A young man's fancy. ... Harriet said, "Don, don't you want me?"
"Sure, I want you."
"Then why don't you do something about it?"
"You're married. You have a husband and he's a nice guy."
"Oh, darling," she cried. "Is that all? Now listen to me. Bill doesn't care about me any more."
"You mean that?"
"You know he's never home. He's got a girl in the city he sleeps with." Harriet studied Don's serious young face. Then, without so much as giving her a kiss, he rolled her roughly to her back.
"Okay," Don whispered through clenched teeth. "If he's nuts, I'm not...."
Catch them while they're young-that was Harriet's philosophy. But she never thought her own daughter would take her up on it!
1
HARRIET SMITH had watched Donald Brent grow from a shy little boy into a powerfully built young man with a winning way and a sunny smile. Don, who lived next door to the Smiths, had been just thirteen when Harriet had arrived at Soper Court as an eighteen-year-old bride six years ago. Since that time Don had been running in and out of the Smith split-level house doing a variety of chores.
Harriet had developed a strong but proper-she thought-affection for the young man. Many days she still fixed him lunch in her kitchen as she had done while he had still been attending school. Sometimes she drove him to Ronnie's ice cream parlor for a soda. Don's mother worked as a secretary in the city, and his father, Sean Brent, a handsome man who had been a schoolteacher before becoming a salesman, was rarely home except for an occasional weekend. Then he was usually drunk and quarrelsome. Don felt pretty rotten about his dad, Harriet knew, so she did her best to console the youth. Bad enough for Don to be lonely, she thought, without his having to act as a buffer between his mother and father.
Harriet was desperately lonely herself. Six years of married life in the suburbs had drastically changed her husband's attitude towards her, she believed. Bill just didn't care any more, Harriet thought. It had been more than six months since there had been any sexual intercourse between them. Bill was the sales manager for a dress manufacturer. If he did not stay in town on the pretense of attending a business convention, he usually contrived to stagger home well after midnight and crawl into bed mumbling something about being dead tired.
* * *
This particular Friday as Harriet watched young Don bolting his sandwich across the table, Harriet had reached the peak of frustration. Her thoughts were racing. Not only had Bill not shown up the night before, but Carol-his blonde secretary who doubled as a model-had phoned to say he wouldn't be home tonight and probably would be out of town for the weekend. Harriet was sure Bill was going to bed with Carol Gaines. Bill's barely concealed tender glances at the long-haired Carol the day she had called at the house with some papers from the office when Bill had been sick had confirmed Harriet's suspicions.
Carol was a professional mantrap as far as Harriet was concerned. Bill had told her Carol's parents were well off and the blonde didn't really have to work but liked living away from home. Conveniently enough, Carol's father paid the rent for her Greenwich Village apartment.
Harriet admitted to herself she had been much too tolerant about Bill's escapades. But she loved him desperately enough to forgive an occasional fling.
Bill's business life in the garment industry, after all, was full of decorative temptations.
But Carol was different, Harriet felt. Carol had been on the scene too long. The girl spent most of the day with Bill. She saw him in all ways more than Harriet did. She viewed the blonde as a menace to the Smith marriage.
There was something else, Harriet thought. It was time she and Bill really settled down and had a child to seal their union. She had to bring Bill to his senses and she had to satisfy her own bitingly frustrated desire for physical love. The celibacy Bill's neglect was forcing on her was rapidly becoming unbearable.
Don had finished his sandwich. He gave Harriet an appreciative smile.
"That's just hit the spot," he said. He gazed speculatively about the kitchen. "Anything I can do for you today, Mrs. Smith? How about giving the floors a once-over?" His voice was grateful without obnoxiousness. "You do so much for me. I wish I could repay you. I feel a little bit like a heel taking so much and giving so little."
"You do quite enough, Don. I often wonder what I'd do without you. Just keep on being you." There were times when Harriet felt awkward with Don. The youth was so genuinely frank.
A brief silence fell. Harriet sensed Don was poised to go but she wanted him to stay just so she could have someone to talk to. She wondered if he had a date. Lately, she knew, he had been going around with Ginny Grimes who lived three doors down the block. Ginny was another kid whose parents were at odds. Harriet sometimes gave Don a few dollars to take Ginny to the movies. Money was not plentiful in the Brent home and Don had got laid off from his first job after he had worked for two months. But Harriet had coached him evenings so he could pass his examination for a slot in one of the big utility companies. Now he was waiting to start.
"So what are you doing today, Don?" Harriet said.
Don shrugged his broad shoulders. He was really a magnificent youngster, Harriet thought. At high school he had captained the wrestling team. Since his graduation he had been keeping himself in trim with Bill's bar bells that Harriet had loaned him. Bill had insisted on bringing the apparatus with him from his bachelor apartment when he and Harriet had first been married but he had not touched the equipment since. Don used the bar bells every day. Watching how his muscles rippled under the T-shirt, Harriet felt a stir of pride at having helped to develop such a superb male.
"I don't really know," Don said in answer to her question. "If I can borrow a power mower I may cut a few lawns. Our mower's on the blink and I haven't got enough money to fix it. Dad promised to help last weekend but he didn't show up-and I don't like to ask Mother. I've kind of made it my responsibility to pay for things like that." His face shadowed. In a moment, though, he brightened up again. "I'm working at the supermarket tomorrow. The manager says I may get the job regularly every Saturday but I can't count on it. That job would sure help till the utility company slot opens for me."
Harriet laughed softly. "Just see yourself doing the supermarket job every Saturday and it will come true. There's magic in wishing. I know."
Don gave her an amused, indulgent look. "The wishing bit doesn't work for me yet. Maybe I'm not old enough."
"You're old enough, Don. You're a man now." Suddenly the mischievous little female devil in Harriet waved her magic wand and Harriet's strong but proper affection for Don was on its way to becoming far less proper. She flashed a beguilingly sexy smile. He is a man, she thought, a big and beautiful man. "You're only five years younger than me, Don. Ever thought of that?"
Don seemed embarrassed. "No, I never did." His boyish face flushed. "I always thought of you as a lot older, like another mother. I suppose it's because you're married."
Harriet leaned across the table and hoped Don would not notice her suddenly reddening face. She patted his hand. "Just being married doesn't mean I'm old, Don. I don't want you to think of me that way."
Don Brent stared at his hands. Harriet's heart went out to him. She wanted to put her arms around his shoulder to comfort him. Don, she knew, had innocently erected a barrier of age between them. This she had to remove.
She said, "I'm not really all that old, Don."
"Forget it, Mrs. Smith. I was just joking. Honest I was." His laugh was nervous. "Mother's married and she's kind of old so I suppose I thought you were the same. Dig?" His blue eyes implored her to under stand and then they twinkled with humor. "You know how kids are."
Harriet nodded, shaking out her glossy brown curls. "I dig, Don. You really had me bugged for a moment. A girl doesn't like to be called old just because she's married. I was married when I was about your age." Harriet snickered. "I don't know why, but I did. Ever thought of that?"
"Can't say I did."
"It's the truth. And, Don, because we've known each other for a pretty long time, how about calling me Harriet from now on? It might help you to forget my great age."
Don's face glowed with pleasure. "Okay. Sure you don't mind?"
"I'll like it. All my other friends do. But we don't have to tell everyone, do we?"
He considered for a moment. "Not my mother, anyhow. She'd say I was being disrespectful. She's funny about some things. She doesn't even like her boss using her first name because she's married." He frowned. "I think he's got a thing for her. He's always calling up weekends and asking her to dinner or something. But she won't go. I teU her she should and she gets angry. But the way Dad treats her, she has a right to have some fun."
Harriet laughed. "Perhaps your mother knows going out with the boss wouldn't be so great. After all, she sees him most of the week, so being with him on weekends wouldn't be much of a change, would it?"
"I see what you mean. I never thought of that." Don's blue eyes settled disquietingly on Harriet.
He loved his mother, Harriet knew, and did every thing to make Mrs. Brent happy. Mildred Brent was a neat and attractive blue-eyed blonde in her late thirties but she impressed one as being younger. She had told Harriet she had run away from home at seventeen to marry when she had been pregnant with Don. Harriet admired the woman. In Mrs. Brent's place Harriet would taken a lover long ago. The woman was a walking angel by today's standards.
"So what are you going to do this afternoon, Don? It's a lovely day." Harriet moistened her lips. "Why don't we go to the beach? We could get back in time to meet your mother at the station."
Harriet often took Donald to pick up his mother on the five-thirty train from the city. It was one of the little kindnesses she enjoyed doing for her neighbor. Saturday morning Harriet drove a grateful Mrs. Brent to the supermarket where they both did their shopping.
"I'd like the beach," Don said. "But I'd feel better if I had a lawn to mow first-and we don't have to meet Mother. She's staying in town for some dinner or other and sleeping over."
"Okay, so off you go. If you don't make it by two I'll know you're busy. But come in if you see the car outside." Harriet knew Don liked to pay his way when they decided on the beach. So being able to earn a few dollars before they started was important to him. To appease his pride Harriet sometimes let him buy her a martini. His obvious sense of manliness at the gesture gave her a thrill.
She stood at the window to watch Don hurry off to borrow a power mower and hustle up some business. He walked as if there were springs in his legs.
She liked the way he held his head, the set of his shoulders, the swing of his hips. He really was a handsome young man.
And Harriet experienced a slow erotic sensation spiraling through her. The sun had been gilding Don's mane of blond hair as he had vanished in the distance. With his muscular shoulders and lean buttocks he reminded Harriet of a young lion.
She sucked in her breath. Harriet Smith, wife in name only, had come to the end of her tether. She wanted a man. She was crazy for a man. What married girl in her ambiguous position wouldn't be? she thought.
For months, now, she had lain awake night after night hoping alternately Bill would come home and then asking herself how a respectable married woman could find herself a lover in the suburbs? And where? she reflected. She couldn't walk the streets, and she didn't want to be picked up in a bar.
Then Harriet laughed a little deliriously. She clapped her hands and executed a little pirouette. She noticed how her breasts swung out as they had not done before her marriage. Her body had ripened in the garden of marriage. But Bill, the head gardener, she thought, didn't want her any more and was leaving her to wither on the vine.
What a joke. Harriet flung herself on the sofa and kicked her legs in the air. She felt like a pony sniffing the first breeze of spring. There was no need to search for a man at all. She had had one close at hand for some time-a beautiful and gorgeous man.
Harriet lay still for a moment and then stretched languidly. All of her sensations seemed to be centered in the one spot where she hoped Donald Brent might soon be. Don was terribly innocent, of course, she mused, but he must know about girls. If he didn't, she would teach him. He would make a wonderful lover....Fantasy gripped Harriet. In her mind's eye she and Don Brent were already in bed. His lips were on hers. She could feel desire coiling and uncoiling in her belly.
The turmoil in her body made her dizzy. It had been so long since she had been loved. So terribly long and she had tried so hard to hold out as a good woman should.
Now it was too late....
As if in a dream Harriet wandered into her bedroom and lay on the bed. Her full coral-tipped breasts seemed to have swollen. Harriet held them protectively and squirmed as the touch of her own fingers sent thrills running through her. Was she going crazy or something? She could not remember ever having been quite like this.
It was all Bill's fault, she decided as she tried to straighten out her thoughts. Bill's and Carol's. The blonde was a dirty little husband stealer.
A wave of rage ripped through Harriet. For weeks she had been debating whether to go to Bill's office and have it out with the girl. But Harriet had been afraid to do so.
Harriet sighed. She knew herself. She was quite capable of tearing off Carol's clothes and bashing her with whatever was handy. Harriet shook her head. Best not to think of Carol. Far more pleasant, Harriet felt, to dwell on Don....
Outside the day was beautifully warm, just right for the beach. Harriet loved the beach. She was one of those girls who tanned to a sultry copper.
But on this occasion she really did not want to go to the beach. She wanted to stay right here in her bedroom with Don Brent, she thought. Definitely. She should be ashamed of such a prospect, possibly, but she was not. The prospect seemed logical, practical and convenient.
Don was not a boy any more. She remembered his strong arms gleaming in the morning light when he had carried out the rubbish earlier-she had watched from her bedroom window. She remembered how his heavily muscled thighs swelled in his jeans.. Even then she had wanted to so much to touch him but she had suppressed the whole idea....
Now she was at last making plans. Desire swept through her like a flash fire. It was all Bill's fault. She was starved for love. And her need for sex was now an obsession.
"Okay, Bill," she whispered, "you asked for it." Her smile was wanton. "But I'll think of you, my sweet. I'll close my eyes and imagine it's you. You'd like that, wouldn't you? I bet that's more than you'd do for me when you're with that wretched girl. I'll hate it, of course. You know me-poor old faithful Harriet."
Her growing mood of anger at Bill was making her sweat. The sooner she got under the shower the better, she thought.
On her way to the bathroom she halted her seething nudity in front of the vanity mirror. "There's nothing wrong with me," she said aloud. "I'm okay as a woman. What's got into Bill?"
She scanned herself critically in the mirror. Dark hair softly wreathed the pale oval of her face. Her breasts protruded lustily, crowned by dark circles. The voluptuous fullness of her hips was accented by her diminutive triangle of curly pubic silk. Her white thighs were long and tapered pleasingly to sleek calves and fine ankles.
She had everything needed to make a man as hard as a rake handle. Yet Bill neglected her.
Why, she could picture the blond Carol on her back on the office couch, legs apart, her pussy sucking in Bill's thrusting love.
For a moment Harriet thought of herself in Carol's position. She rubbed her palms on her breasts. The nipples tingled with heat. Her hands slipped downward, stroked her stomach and the flare of her hips, turned inward on her rounded thighs and smoothed the furriness between. Delicately she opened herself. Damp. And suddenly she was thinking not of Bill and Carol on the office couch but of Don filling her with the bursting hot drive of his youth.
She watched from beneath lowered lashes as her white finger opened her neglected pink-lined labia and teased the sensitive bump between. Her loins trembled. What had reduced her to this? Was she fending off the coltish animality of Don-or preparing herself for him?
She felt a sweet internal seepage. She stepped to the bed, still holding herself. Her body jerking, she sprawled with thighs apart. She thought of Don and was suddenly going, flipping over the top, releasing in wild stabs of pleasure that left her limp and quivering.
But she still had to give Bill one last chance.
Impulsively, she phoned him. "Hi, Bill, darling," Harriet said in her sexiest voice after the abominable Carol had put her through. "Any hope of your coming home tonight? I kind of wanted to see you rather special. You know what I mean. It's the weather or something, darling, but I really do love you. Dig, baby, dig?"
Just give her a chance and she'd be a good girl, Harriet thought, waiting for Bill to reply.
"I'd love to, honey," Bill said, "but I just can't make it. The out-of-town buyers are in and you know what that means. I'm meeting a whole gang of them around eight and they'll go on all night." Bill hesitated. "And don't count on me turning up tomorrow, either. The boss wants me to take some of them to his beach club. You know how he is and I can't say no."
Harriet wanted to interject that only to her could he say no but she kept herself under control. "Listen, Bill. I have an idea. You quit work at five, don't you? And your date's at eight. Supposing I came up to town and check into a hotel. Then you could come over for a few minutes-like we used to. Remember? It was such fun."
Bill's voice became stuffy. "Sorry, Harriet, I could hardly manage that. We're up to our eyes."
"So when will I see you, Bill? Do you really expect me to spend the weekend all alone as usual?"
"I'm afraid you'll have to, honey. I can't help it. If I don't do what the boss wants, I could be home for a long time-without a job." He added aggrievedly, "You seem to forget I'm working for you."
Harriet laughed. "Yeah, me and a few others, Bill. Well, don't say I didn't ask you."
"Are you threatening me? I wouldn't advise you to start that. It will get you nowhere."
"It's all in your mind, Bill. Must be that guilty conscience of yours," Harriet teased.
"So what are you going to do over the weekend?"
"Who knows? I might like a dutiful wife wait home for you to phone. I might paint the rumpus room that you've been promising to do for the last six months. Or I might go to the beach."
"I'd take the beach if I were you. It's going to be hot. Anyhow, darling, enjoy yourself." As Bill's voice stiffened, in her imagination Harriet could see Carol standing at his side. "I wish I could be with you, but I can't. Anything else on your mind? I have to go now. There's a client on the other line."
Harriet managed to laugh. "There's nothing on my mind except you, Bill. Goodbye. Enjoy yourself."
"Thanks. I'll do my best. These affairs are always damned dull. Goodbye."
So it had to be Don, Harriet concluded.
And now she could hardly wait. The beach was the farthest thing from her mind....
2
HARRIET WAITED impatiently for Don. Her lush womanliness encased in a pale blue bikini, she paced the house. She paused occasionally to stare at the hands of the clock creeping slowly around. She was wearing the swimsuit as an excuse, of course, since she had said they would be going to the beach. But she had no intention of wetting herself in sea water.
The boy was incredibly late, she thought. He could have mowed five lawns by this time. In the living room Harriet threw herself into an armchair and switched on the TV. The house seemed overwarm. The upholstery of the chair irritated the flesh of her thighs. She felt as if she were sweating but it was simply excitement.
She was alternately anxious and angry. Could something have happened to Don? Perhaps he had met some girl and goofed off? Boys did that kind of thing, she thought. Males were all the same. Of course, Don did not know what was waiting for him but he should have more consideration for her. When you made an appointment, you should keep it.
Don had always been obedience and reliability personified. Harriet could not remember a single instance in which he had failed to carry out her orders to the letter. Mrs. Brent had often jokingly said she wished Don ob-eyed her so thoroughly. "You'll make a wonderful mother when you have children," she had told Harriet.
Harriet winced at the thought. She wanted a child so desperately but Bill kept saying they should wait and he insisted on Harriet's using those hateful preventatives.
Harriet glanced at the clock again. She frowned. She was half convinced Don would not know how to start making love to her once he was here. She had never had to seduce a man before.
I'll go out, she thought, if Don doesn't come. I can't stay here. A hurricane of desire had built up in her. She could feel her pelvic muscles contracting.
"Darling, please come," she whispered. "Please, Don."
She felt like a drink but she did not want her breath smelling. Don drank beer sometimes but she knew he didn't like hard liquor because of his father's failing.
Harriet crossed to the window. Then she turned to the front door. No sign of the boy. How tiresome could he get? When she saw Mrs. Renshaw, the other next-door neighbor, peering through her curtains, Harriet remembered she was wearing only her bikini and she hurried back into the house.
She called Mrs. Renshaw. Laughing, Harriet said, "I hope I didn't shock you. I'm expecting a parcel and I fell asleep. You didn't see the truck go past by any chance?"
"That service doesn't come today, dear," Mrs. Renshaw said. "The delivery day is tomorrow. And you didn't shock me. I was thinking how nice you looked." After exchanging a few pleasantries, they ended the conversation and Harriet returned to her vigil.
She was lying back in an unhappy and sultry daze of indecision when she was aware of someone standing over her. She opened her eyes and her worried expression changed to a welcoming grin.
"Don, what happened? Where on earth have you been?"
Don's blond face was shiny with sweat. There were sweat stains on his T-shirt. He was disheveled and dusty. The knees of his pants were blotched with green.
"I'm really sorry. I did Mrs. Devlin's lawn. Then old Carter asked me to help him unload some gravel for his driveway. I made twelve bucks." His face lit. "Not too bad for a Friday afternoon, eh?" His blue eyes sparkled. "Never thought I'd make out that good."
Harriet laughed good-naturedly. "You devil, and here I've been worrying about you all this time. Why didn't you phone and say you'd be late?"
"I was too busy. I wanted to call you but when you're working you don't like to ask a guy if you can use his phone. Old Carter's a funny old stick. Then I didn't have any change."
"Okay, you're forgiven. I'm glad you earned all that money. It used to take me a whole eight hours to get as much as that when I first started work-well, never mind. You look tired. Want a drink to cool off?"
"I think I'd better go back to my place and take a shower. I feel real dirty."
"You look it," Harriet said. "But you don't have to go to your place. Take a shower here."
"Okay, I'll just run on home and get some clean togs."
At the door Harriet called, "Don't take a whole day, Don, like you usually do. Come right back. I'll get you some towels."
Don nodded. "Count on me! Your bathroom's real cool."
Harriet sat thinking. So far so good. She sighed, half wishing she could change her mind. But it was too late. Her nerves were on edge. If she did not have some kind of sexual satisfaction, she would scream.
But how could she start this affair? Supposing her efforts to seduce Don'misfired? What would he think of her? He might tell his mother. They were very close. But it was no good worrying, Harriet felt. She had to see the experiment through. Oddly enough, sex was the one subject Harriet had never discussed with Don. Once or twice he had asked her why Bill was home so little and had implied he had concluded her husband drank like Sean Brent, Don's father.
Harriet remembered his solemn expression as Don had said, "I'll never drink that way. That stuff's for the birds." Once he had told her he was always frightened when his father came home drunk. "I'm afraid I'll hit him when he picks on my mother," Don had said. "I wouldn't like to hurt him. He's a sweet guy, really."
Don was soon back at the Smith house with clean clothes under his arm. Harriet noticed he had wiped off his face and combed his hair.
"Take your time, Don," she said as she handed him a cold soda. "I'll put your dirty things through the washer and iron them for you tomorrow." As she spoke she made up her mind. I'll be perfectly natural, she thought. He can take it or leave it. If he doesn't dig what I want, that's his fault. The decision made, Harriet felt proud of herself.
She waited five minutes. Then she walked briskly into the bathroom where Don was standing stalwart and naked underneath the sizzling shower.
"Hi, Don," Harriet said. "How are you making out?" She bent over to pick up his clothes strewn over the bathroom floor.
"Oh, I didn't see you." Don turned his back. "I-excuse me, I didn't lock the door."
Harriet stood smiling at him, his soiled clothes bunched in her arms. She said in a friendly matter-of-fact tone, "Don't worry about me, Don. I've seen a man before."
Don sounded resigned. His back was turned to her. "Yeah, I suppose you have, but...." There were deep dimples in his loins and his big muscular thighs were covered with golden hair. Harriet caught her breath as she ran her eyes up the deep straight line of his spine. He was such an exciting young man, she thought.
"You don't have to be shy with me, Don. It makes me feel funny. We've been friends for so long." Harriet laughed. "Don't tell me a girl hasn't seen you naked before."
