It was Roxana's fault. The party was wearing down to the last minutes, most of the celebrants had already left, and-apart from those passed out upstairs, there were only Malcolm and Sarah, hosts at their first grown-up party in the absence of their parents, Roxana, and myself.
Roxana and I were dancing, my hands sliding gently over the nerve endings in the small of her back, bare to my touch under the silver-weighted sari that was her only garment. She was the oldest there-Malcolm and Sarah were nineteen and seventeen respectively, and I was twenty-one, and full of confidence in myself with six months experience as a man of the world.
It was that hour just past midnight when inhibitions are washed away in the flow of alcohol, and the mind is making plan for bed partners. Our choice was rather limited at that point, and the male ego was aiming both Malcolm and myself in . the same direction. But I was a bit the faster. He came back into the living room after chasing out
the last of the departing guests to find my arms closing around Roxana. He stared at me bitterly, and snapped his fingers at Sarah.
Reluctant, she put down her glass and rose, and the two of them struggled to distract themselves from the burden of disappointment on their minds by relaxing into the prearranged pattern of a dance routine.
Roxana tilted her head back against my shoulder, as she kept us sidling back and forth on the same spot, so that we could both look towards Malcolm and Sarah. There was a secret smile on her face, and so I murmured, "What did you say to Sarah just now?"
Her eyes widened in amusement. "I asked her if she was afraid to make love to Malcolm," came the composed answer at the edge of audibility.
"Tom what?"
Only I didn't say it. I wanted, needed, this incredible woman, thrown my way by the chances of the evening, and I thought that the natural remark might possibly destroy my hopes for the rest of the night. Instead, I heard my mouth form other words.
"And what did she say?"
"Not very much."
Roxana took my hand from its post on her right breast, never ceasing the movement which made me think of those sculptured temple dancers that you find pictured on splendid Indian ruins. She moved my hand downwards, across her belly. It was obvious that I was to place it over her Mound of Venus, there to press and probe until she received pleasure. The fact that I would be achieving pleasure at the same time was of lesser importance, but a fact nonetheless, and so I did as she wanted.
The sensitivity of my fingers was unbelievably increased by mere contact with her. I was able to feel one or two long, stiff pubic hairs that had worked through the mesh of the sari. I captured one between finger and thumb and pulled, earning myself a squeeze of approval above my right wrist, where she had left her fingers lightly resting, after indicating directions for the hand to follow.
The idea of asking a girl whether or not she was afraid to make love to her brother was something out of fantasy, not real life. Yet this Roxana person was solid, warm, right here encircled by my embrace. I was growing giddy, and knew that it was only partially the fault of the mixture of wine and gin that had proceeded this development in the party.
"So?" I asked, curiosity whetted.
"She didn't answer the first time," said Roxana. "So I asked her again. And made her a premise."
"What ... promise?" I asked, tongue dry. In their dancing, something about Malcolm and Sarah-brother and sister-had changed. Instead of keeping deliberately apart, like strangers, they had begun to relax into one another's embrace. It could have been Malcolm with a girl from earlier in the evening, and Sarah with a tall, blonde boy from the same hour. She was thrusting forward with her pelvis when she closed on him during one of the elaborate gyrations, and he was feeling with long pale fingers at the nape of her neck, drawing back the hair to touch the bare skin below.
"I told her she would be safe for at least the next two hours," said Roxana. "And I gave her something to make it so. You know, she wants it so much that she's absolutely dripping."
"You ... felt?" I asked out of a throat gone drier than a cardboard tube.
I wasn't looking at her, although her cheek was against my chin. My hand was still busily thrusting at the front of her belly and she was reacting fractionally late to each pressure of my finger, like a relaxed jazz man letting the impetus of the after beat carry the music forward.
"She wanted me to, didn't she?" Roxana asked, and with a brief cock of her head so that she could glance up at me sidelong, she added, "You aren't stupid, Henry-surely!"
"You made her want it," I said.
"Of course," she replied, relaxing back into the posture that had molded our figures together into a semblance of one so perfect that it could have exceeded only through the ultimate blending of sexual blending.
M*
"How?" I pursued, dangerously, but rather than reply, she merely set herself more firmly against my body. All of our conversation was so low that six or eight feet away, where Malcolm and Sarah were dancing, it could not have been heard over the soft blurring of the music.
"She's wanted it for a long time," said Roxana. "I didn't start it-merely turned it on."
"What exactly did you do?" My lips were so close to her ear, I could envisage the words being interpreted more by contact than by sound transmission.
"Watch," she said.
I was already watching, and I was seeing the. brother and sister being almost pressed together, as though invisible bands were knotting around them. On this pass of their dancing, a touch of hand on breast; on the next, a frank caress crossing the nipple-the left one, standing out beneath the fabric of the blue dress, erected; on the next, Malcolm looking dazed and surprised that the brush of his lips across her cheek was not rebuffed with anger, but actually encouraged.
Meanwhile, the move of Sarah's pelvis grew more vigorous every second; she was rubbing against the front of her brother's trousers as Roxana had earlier rubbed against mine, until she was sure that Malcolm was properly aroused. I could imagine the erection he was enduring-fierce, demanding, seeming to draw blood from the whole lower part of the body-because that was the kind I had, the kind I had been carrying for what felt like an eternity.
"Ah!" Roxana whispered for the latest time, and gave up all pretense that she was actually dancing with me, to stand still and merely let waves of muscular contraction move up her body in time with the languid music. Every now and then her bottom rubbed against my prick and topped up the unbelievable reservoir of excitement she had created within me.
Letting my right hand rest where it had now been working for some time, she used these movements to stimulate herself, turning me into a sort of living dildo, which as yet had not reached inside here. But I could already detect that she was nearly in the state to which she had ascribed Sarah: soaking wet with her own juices, her own desires. The moisture was coming through the front of her sari, with that same slippery quality saliva has.
If she was intending to work Malcolm and Sarah to a further height of sexuality, the effect was wasted. The record player had moved on to a number which was very slow, very sensual, with many of the eerie steel-guitar glissandi that are so evocative of pre-missionary Polynesian love making, and there was almost no conceivable excuse to carry on with the kind of dancing that Malcolm and Sarah had been forcing themselves to engage in.
For some few moments now Malcolm's hand had been resting at the back of Sarah's neck, caressing the skin there as though his hand were under someone else's control. Now his fingers fumbled towards the zipper of her blue dress, drawing it downward a little way, to the level of her bra strap-we could see the strap as they turned and the light from the table with the record player fell on them. The bra she wore was pink, close to the color of her flesh, but the line of shadow along the band showed it up clearly to us-Roxana was watching even more eagerly than I.
As the zipper sighed down, I heard Roxana sigh in unison, and the hand which was lightly holding my right wrist against her belly suddenly tightened, drawing a bit of my flesh tighter against her. Then she relaxed.
Malcolm's hand went inside his sister's dress to caress her shoulder, and she made no attempt to fight him off. Instead, with a mindless look on her face that made me think of those idiots whom primitive people called holy because they were closer than self-critical normal man to the ideal of. God, she stopped dancing and turned her face up. They stared into each others eyes for a long moment, and then he pressed his mouth down on hers.
Time stopped, and everything stood still. Sometime during the pause the record stopped and another fell down on the turntable, and more music followed, still slow and sensual; Roxana had chosen with care when she had changed them over a short time before the dance began. My hands on
Roxana's body halted their movement, but our minds went on. We were each thinking of the pair before us, brother kissing sister, preparing her for the sex act. If this went on....
CHAPTER TWO
1958-was there ever such a year? It seems so long ago now, a time out of a previous reincarnation. The world has changed so much, the values of the world so changed that even the broadminded of a decade ago would be shocked at the commonplace happenings of today.
We thought we knew so much then, we had such plans to change the world ... and we did, after a fashion. Although maybe not quite the way we had originally planned. But the change in morals-not deterioration, mind you; change. Whether for the better or the worse will have to be left up to future historians to decide-the change in morals alone was enough to completely restructure our society, and our reaction to that change was not at all what we would have expected then.
I was twenty-one in 1958, and full of cock-sureness. The world was my oyster; tomorrow a million years away. At twenty-one, there were no worries for tomorrow: tomorrow would take care of itself. Plan for today, and let happen what would.
It was a hot Saturday night in July, and I'd just been dropped by the girl with whom I'd been having my first full-scale affair. We'd been sleeping together for six months, and I considered myself well-educated by that six months; our weekends were explorations into the mysteries of sex, and we stole every opportunity at other times to slip away long enough to make the necessary conjugations.
It was still something of a surprise to me to know that everything I'd been told about female sexuality by my parents and at school was complete rubbish: girls did want it. Further, they enjoyed sex as much as men, and it was not necessary to bribe, plead or blackmail your way into their beds (which had been pretty much the case where my preceding four of five quick lays had been concerned; the girls in question had been as deluded by our educational system as myself).
I was feeling miserable on this, my first weekend alone for half a year.
In London they shut the bars and pubs, even on Saturday night, at ten-thirty or eleven. I didn't belong to any of the members-only drinking clubs which carry on until three-I couldn't afford to; I was making out as a freelance designer and interior decorator, but the commissions were still scarce, and there was little money for extras.
Sexually frustrated, I decided to lose the evening in a party I'd been casually invited to during the week. I didn't really want to go, for the host was just a kid of nineteen. In those days, two years made a great deal of difference. Besides, I had crossed into the adult side of life, and I was . certain that Malcolm Clyde had not.
But the party was the only hope of alleviating
boredom. His parents were away on holiday from their small house in a prosperous northwest London suburb, and Malcolm and his sister Sarah were supposed to have been left in charge of a cousin, twenty-two and considered responsible.
Malcolm was a good-looking youth of about five-eleven, with pale skin, untidy straight black hair, and a very intense manner. Intensity ran in the family. The area where they lived might have led one to guess what Malcolm later told me: the name had originally been Klein, and his father had fled from Nazi Germany during the thirties.
Sarah was then seventeen, somewhat plumper than her brother-she took more after her mother's side of the family-but very pretty, with long dark hair, a big mouth and bright eyes. Sort of a cuddly-doll type. I'd heard earlier that the cousin chaperon would be no problem, since she was spending the weekend in fact with a boyfriend disapproved of by her parents. Hence the party.
I did not want to go, but it was a hell of a thing to go to bed alone on a Saturday. So when the barman called for last orders, I bought a bottle of wine as my admission card.
When I walked up the path from the street, through the neat front garden of the Clydes' home, I decided right away that my worst fears were going to be confirmed. The front door was ajar because some kid of sixteen or so had overdone the liquor and was heaving and retching behind a laburnum bush. I entered the hallway to find a scene so much like twenty others I'd seen in the past couple of years you could have swapped guests around between them at random, and next day no one would remember noticing.
In the hallway were empty glasses with cigarette butts drowning in the last dregs of beer; up and down the stairs at the far end were necking couples at the rate of about one per four steps-the boys with painful erections that more often than not would not be satisfied; the girls with flesh slippery from desire, but doomed to be as frustrated as the male partners they were then in the act of teasing. If only they would learn to give in to their emotions, there'd be a lot more screwing and a lot less frustration.
A table at the end of the hall had been used as a bar, while the room on the right of the entrance was a buffet, with cheese dip and canapes. But the food had disappeared, leaving only one couple with sense enough to go beyond the necking stage.
I did the sensible thing: I found and washed a beer mug, filled it from my bottle, and went looking for Malcolm and Sarah. They were in the other of the two front rooms, where a record player was giving out with soft pop music of the kind then popular. They were dancing with their current heart throbs: Malcolm with a red-haired girl in jeans and a shirt that he had tugged loose from her pants so his hand could play up towards the strap of her bra. As yet the probing was tentative, for he was unsure of the limits allowed. The virginal sickness was in his eyes-that feeling of frustration that comes over boys who dream of sex, yet dare not reach out for it, even when readily available and freely offered.
Sarah was with a tall, blonde boy who was . trying to tug her skirt up to the point where he could nudge his knee between her thighs. Skirts were a lot longer back then, of course, and she was wearing a peasant-type thing with ruffled. petticoats that did not make his task easy.
I didn't know any of the other kids there, and was feeling like a grandfather by the time I'd looked around and seen how very young the guests were-two or three years do a great deal for the ego at the age of twenty-one. I guessed the girls to be students from Sarah's school, with probably not a one over seventeen. The boys seemed to run on the average two years older. All were doing what they considered "making out" with great enthusiasm in the semidarkness.
I decided to take a look upstairs, since the beer I'd had earlier was now putting on the pressure. While waiting for the john to come free of a girl who was vomiting (but who had the kindness to wipe down after herself) I checked the bedrooms. The master bedroom was locked, presumably in deference to the Clyde Seniors, in case someone mussed their prized satin bedspread. The adjacent one was locked, too, but I knew this was the guest room. From behind the door came noises which added up to a very vivid picture indeed: faint, faint creaking, an occasional giggle, once a muttered curse, and then a mutual crescendo of moans that built to a rapid peak, telling of long pent-up frustrations exploded too soon for proper enjoyment.
I felt like hell. The end of a first genuine affair, and the stump was still raw!
In Sarah's room, where coats and jackets had first been tossed on the bed, but now kicked helter-skelter onto the floor, there was another couple at work. All I saw of that pair was the pale back of a hand as it finally disappeared down the unzipped neck of the girl's dress. In Malcolm's room, directly overhead of the record player, two more couples were using the faint underfoot music as an excuse for rubbing together while their tongues explored strange crevices in each others mouth.
Feeling considerably less better than before, I made my way back downstairs, carefully guarding my glass as I picked a path through the lovers on the stairs. I went back to the main room, coming in between records and a momentary lull in the activities. Malcolm was changing the stack on the spindle, and we passed a quick pleasant hello and how are you and good to see you, and then he went back to his popsie. Sarah and her boy hadn't even noticed that the music was over; her blonde pal had managed to ease down the zipper at the back of her dress, and was now busy licking her ears and shoulders.
I leaned back against the wall, feeling sorry for myself as I nursed my drink-and then the dancers parted to give a line of sight across the room, towards the window bay on the far side....
...And I discovered Roxana.
CHAPTER THREE
At that first glimpse all I realized was that there was at least one girl here who didn't belong in the same bag with Malcolm and Sarah's regular friends. The light was still dim, and it was hard to make out more than she was slim, and was a trifle dark-skinned, presumably Indian or Anglo-Indian. She was wearing a sari of some shimmering bright material over one of those tight little jackets that bring the breasts forward and leave the midriff bare.
She was sitting on the long lounge that ran from one side to the other of the window bay, next to an English girl who was-as far as I could gather-trying to keep up a conversation with her in order to evade the greedy pressure of a boy on* the other side who had his arm around her neck. The boy kept nuzzling at the girl's cheek, trying to worm his fingers down the top of her blouse, while Roxana looked on with faintly hidden amusement.
The dancers shifted again, blocking my view, but my mind was made up. I took it for granted that a woman like that was either spoken for or not interested in this gang of kids-whichever, I knew my chances for sex at this first meeting were so slim as to be discountable. But I was feeling too miserable to do nothing more than stand and watch the others, then end up going home feeling more depressed than ever. So I worked my way to a safe spot from which I could maneuver towards her lounge.
Just as I approached the girl next to her finally gave up the struggle and turned to kiss the boy. I had no trouble in putting on the right expression as I nodded at the pair, and said, "Would you care to dance?"
From this range it was possible to make out that Roxana was not just slender and graceful, but actually strikingly beautiful. Her face formed a near-perfect oval, crowned with black hair in braids. Her hands were delicate and tiny, with bangles on both wrists; her feet were likewise tiny, in little Indian slippers embroidered with gilt wire.
In that instant I told myself that I was stupid to dream of getting next to a girl so good-looking. I was sure she could snap a finger and have her pick of the rich and famous, running in their chauffeured Rolls-Royces to take her to dinner at the Jardin des Gourmets. Still, I liked dancing, and I was sure that she would be an ideal partner.
She looked up at me, putting aside a cigarette, and smiled. "I'd love to," she said. "There isn't likely that there will be much else to do for a while." She smiled at her former companion in conversation.
Her voice was low and husky, a kind of voice that has always struck me as tremendously sexy-the kind of voice that, had it belonged to the girl of my just-concluded affair, would have broken my heart for good on losing it. Luckily my former girl's voice had been high-pitched to the point of irritability, and I was able to capture the image as I talked now to this new creature.
She rose in a single smooth movement, and I put my arm around her. It was like touching a snake-dry, and a little bit dusty; vaguely warm. Without meaning to, I asked, "What on earth are you wearing?"
"Silver," she said. "Look."
She held up the end of the dress for me to examine and I could see the silver, in small flakes about an eighth of an inch on a side, mounted on a strong cotton mesh. I felt the weight of it and was astonished.
"The whole thing weighs seven pounds," she said. "Do you like it?"
"It's beautiful," I said honestly as I led her out into the middle of the floor, tiny step by tiny step, wherever a gap appeared so we could avoid bumping into others. I had to cancel one of the steps suddenly and guide her away from a collision course, and I found my fingertips had located the expanse of bare skin under her shoulder blade between the bottom of her little blouse-thing and the waist-turns of the sari.
I left them there, and she didn't raise an objection. Further, she didn't complain when I cut down our movements to the kind of sketch the rest of the dancers were indulging in, an imitation of dancing. Nor when I put my chin on the soft crown of her hair, which came to just the right height.
But despite the feelings of sensuality she aroused in me, there was something completely matter-of-fact about all this. The floor was much too crowded for proper enjoyment, and it was carpeted, so I merely held her, without trying to stroke the bare spot of back, or nuzzle her cheek, or anything that could lead to something intensifying the feelings that were already making my prick stir in my pants. She was a first-rate dancer, more than good enough to overcome the handicaps of the room and the time and the people around us-good enough to make the dance very enjoyable for me.
I tried to think of scintillating conversation to impress her, but my mind was blank; by the time the record ended, I'd managed to say, "My name's Henry."
To which she: "I'm Roxana."
At the end of that record there was a minor commotion as someone put his head around the door calling names, saying that last buses had already gone and if anyone needed to catch a train they'd better hurry. And then he complained that he couldn't find his sister.
Among those who moved to dash were the girl and boy who had been sitting beside Roxana. At once Sarah and her blonde grabbed the lounge and collapsed in a clinch. By now the boy was worked up to a frenzy, his hand probing high under her skirt, she resisting only half-heartedly.
This house stank of the need for sex.
In the momentary confusion of departure Roxana and I separated. I lit a cigarette and managed to get next to Malcolm long enough to ask who she was.
"She's a friend of a friend-she hardly knows anyone in London, so Herta brought her along." The music had started again, and I looked around to see Roxana in the arms of another boy-a boy with both hands behind her, probing experimentally where I had hesitated, trying to release the little buttons that held her tiny jacket. Not only was she not fighting, she was setting her shoulders back to make his task easier.
But he was clumsy in his technique, and when the record ended she came back towards me and nodded in his direction with an expression that said, clear as words, "Kids!"
She went on by to the stairs and headed for the bathroom. The house was much emptier now, with only a few die-hards hanging on. Those who had come a distance had fled, but even if I did miss the last train, home was only half an hour away on foot, and so I wasn't worried.
Now the last of the bright lights in the kitchen was turned off and the whole house was in a gloomy grey twilight. I heard the toilet flush, and then the latch clicked and Roxana came out.
Nowadays standards are relaxed, and I've seen well brought-up Indian girls walking the streets of London without the jacket under their sari. But in 1958 it was really something to find that Roxana had discarded the jacket. There was nothing left to cover her breasts except the turn of the sari at shoulder level. The flakes of silver gave the impression in the dim light that the mesh was open, the skin shining through.
I led her back into the darkened front room, this time not wasting the opportunity. I called on everything I'd learned in the past six months-and it was a fair amount, even if my partner was not the most experienced. I thought my conscious mind down into my hands and left the rest of my body to follow the music of its own accord.
I started with fingertips on and around Roxana's spine, where the nerves go out to the muscles of the flank, and moved them back and form under the shelter of her single garment. At once she pressed against me, combing her dance steps with changes of position designed to bring my fingers to exactly the best spot. She glanced up at me, not saying anything, but her expression made me feel like Casanova.
I'm always willing to work hard at things enjoyable, and I was finding this most enjoyable indeed. If I'd known from the beginning that I'd never see Roxana again, after that one night, then I might have moved a bit faster. But things were proceeding at their own pace, a proper pace. I was feeling light-headed-not exactly drunk, but close to the edge. I was thinking that perhaps people really did do those things I'd heard about, in smutty backroom tales.
I needed only to close my arms a little tighter around this woman to touch her breasts ... and was doing just that, gently, from the sides where it was just barely possible to detect the rising swell and the nearly imperceptible greater smoothness of the skin. If I altered the angle between us, there was the border of the right nipple, the areola and the little tiny ring of lumps that-she changed position adroitly and evaded me.
For an instant I thought this was another, more practiced, form of tease, of a girl who enjoyed slamming down the doors at the last possible instant. Then I decided-hoping against hope-that at long last I'd found a woman, who simply and straightforwardly liked to be made love to.
So I kept on, a touch here, there, all the time weaving to the syrupy music, once in a while pressing my thigh into her crotch, brushing my lips against her neck and cheek, kissing her eyes very quickly when the music paused and we had to stand still, and finally making for her mouth.
I felt, rather than heard, her sigh, and then her lips parted against mine and let my tongue go through. Her teeth, very sharp, just touched it as it passed them, and I almost jerked with the violence of the erection which overcame me. Inspired, I put one hand behind her bottom instead of her waist and pressed her so tightly against me that she could not help feeling me.
At that point she started kissing me back....
I thought I was going to come in my pants.
CHAPTER FOUR
I said, because it was all I could think of to say, "What did you actually do to her, Roxana?"
In a voice quiet as night winds the answer came back, "Why, I reached up between her legs to her crotch and I pulled her briefs out of the way and with this finger"-holding up the middle one on her right hand-"I pushed a sort of ... I guess you'd say a tablet into her."
"Safe for two hours?"
"Yes, but that's not all. Not quite all." A throaty chuckle. She shrugged, and my right arm reaching over her shoulder and, at full stretch, touching the erogenous area of her belly moved with her movement so that my hard-pressing finger made her shiver like a tolled bell.
"Wait," she said. "Watch. And see."
With her leaning back against me, I obeyed, straining my eyes so hard that the lids began to complain at lack of opportunity to blink. Lost entirely to the universe for-oh, a minute and a half, perhaps-Malcolm abandoned his tongue to a probing search of Sarah's mouth and his hands to the naked desire that dragged down the zipper of her dress to waist level and made a path for his fingers to thrust beneath the elastic of her panties.
Lord only knows what was going on in his mind. Suddenly to find that instead of merely having to eke out the tail end of a failed party by reverting to a childhood pattern of dancing with his sister he was embracing a girl who responded ardently to his kisses and caresses-that must have been a fantastic shock. Me, rubbing against Roxana from knee to cheek, I was lost in an ocean of sexual storms and short of diving to the bed of it and walking painfully home I could never have found my way out of the present moment.
In those days for a girl to go to a party without a slip-come to that, without two or three frilly petticoats to make her skirt stand out around her knees-was regarded as a kind of come-on. But it was a hot night, and though the skirt of her dress was full as fashion decreed Sarah had nothing on underneath it except bra and briefs, so that with the zipper fully opened all the skin of her back and sides was available for her brother's hands to stroke, and he could push it away from her shoulders in order to nuzzle them.
I was so aroused that I thought for a second the lightning of orgasm was going to blast up my spine before I was ready for it. Then I realized I was wrong. I was going to come when the time was ripe-when Roxana decreed I should, and not before. This time I had no reason to grab frantically for the chance of orgasm before my partner changed her mind, as I had with most of my previous girls, because I was convinced that that was what we both wanted and that she was a better judge than I of the moment when the peak of excitement would be reached.
So I stood there, moving back and forth fractionally as Roxana indicated in order to keep the pleasure-waves flowing up from my genitals. I was in precisely that state where excitement turns into confidence-and if it hadn't been for meeting Roxana I might have gone on the rest of my life dismissing that possibility as a fiction. I had the most colossal stand I'd ever had and it was making me flash like a neon sign and I wasn't in the least afraid of wasting it before I'd got where I wanted to be.
By now Malcolm and Sarah had given up any pretense of dancing; they were just standing there and clutching frantically at each other. His mouth nibbled at her shoulders where he had pushed her dress aside, and then he withdrew the hand he had been caressing her bottom with and urged her to turn half around so that he could reach over her shoulder and slide his fingers down the slope of her breasts. Her eyes were shut, her head tilted back, her lips a little apart, her breath coming rapidly huh-huh-huh ... but as he turned her and she made some token resistance her eyes opened again and fell on us.
With obvious horror she remembered there were other people in the room and realized what she was doing. The top of her dress had fallen forward almost to the top of her bra; she reached up to catch at it and replace it, and said in a faint voice, "Mai! Malcolm! You-you mustn't...!"
That was the moment-the one in which she was looking at us and recalling her brother to awareness of our presence-that Roxana chose to move just a little aside from me so that we were no longer standing belly to back; to raise with her left hand the overhanging folds of her sari and expose her own lovely rounded breasts with my fingers delicately darting to and fro around her left nipple, and with her right to feel for and draw down the zipper of my fly. I wasn't wearing undershorts. At that time I never did in summer. I was living on my own and anything which cut down the amount of laundry I had to wash for myself was what I did. Turning her hand back at what I should have thought was an almost impossible angle on the wrist, she slipped it inside my pants, locating my prick with her fingertips.
The hunger in their eyes was indescribable. Malcolm just stood there, almost leaning on his sister's shoulder, his right hand still reaching down towards her breast from behind and his left closing hard on the outside of her skirt at the level of her pussy, and she also closed her hands convulsively, one on the neckline of her dress and the other on his forearm.
Roxana laughed, a soft throaty chuckle, and tipped her head back to brush her hair against my cheek. "Henry," she said as though there were nothing at all extraordinary in what was going on. "Do you want me?"
"My God," I said. "Can't you feel how much?" She chuckled again, and her fingers closed around the shaft of my prick, the knuckles bunching so that I was certain they could be seen outlined through my pants. "That's good," she said. "Then take some cushions off the couch for us."
Blindly, like an automaton, I moved to comply, and was corrected as I started to drag down the ones from the seat-it was the kind with three flat soft squab-cushions on the seat and three similar at the back. "No, take the back ones," she directed. "Leave the others. Malcolm and Sarah will be wanting those."
At her direction I laid them out end to end on the floor. Meanwhile, she began gracefully to unwind the sari which she had already thrown back to expose her bosom. Wide-eyed, amazed, Malcolm and Sarah watched her as turn after turn of the heavy silver-laden fabric came away to lie on the floor like the shed skin of a snake. Dropping the last yard of it from her body, she was naked but for her little slippers, and finally she stepped out of them. My mouth had gone dry with tension now; this was something out of a wild fantasy, not something that could really be thought of as happening to me!
I stared at her, marvelling at the slimness of her waist, the fullness of her hips, the perfection of her breasts, the glint of light reflected on the moisture tracing down her thighs. I was just about to reach for her, careless of what the hell else might happen, careless whether this was the point at which Malcolm and Sarah might run from the room or shout in anger or say or do something to destroy the spell she had cast over us-when instead of turning to me, she stepped over her abandoned sari towards them, smiling with the same enigmatic quality you find carved into Indian statuary.
Very lightly, she kissed first Sarah and then Malcolm on the cheek, and touched her on the shoulder where her dress had slipped down and him on the bare arm which crossed his sister's belly. She said something I had to strain my ears to catch; I interpreted it as, "Be very happy, won't you?"
Then she returned to me, standing numbly alongside the cushions I'd spread out, and with nimble fingers undid the front of my shirt, caressed my chest and arms as she took it off, opened my belt and bared the rest of me. I had just enough presence of mind to ease my shoes off, heel against toe in turn to give purchase, but otherwise I was gazing at Malcolm and Sarah. Seemingly without conscious volition, she was drawing down the top of her dress instead of holding it up and letting his hand rove freely on her bosom, while he was tugging up the hem of her skirt by handfuls, frantic to get underneath.
Roxana squatted on the cushions I'd spread out and drew me down beside her. I made to lie over her-she pushed me away and rolled on her side and hollowed her back and with her right hand reaching behind her urged me to enter her that way. I slipped into silken smoothness, into a ripple-walled cave of flesh which gripped me and held me fast, and was happy simply to lie there and let her work on me.
