She didn't resist as he took her hand and led her across the room to a giant bunk. Reaching behind her, Rod unsnapped her bra and flipped it free.
"Beautiful," he breathed as her breasts pouted up at him, swaying and jiggling ever so slightly. She fought to hold her own lust in check as he bent to kiss the firm, yielding mounds and ran a palm across her rising nipples. But it was a losing battle.
He knelt before her and peeled her panties down and began caressing her thighs and belly. She quivered as he kissed her navel, then moved down....
ONE
It was only a dream. It had to be only a dream. It was bigger than life, fuller than life, richer than life, more intense than life, more exciting than life. And hornier than life. Most especially hornier than life. God, was it a horny dream.
In her dream she was dancing. At the start of the dream, anyway. She was back in high school, at her senior prom. The band was playing an ancient tune, and maybe that was why she was dancing with an older man, Mr. Jacobson. Mr. Jacobson was the lean young biology teacher. Even in her dream she remembered that Mr. Jacobson had never been able to conceal his lust when he looked at her luscious ripening legs.
In her dream, Fay was dancing discreetly at first, a few formal inches away from Mr. Jacobson, until i the dance floor became crowded. Then she let her hips sway forward, pressing the soft curve of her lower belly warmly against Mr. Jacobson's trousers at the pelvic area. That's when her dream started to get really interesting. As she pushed her hips closer to Mr. Jacobson she felt a swelling starting up against the gentle pressure of her yielding, responding flesh, through the gossamer fabric of her short skirt and the nothingness of her panties. Without hesitation, in her dream, she pressed her belly forward more firmly, then swung her hips back and forth, feeling Mr. Jacobson's cock firming, lifting, hardening against her.
"Jesus Christ!" Mr. Jacobson said softly, but kept his swelling prick mashed where it was.
Fay raised herself to dance on her toes, and let her tingling cunt do a circular little dance of its own directly on his hardened cock.
"Good God, girl!" Fay heard Mr. Jacobson say, and she smiled up at him and drew away slightly, letting her legs come apart so his thigh could press between, where she wanted it, against the itching of her pussy.
"You're a good dancer, Mr. Jacobson," she could hear herself saying. "Do you do other things as well?"
"Like what?" he asked. His mouth was close to her ear.
"Like, well, fuck," she murmured, careful to keep her mouth against his ear.
"Would you like to find out, Fay?"
She answered him with a question of her own.
"Would you like to fuck me?"
"Oh, God," he groaned. Fay was glad the floor was so crowded. She teased his cock again with a light circular massage of her warm and tingling young pussy.
"You could, you know," she said softly.
"Yes?"
"But only on one condition."
"What's that?"
"You'd have to eat my pussy first."
Mr. Jacobson stopped dead for a second forgetting all about dancing.
"What?" he said. Then he remembered to resume the dance. Fay let her cunt slide lightly against his now raging cock. Very lightly. She didn't want him to come in his pants, out on the dance floor. She wanted that cock inside her hot cunt when it spurted.
"You heard me," she said.
"Yes."
"Wouldn't you like to lick my cunt?"
Mr. Jacobson groaned, but kept dancing. Her lips were against his ear, her pussy pressing, then retreating, from the swollen hardness of his imprisoned prick.
"Lap my hot little twat?"
"I'll gobble your cunt till you groan," Mr. Jacobson whispered desperately into her ear. "When?"
"Tonight?"
"Sure."
"Have you got a place?"
"My cabin. Out by the lake."
"Can we get away right now?"
"Why not?"
She ground her ravenous young cunt against his straining cock, and held it there. "One more thing," she said. "What?"
"Bring two friends. At least two. With loving tongues and big, hard cocks."
"That's easy," he said, his cock hard and tight against her. "But why?"
"I want to end my high school career in a blaze of glory."
"Of what?"
"Of glory. With a faculty-fuck. A gang-fuck by men, not boys."
"Mr. Jacobson said.
The band continued playing.
