liners.

I’d read about orgasms and I thought I’d experienced a couple, but I hadn’t. Not a real orgasm. It’s not something that happens in one big flash. At least it isn’t for a woman.

I’m so glad I’m a woman. How could sex be as good for a man when it happens outside his body? For a woman, it’s all inside, deep inside, and it radiates from within.

I guess an orgasm could best be compared to ocean waves breaking against the beach. Wave after wave came from inside me and moved outward to the very limits of my body. It seemed to go on and on and on, pulsating, extending, retreating, at first with urgency but gradually slowing, fading from a brilliant white light to a luminescent glow.

My fingers and toes hurt, as though the waves inside me had stretched them to their limit.

After a while I began to breathe again, and the woman inside me, that goddess who I hadn’t known existed, realized she was tired and began to recede. With her went my energy. She also took my anger and my general rage at life. I’d never felt so calm, so peaceful, in my life.

When the man kissed my ear, I smiled sleepily, snuggled against his sweaty skin, then followed the goddess inside me and went to sleep.

Later, when I woke up, still in Kane’s arms, his skin next to mine, suddenly I knew I had to share more with him than just the greatest sex ever experienced in the history of the world.

Once when I was one of the judges at the Miss USA pageant, one of the many instructions they gave us was to never give a girl a score lower than 5. They said, and I agreed, that the girls had worked hard and deserved at least a 5 in every category.

The pageant officials had asked local volunteers to stand in for the contestants during rehearsals so we could practice with the computers. Sitting next to me was the famous actor Richard Woodward, and when the first volunteer pirouetted for us, he punched in 2.2. Now, I didn’t know this man but I knew these practice scores were going to be shown on a screen, and I didn’t think it was very nice of him to give these nice, nervous ladies such a low score, so I told him so.

Richard looked at me and said, “You’re a real writer, aren’t you?”