We were both looking at the others still, and gradually we saw them move towards the couch where she had insisted I leave cushions for them. They were panting; their expressions were of anguish, but their bodies were out of their control. By now he had pulled up her skirt far enough for his hand to get at the front of her panties, and it was possible to see that there it was darker than shadow with the moisture of desire.
Roxana reached for my right hand and placed it over her breast, then slipped hers downward, caressing across her belly and started to jab lightly at her clitoris with the middle finger in a rhythm I could judge by the way it made her pussy clasp and release my prick. In time with that, I pinched her nipple between finger and thumb.
Sarah's dress was down around her waist now. Starting to hurry her towards the couch, Malcolm bent her over backwards with the force of another kiss. With his left hand he managed to squeeze together the strap at the back of her bra and part the hook-and-eye fastening; the pink cups came away from her body and with furious eagerness he dropped his mouth to her nipples as they appeared. Sarah fell back onto the couch, moaning with delight, tugging her bra out of the way and letting it fall to the floor. Still licking her breasts, he urged her to lift her bottom to get the bulk of her dress around its curve, and she complied and helped him, shoulders against the back of the couch and both hands thrusting the garment towards her ankles. Now she wore only her panties, and he clutched at them and tried to turn her so he could lie on top of her at the same time, and Roxana, still firing me with exquisite and unbelievable delight, spoke up in a clear loud voice.
"Sarah! There's no reason at all to be afraid!"
She looked at her, her face blank with desire, and could not respond. Malcolm seized the instant she was distracted to pull her panties free, baring the black triangle of hair below her belly, and then, his mouth returning to her nipples, began awkwardly and eagerly to slip down his pants and the shorts he wore beneath. In a moment we could see his prick, standing like a telephone pole, and he was on his sister and twisting her around to part her legs and into her body like a dagger.
"Ah!" Roxana said very softly as she saw how Sarah's hips writhed at the contact and began to plunge helplessly back and forth, and simultaneously she gave herself the final caress which triggered her orgasm. In a wild tempest of sensation I felt myself dissolve into nothing, more violently than by pain, more deliriously than by fever, my whole being drawn out of me by the terrific frenzy of Roxana's pussy.
It was a long time later, an eternity later, that in the aftermath of passion I began to think about what I bad been made to do.
CHAPTER FIVE
After the first few seconds during which they were too overcome by the fury of their mating to think of anything at all, Malcolm and Sarah too returned to awareness of the world and I could see their faces change towards-not exactly dismay, but more astonishment: the kind of astonishment which accompanies doing something you would expect to make the heavens fall and then discovering that the world is still there and going on as usual.
Which was pretty much how I was feeling myself. I had never in my life come so intensively. I felt limp, exhausted, shadowed by the last drifting wraiths of a mist of pleasure which had briefly blotted me out. I could do no more than nuzzle the back of Roxana's neck and try to signal by caressing her my gratitude for the delight she had given me.
We lay there together for a little while, letting my stand subside and watching how Malcolm and Sarah were drawing apart, he turning to let her put her feet on the floor again, she dazedly doing so and staring first at him and then down at her own naked body in complete bewilderment. She did in fact have a beautiful body-for me, not a match with Roxana's because she was plumper, but indisputably she had lovely breasts, cone-shaped and pointed, and her belly was firm although rounded. I thought of the Song of Solomon as I looked at her.
What might have been done or said next but for Roxana, I don't know. It doesn't matter. She prevented it. With a sort of apt briskness she rolled away from me, tipped her head back far enough to give me a kiss and a smile, and rose matter-of-factly to her feet. From the same hiding place where she had concealed the bottle of gin-behind the big bookcase-she fetched her handbag and from it took out a packet of tissues. She tossed one to me; it fluttered down while she moved on towards Malcolm and Sarah, offering more.
"Here, wipe yourselves," she said. "You don't want to stain the cushions."
As though amazed to find anyone could be practical at a juncture like this, they compliantly accepted the tissues. For a moment Sarah didn't seem to know what she was supposed to do with hers, but Roxana proceeded without embarrassment to mop between her thighs and dry herself, so Sarah shyly imitated her.
Also from her handbag she took a pack of cigarettes and offered them, and we all accepted, beginning to forget that not only were we all naked but we had just watched each other screwing. Around the first breath of grey smoke she said,' "Henry, what did I do with my drink, did you notice? Ah, that must be it. Look, how about, topping them up?"
I got to my feet and complied, spilling a little gin and a little lime and splashing a little soda into each of the glasses we'd been using. While I was doing this, she sat down companionably close to Sarah on the couch, with Malcolm on the far side, and smiled at them.
I heard her say, "It wasn't the first time, was it?"
Sarah stared at her. She swallowed hard. "I-uh-I'm not a virgin, if that's what you're asking ... I mean, I wasn't."
"Who with?" Malcolm said sharply, everything else forgotten on the instant. His sister glanced at him and away again, looking down at the drink I'd just handed her. She shrugged.
"Was it ever that good before?" Roxana pressed her.
Again, a violent swallow. Almost inaudibly, she whispered, "No-uh-no, nothing like. I mean it was all so quick. I didn't get the chance to come." And a shy blink at me, Malcolm and Roxana in turn, as though*t6 gauge the effect on us of being so outspoken.
"That's good," Roxana said, and laid her hand on Sarah's bare thigh. "But actually that wasn't what I was asking about. I meant it wasn't the first time you'd wanted to do that, was it?"
Without looking at me, she gestured for me to come and sit at her feet; I kicked one of the over and sat down obediently, leaning my arm on her knees.
There was a pause that positively hummed with embarrassment. Finally, with an air of defiance, Malcolm answered. He said, "No, damn it! In fact once before we bloody nearly did!"
"Mai!" Sarah protested, coloring and shrinking back into the shadow Roxana cast on her. "You mustn't talk about-"
"Why not?" he countered. "I mean this time we did, didn't we? And they were right here with us! And they're not screaming angry or pretending to be shocked or anything-they saw we wanted to and didn't try to stop us. And you wanted to as much as I did, didn't you? Go on, be honest!"
"Well, practically all the evening I'd been-" she began in an accusatory tone, and broke off because she realized the rest of us knew what she'd been doing to get herself so worked up.
"And me," Malcolm muttered, reaching to tip ash from his cigarette into a distant tray.
"You were saying you nearly did, before," Roxana prompted.
"Hmm? Oh-yes." He scowled, his full dark eyebrows coming together above his sharp long nose. "Well, it was one night when Dad and Mum had gone to the theater and were planning to stay out after for a late supper. Their anniversary or something, I think it was. And you know this is an old house and it's only got one bathroom even though Dad keeps talking about putting in a downstairs cloakroom as well. But he never seems to get around to it. Anyway: we'd both had quite a lot of homework and we'd been sitting in our rooms doing it and Sarah had finished and gone to have her bath, you see." He hesitated.
"When was this?" Roxana inquired. I felt her clamping her thighs together as though this story was making her excited all over again; the long muscles tensed and relaxed and tensed. But no trace of it showed on her face, which displayed mere polite interest as if we were talking about the weather or how they were getting on at school.
"Nearly two years ago," Sarah said with a hint of sullenness.
"Yes, that's right," Malcolm agreed. "Just after school started in September. It was my year to work for 0 level so I had a lot to do. So I kept on sitting there working long after I was bursting to go and have a pee, and then the noise of Sarah splashing around in the bath made it impossible to hold it any longer and-and I had to go in. You hadn't locked the door, had you?" he added to his sister.
She shook her head. "I don't know why not," she muttered. "I usually do."
"And there she was in the bath," Malcolm said. "Playing with herself. You know what I mean? That was the splashing noise I'd heard: her hand going up and down on the water."
"It's perfectly natural," Sarah snapped. "Everybody does it! "
"Of course,,'* Roxana said soothingly, and the hand she had left on the younger girl's thigh moved in a little circle, towards her crotch and back again. "So what did you do, Malcolm?"
"Well-uh-she sort of gasped, and grabbed for the sponge, so she could pretend she wasn't doing what she was doing-"
"I didn't!" Sarah objected, straightening. "Grab?"
"Well, that's what it looked like to me," Malcolm said, and grinned. He was relaxing now; I could almost translate the thoughts that were passing through his mind-as it might be, "Damnation, we did it and it was great and these people seem to be taking it in their stride so I might as well make the most of something which may not happen again."
A very sane attitude, in my judgment. At the time.
"Well, I didn't quite know what to do," he resumed. "But I knew what I had to do, which was pee, so I said why I'd come in and she said-know what she said? She said, Why can't you go and do it in the hand basin in Mum's room?' Which ... well, I suppose it rather shocked me. But in a nice way, know what I mean? It was kind of exciting to hear Sarah talk like that. Mostly we'd never talked about-well, sex or going to the toilet or anything of that sort. Back when I was about six or seven and she was five I do remember we'd gone off by ourselves and undressed so we could look at each other, but that had been ages ago and we'd got over that stage."
Sarah was clutching her glass tightly and drawing on her cigarette with quick, irregular puffs; she was obviously torn between embarrassment at what Malcolm was telling us and excitement of the kind he'd just defined, and excitement was winning. I wondered what had been in the "tablet" Roxana had contrived to slip into her. I was sure that must have been what wiped away her normal inhibitions.
"Well, anyway, it was dreadfully urgent," Malcolm continued. "So I just went ahead and did it, and in the mirror alongside the toilet I could see she was looking at me, trying to watch, and that got me terribly worked up. I started to go all stiff-and you know how it is when you try and pee with a stand on, don't you?" He glanced down at me and I frankly stared back, because his own recital was having precisely that effect on him and over his crossed legs his prick was starting to stir again.
It was also affecting Roxana pretty fiercely by now. There was new interest in her husky voice as she urged, "Go on! What did you do?"
"I asked him to turn around when he'd finished and let me look at him," Sarah said suddenly in a clear defiant tone. "I said it was only fair because he'd come in while I was in the bath with nothing on."
"That's right," Malcolm nodded. "So I said all right, and I did, and I was absolutely throbbing by then. I was a bit scared, but I was pretty sure Mum and Dad wouldn't be back for at least another couple of hours, so that was okay. And she stared at me for a moment or two, and she didn't say anything, but then she sort of lifted up her hand, like she wanted to reach out and couldn't quite find the courage to grab hold. So I went over to the side of the bath and said go on, feel it, and she did, and I started coming right away. Sprayed all over her. I was horrified!"
"I could see you were," Sarah said tartly. "There wasn't any need for that, though. I mean, I'd been told all about it in biology class. I was just interested to see it actually happening for the first time."
"You were a lot more than interested," Malcolm smiled. He jabbed his cigarette into the ashtray and put his arm around her, sitting closer so that they touched from shoulder to knee. Roxana reached past Sarah to stroke his cheek encouragingly, inviting him with her eyes to finish his tale.
"Yes, I suppose I was," Sarah admitted.
"You damned well were! You were wriggling around so much you were practically splashing the water over the end of the tub! And you remember what you said then?"
Sarah giggled and leaned forward in a parody of shyness, putting up her hand to cover her mouth.
"You said, 'Is that what boys try and make happen when they play with themselves?' " Malcolm declared. "And I said yes, of course-what do girls try and make happen? By then, naturally, I'd figured out what she must have been up to when I came in to get herself in this kind of mood."
Sarah giggled again, and took another sip of her drink. "So I said I'd show him," she said. "And I did, but I had to sort of hoist myself up above the water level-like I propped myself up with my shoulders and my heels, you get me?-and it was terribly awkward, so I said why didn't he reach over and feel it happening. Only I was the wrong way round and he didn't want to use his left hand because he's right-handed and anyway when he tried he got his sleeve soaked. So I said what he ought to do was undress and get in the bath with me.
"And you did?" Roxana demanded of Malcolm. She reached to stub her cigarette, shifted the position of her bottom on the couch, and blatantly began to stroke herself. With them both' staring at her-and me as well-Malcolm nodded.
"Yes, of course I did. I got in behind her and she leaned back against me and put my left hand on her breast and my right hand down between her legs and started rubbing my finger in the right place, and in next to no time she came. It was the first time I'd really understood that girls could come. And it got me worked up all over again-I had a hell of a hard-on!"
"So what did you do then?" Roxana repeated. Now her hand was working rhythmically up and down over the triangle of her pubic hair, and my own prick was standing up to be counted. Seeing this, Malcolm was emboldened to set aside his glass and put his own hand on his sister's belly; when she made a gesture of resistance, he brushed it aside.
"Shhh! You know you'd like me to," he whispered in her ear loud enough to fill a small theater. She didn't quite have the face to deny the truth of the charge, but she still objected.
"Mai, for heaven's sake! Suppose Don and Wendy get up and come down-suppose Herta decides to see if the party's over yet! It'd be awful for someone to walk in and find us like this, wouldn't it?"
"I'll fix that," Malcolm promised. Jumping up, he marched over to the door and fumbled with the lock. There was a click, and he came back grinning.
"Now they can't just walk in," he said. "And if they have the gall to object to what we're up to after what they've been getting up to, it's just too bad. Isn't it?" He sat down alongside her again and thrust his hand between her thighs, nuzzling the lobe of her ear for a second before continuing.
"So anyway, there we were in the bath together, you see, and I had this enormous stand, so I got her to turn around and kind of kneel over me so she could squeeze it between her legs-which was marvellous-while I was fondling her all over, and then I tried to get her to kiss me. She wouldn't at first, and then when I did manage to persuade her she was far more shocked by that than she had been by my coming in her hand."
"It was the first time a boy had put his tongue in my mouth," Sarah said. She writhed a little at the motion of her brother's hand caressing her. "They hadn't told us about that in biology class!"
"But you liked it, didn't you?" Malcolm urged.
"Well...." Abruptly she broke into a grin. "Yes, dammit! Yes, I liked it very much! And next time Charley brought me home from the pictures-you remember Charley that I was going out with then? I shocked him, because I tried it on him and he'd never been kissed that way either!"
We all laughed, and Roxana moved her delicate little foot across my thighs, sort of drawing it along with her toes, until she located my prick and started to rub it gently up and down, up and down. I shivered.
"That was how I lost Charley, anyway," Sarah added. "My next boyfriend was a bit more-uh-sophisticated! "
"So how long did you stay in the bath?" Roxana asked.
"Oh, more or less until the water started to feel cold," Sarah shrugged. "Then we got out and we dried each other, and Malcolm kept on trying to make me kiss his tool while we were doing it. But I wouldn't do that. I mean, that was a bit too much."
"But there's nothing nasty about it!" Roxana said. "It's a very nice thing to do-it's been called the most intimate thing in the world! Look!" And she leaned forward across Sarah, caught hold of Malcolm's prick, and briefly placed her lips around its tip.
He said, without affectation, "Wow\" I saw the pang travel up his body and compress his mouth, his eyelids and the muscles of his forehead.
Roxana drew back, and Sarah said faintly, "Well ... yes. I mean later I did find that out, and I've done it now. But then I didn't much like the idea that he might come in my mouth-know what I mean?"
"Not that I'd really expected to get her to do that," Malcolm said. "I'd never had it done to me then; I'd only read about it. I'd like you to do it to me properly, though, Roxana," he added optimistically.
"We'll see what happens," she countered with a smile. "Come on-tell us the rest of it."
"Where was I? Oh, yes." Malcolm licked his lips. "Well, then she needed to use the toilet before going to bed and I said she ought to let me watch because she'd watched me, and she said all right, so I did, and then we sort of crept out of the bathroom together, me carrying my clothes and her carrying her pajamas, and we made absolutely certain it was all safe around the house and Mum and Dad were still not going to come back yet-they'd said midnight, and it wasn't much after eleven-so we chucked my clothes in my room and her pajamas in hers and we ... well, we sort of went crazy for a bit. Ran around the whole house stark naked, grabbing each other and kissing and cuddling and doing all sorts of ridiculous things. After-oh, I don't know: twenty minutes of that, maybe, I said I'd like to get into bed with her, and she said okay, let's. You know she's got this big double bed in her room? Used to belong to Grandma, and she left it to Mum and Dad but they had one of their own, of course, which is nicer, so they put it in Sarah's room because she'd grown out of the kid-sized bed she had before and it saved having to buy her a brand-new one. Makes the room pretty crowded, but it's okay. In fact I was sort of jealous, even though I'd been bought a grown-up bed of my own about three years before. So we got into it and I still had this stand so I tried to screw her, but she wouldn't let me. She said I could rub myself between her legs, though, so I did. And I came, and just a minute or two later we heard the car pulling into the garage so I absolutely fled into my own room and put on my pajama pants and jumped into bed, and when Mum and Dad came up there I was pretending to be fast asleep."
"Me, too," Sarah chuckled. "Except it was my pajama top I put on. I only had time to shove the pants down the bed alongside me so Mum wouldn't notice I wasn't wearing them if she looked into my room."
"And that was that," Malcolm said.
"But didn't you ever do it again?" Roxana demanded. "After that, I should have thought it was pretty difficult to resist the idea."
Brother and sister looked at one another for a moment. After a pause, Sarah said, "Malcolm did want to-I mean, for weeks afterwards he kept finding excuses to sneak into my room while I was in bed and trying to reach down under the covers and stroke me, and he kept trying to make me kiss him or hold his prick when we were alone. But the next morning, you see, I was horrified with myself. Like he just said, he had been trying to make me-uh-screw with him." She had tremendous difficulty bringing the taboo word out in a matter-of-fact tone, but she managed it pretty well. "And I knew how close I'd come to letting him, and ... well, suppose he had, and he'd made me have a baby?"
Suddenly she rounded on Roxana. "Can you absolutely promise that the thing you put in me made it safe?"
"What thing?" Malcolm demanded, and I remembered: he'd been out of the room at that particular juncture.
"Roxana-" Sarah began, and had to check, swallow and start again. "Roxana put something into me which she said would make it safe."
"She put something in? Herself?" Malcolm tensed; it was clear that he, like me and so many other men, was automatically aroused by the idea of one girl touching another's pussy. "Roxana, what was it?"
"Something I always take to parties," Roxana replied composedly. "I put one in myself when I went up to the bathroom to take off my jacket. That ought to reassure you, dear-it's the same as what I rely on, and it's never yet let me down." Malcolm stared at her. Eventually he said, "I imagine you've-uh-put it to the test pretty often, hm?"
She shrugged and smiled, her hand still busy on her body in a rhythm that seemed to be quite independent of anything else she might be doing. "I once tried to work it out. I got it to roughly a thousand times, give or take the odd hundred. But that was some while ago now." She leaned towards Sarah, whose face had briefly displayed alarm, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
"There's no need for you to worry, dear-I swear it! I think you're lovely and you're awfully sweet and it would be terrible if I let you do something disastrous, so I simply wouldn't! Believe me?"
After a moment Sarah gave a tremulous nod.
"That's all right then," Roxana said, and reached for her drink, which she drained. Setting the glass aside, she added, "By the way, didn't you say there's a double bed in your room?"
"Y-yes," Sarah agreed.
"And that's the one which hasn't been appropriated by-is it Don and Wendy?"
A nod.
"Then let's go and get into it," Roxana said, briskly rising to her feet. "There's not much point in staying here all night, is there?"
"You mean all of us?" Sarah gasped, while Malcolm looked fervent approval of the idea.
"Yes, why not? I think it would be very sad to separate now. Don't you?"
"But suppose Herta, or-"
"In the morning, you mean?" Roxana cut in. "Oh, you can invent any kind of lie you like: I was in there with Malcolm, perhaps, and you were down here with Henry, or-or anything. But what business is it of theirs, anyway?"
"Well, Herta was sort of supposed to be in charge while Mum and Dad were away...."
"And from what I can gather very sensibly preferred the company of her Johnny to playing the nursemaid to a pair of young people old enough to take care of themselves. Right? Come on, let's go!"
She held out her hands, one to Malcolm, one to Sarah, and they timidly accepted the grip and stood up.
"Aren't we even going to get dressed to go upstairs?" Sarah suggested.
"I'm not," Roxana shrugged. "I'm not ashamed of being seen naked-I don't think I have any reason to be."
"You can say that again," Malcolm muttered. "But we'd better take our clothes along, at least. For the morning."
"Yes, of course." Roxana bent to gather her sari and slippers; then, brazen, she led the way to the door, unlocked it, listened for a second, and beckoned us to follow her up the dark stairs. I went next, and Malcolm and Sarah followed, timidly, holding hands and glancing at one another as light from the streetlamp outside glimmered on their bare bodies.
The double bed in Sarah's room was a big one, five feet across, and did indeed leave very little room around it; I was surprised that Don and Wendy hadn't usurped this, rather than the one in Malcolm's room, but reasoned that perhaps when they decided to bed down together this room had been occupied by someone else; at any rate, the coverlet was crumpled. We went in, on tiptoe for fear we might disturb somebody (though the odds were all against it; the house was in total silence now), not putting the light on because there was enough from the streetlamp, the curtains being drawn back and the window ajar for the heat of the night.
"I suppose I'd better drop into the bathroom," Roxana whispered. "Just a moment!" And she darted back across the landing to the door opposite, where she put on the light, dazzling after so long in near-darkness, and sat down cheerfully on the pan in full view of the rest of us. I heard an audible sigh from Malcolm.
"Don't let me hold anyone else up who wants to come in!" she called softly. "There's the basin and the bath, isn't there? Henry, how about you?" I hesitated. But I did feel the need, and this was all part of the tangle of events I'd been caught up in-willingly caught up. I tossed the bundle I'd made of my clothes onto a handy chair, shoved my shoes underneath (I still had my socks on, I suddenly discovered), and headed for the hand basin, turning a tap on just a fraction so there was a trickle of water to rinse it down.
In the adjacent mirror I could see Malcolm and Sarah at the door, once more puzzled and uncertain. I read decision gathering on Malcolm's face; he put his arm around his sister and urged her to come in.
"Roxana, tell me something," he said in a strained tone. "Is there-is there-well, is there anything you don't like about sex?"
It was a very good question, and I wished I'd thought of asking it.
"Yes," was the brisk answer. "Go on, you'd better use the bath or take turns with Henry at the basin, I'm afraid-I'm going to be another minute or two here. Ah ... I don't get anything from whipping, or tying people up, or anything that uses what you might call artificial aids. But I like whatever two people can do together with what nature gave them, or three people, or four, or however the hell many you like. And I don't give a damn what sexes they are, either. To me it's just a good thing that one person can give another so much pleasure, free of charge."
"Then I like you," Malcolm said simply. He glanced at his sister, and after a second she nodded.
"Yes, I do too. That sounds like a nice way of regarding it."
And, as though by way of setting a seal on what she had said, she walked forward to the corner of the bath closest to where Roxana was sitting, perched on it-giving a barely perceptible start at the coolness of the enamel surface-and did what the older girl had invited her to do.
Roxana reached out and took her hand and smiled at her. She smiled back, raised her arm-and nearly overbalanced but not quite-and turned Roxana's hand over to kiss the palm. Having wound the cold tap of the basin around to full flow for a second to make sure of proper rinsing, I turned just in time to see this directly instead of in the mirror, and nothing in the universe could have convinced me at that moment that we had done, or were going to do, anything wrong.
CHAPTER SIX
We stole into the bedroom in darkness again and formed an uncertain ring around the bed itself, looking to Roxana for guidance. I think the same thought was in all our minds: "She's done this before and we haven't and she knows how it can be enjoyed."
She dragged down the coverlet, and after that the eiderdown (what it was doing on the bed when the weather had been so hot lately, I couldn't guess), and let them fall to the floor. Meantime Malcolm closed the locked the door. When he returned, he once more paused diffidently and looked at Roxana.
"Well, get in!" she said, and put her arm around Sarah who was next to her and urged her onto the bed. From opposite sides Malcolm and I followed. In the dimness, to which I had still not properly readjusted, one could scarcely see what was happening; touch and hearing had to substitute. I felt a hand brush mine as I reached out for Roxana; it was Malcolm's on the same errand and we chuckled at one another, perfectly unperturbed. I had been on Roxana's side, the one further from the door; that was no longer so, for in drawing Sarah to the middle of the bed she had rolled over the body of the younger girl and paused in mid-motion to embrace and kiss her. Without my noticing she had let loose the black storm of her hair, not more than seconds ago, and it fell over their kiss to endow it with a tantalizing secrecy. But, now my eyes were restored to their former sensitivity, I could see plainly how she lay full-length on Sarah's body, how her hips writhed at the contact of belly with belly and how her right thigh had thrust apart Sarah's legs.
It lasted only an instant, and was nearly forgotten in the next, for she twisted lithely away towards the approaching Malcolm who opened his arms to receive her eagerly, also thinking to kiss her mouth. But instead she dodged him and continued to turn, tracing down his body with her lips and raising them just long enough to whisper a message that must be destined for Sarah and a message that was certainly destined for him. She said, "Dear, it's even safer when it's not the same man!" And then: "You asked for this, didn't you?"
I heard Malcolm groan and didn't need to be told what it was he'd been asked for. In the same moment I closed my mouth on Sarah's and felt the urgent slashing of her tongue against mine, like fencing foils, and with my left hand reached back to turn Roxana's hips so that I could guide Sarah's right hand down between her thighs and let her fingers play there while I sheathed myself within her body. That was an inspiration; so too was fumbling for Malcolm's left hand and tugging it down to where he could feel what his sister was doing to Roxana. The instant after he made the contact, he cried aloud with the intensity of orgasm and his shuddering made the entire bed shake. After that he simply lay there inert, drained of all energy, and Roxana eeled around to lie half across his body, facing our way, taking Sarah's hand by the wrist and guiding it into the best rhythm to excite her, while I was pumping steadily with my hips in and out, in and out, in and out....
It was good to be in Sarah, for she was tight and satiny and she smelled and tasted fresh and young and all the eager need of adolescence breathed from her mouth as she panted under my weight, but it was spring water after wine compared to what I had felt in Roxana, with her control over the vaginal muscles and her sensitivity to the closeness of orgasm in a man. It was at Roxana's face that I looked, seeing her eyes lose their focus and roll up in their orbits in response to the demands her nerves were putting on her awareness. It was her mouth I leaned over to kiss frantically when I felt climax approaching in myself, not Sarah's-and it was she who drove climax away for the moment when she roughly shoved my face aside after biting my tongue in reproof, and brought it near again by shifting fractionally and with her head knocking mine still further from where it had been in order that she could seize Sarah's cheek with her teeth-viciously!-and twist it around and stab her tongue into that mouth, not mine. I looked at them kissing and felt Sarah draw back her left hand which had been around my waist with the nails digging sharp into my buttock and thrust it under me and over her so that she could feel for Roxana's nipple and clasp her fingers around it, while I was half-raised on my arms to give clearance. I saw, and the sight tipped me over the brink, and I exploded and knew simultaneously that Sarah had not been ready to follow me. Dismayed, I feared in the midst of agonizing delight that I might be judged and have cause for shame, but there was no need. Roxana's hand also passed under me, the knuckles hard against my belly, and sought the proper spot, catching one of my hairs in passing and pulling on it painfully. At the mere touch I collapsed like a factory chimney being demolished, and rolled aside, and felt the first waves of pure pleasure convulse Sarah as I did so.
Like Malcolm, on the very edge of the bed, I lay there motionless-but he, I suspect, was already asleep, worn out. I was awake enough to hear words exchanged in a whisper. I heard Sarah say, "How-how did you know?"
And Roxana, a smile audible on her voice: "How did I know what?"
And Sarah, pausing to hunt for the most noncommittal way of putting thought into words: "That ... that I ... that I had had a girl friend, I suppose."
"I didn't," Roxana said. "But-have you?"
"Y-yes...." So faintly I could scarcely catch the sound. "Myra. Last year I went on holiday with her. I...." She swallowed, louder than her speech. "I haven't seen her-I mean, not except at school-not for months. She went into a different class. Beginning of last year."
"And you did this with her?"
"They-they took a cottage by the sea and it only had two beds and they put us in one of them together. So ... but it wasn't like this. My God, I never dreamed it could be like this! Darling, darling, it's fantastic, it's absolutely unbelievable-with you, with Henry, with Malcolm!"
"Are you sorry you did it with Malcolm?"
"God, no! I'm only sorry I didn't do it before-often, all the time! I'm ringing like a bell, all the way from my hair to my toes, just jangling!"