Although the dream got wildly confused after the clear dance floor sequence, the setting of Mr. Jacobson's cabin was always recognizable through the rest of the kaleidoscopic, frenzied dream.
And what came through, clearly enough to be remembered in the morning, was that Fay, with her supple pumping young hips and tight ravenous young twat, fucked that staunch few of the faculty to a happy frazzle.
When she did wake up Fay Willaby was more than a little disappointed that the whole thing had been only a dream. Maybe she was disappointed too that her high school prom had been nothing like that, and that she'd been nothing like that, and that she'd never even danced with her biology teacher.
What she did know as she got into the shower that morning was that she did not want to go to the party that day. That day, or any other day.
It was a typical weekend party. Married couples, jaded with suburban life, lounged around the interior of the house, many wives exchanged for intimate petting in an effort to blow the lid off a monotony-laden existence.
Fay eased through the crowd of acquaintances dancing near the patio. She paused to light a cigarette and felt anger rise in her throat. Doug certainly wasn't acting like a husband. At least not like her husband.
When I find him, she thought, I'll give him a piece of my mind. It's the only kind of piece he deserves right now.
She glanced at the silk-draped window, saddened by the wind humming on the pane. March was going out with the bravado of a lion. Fay doubted if spring would ever get here, or if she could warm her twenty-four-year-old body in passion tonight; she felt cold, even though rage had come alive inside her.
Edsel Vaunet weaved along the staircase and approached her. She was faintly amused by his rye-thick breath as he yawned near her face. "You look tired, Mr. Vaunet. I imagine it can get pretty fatiguing to carry all your money around."
"When I reach the point of being so worn out that I can't chase curvy women, they'll have to shovel dirt over me. Dance?"
"That's what they're doing, okay."
Vaunet scowled as he ran his hand down Fay's buttocks and patted her thigh. "Ah! Nice meat. Fay, I wish you'd stop being difficult and join the spirit of our gathering-have kicks today and don't worry about-"
"Speak with your tongue and knock off the hand action." She gave the middle-aged Lothario an elbow to the kidney before edging away. "We're both married."
"But not to each other. Doug seems to be lost."
"I can always send out a Saint Bernard for him. Bye-bye."
She grinned with enough humor so that Vaunet would endure the rejection without rancor. Then she walked up the staircase and heard the din fade beneath her. Some people could cheat as easily as they breathed. He was a rich man who found deadly ennui with his spouse; Fay knew she would require a lot more reason than that to sleep with anyone else but Doug.
Unfortunately, he was doing a good job of giving her the reasons.
She found him in a huge room on the second floor of the house, bathed in darkness with three other couples. They had a stereo in operation. The individual games they were playing made her recollect her high-school fun in this town of Redpine.
A gasp rose in her throat when she saw how intimately Doug was holding the girl in his arms. During the awful moment of discovery, shock became livid within Fay, and she felt like crying openly at the disloyalty before her. She was stunned. Her own husband-did it mean nothing to him that she had been loyal and faithful and walked beside him through every danger and pitfall of their marriage? She blinked at the dampness in her eyes, feeling her cheeks grow hot with rage and humiliation.
She wanted to yank him away from his playmate and sock the girl on her giant nose. Fay's hand quavered as she dug her fingernails into the Jezebel's spine and squeezed hard.
"Get off of Doug or I'll bop you right in the teeth!" she snarled.
It was Inez, all right-her wavy, fire-red hair shone in the moonlight. She took her lips away from him and rolled over, staring up while she lay on the couch.
Fay growled, "I hope I didn't interrupt anything. It was rather lonely downstairs, and I figured you might be in the orgy room."
"Cool it, honey." Doug sat up and unhooked his palm from the redhead's leg. "What else is a party for, if not to joke around and meet new people?"
The alibi sounded weak and she resisted the urge to scream at them. It would only bounce off his stubborn hide. She had the ingeniuous power to think of more clever ways of straightening him out. "Inez has been a waitress at the drive-in for two months. I wouldn't call her new. Incidentally-another inch or so and her goddamn halter may drop off!"