Don chuckled. "You kind of took me by surprise. I'm not used to being on view." He was still soaping himself, his back turned.
"I never thought you would be so shy," Harriet said. "I wanted to get these things in the washer so I just came in to save you getting out. Are you really scared of me?"
"I'm not scared, but-" Don's hands stopped soaping his neck and the soap slipped into the tub.
"But what, Don? You've dropped the soap. I'll get it for you."
Harriet plunged her hand into the water. As she did so her cheek brushed Don's firm buttock. "My, you smell good," she cried laughingly. "You're a lovely man. Here's "the soap. Would you like me to do your back for you?"
Don hesitated. "You really want to?" He grinned at Harriet over his shoulder.
"Of course I do," Harriet cried in genuine elation. "I bet your mother did your back for you when you were a kid."
"You're telling me. I used to lock the bathroom door to stop her when I got bigger."
"Now sit down, Don." Harriet reached for the faucet and turned off the shower. Seeing his hesitation, she said chidingly, "Come on, you big baby. I'm not going to eat you. I won't look if that's what you're worrying about. See, I'll shut my eyes. Now down you go."
Don settled in the soapy water with a prodigious splash and covered himself with his hands but not before Harriet had seen what she wanted. She was wildly excited. She was glad he was taking everything so calmly. It proved he was much more mature than she had imagined.
Harriet soaped the sponge and squeezed a cascade of warm foam-flecked water over Don's wide shoulders. "There, man," she said watching the bubbles run down his back. "You like that?"
Without waiting for him to reply she sluiced some water over him with her hands and then scrubbed away with the sponge.
"Now lift your arms, baby," she commanded later, "so mama can wash underneath them."
Don was too busy shielding himself under the water, so Harriet tapped his shoulder, "Come on, Don-up with that arm."
"I did myself there before you came." Don sounded sullen.
Harriet laughed. "So I'll do it again." She picked up the bath brush and whacked him playfully. "Move, man, move."
Don raised his arms one at a time.
They had a little laughing argument when Harriet told Don to get out of the bath so she could dry him up but he finally did as she wanted and stood dripping on the bath mat, a towel wrapped around his middle.
Harriet knelt to dry his legs. She dared not peer up at his face. Everything was going beautifully. She wished Bill could see what she was doing, but then she dismissed her husband from mind.
In spite of Harriet's boiling passion she felt strangely maternal towards Don. So it seemed quite natural to pat his thigh and tell him to open his legs.
"I've got to finish you, Don. You don't want to become irritated, do you?"
Don ob-eyed with a grunt. After drying him between his legs, Harriet reached for the powder spray.
"I'm going to make you smell real nice," she said as she pressed the bulb.
It was then she yielded to temptation and held him for a moment. Before getting up she brushed him with her lips and unhooked the lower part of her bikini so he could see her.
Don stood rigid as a statue. Harriet wondered if he had another girl or was embarrassed. Whatever it was did not matter. He was as good as hers now.
"Don, look at me," she whispered. When he still did not move she reached up and, pressing her excited body against his, she pulled down his face and ran her tongue across his lips. At the same time she wriggled and pressed her womanly softness against him.
Their eyes met. Don's face was scarlet and his neck was corded with the tension Harriet had created. I'm wicked, she thought, but I don't care. He's so beautiful. He's a man now.
"Let's lie down for a while, Don," Harriet said. She tugged at his hand and he followed her into the bedroom where she literally pushed him on the bed and lay beside him and wondered with arrows of anxiety whether her wanton behavior had disgusted him.
Don was lying on his back, one hand clutching the towel. He was staring at the ceiling.
Harriet ran her fingers playfully down his broad chest but he took no notice. "Are you scared of me, Don?" she said.
"No. Why should I be scared of you?" Don did not look at her.
Her heart thumped painfully. Supposing she could not seduce him? Having him around afterward if she failed would be intolerable. She glanced at the towel draped across his middle, hanging in folds from the tent pole of his manhood. She caressed the tented peak.
He flinched, looked wildly at her. "Mrs. Smith! I-I mean, you're married-"
She whispered, "Don, my husband never touches me. I'm on fire, Don. Don't you want me?"
Now his eyes would not meet hers. "I never thought-you've been so good to me-"
Her fingers slipped under the towel, crept upward. At last, convulsively, she seized the vertical stiffness. Her bosom heaved stormily. Her whole body shook.
She cried, "It's mine, Don, mine!" And yet she could not believe that she really held this awesome length and rigidity, that so much had grown out of this boy whom she had cared for.
Don whimpered, "Oh-oh, God! What am I supposed to do?"
Harriet tore away the towel. Her gaze devoured his leaping center. Her delicate white hand appeared dwarfed by the inflamed, pulsing length.
She stripped off her bikini and jumped astride him. His eyes still were turned away, as though he did not want to witness the destruction of the image he had so long held of her. For a moment Harriet also wished that she could fade back into the past. But her middle was working like a wet pump. She bent over him, offering her wondrously rich bosom. His shaking hands barely touched them. She swayed her torso, swinging her breasts like a pair of bells so that her nipples raked his palm, sending sweet, spicy sensations over the soft white globes and, from there, along her every taut and tingling feminine nerve.
Poised over him, lushly nude, she thirstily notched him in her wet junction. Don's whole body galvanized. He was staring directly at her at last-but with disbelief, and perhaps fear, evoked by the greedy lasciviousness in Harriet's expression. She was laughing all but hysterically as she lowered hotly, engulfing him in a funnel of stinging slickness. The blunt maleness shaped her slippery portals to a clinging circle of liquid fire. She sank down, moaning as the iron intruder stretched her roiling tissues. Don's hands leaped from her breasts. His fingers hooked into her quaking bottom. He clawed, clinging to an upside-down world.
Harriet shrieked her joy. Her belly was gloriously full of him, her dark mound-silk merging with his blond bristles. She fell forward, gave a slow, experimental twitch that brought boy and woman to such an acme of pleasure that both howled. Then, uncontrollably, she was jogging up and down. She felt his hips begin to jerk, meeting her each time she dropped, goring her.
"Harriet! I'm going to-"
She gasped her disappointment. Well-a boy of his age would be ready again in twenty minutes, she told herself. "Yes!" she cried, "Let it go, darling." She was rising and falling in a crazy, heaving, lurching, hip-rolling ecstasy, spattering him with her honey.
She screamed as she felt the delicious explosions.
His charge blasted into her just as her inner body wrung him in a gelatinous fist.
* * *
It had been glorious but too fast. Much too fast.
She said nothing. The kid was quite green. She would have to teach him.
"Darling, you're so wonderful," she whispered as she wiped the sweat from Don's face with a tissue. "Don't go away. There's no hurry."
Don was puzzled but ob-eyed. Harriet pulled down his head and gave him her full warm breast. "Kiss me there, Don," she said. "Lots and lots and lots."
And in a little while Don was once again ready.
"Now please take your time, darling," she said. "Understand?"
"I dig."
"Sort of like a freight train," Harriet said. "On a long track," Don said. "That's right. Oh, that's very right. You pick up how to go slow very fast. And, incidentally-"
"Huh?"
"You can stop every once in a while and I do this, see?""
"Yeah. But take it easy. That could make me lose."
"I don't want you to lose anything. Not just yet. I'll go easy. You go easy."
"Okay."
"Oh, Don. That's great. There aren't any little spaces left in me at all. You're in all of them. You're terrific. And I think you better get up a fast head of steam now. I'm sorry but I'm suddenly on Cloud Nine, Ten, Eleven-"
"I dig."
"You better. Yes, yes-oh...."
* * *
Later, after Harriet had had her fulfillment and they lay exhausted but still joined, Don said, "You know something?"
Harriet stirred languorously. "Nothing, except you are the most wonderful man in the world." She brushed his nose with her long lashes. "What am I supposed to know? You tell me."
"This is serious, Harriet."
"So I'm serious."
"It's about you and me. When I was a kid-about fifteen, I suppose-I was really stuck on you. Real bad, too! I used to dream about you."
"Oh, darling," Harriet kissed him. "I'm so happy. Did you really want to go to bed with me at that age?" Her smile dimpled. "You naughty boy!"
They fondled each other for a while. Harriet was working him up for a repeat when Don said gravely, "You know something else? Dad likes you a whole lot. He always says you're the best-looking girl on the block. He used to tease Mom and say he was going to try you out some day. I used to want to sock him when he spoke like that."
Harriet stroked his face. "Don't worry, darling. He hasn't a chance. I'm so glad I waited for you." She sat up. "It's time for some more love. Let's do it my way this time."
She knelt astride his powerful thighs and lowered herself gingerly. "Now, don't move. This is my show."
Harriet began to swivel her hips, moving her body in a steady circle. As she felt herself reaching breaking point, she took his big hands and put them on her breasts. "Pinch me," she cried. "Hard, harder...."
Finally she threw herself down on him gasping for breath. "Hug me, darling, hug and kiss," she pleaded, and thrilled as she realized they had reached the heights together. Nothing could be more perfect....
* * *
At eleven o'clock-that night they drove down to the beach to eat at the Cloudway Inn.
Afterwards, they went back to Harriet's house and slept in each other's arms after another frenzied bout.
As she fixed breakfast in her kitchen the next morning Harriet counted on her fingers and smiled contentedly. Six times in twelve hours. It was obviously true what they said about a man reaching his sexual peak at eighteen. A woman had to wait until she was thirty or forty, some scientist had said.
She had plenty of time.
This affair was going to be fun.
She began to hum a gay little tune.
It was wonderful to be happy even if you had sinned! But Harriet was not quite sure yet whether she had.
How could anything so blissful be wicked?
3
HAVING BEEN loved until her aching body could take no more had put Harriet in a wonderful mood. Life was once again a joyous adventure. She felt marvelously warm and good-natured. Don's insistence on a quick session before going to work at the supermarket in the morning-he had had a call to report there-had made Harriet sing like a bride.
Bill arrived home at noon. Harriet was so pleased she forgot her new status and greeted him enthusiastically. Bill reacted happily and before Harriet realized what was happening she found herself being hugged and fondled with an ardor that could mean nothing but masculine intention.
Suddenly aware she was beginning to perk, she pulled away, a troubled look in her big brown eyes.
Bill studied her apprehensively. "So, what's wrong?" He released Harriet's breast he had been expertly fondling. "Did I do something?"
Harriet covered up by passing her hand across her forehead. "No, no. I'm just a little tired. That's all." She mumbled something about having done a lot of cleaning and retreated to the bedroom.
Now what? she thought. What am I going to do? Because of her new status she felt she ought to remain faithful to Don. On the other hand, to allay sus picion, she ought to maintain sexual relations with her husband.
Bill had made his intentions plain with fingers and tongue. Perhaps he had not made out with Carol after all, Harriet mused. But he must have. Bill never missed. Harriet slumped dramatically on the bed and rolled over on her stomach and covered her face with her hands. The funny thing was that Bill's sudden attention had disturbed her to the marrow. She wanted him! Was that just a habit? she wondered. Husbands were a habit. And why should she take Bill back and be his bed slave after the way he had been treating her?
But if she didn't take him back what would he think? She could make an excuse for the moment but she could not find a permanent reason to keep Bill at a distance. Not after she had been trying so desperately all these months to lure him to make love to her.
Yes, she thought, in spite of all the loving Don had given her, Bill's kisses had set her on fire. If she did let Bill have her, that would not be fair to Don. But Bill was her husband. Bill loved her after his fashion. Bill paid the tab for their very day-to-day existence so he really had conjugal rights.
She was humid with desire. Perhaps she would let Bill take her this once, she reflected. Bill probably wanted to make love to her to relieve his guilt complex. Harriet had read men almost always tried to make love to their wives after they had been having other women.
The bedroom door opened. Harriet turned sharply. Bill was standing in the doorway, a cheerful six footer with a dimpled chin and humorous gray eyes.
"Anything I can get you?" he said solicitously. "Sorry you're feeling off."
Harriet shook her head unsmilingly. "Nothing, thanks. I'll be okay." She contrived to pout, forgetting Whenever she stuck out her sensual underlip Bill invariably inferred sexual interest on her part. "I'm tired. I didn't sleep much last night. I hate being alone."
Bill grinned beguilingly. "I'm tired, too. Yesterday was a real chore. Perhaps I'll take a rest with you."
Harriet sat up. Trouble, she thought. Bill knew how to feed an erotic mood. Her picture switched to Don. She tried to remember how she had felt when he had been loving her. As she recalled the delicious maneuvers they had executed together, Bill suddenly became a strange man Harriet had once gone to bed with for kicks. He belonged to the past. Harriet Smith had a lover now. She never had affairs with two men at the same time. Nice people did not do that.
Harriet covered her bosom protectively with her hand. She gravely contemplated her husband. "I'd rather you didn't rest here, Bill. You'll be much more comfortable in the guest room."
"I don't want to go in the guest room." Bill grinned amiably. He had been drinking, she now observed. "I want to nestle up close to my adorable little wife."
"You've chosen the wrong day and the wrong time, Bill."
"So it's like that. Just my luck." Bill's dimple deepened as he smiled. "Well, I can he down and mind my own business. Too bad. You've been accusing me of neglect and now you're the great untouchable. That's a good one." He stretched himself on the bed.
Harriet clenched her teeth. The main trouble was, she thought, as his muscular symmetry extended beside her, that she recognized anew she loved him.
"Please leave me alone, Bill," she said weakly. "I don't feel like it." Being near him she was not safe. Bill had definite animal magnetism.
"But I do." Bill laughed and pushed her down. He leaned over and kissed her. She pushed her hands against his face and tried to wriggle away but Bill would not be denied.
"Please, Bill, I don't want you," she said aware of a gushy sensation suffusing her. "Really I don't."
Bill squeezed her breasts knowingly. "Take your dress off, darling. You'll be more comfortable." He pulled down her zipper and bared Harriet's shoulder. She began to breathe irregularly. Thus encouraged, Bill chuckled and put his hand down between the warm white flesh of her thighs.
"No, Bill, no!" Harriet cried out in sudden alarm. She struggled to move away but Bill took not the slightest notice. The devil, Harriet thought angrily. Bill knows me like a book. I could kill him. But she was determined not give in. The man should be taught a lesson and she must not betray Don.
When Bill began to pull her skirt up above her knees, Harriet remembered Don had given her some long passionate kisses on her thighs and they had left their mark.
She wrenched herself free and leaped off the bed. "I said no, Bill, and I meant it. You can't just come back and rush me into it. It isn't fair!" Harriet remembered her headache and held her brow. "I don't feel like it. What's come over you, Bill?"
She was measuring her distance to the door but Bill beat her to it. He smiled amiably. He stood with his arms spread to block her way and said, "Get back on that bed, Harriet. It's time we had a talk."
"I don't want to talk. I want to rest."
"So do I. I couldn't think of anything better-with you." Bill patted her flanks. "Make nice, now."
"You're not nice to me, Bill." Harriet pouted.
"You don't give me a chance. Now lie down and let's talk this whole thing over."
"What thing?"
"Just you and me-us-togetherness-and all that."
"Can't it wait? I'm very tired."
He considered her briefly. "It could wait, I suppose. The future, at least. But the present can't." Bill took his wife's hand. "There's something that needs your attention urgently."
"But, Bill, I told you." Harriet tried to smile. She disengaged her hand and sat on the edge of the bed. With indulgent good humor she said, "You really are a trial, Bill. You don't even give me a kiss for months and then you turn up and say you can't wait. Well, you'll just have to." Harriet was lying but she knew she sounded convincing. "Have patience, man!"
Bill sat beside her. Then, leaning playfully against her, he again pushed her down. "There are other ways of skinning the cat, darling." He gave Harriet's startled face a burning look.
Harriet knew when she was beaten. She sat up and began to take off her dress. How could she conceal the marks of Don's love bites on her thighs? She went to the window and drew the drapes. It was still too bright in the bedroom. She kept her back to Bill as she undressed.
He whispered, "What a beautiful bottom!"
Nude, she caressed the plump globes of her buttocks, hoping to tease him into taking her from behind, from which angle he would not be able to see the blue marks. She backed toward him. He pulled her down to the bed, fitted their bodies together like two nested spoons and raised her thigh. She felt his hot length in the trough of her rear, then forcing into her wet underlip. She wriggled, conforming herself to the stabbing head. He pushed her shoulders from him, bending her down.
"Beautiful," he said, his voice thick.
Harriet clutched her ankles. She closed her eyes and pictured Don.
Bill said, "You've never been so soft, wet-"
She smiled secretly. Why? Because she had been had six times in a night by a boy with an iron rod. Bill rammed her hard, flattening her buttocks. She moaned and clawed her ankles. Her inner sleeve was jerking, spilling honey. To her surprise, she was quickly on the point of getting a big one-maybe bigger than she had ever had with Don! Suddenly Bill fired. Harriet felt her belly draw to a fist on his spitting member as she wrenched and heaved through a tearing spasm.
* * *
Harriet slipped off to the bathroom where she found a robe to hide the bite marks. She returned, found Bill sprawled languidly in the armchair. He pulled Harriet down on his knee and kissed her on the neck. "Thanks a million, sweetheart," he whispered in her ear. "That really hit the spot. Remind me to do the same for you one day."
Harriet freed herself. "I'll remember! Don't worry." She folded her arms as her eyes raked him. "By the way, do we have plans tonight? It's Saturday, isn't it?"
"I did have. But since you're feeling the way you are, I just changed them. I think I'll drive over to my mother's and stay the night so I can take her to church in the morning."
Harriet let loose a string of silent expletives. She had forgotten about Bill's mother who lived a bare twenty miles away. Mrs. Elizabeth Smith still had not accepted the fact a son should spend more time with his wife than with his mother.
Out of sheer perversity Harriet said, "Want me to come with you? I haven't seen your mother for such a long time."
Bill stared at her as if she had suddenly grown two heads.
"I'd take a rain check on it, if I were you, darling. Seeing how you and Mom usually get along, you'll find it a strain in your present condition." He patted Harriet on the shoulder. "You take it easy. Send young Don out to buy you a chicken dinner if you don't want to cook. I'll phone you in the morning."
"Don't make it too early, Bill," Harriet said. "I might be asleep. I suppose you'll be back in the evening so give me a call when you leave your mother's, okay?"
Bill nodded. Harriet wondered if she were only imagining he seemed preoccupied. But she assured herself he could not possibly be suspicious....
* * *
After hearing Bill pull away in the car, Harriet tried to sleep. She was in a fitful doze when there was a knock on the back door. Harriet jumped up and hurried to answer. She hoped it was Don.
But it was Mildred Brent, Don's mother. She seemed distressed and said with, an apologetic smile, "I hope I didn't disturb you. I just have to see you." A blue-eyed blonde, Mildred always reminded Harriet of a middle-aged Madonna. Mrs. Brent had evidently been crying.
"You didn't disturb me," Harriet assured her. "I was just lying down before doing the shopping. Are you ready?"
Mildred tried to smile. "I don't know. I don't think I know anything. I'm all upset."
Harriet motioned the older woman to the table and said, "Sit down. I'll make you a cup of coffee."
When Harriet gave Mrs. Brent a cigarette, the hand that took it was shaking. Probably husband trouble again, Harriet thought. How could a man be unkind to such a nice woman? Studying the stained face, Harriet's heart chilled. Supposing Mrs. Brent had found out about Harriet's affair with Don? Mrs. Brent adored her boy and Harriet felt guilty. Whatever would she do if Mrs. Brent did find out? Supposing she might catch them in the act? Harriet was miserably conscious of Mrs. Brent's unhappy eyes searching the younger woman's face. What did Mildred Brent want? What could have happened?
Over coffee Mildred said, "Something awful's happened. I just don't know what to do." Her big blue eyes glistened. "I really don't." Her underlip trembled.
Harriet said, "Is there anything I can do?" The Brent family's troubles were usually financial. Harriet had sometimes managed by stretching her own budget to help out with mortgage payments. And Mrs. Brent had always scrupulously paid back.
A tear bubbled out of the corner of Mrs. Brent's eye and ran slowly down the side of her nose. Harriet handed her a tissue. "Suppose you tell me about it, dear," Harriet suggested. "It's probably not as bad as you think."
Mrs. Brent dabbed at her eyes. She bowed her head. "I'll never be able to face my boy again," she said in a small flat tone. "I'm so ashamed."
Harriet stiffened. Imperceptibly, she hoped. "Is Don in trouble?" She was aware her voice shook. "What's happened?"
Mrs. Brent made a frantic gesture. She closed her eyes. Anguish lines showed on her gently regular features. "It's me! I've disgraced him. I'm so ashamed. I can't even tell you. I don't know how to start."
Harriet put her hand on the older woman's quivering shoulders. "Tell me if you want to," Harriet said. "Sometimes it helps to talk a thing out, Mildred. You can trust me."
Mrs. Brent made a desperate little noise. She put her clasped hands against her forehead and said in a faltering voice, "I know I can. You're such a good person. You've done so much for my boy. I can never repay you."
"You mustn't say that, Mildred. Don's been a great help to me. I don't know what I would do without him. I'm grateful to you for letting me share your son."
In the heavy silence that followed, Harriet experienced relief. Whatever was worrying Don's mother apparently did not concern Don and Harriet. She was foolish even to have imagined it.
Finally Mrs. Brent said, "You know me and Sean don't get along well. He's so rarely home and when he does come home it's just for one thing I just can't give him. But I've been a good wife all along. I've kept my marriage vows and I've tried to bring the boy up right and steer him clear of what's ruined his father-drinks and women." Mildred Brent's eyes opened. She gazed at Harriet gratefully. "You've helped, dear. God bless you. You've set Don a beautiful example. He thinks you're wonderful. You're a better woman than I'll ever be. You should hear how he talks about you. He thinks you're an angel."
Mrs. Brent began to cry again.
"Don thinks the world of you, Mildred," Harriet said consolingly. "He admires your patience and the way you manage everything so well."
Mrs. Brent nodded her blonde head. "I know. But I don't deserve it. I'm a wicked woman." She broke down. When she was able, she continued, "I let him have me last night. God knows I didn't mean to, but I did. I couldn't help myself. My boss, I let him-he's been after me for years-I let him. How can I face my boy after what I've done?"
