Montgomery 07 – Mountain Laurel

be, how very much fingertips can feel, or all the body parts that fingertips can touch and stroke and caress. But you know, don’t you?”
She didn’t even try to speak but looked at his big hand holding her small one and nodded.
“Yes, virgins need to be wooed and courted. They need to have attention paid to them.
A virgin needs to care for a man before she can relax and love him back.”

them with other things, and then special things have to be done with those women.”
“Special?” A tiny trickle of perspiration ran down the back of Maddie’s neck.
“They have to be made aware that there is something in . . . shall we call it life, for them. They have to learn to look at menor I guess we could be talking about male virgins as well, couldn’t we?”
“Certainly. Of course. What should a woman see in a man?” “How he makes her feel when he kisses her, touches her, holds her.” His voice lowered and she had to lean forward to hear him. “How she feels when he makes love to her and caresses her. He has to first make her want those things so that she will come to enjoy them. Sometimes virgins don’t even know that love, that kind of love that’s between mature, healthy adults, exists. You know, that sweaty, lusty, hard, pounding kind of love, the kind where, at the end, you think you’re going to die from the release, a release that leaves you limp and fulfilled as nothing else in the world can.”
Maddie’s upper lip began to sweat. “Certainly,” she said, her voice cracking just a bit.
“That kind of love.”
“With virgins you need to lead up to that.”
“Hhow?”
“Talk to her, for one thing. Virgins love words. Tell her that you’d like to kiss her ears and her hair. Touch her breast. Not hard, mind you, that comes later, but just lightly at first.
Kiss her closed eyelids. Virgins love that. Make love to her hands.” He lifted Maddie’s hand and entwined her fingers with his, his thumb rubbing the center of her palm. “Some people don’t realize how sensitive hands can

“A gentle kiss,” he said, looking down at the small pile of tinder. “As though you were kissing a virgin.” He looked at her, and the intensity in his eyes made her throat go dry. “Or a kiss to a woman who is very near to being a virgin.”
“How?” she said, and to her horror her voice squeaked.
He looked down at the fluff and shredded wood. “A man, at least a man who is concerned about the outcome, that is, can’t expect a virgin to be like other women. He can’t just one day take her and expect her to want him in return. No, he must first make her aware of what there is to want.”
“Oh?” Maddie said. Her voice didn’t squeak but it was higher than necessary. “What is there to want?”
“Love. Passion. Touching. Feeling. Sometimes virgins are hard to . . . awaken, so to speak. Sometimes women who have been virgins for a long time have buried their feelings, or have forgotten them and replaced

“I swear that I will not kiss your neck or your eyes or the little vein in your temple. Nor will I kiss your round white shoulders, or your waist, or your thighs, or the arch of your left foot.
I will not lick the soft skin where your arm bends, or put your fingertips one by one in my mouth and suck on them. Are you hungry?”

“No matter what?”
He stepped closer to her, and when he spoke, his voice was very low. “I won’t touch you no matter how much I may want to. No matter how your hair smells when it’s been warmed by the sun. No matter that I would give ten years of my life just to hold your bare body against mine. No matter how the memory of you riding in front of me, your thighs against mine, haunts me. No matter that the nights in the mountains are cold and, because we are handcuffed together, we will have to sleep together, wrapped around each other, our bodies perfectly fitting together. No matter what, I will not touch you.”

Ring turned on his side without moving the chain that lay on the ground between them and looked at her. He couldn’t help smiling. She really was impossible. Impossible, yes, but the most magnificent woman he’d ever encountered. Wanted her, he thought. No human in history had ever wanted a person as much as he wanted her. But she wasn’t ready yet. As yet she was only beginning to see him as a person. Him, not just any man, but him. And that’
s what he wanted more than anything else on earth, more than he’d ever wanted anything: he wanted her to want him as much as he wanted her. He wanted her in every possible way that a man could want a woman—but he wanted her to want him in the same way.
He smiled at her in the darkness. I just have to make you more aware of me, that’s all, he thought. I have to make you see me as a man. I want some of that passion that you give to your music. He stretched his free hand across the space between them and touched her fingertips. She curled her fingers around his like a baby would. Smiling, he went to sleep.
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