Free The Female of the Species by Lionel Shriver Page A

swung her over his shoulder. As he climbed she clutched at the skirt.
    Inside, Charles slung her off and she felt herself free-fall to the mattress. She wondered if the parachute would open. Charles slipped his hand under the silk and cupped her hipbone, moving down to the inside of her thigh. With his other hand he traveled up her bare stomach to the tiny strip of cheetah skin, which had slipped dangerously low. Tiny rolls of dead skin gathered under his palm. Gray felt a little sick. Saliva squirted and pooled in her mouth; she had to keep swallowing. Corgie leaned over and took her earlobe in his mouth; hunger rustled at her ear. He moved to the cartilage and licked inside. The pressure in her head changed as he sucked the air out; she heard a splashing and yawning “ah-ah,” like the roar of a conch.
    Corgie let himself down slowly on top of her. He was heavy; though compact, his body was dense and buried her beneath him. Gray sunk into the bed so that the mattress rose on either side of her. Every part of this man’s body was hard like wood. He closed over her like the lid of a coffin. She couldn’t breathe.
    Corgie worked the gathers from her hips. Fold by fold hepulled the parachuting from her body. The material collected in limp rumples beside her, thin and wan and white like funereal linen. He exposed the sweep of her thigh. With one hard pull he snapped the band of her underwear.
    Gray’s eyes shot wide. She jockeyed him across her until she slid his body off to her side. Gray lay panting as Corgie propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her with a smile one might use after an excellent appetizer, when the meal to come promised to be even better. He took a deep breath and followed the indentations of her ribs with his fingertips as her chest rapidly rose and fell. Her cheetah skin had inched down still farther, and he trailed up to the swell of her slight breasts, up, over, down; up, over, down. Gray didn’t imagine for a minute he had stopped. He was resting. He was restraining himself. That was his pleasure. For now.
    “I was wondering when you’d come around,” said Charles. Her ear was up against his chest, and the cavity amplified the sound, like a tomb.
    “Oh?” Her voice was small.
    “Yeah. You’ve been pretty funny, I gotta say.”
    Gray struggled up on her elbows. Trying to look casual about it, she shifted the parachute to cover between her legs. “How is that?” She didn’t like the idea of amusing him just now.
    “Sleeping in your corner; playing the anthropologist.”
    “Oh?” she said again, pulling a little farther up on the pillow. The crease between her eyes indented, just a little. Playing the anthropologist. Gray remembered the snuffling in the night. How many other women had lain here?
    “But I figured pretty soon you couldn’t stand it anymore. Really, watching you’s been a riot.”
    Gray looked over at him, scanning for some sign that this was any different for him than one more snuffling. “A riot,” said Gray. The indentation between her eyes was discernibly deeper now.
    “A one-woman amusement park.” He licked his lips. He seemed pleased with himself.
    Gray tugged at her cheetah skin, now threatening to slide offher breasts altogether. “And how else have I been entertaining you?”
    “Tromping out in those fields of yours. Taking notes. It’s cute. But it’s been obvious from the first few days what you’ve really been doing here. Guess the study’s gonna be real indepth, right?”
    Gray pulled herself to a sitting position. She rearranged the straggles of her hair. She felt her face tingle and her ears heat; she was sure they were red. How did she get here? What was she doing in this bed? She tucked the folds of her skirt one by one decisively into its band. “Well, I suppose it takes me a long time to do my work, Charles,” she said quietly, “since I spend so much time daydreaming about when big handsome Charlie Corgie will finally kiss me