As Harriet comforted her, the younger woman could not help but think somewhat cynically that in the few hours a night Mildred Brent sometimes saw her son there simply wouldn't be that much to face, would there?
4
AFTER DONALD BRENT returned from work he let himself in the back door of the Smith house and came up behind Harriet unexpectedly. Before she could protest he pushed her down on the living room couch and pulled up her skirt.
Harriet tried to push him away but he chuckled confidently and darted his tongue between her lips until she was on fire.
"No, Don, you mustn't!" Harriet cried but she might just as well have been talking to herself. Holding her down, Don furiously worked on her. As she responded to his jolting assault, she closed her eyes. Don had taken the tip of her breast in his mouth and was nipping at it gently. The caress sent a new current of sensation flowing through Harriet and in a matter of minutes she was responding. The youth was terrific, she thought. He had learned sophisticated love-making with amazing rapidity. Harriet felt a chain of erotic explosions whiplash within her. She wanted to control this session but Don had taken charge. She was just a conquered female creature waiting to receive his lightning from the summit.
But she tried to delay matters. She let out a crazy little squeal and reached for Don's face. Holding him by the ears she pulled his head down to her thighs. She felt his tongue lash like wet fire, then an exquisitely painful nibble that would surely leave a mark. He pulled aside her panties crotch and Harriet felt her underbody seized and drawn. She cried out shrilly. She could not distinguish the varied actions, knew only that she was turning inside out while being tantalized by leaping quicksilver.
She did not even get her panties off. He thrust her back on the couch, her legs in the air, and drove in through the leghole, slamming into the honey-slippery heart of her.
"My panties," she gasped.
She heard a rip. She wriggled closer, vising her thighs on him. She flung her body upward, meeting him with a loud slap.
He said, "I hope you've learned that around me you can't keep your legs crossed."
"But Don-"
"When I want to stick it in you, I'm going to. That's right, isn't it? Answer yes!"
She was surging through a violent convulsion. She had to say yes. Yes to everything as the big pistoning hardness in her burst and spewed. She arched up against him, crying, "Yes, yes, any time!"
* * *
Don said, "Your husband was here. Did you let him do it? Did you go to bed with him?"
Lying in his arms, she had been utterly content. But the question made her angry. None of his business. Besides, she resented any disruption of the sweet aftermath of sex.
She held her tongue. After all, Don was young, inexperienced and obviously deeply involved with her. So she did not want to let him see how angry she was.
Finally she raised her big dark eyes. She said with a faint smile and in a casual tone as if the matter were completely unimportant to her, "Yes, Mr. Smith was home today. We had lunch together." Harriet's smile widened. "Do you mind my having lunch with my husband?"
"Did you give him any sex? That's what I asked you," Don again shouted, his eyes heavy with anger.
"Don't shout at me," she said.-Then she added quickly, conciliatory, "You never know who's listening."
Don stepped back, glaring. His face was flushed and his fists were balled. My God, he's going to kill me, Harriet thought. Don seemed more like a lion than ever. A lion about to spring. He's beautiful even when he's angry. He has his mother's expression and his father's temper.
She noticed Don's pants had fallen down around his shoes and she had a crazy desire to laugh. Men always looked comical in such a position. The amusement eased her tension.
"Pull your pants up, Don," she said. "Someone might come in." Harriet smiled faintly. "It wouldn't look right."
Don snarled sourly. As he buckled his belt he said snappishly, "You didn't answer my question."
Harriet's smile was sweet. Her voice was level. "I don't have to, Don. You shouldn't ask questions like that. They're impertinent. They're an invasion of privacy."
Don gaped. Harriet measured the distance to the door. If he tried to hit her she would make a run for it.
She waited, poised for flight. But she relaxed when she saw shocked bewilderment replace the scowl on Don's face.
The anger, however, was still in his voice, bitter and scalding. "So you let him. Then you let me. Just like an old tramp does, one guy after the other. And I thought you were decent like my mother." He slumped into the armchair. He bent forward over his knees and began slapping his fist into the palm of his other hand. "I never thought you would do a thing like that. I've been worrying all day about you. I don't want you to let him have you any more. It isn't right."
In the silence that followed, the slap of his fist sounded like a crack of a whip. Harriet could hear her own heart beating. Outside a car roared past. Somewhere nearby a radio was playing. As the habitual noises of the suburbs pressed in on her, Harriet wondered vaguely if any of the neighbors could have overheard Don's shouting.
Don's unhappiness touched her. She felt guilty. She debated if this was the moment to end the affair. Jealousy worsened, she knew. There was no cure for it. Certainly not in a situation like theirs.
But she shrank from hurting him even more. The young man was so unhappy. All the jubilant eagerness he had shown as he had made love to her was gone. Now he was crushed and beaten. "He thinks you're an angel," his mother had said. Harriet felt tense with shamed remorse.
"If you want to know the truth, Don," she said at last, "I did not have anything to do with my husband. We talked and I made him lunch. He's gone to his mother's and staying the night."
Don glanced up sharply. His face lit. He sprang to his feet and cried with youthful enthusiasm. "You mean that? You're leveling with me?"
Harriet nodded. Something about his manner was making her feel uncomfortably mature. "Yes, Don, I am leveling with you. I'll always level with you."
He knelt at her feet and ran his hands up her thighs. His expression was one of adoration. "You're the greatest. I knew you wouldn't really have anything to do with your husband but I couldn't think of anything else all day. And he's gone, you say? So I can come later."
Harriet took his hands off her thighs and pulled down her skirt. "No, Don, I'm tired. Why don't you take your mother to a movie? I think she would like that."
Don shook his head. "She wouldn't. She's upset about something. Guess it's my father again. She's going to bed early so I'll be here with you."
"No, you won't." Harriet spoke with decision as if she were telling him to do a household chore for her. "I'm going to bed early, too."
"So we can both go." His eyes raked Harriet delightedly. "I won't do anything. We can just rest."
"If you want to rest you can do it at home," Harriet said with a little smile. "Better than here."
"That's not fair," he announced. "I killed a date tonight for you."
Harriet motioned to the phone. "Call her up and say you can make it. Is she cute?" u
"Real cool but I'm not going. I want to be with you. We can watch TV or something."
He was so young for his age, Harriet thought. She had succeeded only in making a man of him sexually.
"Not tonight, Don," she insisted. "You can't expect me to spend all my time with you."
"So you got something better to do? Another guy?"
"Don't be silly. I just want to rest."
"I said I wouldn't do anything."
"I know, but I want to spend the evening alone."
"And not with a silly kid like me." Don's voice rasped. "I'm just the silly cluck who does the odd jobs for you."
"You said it, Don. I didn't." Harriet was becoming angry. "I think you'd better go now, Don."
"I wasn't silly yesterday when you wanted what you got. You liked my tiger, didn't you?"
Harriet was too furious to answer. She moved towards the door on seeing the rage in Don's face.
Don was bellowing at her now. "Right? Am I right?"
Harriet just stared at him, afraid of what she might say and afraid of what he might do.
"You're not right, Don," she said after a long moment. "You're wrong. You're all wrong."
And Don stomped out of the room. He slammed the door behind him.
Harriet started at the noise and sat down again. She felt weak and shaken. Her heart was thumping and her vitals ached. How could a nice kid like Don Brent be such a pill? It was her fault, of course. She had started everything but she did not deserve shabby treatment. "You liked my tiger," Don had said. Don was a tiger, all right, she thought. No mistake about that.
She sat crouched in the chair. She tried to ponder the whole situation. But she was interrupted in her thoughts by Don bursting in at the door. For a moment he stood in an attitude of defiance, his hands on his hips.
"I'm going on my date," he announced. "I'll make out with her. She's just wild about me. Would you like that?"
Harriet did not answer.
Don advanced a few steps and shouted, "Would you like that? Would you?"
Harriet mustered her dignity. She gave him a distant look and said icily, "At the moment, all I would like is that you leave, Don-and don't come back until you are in a better mood."
"Perhaps I won't be back at all," Don said mockingly before turning and leaving.
Harriet was furious with herself for wanting to run after him but gradually she calmed down. She was glad the few years between them had given her a sense of maturity. Don's date was probably Ginny Grimes, that cute little redhead down the block who wore the shortest skirts and tightest sweaters on an excitingly precocious figure. She was in her last year high school.
Harriet sighed and shrugged and crossed to the liquor cabinet where she poured herself a heavy slug of vodka. In the kitchen she opened a low-calorie lemon soda and gulped down the mixture.
"He can have Ginny if he wants," she said to herself. "She's more his line. I'm too old for him. I don't care."
Knowing she was lying to herself, Harriet emptied her glass and refilled it. If she did not get a trifle tanked, she would worry all night about Don and Ginny.
Fury and despair raged in her heart. Couldn't she have one man to herself? she thought. When Carol wasn't having Bill, his mother was. And now that Harriet had Don, Ginny had to loom large on the scene. It just wasn't fair.
He'll make love to Ginny because I taught him how," Harriet mused aloud. "He didn't know anything till I showed him." She shook with jealousy.
She weaved across to the telephone but put down the instrument before she had finished dialing Elizabeth Smith's number. Harriet really did not in her present state want to talk to Bill's mother. And if she asked Bill to come home, he would think her plain nuts and say so.
She sat down again and stared at nothing as she supported her chin with her hand. To hell with them all, she thought. And that included Don, the silly little tiger. Harriet reached for her drink.
* * *
Later, when the phone rang, she said in a slurred voice, "Yes, who is it? Who? Yes, this is the Smith residence."
Don's voice sounded as bright and clear as a spring morning.
"It's me," he said.
"So what do you want?" Harriet grappled with herself.
"Just to talk to you. Are you still angry?"
"No, why should I be?"
"You sound awful funny. Are you crying?"
Harriet felt herself trembling. Her heart ached and there was a pain in her chest. She felt alternately angry and contrite.
"Of course I'm not crying," she said.
"You sounded like it."
"So what do you want?"
"Just to talk to you."
"Where's your date?"
"I parked her with a pal so I could phone you. He'll look after her. Can I come and see you?"
"No, Don, you cannot. Didn't I tell you that?" As she spoke, a vision of Don's bright face formed in Harriet's mind and she wished she could have taken back her words. But she would not. She was stoned and she could not let him see her, much as she would like to.
"But I want to," Don said persistently. "I want to say I'm sorry."
Harriet succeeded in laughing. "You can say that on the phone. There's no extra charge for good manners. You don't have to come here just for that." She detected herself drawling and rushed her words. "Silly boy."
She gave Don a little time to answer. When he did not, she said, "Go back to your date, Don. I'm sure she likes you better than your friend."
Her sarcasm had immediate effect. Don hung up.
Harriet walked unsteadily back to the chair and buried her unhappy face in her hands. What a mess she had made of everything. How could a boy change so much as Don had in such a short time? It hurt to remember how obedient he had been all these years.
"It's all my fault," she muttered. "What the hell am I going to do?" She had made a complete idiot of herself.
She remembered tomorrow was Sunday. Mildred Brent would expect her to drive them to church. "I'm staying in bed tomorrow-all day, and I'm not answering the door," Harriet announced to the room that had started to revolve slowly. "They can go to hell-all of them."
Harriet felt she was already in a hell of her own making. Having stumbled into the bathroom and put herself under the shower, she opened her mind to a new anxiety.
She had let Don make love to her without either of them taking any precautions. Supposing he had made her pregnant? she thought. Such things could happen. Young men could be terribly fertile. She turned off the shower and rubbed her small round belly reflectively. It could happen. Bill always made her use a prophylaxis. Silly old Bill.
She emerged from the shower and began to dry herself. Catching sight of her face in the mirror, she smiled tipsily. It would be a nice-looking baby anyhow, she thought. Don was so handsome.
But so was Bill. Bill was really something.
And so was Don Brent, she repeated ridiculously. Tiger Don! Harriet laughed fatuously. Don was a tiger, all right, and she'd had a tiger in her bed ... a silly old tiger.
She stopped laughing. What had she been in the bathroom for? Had she taken a shower or not? She could not remember. If she had not, that was too bad. She just wanted to sleep. But the shower was not really important. She had meant to take a douche-just in case.
But it was too late for that as well. Too late for anything but sleep. Harriet's delicately chiseled face curled into a smile. She would call the baby William Donald-just in case!
5
BILL SMITH was in a foul mood. He hunched rebelliously against the imitation fireplace in Carol Gaines' apartment, the last place he wanted to be. A couple of hours earlier a brace of bulldozers could not have dragged him to Carol's place in chains. Having promised Harriet he was finished with Carol, he had meant to keep his word.
Now, frowning, he was watching Carol undress. She used the slow deliberate movements he knew were calculated to excite him.
Covered or bare, Carol had everything to excite a man. She had a warm and satiny skin, full and upthrusting breasts with pale pink tips, a slender torso, a small and perfectly rounded bottom and dazzling legs attached to firmly molded thighs. With her pale blonde hair coiled high on her head, baby-blue eyes and that perpetually innocent expression, she reminded Bill on occasion of an angel-and at other times of some rare long-necked animal.
Although Bill had often seen Carol's performance, he still gazed, fascinated, as she gracefully moved her arms back to unhook her bra. What a gasser, he thought. And all his. Bill's stomach twisted as guilt and desire battled. The way Carol's proud perfect breasts quivered set his heart thumping. Desire leapt in his loins and gnawed at the remnants of the resolution he had announced to Harriet.
More than a month ago Bill had decided to break with Carol but the split just had not happened. The day of miracles was finished. Carol did not give up an affair that easily. She had developed a kind of opportunistic defense. She would agree that she and Bill should not see each other any more out of the office but she would always somehow come up with a plea she needed his sudden counsel, and he would end up providing advice in bed. Bill had wanted to break with her from the point she had begun to make it clear she had looked to be the second Mrs. Smith.
Even as he thought about it now, Bill felt the idea insulted his intelligence. Only a fool like Carol could imagine she could take Harriet's place. But was Carol really a fool? Actually, she was extremely canny, a gem of a secretary, good at everything she turned to and brilliant at handling men. Bill Smith included.
Bill tensed unhappily. His heart ached. If only he had the guts to walk out. His knuckles whitened as he fought the losing battle with himself. This girl did something very special to him.
He was making a feeble attempt to control himself when Carol flashed him a brilliant smile. Her voice was a thrilling whisper as with an excitingly sensual undulation of her body she said, "Come on, Bill, I don't want to catch cold." She laughed musically and shivered-and not because of the room temperature. Bill knew she was boiling for him as she pretended to concentrate on rolling down her black net nylons. Nonchalance was part of her technique.
"You always keep me waiting, Bill. That's one of the things I can't understand about you. You haven't even kissed me yet. My last boy friend used to jump on me like a big dog. That's why I had to dump him."
Bill grunted. He pulled at his tie and slipped off his shirt and stepped into the bathroom. His belly twisted painfully. He felt as if he had fallen into a deep pond of foul water and he was not sure if he would swim or drown.
He had been in a rage when he had left Harriet a half-hour ago. Speeding furiously into the city he had wrestled with the temptation of driving into a utility pole or crashing the car into a ditch to end the stupid farce. He should have gone to his mother's place but he shrank from telling Elizabeth Smith anything about his disintegrating marriage because it was his fault.
He was still trying to straighten out his ideas in Carol's pink bathroom. He had tried to make love to Harriet before he had hared back to Carol, and Harriet had rejected him. His wife's manner and words had said clearly their marriage was foundering. And life without Harriet was unthinkable. He loved her. Enough to eliminate all the other girls. At the moment there was only Carol. And she had turned out to be embarrassingly demanding.
Before he had left for home after work he had had cocktails with Carol and had convinced her she was wasting her time with him. The blonde had been very friendly and understanding. They had parted in high spirits and he had rushed off to break the news to Harriet.
Bill scowled at his flushed face in Carol's bath room mirror. Harriet had laughed in his face at his assertion he had broken with Carol. "You don't have to lie to get to bed with me," Harriet had screamed. "Don't waste your breath. Take it to Carol Gaines. Take it anywhere you like. I don't want other women's leavings."
The humiliating climax had come when Bill had been sitting in the living room and cooling himself off with a drink and trying to pay attention to a TV news analyst. Harriet had waltzed in with nothing more than a string of beads and a sheer wrap.
His hopes had been raised. He had jumped out of the chair to embrace her but his wife had spit at him like an angry tigress. "You dare touch me, you lousy buck rabbit," Harriet had said, backing out of his reach. "I just thought you'd like to take a last look." She had opened the wrap with a dramatic gesture, had stuck out her tongue and had flounced away into the bedroom.
Bill had rushed after and had reached her before she could lock the door. Remembering that women often meant yes when they said no, and encouraged by his wife's impromptu display of nudity, he had gone to work on Harriet, first with charm and, when that had failed, with the stern husbandly authority he had felt the occasion demanded.
Their encounter had ended when Harriet had belted him good and hard as he had tried to take her. Afraid he might lose his temper and hit her, Bill had raced out of the house and gunned his car back to the sinuous blonde....
Bill snarled to himself that Harriet was one stubborn little mule. And they couldn't afford a divorce, he thought. All things considered, he decided he'd fight for his wife.
A fine beginning, he reflected scaldingly. Here he was in the other woman's bathroom. Carol was waiting for him. She was naked, eager and passionate. There had been other Carols in his married life. Too many! It was ironic his wife should have chosen to become aware of the very girl he had decided to drop.
Drop?
Here he was back where he had started! Here he was, seeking sex and solace, in addition, and no matter in what order. He guessed he would have both simultaneously. Bill scowled, shrugged and tried a grin. He snatched a robe from behind the bathroom door, draped it over his shoulders and returned to Carol's perfumed bedroom.
"What happened, Bill?" Carol said. "You've been such an age, I almost forgot you were there." She stood up and bent over to push down the flimsy flesh-colored net panties. She moved them slowly down her thighs until the filmy stuff dropped to her ankles.
With a roguish grin she hooked the panties on her big toe, tossed them in the air, caught them and threw them on the dresser. She grinned impishly at Bill, her hands on her hips, her long legs spread. As an exhibitionist Carol had no equal.
"Like me, Bill?"
"Better than ever. You wear well for an old lady," Bill flipped with an attempt to be his usual bright self.
"But what about you, you decrepit old man? Take off that silly robe and let's have some of my favorite tranquilizer." Carol's voice was authoritative. "Come on, Bill, make nice. I want to see if you're still the same. It's been such an age." She moved her tongue across her lips.
A week without Bill was Carol's idea of an age. Bill draped a grin over his hot face and threw off the robe. Still muscular at twenty-eight in spite of his adventures on the martini circuit to which his job as a garment industry salesman exposed him, Bill approached Carol's luscious nudity.
Bill stopped at arm's length from Carol to savor her erotic appeal. She was really something special. His nearness to her upthrusting breasts strained him to the point of agony. How did she manage to look so cool and innocent? he wondered.
He reached to pull her close but Carol pushed him away.
With sharp authority she said, "Just touch my breasts, lover. Nothing else." Her breathing quickened. She stood up and, raising herself on the balls of her feet, leaned her voluptuousness against Bill to enjoy the pressure of his hands to the utmost.
When she finally drew back and brushed his hands aside, Bill made another attempt to seize her but Carol gave an amused little laugh and evaded him. "Wait, Bill, please. I want to look at you. You really are beautiful." Her tongue moved suggestively and then she squeaked with excitement. She reached up to brush Bill's lips with hers, after which she slipped to her knees to say mockingly, "I kneel to you, my beautiful man."
He winced and tried to control himself and flexed his muscles as she began to move her hand lightly up and down his thigh.
He watched her hands rove about his out-thrusting groin. She put both hands between his thighs. Her fingertips juggled his bollocks. She rubbed her cheek on his throbbing length. Her tongue lashed him in a rising spiral of fire. Suddenly voracious, her mouth yawned and she consumed him noisily. Her cheeks drew in as she pulled, gasping and moaning.
Enough. He pushed her away. She fell to the rug on her back, legs up and apart, revealing her wet-furred pinkness. Bill dropped between her thighs and slid into her. She met his thrust by arching her body. He rammed home in one mighty thrust. Carol went wild, writhing and kicking.
"Bill, it's too big. You'll split me! Bill, Bill, suck my breasts!"
She seized his neck and drew his head down. When he had a nipple in his mouth she forced her breast in with both hands. He gobbled his mouth full of the hot, swollen softness while slamming into her with full hip jerks. Carol locked her legs about him. He pushed up on her hands and knees, lifting her. Their bellies pounded.
"Bill, rock me-Bill, hit me! Wreck me, Bill! I'm coming apart. Bill, I'm wooshing off like a rocket ... Oh, I can't stand, I'm flying and flying. Shoot me down, Bill!"
He let go into the convulsing girl, blasting his seed with shotgun violence. She screamed and arched up. He knocked her down again, flat on her back. There, together, they collapsed in the pool of fire that joined them.
* * *
Strangely, Bill wished this were Harriet. Irony of his situation tore at him. Vised in another woman, he wanted his wife more than ever. His heart bled with shame. He loved Harriet. She was his wife. He must beg her to take him back.
"Let me go, Carol," he snapped. "For Christ's sake, stop."
"Stay where you are! Do you always have to be so selfish?" And Carol refused to release him. On the contrary, she began to undulate and all thoughts in Bill of Harriet were dissipated. Then, apparently satisfied, Carol pushed him off her damp body and lay beside him like a dead thing....
* * *
An hour had passed. Bill was again sullenly trying to sort out his thoughts and make a blueprint for his future that excluded Carol and any other woman except Harriet.
Suddenly Carol turned and said dreamily, "Wouldn't it be marvelous if you gave me a baby, Bill?" She pressed cold wet lips on Bill's. "I want a baby so much. I think that's what I need to calm me down. You'll be such a lovely father. I hope he's like you, dear. You're so handsome."
Bill started. He stared at Carol. Her confident tone suggested she was already pregnant.
"Didn't you use anything?" he said. "I thought you had one of those gadgets."
Carol pinched his cheek. "But I don't use it any more, my pet," she said with a gay laugh. Her blue eyes crinkled mischievously. "Not with you, darling. I want you to give me a beautiful, fat, cuddly baby."
She patted Bill's cheek and pressed herself against him.