"So what did you do with your friend Myra?" And I felt the way weight shifted on the bed: Roxana was moving her body a little backwards, to press against the by now sleeping Malcolm, so that she could get at her own pussy with her right hand while cradling Sarah's head in the crook of her left arm. I rolled my eyes to the extreme right of their orbits and was just able to see the younger girl staring upward at the ceiling, licking her lips, her left hand reaching across her body to caress Roxana's bosom, her right lost in the mass of the other girl's black long hair.
"Yes," she said as quietly as before, but with more certitude. "You like to hear what other people have been up to, don't you?"
"Most people do," Roxana said. "They simply feel ashamed to admit it."
"Yes ... yes, I suppose that's true. Well, it was all completely accidental, you know. It was her idea-she first mentioned it back in June, I think, and said it would be nice if I went on holiday with her and her parents. She's an only child, you see, and she wasn't much looking forward to a holiday by herself ... Damn! I wish I hadn't been sent to a girls-only school! It's ridiculous!"
"Never mind," Roxana murmured. "So was I-I was actually sent to a convent school, over there in India. I grew out of it when I was given the chance."
"A convent school?" I felt, rather than saw, Sarah's head turn to gaze in wonderment at Roxana's face. "But!"
"My first affair was with one of the teaching nuns," Roxana said. "I was twelve. I'll tell you about it some time, perhaps. She just couldn't stand the strain, and I don't see why she should have had to try. I came on her in the garden one day, masturbating under a tree, and she was terribly afraid I'd report her to the Mother
Superior, and so she never mind! Tell me about you and Myra."
"All right." Once more Sarah swallowed noisily. "Well, this cottage her parents had taken: it was supposed to have three bedrooms. But when we actually got there it turned out that there were four rooms, two with double beds in and one with a canvas bed, a sort of camp-bed thing, that was rotting and tom at one end. So they couldn't do much about it except write and complain to the agents who'd advertised it, and they had to put me and Myra in the other double bed. It was just coincidence, how it started. It didn't need to have happened."
There was a pause while Roxana raised herself a little and browsed with her lips across Sarah's face. By now I'd recovered just about enough energy to turn my head, and I was watching them as keenly as I was listening to them. But neither of them noticed that I was still awake.
"I like you doing that," Sarah said in the faintest possible vice. "You're so gentle ... but then so is Malcolm, isn't he? And with Henry just now ... it doesn't always have to be gentle, does it? So long as it's rough at the right time, the time when you want it to be rough."
"That's right," Roxana said, letting herself drop back to the bed. "And you know something? You've already learned something some people never find out, not as long as they live."
"But that's absurd," Sarah countered.
"Absurd or not, some of the men I've met-and some of the butch women too!-are proof that that's the truth. But I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go on."
"Ah ... yes. Well, nothing much happened the first night with Myra-we'd driven down to Cornwall from London and it had taken all day and we were both pretty tired. But the second night we were sort of excited, and we were told to go to bed and we weren't sleepy yet, so we lay and talked together and ... well, I think what started it was she got an itch. Between her legs. And she was scratching it and I noticed what she was doing and I said something-I can't remember quite what-and it made her laugh, and it kind of went on from there." She shook her head by rolling it against the pillow. "I don't quite remember what led up to it. I suppose ... I suppose I must have asked if she was playing with herself? Yes, that was it. And she said no, she was just scratching, and I said did she anyway, and she said well yes, sometimes she liked to, and I said had she ever let anyone else, and she said heavens no, it wouldn't be nice, and I said you're wrong, it's much, much nicer-I was thinking of what I'd done with Malcolm, you see, and what I'd tried to get my boyfriend Horace to do only he was dreadfully bad at it, just couldn't seem to get the hang of what I wanted ... oh, never mind Horace! I told him to go and get stuffed!
"But then she said how can someone else possibly know what it is you like, and I said I'll show you and turned over towards her-I was lying on the right side of the bed so I could get the proper hand to her-and I rubbed against her through her pajamas and asked if she liked it, and she said yes, it was marvellous, and I said it would be even better if we took our pajamas off, wouldn't it? And she said well, all right, perhaps if we promised never to tell anybody, and she let me unbutton her jacket and push her pants down round her knees. And ... Roxana, are you playing with yourself while I'm talking?"
"Yes, of course I am. I want to come once more before I go to sleep, and I love hearing about what you've done. Go on."
That stirred me clear to the ultimate depths of my mind. I put my own hand down and felt for my prick, and began to work it up and down very slowly, just enough to make it swell and throb. I hadn't thought I was capable of this again tonight, but a few seconds convinced me that I might be.
"It's making me feel like it too," Sarah said faintly. "But I'm not sure I can...."
"Want me to stroke you instead of me?" Roxana asked.
"I-I...." Sarah hesitated. "Oh-yes, please! I'd like to try anyway. But what about you?"
She must have made a gesture I missed-perhaps groping towards Roxana's pussy-for the next thing I heard was a chuckle and: "All right, all right! I have two hands, haven't I?" Accompanied by yet another shifting of weight and changing of position, which resulted in Sarah pressing hard against my side and the surprised comment from Roxana: "Hey! I thought Henry had flaked out, but he's awake after all!"
"Sure I am," I said drowsily.
"And liking this the way I do," Roxana said with amusement. "Do you mind him listening, Sarah dear?"
"No, of course I don't," she murmured. "I like him very much-don't you?"
"If I didn't I shouldn't be here. Or rather, I might be here but he certainly wouldn't!" Roxana nestled closer to her. "Go on, then. You were saying you'd unbuttoned Myra's pajama jacket."
"How about Malcolm?" Sarah countered. "I never told him about this, and-"
"Malcolm is asleep," Roxana cut in firmly. "If he could fail to react to what I did to him a few moments ago, he's out to the whole wide world. Go on!"
"Oh-all right...." Sleepily, but awake enough to appreciate Roxana's caressing of her clitoris; meantime, I wondered what it was she had done to Malcolm which made it so certain he must be asleep and wished she'd do it to me. Never mind, though-so far tonight I'd had an Indian girl more beautiful than I'd dared to dream of before, and she'd been apparently well pleased with my cooperation, and also a girl of fifteen, who had just said she liked me very much. There were limits to any man's ambitions! And with these two fondling one another next to me on the bed, I couldn't help wondering whether I'd gone past my own limit and got lost in a dream world.
Not to worry about that, though. I was happy to simply lie beside them, hear Sarah tell her tale and keep on stroking myself.
"Well, I got her jacket open-you want to hear everything, don't you? Every little tiny detail? Yes, I thought so; that's the only way it's ever affected me, being able to picture it down to the last grain of dust, practically." A sigh of delight and another shift of position, perhaps, I thought, to offer her body more conveniently to Roxana. "Like I said, I got her jacket open-undid all four of the buttons-and she was lying there more or less on her back and I pulled the jacket out of the way and I raised myself on my left elbow and I bent over her and I started licking her breasts while I pushed her pants down past her bottom. After I'd done that I asked if she was enjoying what I was doing, and she said yes, and I said would she do the same to me if I took off my pajamas, and she said she'd try, so I did-I took my pajamas off altogether and tried to do the same to her but she wouldn't let me, insisted on keeping hers around her elbows and her ankles, and I very nearly got angry but I didn't and I was glad afterwards because it only took a little while longer and then she was as worked up as I was. I mean, she put her hand in between my legs without being asked and started rubbing me there and asked if that was the way I liked it, and it was and I said so, and she said wasn't it funny how stroking your breasts could make your pussy wet and I said well maybe it was but I was glad because I liked doing it to myself and it was even better having someone else do it and I very nearly told her about Malcolm and me but she started telling me about some boyfriend of hers that I didn't know who had put his hand down her dress in the movies once and made her so excited she came right there and was terrified someone else might have noticed ... Owwww!"
"I'm doing it right, am I?" Roxana whispered.
"Yes, yes! God, I don't know how much longer
I can keep talking like this-I just want to stop and enjoy what you're ... but you like listening to me, don't you?"
"Very much."
"All right, I'll keep going until I have to stop. So there we were, Myra and me, and she'd told me about this boy in the movies and I asked her to tell me exactly what he did so I could do it to her again and she did, so I fondled her-her nipples with one hand and I rubbed her pussy with the other and pretty soon I got her so worked up she came. Like a landslide! And then she wanted to stop, because-well, you know how it is after you come; you sort of run out of enthusiasm for a bit and you start remembering all the things people told you it was wrong to do?"
"Yes, of course."
"Well, that was probably why she wanted to give up right then. But I wouldn't let her-I was too much on edge myself by then. I made her kiss my breasts and rub me, and then I said I'd show her how grown-ups kiss each other because I didn't think she knew, and I got on top of her and put my tongue in her mouth and-and I just came. Like I'm going to any second now. Oh! Oh! Ohhh!"
The bed shook with the violence of her orgasm, and my prick trembled in sympathy-but didn't quite tip me over the edge, but quavered and quivered there on the precipice and compelled me to hope desperately that there was still one more erotic stimulus to follow.
There was. I heard Roxana say, "And what did she do then?"
"Didn't you come?" Very breathily, very faintly. "Not yet? I did."
"I know. I noticed." A chuckle. "You damned nearly bust my hand, you know that? Just a second-I can put my right one down there now instead of my left. I'm not terribly good with the left one ... Ah! Oh, Sarah dear, that's wonderful, that's absolutely wonderful! Ohhh! Go on, please, please go on!"
With the detachment of twenty-one years of life I was able to imagine the sudden sense of maturity which it must have given Sarah to hear that: the sense of being able to give indescribable delight to someone much older than herself. I had no idea what she was doing to Roxana, but it was evoking fantastic sighs and moans of satisfaction.
Me, I was lost in the pleasure I had unexpectedly found it possible to give myself.
"Tell me!" Urgent, inches away from me, Roxana's voice. "Did you go on like that-the next night, the night after?"
"Y-yes-yes, of course we did! The next night we didn't even bother to put our pajamas on when we undressed for bed! We just jumped in and cuddled up together!"
"Weren't you afraid her parents might come in and catch you?"
"No-that night they'd left us alone because they'd met some people in a pub at lunchtime and promised to go and see them that evening! Oh, Roxana, please-Y don't think I could possibly...."
"Never mind whether you can or can't! I can! And I'm damned well going to!" The bed shook again, but this time not with the rhythm of orgasm, only with the rhythm of Roxana's attempt to reach it; she was rubbing herself against Sarah's thigh, up and down, up and down. I thought about rolling over and pushing into her, but my stand was far too precarious-I'd never been capable of more than two orgasms in the same evening, and if I made it a third time tonight I knew it would be pure luck.
"So what did you do the next night?" Roxana hissed.
"I-I ... oh, God, please V' A soft moan. "I made her lick me all over! I made her lick me until I came, and I did it to her afterwards!"
"Are you going to do it to me now, or are you going to tell me the rest and let me make myself come? Are you going to tell me about what you did during the day, when you got the chance?"
"Ohhh! Roxana darling, Roxana! I think you must be able to read my mind\ If I hadn't come just then, that was what I was going to tell you to make it happen! Yes, we did do something during the day, we did!" Sarah's hand was casting about frantically; it flailed across my belly and I caught it and clamped it around my prick, and she seemed to seize on that as an earnest of reality.
In time with her own gasped words, she worked me up and down and I felt my blood throbbing as though my heart too were adopting the same tempo. She said, "Yes, well! Well, they took us out for this picnic at the beach, you see, the third day I think it must have been. And the weather was really awful the whole time we were on holiday-I mean the sun wasn't shining and there were cool winds and it wasn't exactly swimming and sunbathing weather at all."
"Which was what you were hoping for?" The words like a lance, accompanied by a grunt that sounded almost masculine.
"Yes, yes of course I was! I wanted to take Myra off by myself in her bikini and lie down with her and make her kiss me and stroke me all over!" It sounded as though Sarah was on the verge of crying, but the words kept on creaking out. "Only we couldn't, it was far too cold, but there we were out for this picnic anyway and they'd brought some cider along and given us some-treating us as grown up, you see, the way the damned fools thought we wanted to be treated-and anyhow I must have drunk a pint of it while we were eating lunch and they settled down in the shelter of the rocks and I said to Myra let's go off and explore a bit and come on, hurry up, spoilsport! So she came with me, and when we were out of sight of her parents I pulled up my dress and took down my panties and said come on, you do the same, I want to watch you peeing! And she said no, I don't like anyone to watch me doing that and I said come on, do it, I want you to and if you won't then I won't do what you like when we go to bed tonight and anyhow where's the harm in it? And so she said all right and she pulled her dress up around her waist and squatted down and did it there on the sand, and I did too and when she'd finished I said all right, come on, kiss me, and-and she did, and ... oh my God, Roxana, you're going to make it happen again and it's-it's impossible! I mean I never did it before without ... Ow! Ow! Owww!" And in the same moment: Roxana's breathing rising to a pitch of sheer frenzy, and Sarah's hand clamped on my prick thumping up and down like the piston of a steam engine, and that was the last I knew until hours after. Hours. Ages, eons, eternities....
CHAPTER SEVEN
Next I was dimly aware of sunlight coming through the window and the pressure of skin on skin against my side. I lay in that sensual no-man's-land between sleeping and waking and basked in memories which might have been dismissed as dreams but for the fact that when I rolled to my right I discovered that my hand encountered a girl's crotch. The hair was crisp rather than silky, so I knew it was Roxana's and not Sarah's.
Instantly I was fully awake, yet still unable to move more than I had so far managed: putting out my hand searchingly, altering my position in the bed. Four people made it very crowded, and I could feel the sharp edge of the mattress next to me.
Some time during the night, I worked out, Roxana must have changed places with Sarah to wind up alongside me, and what seemed to have awakened me was the arousal of Malcolm, who was moving about on the far side, apparently feeling for a partner. I had kept my watch on; looking at it, I found it was nearly seven-thirty.
I raised my head a little and saw that Malcolm was blinking at Sarah. The only covering we had been able to bear during the night, a single sheet, had been tossed aside; with four people in the same bed, you get hot even in mid-December, as I've later had the chance to establish. Consequently Sarah was naked to the waist beside her brother, with Roxana's black hair trailing backward across her bosom.
As he stroked and prodded her, trying to interest her in what he clearly had in mind-his condition lifted the sheet although he wasn't lying on his back-she gave a little moan and pushed him away. The sound woke Roxana, whose large dark eyes blinked open a moment later. She saw me first because she was facing my way, and gave me a smile, and rolled over, lifting herself a little towards the head of the bed.
"Ah!" she said, in the same tone I had heard several times yesterday evening, and rolled back to reach across me for her sari. I hadn't noticed her putting it down on my side of the bed, but there it was; perhaps she had had to get up during the night and had moved it. She fumbled something out from what I had previously decided must be a hidden purse. I caught a glimpse of it and realized it was one of the tablets she had talked about.
Her hand dived under the covers, and located Sarah's pussy; more wakeful every second, I clearly saw the course of her knuckles outlined there. Sarah made another sleepy objection; it lasted only as long as it took her to realize that it was Roxana who had touched her, and dissolved into a smiling sigh.
"Don't be impatient," Roxana counseled Malcolm. "Just let it happen-just let it happen!"
Puzzled, but content to accept her authority in all such matters, he lay back and complied. Meantime, she gazed at Sarah's sleepy face, and when a flicker of emotion that I could not have defined crossed it leaned forward to brush her eyelids with a kiss.
"Sarah!" she said softly. "Malcolm wants you!"
"Hmmm...?" And, suddenly seeming to remember that she was capable of desire, Sarah rolled on her back and spread her legs. But she didn't look towards Malcolm, only towards Roxana, on whom she bent a happy smile.
"Oh, Roxana!" she murmured. "Lovely to find you really are here. Are you going to make love to me again?"
I shivered and my prick stood up on the instant, but I made no move to interrupt the dialogue-I was sure Roxana knew the best way to develop from this beginning.
"No, dear," she whispered to Sarah. "Not right now. I want to watch Malcolm screwing you again-all right?"
At the mention of his name Malcolm brightened and put his hand on his sister's breast. She tensed and wriggled and seemed to resign herself to fate, putting her hand down to feel for his prick and helping him to cover her. At the last moment before he entered her body, she remembered an important point and jerked her head around towards Roxana.
"Have you made it safe again?" she demanded.
"Yes! Yes, of course I have! I told you; I like you too much to want anything awful to happen to you. Go on!"
"That's all right, then," she sighed, and gave herself up to her brother's demands. It was clear that he, like me and the majority of men I knew anything about, was better at it in the mornings; at any rate, this time there was no question of a sudden violent convulsion, but only a steady gentle thrusting back and forth, to which she responded with eyes closed and mouth open, her hands tightening and relaxing on his back.
"Henry?" Roxana murmured questioningly, and reached down me towards my prick. Finding that it was alert and ready, she eased herself across me and with her chin rolled my head so that I was facing to the right and leaned her cheek on mine, our eyes parallel, as she slid her pussy down over me.
"Beautiful Roxana," I said. "Beautiful, beautiful Roxana!"
"Shhh!" she enjoined. "Do you realize what you're looking at, Henry dear? Do you realize you're watching a brother screw his sister right here in the same bed with us?" And her pussy tightened on me with the words.
I said, nodding as best I could, "Of course, of course ... You like to talk while you're making love, don't you?"
"Yes, very much. And so do you, I think."
"I-I hadn't known before," I said, my mouth very dry. "I mean, not like this."
"But you've had girls before, for pity's sake!" She almost withdrew from me in astonishment.
"Oh, yes-yes! Several! I've been having a steady affair for the past six months!" And in the same instant I found I was wondering what my lost girl friend would have done if she'd found herself in Roxana's place right now, let alone Sarah's with her brother humping her. It was a stupid question; she wasn't the sort of person who could let that happen to her.
I went on, "But most of them didn't like to talk much, whatever we were doing. This or anything else."
"Fantastic," Roxana muttered, sliding up and down the shaft she had impaled herself on. "I like it to come at me from every side-skin, eyes, mouth, ears, everything. Tell me about something you've done, Henry! Help me to make myself come at the same time as you do."
"I'd much rather you did the talking," I countered. "I think you're far better at it than I am.
"Sarah did all right last night," she said. "You noticed-at least I think you did."
"Oh, yes!" I squirmed in recollection of that final agonizing orgasm which had hurled me into the oblivion of sleep. "Her and Myra, wasn't it?"
"You liked hearing about that?"
"Christ, of course I liked it!"
Beyond Sarah's profile, beyond her closed eyes and open mouth, I could see her brother's face turn towards us and express interest, one eyebrow rising to pose a silent question.
"Who did you first make it with, Malcolm?" Roxana asked, perhaps giving me up as a bad job for the moment-but it was merely that I wasn't yet fully awake and could not summon the control over words which I knew she was going to demand.
"Me?" He looked surprised. "My God, she was absolutely terrible! I didn't know just how terrible until-well, I guess until last night when...." He swallowed hard. "I wish it had been with you, Roxana," he added in a burst of frankness.
"Thank you!" She reached towards him and ran her hand over his bottom; I felt rather than saw her smile. Encouraged, he reached over in his turn and felt around hers, probing underneath until his fingers encountered my prick sliding in and out, then withdrawing, then glancing at me to see if I was shocked and on finding that I wasn't putting his hand back, his fingertip delicately stroking back and forth from her arsehole to my balls. Meantime, under him, Sarah sighed and wriggled and poised deliciously between full knowledge of what she was letting him do to her and a return to the depths of sleep.
Absently, he said, "I never watched anyone else screwing before. Damned silly, isn't it? I mean, you learn practically everything else through your eyes, and this-well, it's sort of important, isn't it? I'm sure Mum and Dad wouldn't row as often as they do if they were better in bed."
"Right," Roxana applauded, puckering her lips to blow a kiss at him. "Think you're learning anything?"
"Am I not?" He grimaced. "Lord, you know this is the first time, the very first time, I've managed to keep going for so long? And doesn't Sarah seem to be enjoying it?"
There wasn't much point in answering; the proof was in every sigh and moan she gave, and there were plenty of those.
"How do you feel about doing it with your sister?" Roxana pursued.
"Oh, it's fabulous!" Malcolm winced, perhaps on the verge of coming and calling himself back because he wanted to prolong the delightful agony. "But then it is fabulous, isn't it? In itself, I mean. It's the highest pleasure the body is capable of."
"You're quoting a book," Roxana murmured, and gave a soft chuckle.
"Ah ... yes, I suppose I may be." Malcolm smiled back. "But I was going to say: I'd rather be doing it with you."
That snapped Sarah's eyes open, and she looked up at him crossly. "Am I not good enough?" she demanded. "Am I not doing what I ought to be?"
"Oh, Sarah darling!" Contrite, Malcolm bent to cover her mouth and eyes with kisses. "Yes, yes, you're terrific! It's-well, it's just that I think I could maybe learn things from Roxana which I could use later, on you perhaps if you want me to!"
"You're damned right you could," I said past lips which seemed to have been thickened by the passage of time during sleep. "I've learned more off this girl here in a few hours than I learned off my last one in six bloody months!"
"Okay, we'll change over, then," Roxana said. "If Sarah doesn't mind? On one, condition, though! I want to hear about something you've done while we're at it."
Malcolm's face fell. He said, "Goodness, I'm not sure I can think of anything that's really exciting to talk to you about! I mean, I have managed to get myself a couple of girls before-but they weren't up to much, and we never did anything very special together."
"Yes, you did," Sarah said, lying back with her eyes still shut. "You told me about something when you were trying to get me to bathe with you again, don't you remember? And you told it very well, what's more-so bloody well, you nearly got me to do what you wanted."
Her eyes flicked open now and there was a touch of fierceness in her voice as she concluded, "And I wish I had! I really do wish I'd let you!"
"That sounds interesting," Roxana said. "Henry dear, I'm going to keep my promise-you don't mind, do you?"
"I never had two girls on the same stand before," I cracked, and let her withdraw from me. I rolled over towards Sarah; in the same moment, Malcolm withdrew from her and wriggled past me to lie where I had been. I felt his stiff wet prick brush the back of my thighs.
I found my way into Sarah straight away; when I looked around, I discovered Roxana was astride of Malcolm as she had been of me, and was chinning his face around as she had done mine so she could be sure he was looking my way. She was also saying, "So come on-tell us what you told Sarah that impressed her so much!"
"It was about Jeremy and Anita," Sarah said, and lost the words in a gust of breath as I drove hard up into her and made her hands clamp on my back. "You remember that, don't you?"
"Oh, yes!" Malcolm looked as though he would have clapped his hand to his forehead had he been able; as it was, both hands were upon Roxana's shoulders, forcing her breasts down against his chest as she rode him. "All right, I'll tell you-but you're making it terribly hard to concentrate, Roxana!"
"Go on," she insisted. "Who are Jeremy and Anita?"
"Jeremy's a friend of mine from school-or rather he was, about three years ago. Then his father died after being ill for a long time and he and his mother and brother had to move away, back to Wales, I think. Sorry, didn't mean to wander off the point. Well, you see, this weekend
I'd been invited to go and stay over Saturday night with his family at a country cottage they'd rented to get his father away from the London air. It was something wrong with his lungs. And they had this au-pair girl to help around the house and look after him and his brother because his mother's time was pretty well taken up with looking after his father. That was Anita. I don't suppose she could have been more than twenty. Not a very pretty girl, but sort of striking. Italian, but blonde, from the north somewhere near Turin. She was-oh, a bit taller than Sarah, I think, with this straight fair hair down to her shoulders, and the best bit about her was her breasts. And she knew it, goodness! Didn't she make the most of them?
"The first time I saw her was when she turned up to collect me at Saturday lunchtime; she was a good driver, so Jeremy's parents let her use the car and sent her on errands and things, and that's what she'd been doing that morning-shopping for them in London. And she'd brought Jeremy along with her.
"Well, Jeremy came to the house and rang the bell for me, and off I went with him to where she'd parked the car, and I practically had a fit when I saw her standing alongside it. She was wearing a white raincoat open down the front to show this big red skirt with a white design printed on it, and a wide leather belt, and a tight long-sleeved blouse of white silk. Very tight. You could tell without more than glancing at her that she wasn't wearing anything underneath."
"How old were you and Jeremy then?" Roxana whispered, gently weaving her hips back and forth upon him.
"I was fourteen, Jeremy a bit younger-thirteen and a half, I suppose. Well, I suppose I must have gawped at Anita like an idiot, but Jeremy didn't seem to notice anything unusual-though she did, and the way she smiled at me I was sure she meant people to react the way I'd done. So we got in the car, in the back seat, and off we went with her driving.
"Well, it was a very dull route we had to go by, and it being early afternoon on a Saturday it was crowded with people doing weekend shopping so we kept getting caught up in traffic jams, and after a while we sort of ran out of things to talk about and just sat there. Anita wasn't doing any talking; theoretically she'd come to England to improve her English, but it turned out there wasn't much to improve and going shopping was about her limit-she found conversation difficult and kept stopping to hunt for words. And Jeremy's mother spoke good Italian, so....
"Anyway, there we were in the umpteenth traffic jam, and all of a sudden I realized that Jeremy, getting bored, had reached in under the front of his raincoat-it was cool that day, around the beginning of March-and he'd opened his fly and taken out his tool to play with it. You couldn't have seen what he was doing from outside the car because of the coat, but I could. I was horrified and I said so, and he laughed at me. He said, 'Come off it-you've seen me do this before!' Which was quite true, because two or three of us had shown off in the school showers a few times, proving we were old enough to come.
"I said yes, of course I had. But I was blushing like fury, I remember, my cheeks absolutely on fire. I said for heaven's sake, supposing Anita notices! And he said don't be silly, she's noticed me already. And I looked, and it was true: there was one of these oversize rearview mirrors and she could just about see him when he sat right back on the seat.
'"Can't you see what she's doing?' Jeremy said, and I took another look, and there she was sitting with her left hand on the wheel and her right slipped inside the top of her coat, which she'd belted around her when she got back in the car, squeezing and fondling her breast.
"Anita's what they call a nympho," Jeremy said. "She has to have sex pretty well all the time. Especially when she's driving-it does something to her. Twice already today, once on the way up to London after breakfast and once while we were in a shop, she's had to make herself come. She let me watch the first time-pulled off the highway down a side road-but in the shop she had to go to the ladies' room, of course. Mostly she wears button-through dresses so she can get at herself, and I'll bet you she hasn't got any panties on."
"By this time I was getting so stiff myself I wanted to start doing the same as Jeremy was, but I couldn't quite believe it was all right. I asked how it was that he didn't know for certain whether she had panties on, if he'd watched her like he claimed, and he explained she had different ways of doing it and in a car she could sometimes make it happen more or less of its own accord just by squeezing her legs together and rubbing them up and down. But she needed to play with her breasts while she was doing that, he said, which was why she didn't like to wear a bra either.
"So I said do you think she'd let me watch, too? And he said she probably might-she'd let Terence watch. Terence was his brother; he was only about nine then, I think, or maybe just turned ten.
"I said-" By now, Malcolm's breathing was becoming jerkier and jerkier as the rhythm imposed on him by Roxana quickened. Under me, I could feel Sarah responding in the same fashion, and I knew I was very close to climax again.
Taking advantage of the pause, I said, "But you told us you'd never seen a girl coming before the time you got in the bath with Sarah. By the sound of it-"
"Wait a moment," Sarah interrupted. "He's coming to that soon."
"That's not all I'm coming to," Malcolm forced out. "Oh God, this is the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to me."
"I'm listening," Roxana reminded him softly.
"Oh. Oh, yes. Well, I went on asking questions one after the other-I mean I wanted to know how come his mother didn't mind having a girl like that around looking after her sons, and he said he didn't think she knew, or if she suspected something she probably didn't want to think about it. He said Anita was an awfully good cook, and got all the work done around the house on time and could drive the car and one way and another his mother was probably dependent on her by now. So I said was she like this all day at home too, and he said no, it was being in a car that really brought it on, but at least once every day and sometimes five or six times she went off to her room for a bit by herself, or if she was busy with something she couldn't just drop she'd rub herself on a door handle or against the corner of a table or something and in a short while she'd be okay again.
