Free Wilde West by Walter Satterthwait

voice is not yet his own.
    Along the skin of his upper arm, he feels her lips move in a smile. Then she turns her head and her small pointed teeth bite lightly into his flesh. “It was Fate,” she says.
    He smiles; he shares the sentiment, of course. “But which, exactly, was fated? My astonishment? Or this?” He waves a hand to indicate their bodies, the bed, this particular moment into which the storm of previous moments has swept them, driftwood, jetsam.
    â€œBoth,” she says. “All of it. Everything.”
    â€œI know that this is absurd,” he begins. “We met only yesterday. But I really must tell you—”
    The tip of her finger lands softly atop his mouth, closing it.
    â€œDon’t,” she says. “I know already. Don’t say it. If you put it into words, it will start to die.”

    â€œWe will teach our youths to love nature more. When we can teach them that no blade of grass and no flower is without beauty, then we will have achieved much.”

    She is sucking his left nipple, her tongue moving in small, even, maddening circles along its compacted crust. Taut thin ligaments within his body, their existence previously unsuspected, connect this nipple to the back of his neck, to his spine, to his groin, to the soles of his feet.
    While she silently suckles, he silently sulks. He is still smarting at her prohibition. There is so much nameless new emotion dawning within him. There is so much to be said. And how will he ever know what all this actually is, unless he shapes it with language?
    Words for him are toys, tools, currency, plumage; they are his métier. Denied them, how will he win her?
    Could he ever really wish to win someone who refuses him the means to do so?
    For the moment, the answer clearly is yes.
    Her soft thick hair trails against his chest as her mouth licks and nips and sucks down along his belly. Chills unfold at his back. Finally, she engulfs him.

    â€œWhat you have daily before you, what you love most dearly and believe in most fondly, that is where your art may be found. All around you lie the conditions of art. No country can compare with America for its resources of beauty.”

    She is sprawled across the satin coverlet, her arms outstretched atop the red gleaming outspread fan of hair, her legs apart, one knee drawn up. His kisses explore the crook of elbow, furrow of rib, hollow of throat, swell of shoulder, curve of jaw. The vulnerable V formed by opened lips at the corner of her mouth. The cunning coil of cartilage at her ear.
    His heart pounding against his temples, he does things he has never done before, because they were forbidden; does them now because they were; because somewhere they still are.
    With his tongue he licks the salt from her armpits, traces and retraces the tufts of her hair. He savors the taste of her navel. He tastes the savor of her toes. (At this little piggy stayed home she sighs his name; and that portion of his soul not suffused with lust suddenly fills with manly pride.) His fingertip pries and prods between the cleft of her globular buttocks. His face roots in the fur and the folds at the juncture of her legs and he swallows her sweet astringent juices. Soon he employs not only tongue and lips but also nose and chin and fingers: a mole. He is crawling, Good Lord, back into the womb.
    She moans and her hands clutch at his hair.
    â€œOscar,” she says, and her voice is frayed, hurried. “Come inside me. Please. Now.”

    â€œLet it be for you here in America to create an art by the hands of the people that will please the world. There is nothing in the world around you that art cannot ennoble.”

    Their mutual rhythm grows more rapid as their bodies, locked at the hip, buck and wallop. Her legs are coiled around him, her fists grasp at the sides of the pillow as though she fears she will soar off it into the air. Her lower lip is caught between her teeth and she is panting, her