Inez Gurt did a bump and grind as she rose to her feet. She tugged at the wisp of a halter, hefting it and letting her breasts bob deliciously. The khaki shorts and white pumps seemed inadequate to sheathe the magnificence of her body. She was an ex-strip queen who worked at the Joy Haven Drive-in, which Doug owned; her loose morality had worried Fay. Now she knew that the voluptuous waitress ranked as serious competition.
"Your husband's like the Rock of Gibraltar, Fay. I wouldn't have a chance to get him in bed-if I tried-so you can stop blinking those green eyes."
"My eyes are blue. And they don't like what they see."
Doug laughed and put his arm around Fay, sending a dagger of lust through her veins when he kissed her on the neck. "We've all had too much booze for one night. You don't really think I meant to get fresh with her? We drifted up here with the others-some live wire suggested a game of spin the bottle, and before I knew it-"
"I can understand a game. But when you start peeling a woman's underwear off, it ceases to be in the 'joke' category!"
"Holy shit, Fay! Only an idiot would cheat on his wife in a room-load of people."
She squinted at him, then sneered in the direction of Inez. The look conveyed animosity, and every other form of polite hatred known to jealous women since Eve.
Inez purred; "Did I rake up a hornet's nest? Maybe we can really cause a scene and have everyone in the house staring at us. Did you ever hear the one about the salesman and the babe who lived on the hill? She won't do it, but her sister will."
There were many things Fay wanted to yell and snap out, but in view of the panic she experienced at the moment, it seemed wiser to make a cool exit. "I'll be in the parlor when you decide to join me," she told Doug.
"Don't let it work on your imagination," he said in his deep, terse way.
She assumed an icily grim attitude during her walk to the main floor, where the revelers had gone into high gear. There was a void in the pit of her stomach. After a year of marriage she had the premonition of losing Doug, and she could not let that happen, because she loved him. Inez was more than dangerous. Fay knew she had to do something and do it in a hurry or else she would be on the outside looking in.
At one A.M. they left for home. He said nothing about the romantic incident, and the gayety of his singing and whistling only heightened the depression that she felt. Did he need alcohol and a sex-hungry whore to make life exuberant?
When they arrived at their home in the north suburb of town, she undressed quickly and got into bed while he showered. The festivity had drained her as well as throwing her into a mute shell. She had a poor night's sleep and did not figure another angle until later in the afternoon, when Doug had left for Joy Haven.
Donning high-heeled shoes to match her tight blouse and skirt, Fay began the walk toward the fair. Technically, the group of multi-floored stores were known as the Toga Shopping Center.
She hurried across the asphalt parking lot enroute to meet her mother. Fay felt the sinews in her bare calves ripple as she moved, causing a wolf-call from the idlers who hung about the Toga's neon marquee. She enjoyed the attention but did not encourage them. Beyond a drugstore roof she could see the row of advertising billboards. Then her mother came out of a nearby phone booth and waved.
"You're twenty minutes late!"
"I had some brooding to do at home before I could attack the salesgirls." Fay held her skirt down with one hand as a gust of wind sent it over her knees and revealed long, white thighs. "Not everyone can live just for today. Doug and I have a big future-or at least we did, at last tally. Do you need a dress?"
"There are hundreds of things I need on our earth. A husband wouldn't be on the list, though."
She nodded, slowing down to watch her mother yank a powder puff from the handbag and do her nose. Being raised by a divorcee had left its mark on Fay. She often had the urge to address her mother as "Shirley" or "Mrs. Moudeu" in honor of her philandering ex-spouse. But she didn't get any kick out of being so formal or frigid with her own kin.
"Fay, I hope you're not going to give me a lecture on my short-sighted views."
"Would it do any harm? A clean-cut fellow with the ivy cottage on his brain might do wonders for you."
They headed for a revolving glass door that emptied into the ladies' garment center. "Please-I already have a cottage," said her mother in slow, measured rhythm. "Rod and I get along too well for anything like the brand of life you suggest. That would ruin us."