"So 1 asked whether she let him play with himself while she was watching and he said yes, she had done sometimes, but he didn't think she liked it very much, and she'd absolutely never let him touch her at all. In fact the only way he found out what she was doing was because of riding in the car with her. She never had to drive his parents because his mother preferred to drive herself and his father, and short journeys in the back seat didn't seem to bring it on quite so strongly as a long trip at high speed. Taking him out from London to the country-on this same route we were following now-for the first time, though, she'd been unable to stand the strain any longer and had to find a turning and go ahead, and of course after that she couldn't keep the secret without Jeremy's cooperation. He was sort of blackmailing her, I suppose, and the price of his silence was being allowed to go in her room sometimes when she wanted to come, and watch her doing it.
"Also he'd worked out ways of teasing her into doing it when she didn't really want to and there was a particular day he told me about when he did something-he didn't know what but he wished he did because he'd have liked to do it again-while she was chopping meat on the kitchen table and all of a sudden she dropped the knife and hauled her dress up around her waist and went to it with his mother in the back garden where she would only have needed to look up from her paper and see what was going on, and she didn't. He said that time he got so excited himself he came right in his pants."
"Wasn't he playing with his prick all the time he was telling you this?" Sarah said. Her rhythm beneath me was becoming more and more insistent, dragging me along with it, and all of a sudden, before Malcolm could answer, she exploded and I poured into her. The delight was almost agonizing, for I'd already been drained before we slept and with me the less there is to spurt out when I come the more acute the sensation becomes.
Hearing us, and feeling the bed shake, triggered Malcolm, and though I was certain she wanted to hold on longer Roxana let herself go as well; I'd never have believed that it was possible to achieve four simultaneous orgasms like that, because it had taken me and my ex-girl something like six weeks before we got our own timing right and even after that we missed about one time out of three.
Collapsing, rolling a little aside from Sarah so as not to crush her with my whole weight, I heard Roxana say, "It sounds as though that was when your education ought to have got properly underway, Mai! Why didn't it?"
"What?" Bemused by the violence of his own climax, Malcolm blinked at her. "Oh! It started to rain, just as we were getting out of London, and we came to this roundabout. And this big heavy lorry skidded just as we came up to it and slid clear across our path like an elephant on ice. Anita did her best-they said afterwards that what she did manage to do probably saved us from crashing into another car as well as the lorry-but when she tried to brake our car skidded as well and there was a terrific bang and I pitched right forward and caught my arm at an awkward angle against the front seat. Broke my wrist. So I had to be whipped off to hospital, and I never did get my chance to watch Anita because a little while later Jeremy's father died and like I say he moved to Wales."
He yawned tremendously. "And right up until last night I think that, and the night with Sarah that I told you about, were the only really sexy things that had ever happened to me. You know, I think there must be a conspiracy to keep kids from knowing what they're missing? I mean they don't get the chance to find out from people like you!" Another yawn; this time he raised his hand to cover it and caught sight of his watch. "My God!" he exclaimed. "It's long after eight o'clock! The others will be getting up! We daren't let them catch us like this!"
Sarah pushed free of me and struggled into a sitting position, going pale. "Lord, no-that would be awful!" She clambered over me to the floor and began to grab hastily for her clothes.
"I'll go and scout around, if you like," Roxana offered, also leaving the bed. "I haven't heard anyone moving, and I suspect that Herta and Johnny and Wendy and Don will want to lie in this morning to make the most of their chances. But if I slip out and make sure the coast is clear Henry can always pretend he slept downstairs on the floor-we left the cushions spread out, didn't we? And nobody is going to wonder very much about you two sharing this room. They don't expect brothers and sisters to enjoy each other."
As she spoke, she was buttoning her little jacket behind her. She checked, and added, "Yo' did, didn't you?"
"I don't know what I'm going to think of myself later," Sarah said from the other side of the bed; she was fastening her bra, having already stepped into her panties. "But-well, right now I can't be anything but glad. I feel absolutely wonderful. I feel as though I've been turned inside out and filled up with sunshine."
Roxana grinned like a contented cat and deftly-and incredibly quickly-wound her sari into place. Stepping into her slippers, she stole to the door and unlocked it. Peering out, she listened for a moment, then glanced back and nodded and blew each of us a kiss.
"Nobody's about! Scatter!"
I reached for my shirt and scrambled into it, Malcolm copying me. Before I'd got my pants zipped, there was the sound of the toilet flushing across the landing. I put on my socks and shoes and headed on the same errand myself, to find the bathroom empty. When I'd rinsed the overnight taste from my mouth with a bit of the Clydes' toothpaste, using my forefinger for a brush, I crept out again and hurried downstairs. Roxana had been right in her guess-there was no sign of anyone else around yet.
In which case it might not be a bad idea if we disappeared before they got up-it would save all kinds of phony stories about where we'd spent the night. I knew a place not far away where we could get breakfast on Sunday morning. I called out for her, softly; I hunted for her all over the ground floor, went back upstairs ... and couldn't find her anywhere. She had vanished.
I never saw her again. The only other thing I ever heard about her was when I called up around noon to find out whether I could reach her in care of the friends of Herta's I'd been told she was staying with, and Malcolm told me that she'd rung up herself shortly before, and Herta had answered the phone, and she'd said she wanted to thank her for inviting her to the party and to thank Malcolm and Sarah for being her host and hostess. When I went to ask for her at the address I wormed out of him, I was told that she'd gone out to lunch with a friend and she wouldn't be back because she had to take an afternoon train to Southampton and tomorrow she was heading home to India.
I thought about chucking everything and catching the same ship. But I only thought. In the sober light of day I was convinced that Roxana was too wonderful to be real, and I was afraid that if I tried to put fetters on my dream-like memories I'd turn them to clay, or brush off the brightness like scales from a butterfly's wing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ordinarily I would have expected having, and immediately losing, a girl like that would make me despair for the next six months. But there was no such aftereffect. Roxana was so utterly and completely alien from anything else that had ever entered my life that moping because she had vanished would have been like complaining that the Taj Mahal couldn't be reached on an Oxford Street bus. Briefly I had stepped into a different universe; now I was home, and like a traveller who had had his personal horizons widened by his journey I found something at least of the strange other world had remained with me.
For, on the very next evening, I went for coffee and spotted a girl sitting by herself, a pretty cuddly little thing who turned out to be an Irish nurse, and I struck up a conversation and invited her to come along with me to a dance at the local town hall and got necking with her when they turned the lights down for the last half hour and took her back to her hostel and extracted a promise that she would see me again on Wednesday evening and on Wednesday evening we spent practically the whole time in bed at my place except when I had to get up and fix a meal. She went in and out of my life more or less at weekly intervals for the next year or two, but she was a long way from the only one. I'd suddenly caught on, and until I eventually got married in 1965 (and, to be frank, pretty frequently afterwards because there's more than a trace of Roxana about my wife, which is why I selected her) I had practically no trouble deciding which of the girls who attracted me were promising targets and which simply didn't enjoy sex enough to be worth pursuing.
I didn't see Malcolm or Sarah over the next few days, partly because I wanted to bask on my own in my recollections of Roxana, partly because when I'd finally simmered down on the Sunday evening and reconciled myself to being infinitely lucky that she'd intruded into my life at all, I decided the Clyde kids might conceivably have reconsidered what they had said during our fantastic night together, even to the point of being afraid to remember what they'd done. So I felt it advisable to leave it up to them to get in touch if they wanted to.
But I did sound out my Irish bird-delicately and with lots of euphemisms-to try and discover whether if we ever managed to arrange anything similar again she would be willing to join in. (She wouldn't have been; she was from a convent-school background too, and hadn't stripped herself of it as thoroughly as Roxana had.)
Then on Thursday evening Malcolm turned up on my doorstep. Not quite literally-I didn't have a doorstep, only a door, being the tenant of the upper floor of a terraced house bigger than it looked because it had been extended at the rear. It was in a crummy street, but it was cheap, and I got a sitting-room, a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen the size of a broom closet and another small room at the back with a good-sized skylight so I could use it as a studio. At the time I was spending two or three mornings a week doing hack commercial art like story illustrations for inferior teenage magazines, and a certain amount of layout for ads and leaflets, which was all right because it paid the rent and the food bills, but everything else came from interior decorating commissions. Some people just have no conception of what might be done with almost any run-down old house or apartment provided you put enough imagination into it, so a few months before I'd had an inspiration and I'd packed a portfolio and gone around to see an estate agent trading in broken-down Victorian houses in an area that was just coming up in the world, and now I was getting paid not merely for drawing up full-color sketches of what a house might look like when it was modernized, but also occasional commissions to carry out a whole scheme from start to finish, working in conjunction with an architect friend.
But I couldn't depend on that sort of thing, so when a well-paid assignment turned up I dropped everything else and hurried it through in the hope of acquiring a reputation for invariable fast service. I'd just got one, and I'd been to see the raw material-the house-this morning, along with the prospective purchaser, and he'd been delighted with my suggestions and wanted the finished drawings to show his wife as soon as possible. So there I was up to my ears in paint jars and wallpaper sample books and color charts, and Malcolm arrived.
He looked glum. I invited him in, told him to help himself from the quart bottle of beer I had going and sit down in the comer of the studio out of the way, and went on working, waiting for him to get off his chest whatever he wanted to. For a bit he stalled, complimenting me on my work-but he'd seen it before and this was just run-of-the-mill-and finally, when I'd been obstinate enough, he got to the point. I was dismayed to see him looking downcast, naturally; after the previous evening and the previous weekend, I was practically singing at my work.
Then, as I say, he blurted it out. He said, "Henry, I've got to ask somebody this and you're the only person I can-possibly! Do you think it was terribly wrong, what I did with...."
The words ran dry. I said, adding final outlines in India ink to my current sketch, "With Sarah?"
"Yes, of course." He sounded defiant. I put aside my pen, sighed, and leaned back in my chair to reach for a cigarette.
"No," I said. "I've been thinking about it a lot, and that's the conclusion I've come to. Hell, more than once I came within inches of doing something similar myself."
He started. "You never told me!"
"No, but if I'd been cornered into contributing to that game of confidences we were having on Saturday night I might very well have told you about what I used to get up to with my sister Nelly, the older one who got married last year. I never actually screwed her, but we got up to a hell of a lot of things my parents would have fainted dead away to learn about when I was about fourteen, and given half a chance I very probably could have. So what's the trouble? I'd have thought you were laughing now, boy! It's not everyone your age who can have a good lay like Sarah right under the same roof with him all the time!"
I was being deliberately crude because I wanted to hurry him to the crux of the matter and maybe get back to work and do another sketch before I turned in. He reddened and cast his eyes down.
"That's just it," he muttered. "I want to-I want to like hell-and...."
"And you haven't made it again since Saturday. I mean since Sunday morning." The reference made my prick stir, but I had no intention of wasting time on DIY this evening, so I told it firmly to lay down again and after a while it complied.
"That's right. We couldn't on Sunday, of course, not with Herta around the house the whole time, and then in the early evening Mum and Dad came back so we'd had to clear the whole place up. We got off pretty lightly, but someone had broken one of a matched set of cut-crystal wine glasses, so there was a bit of a row about it and when we got to bed it was sort of late and we were tired and ... well, I figured there was tomorrow. Only there hasn't been a tomorrow yet. Oh, I don't mean she hasn't let me kiss her when we got the chance, and feel her up a bit in the mornings when she comes out to the bathroom with nothing on but her pajamas. But-oh, you must know how it is! You had your girl friend for six months, didn't you? So you must know that once you've been the whole way it isn't enough to cop a feel here and there."
"Is she just being practical? I mean, there is the risk of pregnancy."
"No, hell! Straightaway on Monday I went out and bought some of these chemical things, like what Roxana put up her, and-"
"I'm not so sure about that," I cut in.
He blinked at me. "What?"
"I'm not so sure what you bought would be like what Roxana uses. I've been wondering about that, and I suspect there was something else besides a contraceptive compound in her little tablets. She practically said as much to me, in fact."
"What do you mean? An-an aphrodisiac?"
"I suppose that's what you'd call it. I checked in a few books at the library when it struck me, and everyone seems to agree that there ain't no such animal, but-well, wouldn't you say the idea fits?"
"Damned right it does," he muttered. "Because I just can't seem to get her interested}. And that's why I came around here, actually, to ask you a favor."
"Me? What on earth? Christ, you don't want me to warm her up for you or something, do you? That'd be a hell of a note!"
Stiffly, he said, "That's not what I mean at all. I just want a bit of help in solving the major problem: having Mum and Dad underfoot the whole time. That's her chief excuse for not cooperating, and what's so utterly bloody is that of course it's absolutely right. There'd be hell and all its devils to pay if Mum or Dad caught us at it."
"So you want to bring her here," I nodded. "Well-uh-I thought if maybe perhaps on Saturday afternoon...." He paused uncertainly.
Saturday? Saturday my Irish nurse was going to be on duty at her hospital, so that would probably be okay. I said so, wondering a little at my own casualness, and he reached out and caught my hand with fervent gratitude.
"Thanks a million, Henry!" he exclaimed.
"Wait a minute! Wait forty-eight hours, actually! You can't be certain that bringing her here, even, will turn the trick!"
"Can't I?" On the instant he was all seventeen-year-old again.
"No, of course not," I said almost angrily. "Last Saturday was a very special kind of occasion, and Roxana was a special sort of person to be around; she practically scented the air with sex, didn't she? Without her help ... Well, what have you been doing to Sarah? Just sort of grabbing her and sticking your hand up her skirt, and then getting annoyed when she pushed you away and saying so?"
He looked embarrassed and after a pause gave a shrug. "I suppose so," he muttered.
"Well, it's small wonder, then. I mean, even if she is your sister you still have to do the odd bit of chatting up, don't you? You can't expect her to turn overnight into a nympho like your friend's au-pair girl, lit up like a firework six times a day and dripping wet for need of sex!"
"You mean-"
"I mean if you want to go on screwing her you'll have to seduce her all over again; you can't just snap your fingers and expect her to come running. She wasn't a virgin when you got into her, so presumably she's had a pretty wide range of boyfriends, enough to know which of them treated her properly, like a person, and which were only interested in getting up her. Think about it, will you?"
He did, for half a minute or so. Then, rather shyly, he looked up. "Ah ... you're a lot more experienced than I am, Henry, so can I ask you a question which might sound a bit silly?"
"Shoot," I said. "If it's really silly, I'll tell you so."
"All right then." He licked his lips. "You-you screwed her on Saturday night, as well as me. She is worth having, isn't she? I mean, it's not just the idea that she's my sister which keeps getting me so worked up every time I think about her?"
I had to chuckle. But at least I kept it from turning into an outright laugh. As gravely as I could, I answered, "Yes, boy, she is very definitely worth it, and if the chance arises for me to have her again I'll gladly take it."
He looked faintly alarmed. I went on hastily, "No, no! I don't have the vaguest intention of trying to lure her away from you-for heaven's sake, she's only fifteen, isn't she, and still at school and all like that? How could I? And...." It was my turn to hesitate, while he gazed at me inquiringly.
"And," I concluded at length, "it sort of hits me where it hurts to think about you two screwing."
"Because we're in the same family? Yes, I know. Isn't it peculiar how something like that can get through to you? I mean, lying awake in bed and wanking the way I have been the past few nights I've been wondering what it would be like to go to bed with Mum, for God's sake! And it just doesn't seem possible, I can't make the idea real to myself. I don't mean it's because she's too old or anything-she's only thirty-nine and she's still attractive even if she is getting fat now, and I don't think I'd say no if someone else of her age offered to lay me. But there simply isn't anything there which can get a grip on my imagination, you follow me?"
I started. I said, "Lord, I just thought of something I hadn't thought of for years! You know I once met someone who'd screwed his mother?"
"For heaven's sake! Who?"
"Oh, a man my parents met at a party or something, when I was about ten, I think. He was very charming and sort of socially acceptable and everything, and he came around to the house a few times for drinks and my sisters and I liked him because he brought silly little thoughtful presents for us. Once he gave me an Easter egg with a picture inside, in the middle of October. And then his mother died, that he'd been living with all his life, and by then he must have been over thirty, and he tried to kill himself and left a note saying what he'd been doing, ever since his father died when he was about fifteen and his mother started drinking and he tried to console her, and one night...." I shrugged. "Anyway, he didn't manage to kill himself as he meant to, and I think he wound up in the bin. It was a terrible scandal, and of course nobody would tell us kids what had happened to that nice Mr. Scrammel and it wasn't until a friend of mine showed me a clipping he'd taken from the newspaper that I found out. And then I thought it was really a terrible shame that he hadn't managed to die like he'd wanted to, and then I clean forgot about it until this minute." Malcolm shook his head in wonder. He said, "It's fantastic what does go on that you never hear about!"
"You hear about it if you listen at the right keyholes," I assured him with all the superior worldly wisdom of my four years' seniority.
"Yes. Yes, I suppose you probably can." He looked around distractedly, located his beer glass and drained it, and got to his feet.
"We'll see you on Saturday, then," he said. "Would three o'clock be all right?"
"Remember what I said!" I warned. "Otherwise you may find you can't talk her into coming here with you."
"Oh, I think I can probably persuade her to do that. It's the next step that'll be tricky. Never mind. I'll see what I can do. And thanks again. I don't know what I'd have done without you."
"Gone on masturbating," I muttered under my breath, and turned back to my work with a pang of relief.
CHAPTER NINE
And, on Saturday at three, they did indeed both turn up: Malcolm absolutely hopping with eagerness, Sarah following him in very timidly, as though frightened to confront me the witness of what she had done a week ago. She was looking quite lovely in a stiff-skirted summer frock of diagonal green and white stripes, and seeing her again now for the first time since our fantastic night together 1 was astonished to discover that a radical change had taken place either in her or in me. I couldn't possibly regard her now as a mere schoolgirl, whatever her chronological age. She was simply a girl, and an extremely attractive one.
As I kissed her cheek and ushered her into my apartment, I decided that the change must be on her side. She'd been shown that her body was capable of discharging the functions of an adult woman, and after that she could never be the same-well, the same child she had been before.
Much later, I figured out that what I'd witnessed was the true loss of virginity, which has nothing necessarily to do with a mere physical action but occurs entirely in the mind. Right then, however, the thought which mainly preoccupied me was that maybe I'd been a fool to promise Malcolm I'd help his plan, and would have been better advised to help myself-to whatever I could get from her.
Never mind, I told myself; the past few days had taught me z brand-new way of solving my own problems in this area, and it was going to be a hell of a lot of fun testing out the technique. Why should I begrudge someone else his own, or her own, enjoyment in life?
As I'd told Malcolm on Thursday, I'd been doing a lot of thinking along those lines since last weekend, and as nearly as I could pin down the root cause it was due to having met someone I could imagine to be perfectly uncomplicated. I was intellectually aware that a person like Roxana (if there were any others like her at all) must also suffer from human failings; in particular, I was certain she must have a fiery temper and very likely she sulked if she didn't get her own way ... and so on. But I hadn't seen her behave like that. I'd merely seen her stripping away the shams from something which had been built up in most people's minds into a sort of Eiffel Tower of anxiety, casting its shadow for miles on every side across the mental landscape. For once I'd committed myself without reservations to a transient sensual pleasure, and contrary to all the lies I'd been told while I was a kid I'd found the result to be wonderful. What was more, the consequences had been far-reaching and immediate; my new Irish girl friend had said a lot of improbably flattering things to me the other night, and all I'd done was forget about the risk of offending her sensibilities and drive straight for what I guessed would be most satisfying for her. (Not for me. I'd decided to give up grabbing. Maybe that was what really made the difference. Afterwards what I got came as a sort of present, wrapped in genuine affection. It was great.)
In a sense you might say I felt sorry for Sarah, who had cut loose so spectacularly once already and appeared to be in danger of drifting back into an old shadowy world of guilt and apprehension. I had become a devoted disciple of the creed Roxana had enunciated in the Clydes' bathroom: it was indeed wonderful that people could give each other so much delight at no cost to themselves, and I was an idiot to have overlooked the fact until this late age of twenty-one.
Conscious that Malcolm's eyes were on me signaling "get out of the way!" I led them into my sitting room where there was a divan with a row of cushions laid along the back, waved them to sit down on it together and brought out from a cupboard a bottle of wine I'd decided to offer as my contribution to their impending (?) reunion. It was originally to celebrate the fact that the wife of the house buyer I was currently dealing with had fallen in love with my sketches for modernization and decoration and I was certain of getting a record commission in consequence. But I still had some more work to do on the plans I had roughed out, so my architect friend could take over, and I couldn't work unless I was sober. So I figured they might as well reap the benefit of my extravagance. I took just one small glassful and drank a mouthful with them and told them to make free with the records and radio and anything else they chose to, and used my work as an excuse to leave them to it. 1 think Sarah was asking with her eyes that I shouldn't, but the reason she wanted me to stay wasn't the same as that for which Malcolm wanted me to go. If it had been, I'd certainly have complied.
I blew her a kiss, went out, and carefully closed the door.
In my studio at the end of the landing, I sat smoking and musing for a long time before I finally managed to start work again. By turns I felt I must be crazy, or else I must be incredibly altruistic, or else....
I shut off the cycle eventually with the mental shrug that might be interpreted as concluding I was simply human, and on that curiously comforting, if vacuous, note I found I was able to locate the false starts and the half-mistakes which up till then I'd only suspected in my present group of sketches, tore half of them up, and did them all over from scratch. They were terrific. I had four ready in two hours, and I was sitting back admiring them when there came a tap at the door-I'd left it ajar so if Malcolm and Sarah emerged they wouldn't think I was shutting them away from me-and I glanced up to find them both on the threshold. Malcolm was shaping words of conventional gratitude for my "kindness" when I beat him to it.
"You had lipstick on when you arrived, Sarah!"
She gasped and put her hand to her mouth, and Malcolm roared with laughter. All his tensions had evaporated and he was in the gayest of spirits. Embracing his sister with both arms from behind, he said, "Oh, Henry, you're wonderful-know that?"
"I got some independent testimony to that effect the other evening," I said. But Sarah was blushing deeper scarlet than the lipstick which she had hastily found to repair the damage Malcolm had inflicted, and I cancelled the next crack I was about to make: a not particularly witty inquiry about the success of their lovemaking.
"Can we come again next Saturday?" Malcolm demanded.
"Tomorrow, as far as I'm concerned," I shrugged.
His face fell. "No, tomorrow we've got to go and call on some damned cousin of Mum's. We'll be out the whole day. Ah ... some evening, possibly?"
"By all means. Provided I'm not-ah-otherwise engaged, of course."
"Yes, of course." He hesitated. "Well, we'll be on our way then. Thanks. Thanks awfully."
They did indeed turn up again the following Saturday, and repeated pretty much the same performance, except that Sarah was even more subdued, and made the same arrangement to return, and in the meantime my work went from success to success, with orders for artist's impressions from another and much bigger estate agent than my previous employer on top of the expected commission to supervise redecoration of the house I'd been mentally converting the week before. It was starting to look as though I might be able to give up my part-time bread-and-butter job. Also my sex life took a brand-new turn when my Irish nurse had to break a date with me and when I got to the place I was supposed to meet her, not knowing she'd been held up, I found a skinny redhead waiting instead, who marched up to me and called me by name and said she'd been told to bring me the message but her friend had been talking about me in the nurses' hostel with such enthusiasm that she thought she'd do more than that and offer herself as a stand-in for the evening to find out if it was true.
That was pretty extraordinary, the night we had together; among the other things which made it so remarkable was that she was the boniest girl I ever ran across, and so fragile I was half afraid I'd hear a rib cracking at any moment. But she was almost as greedy as Roxana in her own way, even though I didn't care for her own way so much, and it was certainly a memorable occasion up to and including the time when she paused on the way to the door intending to catch the first bus in the morning and get back to work, and said, "I won't see you again because I'm getting married next week, but I got a couple of new wrinkles off you and I'd hardly have thought that was possible because I've always promised myself that when I did get married I'd be as fully equipped as I could-in case we got bored. It's a long life, isn't it?"
And the door closed.
So what with one thing and another I was humming when I opened the door on Saturday afternoon and found Malcolm there on his own, a picture of misery. Startled, I stepped back to let him in.
"No Sarah?" I demanded. He shook his head silently, and walked past me like a ghost.
"Come on!" I said, putting my arm companionably around him. "Sit down, tell Uncle Henry what's the matter and we'll see if there's anything that can be done." I urged him into the sitting room, waved him to a seat, and fetched some beer from the kitchen for us. I was luxuriating in brand-new affluence, keeping drinks in the house.
He hemmed and hawed for a while, but eventually-as I'd been sure it would-it emerged.
"She says she isn't coming this time because it's her period," he blurted.
"And you don't believe her?"
"No, I don't," he said doggedly. "I mean, since-since the time I told you about when we were with Roxana she's quite often talked to me about things like that, and I'm sure she's never gone longer than four days and it started last Sunday. You can always tell by looking in the bathroom medicine cabinet."
I didn't altogether like the sound of that. Going around adding up scraps of that kind of evidence smacks of paranoia. I said, "But surely that's not the only thing that makes you think she might be-uh-fibbing?"
"No, it's not." He gulped at his drink. "There's something a lot more important, a lot worse. She says I'm not very good at it. She says I'm clumsy when I ought to be gentle. She says maybe she ought to try and find another girl friend because it was so wonderful when Roxana did it to her, and...."
"And girls don't only care about their own selfish satisfaction?" I prompted. He stared at me in amazement.
"Henry, have you been talking to her? She didn't quite put it like that, but it's what she meant, anyway!"
"No, of course I haven't."
"Sorry. Shouldn't have snapped at you like that. But heavens above, Henry, I think it would be absolutely awful if Sarah wound up queer for girls because of something I'd done to her! I mean I couldn't face myself if that happened!"
"Didn't she enjoy it when you brought her around here last week and the week before?"
"She seemed to, all right. I mean, the first time she was kind of reluctant, and directly after you went out of the room and I tried to kiss her she pushed me away and got out a cigarette to delay things a bit longer. But that was all the trouble I had, really, and ten minutes later I had her dress off, and her bra, and the wet was absolutely streaming down her legs and she took off her panties herself and got up on the divan on hands and knees and made me come into her standing up from behind because she said she'd read that was a way of making it last longer. And even after we'd screwed twice she still wasn't finished and made me talk about you and us and Roxana while she stroked herself. And I thought it was going to be all right from then on, of course, especially when we got home that evening and right there in the drawing room while we were watching TV with Mum and Dad she opened the front of her dress while they weren't looking and showed me that she'd taken off her bra. Just sort of zipped it down and up again and grinned at me....
"But then she got all these qualms of conscience again during the week, and about all I managed to do was come in the bathroom and watch while she used the toilet. That was Wednesday, I think-no, Thursday it must have been. And I tried to get her to feel me, but she wouldn't, so all I could do was wank. And then Saturday we came here again, of course, and it wasn't nearly so good this time and she only let me screw her once and she wouldn't do anything else to me or leave her bra and panties off when we got dressed like I asked her to, and . .
"Did you get annoyed with her?" I said.
He looked down at his toes and nervously raised and lowered them in turn. "I suppose I did," he admitted after a pause.
"Damn it, that's your trouble, then!" I barked. I was covering up something which disturbed me a little; hearing his matter-of-fact recital of what he'd done with his sister right here in this room had stung my prick into a stand, and I didn't have anyone lined up for tonight-only my Irish girl, for tomorrow. In the past few weeks I'd had more sex with more different partners than ever before, and I was apparently getting more and more sensitized instead of growing blase as I had half-anticipated.
"Now it's my turn to apologize for snapping at you," I said as I saw him bridle. "Didn't mean to. What I do mean is ... Hell, look! How would you like it if a girl you very much fancied got angry with you simply because your stand didn't last right through until she was tired of coming?"
"Not much, I guess," he muttered.
"Well, that's more or less what you're doing, in reverse, if you get angry with Sarah for not making you come the second time last Saturday. No wonder she made this crack about girls not being preoccupied with their own selfish satisfaction! How many times did you make her come?"
"Ah ... well, I suppose just the once."
"But she can manage it much more than that, can't she? And wants to when she hits the right mood." I leaned forward. "Look, you've watched her stroking herself, haven't you? And that time we were with Roxana you were saying how damned silly it was not to be able to learn about making love by watching other people because so much of our knowledge about the world comes in through the eyes-remember?"
"Yes, of course."