"But I'm married, Carol." Bill made no attempt to conceal his disapproval of her idea. "You can't have a baby."
"Of course I can, darling. A divorce doesn't take all that time. Remember, you promised."
Bill had done nothing of the kind but he knew it was useless to deny it. Carol kept repeating a lie until she believed it.
Carol continued. "Daddy will be so pleased to see me married. He's not sold on the idea of my starting with a divorced man for a husband but I've told him all about you and he says you must be quite nice. He'll probably set you up in business when we're married. He has hosts of companies and he likes young men who work hard." Carol laughed. "You certainly do that-except in bed." Her blue eyes crinkled again.
Bill stared at her with hot incredulity. What Carol had said lashed at him. So the bitch had been talking to her father about him, Bill thought. The nerve of these women. Bill sprang out of bed.
"It isn't as easy as all that, Carol," he said evenly. "I don't earn enough to support two wives even if I wanted to." Carol had to know sooner or later, damn her.
Carol gazed at him with amused compassion and understanding. "But you earn enough, darling. Don't worry. Harriet will marry again. She's quite attractive. She probably has some man in mind. Most women do. Ever thought of that? Perhaps he's in your bed right now-or what used to be your bed."
He stared angrily at the blonde. Carol was quite capable, he thought, of having phoned Harriet earlier this night when he had intended to have his heart-to-heart talk with his wife. Unfortunately he was in no situation to gage the accuracy of his hunch, but such a phone call could have accounted for Harriet's fury. Carol was really all bitch, he thought. Bill felt like shaking the guts out of her.
But as he contemplated her, his distaste for her slowly melted. Carol was such a luscious creature, he mused. As a woman she was unbelievably desirable. She loved him in her sadistic way. He ought to be proud of being able to hold her. And they harmonized chemically. She might even make him a good wife. And her father's influence could be extremely helpful. But Bill's brain felt wooly. He knew he was confused.
"Yeah," Bill said, hardly knowing which of Carol's comments he was answering and not caring. "I suppose so. Let's talk about it some other time."
Carol sat up and hugged her breasts. She looked' coolly graceful.
"So what are you standing there for, Bill?" she said sweetly. "Going some place? It's three a.m., in case you don't know. You're not by any chance thinking of going home, are you?"
Bill made a quick recovery. "Home at present is the bathroom. I feel like a shower."
"And I'm ravenous!" Carol made a charming face. "I won't send you out for pickles and ice cream. Not yet, at least." She prodded her small round belly with a silver-tipped finger. "I'm not quite sure yet, but I'll tell you first, darling."
Bill escaped to the bathroom in a savage mood. Why did she have to keep taunting him with this baby business? He felt trapped, a horrible sensation. Under the sizzling diversion of the shower he wondered what Carol might have to offer when they were tired of sex?
The difference between Harriet and Carol, he thought, his seesaw meditating resumed, was that even when there was no bed business he still enjoyed being with Harriet. Why? He threw the question at himself. Was it because she was a real person as well as being a female? Harriet wasn't a great brain but she was warm and giving. He must win her back. He would try with everything he had.
Outside of sex, Carol was a bore, interested only in herself. She wanted him for her own ends. Bill sighed. A comfortable and relaxed relationship with the blonde was out of the question.
Bill emerged from the bathroom to find the table set in the kitchenette. Carol had fixed a couple of hero sandwiches on crusty bread. There were pickles, lettuce and tomatoes, a can of shrimps and a bottle of wine. Coffee was perking on the stove.
Carol and Bill sat naked at the table. The food cheered Bill. And he found himself vibrating again as he gazed at Carol's luscious body. Once or twice he leaned over to kiss the tips of her breasts. Nibbling at the lettuce, he remembered Harriet had called him buck rabbit. Angrily he thought he could be just that. Why not have fun while you're still young?
Carol was of the same opinion. The moment they fell back into the bed she had remade with cool fresh sheets, she began to crawl all over him. He saw a mischievous glint in her eye. Her need was less urgent than before. She would be inclined to experiment.
She bent over him and forced a breast into his mouth. He sucked hard and then was given the other. She raised up, shook her torso, making her breasts jump and toss. She fingered the wet nipples, laughing as though at a private joke. Then she sat on his upright sex, swiftly engorging it. She put her heels in his armpits and slowly lay back between his legs.
All he could see of Carol were her gleaming white thighs and her soft entry curved to a teardrop shape around his invasion. She began to writhe and toss on his hardness. She did it too violently and he flipped out. She nipped him back in with thumb and forefinger without missing a stroke.
Watching her voracious nether lips pull at his length, he knew that he was seeing all of Carol. Pure sex. A born whore.
Harriet? If she knew about this-and she must know-would she seek vengeance with another man?
Although his end was being steamed and kneaded by the voluptuous roiling of Carol's inner body, he felt quite detached. He made his decision. He could not risk losing Harriet.
Tomorrow he would fire Carol.
He raised up and drew her to him. Her hot breasts burned his chest. Seated on his thighs, she rose and fell rapidly on the powerful stem that impaled her. Pleasure raked them both as she felt him explode.
But tomorrow he would fire her.
6
BILL HAD insisted on going home and Carol had reluctantly yielded.
It was daylight when he parked the car as quietly as he could in the Smith driveway and let himself in the front door. Yes, he had to get rid of Carol, he thought, as he undressed in the living room and tiptoed into the bedroom in his shorts, his clothes on his arm. This is where I belong. Full-time life with Carol was unimaginable. Why the hell did she want to marry him? Just to score off Harriet? Some women were like that. Carol had told him she had separated one couple out of spite after the man's wife had found out about Carol's affair with the husband....
The bedroom was quiet. Harriet's breathing sounded muted. The moonlight from the window softly out-lined her profile. Bill let out a sigh. What did Harriet intend to do to him? How could he make her realize he was sorry and that he had suffered enough and that there would never be another woman?
She would say Bill was insincere. Since their rift she had said that all too frequently. He bent over his wife's sleeping form. Her hair smelled sweet and her mouth fragrant. There was a definite attractive scent, he thought, to a woman who kept herself for one man. No amount of bath lotions and perfumes could disguise the odor of promiscuity.
What a fool he had been! What an utter idiot! As he slipped silently between the sheets, Bill wondered if he dared take Harriet by surprise. In her sleepy state she probably would not refuse. Her back was turned to him. But then his guilt feelings reasserted themselves. If he took her unawares, Harriet would repeat her accusations he wanted her just for sex. But how could he disabuse her of this impression? Now she would not even believe he wanted a child with Harriet as its mother.
Bill's brows knitted as he lay on the edge of sleep and stared at the ceiling. At last, separating himself as far as possible from the temptation she presented, he fell into a fitful sleep....
* * *
When he awoke in full daylight, Bill was alone. He sat up in bed and sniffed. Smells definitely associated with breakfast were wafting in from the kitchen. Coffee, bacon, toast.
Bill slipped on his robe and dug his feet into his slippers. The odor of food smoothed away the tension that had gripped him the moment he had awakened and had found Harriet was not beside him. He felt sunny all at once.
In the kitchen Harriet was togged out in a sleeveless flowered dress with a full skirt. She looked deliciously feminine. His spirits soared. It seemed as if the clock had been miraculously turned back.
"Hi, pussy," he cried gaily. "Yum, yum. It smells good. I'm ravenous."
Bill moved close as he spoke and made an effort to kiss Harriet but she swung her face away. Over her shoulder she said in a resigned tone, "You can have these eggs. I'll make some more for myself."
Bill had not expected the rebuff. "Don't worry," he said with an effort at good-natured nonchalance. "You go right ahead and eat." At the kitchen door he turned to add, "All I want is a cup of coffee." His irritation had killed his appetite.
When he returned, shaved and dressed, the table was nevertheless set with one blue plate and a cup and saucer beside it and a napkin. Two slices of bread stood beside the toaster. Two eggs circled by strips of bacon were keeping warm on the hot plate. The percolator was bubbling merrily. The single place setting insulted him. He felt angry and aggrieved. His wife should be at the table with him.
There was no reviving his appetite. After pouring himself a cup of coffee, he arose to look for Harriet. She had left him so that he would eat alone. Bill sweated. How long could she keep this up? She was justified in being angry at what he had done in the past but that was all finished now. She just was being unreasonable.
So he would bring her back to the table. He would make a sincere apology over the coffee and straighten everything out. His first appointment at the office was around eleven. He expected Carol to take the day off as she often did after their all-night sessions. On this ground, already prepared for, Bill was going to fire her. That might impress Harriet.
Bill felt comfortingly mature and sure of himself as he passed through all the rooms of his house so he could turn up his wife. But Harriet was nowhere inside. However, when he reached the back door he saw Harriet in the yard talking to young Don Brent who must have just taken out the trash can. Don's blond hair was shining in the sun. The youth was certainly growing up, Bill thought. It seemed only a few months ago that Don had been a gangling youngster.
Harriet was chattering animatedly and the youth who dwarfed her was listening with a sunny grin. Don was really a fine specimen, Bill thought. His mother must be proud of Don. Bill knew about the marital situation in the Brent house. Sean Brent had told Bill some of his troubles and how worried he was at not being able to give his son more attention. For a neglected kid, thought Bill, young Don had certainly done a good job on himself. Or was his mother's influence responsible? Or Harriet's? She was crazy about the boy. Bill was stirred by the sight of them together. Harriet should have a son. It was time. He would see to that.
Don saw him.
"Hi, Don!" Bill waved his hand. "How's tricks?"
"Fine, thanks, Mr. Smith." Don's smile was genuine. "And you?"
"Yeah, still struggling. Aren't we all?" Bill glanced at Harriet. He was aware of how the happiness had drained out of her face. He hoped the youth had not noticed. "Hi, Mrs. Smith," Bill said with an attempt at joviality. "I was wondering what happened to you. I don't like having my coffee alone."
Harriet snapped, "I'll be with you in a tick." And she resumed her conversation with Don. Bill shrugged and stepped inside the house. When Har riet joined him she said scornfully, "So what did you want?"
Her attitude said plainly she resented his interruption of her conversation with Donald Brent but Bill attached no significance to that. She looked strangely lovely, her dark eyes bright, her face flushed. He had the impression she was gazing at him as if he were an utter stranger whom she had found distasteful.
Bill shook off a moment of dismay. Harriet was going too far, he thought. But he had no intention of fighting with her. He turned on his charm. His eyes caressed her deliberately. He said with a dimpled grin, "Nothing particular, sweetheart. I just wanted you to make my breakfast go down better. You're good to look at, you know?" His smile widened naturally. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that?"
Harriet's expression told him his attempt at charming her had been as successful as trying to put toothpaste back in a tube. Nevertheless, Bill held his smile.
"As far as I'm concerned you can get indigestion," Harriet replied in a small quiet voice. Even as she spoke, Bill wanted to kiss her. "Would you like me to call Carol? She might do a better job for your breakfast."
"Carol's a thing of the past," Bill countered, his voice sharp. "I told you that yesterday, remember?"
"You really expect me to believe that? Don't be so childish."
Bill wrestled with his exasperation. She's my wife, he thought. I love her and-His thoughts careened into a blaze of rage. He stared at Harriet helplessly for a moment and then pulled himself back to sanity. He said evenly, "Harriet, why can't we talk this thing over? Why don't you tell me what's biting you?"
Harriet did not answer immediately. Her face was impassive. Her eyes flickered.
"Come on, Harriet," he urged persuasively. "Tell me."
"You don't really know, Bill?"
"No, I don't" Bill stared at her.
Harriet laughed defiantly, adding to his tension. She moved for the first time, folding her arms under her bosom. Her brown eyes raked him contemptuously. "That's exactly why we can't talk, Bill. Because you only hear your own side-because you're selfish and beastly and immoral. That's why!"
Bill's eyes narrowed. He made a masterful effort to control his fury. He spoke with as much good grace as he could muster. "Look, chum, we can't go on like this. Don't I get a second chance?"
"Second chance! Good God, you've had twenty chances-twenty girl chances and Carol. What more do you want?" Harriet's terrifying composure made Bill feel as awkward as he was desperate. Harriet had shut him out of her life, he thought. All because he had been chasing a worthless little siren like Carol. Didn't Harriet know Carol was the type of girl no man could be serious about? But how could he tell his wife that? Well, he would make Harriet understand if it meant he had to drag Carol here by her hair. But even then Harriet would probably not believe him.
He clenched his teeth. There must be a way to communicate with Harriet. He studied her face.
There was a shadow of sadness in her expression. She had not entirely changed.
But their emotional mutuality was. ruptured. They were no longer sharing. He had to find a method to convince her his love for her was something infinitely more than sex, that his love was a sacred thing to which he intended to dedicate the rest of his life.
Because this was his wife, his woman, his mate for life. He had been foolish to let the rift between them become so deep. But it was not too late to find solid ground again.
Bill took his hands off the table and stuffed them in his side pockets. He took a step toward Harriet and her eyes glowed up at him angrily. She backed away.
"Harriet, I want you to believe me," Bill said. He held out his arms. "I love you. I'm sorry."
"Don't touch me!" Harriet's eyes were wide with fright. She flattened herself against the wall.
Bill froze. He stared, miserable.
"I told you it's too late," Harriet said. "I meant it, Bill. All those tramps."
Harriet raised her arm as if to parry the blow Bill never intended to give her. "Go on, hit me," she challenged. "I don't care. I won't call the cops."
She was daring him, he thought, his fury overmastering him.
Harriet was making a futile effort to slide toward the door as Bill sprang. She struck at him savagely but he beat her hand down and grabbed her about the waist. Lifting her off her'feet, he carried her kicking and struggling to the bedroom. In his haste he bumped her head hard against the door. Serves her right, he thought. The blow might knock some sense into her. He tossed her on the bed and stood glaring at her.
Harriet did not speak. She lay crumpled up on the bed. She looked beaten.
Bill found his voice. "Take your clothes off," he shouted.
"Like hell I will." Harriet's eyes widened. "You bastard."
In that terrible moment Bill saw her as primitive man might have viewed the woman he dragged by the hair to his cave. He let out a snarling laugh and ripped at the neck of the dress. It split noisily. The sight of his wife's bared flesh spurred Bill's surge for conquest. He hooked his finger in the bra and pulled it up. Harriet's pink-tipped bosoms captured his gaze. He fell on them savagely, kissing and biting them as he pulled down her panties. This was his, all his, he thought. Where did she get the idea she could lock him out?
Bill pulled away as if to gloat over his victory. For a burning and torturing instant he surveyed the milky white belly with its little whorl of a navel.
"You bitch," he heard himself snarl, "I'll show you." He spread the unresisting thighs and threw himself down to nuzzle his burning face between the full soft warm globes of her breasts. He slowed down his pace. He wanted to give her one more chance. He stroked her and kissed the sensitive hollow of her shoulder. "Come on, sweetheart, make nice." He was holding her gently.
Harriet did not answer. Bill wanted to hit her.
"Harriet!" he shouted. "Harriet!" He covered her roughly.
"Go on, you beast," Harriet cried, her body limp under him. "Go on, enjoy yourself. I don't care. I'm free-you don't have to pay."
"You bitch, you incredible bitch. How could you fool me? And I thought you were the best. Open up and give." Bill rammed himself against her and then scowled in exasperation. He had forgotten to take off his pants.
As he drew away, Harriet renewed her verbal attack. "You louse." Her breathing was loud and steady. Her breasts quivered.
"Go on," she urged in a slow solemn voice, her eyes now closed. "Enjoy yourself. That's all you live for, isn't it, Bill? All you live for. That's right, Bill, isn't it?"
"Okay, you win," he suddenly growled. He slammed the door behind him.
Back in the living room, sweat-soaked, gray-faced, weary, Bill was doused in shame. He could not have possibly had intercourse with his wife-he had become impotent. His body, presumably drained by his night's orgy with Carol, had failed him.
Bill sat for a bleak ten minutes. The impotence couldn't be for real, he pondered. It had to be temporary. It was psychosomatic.
His body had played a trick on him. Perhaps for the best. Harriet would never forgive him if he had forced her. Now he would have another chance. So he would rededicate himself to his wife. There would never be another woman. If only his sex would work again. The thought that it might not was terrifying.
But his generative powers would work again-must-for Harriet, his wife. For Harriet alone!
* * *
It was ten a.m. when he reached his office. As he expected, there was a note on his desk to say Carol was sick. Bill stared at it with grim satisfaction. He called the cashier. The man sounded dubious. "I mean it, Mac," Bill said. "She's fired. This is a business office-not a club."
Bill gave instructions he was not to be disturbed all day and settled down to work with enthusiasm. He felt free all at once. More of a man.
Now he could go to Harriet with-clean hands, he thought. Perhaps he should call her now. No, that could wait. She would bite his ear off. Give her time. They both needed time to reorient themselves.
7
HARRIET lay thinking for a long time after Bill roared away to the station in the car. She worried about whether he made it safely to the station. Men who drove when they were upset often had accidents.
She -eyed the telephone nervously for a while. She hoped it would not ring. She began to cry. The tears eased her tension. Why had Bill not taken her as her eyes had been shut? The sex act might have helped to break the spell Don seemed to have cast over her. She remembered how she had been strongly attracted to Bill as he had been storming at her when she had been at his mercy. The threat of being taken by force had awakened some primitive urge in her. Her body had quickened for him even while she had reviled him. She had wanted to be conquered.
When Bill had stormed out, her immediate impulse had been to run after him and throw herself at him.
Now she felt cheated. Her passion was past its peak but the juices were still simmering. This was one of her fertile calendar days. Bill might have given her a child. She had read somewhere that coitus with violence encouraged fertility.
Perhaps she was not really being fair to Bill. Men did play around and still love their wives. Bill had seemed genuine when he had burst in the day before and had told her he loved her. He had not sounded like a man who wanted a divorce. And yet Carol had telephoned only a few minutes before Bill had arrived to say that was what he wanted. Moreover, the blonde had said, Harriet had better consent or they, she and Bill, would leave Harriet flat.
Harriet wished she had told Bill about Carol's call and given him a chance to tell his side of the story. She reflected a few minutes, supporting her naked self on her elbow. She would play fair. Bill was integral with her life.
Harriet reached for the telephone. Waiting for the connection she was aware of little pains at the tips of her breasts and a bigger one in her groin where Bill had been so rough. She smiled dreamily. They were nice pains, the kind a girl liked. She would make Bill kiss them away. That would be his only punishment. Thinking about Bill kissing her excited her pleasurably. Women were funny animals, she thought. And love was deeply and inexplicably personal.
An unfamiliar woman's voice answered when the switchboard girl connected Harriet with Bill's office. "Just a minute," the voice said. Harriet's heart throbbed. What should she say to Bill first? How to start? She would tell him she had stopped being a bitch and would never be that way again. He would understand. If he was with her, it would be easier. Perhaps he would dash home for lunch as he often did when they had first been married.
The voice came back to say, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Smith, but Mr. Smith asked me to tell you he's in conference and he'll be tied up all day." The girl paused and then said in a tone that implied she understood. "It's just one of those days. He's not seeing anyone except the boss."
Harriet squeezed a thanks and said, "It's nothing urgent. He'll probably call me later."
Liar, she thought. He won't. You fool, she accused herself, why deceive yourself? The man's finished with you. She was too stunned to direct her anger at Bill and she was too hurt to hate. Well, she would not try to reconcile with Bill again. He could go his own way. She would take a job and move out. Secretaries received good pay these days....
Harriet was so engrossed in her planning that she forgot completely about Don until he pushed open the bedroom door and stood surveying her with a sunny grin. She quickly scanned him. How boyishly innocent he seemed. She saw his thickly muscled arms and the strong white thighs sculpturing his tight white pants. His eyes worshipped her.
"Why, Don, I didn't expect you. You scared me. You shouldn't do this," Harriet said.
"It's one o'clock. Time you got up."
Harriet covered herself with a sheet and hoped Don would not see her ripped dress on the floor. "I was tired and I fell asleep." She yawned. "I was up quite early. If you wait till I get dressed I'll fix you some lunch."
Don stepped toward her. "I don't want lunch." He patted her thigh. "I want you." He peeled off his T-shirt.
Harriet pushed his hand away. "Not now, Don. I'm too tired."
"You're not tired. You're just sleepy. And I've got a good alarm clock."
Harriet sat up and the sheet fell away. She blushed and said tartly. "Don't touch me, Don. I don't want you to make love to me now." Her eyes searched his face to gauge his reaction. Don had always been so obedient before they had been intimate.
But their relations had changed him into a dominating man determined to have what he wanted. Panic seized Harriet as she watched him unbuckle his belt.
"Sorry, Don," she said mechanically. "I don't feel like it." She pulled the sheet up to her chin. "Leave me alone."
If he did not go away she would hit him. She scanned the room for something to use as a weapon. Then she remembered her temper. Supposing she killed him? Things like that did happen.
She shrank back when Don reached out and pulled the sheet away, baring her.
"Don't give me that business. You're ready enough." He flipped her nipples with his forefinger.
Harriet gasped. An oddly impersonal sexual excitement shot through her. She was ashamed. She wanted him. But she was married. She loved her husband. She was in her own bedroom where she slept with her husband and there was a handsome boy much bigger than her husband telling her he was going to make love to her whether she liked it or not and she was naked and not worried about that one little bit and it was all her fault.
Where was Bill? Why didn't he stop the whole thing? Silly, remember you quarreled with him, she told herself.
Harriet stared helplessly at Don. How could she communicate with him? She felt his eyes moving slowly over her. Her excitement increased. But she was not going to let him take her. You just couldn't let a youth have you when and where he wanted. You had to teach the young their responsibilities. He was going to learn a woman can say no and mean it.
"I'm sorry, there's nothing doing, Don," Harriet said. She covered her breasts. "I don't want you now."
He moved closer, a wild look in his eye. "But I want you."
She stared aghast at him. She had never imagined he could be like this. Had she unwittingly turned a nice boy into a sex maniac? Now she was really scared. Donald Brent, her love pupil, was going to rape her. There was no way of escaping but she still wanted to try.
The fuzz on his well-muscled thighs shone like gold in the sunshine from the window. He was a beautiful young man. Harriet's sexual excitement increased. If only he were older she might divorce Bill.