Fay had no desire to argue about Rod. He was an executive flunky at the aircraft plant where mother worked, and she hoped that some day he would help her escape from the factory.
"I'm rather bad at guessing what your thoughts are," she remarked when they got on the up escalator. "Tell me why you spent the day in the Willaby cell."
"Brooding."
"Why?"
"Mother, now I know you're teasing and drawing me out on the subject of Doug. It's obvious that he developed a cold as far as our love and spooning go. You've seen it."
"You own weapons that can heat men up in an awful hurry."
"Oh? And what happens when a guy reaches the turn-'em-over-they-all-look-the-same-level? Or when he decides a busty redheaded waitress is more fun than his wife?"
The woman was silent for the moment. Fay swallowed at a pang of anxiety when she saw mother favor her arthritic leg, which annoyed her when she climbed. At age forty-one, she had a figure designed to give passion fits to the leering male.
Tires screeched in the parking lot far below, and Fay squinted through a sun-bright window at the scene. Two young motorists, probably juvenile delinquents from the nearby project, were racing and cutting each other off on the asphalt. "The kids make more noise than a barrel of monkeys."
"Not very original for you, my dear. Creative artists with four years of college ought to do better in the poetry line. In fact, by using the Mondeu visual power-I'll credit my ex-hubby with that much talent-you could even find a way to cut Inez out. Is she the villain?"
"The only one I know of. There's no reason to panic-all I have to go on is a petting orgy when they were half drunk. He's never done anything like that before."
"A drive-in owner has to fight the devil of temptation. You trust Doug."
"I love him." She felt her heart sag with a vacant sensation when she thought of his wiry, athletic body. He was so restless. Had he yielded to Inez or someone else during the long night-shift hours while she pined at home? Fay paused at the counter of bras and stockings. Taking a tissue from her purse, she wiped the trickling tear from her eye.
"I hate myself for thinking about Doug this way-not trusting him. But why has he gotten cold? I always managed to hold his interest before-"
"Wake up, sweetie. Maybe he is carrying the brother-sister angle too far, even for our type of casual neighborhood. Get to work. Hang on to him at all costs, or he may drift away-take it from a girl who went through it."
"We can't really accuse him of a thing. I could be making mountains out of anthills."
"Do something about Inez-and him."
A scheme began to take shape in her mind. Fay had yet to employ such a weapon against Doug, because he had been the height of virtue, unsullied and true. As far as Harry Feriso went, she expected no trouble in getting him to agree with her idea.
TWO
Fay gazed in sorrow at the empty white squares of paper on the table where she sat. There had been a time when she could do an involved crossword puzzle in two hours flat-even the numberless kind-but now her brain kept fluttering.
She arose and moved across the parlor. The sound of a jet airplane cut into the hazy sky far above the Willaby home, wailing its tormented banshee cry. She blinked in the silence after the plane had gone, then she looked at her painting of "Knight and Dragon," hung on the wall beside the fireplace.
Doug grunted from his slouch on the divan in front of their TV set. "I could never understand why you're so crazy about that oil. It needs more color. You've done better pictures left-handed."
"Thanks," Fay murmured. "Maybe I go for the Dark Age ideal, or a vision of how cute the knights were."
"May God have mercy on this slob for ruining your dream with a wedding ring."
"We should live through it okay."
A cold aura permeated her half-jocose replies, although she and Doug had found affection by kidding each other. She heard voices on the lawn outside their home. Glancing out the window, she saw a mob of children run across the grass beyond the hedge toward Ralin Street.
"You haven't said anything about the drive-in lately, Doug. I'd like to share in our problems, if there are any."
"Want to be a waitress for me?"
"It's an idea."
"The turnover's been awful-I don't pay the girls enough. Or maybe they figure I'm a lousy boss." He went over to the television and changed to another program, the bottom of his shirt ruffled, his pants unkempt in the youthful way that she knew was part of his attractiveness.
Her pulse thumped in her breasts. She hated to launch an argument, but they'd have to clear the air somehow. "It takes more than one year of experience to be a good proprietor, and I must say you've done fine with Inez."