"Well, you're having the opportunity, a hell of a lot more than most people get in a lifetime, I'm sure, and you don't seem to be taking much advantage of it. By now you bloody well ought to know how to absolutely wring pleasure out of Sarah's body for her. And you ought to be doing it, instead of getting annoyed with her!"
He didn't say anything, so I pressed him: "Aren't I right?"
"Oh! Hell, yes, of course you are! It's just that it's so difficult doing it! Days go by and I don't get anything, and finally ... FINALLY ... we make it around here to your place and I'm just so frantic I can't think about things like that."
"Then don't leave thinking about them until you get over here," I snapped. "Think about them when you know there isn't much chance of anything else happening, at home. What are you doing tonight?"
"Oh ... there's a party, I think. Don't expect it'll be a very good one."
"Okay, so you're already resigned to not getting much out of it. So use the time for something else-spend it chatting her up, being nice to her, bringing her drinks, asking her to dance, same as any boyfriend would who'd taken her along."
"But it can't possibly lead anywhere!" he objected. "I mean, it's with some friends of hers and they know I'm her brother. They'll think it's pretty funny if I hang around her all evening instead of chasing some other bird-if there is another one to be had."
"What do you mean, "it can't lead anywhere?" I countered. "I've just been telling you where it's likely to lead! I don't mean you have to be blatant about it, like necking with her while you're dancing-that could lead to disaster, and nothing else. I just mean she probably wants you to behave towards her in as thoughtful a manner as the best boyfriend she's had before, as well as screwing her so efficiently. It's only natural. You always relax best with people you genuinely like."
"I wouldn't have said so," he muttered. "Most people seem to find it easier to take off their inhibitions with perfect strangers, ideally people they expect never to see again."
"In one sense, maybe," I nodded. "Otherwise there wouldn't be prostitutes, would there? But I didn't exactly mean that. What I mean goes more like this. Start by thinking of it from Sarah's point of view. You and she have done things together that most kids your age can't manage to do with anyone. As well as being fun, it must also be kind of a shock, mustn't it? So if you then start treating her like-like a private convenience, giving her the impression that the only bit of her you want is her pussy, you must expect her to go cold on you!"
He drained his beer glass, got up, and began to wander distractedly around the room. I'd put my sketches on display in here, propped up on whatever came handy, so I could live with them over the weekend and see if anything needed to be modified before I delivered them on Monday, and he paused in front of each in turn.
"These are yours, aren't they?" he said suddenly.
"Yes, of course. I must have told you how I make my living."
"I like them. Like them a lot. You've got a marvelous visual imagination, haven't you? Ah ... you couldn't by any chance do a drawing of Roxana, could you?"
"I tried," I said. "I tried half a dozen: her by herself, her dancing with me, her in bed with us-nothing. I just couldn't catch the quality I wanted. So I tore them all up. Better a clear memory than a bad sketch."
"Yes, I suppose so...." He went on gazing at the drawings. "So I suppose I ought to be contented with memories as well, oughtn't I?"
"You give up pretty bloody easily!" I sighed. "Weren't you listening just now?"
"Yes, okay. Well, I'll do my damnedest to follow instructions and dance attendance on her at the party tonight, then."
"Fine, but for pity's sake don't give the impression you're doing it to gain something. Show you're doing it because you like her. You do, don't you?"
He looked briefly surprised. "Well-dammit, yes, I do! In fact on and off for years I've been thinking how much luckier I was than friends of mine at school who also had sisters, because Sarah seemed so much more of a...."
"Of a friend?" I prompted.
"Yes, precisely. As well as being my sister."
"You're halfway there, then, for goodness' sake! You go ahead and try it-and bear one more thing in mind, too."
"What?"
"If some other boy gets necking with her, or anything like that, don't for the love of Mike try to cut him out. Even if he manages to lay her, if the party's anything like what I imagine, it'll at best be something furtive grabbed in a dark corner, and sure as hell it won't be up to the standard of what she's already enjoyed. So she'll more than likely get frustrated and look around for what she can get that's better. And if she does-well, tomorrow's Sunday, and you're welcome to bring her around in the afternoon if you can swing the deal." I added, "But you wouldn't be able to stay very long, actually; I have a girl coming here at about six."
"You managed to get yourself another girl already? But I thought you were sort of bust up by losing-"
"What do you mean, 'already'? How long was it between meeting Roxana for the first time and getting into her?"
"Yes, but that was a special case, wasn't it?"
"Not nearly as special as I'd always been led to believe," I said with a touch of smugness. "When you catch on to that, chum, you'll stop worrying the way you're doing right now."
Well, it worked out, and around two-thirty the next afternoon there were Malcolm and Sarah, as predicted. She was in a jersey and skirt that didn't do too much for her, but that didn't matter much; what struck me was that she came in more cheerfully than on either of the previous occasions, and made no bones about sitting down next to Malcolm on the divan with his arm around her. So, just to keep the fires stoked, I went to special trouble to make it clear I regarded this as a perfectly ordinary way to behave, and chatted for a bit with them before slipping away, and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek on the way out of the room. And then, for the next hour or so, I sat in my studio reading, not finding the least difficulty about concentrating on my book-in fact, I'd managed so successfully to convince myself that this was all commonplace and routine and so on, it was almost a surprise when an hour or so later there was a tap on the door and I glanced up to see Sarah there, stark naked, with her eyes shining like a pair of personal suns.
For a long moment I just stared. It was a sight worth the seeing.
She said after a moment's pause, "Henry, you've been-well, you've been talking to Malcolm, haven't you?"
I admitted as much.
"Well...." She licked her lips. "Well, I just wanted to come and say thank you. I mean, it's like being with a different person completely. Up till now he's been sort of grabby, just like any of the boys I've let go a bit too far with me at a party or wherever, thinking that because I let him once I was bound to let him forever and ever afterwards, amen and three cheers! But today he's been so-so downright nice\ Do you understand?"
I felt a grin spreading over my face. "I'm surprised you left him, then," I said.
"I told you: I wanted to come and say thanks." She advanced a pace or two into the room, breasts and hips swaying. "Though actually just saying it isn't enough. Put that book down and let me show you."
I complied, and she bent over me and clamped her mouth on mine and stabbed between my lips with her tongue. To stop myself overbalancing as she tilted the upright chair I was sitting on, I clutched at her, and-taken aback by the skill and vigor of her kiss-automatically my hands started to caress the sensitive zones at the base of her spine and around her bottom. Still with her mouth tight against mine, she started to dance a little on the spot, not moving her feet but the muscles of her legs and pelvis tensing and relaxing.
Drawing aside finally, she said in a breathless voice, "Oh, heavens! I can't help wondering if I'm going to wind up like that Anita we heard about from Malcolm-I mean, I'm just getting turned on so easily now...." She darted her hand down to her pussy and scratched rapidly with the forefinger.
After a second, she added, "Henry, isn't it-isn't it unbearable for you just to sit in here and know we're in the other room?" Without waiting for an answer, she located one, shooting out her hand to feel me instead of herself. It wasn't so much sitting here and thinking about what she and Malcolm were up to, as the unexpected titillation from that long passionate kiss, but regardless of the cause she had no difficulty determining what a stand I had.
"I thought so!" she exclaimed. "Well, it isn't fair, is it? Come on, turn your chair away from the table!"
I did, astonished, and she dropped on her knees before me, tugging at the zipper of my pants, pulled out my prick and closed her mouth firmly around it. The touch of her tongue was expert in its precision; she had me throbbing violently within seconds, and I barely had the chance to caress her thick dark hair as it spilled around her head and onto my thighs before I lost control and felt the end of my prick hammer-hammer-hammer on her little sharp teeth. That was when I learned why the French call fellatio la veuve, the widow, the same name they give to Madame Guillotine.
I shook so fiercely I nearly fell off my chair, and when I regained some shreds of self-possession I found I was blinking at her upturned face, with a trace of wet running down from the corner of her mouth towards her chin.
"Was that good?" she demanded.
"It was bloody marvelous!" I said. "But I thought-"
"You thought I didn't like the idea," she interrupted. "Well, I didn't very much. Malcolm's been trying to get me to do it for ages, and I wouldn't. Not until today. And then ... well, like I told you, today he's been like a different person; it seemed he simply couldn't go on too much trouble for my sake. So I did it to him without being asked. It was only fair, wasn't it? And it was quite different from the only other time I tried it. It got me so worked up too that I came along with him, and I think I practically bit the end off!"
"Not quite, but you could probably still see the marks."
We gasped and turned our heads, to find Malcolm standing in the doorway also quite naked, and stroking his prick absently with his left hand while he leaned on the door jamb with his right. Sarah drew back from me, but he made a gesture to check her.
"You were talking about things being fair and unfair, weren't you? Well, the way I feel right now I think it would be very damned unfair if you hadn't given Henry a piece of what you gave me. Lord, I can hardly stand up-I feel as though I've been put through a bloody wringer! You're fantastic, you know that?"
Sarah, sitting back on her heels, gave a sudden chuckle.
"I took your advice, Henry," Malcolm went on. "So actually I suppose the credit has to go not only to you, but to this character Adrian who picked Sarah up at the party I told you we were going to last night. It took a lot of doing, especially when I found he'd conned her into going into the room where the coats had been parked and lying down there on the floor in the dark, the other side of the bed so you couldn't see them if you glanced in the door. But I remembered what you said, and took a tight hold on myself and went and found a popsy to dance with, and...." He shrugged. "You were absolutely right."
"What do you mean?" Sarah demanded.
"I told him that even if someone did manage to lay you at the party it probably wouldn't be up to what you'd had already," I said. "And did he manage to?"
"I'm pretty certain he didn't," Malcolm said. "Not judging by the look on her face when she reappeared in the room where we were dancing."
"You smug bastard," Sarah said. But there was no malice in the words-only faint amusement. "Quite right, he didn't. I'd have let him if he could, because I was getting pretty frustrated and he did at least know what to do when I let him put his hand down my dress. Only when he stretched me out on the floor and got out his prick, it was too much for him and because he'd come he sort of lost interest. It didn't seem to occur to him that I might want a bit more myself. Which was-like I say-frustrating. In the end I had to do it myself in the bathroom."
She rose in a smooth movement and went over to kiss her brother lightly on the chin. "But you were awfully nice," she said. "You really were. I was in such a foul mood I'd promised myself that if you made a pass at me on the way home I'd clout you and tell Max what you'd done. Max was the guy who gave us a lift after the party," she added for my benefit.
"So that's why you tensed up when I put my arm around you in the back seat!" Malcolm exclaimed.
"Of course. That's why I relaxed when I found that was all you were going to do for the night. Matter of fact, if you hadn't mentioned that we could come here today if we liked I think I'd have let you come into my room with me for a bit. Because Mum and Dad were asleep when we got home."
For an instant Malcolm looked startled, then said wryly, "Just as well, perhaps. They might only have been as much asleep as we were when they came home and nearly caught us in bed together." There was a pause. Malcolm looked at his watch, which was all he had on. He said, "You said your girl was coming around, Henry-ought we to get a move on?"
"No, she won't be here for a while. You can have another hour, if you like."
"Heavens! I don't think I could make use of another hour. Sarah, how about you?"
"Putting it crudely," she said, "I am just screwed out. What I'd mostly like is a cigarette and a drink and a chance to lie down for a while."
"In that case, let's go in that room," I said, rising. "I only have beer, but if that's okay? Fine, let's go."
"Are you going to keep your clothes on?" Malcolm gibed.
I looked him in the eye. I said, "What clothes?" And let my pants fall around my ankles; Sarah had of course already undone the zipper. It was a warm day again, and there was practically no wind, and up until lunchtime I'd had nothing on but a dressing gown against the risk of the milkman coming to have his bill paid.
Sarah laughed, jumped to her feet, waited until I'd stripped off my shirt as well, then linked arms with both of us and hurried us back to the other room. When I'd handed around cigarettes and poured our beer, she urged me to sit down on the divan beside her with Malcolm on the other side, and curiously handled both our limp pricks, examining them thoroughly.
"Does it make a difference being circumcised?" she demanded of me after a little while.
Over her bowed head I grinned with Malcolm. I said, "You're probably in a better position than either of us to answer a question like that. I've been the way I am all my life, so I wouldn't know."
"So have I," Malcolm said. "I was done when I was eight days old, in the traditional fashion, so I can't remember anything else, can I? What do you think, Sarah? You've tried it both ways."
She hesitated. "I-I don't know," she said. "I think maybe yours is nicer to kiss, but I'd have to try again lots of times before making up my mind. Apart from that all I know is I like it."
We all laughed; the atmosphere was good humor. "Provided you promise to try it lots of times more, I shan't mind what you decide," Malcolm said. He reached over and gave her breast a companionable caress, and she blew him a kiss.
Glancing at me, she added, "You're saving up for your girl friend this evening, are you, Henry? Or would you like to do something with me now? I rather like the idea of having someone else watching."
"I like the idea fine, too," I said-indeed, it was clear I liked it, for it was stiffening me visibly. "But ... well, she has sort of high expectations of me, so I think it would be better not to. Anyhow, I thought you said you were screwed out."
"Yes, but the idea of making Malcolm watch you and I...." The words trailed away. "No, not really. I've had as much as I can cope with for one day."
"I don't guess we can stick around or join in, could we?" Malcolm said in an optimistic tone.
"I thought that," I said. "So I sounded her out, and I'm afraid the suggestion sort of turns her off. So far, at any rate. I'll keep working on it-I think it would be a nice thing to do later, if I can bring her round."
"I've been asking to see if she can bring some of her school-friends round," Malcolm said. "Myra, for example. I think she told you and Roxana about Myra after I flaked out on Saturday night. I didn't know until just now, when I asked her whether she really preferred making love with a girl."
"I don't see why anyone should have a preference," Sarah said. "Do you, Henry? I mean, wouldn't you make love with Malcolm if you felt like it?"
Malcolm's eyes met mine and there was a pause. I said at last, "Dammit, I can't see any reason why not-except that the idea of a boy just doesn't hit the right spot in my mind. I think maybe if we were both together with you, perhaps, it might happen as part of the whole set-up, but it would be because there was a girl involved too, if you follow me."
She nodded. "Yes, I do. I mean, what made it sort of special with Roxana was that I knew she'd just-uh-just been screwed, and that turned me on much more than merely being put in the same bed with Myra by accident." She turned to face her brother. "Mai, I'm awfully sorry I said that nasty thing to you the other day. I didn't really mean it, you know."
"I know," he gave her a squeeze. "It's all psychological, isn't it?"
"Much more of it is than I would have guessed," she nodded. "I suppose there are clues in what make you excited when you're masturbating, aren't there? Henry, what gets you particularly worked up?"
"You mean what goes through my mind when I'm playing with myself? Or what gives me a stand if it just happens without warning?"
"Both, I suppose. There isn't anything that turns me on out of the blue, but there are plenty of things I know are liable to put me in the right mood for someone else or myself to push me a bit further."
"Such as?"
"Oh, sometimes it is simple as seeing a couple going down the street arm in arm, when I'm feeling depressed and lonely. Sometimes it's complicated, like when a train of thought leads me to a state of frustration about the long, long time I can see stretching ahead before they let me out of school and I can think about getting married and settling down with a man." Sarah made a vague gesture. "Nothing I can pin down."
"But while you're playing, isn't there anything which works particularly well?" Malcolm urged. "If there is, tell me and I'll try and make it come real."
Sarah hesitated, then giggled. "All right, there are some things, and they're terribly childish really! And now they seem almost like ancient history, because...." She swallowed hard, glancing at Malcolm. "Well, because since that night I was in the bath and you came in, and we got up to all those things together, I've learned such a lot more than I used to know, and of course in the end I wound up letting Toby screw me, disappointing though it was, so I had real-life memories to think about when I was playing with myself."
"But when I walked in and caught you at it, what were you thinking about then?" Malcolm urged.
"One of my things, back in what I've started to think of already as 'the old days.' I was thinking about being at this party where there was a girl much older than me-I don't mean old, I mean sort of nineteen or twenty, old enough to have left school and live on her own and do what she wanted. And she was in this fabulous matching outfit all the same beautiful material, red and black in big swirling patterns, with gold earrings and a marvelous hairdo and high-heeled shoes matching her clothes. And the outfit consisted of a sort of evening coat, fastened down the front but open from about here"-she pointed to the upper part of her thigh-"over a long skirt-to her ankles with a slit in it up the side. That was all you could see at first. But she got dancing with this boy who attracted her, and she kept going out of the room pretending to want the bathroom, and then coming back to dance with him again, and every time she went out she'd taken off part of what she was wearing. The coat went first, and showed she was wearing a top with bare shoulders, just covering her breasts, so when he danced with her next he could kiss her neck and practically all the way down to her nipples, only not quite. And then she went out again and this time it was her skirt she took off, and when she came back you could see that it had been wrapped around this sort of topless slip thing. So that meant she gave the impression she'd turned up at the party in her undies, you get me?"
"Yes, I get you," Malcolm said. "Go on!" With the words he reached for her hand and placed it around his prick, which was visibly stirring as he listened. She took hold obligingly, reached to stub her cigarette, and did the same for me with her now empty other hand.
"And then she took off the middle bit, which-oh, I suppose I thought of it as being zipped to the bra part and the skirt, probably. Anyway, she was able to take it off, and this time when they were dancing he could stroke all round her waist and her tummy. And the rest of the room was full of people also dancing, and they kept looking at her and him and not quite daring to do anything themselves, but you could see they wanted to.
"And she went out of the room again, and when she came back...." Sarah's voice quavered a little, and I felt her moving against me on the divan. "Goodness, it does still work for me, apparently. I thought it belonged to the past now. Mai?"
"On my way," he said, and reached with his right hand to the base of her belly. She parted her thighs and moved her bottom forward to make access easier, and gave a sigh of relief as his finger located the proper spot.
"Well, this last time when she came back at first sight it looked as though she couldn't have taken anything off, she was still in this tight strapless red and black bra and this frilly half-slip arrangement. But then someone put a jazz record on and they started to jive so the skirt of it spun out around her, and you could see that it wasn't really all one piece. It actually had a slit in it straight up the front, right to the waistband, and when she swirled it back and forth you could see that what she'd gone to take off the last time was her panties. Ow! Oh, my God! Ow!"
Her hand clamped so tightly that I thought she might tear it out by the roots, and she slammed her eyes shut like the doors of a bank vault closing and jolted up and down against the pressure of her brother's hand. I glanced at him, and saw that he was nearly making it again himself; breathing hard, he too had closed his eyes and let his lips part and with the fingers of his left hand resting on Sarah's shoulder he was clutching and releasing her in rhythm with her manipulation of his prick.
"Did you ever do that yourself?" he forced out. "Did you ever undress at a party, or anything?"
Sarah took her hand away and wiped at the beads of sweat which had gathered on her bosom to trickle down her cleavage, as though they were tickling her. She said, when she could, "Not-not exactly. But I made a bet with Myra once, a little while after we came back from our holiday together. I said I'd take off my clothes in the movies if she'd do the same."
"Phooey! And did you?"
"Well, she wouldn't and she didn't believe I would. So I said of course I would and if I did would she do what I asked her to do? So she said yes, so we went to the pictures together one afternoon and we got in the darkest corner and I started. I had a sweater and skirt on like I have today, and before leaving home I tucked the top straps of the bra I was wearing inside the cups so I wouldn't have to worry about getting them down over my hands. So when the lights went down I started off-I undid my stockings and gave them to her one by one, and then I wriggled until I could get my garter belt off and gave her that, and then I pulled up my sweater and took off my bra and gave her that, and that left me with nothing on but the sweater and the skirt and the half-slip and panties I had under the skirt. But about then Myra started to get frightened because she saw I was perfectly serious, and whispered to me to stop for goodness' sake before anyone saw me, and I said no, I'd made a bet and I was determined to win it. There wasn't anything very sexy in this, you know-it was sheer downright devilment, I think."
"There may not be anything in it for you," Malcolm muttered. "There is for me, and I'm damned certain you can feel just how much!"
He jabbed his right hand down to close it around hers and impose the best possible rhythm on her caresses. I was having some difficulty in resisting the temptation to substitute my own hand on myself for the one she'd just withdrawn, but I decided it would be pleasanter to see if what she was going to tell us provoked orgasm in me of its own accord. So I leaned back and went on sipping my beer as I listened.
"So to show her I was serious I pushed myself up on my elbows and eased first one side and then the other of my panties down under my bottom, and she was grabbing at me by now and practically crying, and demanding to know what I was going to make her do if I won the bet, but I hadn't really decided, so I said the first thing that came into my head: I said I was going to make her piss on the seat while we were watching the film. Ouch! Mai, careful-you're practically breaking my hand ... oh."
I glanced down, saw the swollen, circumcision-bared tip of his prick swelling and throbbing and finally exuding a trace of curdled-milk whiteness above the encircling double ring of her hand and his. I went and fetched a tissue to mop him up with, my own embryo stand subsiding.
There was a silence after that. Finally Malcolm stirred and blinked and smiled and blew her a kiss, and she returned the smile warmly.
"I never knew I could affect anyone with my silly ideas," she said. "Isn't it fun? Henry, I suddenly realized: I started off asking you what excited you, and you wound up conning me into doing the talking! Isn't it about time you told us something?"
Christ, wasn't there an end to the sexiness that had been tapped in this kid's mind? I grinned and shook my head, lighting another cigarette.
"No," I told her. "Right now, it's about time you and Malcolm put your clothes on, because I want to tidy up around the place a bit before my girl friend gets here. Sorry!"
"Oh, all right." Reluctantly she got up and drew Malcolm after her. But, as she headed for the heap she had made of her clothes on a chair the other side of the room, he called after her.
"Hey! Leave your undies off so I can feel you up a bit if I get the chance on the way home?"
She had her panties in her hand, about to step into them, and hesitated. After a moment she said, "No, I don't think I can leave them all off-I'm all full of you, for one thing, and it would be awful if there was a stain on my slip. I wash my own panties," she added to me in parenthesis. "But Mum does most of the rest for me."
"Well, why can't you wash yourself out?" Malcolm suggested obstinately. And then, correcting himself: "Oh, of course not-I suppose that counts as douching, doesn't it? And it says on the tube of tablets I bought you have to leave it to work for six hours or more."
"I'll leave my bra off," she offered. "It might show through my sweater that I haven't got one on, though, and I'm afraid Mum might notice."
I snapped my fingers. The night I got the little bony redhead home and started to undress her, I'd discovered she hadn't got a bra on, and I'd asked if that was normal with her, and she'd laughed and said she didn't even own one-with breasts as small as hers, what did she have to support? And indeed she was almost literally as flat-chested as a boy, though she had all the female reflexes when she was caressed there. In fact, her nipples peaked out so enormously when she was excited it occurred to me that without a bra they must be clearly visible through her clothes, so I mentioned the possibility, and she said yes, of course they could be seen, but if she went to a party or something where she was liable to get excited she didn't care who knew about it, and while she was at work she just put a bit of adhesive tape over them to hold them down. "So as not to distract the patients," she'd said with a grin.
Which was what prompted me to go to the bathroom and come back with a couple of bits of tape, which I duly affixed to Sarah's bosom as I'd been instructed. "There!" I said. "Now you can have your breasts bare and nobody need know except Malcolm."
She looked at herself a little doubtfully. "All right," she conceded. "But that's the nicest bit to have touched, and ... goodness, listen to me! As though we had to seize the only chance we were ever going to get on top of a bus, or something!"
So she balled her bra up small and hid it in her handbag, and put on the rest of her clothes. So did Malcolm. I waited and watched until they were ready, and then escorted them to the door, admonishing them to let me stand back as they went out because I wasn't dressed yet-I'd left my own clothes in the studio. On the threshold, Sarah hesitated, and suddenly darted close to me to give me a quick kiss.
"You're a darling," she said. "I can't tell you how happy you've made me."
"And me," Malcolm said fervently clasping my hand.
Sarah glanced from one to the other. In a voice whose quality had suddenly altered, she said, "Why aren't men allowed to kiss each other? Girls can-I've got lots of girl friends I can kiss hello and goodbye, and it's so much nicer than just shaking hands or anything. Isn't it silly?"
I stared at Malcolm. He stared. Without taking my eyes off him, I said, "You want to see us do it-is that right, Sarah?"
"I'd like to have seen it once in my life," she said firmly.
"Anything you want is okay as far as I'm concerned," Malcolm said with magnificent liberality. He leaned over and brushed my cheek with his lips. "There! I don't mind-I like Henry very much, and I'm awfully grateful to him."
"I didn't mean that," Sarah said. "I meant properly."
We both glanced in astonishment. She was very flushed again, and once more there was a glint of perspiration on her forehead.
"You mean the way you kiss girl friends?" Malcolm cracked, with an attempt to turn the request into a joke. But she nodded.
"Yes! I've done it lots of times, to find out if I really wanted to keep them-pretended I was just going to give them an ordinary dull sort of kiss and then hugged them tight and done it thoroughly with our mouths open. And some of them have been so horrified they never wanted to talk to me again, but most of them have liked it very much and let me do it again."
"Most?" I said.
"Well...." She gave a grin. "Actually I think it's six of them I've tried it with, and four let me go on and one screamed and one smacked my face and said she thought I was horrible and she'd never speak to me again. Which was all right by me.
"Lord, lord!" Malcolm sighed. "You keep on surprising me all the time, don't you? I never had the least inkling that you-hell, you're a sexy bitch, aren't you?"
"I just found out that I am," Sarah said with renewed composure. "And I like it tremendously. So you'd better help me keep it up as long as possible."
"Yes, that seems a good idea," Malcolm agreed. "All right, then. But it's up to Henry, after all."
"Oh, for God's sake," and I put my arms around him and forced his lips apart with my tongue. It wasn't in the slightest degree unpleasant; in fact, the only strange thing about it was feeling the prickly bristles of his afternoon beard along his upper and lower lips, and knowing that he must equally be aware of mine. That minuscule lasted only for seconds; after that, it was simply kissing, and extremely enjoyable.
When we drew apart and remembered who we were and why we'd been asked to do it, we both started shaking a little, but that wasn't for long either, because Sarah spoke up again.
"Well, Mai? Was it terrible? It didn't look as if it was terrible!"
"Ah...." He licked his lips. "No, honestly, it wasn't. It was pretty good. Henry?"
"Pretty good," I echoed. "You must have learned a lot from her and Roxana, I suspect."
"That's all right," Sarah said with satisfaction. She turned to me. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you do that if you didn't want to, but-"
I cut in. "You made me, or I might never have done it! And I meant what I said. I did enjoy it."
She looked relieved. "I'm sorry," she went on. "It was all because last week we-we had sort of a row, and he said how awful I was to talk about finding a girl friend again because I'd liked what Roxana did to me. So I just wanted to make him admit that she was right when she said it didn't matter a damn what sex people were so long as they were giving each other pleasure."
And, with a glare at her brother: "Nor what relationship they have to each other, what's
THE INCESTUOUS LOVERS
135 more!"
"You win!" Malcolm said, holding up his palms before his face in a parodied gesture of self-defense. "But-well, that's not the whole story, I'll swear. What you really want is for us to-well, suck each other off, isn't it? So you can watch and get yourself worked up while we're doing it!"
"And you'd like to see me and another girl licking each other's pussies?" she countered sharply. "Wouldn't that make you excited?"
I glanced at my watch, and said, "Come on, you two," I rapped. "Finish your argument outside-I'm expecting a visitor, remember!"
"Sorry! she said, and once again gave me a light kiss, this time on the mouth. Being careful to keep the door between my naked body and anyone who might be downstairs in the hallway, she slipped through. About to follow, Malcolm paused and turned back and gave me an identical kiss, accompanied by the lightest of caresses along the shaft of my prick.
And they were gone.
CHAPTER TEN
Whereupon, for over three months, Malcolm and Sarah vanished entirely from my life. I'd fully expected them to come back the following weekend and make use again of the facilities I'd offered, and-to be perfectly frank-I'd also half-hoped that I might get another chance at Sarah with or without her brother, because I now knew she was beyond doubt one of the sexiest girls I'd ever run across. Once we were safely inside my flat and the outside door was tightly locked, my Irish nurse was willing enough to forget her convent training and do virtually anything I suggested; run around naked with me, bathe with me-anything. But outside, where anyone else might see, the absolute limit of what she was willing to permit consisted in a bit of necking, Eventually, of course, the ridiculousness of this got home, but back then the advent of the miniskirt was still years in the future, and everything that went with it like panties designed to be shown off in public, with pretty floral designs on them, and tights to get rid of that ugly constructional effect due to suspenders taking a frenzied but unreliable grip on stocking-tops.