She felt wild. Don seemed bigger than ever. She was frightened. How silly to be frightened. They had made love at least fifteen times. It had never hurt.
No, she thought, I'll just say no. He always does as I tell him. I'm Mrs. Bill Smith and he's Donald Brent, the boy next door. He's got a nerve thinking he's going to get me just like that. Harriet wanted to laugh.
Don interrupted her thoughts. "Come on, Harriet."
She looked up at him sharply. His body affected her deeply.
"All for you," he said. There was a proud expression on his face.
"No." Harriet was trembling. "Go away, please."
"Sorry," he said in a tone both amiable and masterful.
Harriet stared at him mutely, her dark eyes narrowed. Knowing he was going to take her by force affected her like a powerful aphrodisiac.
But she was not surrendering so easily.
She slipped off the bed and stood up. She clasped her hands behind her head and thrust up her breasts at him to dare him. Sometimes he kissed her under the arms. It excited them both intemperately. The bastard, she thought. She wanted him to suffer.
"I'll hate you if you take me, Don," she said evenly. "I know I will."
"So go ahead, hate me! Get back on that bed," he said.
Harriet shook her head. Her dark eyes flashed. "No, Don, I'm not going to let you." Her voice was loaded with resolution. "Now get dressed and go back to work like a good boy."
"When I'm through."
Don reached for Harriet and pulled her close. He slid one hand under her to lift her. Then he threw her on the bed.
"You bastard," Harriet said. She tried to push him away.
She did not love him. She did not hate him. But he was giving her a wanton pleasure. Her body was on fire.
Don worked his tongue around her nipples. She groaned, despairing. She had taught him too well. He knew that she was vain about her pearly breasts and rosebud tips, that his sucking flattered her while sending oozing heat down to her middle. His hand stroked her fleece and then the satiny skin of her thighs. He trailed his fingertips over her bottom. Harriet tensed, clenched her teeth, trying to restrain herself. She had created a monster, a sex technician who could destroy her pride, reduce her to a whimpering blob of sensuality.
Hot-eyed, she watched his flesh grow to a throbbing, stiff hulk. She felt like a teen-age virgin. It was too massive for her, despite the delicate pressures of his fingertips, dancing in and about her center, distending her to a syrupy cavern. It was too much He laughed, crowed like a rooster. "Want me?"
"No. Don, please, no!"
He laughed again and pushed her legs apart and stuffed his swelling into the tender membranes of her womanhood. She groaned as she felt her betraying cleft close hungrily, then draw the rascal inch by inch into her seething belly. At last he touched bottom. She collapsed, let herself be butted and stretched. She found a rhythm, softly meeting each thrust, riding with it, backing off to let him almost escape, then heaving upward to be filled again.
When the young bull at last erupted, Harriet shook with frenzy-and collapsed.
* * *
She was in the bathroom, sitting on the John. Don knocked at the door, saying, "I have to go to work."
Harriet thought he wanted to use the bathroom and she stepped out, wishing she had taken a robe to cover herself. To her surprise Don was aggressively naked. He put his arms about Harriet's waist and pressed himself hard against her belly. "Come on, doll." He kissed Harriet's ear. "One for the road."
"No, Don. No more!" Harriet wrenched herself free. She tried to laugh. "What's got into you?"
Don shrugged. "Nothing. I just feel like another session."
Harriet backed away. She reached into the closet for a robe and fastened the belt in front.
"No more, Don. I didn't want to have you make love to me today at all. But you insisted. You're not behaving very nicely. You took mean advantage of me."
If he tried anything more, Harriet thought, she'd claw his eyes out. She'd kick him right there. She was stronger now.
"You enjoyed it," he said.
His blue eyes crinkled with amusement. He reminded Harriet of his father for a moment, then of his mother. Harriet watched him closely, her temper rising. What would he do if she flew at him? She studied his face and all at once her anger changed to compassion. The poor kid didn't know any better, she thought. He had practically raised himself. She knew how Don despised his father who had done so little for him. Did Don suspect his mother was having an affair with her boss? Once or twice Harriet had felt Don was treating her as if he had contempt for women sexually.
Don laughed sharply. His desire had faded. He said testily, "So I'll have to go somewhere else. I know someone who will be interested."
Harriet became angry again. "Don't talk to me like that, Don. And don't try to blackmail me." She hesitated, weighing the consequences of what she wanted to say. "And I think it would be better if you did not come here in future-unless you're invited."
"So I have to take my turn-by invitation only. You should put up a sign. Okay! So you can empty your own trash and tell your husband why. He'll be interested." Don's now stolid face became engrossed in his dressing.
Harriet wondered if he were putting on an act, imitating something he had seen on TV. Sex experience could not change a boy's character so radically. Don was still very much the same youth she had known for so long.
She reflected about him and blamed herself. Perhaps it was not too late to help this mixed-up kid. Their association in the past had been so pleasant and rewarding.
After Don had pulled on his T-shirt, Harriet said gently, "Don, I want you to listen to" me. It's rather important."
He stopped smoothing the shirt down his torso. He looked at Harriet uncertainly. Some of his familiar boyish expression had reappeared.
"I'm listening." He sounded almost contrite.
"It's just this, Don. I want us to go on being friends. And I want you to understand a woman is not just made for a fellow's pleasure. She has rights, too, and she expects a man to protect her and respect her. She often can't defend herself physically." Har riet felt as if she were foundering but she went on. "Take you and me, for instance. You're so strong. You don't give me a chance. A woman likes a man to be gentle and considerate."
Harriet studied his face. Don understood what she was driving at but he did not want her to know he did. The juvenile part of him she knew so well had grasped her meaning but the sexually awakened male was trying to ignore it. She could practically see the battle he was waging in his heart.
"I want you to be a gentleman, Don. Being a gentleman doesn't make you any less of a man." Harriet then said something she knew was daring. "Remember how you used to say you admired my husband for being a gentleman?"
To her surprise his temper did not flare. Don nodded and brushed the yellow plume of his forelock from his forehead. His smile now was frank and bright.
"I understand," he said. "I'll do what you want. I've got a few questions to ask you about you and me but it's time I got back to the store now. I'll call you tonight. See you!"
He was gone before Harriet could ask him not to call because she was going to bed early.
She called Bill's mother ostensibly to inquire after the old lady's health and to find out whether Elizabeth Smith was expecting Bill to dinner. Yes, she was. Harriet felt relieved. Bill would stay the night at his mother's, Harriet thought. At least he wouldn't be with Carol.
That meant Harriet could lock up early and have a good sleep. First she was going to clean house.
Cleaning and sprucing her home was good therapy. She loved her home. She found the vacuum cleaner and set it going. Passing the nozzle over the living room rug she found herself looking around the attractive room where she and Bill had spent so many happy hours-loving each other, entertaining their friends and watching TV.
She did not want a divorce. This was her home. A home meant everything to a woman. It was part of her life. A home was the enemy of divorce, a discussion forum for marital problems, a place where you could express yourself freely, say you were sorry and forgive. Why sacrifice the home she had cared for so lovingly through the years? If she had taken it for granted before, now she had come to realize her home was an essential part of her life.
Harriet switched off the vacuum. She settled in an armchair and lit a cigarette. She began to review the situation again. A woman's home and her relationships were linked. She had innocently let Donald Brent invade her home and so it had been easy for him to take her body.
What could she do to end this whole miserable business? If she stopped Don coming to the house, his mother would ask why. The neighbors would talk. Don might say something himself. He might even approach Bill and say he wanted to marry Harriet.
Harriet stubbed out her cigarette and returned to her cleaning. For the moment she had no solutions.
8
A WEEK dragged by.
Harriet was lonely and miserable. Although she had searched, she had not found a job. She had tried to keep herself busy cleaning house and she had evaded Don until Thursday at lunch time when he had again stepped in via the back door and had surprised her. His ruthless assault had added to her tension. She had been furious with herself for yielding and had been utterly disgusted with Don. When she had screamed at him never to come near her again, he had laughed and said he would come when he pleased. Harriet had never imagined any human being could be so despicable.
Ever since that ghastly morning she had been struggling desperately to remain calm but she knew she was near a breaking point. It might come any moment. The possibility she might scream out the truth to Bill or to anyone who cared to listen haunted her. She had lost weight. She was using a heavier make-up to hide the dark circles under her eyes.
To add to her misery, Bill had been arriving home early these nights. Being with him and hardly exchanging a word was a terrible strain.
Her inability at finding a job climaxed Harriet's unhappiness. The woman at the employment agency had inquired why, being married, Harriet wanted to work, and Harriet had told her frankly of her marital difficulties.
"I'm afraid we won't be able to send you out for a permanent job," the woman had said. "Our experience shows that women in your position so often change their minds after a few weeks." She had smiled understandingly. "We're glad to hear of reconciliation with the husband but our clients don't like it and so it's bad for the agency image." But she had promised she could send Harriet out on temporary jobs. This would involve Harriet being available by telephone most of the day and ready for work at a moment's notice.
Harriet had said she would think that over. The next agency she had visited told her very much the same thing. She had hurried out into the street. She had been discouraged. Fate had seemed against her. She had had then an impulse to phone Bill as she usually did when she was in town so they could have dinner together. But it had been only after she had dialed the number she had emerged from her daze of gloom and had remembered that she and Bill were not friends any more. She had pressed the coin return button and had rushed to catch the train home. She had had to gulp back her tears....
* * *
Harriet was waiting for the bus at the station when Mildred Brent joined her.
"I was coming to see you tonight, dear," Mildred said. "Will you be alone?"
"I'm rather tired," Harriet said quickly. "Bill's seeing his mother and I thought of going to bed early."
"I'm a little weary myself. It was so hot in the city. Suppose I come in with you as soon as we get off the bus. Then I won't keep you up." Mrs. Brent's tone intimated that nothing but a door locked in her face would make her change her mind. "It's really terribly important."
To you, of course, Harriet thought. She wished she had not been so indulgent toward the Brents in the past. She was tired of being used as a crying towel. Joggling homewards in the crowded bus, Harriet wondered if the woman wanted to talk about Don. Did she suspect anything? People gossiped. But it couldn't be that. Don had been running in and out of the Smith house for years. Harriet's conscience was playing tricks on her....
* * *
In Harriet's living room Mrs. Brent put a carton of cigarettes on the table. "I've smoked so many of yours," she said, smothering Harriet's protests. "I've been meaning to give you some for ages." She settled into a chair and glanced sideways at herself in the mirror.
Don's mother was radiant. Her love affair had rejuvenated her. She had slimmed attractively and filled out in the right places. She was positively blooming.
"You remember I told you about me and Tom-he's my boss," Mrs. Brent began. A light flush stained her cheeks. "Well, I like the affair but I'm worried. Tom says once a week isn't enough so he wants me to stay in town twice a week and to come up sometimes for a weekend."
Mrs. Brent paused. Her bright blue eyes reminded Harriet uncomfortably of Don's. Mildred Brent continued. "Do you think that's too much? He's so sweet to me. I have a lovely dinner each time and sometimes he gives me a little present. But I just don't know. I can't help thinking more than once a week would be too much."
"It's one of those things you have to decide for yourself, Mildred," Harriet said. "Sex is so personal and individual. We're all different."
Harriet studied Mildred closely. There was the suggestion of an artificial coyness on Mildred's face. She obviously was not satisfied with Harriet's answer.
"I'm worried. They say if you give a man too much he gets tired of you." Mildred Brent hesitated. "How often do you let your husband have it?"
The impertinent question irked Harriet. The nerve of the woman! At her age Mildred Brent should know better. Now she had jumped over the traces did she really expect Harriet to tell her how to keep the affair going?
"I don't let my husband have it, Mildred," Harriet answered with a small smile. "We share the pleasure when we make love to each other. When you're in love with a man it isn't a question of letting him have you. Do you really feel you are doing this man a favor when you go to bed with him? Doesn't the relationship mean anything to you?"
Mildred flushed. Her face registered resentment for a moment and then dismay. Harriet wondered what kind of answer the older woman had expected.
"But sex is what he wants me for," Mrs. Brent whined. "I know it's just that. He's always chasing me. I have to do what he wants. He's my boss. He'll fire me if I don't. He slaps me sometimes now. I've got to go on with him." She stared blankly at Harriet and giggled nervously. "Of course I like the affair in a way and I like getting the little extras he gives me. But it's hard to be bad when you've tried to be good for so long. It's all Sean's fault." She dabbed at her eyes. "I was a good girl when I met him."
Harriet was revising her picture of her next-door neighbor. The ill-treated-woman image Mrs. Brent had presented to the world was a false front. The woman enjoyed torturing herself. Now she was calmly trading her body for a few dinners and her job security and blaming it all on her husband as she did all her misfortunes real and imaginary-and she was expecting Harriet to sympathize.
Harriet felt suddenly very sorry for Sean Brent whom Bill had always insisted was a perfectly nice guy.
"So do you think twice a week is too much?" Mildred Brent once again fired the question.
"I'm really afraid I can't help you there," Harriet replied. "You must do as you think best."
Mildred giggled damply. "Sex is such a nuisance, isn't it? I wish I knew more about it. My boss says I've missed so much I should try and make up for lost time. But what I've missed is certainly getting me into trouble."
"There need not be any trouble, Mildred," Harriet said judiciously. A greater urgency to reconcile with Bill and straighten out her marriage was gripping her.
"Now I'm worrying about my boy," Mildred announced. "He's growing up so fast. I found one of those sex manuals under his bed. The page was turned down at a
CHAPTER about younger men and older women." The blue eyes clung pathetically to Harriet's. "Now why would he want to read about that?"
Harriet answered without flinching. A few minutes earlier she would have been terrified at thinking Don's mother suspected her. Now, Harriet couldn't care less.
"I wouldn't worry," she said casually. "Boys read anything they can get their hands on." She decided to fish just for kicks. "Doesn't Don have a regular girl?"
"He dates Ginny Grimes sometimes but she's only seventeen. I'm not worried about her. It's the older ones that scare me. They say there are some real wicked ones around."
Harriet assumed an expression of appropriate surprise. "Do you suspect anyone, Mildred?"
Mildred was horrified. "Oh, no! Don's a good boy."
Harriet felt ruthless. "So you have nothing to worry about." She paused, fought a little battle with herself and lost. She added words she regretted the moment she said them. "Sometimes it's a good thing for a boy to have an affair with an older woman." She wished she had had the guts to add she was the older woman Mildred was worrying about and that she, Harriet, hadn't done Don any harm. The real Harriet would have said that.
Now a tense quiet filled the room. Harriet could hear Mildred's agitated breathing.
Mildred was twisting her damp handkerchief. Harriet noticed the woman's sensual mouth for the first time. The poor thing must have suffered agonies during the loveless marriage she had imposed on herself.
But Mildred avoided comment oh what Harriet had said. Instead, Mildred suggested, "Perhaps your husband would tell my boy about sex. Don admires Bill so much."
Harriet shook her head and said firmly, "I wouldn't ask Bill. It's your job or your husband's."
Mildred Brent looked as if she were drowning in misery as she rose to go. At the door she said, "Goodbye, dear! Thanks for being so helpful."
Harriet mixed herself a drink and settled into her favorite chair. Helpful, indeed! she thought. How had she been helpful? Her neighbor knew how to help herself in her own way. Harriet sipped her drink. So she'd drink enough to become tight and have a good sleep for a change. Drink did help sometimes.
She thought of Bill and brightened. I love him, she mused. He's part of me. Men do run around. They can't help it. They're looking for their mother image although they don't know it. Bill's just another mother's son. He thinks of me all the time he's with another girl. He told me so but I was an idiot and wouldn't believe him....
Harriet finished her drink and poured herself another. She turned on the TV but the show seemed stupid so she turned it off. She remembered that ter rible telephone call from Carol. Her heart flamed with shame. Why hadn't she told Bill about the call at the time instead of jumping down his throat? The blonde had probably made the call just to put Harriet and Bill in Splitsville.
She was on her third drink when the telephone ringing shattered the silence. Harriet sat up straight and stared blankly at the illuminated instrument. Who was it?
Don, of course. He always called Fridays after work. Well, the rat was out of luck this time, she thought. She just wouldn't answer. No more. But her thinking about Don stirred her. The drinks had lit her up. Harriet shuddered at the thought of what might happen if she let him in.
After a few minutes the telephone started to ring again.
Harriet stretched out her hand automatically and halted in mid-air.
"No," she whispered aloud. "I won't. I won't answer."
The ringing was insistent. It might be something important, she thought. A telegram-an accident-oh, God! Supposing something had happened to Bill? He drove so fast sometimes.
The suspense became excruciating. Harriet hurled her hand at the instrument.
A voice her fuddled mind recognized as Bill's said, "Hi, sweetheart, how's tricks?"
"I'm fine, thanks." Harriet struggled to grasp at her normal self. "What is it?"
"Nothing special, Harriet. I'm at Mom's as I said I would be." Bill was his old friendly self. "How would you like to come over?" He lowered his voice. "No strings, kid. The old lady asked for you. She really wants to see you."
Harriet bit her lip. There was nothing she would like better than to accept Bill's offer but she couldn't, she thought. She wouldn't dare. She was more than a little high. Bill's mother disapproved of any kind of drinking and had a nose like a hound dog.
"I'm sorry, Bill, but I'm too tired," Harriet said, sadness overwhelming her. "I was just going to bed. Why didn't you ask me earlier? Tell Mom I'm sorry."
Bitterly he said, "Okay, Harriet, I understand." He slammed down the telephone.
For a few minutes Harriet sat in a deep freeze of misery. The odds seemed to be loaded against her. Why did Bill have to call when she was hopelessly tight? She shuddered as she remembered how savage and final he had sounded.
She stumbled into the bedroom and undressed. On the edge of sleep she remembered Mildred Brent's petulantly selfish attitude toward life. I won't be like that, Harriet thought. I'll make Bill love me again. How, I don't know, but I will. Harriet smiled. She knew more now. Marriage was more than just sex. It was love. Giving and taking the good with the bad-understanding and trying again. That was the woman's role.
9
GINNY GRIMES was worried. Her favorite boy friend, a certain Donald Brent, was obviously spending his spare time with someone more attractive than herself. Consequently, she applied herself diligently to discover who that someone might be.
This Friday evening as she sat in her Thunderbird outside the candy store adjoining the supermarket where Don worked, she was thrilled to see her idol sauntering over to her with an engaging smile on his face.
And the sudden sight of him decided her then and there. Donald Brent was definitely the "him" in her life and if Ginny wanted him for keeps it was time she acted. Advanced for her age in mind as well as body, Ginny knew more about sex than most adolescents. She had not gone the whole route, true, but mainly because she had not allowed any of the local boys to corner her. She and Don had perfected a mutually satisfying petting routine they practiced in secluded spots in the car under the stars and occasionally at Ginny's place when her mother had a date. Ginny's dad had a permanent date elsewhere and tried to make up for his absence by giving Ginny a liberal allowance, of which the Thunderbird was part.
Ginny greeted Don with a roguish grin. He was excitingly bronzed and muscular. She breathed more rapidly. The youth was a perfect dream boat. As such, he should be secured. Ginny had never met anyone quite like Don. He had serious plans. He could be amusing. And he was excitingly wild in the clinches.
Ginny's big green eyes opened wide. "So we go somewhere, man?" she said. Ginny was much too smart to hand out a reproach that he had not seen her for some time. She might learn the reason he had not been around, or she might not. The important thing was to hang on to him. Playing it nonchalant was essential in dealing with this gorgeous beast, she thought.
"Why not?" Don replied brightly. "Where?" He opened the car door and slid in beside Ginny. A whiff of her perfume trailed to him through the damp night air. He noticed her slim golden thighs in their tiny white shorts and the bulging blue halter under which an expanse of Ginny's slender tawny torso showed attractively. He had not been close to Ginny for an age. He had in fact nearly forgotten her existence. But now Ginny seemed a little more grown up. Her red hair was really something, he thought. Don, whose knowledge of female topography had recently been enlarged, glimpsed Ginny's attractive cleavage. He had often fumbled between those sweet little breasts but now their appeal was even stronger. Ginny had really grown up in that area. Too bad the Thunderbird with its bucket seats was such an unfriendly car.
"So where's it to be?" Ginny said. Her rosebud mouth was compellingly kissable. "There's a good show at the drive-in or we could watch TV at my place. I have a set of my own now. Mom's going to be real late by the way." Ginny's father had given her a portable set for what she called her Action Room, a paneled den-studio-bedroom under the rafters with a convertible bed. Ginny had more everything than most neighborhood girls. She was for real.
Don fingered the little roll of bills in his pants pocket. "I'll get some soda and potato chips and we'll go to your place. Okay?"
Ginny said, "Okay." She sighed a deep female sigh as she watched Don go to the candy store. Her mind was not on soda. No other man she knew walked quite like him. Don reminded her of a beautiful lion. She really was fixed on the youth.
* * *
At the Grimes manse Ginny apologized for the condition of the living room, Ginny's mother not being particularly house-proud, and Ginny directed Don to carry his purchases up to her den. When he was out of sight, she extracted a sign from the closet and put it on the table. The sign read, "Gone to bed, Mom. Don't wake me."
Ginny smiled contentedly and mounted the stairs. She was quivering with excitement. She locked the door behind her.
Don was already stretched out on the couch. He had kicked off his shoes and put a pillow under his head. Ginny noiselessly removed her sneakers, snapped off the top light and plugged in the pink shaded boudoir lamp. With its dark red walls, blue rugs and contemporary mahogany furniture, the pad was ideal for watching TV, for study and art work. Ginny was proud of the decor she had copied from magazines and color movies.
Having pushed down her shorts to reveal her dimpled navel and arranged her top to show a little more of everything, Ginny undulated over to the TV set.
"What do you want to see?" she said, bending over the dial. "Anything special?"
Don said, "What's on? The same old crud, I suppose."
His nonchalance decided Ginny. "We don't have to see anything," she said. "We can just talk. I'll put some records on. LP's so we don't have to change them. I got some decent ones, Chopin and Beethoven. They're real cool. Or would you rather have the radio?"
"Records are okay." Don lit a cigarette. He was wondering what Harriet was doing. He had meant to telephone her but his running into Ginny had altered his plans. He lay back again, his hands clasped behind his blond head and looked around. Ginny had a nice pad, all right, he thought. This was the first time he had been up here. They usually sat in the glass porch downstairs, used as a TV room.