"For the last couple of days you've been throwing her name into our talks. Ever since the party. I think we'd better sit around the house during my time off, and glare at the wall, so there won't be any poison darts. You say I want to make it with Inez?"
"There are uglier women in Redpine. With all the boyfriends she's downed, a jig in the hay with her wouldn't be very hard to take-I know you're faithful, though."
"You do." His face reddened as he rubbed his nose and walked along the rug toward her. "Fay, this may sound odd for a guy of twenty-three who isn't even sure what he wants in life. But I love you."
"So why did you turn me away in bed last night? Every so often I'd like to have pleasure and joy on a Saturday, like other wives."
"Knocking myself out at the Haven got me so tired, I couldn't move. Show a little pity."
She sighed in frustration and yanked the cinch of her robe tighter around her thin waist. With feline grace she ran a palm up and down her thigh. By continuing the line of discussion over his steady refusals and rejection of her when sex had mounted to a peak of need, would only sour Doug. He'd start moaning about her emphasis on sex.
He never admitted the obvious: when one partner shied off, it indicated a voiding of the whole marriage. The voiding could remain temporary or evolve into a straw that would fracture the camel's back.
Frowning at him, she replied: "I'm certainly not a camel."
"Huh? What the hell are we talking about now?"
"You're aware that Inez and I became natural foes after-after how it was at the time I showed up. I've tried to forget her, Doug. Then you had to go and hire the girl on a car-hopping thing. Of course there was no romance connected with it, but-"
"I can fire her just as easily if that'll ease your-"
"A skeleton from the past would rank as a poor motive for letting her go."
He shook his head, then drew a cigarette from the pack on the end table and rammed it into his mouth. "One of us is talking in circles. I'm not as educated as you are. What's the word? Articulate? I know you resent it when your old college friends stop in to visit, and I have trouble joining with their literary and psychology gab. The burden must weigh you down."
Her heart fell again. "What makes you think I have any such notions? I married you, Doug-for what you are." The anger she had felt began to subside under the gentle touch of his hand. She whimpered, letting him hold her and kiss the wet warmth of her lips, while he slid his fingers under the robe to caress the erect mounded bust. Each tip sprang to life, throbbing and sensitive. "Doug! Oh! Why must I get angry at you?"
"Because you need love, and I couldn't bear living without you-so knock off the crazy patter, huh? From here on out, there's only the two of us."
"We'll find the answer," she gasped. "I'd fight that dragon in the picture, if he tried to steal you away from me."
"You're a nut. Wild, gorgeous, naive, shrewd, old and young!"
She thrilled to the aroma of his sweaty clothing and tobacco breath and the feel of a hard yet affectionate palm. He brought his mouth onto the flesh of her breast and her brain caught fire. A distant volcano rumbled within her, but she knew it was not their time, for he was already easing toward the porch.
"Shit, I'll be late at the restaurant again. Promise you'll stay awake until I show up during the wee hours."
"Promise."
The old ardor had been lacking, though she tried to prove her receptivity; a tenseness had kept them from evoking honeymoon ecstasy. When will I get you back, Doug? she wondered. She heard an engine roar as he gunned the sports car. No ersatz and hurried kind of lovemaking would be able to conquer her doubts or the premonition of being shut out from his genuine feelings.
After waxing the den floor, she brushed her teeth and went to work on her coiffure. She combed her saffron blonde hair until it glistened and then she rolled it in a top-heavy chignon that accented her stunning figure. There was one hot gimmick by which you could rewind your husband. Just make him jealous!
That evening she spoke on the phone for a while with Juliana, the neighborhood gossip, concerning their flower society. By eight o'clock Fay was ready to seek Harry.
It would be too late to catch him at his law office. The most rabid hustler on earth needed deviation from the grind, via means which suited him, and Harry rated in the cocktail-sipping class. A brief walk south into the downtown area brought her to the door of his cafe. She would have preferred to drive but she knew Doug had left the sports car in a garage for tuning up.