There were certain advantages, admittedly-for example, when I ran across a rather sexy girl a few weeks later who looked ravishing in the current fashions but complained that having to take off and put on such a complicated mass of clothes was a damned nuisance, I recalled Sarah's little fantasy about the girl at the party who took one garment off every time she left the room, and suggested she figure out some way of exploiting the idea. Which she did, and next time I took her to the movies it was in an outfit that consisted of a sort of bolero jacket under the hem of which I could fondle her tummy, and a big wide skirt hiding a kind of fly which she'd cut in the petticoat beneath, so that I could slide my fingers right in and get at her bare pussy. You can't do that with a girl in a mini, no matter how short it is-if she leaves her panties off, or her tights, everyone knows.
Still, with things as they are now, there's far less incentive to do things like grab the chance of petting in the dark of the movies. So on balance it's probably better the way it is.
I digress. I keep digressing. Largely because at the time I was doing exactly that with my life. After the job I already mentioned, the grapevine started humming, and the next thing I knew a personal recommendation had got me an assignment to design and supervise work on redecoration of a house in a far more expensive area than any I'd tackled before, the outside as well as the inside. I hadn't met my client when I first went to look the place over, but I knew one thing about her: she had money. I was trying to work out by how much I should increase my normal prices when she turned up-a slip of a thing, half-Japanese, daughter of an army officer and about-to-be-divorced wife of an executive in a big-city company, with the most gorgeous twin babies, both girls, about a year old.
I struck up an acquaintance with her while we discussed what she wanted, and when we'd been chatting for an hour or two she came out quite frankly and said she wanted to finish the conversation over dinner so why didn't I stay? I stayed for a good deal more than dinner. You might say I was the one who got eaten. I was finding a hell of a lot to thank Roxana for.
So what with one thing and another, I stopped wondering much about what was happening with Malcolm and Sarah. I was pretty certain they must be getting on all right, and if they weren't it would probably be first to me that they brought news of their difficulties.
As it turned out, it was.
On a cool day in October they turned up without warning; I just opened the door, and there they were. I was so surprised I must have gawped for a moment. Then I recovered, invited them in, and it was like time being rolled back as she kissed me and he kissed me-as she had done, friendly on the cheek-and we all went into my sitting-room and settled down and passed cigarettes and accepted drinks and so on.
Dropping onto the end of the divan next to Sarah, I said, "Well! And what brings you along after all this time? I'd been expecting you to be regular visitors!"
Sarah chuckled and glanced at her brother.
"It wasn't necessary after all, thanks," the latter said with a reminiscent grin. "All it needed was for us to put our minds to it, and the problems we thought we had just evaporated--phfft! A gesture of dismissal. "It's absolutely fantastic what we've managed to do right under the noses of Mum and Dad, just by planting the proper hints and so on."
"Tell me about some of them, then," I invited, feeling the familiar stir between my legs at the promise of his words. It looked as though I'd caught that habit off Roxana for good and all, but there didn't seem to be any need to worry about the fact-even my Irish nurse, with a couple of drinks down her, had proved willing to talk about things she said she'd never have dared to discuss with anyone else.
"I told you!" Sarah crowed. "I told you he'd want the details, didn't I? All right, Henry, I'll let him go ahead, on the understanding that this time you tell us something too. Okay?"
I pulled a face at her, and shrugged acceptance. She leaned back with a smug expression and waited for her brother to continue.
"Well, I suppose what proved to us that it could be done was just after we last saw you. It was Sarah's idea, really, because I'd got over the frantic bit and I was content to let things ride along for a few days, knowing that provided I did nothing to upset her I could have her again. And, I guess, at least partly because I was worn out and downright sore after what happened here! But if Sarah's anything to go by, women can sometimes be a lot sexier than men, don't you think so?"
I shrugged. "It's certainly not true that they're less sexy. But I suppose just as there are some men who can't care less about whether they get it or not, there must be women who can disregard their impulses."
"Which they are encouraged to do by their elders," Sarah said. "/ didn't know until I took my inhibitions off that I can sometimes come five or six times in a couple of hours while the best Malcolm has ever managed is four, and usually he can only manage two. Though he is getting better at keeping his stand on while I come so it can be used again, I'll give him that."
The incipient stand I was getting myself turned into a real one. In spite of the new and sometimes startling experiences I'd enjoyed since meeting Roxana, it had suddenly occurred to me that never before had I heard any girl so casually discussing her lover's prowess-let alone her brother's!
"You've had plenty of practice, have you?" I suggested.
"I was just telling you when I was interrupted," Malcolm said.
"You changed the subject!" Sarah cried.
"Oh, skip it, will you?" he snapped back. But it was all in fun; it looked as though they had managed to turn bickering into a kind of personal joke, and they both ended the exchange with a smile.
"Hah! Yes, like I said: the very day after we last came here, the Monday, it was absolutely beautiful weather all day and we spent most of our time out in the back garden. Dad was off at work, of course, but Mum was around, busy in the house, and anyway the garden's overlooked by the neighbors, so though we were sort of playing around with the hose and everything it didn't look as though there was going to be a chance for anything much more serious, until after lunch she ... well, she just did something that turned me on and really started me thinking about possibilities."
"We were cooling each other down with the hose, you see," Sarah supplied. "And Mum was in the kitchen washing the lunch things, and I got the urge. Or ... well, I more got a fit of devilment, actually."
"I know you get those," I said. "You told us about one which horrified your friend Myra."
"This one horrified Malcolm," she said with a parody of a leer. "It doesn't seem to be horrifying you yet, though." She reached over and felt my stand through my pants. "No, more the reverse, hm? Come on, take it out and play with it while you're listening if you want to."
"How the hell should I know yet if I want to or not?" I countered. "Keep talking!"
"Okay, okay! Well, I said to Malcolm come on, lie down on the lawn here and let me go on you, I can't be bothered to go indoors and do it. Goodness, you should have seen his face!"
"I thought she was going to take her pants off," Malcolm explained. "I hadn't realized she was already soaked with the water from the hose so it wouldn't show."
"That's what I had to point out to you," Sarah said. "I'd thought of that already. I said even if Mum looks out of the kitchen window, she'll just think we're horsing around and I'm trying to spray your face with the hose or something. I was wearing this very lightweight bikini, which I'd had a terrible job persuading Mum to let me buy-at first she said it was disgusting, and I had to show her pictures in the papers for weeks before she agreed it was what all the girls were wearing this summer. And Mai had on these trunks, you see, and nothing else, so it seemed like a good idea to make use of the opportunity."
"She's a hell of an actress when she wants to be," Malcolm said admiringly. "Because in fact Mum did look out of the window. Sarah didn't notice, but I did. And there I was stretched out on my back on the grass making believe I was just trying to knock aside the hose she was waving around my head. But she made such a good job of the byplay, I swear Mum just laughed and went back to her washing-up."
"Then I tried to get him to do the same to me," Sarah said. "But he wouldn't."
"Not wouldn't-couldn't. You'd put such a stand on me I couldn't possibly unless I'd really needed to very urgently, and I didn't because I'd been while I was indoors helping to fetch the lunch tray."
"Either way,"-Sarah shrugged-"all I could get him to do was rinse my pants for me with the hose. But it didn't really matter, because it was then we started wondering, well, if we can get away with that right under Mum's nose, what else can't we get away with?"
She glanced at my crotch again, and started. "Well, that didn't exactly build you up, did it? Unless you've come and it's going down? No? What's the matter? Don't you enjoy water sports?"
"Where in hell did you pick up that term?" I demanded, startled in my turn. I'd only just learned it myself, from my nurse, who had herself learned it from someone else in the hostel where she was billeted.
"Never mind where we picked it up! Answer my question!"
I sighed and complied. "Yes, actually I do, but mainly-well, kind of in a symbolic sense, I guess. Once you get to that stage, you know it's time for inhibitions to fly out the window."
"That's more or less how it was with us,"
Malcolm nodded. "We sat facing each other on the lawn and turned off the hose and got talking, and before Mum came out to join us with her book we'd reached an agreement." He hesitated. "Actually, thinking back, it sounds bloody childish, but that was the point at which we really got started-like you said, the end of our inhibitions."
"We washed them away," Sarah said suddenly. "That's right."
"Yes, right!" Malcolm confirmed.
"So what was your agreement?" I pressed. "Well, we didn't actually spell it out, but except for first thing in the morning-and not always then-and after breakfast when we needed to sit down ... I mean I needed to," he corrected himself, "I don't suppose either of us used a toilet for a week, did we?"
"/ didn't, even first thing in the morning," Sarah said. "I decided to do it in the bath instead. But that was only the half of it. I got Malcolm on my side straight away-"
"What do you mean, 'on your side'?"
"I started it, didn't I?"
"Yes, but it was my idea to do it when Mum was out there with us-"
"Oh, never mind!" Sarah exclaimed, and turned to me. "What he means is, when he next wanted to do it, while we were out there in the garden with Mum, he told me quietly so she wouldn't hear and I went and got the hose again while he pretended just to be lying on his tummy sunbathing, and he did it in his trunks and I sprayed him to cover up the traces."
"But that got me worked up enough to come, so I had to go indoors after all and wipe away the sperm," Malcolm chuckled. "Not that it was much of an orgasm-I was terrified Mum might catch on. But I think she mistook it for the shock of being unexpectedly hit with cold water."
He leaned over towards me. "Hey, you're going to do the same if you're not careful, aren't you? In spite of what you just said!"
"Okay, I give in," I muttered, and unzipped my fly. My prick was indeed standing firmly to attention now. At the sight of it Sarah gave a soft laugh and twisted around on the divan, throwing her right leg over me and reaching down to grab hold. I went straight into her without the least hesitation, and very nearly-but in the event not-had an orgasm on the instant with the surprise.
"There!" she said, pleased. "Weren't expecting that, were you? Like it?"
"You must be joking," I said weakly, as I felt her muscles contract and relax in a pretty good imitation of what Roxana had done to me.
"It was Malcolm's idea," she said. "He said we really owed it all to you and Roxana, so when we did see you again I ought to screw you, but-well, now it's happening, I'm sorry I didn't get around to it sooner! Come on, Mai, tell him the rest of it, and I'll just sort of sit on him and feel the effects." But before he could comply, she thought of another point, and turned back to grin into my face from a few inches' distance. "Ah, I know why you looked so surprised when I got on you! It wasn't just that I decided to, was it? It was the fact that I didn't have to take my panties off first."
"Well-uh-yes, I suppose it was," I admitted.
"I haven't worn any for weeks," she boasted. "Not except when I had my period. And look!" She skinned up the jersey she was wearing. "I'm not wearing a bra either, and I haven't even got tape on my nipples, have I?"
Indeed she had not, and she twisted herself to bring each in turn against my lips and prove the fact before settling back firmly on the shaft of my prick.
I said rather weakly, "But haven't your parents noticed?"
"THEM?" In a disbelieving tone. "They wouldn't notice if you set fire to their chairs! No, I told you-at least I think I did-I've washed my own panties since I was about ten or eleven, and all I had to do to account for bras not turning up in the laundry box was to say I'd decided to do all my undies and take some of the work off Mum. Little does she know what work I've taken off myself as well! And since Malcolm likes me better this way, what the hell? Come on, Mai"-with a jab of her hand at her brother-"open up and let's have a sight of you while you're giving Henry the whole dirty story!"
Obediently he unzipped his fly too and started to stroke his prick, turning so he could watch us more easily. He said, "Actually I'm sure you'll be doing most of the talking, but never mind. Where was I? Oh, yes! Well, after we'd got started on this bit I was telling you about, we just kept on and on. We found excuses for Sarah to be in the kitchen on her own after dinner and I went out in the garden against the wall under the window where she could watch, and then-well, you know we've got this French door out of the dining room, don't you? So
I could be in there convincingly while Mum and Dad were watching TV, and when she wanted to she ran out the back and just squatted down on the little terrace thing we have there, and ... so on."
"One morning when I woke up early and I'd drunk a lot of water because I was so thirsty before I went to bed," Sarah bragged, "I did it out of my bedroom window! It was about six o'clock and there was nobody about-at least I don't think there was-so I took off my pajama pants and climbed up on the sill and sat there to do it, looking out at the street. It turned into a sort of game after a bit, though of course it wasn't really fair because boys can do it standing up and girls can't-not without bending their knees, anyway. I tried, and I very nearly ruined one of my best pairs of shoes."
"But you're getting better at it, aren't you?" Malcolm encouraged. "I'm sure it can be done with practice. There was the time while we were away, for instance."
"Oh, yes, of course. We haven't told Henry about our holiday, have we? Well, we'll come to that in a moment. But what he says is quite true, dear." She leaned forward and rubbed her breasts against my face, while I thought about the way the moisture from her pussy was soaking into my clothes and decided I didn't give a damn. "We were at this place in Suffolk and we'd persuaded Mum and Dad to take us drinking in a pub-a real fisherman's pub, the first time they've ever agreed to try and pretend we're both over eighteen although lots of people have said we can pass for it any time and Malcolm's been to plenty of pubs without anybody asking. And it nearly worked; I think it was Mum's fault it didn't, because she said something and the landlord came and asked some questions and in the end we had to go out in the street and wait until they came and joined us. We were a bit worried, actually. But before we were turned out I'd had quite a lot to drink and so had Mai, and the street was completely deserted, so he hauled out his prick and said he was going to show what he thought about the place. I was awfully afraid someone would choose that moment to come out and catch us."
"But nobody did," Malcolm said, his voice strained as he charged his prick with more and more violent stroking. "And I got you to do the same, didn't I?" He glanced at me. "She got me to hold her skirt up out of the way at the back, while she held it up at the front, and she just let go!"
"I don't think this is working Henry up as much as what you were saying before, about the time before we went on holiday."
Sarah squeezed her secret muscles on me by way of verification. Actually I was glad to have had the slightest distraction from the main story; it had given me a chance to reestablish a modicum of self-control. I wanted this to go on for a long, long time before I came.
"Yes, of course." Malcolm licked his lips. "Well, like we were saying: we had this crazy week when we did the most absurd things right under Mum and Dad's nose. One time I got Sarah to keep watch for me while I did it by the garden gate, and once she stopped in the street when we were coming home from a visit to friends, when it was late and fairly dark, and asked me to watch out while she squatted down next to a parked car. That one almost gave me a heart attack because someone's lights went on and I thought they must have heard, but it was just accidental."
Sarah giggled. I felt the contractions go all the way down inside her; I've always liked to make a girl laugh while we're screwing, because of the side-effects.
"By then," Malcolm resumed, "we'd discovered just what we could get up to, mainly because nobody was expecting it and might easily miss it if it happened straight in front of them. The first time we actually screwed at home, we did it without intending to, more or less; Sarah came into my room in the morning and said Mum and Dad weren't awake yet so how about coming into the bathroom with her? By that point we'd got it to a kind of competition-we were drinking gallons of water and milk and stuff all day, both of us, just so we could do it more often than usual. Well, I wasn't more than half awake, so I didn't react immediately, so she pulled back the covers to wake me and there I was with one of those enormous waking-up type erections waving out of the front of my pajama pants."
"So I skinned out of my own pants and jumped on top of him," Sarah said with a grin. "Lord, the way that bed creaked as I got on-I damned nearly jumped off again at once!"
"It wasn't that which bothered me so much," Malcolm said, his hand pumping furiously. "It was that I hadn't put one of those contraceptive tablets in her, so she had to get off again anyway-I insisted-and get them from where I'd hidden them in my bottom clothes drawer, and-Henry, is something wrong?"
"It is safe for me to be doing this right now, isn't it?" I said. I'd tensed the instant I was reminded about that; up until then, it hadn't occurred to me to ask because of the matter-of-fact way Sarah had got astride of me.
"Oh, there's no need to worry about that any more," she said blandly. "It's quite definite now-I already am going to have a baby."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
For an instant I was paralyzed with astonishment, and my face must have been a picture, for she suddenly burst out laughing. "Oh, Henry, for heaven's sake! Don't look so alarmed! That's really what we came around to tell you about."
"Yes, but-" I was half-struggling to get away from her, but she caught my shoulders and held me still.
"Oh, don't be a spoilsport! Don't try and move out of me! I've been looking forward to this for days, and I'm enjoying it tremendously." With the words she gave a violent grip of her vaginal muscles, as though to prevent my stand from subsiding. "Malcolm!" she added to her brother. "Tell him all about it, quickly-I think he's so dismayed he's going to go soft!"
Dazed, I relinquished all idea of separating from her and she gave me a mischievous grin. "Yes, it's done, so there's nothing more you can do-at least, that's what the books say. Relax, enjoy it!"
"But whose baby?" I demanded feebly. "Malcolm's?"
"Yes, of course. And we know exactly when it must have happened, too. Mai, come on!"
Sighing, he withdrew his hand from his prick for a while, as though too close to orgasm to risk any further stimulation if he wanted to keep himself aroused during the rest of the story.
"Well, when you interrupted me, I was telling you about the first time we screwed at home, wasn't I? Like I said, it was more or less accidental. But it was pretty damned good anyway, considering how frightened we were of being caught-"
'7 think," Sarah interrupted, "it was that which made it so exciting."
"Yes, very probably. Anyway, I just lay there and let her get on with it, like you're doing now, Henry, and it was terrific, as it turned out. So when we'd both come we snuggled up together for a while, and then we heard a door opening, so she jumped out and put on her pajamas again-I'd stripped her off completely-and for a moment we were scared blue, but then she shouted out and started ragging me, and Mum came to the door and looked in to see what was going on and Sarah said she was trying to wake me up because it was such a beautiful day and I was an old sluggard lying in bed so late, and Mum just smiled at us and went into the bathroom. And we burst out laughing. Couldn't help it."
"The moment I heard the bathroom lock click, I hauled down the covers again and started licking his prick," Sarah boasted. "Went on like that until Mum came out again!"
By this time I was drunk on sensual delight all over again; I'd clean forgotten the alarm the news of her pregnancy had provoked in me, and my stand was back to where it had been and I was drowsily happy to let things continue as she and he dictated. Worrying could be coped with later. For the moment, we were enjoying ourselves.
"So after that," Malcolm said, "we just decided to see how blatant we could be without them noticing, and that turned into a sort of crazy game too. I gave Sarah the contraceptive tablets so she could keep them with her all the time, but it didn't prove to be all that often that we could actually screw. We could do practically anything else, though. Like for instance if I got the urge during the evening-which was pretty frequently-I could go to my room and just wait a bit, and Sarah would find an excuse to come up to the bathroom while Mum and Dad were watching TV and pop in with me and give me a blow. It was so nerve-wracking doing it like that, it seldom took more than a few minutes and neither Mum nor Dad noticed anything."
"I had more trouble getting him to do the same for me," Sarah said, easing herself gently into a new position as though her knees were getting cramped but not letting me slip out of her. "That was what decided me to give up wearing panties, like he'd been asking me to do. And after that I did manage to get him to masturbate me fairly often. But it was when we went off on holiday that we had most of our chances."
"Yes, you see we went up to a hotel in Suffolk," Malcolm supplied. "Right on the coast overlooking the sea-very nice. And of all things they'd made a mistake in the bookings for us. Instead of a double room and two singles, which was what they'd been asked to reserve, they'd given us a double and a twin. So we said of course we don't mind sharing a room!" He chuckled.
"Boy, that was fantastic!" Sarah sighed, and I felt a convulsion travel up her vagina. "We were able to screw every night, even while I had my period-there was a hand basin, of course, where Malcolm could wash off afterwards. And what was even better, nobody knew who we were around there, so during the day we managed to go off by ourselves a couple of times when Mum and Dad wanted to do something we didn't, or said we didn't. And we went to a fairground and went to the Tunnel of Love, and we went on the beach at another town nearby, and lay there petting like lots of other couples in full view of everybody, and all the time we were just shaking with laughter inside to think what they'd have done if they'd known we were brother and sister!"
"Was that when you got pregnant?" I asked foggily, not really caring because of the pangs of pleasure she was shooting up me.
"No, that was after we came home," Malcolm said. "We'd been-uh-behaving especially well, I suppose, since we got started on this. I mean, we'd been helping around the house more, and so on, so much that we were half-afraid we might overdo it and make Mum and Dad suspicious. But it gave us more chances to be alone, naturally. So one evening after dinner when there was a TV play they wanted to watch and we didn't, we said we'd clear the dinner things and wash up, and they said thank you very much, how nice it is to have kids like these, and off they went into the front room to watch the idiot lantern and there we were. Of course we did have to do what we'd said we'd do, and not take too long about it, but when I'd put the first pile of dishes through the kitchen hatch and turned back to get another, there was Sarah practically lying across the table trying to get at something on the far edge which she couldn't quite reach. So I hauled out my prick and threw up her skirt. I only meant to sort of bang it back and forth across her bottom and give her a surprise, but I guess I moved faster than I meant to so I'd catch her still in the proper position, and-"
"And I was slippery-wet," Sarah supplied, "because we'd got this chance to dodge Mum and Dad for a bit and as usual it was making me terribly excited. So he slid straight in, and I stayed there, leaning forward on the table."
"And then," Malcolm said, "we heard Mum get up in the next room and come to the door. I completely lost control. I just simply started to come with fright."
"So did I!" Sarah said. It was obvious that the memory was as exciting as the reality; I could feel the contractions in her which presaged climax, and I was teetering on the very edge of it myself.
"It was fantastic," she added, breathing hard. "I think that really was the most terrific orgasm I've had. Any second we expected Mum to march in and find us there, screwing across the table!"
"And the phone went," Malcolm said simply. "When her hand was actually on the handle of the dining room door, the phone started to ring and she turned back to answer it. So we were safe; a few seconds later I could pull back and grab a paper napkin and wipe my prick and put it away, and Sarah could just stand up and shake her skirt around her properly again, and then Mum came to say it was someone for Sarah and Sarah dashed to the phone and Mum noticed the state I was in, as white as paper, and demanded what was wrong, and on the spur of the moment I told her I'd nearly dropped a whole stack of plates and just caught them in time. And she believed me, because I'd grabbed them as she came in and she must have seen me trying to get a proper grip on them. But when I think what would have happened if the phone hadn't rung-ho my God\"
His prick convulsed and he clutched at it with both hands. In the same second, Sarah reached her limit and started to plunge up and down on me frantically, twisting herself sideways and tugging at her brother's hair to draw him closer and let her kiss him violently as she came. That was more than I could stand, too, and I practically passed out with the fury of my orgasm.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sanity returned in a little while, foreshadowed by practicality, in that I lifted Sarah off me and fetched tissues to wipe us with and poured fresh drinks and handed cigarettes. And then I sat down again and took a deep breath. I said, "Did you mean it when you said you were pregnant, Sarah?"
"Of course I did," she shrugged. "I've been sure for-oh, a couple of weeks now, at least. No, more like three."
"But you sound so cheerful when you talk about it!" I exclaimed. "Have you already managed to arrange for an abortion, then?"
"No."
"Well, I've got a girl friend who's a nurse-she's a lapsed Catholic, so she may have scruples, but I'm pretty sure if I put it to her in the right way...." My voice trailed away as I saw them shaking their heads in unison.
"We want it," Sarah said firmly. "We've talked it over, and we've decided we love each other very much and we want to have the kid."
"You're crazy!" I whispered.
"Not at all," Malcolm said. "We've worked it all out, and it's going to be possible."
"But you can't-you can't just go to your parents and say you're going to have a baby, and expect them to help you out! Not unless ... well, perhaps if you lied to them about whose it is...?"
They were shaking their heads again. "We're going to disappear," Sarah said. "I'm over sixteen now, and Malcolm's nearly eighteen-his birthday's in December-and we don't have to stay at school anymore. So we're going away somewhere, probably up north to Cheshire where we've never been and no one knows us."
"But you can't simply disappear, these days!" I said frantically. "We're tied up nowadays in a maze of paper, and I don't see how anyone could possibly break out of it!"
"We have two names," Malcolm said. "We'll use the other one."
"What?"
"We have two names," he repeated. "You know us as Clyde, don't you? Well, Dad legally changed his from Klein; it says Klein on my birth certificate, in fact. But it says Clyde on Sarah's-do you see what I'm getting at now? I'm not stupid, Henry! That will get us over the first hurdle. People don't look too kindly on an unmarried couple living together, but at least there's no law against it, and Malcolm Klein and Sarah Clyde can pass for one."
"But your parents are, after all, the same people-"
"No, that's just it!" He was practically chuckling at his own ingenuity. "My parents, it says on the documents, are Franz Klein and Helen Klein, nee Grossmann. Sarah's parents are Frank Clyde and Helen Clyde, nee Grossmann! In between my being born and her being born, Dad changed his name by what they call 'use and custom,' because ever since wartime he'd actually been using the name of Clyde, and finally he got around to adopting it permanently. But I have my birth certificate in the name of Klein, and that s what I'm going to make use of."
"We've worked out a whole story in case someone wonders why both our mothers are called by the same name," Sarah said. "They were cousins, of course, named after their rich grandmother in the hope that she would leave them some money, only she didn't. And of course we were born in different places, and since then we've moved three more times, and at least one of our old homes has been demolished ... oh, we've been over everything, I promise you!"
"But if you just disappear, they'll start a search!" I exclaimed. "The police will be looking for you, there'll be SOS messages on the radio. How can you possibly hope to get away with it? And what are you going to live on? I thought you were planning to go to university, Malcolm! That's something you can't manage if you disappear!"
He looked smug and guilty at the same time, an improbable mixture. "I've pinched an idea from you, I'm afraid," he said. "Where's my coat? Ah, I put it over there. Here, take a look at these." He jumped up and from the pocket of his raincoat produced a large envelope containing a number of watercolor sketches very similar to my own, intended for prospective purchasers of rundown houses.
"They're not bad at all," I admitted when I'd glanced through them; they were in pairs, before and after, and that was a wrinkle I hadn't thought of myself. And, professional admiration getting the better of the vague resentment I'd felt when I realized he had, literally, copied my idea, I corrected myself.
"Damnation, they're damned good! In some ways they're better than my own stuff!"
"I don't think they're that good," he said deprecatingly. "But I know they aren't bad. You see, your name's beginning to get known around this part of London because of the work you've already done for that firm which retains you-whatever it's called; I forget-so I rang up one of their chief rivals and mentioned you to them, and the man on the other end said he wished they had someone like you to call on, and they were looking around, so I said try me, and last week I did. I put on my smartest suit and my most-uh-mature manner, and went to see them, and it worked-they hired me freelance at a damned good salary!"
Looking a little abashed, he went on: "Well, I haven't learned very much from Dad, but one thing he has dinned into me is that if you can see an idea and exploit it, you must. I hope you don't mind very much my having exploited yours ... but I wouldn't be doing it anywhere around London, you see. When the man at the estate agents told me what he'd offer, I said thanks, but I didn't think I'd be staying in the district long enough to work regularly for him, and he said where are you moving to? So I said probably up north, and he said anywhere in the Cheshire area? And I said could be, and he said well, I must go and see his former partner, who'd just gone home a few months ago and set up his own agency after working in London for a while, and he offered to write me a letter of recommendation."
I sat there thinking for a long time. I said finally, "You are serious about this, aren't you?" They nodded.
"But what about your parents? What are you going to tell them, to stop them raising a hue and cry?" I leaned forward. "I mean, you don't hate them, do you? You don't think they'll shrug their shoulders and be glad to have you off their hands!" There was a long silence. Finally Malcolm said in a strained voice, "After the past few weeks, we've come to a conclusion about Mum and Dad. We think-both of us-that they probably wouldn't have had us if it hadn't been sort of socially expected of them, and while they've been pretty kind and all that...."
"You're missing the point," Sarah said. "Henry, what counts is that we've decided we're madly in love with one another, that's all. We want to be able to live together, and sleep together, and have a baby together, without caring about anyone else. I suppose that sounds terribly selfish, but there it is." She set her jaw defiantly.
"It probably looks romantic from where you are now," I said. "How about when you're stuck in some shabby flat together, with wet diapers draped all over the bathroom and a kid squalling and-"
"We're going to face that," Malcolm broke in. "We've talked about it more and more all the time since we realized what had happened, and this is what we want more than anything else in the world."
