Free Give Us a Kiss: A Novel by Daniel Woodrell

that,” she said, “and my whole soul just screams, I want! I want! I want!”
    “I’ve seen better,” I said. “Out around Palo Alto and Pacific Heights and Carmel, in California. Mission Hills in K.C.”
    Her hand squeezed mine excitedly.
    “Oh, Doyle,” she said, “better’n Tararum would make me faint, I reckon, with all the want that’d be shootin’ through me.”
    She led on again, not toward Tararum but parallel to it. Her hand steered me across an area of mowed grass, her blond hair shining. She led to a gazebo or cupola or whatever, about a hundred yards from Tararum, near The Howl.It was over a slight ridge from where I’d noodled that bullhead, so I hadn’t seen it before, and there was a path from it going straight toward the big house. The gazebo was shaped like a bell, sort of, with a considerable amount of ornate lacework of lumber near the eaves. The floor was six steps from the ground, and up we went.
    The gazebo was painted bright white, and with the moon and all, vision wasn’t too bad, not exactly in focus but like a gauzy art film. Niagra let go of me, and went to the rail, and stared toward Tararum.
    “This is my secret spot,” she said.
    She had her hands on the rail and stretched her body, and those shorts rode way high on her ass; then she went taller on the toes of those flame-lick boots and those shorts slipped clear up and in like a thong bikini.
    I fell to my knees and went right after it.
    I encircled her waist from behind and undid the shorts and gave a yank, yanking them down to her knees. She had on white cotton schoolgirl panties, and I just slid those aside, got my nose to her butt and my tongue in her bush. I pushed her forward some for cleaner licking, and after about six tongue flicks her knees sagged and she moaned, then said, “I’m virgin.”
    My response was, “Mmph.”
    “I’ve got to lay down, Doyle, my legs are gone.”
    I jerked her down to the floor of the gazebo and she shoved her shorts and panties to her knees, and I dove straight in under the tangle of garments and went hungry, hungry, hungry after her virgin muff.
    I felt inspired. She was as so much nectar, divine honey, a potion. She was that song. My tongue employed the strokes of a Picasso, li’l light flicks on the clit, the lips, then traced tiny, gentle circles around the pleasure button, then up and down. I had both hands under her butt, roaming and squeezing and raising for deep tonguing. Those flamelick boots were beating against the wooden floor, sounding like a jungle drum, and somebody was beating a piano at Tararum.
    “Oh, sin me up,” Niagra said. “Sin me up good’n evil.”
    Suckin’ that split, I felt transported, enlightened, only with a huge boner. Those boots kept drumming to the strumming, and when she busted her kicks she fairly screamed an orgasmic hallelujah.
    I crawled back, then sat up, breathing hard.
    Niagra laid there, looking gorgeous, raunchy, and magical, her eyes closed, her fingertips tweaking at her nipples through her shirt.
    “Goodness,” she said. “That was weird. I liked it a lot.”
    I snatched back my wind, and snap, like that, my own nature required reciprocity. I stood, posed in the moonglow so bright in the white gazebo, and unbuckled. My bird dog stood out, on a hard point toward her brunette bush.
    Niagra looked up, then baffled me.
    “What’re you doin’?” she asked. Immediately, instinctively, she began to scurry. She jumped up and jumped up her garb and buttoned it. “What’re you thinkin’, Doyle?”
    “I don’t get your confusion, here.”
    “I ain’t ready for that,” she said. “That’s the whole hog.” She took baby steps backward. “It’s important I stay virgin.”
    “I hope that’s the punch line,” I said. “ ’Cause this best be a joke.”
    She bit her lip. She lowered her face. She tossed her mane.
    “I’ve got to lose my cherry accordin’ to the bylaws,” she said. “I’m serious about my goomerin’,