The bar's interior had a statue of Lady Godiva, about twenty male drinkers, and smoke. Fay squinted in the cigar fog while she weaved past a shuffle-board machine. In the lounge it proved a little easier to breathe; she saw two women dancing in a comer-a hefty blonde and her willowy comrade who had the earmarks of butch and femme lesbian, in that order.
Before she caught the barman's eye, Harry Feriso smiled at her from a stool near the window. He walked over toward her in his quick, nervous gait.
"Hi, there!" she grinned. "Wonderful to see you again, after all these months."
"It's been a year and a half! Baby, you're just as beautiful and curvy and married as ever. I did manage to get a view of the ring when I covered your anatomy." He hurriedly eased onto the stool next to her, and she jiggled around so that the hem of the beige knit dress crept over her knees.
"And I see you're the same old con-man. Dating every cutie on the Connecticut shore, are you?"
"Yep. Looks as if I may die as the original Don Juan. If my clients were as much of a knockout as you, I'd win a thousand cases! Have a cigarette?"
"Thank you." She slid the cigarette between her lips, fondling his hand gently as he lit the end.
She kept flexing her leg to make the sinew waver under gray nylons. His attention went to the erect thrust of her bosom; a fever heated her neck briefly and she toyed with the wide hat on her lap.
"Who's the lesbian with the peroxide, Harry?" she whispered.
He laughed as he jerked a thumb at the lesbians united in a fox-trot. "They're regular patrons-they help give this place its bad name."
"I feel sorry for all women who let themselves go into the twilight zone. And yet it fascinates me."
"Ignore the fascination and give out with a sisterly kiss."
"On the spur of the moment?"
"I can't do things any other way-and to hell with your husband."
Fay tilted her jaw and saw him bend over, a sturdy fellow with smoke-gray eyes. At five feet eight he was only an inch taller than she. Harry's Roman nose hooked with a delicacy that gave him a Valentino air as well as providing the nasal twang in his voice. When they kissed now, she felt the heavy mouth grind upon hers with more than casual greeting.
"I'm glad it's dark in here," he finally chuckled. "You always had enough nerve so that a ring wouldn't stop you. I mean that as a compliment."
"The unattainable is a scene I dig."
She watched him puff at his own cigarette, stub it in the ashtray, and flick a hunk of lint off his lapel. His habit of acting by whims or quick urges worked in her favor. She was counting on that trait and also the hold which she had over him. Eighteen months of living apart had not changed it; he revealed its strength in his glance, the open lust when her breast squeezed into his arm.
"Honey, I think we should have a drink to celebrate the reunion-before I flip my wig."
"I was sort of hoping you'd spring for a meal. Coffee and steak at the Joy Haven?" At the sight of his frown, she knew there would have to be some conning from her end. "I thought lawyers made a bundle of cash in their wild little profession."
"There's one minor hitch. A big, strong character by the handle of Doug Willaby owns that drive-in. It's your drive-in, kiddo. I believe in Auld Lang Syne as far as the next guy, but-"
"He wouldn't be jealous at all," she lied.
"The Bastogne's a good, safe restaurant, if you can use 'safe' in describing a den where correspondents meet."
She got off the stool and ran her ample left breast on his elbow during the action. He shivered. "You're getting melodramatic," she purred. "It wouldn't hurt you to meet Doug-he'll understand why we're together. Of course, if it's a question of being afraid-"
"Caution is the better part of valor."
"Are you chicken?"
"This isn't like teenagers dragging in their jalopies, damn it!" He paused to rub his eyebrow, and in that moment she figured he was on the road of retreat.
"If he did get angry, I could invent an excuse. Insurance claim, legal quirk, and so on. I really want you to see the conquering hero."
Harry showed his teeth at her reference to the dead past. Then he snapped his finger, nodded to the exit, and put his arm in hers. "As they say in the funny paper-why not?"
She smiled and led him out to the curb where his sedan was parked. They got in without further hedging, a fact that reassured her on the matter of her Lorelei grip over him-she might need every inch of it. He drove away toward suburbia's milieu of tennis courts.