"We're going to do it regardless of what anyone says," Sarah declared. "And we didn't come around to tell you about it because we wanted advice, or anything like that. We simply wanted one person here to know where we were going, and we thought you were the only safe one we could talk to. Because-well, suppose eventually something happened like Mum or Dad fell ill, or something-we'd like one person who could keep us in touch. But we aren't going to give you an address; we'll just get a post office box and if you have to, you can write to us."
I shook my head, stunned.
"Oh, goodness!" Sarah jumped up and went to get the bottle of beer to refill our glasses. "You don't have to sit there like a Jeremiah, Henry! This ought to be a happy thing! Let's see you smile!"
"I don't know," I said. "I just don't know. When are you going?"
"Next weekend," Malcolm said. "Mum and Dad are going to spend Saturday night with Grandma, and we've begged off on the grounds that we shall be too busy with our school homework. So we'll just pack up and go, and we'll leave a note and we'll disappear with everything we own. We know where we're going-there's a very cheap hotel that's expecting Mr. and Mrs. Klein to turn up on Saturday evening-and we'll take it from there when I go to see this property dealer on Monday morning. If it does break down, we have a cover story, about a boy who screwed Sarah while we were in Suffolk on holiday and how I wanted to save the family from the shame of it all." He gave a humorless grin. "Shame of it, hell\ I've never in my life had such a fantastic time as during the last fortnight since we discovered Sarah was definitely pregnant and we've been able to forget about contraception because it didn't matter any more. My God, some of the things we've managed to do you simply wouldn't believe."
"In the car, for example," Sarah said with a giggle, sitting back down beside me.
"Oh yes, that was really something! We went to call on some relatives-an aunt of Mum's and her kids. Last Saturday. They live about a hundred miles north of London. We spent the day up there and we drove back very late at night, after midnight. Well, you know we have this estate car thing with the seats at the back that fold down into a big flat platform? So when we left for home we said we were awfully tired and we'd like to doze, and it was a cool night so we lay down in the back and spread a rug over us and yawned and yawned until we started Mum doing it too, and pretty soon she dozed off in the front seat and Dad was busy with the driving, so we wriggled around until we were cuddled up spoon-fashion-with the rug over us, like I said-and I slipped my prick into Sarah and just left it there and let the bumping of the car on the road move us back and forth. We must have been like that for nearly half an hour and neither of them noticed a thing!"
"Not until it got too much for me and I had to come," Sarah said. "And I couldn't do that quietly-you know how it makes me thrash about, Henry! So that woke up Mum and startled Dad, and I had to say I'd been having a nightmare. Which convinced them, but I had to sit up and stay 'awake' for a bit because whenever I've had a nightmare all my life I've always been afraid to go straight back to sleep in case it started again. And poor Malcolm hadn't come when I did."
"I saw Mum beginning to wake up," Malcolm supplied. "I was too worried. It wasn't like the other time, in the dining room, when we nearly got caught; I'd been deliberately stretching my stand as long as possible, and I wasn't at the right peak of excitement just then."
"But it was okay after all," Sarah said. "As soon as Mum dropped off to sleep again, because we were still quite a long way from home, I was able to sneak my hand around to his fly and let him come that way, with a handkerchief wrapped around to catch his sperm. I don't think it was a very good orgasm, though."
"Not very," Malcolm said. "It's never very good when you have to half-repress it-like when we did it at the movies, remember?"
"And how about on top of the bus?" Sarah said, grinning like a cat.
"Oh, Lord-yes, that was really ridiculous!" Malcolm turned to me. "This hussy found out that there were some things she could say to me which could more or less make me come straight away, especially if we'd had to miss a day or two since we last managed it, and we were riding on top of a bus out to see some friends in Harrow the other week, and we had the seat right at the back and there was no one in the next seat or the next but one, so she started whispering in my ear. She must have been rehearsing, I guess, because you never heard anything like it in your life!"
"I wasn't saying anything very special," Sarah shrugged. "Nothing more than what we've talked about with Henry, for instance, or with him and Roxana."
"You're joking." Malcolm licked his lips. "You were saying how badly you needed to go, and how the pressure in your bladder was getting you excited-well, I can't remember all the details, but it was one of the craziest fantasies you've ever come up with, and boy! You've got a vivid imagination!"
"And I talked about the people we were going to see, and what they'd do if before we knocked at their door I took my dress off so that when they said in their oh-so-polite manner, 'Can I take your coat for you?' I could say yes, thanks, and hand it over and let them see that I wasn't wearing anything except a garter belt and a pair of stockings and shoes. I was wearing a dress you haven't seen," she added for my benefit. "It's got tucks all over the front of the bodice; I chose it specially so it would help to hide my not wearing a bra. So I don't have to wear anything under it. It's nice! But it is a bit chilly now the weather's turned. You know, I think Mai thought I really was going to do what I told him I was!"
"I wouldn't put it past you," Malcolm said fondly, turning and sliding his hand up her thigh. "Henry, don't you think I'm incredibly lucky to have got a girl like this-sister or no sister?"
I said with complete sincerity, "About the only thing I can call to mind which prevents me from envying you dreadfully is that you're going to run into a hell of a lot of trouble simply because she is your sister. Apart from that, yes, I think you're very damned lucky indeed."
"Bless you," Sarah said, and leaned over to kiss me. "Goodness, I wish it wasn't so cold already, don't you? I'd like to take my clothes off and start all over again. I mean, this is the last time I'm going to have the chance of two boys at once until goodness knows when, and I'd like to make the most of it."
I looked blank, and Malcolm amplified: "That's another of the crazy ideas she's got into her head now! When we agreed we must at least tell you what we planned to do, she said she wanted to have both of us at once, one of our pricks in her pussy and the other in her arse."
"That's not all I said," she exclaimed. "Is it? Come on-you promised that because it was the last chance for the time being you'd come right out and say it."
Malcolm hesitated. Finally he made a vague gesture of resignation. "All right; like you say, it's the last time for a long while. What she also said, Henry, was that she wanted to take me at my word, and you at yours, from the last time we came here. You remember I told her that what she really wanted wasn't to see me simply kissing you, but sucking you off as well?"
Brazenly Sarah felt down my fly as he spoke, with fingers that had now become incredibly skilled at provoking the male response, and she gave a crowing laugh. "That's got through to him, Mai! Here he comes back to the vertical! I can feel it happening! Come on, let's all go and get into bed, shall we? Is there room, Henry? It'd be much warmer than doing it in here with nothing on."
She was quite right; October was already very cold, and we'd had the first autumn frosts within the past few days. And there was nothing I could do to dissuade them from the mad plan they'd concocted, I was certain of that, so they were going to disappear from my life next weekend, and-and I was going to miss them. I hadn't seen them for the past three months, but I'd always been sure they'd show up again sooner or later, so I hadn't worried. Hearing just how completely they now intended to vanish, I'd realized what they meant to me and how much I liked them both.
So, as Sarah said, we might as well make the most of this final opportunity. I got up. "Okay," I said. "This way to the bedroom."
Jumping up delightedly, clutching my arm and extending her other hand for Malcolm to catch hold of, Sarah said, "And remember the promise you just made, won't you?"
"What promise?" I countered.
"You said that you'd tell us about some of the things that particularly excite you! You've just listened to us talking, most of the times we've been together. Now I'm going to be very strict and hold you to our agreement."
"Oh, that!" Privately, I was very relieved that she didn't mean the bit about me and Malcolm sucking each other off while she watched; I was still horribly nervous about that kind of thing, the last legacy of my former willingness to conform to convention, and even though Malcolm didn't seem unduly disturbed-probably, I reasoned, having been reconciled to it during the past few weeks by her frequent invention of madder and madder fantasies in order to get him aroused-I felt I would prefer not to go that far ... yet. Maybe one day, when I was so perfectly self-confident about my sexuality that I didn't give a damn whether it was a girl, a boy or a goat I was screwing provided I enjoyed it; but not quite yet.
I led them into the bedroom, and the moment we were across the threshold, as though in response to a preplanned plan, they both started to take my clothes off: Malcolm tugging up my sweater and undoing my shirt, Sarah attending to my shoes, socks and pants. They hurried me back onto the bed and let me lie there naked while they undressed themselves. Sarah was the faster; shoes, dress, stockings, garter belt, and that was it. Malcolm followed a moment later, and they both fell on me, kissing, rubbing, hugging, stroking. It was unbelievable; within seconds I was tingling from head to toe. Sarah leaned over me from the left and sank her tongue deep into my mouth with such enthusiasm that it wasn't for long moments that I realized another tongue was at work on my prick, and an expert hand was caressing up and down its shaft. The instant I did, I sprang into a full erection that practically twanged like a guitar string.
Sarah rolled away from me to look down at what her brother was doing. "Ah!" she said in a tone of satisfaction, and darted her right hand to her pussy. "You did what you said you'd do, didn't you?"
Malcolm raised his head. "Yes, damn it, of course! I haven't broken a promise to you yet, have I? And I mean to go on that way as long as I can. Besides, you need to have it very wet and slippery, don't you?"
"Yes, of course-the more the better," Sarah agreed, and added to me: "You know, that was one of the first things we thought of trying when we started making love properly at home! Malcolm suggested buggering me instead of screwing me because then we could grab any chance we got and not have to worry about putting a tablet up me, so I said fine, I've never been done like that but it must have something going for it because so many people enjoy it, let's try. And we found we couldn't because my arsehole was too tight-to start with, I mean. But then we figured out a way of making his prick properly slippery in my pussy first, and after that it was all right provided he gave me long enough to work myself up pretty nearly to a climax before he changed over. That way works fine, and I can come at the same time he does!"
"Look, if you go on like this, he's going to come right out in the open and you're going to miss your chance of having us both at once," Malcolm said, raising his head again from a second attack on my prick.
"Goodness, that's not the idea at all!" Sarah said, and tugged at my shoulders for me to rise and roll over. "Come on, then-let's see if it actually works in practice the way we decided it ought to in theory. Mai, he on your back here ... that's right, with me on top of you...."
"Pillow!" Malcolm said, dragging one down and pushing it under his bottom.
"Fine!" Sarah straddled him with the accuracy of much practice, and glanced at me. "Come on, Henry, now you see if you can slip into my arse while I'm on top of him!"
My prick hard as iron, as it usually is when I'm given a second erection within half an hour or so of my first orgasm, I complied, but it wasn't easy; my first attempt proved to be at a ridiculously wrong angle, which more or less risked giving me a sprain in a very painful place.
"Another pillow?" Malcolm suggested. "Raise you a bit further?"
"No!" I countered. By this time I was as hot for the idea as they were; I'd buggered enough girls to realize that if I did manage to get inside I'd be able to feel his prick throbbing against mine through that thin wall of flesh which divides pussy from arse, as you feel your own finger if you slip it up the other way while you're screwing.
I forced my legs out as far as they'd go and sat down between his thighs, instead of attempting to kneel; I spat on my fingers and with them wiped over the tip of my prick to make it even more slippery than he'd left it, and eased Sarah up on the shaft of his until it was barely inside her at all. That just gave enough clearance. I told her to hold quite still for a second while I reached down and stiffened myself with my hand to overcome the resistance of her anal sphincter-and I was through, inside, as she responded by settling her weight back on her haunches. And she had both of us in her; I could feel my balls brushing against the hairs on Malcolm's scrotum as she delicately jiggled up and down.
"Ha-how!" she said breathlessly. "Oh my God, we made it! We really did! I never thought we would. Ho-ho-ho! Oh, this is fabulous, this is fantastic, this is wonderful!"
It was terribly difficult cantilevering my torso against my splayed legs, though, so I had to lean back with both arms outstretched to bear my weight and I couldn't reach under her to fondle her breasts or indeed caress her at all. But that didn't seem to matter much. And all thought of needing to talk to excite each other had been forgotten; this situation was enough to be going on with, for God's sake! Anyone who needed more stimulation than this would probably be on the verge of losing his potency for good and all.
Thickly, his hands raised to cup his sister's breasts, Malcolm said, "I never thought of it happening like this, but-Henry, I can feel your prick, you know that? Can you feel mine?"
"Yes, of course I can," I forced out. It was a strong elastic shaft hard against mine, tip rubbing against tip with the barrier of Sarah's flesh between them. Neither Malcolm nor I was required to move-we could leave it entirely up to her. I thought briefly of Roxana and the skills she had displayed, and forgot her again as I realized that Sarah in a few short months had learned not only several of the same ones reasonably well, but one or two extra which I'd never dreamed of.
So there we were: Malcolm on his back with his thighs spread so that my bottom rested on the end of the pillow he had tucked under his haunches, my legs strained apart so that I had to lean back on my hands, between sitting and reclining, and over our balls as they brushed together Sarah with our pricks both securely inside her, her hands outstretched to clutch the rod across the top of the cheap iron bedstead and give her purchase for the wriggling, infinitely erotic motions she was applying to her joint lovers.
"All-right-Henry!" she forced out in little gasps. "Let's hear what-you particularly-"
"No!" Malcolm cried. "Please, darling, no! If anything more than this happens I'll come right away, and I want to go on and on as long as I can. Don't you want me to?"
"Same-for-me!" I whispered.
"All ... right...." The words trailed away, and for a long, long time-as it seemed while it was passing, but in fact it can have been at most four or five minutes-there was nothing in the universe but the shift and grind and suck of her body on ours.
My mind became a kind of randomized movie screen across which images flashed with the vividness of delirium, bunches of words burst into awareness like fireworks and died away, doused by the rainstorm of physical sensation. I thought at one point how much I'd have liked to do this with Roxana instead of Sarah, and in the same fraction of a second realized that in one sense I was doing it with Roxana, because if enough femininity had been injected into myself for me not to be shocked and dismayed at Malcolm's mouth on my prick there was only one person it could have come from, and I was glad that it had happened, and she-Roxana-was going to be a part of me for the remainder of my life.
And then there was another claim on my attention from the outside world apart from the growing, frustrating, strain on my muscles owing to the awkwardness of my position, and it was Sarah's voice, breathy and at the edge of audibility.
"Malcolm, hold on just a bit, just a bit!" And, simultaneously, I realized that for the first time in my life I'd been able to detect the throb in a boy's prick which presaged a climax not my own. The awareness of that stormed down my nerves like fire following a train of petrol.
"I want all of us to make it at the same time!" Sarah cried, and with that gave such a sharp convulsion of her internal muscles-anal and vaginal-that we both exclaimed in near-pain.
"Wait for me!" Sarah ordered, and spared one hand for a moment from the bed rail to catch at Malcolm's, where it rested on her breast toying with her nipple, and hurled it with violence in the direction of her pussy. I felt him compliantly start to rub her clitoris without further direction.
"God, how much longer have we got to hold out?" Malcolm cried. But for the fierceness of my own attempts to do the same, I might have echoed him.
"Just-a-minute!" The words came in rhythm with the frenzied convulsions that were now wracking Sarah's body. "Oh God, this is so marvelous! I wish everyone in the world could be like Henry, Mai! I wish we didn't have to go away together-I wish we could just be open about it and not give a damn who knew what we were doing, I wish we could be sitting in the drawing room with Mum and Dad and when we got bored with the TV I wish we could just say well, there's nothing here for us, we're off for a screw, and they would say there's no need for that, you just do it over there on the couch if that's what you feel like, and we could go over to the couch and undress and lie down on it and go right ahead with them in the room and look over and see them getting worked up about it and maybe Mum starting to fidget in her chair and pulling up her skirt so she could get at her pussy and Dad noticing and opening his fly and copying her and-oh, oh, oh! Oh, oh, oh, ow, ohhh...!"
And we made it, as she had planned, in the same instant: her brother into her pussy, me into her arse, the spurting double blast of sperm hammered into her while she clutched the bed rail and rode the intolerable storm of her own delight.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
And time went by....
To be more or less exact, there were nine years of it: 1959, 1960, 1961-clear through until the spring of 1967, late May, when a job took me up to Chester, which is a very pleasant old town, the county capital of Cheshire. I'd made out well; currently, at the age of thirty, I was earning more than fair money and I had an assistant and I had my wife (whom I'd met in 1965) and more or less single-handed I'd created a brand-new branch of the property business, the effect of which had been to make formerly ruinous semi-slums into attractive dwellings whose occupants drew on the imagination of myself and people who had copied my techniques to transform the most unpromising back streets into delightful avenues. I was, not to put too fine a point on it, damned proud of myself.
And, as I say, I'd been called up to Chester because a big property developer in the north had finally cottoned on to what a gimmick had been evolved to make work for builders, decorators, architects, plumbers, electricians, carpenters ... and wanted to open a branch of my company, a London-based company with a terrific reputation among the most informed and with-it homebuyers, as a rival to Butihomes Ltd., the current field leader around the wealthy industrial areas of Manchester, Liverpool and other northern cities. We had the blessing-in-principle of the
Ministry of Housing, because it was cheaper than clearing slums to make people buy into formerly undesirable districts and refurbish them at their own expense instead of the taxpayer's, and there I was parking my Alfa-Romeo 2600 convertible not far from the Pantiles in Chester one sunny May morning, and "Henry!"
I glanced up, and with her hand on the door of a nearby Austin, there was Sarah Clyde-Klein.
The intervening years had altered her a little, of course; she was no longer a teenager, but a plump, smiling, well-groomed woman in her middle twenties, wearing a top-fashion minidress which displayed her full bosom, bold hips and comparatively delicate waist to maximum advantage, quite apart from what it did for her legs. I hadn't quite appreciated before how well-proportioned they were. She was exquisitely made up, she had this minute left a very skillful hairdresser and she was marvelously turned out in every respect I could think of.
As though we had last met yesterday, she strode over to me and gave me a big hug and a smacking kiss which left lipstick on my cheek, and she said something which absolutely took my breath away. She said, "Oh, Henry! It's wonderful to see you! You are here for more than just the day, aren't you? It'd be awful if you couldn't drop in and have a screw with me for old times' sake!"
When I recovered from that-I'd been growing in the direction of respectability recently-I said faintly, "Well, I'm here tying up some business arrangements, and they're likely to take three or four days."
"Marvelous!" She glowed at me. "Where are you staying-is this your hotel?" She pointed at one across the street. "We could make it right now if you like, and-"
"I'm afraid not," I said. "I'm staying somewhere else, and I have an appointment in half an hour. But at least we can grab a drink together, can't we?"
"Better than nothing," she said, and caught my hand to hurry me across the street. Doing so, she felt the gold band I wear on my wedding finger. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Are you married?"
"Yes, for about two years now," I admitted. "So am I!"
"What?"
"Oh, you're wondering if I'm separated from Malcolm, aren't you?" She gave me the old familiar grin, and it was as though time had rolled back like a window blind. "No, of course I'm not-Malcolm is the dearest person in the world, and it would be ridiculous. But ... oh, come into the bar here and let's go over the whole story while we have that drink you offered me."
When our drinks had been delivered and I'd given her a cigarette, she leaned back companionably close to me on a padded velvet seat, and I raised a subject which had almost slipped my mind. I said, "How about the kid? I never even knew what sex it was!"
"There are four of them now," she said proudly. "Twins both times, believe it or not! Twinning runs in our family, I'm told-Dad had a twin brother and his father had twin sisters-but in us it's really hit the jackpot. The boys were on the way when you last saw me, of course, and we called them Derek and Humphrey, and about fifteen months later we were a bit careless again and the result was Miriam and Tabitha. You absolutely must meet them-they're perfectly sweet, even if they are sometimes a bit of a nuisance. But aren't all kids? And, before you ask, there is nothing wrong with them; they're all physically sound and mentally bright."
She sipped her drink, and continued in a rush, "And we're bringing them up the way we wanted to be brought up! We've got this big old house just outside the town, and we've opened the whole top floor out for them, where they play together and sleep together and study together and everything. And they take their baths together and they run around naked if they want to and they're not ashamed of seeing each other on the toilet, and what's best of all we're sort of starting a trend, because they're so natural and free-and-easy lots of our friends have decided they'll raise their kids the same way!"
She twinkled at me in high delight, and I started to feel that old black magic working between my legs. Time had done nothing to undermine Sarah's sexiness.
I said, stumbling over what I had once regarded as a casual fact of life, "Do they know that their parents are-uh-"
"You mean that we're brother and sister? No, we decided that we'd leave that probably until the boys are about fifteen or so, depending on how mature they are. But we've agreed that we'll never stop them doing anything they want to do, even if they want to have affairs with each other, and I suppose you might even say that we're encouraging them because of the set-up I told you about."
"Are you trying to establish a family tradition?" I demanded.
"No, of course not-we simply want them to grow up as enjoyably as possible, and to our way of thinking that includes not being turned off sex by old wives' tales, inhibitions, parental jealousy and taboo ... God, it's wonderful to be able to talk openly to someone, you know that? Usually, of course, we have to watch what we say like hawks!"
"Does anyone know, around here?"
"Oh yes, one couple-the people we got married to."
I shook my head, puzzled, and she gave a chuckle. "It does sound confusing like that, doesn't it? But it's perfectly simple really. A few years ago we decided that all the complications and evasions and legal finagles we'd had to get involved in because of our relationship could be avoided if we could get married. So we looked around among our friends, and eventually we got in touch with this delightful couple, Joan and Brian. They haven't any kids of their own, and what was better still from our point of view they'd been living together for about as long as Malcolm and I had, five or six years, without bothering to get married. And they have scads of money on top of all that.
"So we went off on holiday with them three summers ago, and we worked out a little plot, and we managed to swap with them while we were away, and that worked out fine without any recriminations, so in the end we let them into our secret. And they both burst out laughing and said it was absolutely wonderful and they'd never have guessed and they were all for more people defying convention. It turned out it was by policy that they'd never got married themselves.
"So we did a bit more fiddling and string-pulling, and we fixed ourselves a double wedding over the border in Scotland where nobody knew us, and officially I became Mrs. Brian Hawker and Joan became Mrs. Malcolm Klein and we came back and we bought adjacent houses and-well, we've taken it from there. Both of them travel a lot; he's a photographer and she's a fashion journalist, so they're away about half the year on average, I suppose. They're away at the moment, I'm afraid, which is a shame because I'm sure you'd like them. But when they're at home we sort of live "a quatre" -- we clubbed together and bought this enormous bed, seven feet square-and the kids love them and treat them as sort of extra parents. We don't hide anything from the kids, you see: we let them walk in and out of the bedroom, we never lock the bathroom, or the toilet unless like when we have a party and the house is full of strangers ... hmm!" She gave a sudden grin and reached under the table to feel in the vicinity of my prick; at her touch, what had been an embryonic stand leaped up to full force.
"So you still think I'm a sexy bitch," she chuckled. "That's obvious!"
"My God, yes," I agreed. "I thought so when you were sixteen."
"You should see me now! You will see me now, if I have anything to do with it. You know the nicest compliment Malcolm ever paid me? He said 1 must be sexier than his girl Anita his friend had for an au-pair-you remember about that, and the car crash, and all?"
"I do indeed," I confirmed.
"Well, Malcolm says I must be as sexy as she was, and on top of that I'm not just fixated on do-it-yourself, I like men. But of course I like women too-Joan especially, thank goodness-and I don't have anything against DIY either if circumstances dictate. Well, I'll give you a for-instance. You know how many times I've come in the past six months? I've been keeping score because Malcolm said he'd be interested to find out."
I shook my head.
"Two hundred and seven times," she said. "Well over once a day. And most of them with Malcolm, what's more-or about a hundred and fifty of them, at any rate. I've never gone as long as a week without it since we started. And there must be something good about this, because we're so much happier together than many of the people we've met since we moved up here, who got married after we arrived and have already started to quarrel and bicker and lie to each other...." Momentarily depressed, she gave a sigh.
Then she brightened. "Say, Henry! I have a marvelous idea! Why don't you leave your hotel and come and sleep with us while you're up here? Who's your appointment with and what's it for-lunch?"
"Yes, I'm lunching with this big property developer."
She glanced at her watch. "What time could you make it to our place? How about three-thirty? Then we could make a start before the kids come home from school."
I must have betrayed my reaction in my face, for she laughed outright and gave me a particularly expert squeeze with the hand she was using to caress me under the table. "Don't tell me!" she exclaimed softly. "You're worried about not getting it over before they come home, aren't you? There's no need! The way we're raising those kids, they wouldn't turn a hair if they walked in and found me blowing you. The girls don't go for it, but both the boys love it and every now and then they insist on having it done to them before they'll go to sleep."
"You do that to them?" I demanded.
"Why in the world not? Or if I'm not around, Malcolm does. Or Joan or Brian. They say they like Joan to do it best of all, and when she's home they usually ask for it every night. But they're very tolerant when she can't spare the time, I must say."
I was silent for a while, and she gazed at me steadily all the time. Eventually she said in a changed voice, "I remember you saying something about Roxana, darling: something to the effect that she made the air reek of sex, wasn't that it? Well, that's the way we want our home "to smell-we want it to drip off the cornices!"
"How far do you propose to carry this policy of yours?" I said with an attempt at lightness that was sabotaged by a warning throb in my prick.
"As far as we can," she answered calmly. "I remember when I was a kid-back when we knew each other before-after I'd discovered how much fun Malcolm and I could have together, I used to wish to God our parents weren't such stick-in-the-muds. "
A relay of memory closed. I said, "That's right!
I remember you saying you wished you could say when they were watching the box that you weren't interested and you'd rather go upstairs and screw, and they could say don't worry about going upstairs, do it on the couch over there."
"Precisely. If Derek and Humphrey and Miriam and Tabitha want that, they damned well can. How about another drink, if you have time? No, I'll pay for this one!"
She snapped her fingers at the waiter and ordered the same again.
"And do they?" I said.
"They're a bit young yet, but we've never stopped them playing with themselves, and I particularly like to watch Tabitha doing it because she's so unselfconscious about it. That is, provided there's no one around but us and the other kids. They're all very bright, and they understand perfectly they mustn't do it when they're out, or at school, in case someone takes offense. But Tabby enjoys it tremendously, and it's a treat to see how she sneaks her hand in her panties and keeps it going oh-so-discreetly...."
Her own hand traced up and down my penis. "Oh, you've got to come and stay with us, Henry!" she exclaimed. "I always get a hell of a bang out of Tabby, like I said-it makes me do the same, pretty often-and I'm sure you would too, judging by the feel of you right now!"
"All right," I said. "I'll check out of my hotel after lunch and come to your place as soon as I can manage. Give me the address, though!"
"Here!" She fished a card out of her handbag and gave it to me. "Oh, this is going to be terrific!" she added with sparkling eyes. "What a shame you're on your own! You are, aren't you? Or is your wife up here too?"
"No, I'm afraid not." _
"What's she like? Is she sexy too?"
"I chose her because she's the nearest to Roxana that I've ever met," I said.
"She should be absolutely wonderful, then! Does she swing both ways?"
"Yes, of course," I declared.
"Oh, then you must bring her next time you come!" Sarah was practically jigging up and down on the seat with delight.
"Why haven't you ever got in touch with me in London?" I demanded by way of counter. "Is it because your parents are there, and therefore you daren't?"
"Oh, no!" Her eyes widened enormously. "I didn't tell you about that, did I? The most fantastic thing happened! Dad and Mum split up, you see, about a year after we left home; it turned out she'd been having an affair on the side for years, and we never even guessed! But Dad found out, and he quit her and went back to Germany, and-well, after that Mum advertised to try and find us, and we saw the ad, and we sent a very guarded reply that we couldn't be traced from, and in it we made it fairly clear what we were doing, and she wrote back in positively glowing terms. It was about then that Miriam and Tabby were born, I think, and of course in our first letter we'd mentioned Derek and Humphrey, and Mai says it was because she wanted to see her grandchildren whoever's they were, but it doesn't matter, because in the end we decided we could risk having her know where we were, and she turned up with her boyfriend, can you believe it? And he's an absolute charmer! He's a tall, suave, distinguished-looking man of about sixty, with greying hair and a tan that he keeps up all winter, and he's been all over the world practically-India, Ceylon, Burma, Africa, America-and he's a perfect sweetie, really he is, and he says he's seen so many different ideas of what marriage ought to be like that he's prepared to let us handle our problems our way. And he always refers to me, when he's talking to Mai, as 'your charming wife,' and vice-versa with 'your husband,' and it's just great! And he's made Mum absolutely blossom; she looks ten years younger and she dances and she goes out to theaters with him and she wears smart clothes and one way and another you could practically take her for my elder sister! Believe me, I really fancy Alan-that's his name: Alan Asbury-and one of these days when they come to stay with us I swear I'm going to get Mai and Mum drunk enough, or something, so we can swap!"