He unperturbedly watched Ginny as she bent over collecting records, and again as she erected herself and fiddled with the record player. Until he had made love to Harriet he had wanted to go all the way with Ginny. But he had been frightened. Don had not followed through because he was not quite sure of what to do. His sex experience had been limited to a five dollar gypsy girl in a caravan attached to a carnival. She had made it easy and there had not seemed much to it. But Ginny had always put up a fight.
Don felt superior now. Viewed from the lofty eminence of his experience with Harriet, Ginny was just a baby, he thought, a mere amateur. A man shouldn't take advantage of a kid. The stallion in him quivered and then subsided. He felt compassionate. Ginny really didn't know anything much. They would just play around as usual. He might let her get him worked up and then beat it and call on Mrs. Smith-Harriet, that is, he corrected himself-before he went home. Bill Smith would be at his mother's. Don's own mother would be asleep. Harriet seemed a cool idea. Why not?
Ginny crossed to him. She was a dream of loveliness, her arms folded under her breasts. "You're so big, Don," she remarked. "You take up all the couch. There's no room for me."
Ginny hesitated, her green eyes thoughtful. She laughed, shaking her coppery curls. Then she said in a matter-of-fact tone, "Sorry, man, I don't want to sit. I want to relax. Let's open the bed. Then we'll both have room to breathe."
Don said, "Okay, it's your pad." He stood up. Ginny pressed a lever somewhere and the bed appeared magically out of the couch.
Don whistled. "That's cool. I saw one of these things on TV."
Feeling ultrasophisticated, Ginny said, "They're very convenient. I hate beds except for sleeping. They really spoil a room." As she spoke, Ginny arranged herself beguilingly on the bed. She freshened the second pillow and peered invitingly at Don.
"Come on, Don, relax," she said.
The mischief in her eyes affected Don in a strange way. Poor kid, she didn't really know a thing, he thought. A book he was reading said teenage girls were rarely enjoyable bed companions. Some girls weren't even good at thirty. He thought of Harriet Brother, was she good! It was kind of silly wasting time with Ginny. But she was a nice kid and a great dancer. They should have gone to The Glog, the teen discotheque in town.
Don lay down. He kissed the lips Ginny offered. It was not long before Ginny's halter had been denied its function and Don's lips were doing a mutually exciting job on the warm golden globes of Ginny's breasts.
"Oh, Don," Ginny whispered, "you're dreamy. Keep doing that. I love it. Lovely ... lovely ... lovely." Ginny stopped talking and her tongue snaked between Don's lips. Don stiffened. He ran his hand down the satiny smoothness of her back and pulled her quivering flanks to him.
Ginny responded as if he had given her an electric shock. She pressed herself hard against him. She gasped and wriggled with passion.
Enriched by his experience with an older woman, Don did what any other sexually excited male would do. He molded her satiny thighs.
Ginny countered with her proven petting technique. She whispered an endearment and gently and expertly undid Don's belt.
Don warned, "Tonight you better not do that, Ginny. You might suddenly find it inside you."
She paused. "We've fooled around a lot together without losing control."
"That kid stuff is hard on a fellow's nerves."
He became aware of the flower-fresh odor of Ginny's warm little body. He nuzzled her breasts. He felt her touch tentatively at his groin. Abruptly she unzipped him. He had warned her, dammit! Her small hand dove into his shorts and pried out his distention. Her other hand joined in. She rubbed it between them.
She whispered, "I'm playing with fire, Don. Is that what you mean?"
His breath was coming quickly. He pulled down the zipper of her white shorts. There was room for his hand to slip down inside her panties to the furry little mound and then to the dampness below. Ginny stiffened. Her hands stilled. She waited tensely as he stroked the slippery wetness of her nest. She seemed to be studying her body's reaction to him. He found her virginally narrow at first, but soon enough she was enlarging, softening.
Suddenly she gave a little cry. Her thighs vised on his hand. "Don, please. Darling, listen. I want it. I want it, Don!"
Ginny was too young. He should not do it.
With Harriet there was safety, no responsibility Ginny slipped out of her shorts and panties. He stared at the mossy crevice between her thighs.
She said, "Now, Don. You must!"
That did it. He could not resist.
Ginny was eyeing his oversized tiger. Actually she was frightened, but the moist pulsing at her center would not be denied. She watched, biting her lip, as he lowered himself to her virginity. She felt a velvety caress burn up and down her genital skin. Then gently he wedged into her. Incredibly, her trembling lips opened enough to contain him. She was tight but slippery and soon he had squirmed past her portals.
Ginny thought, it's happening! It hurt a little, yet her vaginal sphincter was closing eagerly on his shank. She raised her legs. She got more. Something fluttered quirkily inside her. She heard squishing sounds and felt moisture dribble out and down her rear crease.
Delighted with her success thus far, she made a conscious effort, wringing her inner self tight on him. His slippery member jerked. Ginny was so pleased with herself that she giggled.
Something new was happening. A shudder convulsed her belly. It opened like a bell: a fluid, rippling dilation. It then drew tight on his slithering thrust She realized that she was hurtling into orgasm Sweat broke out on her lip. She throttled a scream. This was not how she had pictured being had. This was not passive. She was racing back and forth on the iron within her, using his strength to pull little flying spasms out of herself. Suddenly, Don exploded.
Ginny moaned, thrashed, humped and whipped her body against him. She went over the peak on his last shuddering release.
* * *
Afterward she murmured, "Was that kid stuff? Was it, doll?" She laughed. He did not have to answer.
Don grunted. Why tell her she was way out? he thought. The best. And then his inevitable comparison of Ginny's with Harriet's bed appeal stuck a needle of guilt into his heart.
Ginny was mockingly persistent. She playfully pulled his nose and ran her fingers through his hair. "Was it, man? How was it? Still kid stuff, gorgeous?"
"Quit it," Don said. "You're okay." He yawned and closed his eyes as Ginny wiped his sweating face with her handkerchief. He was listening to the music Ginny said was something an old guy named Beethoven had composed in the moonlight and the music was nice enough. But when Ginny took his hand and put it to her breasts and intimated she could use some more, he obliged because her equipment set his blood pulsing powerfully. The lad and the lass blended easily and kept loving each other for the longest time until they were both contentedly tired....
* * *
Ginny was humming a little tune of happiness as she straightened out the bed after Don had gone and she restored her room to its virgin orderliness. The pair had not even touched the potato chips. Ginny tore open the crackling container and began to nibble.
When the chips had vanished she was aware of a sharpened appetite. She undressed quickly, sponged herself down with a damp wash cloth, sprayed her self with powder, put on her pajamas and tripped downstairs to raid the refrigerator.
Her mother stepped in as Ginny was wolfing a huge sandwich she had made out of hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes and cold cuts on a good twelve inches of crusty bread. Ginny answered her parent's query as to how she had spent her evening with a sweet flower of a smile.
"You'd never guess, Mumsy," she said. "I spent a perfectly lovely evening at home listening to those classical records Daddy sent me."
Mrs. Grimes was relieved. "I think you are really growing up at last, darling," she said enthusiastically. "Remember how I've often told you it's nice to stay home sometimes?"
Ginny agreed. "It's lovely, Mumsy. I'm going to do it often. I don't think I ever really liked going out-but all the kids do and you have to keep up with the crowd." Ginny felt well ahead of the others but her mother just would not understand that.
10
MRS. ELIZABETH SMITH disapproved of Harriet on the score no woman was quite good enough for her son. But the mother was old-fashioned enough to believe in marriage and strongly maintained a husband's job was to make his marriage work. When Bill confided to her his was on the skids, his mother let him have it straight.
She spiced her scolding with advice. Bill was to stop running around. His mother knew his weakness, undoubtedly inherited from his father. She told him to woo his way back into Harriet's favor. If that didn't work, he could try beating her....
* * *
Bill drove home after church Sunday morning in a subdued mood. He wanted to bring Harriet flowers but the florist's shop was closed. So instead he bought a three-pound box of candy in a gold wrapping and was rehearsing all the nice things he was going to say to his wife.
But when he found Donald Brent hunched in Bill's seat in the dinette opposite Harriet and consuming what seemed like an exceedingly attractive lunch, the older man nearly dropped the candy. Instead of presenting it with a romantic speech, he slapped down the box on the table and glared. What the hell was the Brent kid doing here? Bill thought. Sunday was one day of the week he and Harriet always spent alone.
As he made an attempt to smile, Bill had the unhappy impression Harriet's greeting was the kind women bestow on bill collectors and dirty old men who pinch bottoms in subways. And the Brent kid regarded Bill with a bored stare the older man found difficult to appreciate. His wife's and Don's expressions said quite plainly Bill had butted in on something.
Bill glanced at Harriet, then at Don, then back to Harriet.
"So I'm just in time for lunch. Right on the nose, you might say." His joviality was forced.
But he waited for someone to answer. In the silence that followed, Don reached for Bill's pewter tankard and took a long draft. Harriet sat motionless. She was pale and tense. Bill wanted to stroke her hand to comfort her but he was awkwardly conscious of young Brent watching. She might brush Bill off in front of the kid.
Bill hoped he was mistaken in thinking they did not want him. His feeling could be just his imagination. His having been on the outs with Harriet for nearly a month had frayed his nerves. His memory began to work at top speed. He had never seen the Brent kid drinking beer before. These kids certainly grew up fast, Bill thought. Donald Brent had seemed a gangling lanky kid only a few weeks back. Now he was a husky young man. Quite a hunk, in fact. But why was Harriet letting him use the tankard? Bill wondered.
Harriet suddenly seemed revived. She arose and said, "I'll set you a plate, Bill. I didn't think you'd be back so early." As she put the plate in front of her husband, she said, "Don and I are going to the beach."
Bill was on the point of saying that was okay by him when the proprietorial husband part stubbed its toe. He had come home specially to talk to Harriet. What kind of man would let his wife go off with a mere youth when he, Bill, wanted her at home himself? It didn't make sense. He considered briefly. He might go with them. But he did not want to.
What he wanted was infinitely more important.
"I don't think I feel like the beach today, sweetheart," Bill announced. He tried to sound casual as he poured his coffee. "Much too crowded."
"But I promised Don." Harriet sounded as if the outing were of major importance. Her eyes were pools of resentment. Her underlip pouted. That pout determined Bill to be firm. He had been too indulgent lately. It was time this farce they were playing ended. Harriet spoke as if he were some kind of a monster. And it was damned ridiculous for a grownup gal to get all smoked up just because she couldn't take the neighbor's boy to the beach.
Boy? He's not a boy any more, Bill thought. Don's a man. He's probably got a girl of his own. These kids don't wait. They learn fast. So, Bill reflected, he might be doing young Brent a favor by taking Harriet off his hands. The kid often said he felt he was under an obligation to the Smiths because of all they had done for him.
Bill regarded Don. "You don't mind, Don, do you?" he said. "I think we'll stay home." He leaned back in his chair and stretched. "Home's a good place on a Sunday when you're married. I go off so early weekdays and I get back so late I hardly have time to talk to Mrs. Smith. You know how it is. This darned commuting is a headache."
Don shrugged. "It's okay by me. I'll find something to do." He sounded resentful. Bill felt sorry for him. The youth's mother spoiled him and so did Harriet. The kid was always running to her with his troubles. As Bill studied Don's disgruntled face, the older man was glad his own mother had brought him up right after his dad had died. Bill had never been spoiled.
A thick silence ensued. None of them seemed disposed to talk. Instead of leaving as Bill had expected, Don poured himself some more beer and sat with his elbows on the table, chin in his hands.
Harriet looked palely distraught.
It was time for action, Bill decided. Harriet must be suffering from thwarted mother love. Her association with Don in the past was responsible. Harriet had said once she felt as if she were a substitute mother for the boy because Mildred had to hold down a job. It was time the Smith family had a child, Bill thought.
The thought stirred him.
This afternoon he would turn the trick, perhaps. He studied Harriet's profile for a long moment and found her satisfyingly beautiful. She might put up a fight but this time he would master her. The com forting decision made, his spirits rose. Happy days were around the corner.
Whistling a gay little tune, Bill helped himself to a generous portion of the strawberry shortcake Harriet had taken out of the refrigerator. He poured himself another cup of coffee.
He glanced at his watch. "It's getting late, Don. You'd better be moving if you're going to the beach."
Don nodded, still sullen. "Yeah, I suppose so."
He arose as if he had two chips on each shoulder. He hesitated at the door to utter an inaudible goodbye and vanished.
Bill turned to Harriet. "What's biting him? Papa been on his neck again?"
Harriet nastily regarded him. "You didn't have to throw him out. He's upset and I don't blame him. He was looking forward to going to the beach and you spoiled it all."
Her anger blazed. Bill watched the slow rise and fall of his wife's bosom, and desire swelled in him. The sooner he took her to bed, the better. This nosex business was ridiculous. He would go on his knees to Harriet if she wanted him to.
He saw her then lovely and virginal. It was easy to let his eyes worship her. He said tenderly, "And I was looking forward to spending a lovely Sunday afternoon with the nicest thing that could ever happen to a man."
Bill put his hand on Harriet's arm. The touch of her flesh sent his passion soaring with his hopes. He added in a contrite voice, "I hope I've still got priority, sweetheart."
Bill's grip on her arm tightened. His eyes burned into hers. His love for her was mature and steady now. He was sure of himself. Presently he would plant his seed in her loins. They would have a son. The urge to take her in his arms and carry her into the bedroom was tremendous.
He continued like a man in a dream. "Harriet," he said, "I love you. Darling, forgive-"
Harriet coldly interrupted. "You had no right being rotten to a kid who had a miserable home life like Don. I'm ashamed of you."
Harriet knocked her chair over backwards as she sprang up. She brushed Bill aside and rushed out with a flutter of skirts and a flash of sun-tanned leg. Bill followed. He intended to plead with her. If that failed, he intended to be rough.
He was at Harriet's heels when she burst into the guest room and banged the door in his face. His anger flared. Harriet wasn't playing fair, he thought. But what woman did?
A few minutes passed. When he had cooled off, he knocked on the door and said, "Harriet, I want to talk to you. It's rather important."
He heard her approach the door. But instead of opening it as he had hoped, Harriet cried, "Go on, talk. I'm listening. Say your piece. I don't have to look at you, do I?"
Bill answered sadly, "No, you don't have to look at me."
Without waiting for a reply, he turned slowly into the living room. Women were a problem, Bill thought. Wives certainly were. Only idiots married them.
Behind the locked door Harriet felt aggrieved and then frightened. Why had Bill been so rotten; to Don? Did Bill suspect anything? She searched her mind. No, she decided, her husband was just being his old arrogant and selfish self. He had rushed home from his mother merely to spend Sunday afternoon in bed with Harriet. The wretched husband simply wanted to use her. Like a whore-but for free.
Harriet glared at the woman in the mirror who glared back at her. Bill was a brute. But she glanced away as a very strong part of her insisted she wanted Bill to use her. Didn't she want him? So go out and get used, she told herself. And use him as he uses you, chum. But no, she countered to herself, that would degrade me.
Harriet felt frantically frustrated. How was she to rid herself of her tension?
Well, she could try old faithful-stand on your head and think of your favorite book.
Her fingers were still trembling as she took off her dress and bra. Then she arranged a throw rug on the middle of the floor between the bed and the dresser with its magnificent Italian lamp. She was ready, now, and without further ado she stood on her head. She wore only panties and earrings. But she was damned if she could think of her favorite book.
Furthermore, it seemed after a few moments that the floor had hardened since she had last stood on it. Or her head had become over-soft. In any case, Harriet panicked and, in obeying Newton's Law, she careened against the dresser and swiped the Italian lamp. She toppled with a thump as shattered porcelain fragments flew about the room to their various resting places.
Harriet lay stunned. Her hip hurt where it had hit the dresser. So did her rump. And she had banged her head. The ceiling was going slowly in and out of focus.
Well, at least she no longer felt frustrated. She began to laugh without tears. That poor old lamp, she thought. She had loved it but it really had been a monstrosity.
Then somebody was knocking at the door.
Bill was calling out. "What hapened? Are you all right?" He sounded genuinely alarmed.
Harriet did not answer immediately. The knocking was strangely comforting. Bill banged again.
"What happened? Harriet, are you all right?"
Harriet drew a deep breath. She said in a sugary tone, "I'm quite all right, darling. I'm trying to hang myself but the nylon thread keeps breaking. Please don't disturb me." She paused to let that sink in, then added, "And, darling, if there's a bad smell coming under the door in the morning, you'll know you'll be able to marry Carol without committing bigamy. And no flowers, please-sprinkle my ashes in the pool at the country club and release five white pigeons. That will get your name in the paper."
Bill did not answer. His footsteps as he retreated sounded like the thumping of a bass drum at a royal funeral.
Harriet now felt hugely relieved. After a moment of mourning for the lamp, she stood on her head with perfect equilibrium and recited what she could remember of The Owl and the Pussycat. Completely restored, she decided it was too bad her particular owl was such a bastard.
When she emerged, Bill was watching TV. He was totally uncommunicative. To preserve her own image of aloofness, Harriet ate a sandwich in the kitchen. Having washed it down with a cold beer, she set the table for one, fixed an attractive dish of cold cuts with a mixed salad and put her head through the doorway to say, "Your dinner's on the table, sir. There's ice cream in the freezer."
Bill's response was unintelligible. Harriet did not want to hear it, anyhow. Back in the guest room, where she intended to make Harriet's last stand, she wondered what Don was doing. The poor kid had looked so crushed. But he had deserved it, she thought. He hadn't had to be so truculent. But Bill wouldn't suspect anything. Her husband did not have that kind of imagination, thank God!
A feeling of helplessness came. She couldn't go on like this. How would she rid herself of Don? Perhaps she should lose her temper? No, that wouldn't accomplish anything. Men were surely a nuisance. Don wouldn't take no for an answer any more than Bill. Why did she have to attract that kind?
But she was definitely sorry for Don. Bill was a perfect monster to have deprived the youth of the pleasure of spending a Sunday afternoon at the beach. She would tell Bill so when they were on speaking terms again. If they ever were!
Harriet's concern for Don's bruised ego might have been considerably watered down had she been able to scan a tender scene enacted in a secluded hollow on the beach a bare five miles away. Had she seen a certain young man's vibrations and heard his muted grunts as he surrendered himself to an ecstatic eruption, Harriet would have had no trouble banishing him forever....
* * *
Ginny said that making love in the sand had its drawbacks. They were in a hollow in the dunes, out of sight, but suppose someone caught her bare-bottomed? Besides, she could get gritty sand inside her.
On the other hand, she had a reason to surrender on the spot. She guessed that Don had someone else, someone more experienced. She must show that she was adroit enough to meet any competition.
She let him pull down her halter, exposing her breasts while she dug his hardness out of his trunks. She teased it with feathery caresses. She rubbed her face against his chest, slowly kissed down his torso.
"What are you doing, Ginny?"
She giggled, full of mischief, as she nuzzled his stomach, tongued his navel. He tasted of salt. Her nostrils flared with excitement. Oh, she wanted it in her. She could put up with the sand. But Don must learn to think of her as a woman, not just a young girl who knew only kid stuff. She bent down until she could kiss and lick.
"Ginny-I can't believe it!" he gasped.
But he had to believe. He groaned and fell back, lay twitching as she laved him while kneading and fondling. She felt his throbbing begin. He was almost there. She would stay. Yes. Go the route. It was good. She liked it. Loved it. Oh, Don, I want to have it, keep it, make it mine forever.
* * *
Don would not look at her.
Ginny asked, "What are you worrying about?"
"I'm not worrying," Don asserted. "Can't a fellow think sometimes?"
"Did you like it?" Her green eyes clouded. "You certainly act funny. Not many girls would do that for a guy."
"Sure, I liked it fine."
Having thus mollified the girl, Don returned to his meditations as Ginny dreamily gazed at him. He couldn't wait until he cornered Harriet alone. He pictured himself suddenly as a man of the world. Harriet would regard him with awe and wonder. "I haven't got time for anything else," he would say. "Come on, make it snappy. Tame that old tiger...."
* * *
When he reached home shortly before midnight, Don allowed himself the privilege of tiptoeing into the Smith yard and peering through the living-room window to see if Harriet were alone. The TV was on. A solitary male head was silhouetted in the cone of pale light from the screen. Harriet was nowhere in sight. But the fact that Bill Smith was alone relieved Don's tension. Christ, he thought, supposing Harriet and Bill had been necking or in bed together!
Such possibilities were too ghastly to contemplate. Donald Brent felt sick. He turned quickly on his heel and, heedless of who saw or heard him, ran to his own house.
After pausing for a while to listen to his mother and father argue and being unable to gather what it was all about, Don stepped into his room. From under his mattress he took a magazine one of the men at the supermarket had given him. Sitting on the bed, Don turned the well-thumbed pages until he came to a picture of a muscular gentleman who resembled a wrestler. He had a black belt around his bare middle and flourished a whip over the head of a half-naked blonde kneeling at his feet.
Don studied the picture for a minute or two. Its significance dawned on him piecemeal. When he finally grasped it in totality he smiled to himself.
It was real cool stuff. But he wouldn't whip Harriet, he thought. She wouldn't be that difficult. She wanted him too intensely. When a girl wasn't being serviced by her husband, she always wanted sex more acutely. One of Don's books said that. It had something to do with the mind. Which was fine, Don thought, as long as the mind led the body to bed.
11
BILL SMITH had labored for what had seemed an infinity trying to reestablish himself with his wife. He had yet to see major results. He was sitting in a cozy bar in the city and waiting for Harriet. Her agreeing to meet him did amount to slight progress.
Bill sipped his martini. He and Harriet had been to the movies twice together and had hardly spoken. His effort to hold her hand had received the swift brush. They had eaten out twice at a roadhouse. True, Harriet had talked-on any subject but themselves.
He had tried gifts galore-candy, perfume, nylons. Harriet had accepted them all with a cold little thank you and a stony silence. But he had loved her even then.
Harriet was his wife. A man should love his wife.
Bill sipped his second drink. Frankly, he was tired of making allowances for Harriet. There was a limit to the amount of cold-shoulder treatment a guy could absorb. In odd moments at work he had written Harriet love letters explaining how he felt about her but he had not mailed them. When he had read them cold, they had sounded fatuous.