When they approached the road near the missile factory, she hitched up higher in the seat to admire it. "That's an example of beauty in edifice art, Harry. Glazed azure brick, concrete post, sculptured garden on the lawn."
"If I've seen one factory I've seen them all," he mimicked. "I like your esthetic architecture a heck of a lot better." Then, more seriously: "The feature of our missiles center is the Pied Piper jag-it drew people from downtown and out 'em in 'Outskirtia.' I may relocate there, myself."
Minutes later he cruised along a rotary on Third Avenue and into the Joy Haven lot. Fay stared at the five towering arc lights shining like smoggy planets in the night; they didn't give much illumination. Doug had enough bills without burning juice for the motorcycle gangs.
"What a nice joint," Harry chirped. "I expect to see them wheel Dracula up on a stretcher, for atmosphere. In the places where I chow down, they have women, life, rye and beer flowing with the music."
"It's a bit early for any crowd. Don't you ever get the urge to soar away from life?"
"Only if it could lead to a nice fat murder with me as the defense attorney. Otherwise I like people."
"I hate them," she kidded.
"Yeah." He stuck one elbow on the window jamb and waited for a carhop to notice them.
Fay knew that Inez had taken the night shift this week, making the situation even more pregnant. She would have to serve them. "The fact of my being a lone wolf kept us apart, Harry. You were always going to parties or conventions-"
"At the moment I'm hungry enough to grab a mouthful of that!"
She followed his gaze along the pavilion toward the Haven's door. Inez, breasts jiggling under her blouse, the skirt no more than a glorified bikini, came prancing out with her tray. Harry whined; "I've yet to meet your husband, but I know this isn't he. It must be a walking mountain of jelly."
"Inez? Before coming here she worked as a five-and-ten salesgirl, insurance clerk, and nude model. Her first piece of man was her own brother, when they were kids."
"Wow! Look at that body."
An old resentment flared within Fay as she saw the redhead getting closer to the auto. She dresses as though she'd like to get raped And by whom else but Doug?
"Can I help you?" Inez cocked her head, using one hand to brush the wild locks of hair back from her eyes. A grin lit her ivory-hued face. "Well, well! Fancy running into the boss' wife in a car with a new customer. Anything I can do for you, sir?"
"Plenty," he leered.
Fay was irritated by the girl's wise-cracking, and showed it in her reply. "Stop throwing yourself at him, Inez. Bring me a tuna sandwich on a hard roll and some french fries."
"You can call me 'Harry,' " the lawyer broke in. "And I'll have what Fay's having-up to a certain point. Allow me to say that your legs are the best I've seen anywhere north of Minsky's."
"You ought to look at the rest of it sometime. If it would be alright with Mrs. Willaby."
Leaning forward and glaring over the dashboard, Fay fought the anger in her brain. She searched the kitchen but found no sign of Doug at his usual post near the counter. It wouldn't take long for him to come running out when he did see her.
"Hurry up and fill the order," she told Inez, who had bent over while writing on the pad, to give Harry a shaded view of her breasts. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the skin under her loose blouse. "Did you hear me?" Fay repeated.
"Yes, ma'am! I wouldn't want to lose my job because of inefficiency." Inez pouted and stuck her ample derriere outward in a wanton display designed to aggravate Fay.
Harry reached his palm toward the waitress, stroking her arm. "Put ketchup on my spuds and you'll get a real tip, honey."
"I hope so. Otherwise a mean old boss may cut my wings and get revenge."
After she had swaggered back toward the drive-in, there was a taut silence in the car. Fay took some gum out of her purse and began chewing it, to ease her nerves, which rarely stayed calm with Inez around.
"Do you have something against the broad," he finally said, "or is the house rule that cold?"
"I'd hate to see my friend get involved with a known man-hunter."
"Old Harry is the friend?"
"Yes. Maybe you're a lot more than that, too. I've watched Inez turn on her hot-cold charm and make a fellow dangle, because she enjoys it. Come on-let's sit at one of the benches and get some air."