"Christ Almighty," I said, shaking my head. "You're certainly not changed by time, are you?"
"Of course not. I found out how I ought to be, and I'm determined to keep it up as long as I can." She sipped her drink. "Of course, I don't think Mum really approves of the way we treat the kids, being a bit on the old-fashioned side, but she's so pleased that we haven't disowned her, if you follow me, for taking up with Alan instead of Dad, that she's prepared to swallow her objections. And since we got married to Brian and Joan, of course, she doesn't have to be secretive about us any longer; she can talk about her daughter who's married to this successful photographer and has these lovely children even if she did anticipate her marriage slightly-people don't seem to be half as critical about that as they were even a few years ago, do they?-and her son who's married this nice girl in fashion journalism who travels such a lot it's a shame for him but of course he lives close to his sister so he gets his proper home life as he ought to. Oh, it's worked out marvelously well!"
"Didn't she even throw a fit when she discovered the kids were Malcolm's and not-what's his name?-Brian's?"
Sarah put her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle in precisely the little-girl fashion I used to see when she was fifteen or sixteen. She said, "Henry, that's what makes me think we're eventually going to swing the swap I told you about! I fully expected just what you said, hysterics, the first time she came up to stay with us, but very late in the evening with the kids asleep and Alan and Malcolm listening to some concert on the radio-that's another thing we like about him; he and Mai have the same tastes in music, the very modern stuff which I can't go for particularly-anyway, she was in the kitchen with me helping to clear away dinner, and I was getting her fuller and fuller of brandy, and she started having this real woman-to-woman chat. It began with her offering excuses for preferring Alan to Dad; I think she still expected us to be furious with her. After all, he's a lot older than Dad, at least ten years, and this seemed to be weighing on her mind, so eventually as she became drunker and drunker she started admitting that she'd had a fixation on older men all her life and all of a sudden I realized what she was building up to and I sat down and held her hand and gradually wormed it out of her. It turned out that when she was in her teens her father-who was rather like Alan, I seem to recall from the pictures I've seen, but who was killed in the war long before I was born-made too much of a fuss of her, as she put it. What she really meant, when she finally admitted the truth, was that he liked to kiss her, and stroke her breasts, and put his hand up her dress when she sat on his lap, and at least once he made her come by feeling her up. She'd been saying that Alan made her feel like a real woman again, to explain why she preferred him to Dad, and what it meant, obviously, was that she could only get an orgasm with a man who was a lot older than herself."
"That doesn't bode very well for this swap you were talking about," I said.
"We'll see." Sarah gave a confident smile. "/ think he's introduced her for the first time to the pleasure her body is really capable of; I told you about how we have the house laid out, didn't I? But I don't think I told you about the arrangements for guests, which are-well, sort of unusual! That was Mai's idea. We have our room right next door to where guests have to sleep, and there's a panel in the wall with those little spyglass things set into it for decoration, the ones you put in front doors so you can see who's ringing the bell. The idea is you can lie in our bed screwing or masturbating and watch if anything is going on in the next room. So we put Mum and Alan in there, and we saw them getting up to the most incredible things, which practically drove Mai out of his about
Again her hand squeezed my prick. "Yes, you'd like," she murmured with amusement. "So shall I see you at three-thirty, then?"
"As close to three-thirty as I can manage," I promised.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Their home was in a district which looked pleasant and prosperous as I drove through it; an imaginative architect or developer had laid it out with pairs of non-identical semi detached houses, one larger and one smaller, each having gardens full of trees and shrubs. The address to which I finally found my way had had the fences between the gardens taken down, and-as I discovered when I went inside-some of the walls dividing the two houses, so that they could be shared.
Logically, the smaller was Joan and Brian's and the larger Malcolm and Sarah's ... for official purposes.
Toting my bag, I went up the path and rang the doorbell, and one of the spyglasses she had mentioned to me gazed with a baleful expression into my face. Then the door was thrown back, and there was Sarah laughing with delight in one of the most astonishing outfits I had ever seen. She was wearing a minidress of dark green nylon mesh, very open, with vertical slits over her nipples about the width of a man's palm and a similar slit front and back from hemline to just below waist-level, over skin-tight black tights and no bra.
"Like it?" she purred as she drew me inside and closed the door.
"It's fantastic!" I said.
"Mai calls this my come-on dress, but it's not the only one I have which has the same effect. I like to wear it to parties where people won't object, though I generally have to put on a bra with it if I go out. But there are hidden secrets-though you might not think so. Look!"
She palmed each of her breasts in turn, and when she withdrew her hand her nipples were concealed by dark triangular patches of the same green as the rest of the dress.
"It's done with Velcro," she said. "Just press it together and it's stuck. But the tights are the best idea. I'll show you."
Taking my hand, she led me from the hallway into a large comfortable living room furnished with handsome modem chairs and couches. There was no doubt that the Clyde-Kleins were doing very well. Waving me to sit on the nearer couch, offering me a drink and accepting my pointed finger at a bottle of vodka as sufficient instructions, she went on, "Yes, this outfit was really all Mai's idea-I make things up to his designs." As she mixed my drink, she parted the Velcro fastenings over her bosom again and gave a sigh of relief. "It's a bit tight when they're done up!" she commented. "But as to hidden secrets, like I was saying: it's the tights which are the best. I have panties like this, too." She set down my drink close by my seat, stepped back and splayed her knees, and reached under her crotch. There was the familiar tearing sound of a Velcro fastening being opened, and against the contrasting black of the thighs of her tights I saw the bright pink of her pussy exposed. Laughing, she raised her head.
"Like it?" she demanded.
"Of course I like it!" I exclaimed. "And-and you're shaving yourself now!"
"It makes a change," she chuckled. "I do it about once a year; then there's the awful prickly period while the hair grows back, and then for about three or four months it's normal, and then Malcolm says he'd like to have me bald again, so I take it off. But what do you think of the tights?" 'Terrific!" The mere sight of her was making my prick rise.
"Like I said, it's Mai's idea. He and I were talking once about how unfair it was that men should be able to go out in the open just by turning their backs, so we hit on this solution-I peel away this strip of cloth, and there I am, exposed." She picked up her own drink and came over to sit alongside me. "I tried zippers first, but of course while they're all right for the going bit they have teeth which makes them not so good for the screwing bit. That's the other point of the idea, you see-so's you can screw in public without actually taking down your panties. Practically all of mine are like this now; I'm getting very clever at making them over. Want to try it?"
"Yes, of course," I said. She reached for my fly and drew the zipper down. Easing out my prick, she bent her mouth to its tip and delicately caressed it with her tongue for a moment before agilely straddling me and sliding it into her. Again time rolled back, and it was as though I was once more in my old home in London with her riding me while Malcolm sat at my side and recounted their first experiences together.
"Oh, it's great to be back, Henry!" she whispered as she jiggled delicately up and down. "Have you told Malcolm I'm here?" I inquired. "Yes, of course-I called him at his office directly after I left you. He's as pleased as I am. He said to give you a kiss from him and you could collect the interest on it later." She leaned past me to adjust the cushions I was leaning against and let me lie further back to improve the angle of our mating.
"Do you still like to hear about what other people have done?" she asked teasingly.
"Apparently Roxana infected me with that permanently," I shrugged. "You too?"
"Oh; yes! She seems to have transformed all our lives, doesn't she? And to think it was just one crazy night when we knew her, and then she disappeared...." Sarah sighed. "Well, never mind. I owe her a hell of a lot, I really do. Let's think way, way back, and work out what ... Oh yes, I know! Not long after we got ourselves settled up here, when the twins were born: that was sort of the next stage after the one you knew about, I suppose. Goodness, it's a shame we lost touch, Henry! You're so like Mai in so many ways, I'm sure you'd have wanted to be around me while I was nursing the kids, wouldn't you? He loved my milk, he absolutely went crazy over it-he'd lie sucking me and I could just see his prick stand up from nothing and the next moment there he was spurting out milk of his own, as you might say. He didn't exactly starve the kids, but given the chance I think he might have, practically!" A reminiscent laugh sent the old familiar waves through her vagina, and my prick trembled in response.
"And of course the kids too-I didn't tell you about them this morning, but you probably could have guessed. We read up every book we could find to try and keep my milk as long as possible, and that's why we wound up with Miriam and Tabby, because the first time we kept it going for over a year and we fell into the trap of the old wives' tale about not conceiving when you have milk, and one night we took a risk and it didn't work. But it didn't matter; I stayed on a high-calcium diet and I very nearly managed to make both my lactations continuous, only the doctor warned me not to. But the second time I spread it out for-oh-nearly four years altogether, which was quite remarkable, they said, and all four of the kids took turns with Mai, and he used to suck a mouthful and then come up and kiss me so I could drink some too, and this was sort of extraordinary in its way, hm? And they all still like to do it, even now-I mean the kids-and one of the things I keep promising myself I ought to try is lying down with a boy and a girl licking each of my nipples and a boy's prick in my mouth-I told you Derry and Humph both like that-and the other girl busy with my pussy. That would be terrific, wouldn't it?"
I didn't have to answer; my prick did it for me. She laughed again, obviously delighted to discover how well after all this time she could take control of my reflexes.
"Have you done that?" she challenged. "Come on, I remember how you always used to weasel out of telling us anything you'd done!"
"That's not fair," I protested. "It's just that you were far more enterprising-and being brother and sister and living with your parents, you took more interesting risks! But ... well, yes: I did have an affair with a girl whose husband had deserted her while she was nursing her baby, and what she liked to do most of all was lie sideways on the bed with the kid sucking her-she had terribly sensitive nipples-and stick her arse out over the edge so I could kneel behind her and slide my prick in and out at the same time. That used to make her come so violently I was sometimes afraid she might clench her hands too hard on the baby and break something."
"Hmm! Yes, that's a great idea," Sarah commented, and I felt her contract in response to it. "But did you drink from her?"
"Yes, of course I did."
"I thought so-you and Mai are alike in your tastes. And ... and have there been many men?"
"You didn't say 'any,' " I countered with a grin. "How well you must have got to know me! Yes, again of course-as soon as I became confident enough about my own orientation to risk it. But it's mainly been with a girl or girls involved at the same time; I seem to respond better like that. How about you and Malcolm?"
"Oh, we've been trying everything we got the chance to." She settled herself a little more comfortably on me and remained still for a bit, to prolong the pleasure. "I was going to tell you when I got distracted. Goodness, I think it's fabulous to be able to tell someone new about all this-the only other people I've ever dared tell have been Brian and Joan, of course, who love to sit around the room here and play with themselves while we exchange reminiscences of what we've been up to since we last met. You see, for a long time after we moved up here we were so engrossed with each other, making the most of being on our own and not having to worry about other people and especially not about Mum and Dad, we didn't care about anything else. But then Mai started absolutely coining it with his work, and there were twins to cope with instead of only the one kid as we'd expected, so we decided we'd take a risk-we'd managed to get a large apartment through someone Mai was working with, at a very reasonable rent, and we had the extra room for an au-pair girl. So we advertised for one, and we got this very lovely and charming Belgian girl, Antoinette: blonde, about my height but a lot slimmer, and only a year or so older than me. And terribly shy at first! But anyway, she liked us and she didn't ask any awkward questions and the last place she'd been she had two boys of five and nine to cope with, so working for us was dead easy after that.
"And then one very hot weekday in August when Mai was out at work, we were in the living room together and I was wearing my bikini-the same one you saw, I think? No? Oh, of course, you never saw me in it, but I had it when I knew you. A little skimpy thing. And I'd put on this record I liked very much, and I knew she did too, and she was sitting there in the chair facing me wearing this big long full-skirted dress-you can imagine what a shy Belgian teenager would have been wearing back in 1959, can't you? And I was dancing around the way I often did, with the kids asleep for an afternoon rest, and it wasn't much fun, so I said come on, come and dance with me, I need a partner to make the most of this. So she got up very timidly, and she did, and she turned out to be awfully good, with a strong natural sense of rhythm. But then the music changed to an up-tempo number and she started to sweat and pant, and I said for goodness' sake, why don't you take off your dress? So she blushed like fury, and I pressed her, and finally she said she couldn't-she wasn't wearing a bra. I hadn't noticed, there was so much material in the bodice of her frock!
"So I said that's all right, I'll fix it! And 1 took off my bikini top. I mean, you understand that up till that very moment, even though from watching me and Roxana you must appreciate that I like women too, I'd never given a thought to this kid 'Toinette; she was just someone we'd been lucky to find to take care of the twins. So anyway I said come on, you can take your dress off now without being ashamed, and very reluctantly she did, showing that she had nothing on but these skimpy little pale-blue panties. And they were all dark with wet in the front, you know how it happens?
"You can imagine what the sight of that did to me! I went and changed the record right away, and I put on sort of late-night smoochy music, and I started dancing with her and rubbing myself against her, and her nipples just leaped out and I bent my head down and started licking them. And she said in her funny English with this strong accent she never managed to lose, 'I did not know you like this!' So I said did she like it, and she said yes, of course she did, so I started kissing her properly as we went on dancing and pushed her panties down and stroked her bottom and she did the same to me and we wound up on the floor in five minutes licking each other's pussies-hey, am I turning you on that thoroughly? Wait, relax!"
Obediently I countermanded the incipient reflex in my prick; my wife had the same habit, of asking for me to wait for her second climax, and I'd grown fairly good at holding on.
"That's fine!" Sarah said with approval. "Well, of course when we'd finished and got dressed again and everything, nothing could be like it was before. I was terribly worried about Malcolm, because I was sure that if he's fancied ''Toinette he'd have told me so, and-he's always been utterly honest with me, you see, which is probably one of the things that's kept us together this way. Yes! But anyhow ''Toinette did have a boyfriend as well, not a very serious one, and it was her evening to go out with him, so I waited and eventually Mai came home late, and I gave him supper and before he started eating I blurted out what had happened. And he grinned at me, and he got up and he grabbed hold of me and hugged and kissed me and said we must really be telepathic with each other! You see, he'd gone out for a drink with someone from the place where he was working, an awfully nice boy called Ted, and instead of going to a pub or something they'd gone to Ted's flat and Ted had steered the conversation around to the right subject and-"
She shrugged, which had interesting consequences around hip-level, and spread one hand in a gesture of dismissal. "Anyway, Ted wound up buggering him. Which he didn't much care for, he said, but it had made him come, and he liked that. So a few days later he brought Ted around, and that was when I got the chance to do something I remember Mai saying he was sure I wanted to see done: two boys sucking each other off. Remember?"
"I certainly do," I agreed.
"Well, it turned out all for the best in the end: Ted was very happy to be sucked rather than bugger someone, and we certainly liked having him around, and after the first couple of times we persuaded him to let ''Toinette come in and watch too, which she did sitting on the edge of a chair with her skirt up around her waist and stroking herself frantically-I don't think I ever saw a girl who hammered away like she did! But then that all broke up, and ''Toinette went home, and Ted met a woman older than himself who liked having young boys around and already had three that she was keeping-or two, I don't remember-and took him off to Spain. And you know something? Neither Ted nor ''Toinette ever had the least inkling we were brother and sister!"
She felt me stirring within her, and trembled with the echoes of my motion.
"But it was they who got us out of the-well, Mai says 'incestuous rut' we were in, and I can't think of a more accurate term! We'd only been together with them for a few months, but we'd got started on something quite different from what we'd been doing before, and-well, we took it from there. Ted was the only boyfriend Mai ever found on his own, but a dozen times or more since then we've got involved with men who like it both ways-Tim, for instance, who liked it best when he was screwing me and Mai was buggering him at the same time. Hey, do you think we could do that with you?"
"It sounds fine," I muttered. For the latest time of many my prick shivered with impending climax. "And you've been collecting girl friends too, no doubt?"
"Of course," she said with some pride, and resumed her regular rocking on my prick. "We never had so much luck with an au-pair girl again as we did with ''Toinette, but Loretta wasn't bad; she liked to masturbate before going to sleep, and we could hear her through the wall, so because she was very shy we sort of set her up one night while we were repainting her room and said she had to sleep on the couch in the living room-that was at our last place, of course. And when she was well away we sneaked in very quietly with nothing on and lay down on the rug in front of the fire and turned it on so she could see us and started making love, and by the time we'd been at it five minutes she was practically hysterical, so Mai went over and jumped on her while I squatted down in front of her and did what she'd been doing. But then after her we met Brian and Joan and the kids were old enough for school and since then I've been coping by myself. It made a difference being able to afford a washing machine and a dryer and all the rest of it ... My God, Henry, it just struck me! Here I am sitting on your prick in my party-screwing gear, and I'm talking about damned washing machines! Isn't it absurd?"
"It takes a lot of doing to make washing machines sexy," I said. "But you can do it, apparently!"
She gave me an appreciative squeeze with her vagina and glanced at her watch. "Right!" she said with determination. "I don't think you entirely believed me about my children if they walked in and found us like this, so I'll hurry you along a little and you can see for yourself later on how they'd react and make up your own mind about them. Tell me something about what you've been up to, hm?"
"Just a second," I said. "Did you say this was your party-screwing gear?"
"That's right." She glanced down at herself in the green mesh dress that seemed to have no other function than to display her splendid flesh, with her nipples protruding and the exiguous skirt stroking up and down on the inside of my thighs with her recurrent motions.
"Literally?"
"You mean is this the only outfit I go to parties and screw in? Lord, no! I told you: practically all my panties and tights have this crotch opening now, and of course my slacks-well, I'll have to show you some of those, but I've worked out such a clever way of opening them up, without anyone realizing they're different from the ordinary kind, that Mai says it almost makes him jealous because I can do practically everything without taking them off. But there's one outfit which is absolutely fantastic, which I wear when we go to parties where people are likely to be a bit too square for this sort of thing. I'll show you later, but this is the idea: it's all heavy fringes, three layers deep, in big fat glossy strands, up to here"-she tapped the base of her throat-"and down to my knees. But the whole point is there's nothing else to it but the fringes, and I never wear anything underneath, so anyone I fancy can always reach up through it and get at my breasts and my pussy."
She was beginning to breathe faster now, and her movements on my prick were becoming more insistent; I felt the preliminary spasm which suggested she was on the way to coming now. That must be quite some dress she was talking about, I thought, and realized at once how right was my guess.
"Lord, that's such a sexy outfit I practically come just to think about it!" she whispered. "If we have to go more than a few minutes' drive to a party when I'm wearing it, I always have to masturbate on the way, believe it or not, and sometimes I've had to make Mai park outside the house we were going to so I could finish and calm down before going in! And the kids love it, too-whenever they see me putting it on to go out in, Derry and Humph laugh and say, 'Who are you going after tonight, Say?' That's what they call me: Say, short for Sarah. We decided we didn't want them calling us Mum and Dad. And as for Tabby ... well, I told you what a sexy little bit she is already, and she comes in to watch me getting dressed to go out, and she puts her hand down her panties and she pumps away, while Miriam-did I tell you they're not identical, those two? The boys are, but the girls aren't, and Miriam isn't nearly so precocious and she always hangs around saying it's silly and then wanders off to leave Tabby to get on with it. Oh, she's so sweet! You'll see her in a little while. Yes, and when I'm wearing this dress I've been telling you about, I can do wonderful things. What Mai and I like doing most is working into a dark comer of the room while we're dancing so I can get his prick out and slide it into me, and then we make a complete circuit of the floor and everyone says how wonderful to see such a devoted couple, and they never ever realize what we're doing! But there was one time when we were feeling sort of devilish, and we had this very stuffy sort of party we had to go to because it was being given by some business acquaintance, and we weren't much looking forward to it so we sort of made a bet to see how many new partners we could score in the evening, and I thought it would be easy for me-and it was, because whenever a man got interested in me I only had to lure him off somewhere and let him find out what my dress was like, not the one I've told you about but another I can screw in without showing anything, and of course he practically climbed up me at once. But I thought it would be more difficult for Malcolm, because women have this awful habit of playing hard to get. In the end, though, it worked out incredibly even. I got four men, and he got three girls, as many as he could manage to raise a stand for within four hours, not counting two whose breasts he managed to feel and one who did the most amazing thing when she was very drunk towards the end of the evening. She was quite pretty-blonde, not wildly exciting, but with a nice figure and a good sense of clothes, wearing this shimmering dark red dress that I liked very much, and she had this discontented look Mai and I have learned to recognize when we go to parties and start looking for possibles. And he'd decided to go for her next, not that he thought he could screw her as well as the other three, but because he thought I was piling up a hell of a score ahead of him being out of sight for so long, so he started petting her up and suddenly she said-as he told me later-'You don't give a damn, do you? Your wife's here and she's gone off with someone else and you don't turn a hair!' So he said, no of course I don't, and she said well, she said this is something I could never ask my husband because he'd have forty fits, but I think I can ask you so I'm going to ask you now I'm drunk enough not to give a damn either. She said I've got my big fur coat with me and let me go and get it for afterwards-come along-and she did fetch it, and when they got the chance she led him into one of the bathrooms and shut and locked the door and turned round sort of defiantly, Mai said, and asked if he'd been drinking a lot, and he said yes, he had, and she said thank goodness, I nearly forgot to ask, now you stand there by the bath and let me get in. And she climbed in the tub and leaned forward and pulled her dress away from her breasts and she said do it right down here. Please, come on, down my chest and let me feel it run over my tummy!
"So he pulled out his prick and did as she wanted, and she writhed and wriggled and shivered and pulled her dress away from the front of her body so the stuff would run as far down as possible, and suddenly when he'd nearly finished she said, 'I'm doing it too-look, look!' And she was; she was soaking her dress with it. God, Henry, this is taking me right back to the time when Mai and I used to do this so much! You can feel what it's doing, can't you?"
I could indeed-she was squirming and twisting on my prick so violently I was sure I'd let go within the next few moments.
Sarah went on, breathlessly now, as the pressure in her body mounted. "And she got over it after a bit and got out of the bath and put on her coat to cover herself and she went out and called a taxi and went home. And that was all he ever knew about her, but when he came and found me and told me about it--it made me wish I could-Oh ... Ho-Howwwww! Oh, Henry! Oh my lord...!"
And she writhed and plunged and dived her head forward and bit my lips furiously and we both came in a frenzy of long-awaited reunion....
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was around then that my powers of rational thought quit completely and stayed dead for the better part of a week. There's a good chance I'll never get them back completely, and I won't give a damn if I don't, because I had so much fun. I can work out-I think-the order in which events must have succeeded one another, but it takes an effort to do so, and ordinarily my memories just lie there all balled up together, like lovers.
For instance, I know it must have been the following day that I called my wife in London to tell her to come and join us; indeed, I know it must have been well on in the evening because there wasn't another train she could take before the morning. (Not that she was in any hurry to leave; she'd invited her nice Jamaican girl friend Lucinda around for dinner, and things were proceeding smoothly from there as I'd anticipated ... knowing Lucinda.) Yet when I think back I keep overlaying her presence in scenes where she couldn't possibly have been watching. It was after I'd made the phone call, but before she arrived in response, that pretty little Tabby came up to me shyly and asked if I'd bathe with her like Brian and Joan did when they were at home, and Sarah told me to go ahead because it would be quite an experience.
Which it was. It almost made me worry about what would be left for this kid when she grew up ... until I figured that she'd probably be starting where her parents and I had had to leave off owing to paucity of imagination.
There were certainly two nights with only me, Malcolm and Sarah in their enormous bed-and eminently satisfactory they were, too, despite my arse being left rather sore afterwards-but those nights, and the ones which followed, blend together when I look back on them, and I've no idea whether it was on the third or the fourth or the fifth that Humphrey made it to orgasm for the first time over in that section of the huge open room where the kids were supposed to be asleep. It was precocious Tabitha again who brought the news in high excitement, and got us all to leave the bed, quite naked, and toast his new maturity in champagne-much to the disconsolation of poor Derek. But it was my wife (and this made me very proud of her) who drew young Derek aside and stroked and licked and kissed his little prick until he convulsed like a dying frog, then carried him back to us in her arms and announced that she wanted more of that and was going to spend the rest of the night with the pair of them.
(The fourth night, I guess; the night after, Tabby was polite but insistent.)
Some time in there we decided that there was, after all, no reason why we shouldn't have kids-a decision we'd been putting off for rather selfish reasons-and raise them the way these four were being raised, because that was just about the most stimulating notion we'd ever run across. That was the night we spent elaborating ridiculous family trees for our descendents, beginning when Sarah said that she'd seriously considered the idea of having another kid by one of her sons, and would very much like Malcolm to be the first lover for both the girls. We were lying in a sort of mad Maltese cross arrangement when she mentioned the suggestion, our legs entangled, our heads propped up on pillows so we could look at one another, glasses and ashtrays within reach and the kids finally asleep.
"How about if you manage to bring off this swap with your mother that you were talking about earlier?" I said. "How about another kid of Malcolm's joining the family that way?"
"She's on the pill, believe it or not," Sarah said. "But it would be a giggle, wouldn't it? Mai, what do you think of the idea?"
Malcolm chuckled. "After watching her with Alan, 1 think she's a damned good lay and I'm looking forward to it. I'm not so sure about giving her a kid, though."
"But wouldn't it be fun?" Sarah murmured. "If you had a son, I'd still be young enough to screw him when...." A yawn came up from nowhere and stifled the rest of the sentence.
"You're going to be young enough to screw when you're eighty," Malcolm told her affectionately, and leaned sideways to kiss her breast. She ruffled his hair as he did so.
"Never mind anyway," she added. "It has nothing to do with it. Ask Henry. You get as much of a bang out of Tabby-don't you?-as if she were your daughter?"
She didn't have to ask that-, it was only some four or five hours since Tabby's enthusiastic hands had guided me into her pussy and gone on to caress her breasts while we were screwing.
I said, "I...." And stopped. I felt as though I'd been blind right up until this moment. Very foolishly, I said, "Why did I never think of that?
"Think of what?" Malcolm rolled on one elbow and looked at me with twinkling eyes.
"You weren't just 'careless' when you let yourself become pregnant a second time, were you, Say?" I demanded.
She shook her head, grinning like a cat that's been at the cream. "Of course not. But what was the reason, then?"
"To raise a daughter like Roxana if you could."
"Of course! Dear Henry!" She stretched out her arm and delicately touched my prick with bunched fingertips. "Don't you owe her just about as much as we do? Don't you wish that more people could be exposed to that kind of sheer sensuality? Don't you wish that there could be Roxanas in everybody's lives, so that they'd stop wanting to get back at the world because it never gave them any fun?"
"What's more," Malcolm said smugly, "it looks as though with Tabitha we've scored a hit first time. And I even have hopes for Miriam; Brian thinks she's going to be the sexier of the two by the time she's twelve."
He stretched both arms with a sigh and leaned back.
"It's been a crazy life so far-living with my sister, raising these kids like something out of a weird erotic fantasy ... but it's been worth it, every second of it, including the lies and the heartbreak and the deceit. I've been as happy as anyone has a right to expect-which means as happy as everyone has a right to expect, only mostly people don't get the chance, do they? And if it hadn't been for running into Roxana, I could have been a staid, dull, conformist, bored nonentity! I can't find her again and say thank you; all I can do is try and bring up a kid who'll one day do as much for someone else as she did for Sarah and me."
"And for me," I said. "Very definitely, for me too."
Which pretty well sums it up. I don't have kids of my own yet-the ambition of raising another Roxana kind of daunts me because she was so exceptional-but the idea is becoming more and more tantalizing, and whenever I think of what's happened to friends of mine who've lived conventional lives and sunk, before they were thirty, into grey apathy of the sort where a grand highlight is five minutes' awkward necking at a party, I find myself more and more grateful to her.
Yet ... oh, I don't know. Obviously some people get along through life quietly, contented rather than happy, the whole emotional pitch of their existence in a lower key than mine or Malcolm and Sarah's, and no doubt those people would go into hysterics if they knew that my wife and I, outwardly so respectable, share a bed on average one weekend a month with a brother and sister and-more often than not nowadays-the brother and sister's children. (They're talking about building a nine-foot bed now. Not too soon.)
Damn it, though, that's what I like most in the whole damned world, and if any of my neighbors ever finds out I'm going to thumb my nose at them and say, "Show me a better way to have fun or else shut up!"
