him with the passive fortitude of a heroine; soon his thrusts, more and more furious, cheeks flush’d with a deeper scarlet, his eyes turn’d up in the fervent fit, some dying sighs, and an agonising shudder, announced the approaches of that ecstatic pleasure, I was yet in too much pain to come in for my share of it.
Nor was it till after a few enjoyments had numb’d and blunted the sense of the pain, and given me to feel the titillating inspersion of balsamic sweets, drawn from me the delicious return and brought down all my passion, that I arrived at excess of pleasure through excess of pain. But when successive engagements had broke and inur’d me, I began to enter into the true unallay’d relish of that pleasure of pleasures, when the warm gush darts through all the ravish’d inwards; what floods of bliss! what melting transport! what agonies of delight! too fierce, too mighty for nature to sustain; well has she therefore, no doubt, provided the relief of a delicious momentary dissolution, the approaches of which are intimated by a dear delirium, a sweet thrill, on the point of emitting those liquid sweets in which enjoyment itself is drown’d, when one gives the languishing stretch-out and dies at the discharge.
How often, when the rage and tumult of my sense had subsided after the melting flow, have I, in a tender meditation, ask’d myself coolly the question, if it was in nature for any of its creatures to be so happy as I was? Or, what were all fears of the consequence, put in the scale of one night’s enjoyment of anything so transcendently the taste of my eyes and heart as that delicious, fond, matchless youth?
Thus we spent the whole afternoon till suppertime, in a continued circle of love delights, kissing, turtle-billing, toying, and all the rest of the feast. At length, supper was serv’d in, before which Charles had, for I do not know what reason, slipt his clothes on; and sitting down by the bedside, we made table and tablecloth of the bed and sheets, whilst he suffer’d nobody to attend or serve but himself. He ate with a very good appetite, and seem’d charm’d to see me eat. For my part, I was so enchanted with my fortune, so transported with the comparison of the delights I now swam in with the insipidity of all my past scenes of life, that I thought them sufficiently cheap at even the price of my ruin, or the risk of their not lasting. The present possession was all my little head could find room for.
We lay together that night, when, after playing repeated prizes of pleasure, nature, overspent and satisfy’d, gave us up to the arms of sleep: those of my dear youth encircled me, the consciousness of which made even that sleep more delicious.
Late in the morning I wak’d first; and observing my lover slept profoundly, softly disengag’d myself from his arms, scarcely daring to breathe for fear of shortening his repose; my cap, my hair, my shift, were all in disorder from the rufflings I had undergone and I took this opportunity to adjust and set them as well as I could: whilst, every now and then, looking at the sleeping youth, with inconceivable fondness and delight, and reflecting on all the pain he had put me to, I tacitly own’d that the pleasure had overpaid me for my sufferings.
It was then broad day. I was sitting up in the bed, the clothes of which were all tossed, or rolled off, by the unquietness of our motions and from the sultry heat of the weather; nor could I refuse myself a pleasure that solicited me so irresistibly, as this fair occasion of feasting my sight with all those treasures of youthful beauty I had enjoy’d, and which lay now almost entirely naked, his shirt being truss’d up in a perfect wisp, which the warmth of the room and season made me easy about the consequence of. I hung over him enamour’d indeed! and devoured all his naked charms with only two eyes, when I could have wish’d them at least a hundred, for the fuller enjoyment of the gaze.
Oh! could I paint his figure as I see it now, still present to my transported imagination! a whole length of an all-perfect, manly beauty in full view. Think of a face without a fault, glowing with all the opening bloom and vernal freshness of an age in which beauty is of either sex, and which the first down over his upper lip scarce began to distinguish.
The parting of the double ruby pout of his lips seem’d to exhale an air sweeter and purer than what it drew in: ah! what violence did it not cost me to refrain from the so tempted kiss!
Then a neck exquisitely turn’d, grac’d behind and on the sides with his hair, playing freely in natural ringlets, connected his head to a body of the most perfect form, and of the most vigorous contexture, in which all the strength of manhood was conceal’d and soften’d to appearance by the delicacy of his complexion, the smoothness of his skin, and the plumpness of his flesh.
The platform of his snow-white bosom, that was laid out in a manly proportion, presented, on the vermilion summit of each pap, the idea of a rose about to bloom.
Nor did his shirt hinder me from observing that symmetry of his limbs, that exactness of shape, in the fall of it towards the loins, where the waist ends and the rounding swell of the hips commences, where the skin, sleek, smooth, and dazzling white, burnishes on the stretch over firm, plump, ripe flesh, that crimp’d and ran into dimples at the least pressure, or that the touch could not rest upon but slid over as on the surface of the most polished ivory.
His thighs, finely fashioned, and with a florid glossy roundness, gradually tapering away to the knees, seem’d pillars worthy to support that beauteous frame; at the bottom of which I could not, without some remains of terror, some tender emotions too, but fix my eyes on that terrible machine, which had, not long before, with such fury broke into, torn, and almost ruin’d those soft, tender parts of mine that had not yet done smarting with the effects of its rage; but behold it now! crestfall’n, reclining its half-capt vermilion head over one of his thighs, quiet, pliant and to all appearance incapable of the mischiefs and cruelty it had committed. Then the beautiful growth of the hair, in short and soft curls round its root, its whiteness, branch’d veins, the supple softness of the shaft, as it lay foreshorten’d, roll’d and shrunk up into a squab thickness, languid, and borne up from between his thighs by its globular appendage, that wondrous treasure-bag of nature’s sweets, which, rivell’d round, and purs’d up in the only wrinkles that are known to please, perfected the prospect, and all together formed the most interesting moving picture in nature, surely infinitely superior to those crudities furnish’d by the painters, statuaries, or any art, which are purchas’d at immense prices; whilst the sight of them in actual life is scarce sovereignly tasted by any but the few whom nature has endowed with a fire of imagination, warmly pointed by a truth of judgement to the spring-head, the originals of beauty of nature’s unequall’d composition, above all the imitations of art or the reach of wealth to pay their price.
But everything must have an end. A motion made by this angelic youth, in the listlessness of sleep, replac’d his shirt and the bedclothes in a posture that shut up that treasure from longer view.
I lay down then, and carrying my hands to that part of me in which the objects just seen had begun to raise a mutiny that prevail’d over the smart of them, my fingers now open’d themselves an easy passage; but I had not long time to consider the wide difference there, between the maid and the now finish’d woman, before Charles wak’d, and turning towards me, kindly enquir’d how I had rested, and, scarce giving me time to answer, imprinted on my lips one of his burning rapture-kisses, which darted a flame to my heart, that from thence radiated to every part of me; and presently, as if he had proudly meant revenge for the survey I had smuggled of all his naked beauties, he spurns off the bedclothes, and trussing up my shift as high as it would go, took his turn to feast his eyes on all the gifts nature had bestow’d on my person; his busy hands, too, rang’d intemperately over every part of me. The delicious austerity and hardness of my yet unripe budding breasts, the whiteness and firmness of my flesh, the freshness and regularity of my features, the harmony of my limbs, all seem’d to confirm him in his satisfaction with his bargain; but when curious to explore the havoc he had made in the centre of his over-fierce attack, he not only directed his hands there, but, with a pillow put under, placed me favourably for his wanton purpose of inspection, then, who can express the fire his eyes glisten’d, his hands glow’d with! whilst sighs of pleasure, and
