from ON CHESIL BEACH by Ian McEwan

Between Edward and Florence, nothing happened quickly. Important advances, permissions wordlessly granted to extend what he was allowed to see or caress, were attained only gradually. The day in October he first saw her naked breasts long preceded the day he could touch them — December 19. He kissed them in February, though not her nipples, which he grazed with his lips once, in May. She allowed herself to advance acros his own body with even greater caution. Sudden moves or radical suggestions on his part could undo months of good work. The evening in the cinema at a showing of A Taste of Honey when he took her hand and plunged it between his legs set the process back weeks. She became, not frosty, or even cool — that was never her way — but imperceptibly remote, perhaps disappointed, or even faintly betrayed. She retreated from him somehow without ever letting him feel in doubt about her love. Then at last they were back on course: when they were alone one Saturday afternoon in late March, with the rain falling heavily outside the windows of the disorderly sitting room of his parents’ tiny house in the Chiltern Hills, she let her hand rest briefly on, or near, his penis. For less than fifteen seconds, in rising hope and ecstasy, he felt her through two layers of fabric. As soon as she pulled away he knew he could bear it no more. He asked her to marry him.

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