Read Online The White Rose by Jean Hanff Korelitz - Free Book Online Page B

laughs. “I thought that was a nice touch, before. Who taught you to do that, anyway?”
    “Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, ” says Oliver.
    “Oh, but you’re so much prettier than him. I seem to recall some difficulty with five o’clock shadow.”
    “Well, it’s past five o’clock. I might have a bit of a problem,” Oliver leans close. “Care to feel?”
    Marian reclines, with drama, a hand to her chest. “I couldn’t.”
    He grins. “Scared?”
    “Why, no. It’s just, you’re a very pretty girl.”
    “And that frightens you?”
    “I can’t trust myself!”
    “How…provocative.”
    His hand, she now observes, is on her knee.
    “Mr. Stern!”
    “Please,” Oliver entreats, “call me Ms.”
    “I’ve never!” Marian is laughing.
    “Then you ought.”
    Well, if you put it that way. Proper English is such an aphrodisiac, Marian thinks, letting his weight pin her back against the cushions. She puts her hands on his back and feels the movement of cashmere over his skin and under her hands. She puts her hands under the cashmere and over his skin, which is warm—no, hot. It’s hot like his breath against her neck. She can’t see much because the long wig has fallen over her face, and there is just room in this diminished range of vision to be persuaded that a woman—indeed, a beautiful woman—is on top of her, moving and touching, pinning her to the couch and persuading her that she is no longer in control of herself. A woman is wanting Marian so fiercely that her desire is escaping in sounds of want, in little sighs at Marian’s ear. A woman is putting her fingers in Marian’s hair and making her want to bring her thighs together, except that the woman is already between her thighs, so she can’t. The woman has narrow hips, a flat chest, shiny chestnut hair, and delicate hands. She is not shy, this woman. She doesn’t hold back the way Marian herself might, wanting something so badly but only hoping a finger or a tongue will land in precisely the spot she wants it to, or wanting to put her own finger or tongue in some specific location but waiting to see if it might arrive there accidentally, as if in the course of other events. This woman is everywhere, touching beneath Marian’s bra, reaching expertly for the zipper of Marian’s wool pants, trailing her feathery hair across Marian’s bare skin. It’s all beyond her. The woman, this beautiful woman, is in charge, and Marian’s only choice is whether just to lie here, and let the woman touch her in all of the places that now want touching, or to touch her back in all of the same places.
    She could, for example, move her own hands from where they are on the woman’s back over her ribs around to the woman’s front. To her chest, in other words. She could put her hands on the woman’s chest and, well, touch her. Which is not a thing she has ever done before and not a thing she has ever wanted to do, but it is in fact a thing she would like very much to do right now. She would like to see what this woman’s breasts feel like and why shouldn’t she, since the woman seems very willing and is moving against her in this provocative and yet oddly affectionate way, with one stockinged leg insinuated between Marian’s legs. In fact, it now occurs to Marian that quite apart from putting her hands under this woman’s sweater and touching her breasts, she could very easily put her hands under the woman’s skirt and touch her between the legs. She could do that, and very easily, by lifting up the skirt or merely burrowing beneath it. Simple! Women make it so simple, don’t they, wearing skirts. Do they want to be touched all the time? Is that the point of a skirt? She could put her hands under the skirt right now, right this second, without anything to stop her, and get directly at what she wants, whereas she herself is stuck in pants that need unzipping and peeling off—all that work! She hears the scratch of the woman’s stockings as her legs move