The clitoris is like a clematis in essence

     “So what did you talk about?” she asked.

    He slid down the mattress and nudged apart her thighs with his forehead. “This and that,” he said, slipping his fingers inside the lace of her knickers.

     “You didn’t tell her I told you about her and Ben, did you?”

     “Lips were sealed,” he said, inviting her to lift up her hips.

     “What did she say about me?”

     She complied with his request without seeming to and he tugged down her knickers and untangled them from her ankles. The warmth of the black lace in his hands, its vulnerability, brought a heightened tenderness into his hands.

     “She thinks I’m using you to get back at her,” he said.

     “And what did you say?”

     “I said you are a woman for me and she is a ghost.” He began caressing her small breasts. “The female nipple,” he said, in a television documentary voice, “is an electric blue nerve that connects to the deepest part of the womb. To be touched, caressed, kissed here lights up this nerve to its brightest intensity and generates a pleasant humming throughout the body, awakening deep slumbering sensations within. Waves begin to swirl inside her most secret places.”

     “You’re mad,” she said, through a puzzled smile.

     “Let’s now move down,” he said, feeling her pleasure spread like sunlight over the surface of her skin. “The clitoris is like a clematis in essence. Or the anther of a rose with all its petals protecting the heart of the flower. The clitoris is pink and shines and if you allow your fingers to run down and up and down and around and down and around and up it will respond by swelling and getting harder and bigger. These inner lips or folds I’m running my mouth over now are called the labia and each woman is unique and different in colour, texture and size. A little further down is the urethra which is tiny and difficult to see and that’s where urine is passed. Then there’s the vaginal opening which is surrounded by bits of pink tissue that are the vestiges of the hymen.”

     He curled his fingers inside her and they encountered the spongy texture of tissue which when touched made her gasp. He licked at her clitoris, enjoying the taste of her secretions on his tongue. He was reminded of the privacy and intimacy of rain. He felt himself sink down further into a dark resourceful embrace, a sticky coalescence.

     When they made love the bed shifted about beneath their exertions and began thumping against the wall behind which he imagined Rose sleeplessly listening. He also sensed that Grace herself was not indifferent to the effect their lovemaking might be having on her sister. She made more noise tonight. Afterwards he made Grace laugh. She was giggling for more than half an hour and he imagined Rose listening to the laughter too.