Bill's eyes strayed along the bar. A slim and fullbreasted girl in a blue dress was drinking alone.
Bill studied her. She was young and sexy. There was a clean look to her-and something else. She was not waiting for a particular boy friend. She was waiting for anyone who wanted to pick her up. Bill's experience told him that. She would be good in bed, too. She reminded him of Carol. The male part of him that had been concentrating so fruitlessly on Harriet-quickened.
Bill glanced at his watch. Harriet was fifteen minutes late now. He would give her another half an hour.
Uncounted minutes later, he decided the fates were unkind when Harriet's voice interrupted his contemplation of the blonde siren who had signaled her willingness to play.
Harriet said humorlessly as she settled on the next stool, "Don't let me spoil your evening, Bill. I'll just have one drink and vanish. I can see you won't be lonely."
But Bill told her not to be ridiculous and charmed her into having two drinks and then rushed her off to Quantette's, an expensive little bistro that had been one of their favorites before they had been married.
As they ate the exotic food and washed it down with a bottle of Pommard, Bill's spirits rose. Now he felt he was making real progress. The hurt had vanished from Harriet's eyes. He found her hand under the table. Even if her response was not the warmest, she did not disengage herself. The nostalgic glamour of the place was working. They had spent so many tender moments at Quantette's.
Bill put his cheek as near to Harriet's as he dared and gently squeezed her hand. Harriet replied by moving her finger in his palm. Bill recognized the old sign and his spirits soared. He opened his hand. To his delight, her finger stroked again. He had made it!
He signaled the waiter and ordered two apricot brandies.
When they came, Harriet gave him a long and sexy look and said, "I have an idea you're trying to get me high, Mr. Smith. You're doing so at your own risk. Don't say you haven't been warned."
Bill was one big eager grin. "I'm warned," he said. He pressed his knee against her thigh. Harriet had said exactly the same thing that memorable first night at Quantette's all those years ago. His girl was back again, he thought. He felt as eager to possess, her now as then. His desire made him positively tongue-tied. He wanted to tell Harriet how much he loved her but he was afraid to. She might revert and tell him to get lost.
All he wanted now was to lead her to bed. Their eyes met. His were pleading. Hers seemed to tantalize him. Bill felt helpless. No woman had ever been quite so baffling. Was Harriet just fooling him as part of her revenge?
But she seemed so ardent. She couldn't be fooling, he thought. Harriet was a sexy chick. Bill knew his wife. He signaled the waiter again, this time for the check, and was momentarily disappointed when Harriet said she wanted another drink.
She was just being feminine. Women liked to make a man wait. Bill finished his drink quickly and tried not to look as if he were waiting for her. He wouldn't even mention their recent differences, he thought. They would just go on from where they had left off. They were in love again. Good old Quantette's! And God bless apricot brandy!
Bill's impatience survived a further test when Harriet wanted coffee to escort the ambrosial cordial. Her eyes teased. "We have plenty of time," she said with an inviting smile. "We don't have to hurry. We have it made, man."
Bill agreed. The sun was shining again on their marriage. After a month of celibacy he was having difficulty containing himself. He slid his hand playfully up Harriet's thigh under the table.
Harriet imprisoned it for a moment. She arched her brows and passed her tongue slowly across her lips. "Careful, Mr. Smith. You're trespassing. You know what happens to trespassers, I hope." Her look was wanton.
"I hope the prison's ready," Bill gave her an enraptured survey.
"You never know." Harriet's sigh was deep and gusty. "It's quite possible."
When Bill finally drew her outside, it was raining,, a little. The sidewalks gleamed in the streetlights. There was the smell of damp leaves and freshly washed air.
Harriet insisted on walking awhile. "It's not raining too much," she said. "That place was so stuffy. I want to wake myself up." She put her arm in Bill's. "I love walking in the city. Remember how we used to in the good old days?"
Bill was in a cradle of delight. Molten fire ran through his loins. There was a little hotel where they had spent many happy nights enjoying the delights of each other's love-hungry bodies. There was really no reason to go home this particular evening, he thought.
He slipped his arm around Harriet's slender waist and moved his hand slowly upwards until it found one of the breasts he loved to kiss.
Harriet wriggled appreciatively and gently removed his hand. "Not in the street, darling. Someone might think we're in love."
"We are, aren't we?"
"No, silly, we're married." Harriet sounded deliciously inviting. She put her arm in Bill's and linked their fingers. "But I like it, I think."
They walked for awhile in silence until Bill said, "Sweetheart, I've got an idea. Our little hotel. It's only just around the corner." Bill felt urgent. "Come on, Harriet," he said, "let's have a ball."
Why didn't she answer? Bill worried. He could have sworn she was as ready as he was. He glanced at her nervously. Was there still something wrong?
There was nothing wrong.
In love with her husband all over again, Harriet was feeling no pain. She was filled with a special kind of longing which unblessed by marriage would have been sheer lust. But marriage had made Harriet practical. Who wanted to wake up in a hotel room and face a journey home in the daylight wearing a cocktail dress?
She squeezed Bill's hand. "Let's go home. It's silly to spend money on a hotel when we've got a nice home to go to."
Bill smothered his dashed hopes and flagged down a cab. In the crowded train where they had to sit opposite each other, he kept noticing how beautiful Harriet was. It was good to be with her again. How lucky he was. Once, when Harriet crossed her legs and revealed a space of white flesh under her short skirt, his passion nearly overflowed. He was in pain.
"Be careful, darling," Harriet admonished as Bill drove home from the station as if he was competing in the Grand Prix. "I'm too young to die." She laid her head on his shoulder.
The tires screeched as Bill swung around the corner into their street. He was a man in a hurry.
In the vestibule he gathered Harriet eagerly in his arms. He felt her full soft breasts that had been strangers so long. He ran his hand down her belly and pried apart her thighs to rediscover his marital playground. He kissed her greedily, pushing his tongue in and out of her mouth. Harriet responded with equal avidity. He pulled her close.
"Come on, sweetheart. What are we waiting for?"
Harriet replied by running her tongue sideways across his lips. Then she drew away and said in a shocked tone, "I think it's best to close the front door. You never know who's around at this time of night. They're still up next door."
Bill locked the front door he had left open in his haste. Harriet settled in the armchair and kicked off her shoes. "Better see the back door's locked, darling," she said. She yawned. "I leave it open sometimes."
When Bill returned, she was lying back in the chair, her skirt pulled up over her thighs.
"Take my nylons off, darling," she said. "I don't think I'll be able to manage."
Bill knelt to undertake the pleasant task. When her right foot was bare Harriet wiggled her toes under Bill's nose. "Kiss my foot, honey. You haven't kissed my little tootsies for a long time. I hope they don't smell too bad!"
Bill laughed. He kissed each pink-tipped toe. Harriet was the most delicious, the most fragrant, the most inviting creature in the whole world.
They wouldn't go to bed, he decided. He'd have her here first. A quickie to seal their reunion-then he'd take her to bed and love her seriously all night. As long as they could manage. They'd make a child.
He ran his hand up Harriet's warm white thighs. Their satiny texture excited him to the point of eruption. But he was prepared to take that risk. Harriet liked being loved in the chair. She would let him have her anywhere now. Her labored breathing was sweet music.
After he had unhooked the other nylon, Bill bent over and ran his tongue slowly up the inside of Harriet's thigh. She gasped and clutched his hair. This was going to be good, he thought.
Then Harriet screamed.
Bill drew back and for an instant stared at her in utter bewilderment.
Harriet was pointing over his shoulder.
Her face was blanched, her eyes strained.
Her arm shone palely in the dim light from the hall.
"Look, Bill-look! The window. Someone's looking. He saw us. He-"
Bill swung around.
Harriet screamed again. "There-there he is. At the little window, Bill."
Bill saw something move outside. He ran to the door. Everything was quiet. Bill peered left and right. The air was so still he could hear his heart beating. But he had indeed seen something move and it had been human.
A pair of clipped yews flanked the picture window. Bill moved quietly toward the one nearest the smaller casement where he had seen the movement. The guy might be hiding behind the tree, Bill thought. The peeper couldn't have gone far. Bill held his breath for an instant and then charged the little tree. It bent over under his weight and slapped its branches against Bill's face as it whipped back to the vertical. Nothing else moved.
Bill stood motionless, listening. If the peeper were still running, Bill would hear him. He might have scaled the wire hurricane fence separating the Smiths from their neighbors. Bill peered cautiously around the corner of the house. Everything was quiet next door. The Brents had a clipped privet hedge. Anyone going through that would cause a hell of a noise, Bill thought.
He walked quietly to the back yard. The only noises were those of a normal suburban night: a TV show unwinding softly, the faint roar of traffic on the parkway, a jet wooshing overhead, the occasional whisper of leaves.
After circling the house twice without seeing or hearing anything, Bill decided not to call the police. The whole neighborhood would wake up, then. Bill had something more important on his mind. He smiled ironically. He had quite forgotten sex in the other excitement.
Once inside the house he felt worried and distraught. He cursed the prowler. The bastard.
If Bill could get his hands on him he'd teach him to peek.
Bill was sure there had been someone at the window. He and Harriet hadn't both imagined it. Who the hell could it have been? Perhaps Sean Brent had got loaded and tried the wrong house. But a drunken man could not vanish so quickly. Whoever it was had been peeping deliberately.
Harriet was not where he had left her. Bill's spirits sank. He tried to push away a sudden and unhappy foreboding. He hurried to the bedroom. It was empty. So was the bathroom.
Then he heard Harriet sobbing in the room for guests and he hurried to comfort her. Poor kid, she was really jolted, he thought.
"I'm here, sweetheart," he called. "It's me. Everything's okay."
The door was locked. Bill halted, chewing his lip. Now what? Christ, not again-He folded his arms, his brow knitted. He could hear Harriet whimpering. Thinking he might have been mistaken about the door being locked, he tried the handle again.
Bill tapped lightly. He called her by name. No answer. Just sobs. The door was locked.
He knocked harder. "Harriet, open up. Let me in."
After what seemed an age, Harriet cried, "No, I won't. I won't. Go away. Please. I'm going to sleep here. I want to sleep alone."
She sounded more angry than frightened. Bill banged on the door. "Open up, Harriet. I'm coming in."
Harriet screamed. "Don't you dare. Don't touch me. Leave me alone. All of you." Her voice rose hysterically. "Catch him. That's your job. Go catch the peeper and leave me alone-leave me alone. I don't want any of you. I hate you-I hate you all." Her voice faded into sobs.
And Bill slept alone. He awoke in a blue mood. He was furious with himself. He had let Harriet make a fool of him again. Even if there had been a prowler she hadn't had to make all that fuss, he thought. A girl as scared as she had been should have been all the more eager to sleep with her husband for protection. Something was wrong.
The whole thing was ridiculous. Damned ridiculous.
Bill pondered as he fixed himself a cup of coffee. He thought of knocking on Harriet's door but he was not feeling forgiving. It was her turn to make nice.
He'd done his best.
Perhaps I'll call Carol. The thought occurred as Bill raced to the station. No, Carol was dangerous. The long-haired girl at the bar would be a better bet. She'd be good. Bill emerged from his daydream just in time to wrench the car across to the left as silly little Mrs. Elvin who lived at the corner backed her Caddy into the street without warning. Trudy Elvin was always doing that. One day someone would hit her.
He had missed her this morning by a bare inch, Bill reflected. He slowed down. The sweat on his forehead reminded him that slowing down had a special significance for him this morning.
A telephone booth on the corner beckoned to him compulsively. He parked the car and found a dime. She would be dangerous but what the hell, he thought. A sleepy Carol answered and quickly became fully awake to spit venom. Bill listened wonderingly. He was a bum, a bastard, a four-letter crook, a louse and a few other choice titles. He began to smile. His former secretary had met a delightful man. Bill's successor was rich, generous and attentive and wanted to marry her, and there was nothing he would not do for her and he was doing plenty already. So Bill could go take a flying something.
Bill was still smiling as he returned to his car.
He drove on slowly. He did not try to beat the light on the corner. He waited for the oncoming traffic before making a left turn. Going slow helped sometimes, he thought. Holy cow-supposing Carol had yanked him back into the saddle? He had escaped with his life!
So. He wouldn't rush Harriet. He would slow down all the way and act right. She needed time to calm down. The poor kid had been really terrified by that peeping business.
Lunch time he'd call her and start his campaign all over again and keep at it until he made the grade.
Harriet was too good to lose.
12
THE THING kept ringing!
Harriet stared malevolently at the telephone. She would not talk to Don. She would never see him again. She shuddered. She was afraid. Supposing he told everyone? Young people did not reason things out. If only Bill had caught him, she thought, and beaten hell but of him. Bill would never have believed whatever Don tried to tell him.
But matters had not worked out that way. She should have told Bill it had been Don Brent at the window. She couldn't, now, she thought. Bill would wonder why she had not told him then. And Don would give his side of the case. How people would talk!
Go away, she told herself. Leave. It's the only way. You'll get some kind of job in the city. You can always wait on tables.
At last the telephone stopped. Harriet lay back on the bed. She was heavy with despair....
She had awakened in a kind of trance and had hurried to see if Bill were still asleep. The sight of their empty bed had numbed her. She had lost the guy forever, she thought, as she had crawled into the bed-and she had deserved it.
After taking a shower she had reposed naked under the sheets in a trance of misery until the telephone had started ringing. It had to be Don, she had decided. Who else would call so early? She just wouldn't answer, she had vowed. Later, she would call Bill and beg his forgiveness ... ' But she could not tell him the whole truth and so there would always be a curtain of doubt between them. She thought of the event of the night before. She had been terribly shocked to see Don's face in the window. It had been so easy to push herself into hysterics to cover up her guilt. What should she now do?
She thought of Bill and patted the pillow on his side of the bed. Dear, wonderful Bill. Her man. In her mind they were suddenly joined. She shivered as her muscles quivered receptively. She could sense the touch of Bill's flesh against hers. His hands on her breasts! I've got to stop it, she thought, I'm having an orgasm. I'll be a nervous wreck.
The telephone began to ring again. But she was not going to answer the thing, she thought. The caller might be Don. She hated him. How people could change. But she knew she wasn't finished with Donald Brent. To her intense horror, just her thinking about him made her feel lusty. She must never be alone with him again.
Never!
Harriet sat up, hunching her knees under her chin and clasping her hands. She wanted "to talk to someone. Even Carol Gaines might do. Bill said Carol was the friendly type. Harriet laughed at her own sick joke. She lay back again. Might as well face the facts, she thought. Bill was the only person she wanted to talk to. She wanted him desperately. She would be sweet to the guy. No nagging. No questions. Just love and more love. The telephone rang again.
Harriet raised herself on her elbow and put out her tongue. Silly old thing. Go ring to yourself! The ringing did not stop, so she shouted a dirty word and miraculously the thing gave up.
She lay flat and slowly ran her fingers down herself. Her breasts felt swollen and her tummy ached. The touch of her own fingers was comforting. She thought nostalgically of that wonderful moment the night before when Bill had been about to kiss her. Her heart quickened. She held herself compulsively. For a moment, it was as if Bill were there.
But he wasn't. She couldn't fool herself.
The tears blistered from her eyes. She wanted Bill. She would beg him. Call him now. Now!
Harriet reached for the phone. I want you, darling, she would say, I'm all ready in bed. Come home to lunch and stay all the afternoon.
An unfamiliar voice answered. "Mr. Smith left for Connecticut this morning. He asked me to phone you at five to say he will not be back this evening."
Harriet took another shower. Instead of cheering her up, the shower depressed her. She dressed in a somber mood, repeating her resolutions to herself. She would keep the house locked all day. She would not answer the phone.
Bill must have left town on purpose. She could not blame him.
For the rest of the day Harriet and the telephone were engaged in a snarling match. When she had r used up all her curses, Harriet started to torture the I living-room rug with the vacuum to drown out the silly bell.
At four o'clock she was gloomily drowning a tea bag to refresh her exhausted self when again the phone bell slashed into the silence.
This was too much! she thought.
Harriet rushed into the living room and hurled herself at the instrument. She held her temper just long enough to make sure Bill was not on the wire, and then she let fly.
She told Don where he could get off. She told him he was lucky not to be in jail. If he ever showed his face in her house again, she'd call the police.
Ignoring his protests, Harriet continued until finally she talked herself out. She held back the curses because of his age. When she eventually dried up and was about to cut him off, the kid's voice came over loud and clear and irritatingly unruffled.
"Go right ahead." Don sounded surprisingly mature. "If you think you're going back to him for keeps, you're all wet. I'm not going to let you. He's not good enough for you. I'm going to tell him so. Then I'm going to get a job and marry you."
"You're out of your mind." Harriet felt weak and exasperated. "You silly little boy."
"I'm not! I have what it takes."
"You're much too young, Don. Besides, I'm married and I love my husband."
Don laughed maddeningly.
"Sure you love him! That's why you shacked up with me. Don't kid yourself. I'll make more money than he ever will. I got all kinds of things -lined up.
I'm going into the trucking business with a friend after I save some bills working for the utility company."
Harriet was searching for an idea to cut him down to size.
"Don, please be sensible," she said. "We'd never be happy together. We're not suited. We'd fight all the time." Saying that was silly, she knew. It put them on the same level.
"Where did you get that cruddy idea? We've known each other for a long time. We never had a fight till you got silly. And we get along fine in bed, don't we? You never had it so good. You told me that You like that."
Harriet remembered how proud he was of his sexual prowess. How wrong she had been to compliment him on that. She felt ashamed. Don kept boasting about his. tiger. And she had gone along with the joke. Now she had to shoot that tiger to save her marriage. A man's pride was always his most vulnerable spot.
Harriet fought momentarily with a memory. Don was good in bed-very good. She felt herself sweating. The room became populated with familiar sounds. A car was passing noisily. Someone's radio was going.
"That's just it, Don," she said, her voice steady. "We don't get along fine in bed. You may enjoy it but I really don't. You're so clumsy and inexperienced. I thought you'd learn but it seems you can't. You don't send me. I just let you because I'm sorry for you."
"But you said-" his wounded pride cut his voice to a whisper-"you told me...."
Harriet rushed in for the kill. "I wanted to be kind, Don. You were always such a nice little boy." She found it easy to be compassionate. "I was just sorry for you. That's all. We all do silly things when we're sorry for people."
The silence told Harriet how hard she had hit him. Perhaps she had been too tough. She felt dreadful. "Don-"
"Yes...."
She had never heard him so subdued.
"Why don't you get a girl of your own age? You'd have much more fun."
He snarled at her, then. Furious words spewed forth. Words that tumbled out on the torrent of his anger. "Screw you. I'll have you when I want to. Get a load of that-"
Harriet hung up. She felt restored. She would not ever be scared again. Fear .was never real once you faced up to it.
She hurried to the kitchen and fixed herself a sandwich. She was suddenly delightfully at ease. She had won her first battle but she felt as triumphant as if she had won a war. Now she could go to Bill with clean hands and a loving heart. A true and faithful heart. She began to hum a little song. She did not know the words but it was a happy song.
She lit a cigarette and enjoyed it. The first she had really enjoyed for ages, she thought. She went to the window. Tomorrow she would cut the lawn herself with the power mower and do some weeding.
The radio said it would be fine and warm tomorrow.
Of course it would be. Tomorrow was going to be a lovely day. Tomorrow night she and Bill would be in each other's arms. Harriet hugged herself. She wanted love. She wanted sex but she wanted the married brand. Married love was best.
There was nothing to stop her now except her pride, and love was always stronger than pride.
* * *
Don's father, Sean Brent, was seething. His lean face was flushed and his sensitive mouth turned down. He ordered a beer at the bar of the tavern on the corner and -eyed it distastefully when the barkeep set it in front of him. To hell with drink, Sean Brent thought. He actually hated the stuff, now. Alcohol wasn't a good narcotic any more. Just a damn nuisance. A bottle was really poor company.
Like many another unhappy husband, Sean was a lonely man. He was not really an alcoholic. He drank only when his wife made it painfully clear she did not want him around. His boy had followed his mother's tack and frequently made it obvious he resented his father being home.
Sean was a sensitive intellectual. He had graduated cum laude from a good college with the intention of becoming a teacher. The war had deflected his career. Marriage had switched him to selling college textbooks. He had started in a big way and had kept going until the loneliness of his unhappy marriage had snapped his controls. His first big drunk had lost him his job. His wife had made capital of it even when he had found another in sales. In twenty years he had held six jobs. His present one enabled him merely to get by, but the leisure time it allowed him pointed up his homeless loneliness.
Last night Mildred had told him there was someone else in her life. She wanted a divorce, she had said. Her waywardness had shocked Sean as much as it had surprised him. Mildred had pretended to be so devoutly sexless all their marriage. The only time he had ever aroused a response from her had been the instance in which she had conceived Don.
Even so, Sean still could not associate his wife with divorce. He had attributed the recent improvement in her appearance to the fact he had been giving her an extra twenty dollars weekly out of his recent raise. But her fresh attractiveness was really due to the new man. The bastard!
Still, Sean did not hate the fellow. Sean was sorry for him. Mildred was not capable now of giving a man a fair shake.
Sean stared at his drink. He really did not want the stuff. He squared his thin shoulders and left. There were better things in life. He liked reading. He had published a book during the war. He might start writing again.
As he walked home he thought of the dull misery of his marriage. The neighbors talked about him, he knew. Mildred had spread the canard that he was a drunk. Sean Brent's shoulders stiffened. He was not a drunk. And she had told everyone she had brought up her son single-handedly. That, too, was a lie. But the people of the block believed it. He could tell by the way they looked at him. If they only knew how he had spent many of the nights he came home late.
He had spent the hours at the movies in the city or reading at the library until closing time.
As for Mildred's bringing up Don single-handedly, that was ridiculous. The Smiths next door had done far more for his son. The Smiths were a decent pair, Sean thought. Mrs. Smith was a sweet girl. He liked talking to her. She always made him feel as if he couldn't possibly intrude. He hoped her husband did not leave her alone so much because of another woman.
Sean reached his home. The place was in darkness. It looked as uninviting as every other unlit house and more hostile than most, perhaps. His face was sad. He wanted a home. His house was just a place not to live in.
The light behind the shades of the Smith house caught Sean's eye. Why not drop in for a talk? he thought. The Smiths always made, him welcome. He wanted to talk to someone so desperately. To talk about anything except marriage.
As he rang the Smith doorbell he had to wrestle with innate bashfulness. With his reputation as the worst husband on the block, he expected a snub whenever he called on a neighbor.
13
HARRIET WELCOMED Sean Brent with a bright smile.
While it was true Harriet had vowed married love was best, and that sex should take place only in married love, it was also true that Bill had not shown up. His office had phoned to say he would be delayed in Connecticut on business. She had so looked forward to being in Bill's arms, and she was therefore feeling terribly frustrated once again. So that in the back of her mind was the idea that, well, maybe she did deserve sex even though it might not be with Bill deserved sex with someone who also needed it, except Don. Until Bill claimed her once and for all! Unless, of course, it might turn out that she would have to claim Bill.
At any rate, as far as Sean was concerned, Harriet had come to have a warm regard for him that bordered on affection. Sean was intelligent, knowledgeable and friendly.
"There's no one home," Sean said, apology clouding his sculptured face. "My place suddenly looked terribly foreboding so I just dropped in. Toss me out if I'm a nuisance."
"I'm not going to toss you out," Harriet cried. "I'm going to make you eat Bill's dinner-" her eyes crinkled-"after I've given you a drink."
At the liquor cabinet Harriet turned to him with a rakish swing of her hip. "Bourbon, rye, gin, or vodka," she said. "What's your pleasure?"
Sean seemed more than usually handsome. It was easy for Harriet to give him a personal smile that reached over the fence of conventional neighborliness.
"Make it a small bourbon for me." Sean made a comical gesture. "You shouldn't encourage the local drunk, you know."
Harriet pretended to look about the room. "Where is he? Did he come in with you? I didn't see him." As she gave Sean his glass, she said, "I don't give that fellow anything. I promise you."
They both laughed.
Sean raised his glass. "Bless you, kind lady. There should be more like you in the world."
There was plenty about Sean Brent she had responded to years ago. His lean and sad face with its gray sideburns was intriguingly handsome. He was the type women felt compelled to comfort-to sew on his buttons and iron his shirts. How hungry she was for love, Harriet thought. She corrected herself. She was hungry, really, for a man. Aware of Sean's eyes surveying her with masculine interest she decided to give him something to look at. Now she was beginning to feel positively mischievous.
She curled herself up on the sofa and took pains to show an unusual amount of leg. She was glad she had fixed her face. Sean's eyes were prowling appreciatively. They came to rest on her cleavage and burnt hot spots of excitement into her flesh. Harriet shivered.
She gave him a dazzling look. If he wanted to play, she would. She certainly had no compunction about cheating on Mildred. Furthermore, Harriet's sexual frustration just had to be pacified. She felt a slow spiral of desire rising in her loins.
To her surprise she did not arouse instant response. Sean turned down his eyes when Harriet's scorching gaze met his. So the man was shy, she thought. He would need encouragement.
Sean was an entertaining conversationalist. They discussed Viet Nam, De Gaulle, avant-garde writing. He had written a book as a young man. Harriet analyzed the man's appeal. Like Bill at his best, Sean Brent made a woman feel important. He sought her opinions and listened attentively with tender approval.
As Harriet summed things up to herself, each could give the other something. They were two frustrated spouses with sore hearts.
She refilled their glasses. When she arose and excused herself to prepare dinner, Sean said, "Why not let me cook the steak? That's one of the few things I'm supposed to be good at."
"Go right ahead," Harriet replied. She felt blissfully light-hearted. "The best steaks I ever had were cooked by men."
Their eyes now exchanged unmistakable signals. She was breaking him down, she knew. She took his jacket and gave him an apron. Watching him tenderize the steaks and light the grill, she was aware of a bond of comforting intimacy linking them. A definite and natural rapport. They were man and woman. Her thoughts had become wanton.
After she had tossed the salad and set the table, Harriet stepped into the bedroom, slipped off her dress and unhooked her bra. Her nipples were already hard. The poor neglected little things, she thought. They wanted Sean to kiss them.
Laughing at her conceit, Harriet crossed over to the mirror and surveyed her nakedness. She tried to give herself an honest appraisal. Yes, she looked good. She chuckled. "You're bad," she chirped at her image and wagged her finger. "But it's nice. There's a man out there and he wants you-. Catch him and to hell with everything else for the moment!" Gosh, she thought, I'd better calm down or I won't be able to eat.
Having freshened and perfumed herself, she put on a pale green negligee she had never worn. The gauzy thing showed a lot of Harriet. Patting her hair and shaping some new lipstick on her lips, she laughed. If Sean liked breasts-and what man didn't?-he would appreciate what she was showing. The idea of seducing a father after having slept with his son seemed shocking to Harriet for a moment but she brushed aside her slight attack of conscience. Sean would never know, she thought. We're just a man and woman and we're both hungry. If he were as ravenous for sex as she was, they'd have a real ball.
Sean's eyes popped like a child's when he beheld her in the doorway. She wanted him to desire her madly. And she was going to be extra loving. The poor man looked as if he intensely needed a woman. How could Mildred be so cruel? Harriet wondered. But bless Mildred, anyhow. If Sean Brent had a normal marriage, he wouldn't be here.
Harriet forgave Mildred wholeheartedly. The steaks were delicious. Harriet ate while she listened with half an ear to Sean telling her of his student days in Paris....
The idea of Bill intruded itself again on Harriet's consciousness. The man had a nerve being delayed in Connecticut. The fires of her anger blazed and fed her sex hunger. Her intimate muscles were contracting.
She interrupted Sean's account to inquire coquettishly, "Is Mildred working this evening?"
Their eyes met, hers amused, his momentarily sad.
Then Harriet watched Sean's expression change slowly from grave to gay and knew he was falling in with her mood.
"At least she says so," he said.
Harriet moistened her lips. She allowed her tongue to peep between her strong white teeth.
"Bill's working in Connecticut and can't even get home...." Her eyes rioted with fun as she echoed Sean. "At least he says so. But you know what I think, Sean?"
Harriet's eyes burned into his. Alcohol, passion and masculine propinquity had woven their spell over her.
Sean smiled and shook his head.
"So what do you think?" he said.
Harriet imagined she could feel his eyes prowling over her. His gaze seemed to stroke her intimate parts.
"I think we are both sadly neglected spouses." Harriet cradled her words in a warm and luminous smile. "Perhaps we should do something about it."
He grinned and said with sudden eagerness, "And what do you think we should do? You tell me." They stared at each other.
She wanted a man, a man, a man, she thought. Not a silly boy, not Don. A man. And if Bill wasn't here, Sean was. The man who didn't get sex from his wife, God bless her. What had Harriet been doing with a mere Brent son? Here was the sire!
Harriet felt herself glowing. Sensations were whirling through her. Her breasts had tightened and the nipples felt as if they were holding back some fiery liquid.
She focused her big dark eyes on Sean, her face ablaze. The dear man, she thought. She would be kind to him. Didn't he know that? Why was he just standing there and staring?
Harriet held out her hand.
"Let's console each other, Sean. And come see my bedroom. It's quite a pleasant place."
Her robe fell open to expose her breasts. But she wanted him to see her. She was proud of what she had to offer.
"Please, Sean. We need each other."
She led him to the bedroom as fast as her wobbly knees would allow. Her breasts ached excruciatingly.
After locking the bedroom door she turned to Sean. She linked her arms around his neck. Reaching up, she pressed her hot wet lips against his and held them there. She slipped her tongue in and out until he freed himself to breathe.
"Touch me, Sean. Touch me!"
Harriet put his hand on one passion-swollen breast. She moaned as his finger pressed the nipple. His grip on her tightened. He ran one hand down her back and pressed a long finger between her flanks.
He did want her. That was all Harriet could think of. She felt like squealing with delight. Hanging in his arms she let her head fall back and pressed her tortured breasts hard against him, scrubbing her sensitive nipples against the golden blanket of his chest hair. He kissed her throat and then slowly moved his lips down to the warm divide between her breasts. She cried out.
"Oh, Sean-Sean!" Harriet felt utterly open. "Yes, darling, yes," Harriet slipped her hand down. "I want you, darling. All of you. So much-so much. Let's go to bed. And take your clothes off, Sean. I want to see you."
It amused Harriet to watch him undress. The man was obviously a perfectionist. He took off his shirt with the utmost care and hung it over a chair with his tie. He slipped the blue suspenders off his shoulders and carefully stepped out of his pants. These he folded into their creases and laid them on the chair. Next his shorts and his undershirt. He bent over and pulled off his socks and put one in each shoe.
When he was completely naked, Harriet gasped with joy and surprise. Sean was a beautifully muscled man, lean of waist and narrow-hipped. She put her arms about him and covered his chest with delirious kisses. Sean was really endowed, she thought. Like father, like son. Damn Don! Why did she have to think of him? No more kid stuff!
Harriet pushed Don's image out of her mind. She threw off the robe and posed for an instant to show him herself. She arched her breasts and tucked in her belly.
"Like me, Sean?"
His eyes worshipped her. Thrilled, Harriet gave him one quick passionate kiss and threw herself on the bed.
"Come on, Sean. Come to me." She could say nothing else. She was shivering. What was he waiting for? How slow he was.
Then she felt him lying beside her. His male magnetism invaded her. His hands were stroking. His lips came down on her breasts. He kissed each one in turn, first gently, then hard, until Harriet cried out. Then his tongue softly touched them to take away the pain. The sensation was exquisite. Her body became a carrousel of thrills.
This man was a master in the art of love. She must not let him know she was a comparative amateur. Sean was making her enraptured body an instrument from which he was extracting the sweetest music. He fashioned intercourse into a ballad instead of a battle. Harriet struggled to stay conscious. She did not want to miss a single note of this glorious symphony.
She clung to him in the depths of passion. Sean's lips were everywhere. He kissed her neck, her shoulders. He passed his tongue gently between her breasts, under her armpits. She wanted him so desperately. He had transported her to a new plateau of sexual love.
Ah, now, she thought. There it was, now. How gentle he was. Harriet arched. Her vitals seemed to be leaving her. How long could she endure?
Harriet's body convulsed. Then she relaxed, surrendering blissfully to his caresses. He had almost entered her, had drawn back. Had he lost his potency? Did all these delicious teases mean that in the long run he was less than a complete man?
He proved her fears groundless. The head slipping up and down her duct at last advanced, gliding snakelike into her flooding emptiness. The movement was so without strain that she pictured him as undersized. But there was more, and more, until her jellied sleeve was stretched, bulging with the suddenly leaping length of a man more powerful than his son. Harriet yelped her delight and pulled back her legs to get more. He supplied it with a rush ending in something much like a splash.
"Sean. You're driving me crazy!"
He smiled. His pace speeded, lengthening, almost leaving her on each stroke. He arrived with the bulky certainty of an express train roaring into a tunnel. Harriet squeezed the tunnel shut on him each time and tried to retain him but he was stronger than her suction. Again he returned, as tight in her as a sausage in its skin, at last exploding in a burst of wet fire that made her arch up against him, screaming, feeling herself gush, her very tubes opening to augment the spillage of honey.
* * *
Much later they dressed and had coffee in the kitchen.
Harriet knew that her crotch was sloshing with every movement.
How could his wife even think of wanting another man?
14
SEAN STOOD up to leave.
"There's something I haven't told you," he said. His smile was bashful. "You made me forget all my troubles, bless you."
"What is it?" Harriet saw he was deeply concerned.
"Mildred wants a divorce. She's got another man. She told me yesterday. I imagine they're together this evening."
Harriet cried out in surprise and then motioned Sean to the sofa. "Tell me about it," she said. "I always thought Mildred was the last person to think of divorce. She always told me it was against her principles."
Sean laughed softly. "Sex has no principles. Haven't we just proved that ourselves?"
Harriet shrugged and listened to his story. She sensed how hurt he was. Despite the treatment Mildred had handed out to him, he loved her. Or was it that he loved marriage more?
"I'm really too old to start again," Sean was saying. "At my age it's hard to find the compatible. In youth one marries for sex. In age it is compatibility that matters."
Harriet winced and glanced away momentarily. As she brought her face back to Sean's, something she saw made her stiffen.
She made an instant decision. Leaning over, she put her arms about Sean and kissed him.
He struggled for an instant.
"It will be all right," Harriet whispered as she held him tighter. "I'm sure it will be all right. Just a minute."
Then she freed him and ran to the door.
Donald Brent had moved away from the window into which she had seen him peering-that was why she had suddenly kissed his father.
She came on Don standing by the edge of the picture window outside. He stared at Harriet as if she were a ghost. His mouth was open.
Harriet sprang at him. She slapped him hard across his face. Don staggered back. Harriet slapped again.
"You little rat," she whispered fiercely. "You dirty-"
Don turned to run but Harriet was too quick. She reached up and grabbed his ear. He struck at her, she ducked, and the blow went wild.
"Come on, Don," Harriet cried. She pointed to the door. "Let's tell your father. I'm sure he'll like to know about us." She pulled at his ear. "Come on, Don. I'll scream if you don't. I'll call the police."
"Okay, I'll come," Don snarled. "I'll knock his head off."
Harriet pushed him inside. She shut the door behind them. Sean stood up. There was a tense expression on his face.
"What's this?" he said. "What's going on?"
"Your son was peeping in the window watching us," Harriet announced coldly. She was trembling. "He's been spying on me like that lately. I think you ought to know."
Sean blanched. He stared at his son.
"Is that true, Don?"
Don lunged forward, his fist raised. He shouted at his father. "And what are you doing here? I saw you kissing her. I'll-"
He aimed a blow at the older man but Harriet flung herself between them. She threw her whole weight on Don's arm and pulled it down.
"No, you don't. Behave yourself, Don!"
Don grunted. He allowed Harriet to push him back and stood staring at her, his face hot, his eyes blazing.
"So you lay him as well. You lay all of them." Don's tone was bitter. "You sure made a sucker out of me."
Sean interrupted, "Shut up." His face was thunderous with fury. He started toward his son but Harriet blocked his passage.
"Don't hit him, Sean. I'll explain." She tried to shake the tremble out of her voice. "It's all my fault. I encouraged him. It started as fun but it seems your son doesn't know when to stop. Sit down, please-let me explain."
Sean barked, "There's nothing to explain. The dirty little punk!"
"He's not a little punk, Sean," Harriet said. "He's a nice boy, the product of an unhappy home. Spoiled by his mother and neglected by his father-and-" Harriet's voice faltered. "I took advantage of him. Please sit down and listen."
Sean fell back on the couch. His knuckles blanched as he clutched his spread knees. His face was red with excitement. His gaze moved slowly from Harriet to his son and then back to Harriet. The father's blue eyes were fierce. He resembled a tiger about to spring.
Don was leaning against the wall and trying to appear nonchalant. His arms were folded across his chest, one leg was crossed over the other. A sad lion, Harriet thought. She felt sorry for him but would not spare him. He had to learn.
She was not thinking about herself. She had had her life-one life, at least. She had to free this boy from his obsession with her-and she had to free herself.
She turned to Sean. "As I said, it's all my fault. I've been having an affair with your son. He needed the experience and I needed the love. I'm tired of him now but he won't accept the fact. That's all there is to it." Harriet made herself smile at the stricken man. "Now I'm afraid he'll be jealous of you. He's been jealous of my own husband. That's why Don looks into my windows at night. He wanted to convince himself I'm faithful to him, I suppose." Harriet's voice iced. "Now you know the truth, Sean, perhaps you can talk sense to him."
Sean's voice had a weary rasp as he said, "Is all that true, son? Is it?"
Don was taking an interminable time before answering. Harriet studied his face impatiently. She saw no fear, no anger there. Only a bright youthful composure. She watched the handsome young face slowly take on an ingenuous smile that had, curiously, a spark of nobility. And now his eyes were suddenly shining.
"She's all wrong, Dad," he said. "She's only made that whole explanation up to protect me. She's always been good to me-better than Mother or you. Sure, I was jealous. I've been looking in her window-to see if her husband had come back. He's been neglecting her-she didn't tell me, but I knew." The blue eyes turned appealingly to Harriet. "I wanted her to be happy."
Don's gaze fell again on his father. "That's the truth. Mrs. Smith knows it. You have to believe me, Dad!"
Sean stood up. He staggered as if to shake off his shock.
"I believe you, son ... I believe you."
Don turned to go. At the door he said in a thick voice, "I'm going for a walk, Dad." He nodded in the direction of the Brent home. "Mom's back. She's got a black eye and she's crying. I think she wants to see you." He regarded Harriet. "Good night, Mrs. Smith. I'm sorry I behaved so badly." Then he added, with a glint of humor in his eye, "I think we're all clear now...."
After his son had gone, Sean Brent took Harriet's hand and kissed it. As he raised his eyes to her, he said, "Allow me to say again, Mrs. Smith, you are a fine woman. The world needs more like you. Good night-and thank you for everything-including the lovely dinner. And now, would you mind if I made a last comment?"
Harriet shook her head wordlessly.
"If your husband really has been neglecting you," he said with a deeply comprehending expression, "I think it's time now you put in a strong claim. Don't you?"
* * *
Donald Brent saw a familiar car parked across the street. He saw the lights blink and he strolled slowly toward it. Ginny put her head out of the window.
"Hi, Don, how's tricks?" Her smile was radiant.
"Okay. What you doing here at this time of night?" Don hunched his shoulders and stuffed his hands in his pants pockets. "Kind of late, isn't it?"
"I wanted to talk to you, man. That's all. I was looking for you everywhere. I saw you go in the Smith place-so I just waited till you came out." Ginny pushed open the door. "Get in-I have something to tell you."
"So what is it? Can't you tell me now?"
"Nope. It's kind of personal."
Don clambered in and they drove off. They parked in a place overlooking the water. A crescent moon sailed low over the horizon, its light silvering the whispering waves that slapped themselves musically against the bulkhead.
Ginny felt the setting was perfect for what she had to say.
She held Don's hand and began a little breathlessly. "I haven't told Mother yet, Don," she began. "But she'll have to know. She'll see it. Now listen carefully...."
* * *
It was true, Harriet thought. She was all clear. She had exorcised out her last piece of sexual retaliation against Bill-exorcised it out, thank heaven, with someone as understanding as Sean Brent. Furthermore, she had checked through Bill's story of his having been in Connecticut on business. Bill had been working at business very hard-and working at being faithful to Harriet. She had further ascertained that Carol Gaines was in no way any longer connected with Bill's firm, and that she had manufactured out of the whole cloth the story that Bill had wanted a divorce. On the phone Harriet had coldly informed Carol that she stood in danger of losing life and limb if she, Harriet, ever caught the blonde in the latter's natural habitat-a dark alleyway. Then Harriet had abruptly hung up. Yes, Harriet saw, Bill had turned over more than a new leaf-he was, apparently, practically a whole fresh tree for Harriet to be secure under. And-she was free of Don. There was nothing in her way to prevent her-as Sean had stated it-from putting in a strong claim for her husband.
Accordingly, Mrs. William Smith attired herself tastefully and bewitchingly, as befitted a young matron deeply in love with her husband, and caught the eleven a.m. train to the city.
At the station Harriet dumped herself and her suitcase in a brightly hued cab that seemed to sym bolize the spring in her heart and commanded the hackie to drive her to the little hotel where she and her husband had spent so many happy nights before and after marriage, the same place where Bill had wanted her to stay the last time they had been in town together.
The secretary at Bill's office immediately connected Harriet. Bill sounded encouragingly bright and gay.
"You're not kidding me by any chance, sweetheart?" he said.
Harriet chuckled. "Come right over and see, darling. And be quick. I can't wait. We've both been utter idiots for too long-and children, too. It's better to be grown up. Now we can really have kids! Hurry!"
Bill's voice had bells in it. "You couldn't be in a better place, Harriet. I have a client right around the corner whom I'm supposed to see today."
"He'll be out of luck," Harriet said. "I'm going to take a lot of seeing myself."
She was naked when Bill arrived. Their union was frantic and joyous. Nature without frills. After Bill's first rewarding relief, they lay quietly joined, locked in each other's arms. It was all so beautiful! Harriet kissed her husband. Bill was as happy as she was, she knew. They had both matured miraculously. There were no more doubts between them. Yesterday was gone forever. Only today mattered-and tomorrow. All their tomorrows.
"You know something," Harriet told Bill in the damp pause between the fourth and fifth mutual assurance of their love.
"Nothing except I love you." Bill kissed her on the breast.
"So I'll tell you, darling. You're the best lover I ever had."
Bill's tall brow wrinkled. He nodded. His eyes lit with humor. "I hope that's not by any recent comparison, sweetheart."
Harriet tickled the end of his nose with her eyelashes. "Of course not, silly. I was just dreaming-"
* * *
There were two uninvited guests at the Grimes-Brent wedding. One might have been visible to the closest observer under the form-fitting and gleaming white dress of the radiant bride, but the other whose name would be Smith was still his parents' secret.
After liberal imbibing of the Grimes family champagne, Bill squeezed Harriet's arm and said, "I feel just as if I'm married all over again, sweetheart."
"So do I. Let's go and pretend we are." Harriet gave Bill a loving look. They rushed home. Harriet let him undress her. No man could do it so excitingly as her husband.
She closed her eyes in ecstasy as she presented him her breasts already enlarged by pregnancy. In that sweet moment she remembered something she had forgotten to tell Bill-Mildred's story of how her boss had beaten her and given her a black eye when she had said she would obtain a divorce to marry him-and how happy Mildred was with Sean now. There was good in everything, Harriet thought.
But this was not the moment to talk philosophy.
This was surely the Smiths' moment. Bill Smith's, Harriet Smith's, and the new Smith's in her loins.
"Come on, Bill," Harriet whispered. "I can't wait any longer. Where are you, man?"
Bill gently laid his hand on Harriet's satiny belly. "Do you think he'll mind, sweetheart? I mean, is it safe? I-"
"He'll love it," Harriet interrupted. "So will his mother. We've got a lot of time to catch up on, darling. Think of all the days-and nights-we wasted."
Their union was the sweetest-and the strongest-ever.