The car's door slammed behind her. She heard him moving toward her, amazingly light on his feet for so hefty a man. Harry wasn't what she'd call fat-just muscular and lithe and a bit overweight, and it interested her to speculate on his technique in bed. She hoped Doug would see the light before that hour arrived.
The lawyer propped his shoe on a rung of the chair when Fay was seated. "My dad was a great guy-bless his bookie heart. He made sure I knew about the dangers of women before I left Brooklyn. I can handle Inez."
"You may have to, judging by the look she gave you."
"It's a fatal charm that didn't work in your case, I'm afraid. The line broke and my fish got away."
"There are plenty of other ones," she teased. "And the right kind of bait might even have me sucking air, if I'm not careful. We girls are awed by con-men."
"Control yourself and be platonic here in enemy territory."
A breeze wafted across the lot, ruffling her dress, and she swallowed the uncomfortable taste in her mouth. He was playing it cool enough. But Inez Gurt offered a new type of stigma. Her reference to getting her wings clipped had been a thinly veiled threat aimed at Fay, who had stolen Doug from under the redhead's nose more than a year ago.
Inez harbored a grudge after losing out. Today she clung to the faint hope of wooeing him back. Fay knew that the rage of woman scorned had no equal in savagery, and she must be alert for the vengeance that could erupt.
She smiled as she sipped her coffee, thinking of Inez's raw silence throughout her serving of the meal. Fay was glad that the waitress had left quickly.
A singer on the juke box began wailing the theme of a smashed love affair. Fay, not especially overjoyed by the lyrics, put one hand on Harry's wrist. "Your temperature seems to be up, Harry-I wonder why." She enjoyed the feel of thick hair and sweating flesh that belonged to another man besides her husband. Her pulse hammered with expectation.
"Check the Registered Nurse book and find out," said the lawyer. He frowned at his sandwich, then tossed it away into a refuse can near the seat he occupied. "Our hospitals could use an intelligent tomato like you. Want me to put you through nursing school?"
"Silly."
She arose and walked to the railing that curved around the Haven's edge, overlooking the river. The moonlight reflected on the water gave her romantic sensations. How did it feel to get chased by wealthy professional men? She knew it would be fun to relive the experience and challenge of her courting days, if only-if she weren't tied down with a ring. I want to be faithful to Doug for as long as he plays ball, she thought.
"A warm spring night gives me ideas," Harry murmured in her ear. "Too bad we're not isolated from-"
"From the roar of civilization. I like to watch little foreign cars streaking up the highway like scooters in an amusement park. See them?"
"Fay, you're a spoilsport."
She bit her hp coyly, watching the two foreign cars move down the road, their oval lines gray under the moon.
"I need a big car. One night I got so mad at not having room to maneuver in the rear seat of a German 'bugmobile' that I kicked the window apart. You should have seen the girl's face. Then again-maybe you shouldn't-but the kid owned a real figure! Va-va-voom!"
The sound of a door slamming behind Fay cut off her chuckle at Harry's remark. She whirled around, and saw Doug rushing toward them in his white chef's apron and cap; when he got nearer, she could see that his eyes were bloodshot-tired. They blazed iron daggers at Harry.
"It's nice of you to pay a call at the homestead, Fay. Am I missing anything out here?"
She nodded. "Bored housewives can try a coffee break once in a while, too."
"Oh. We'll have to find you some more games or put you in the bingo club. Then there wouldn't be any-what's the literary term-ennui?"
Doug's sharp, terse reaction sent a wave of fear through her. He looked ready to punch Harry, who furled his brow and was at a loss for words, a condition very unusual for him. She coughed into their awkward pause. "I'd like you to meet Harry Feriso-an old chum."
The chunky man dug a finger in his collar and fidgeted. "Mr. Willaby, I presume?"
"I sure as hell wouldn't be Doctor Livingstone! You two could have found a smarter place to go for a date. Or maybe you wanted to kick me in the ass and laugh it up, Fay. The joke laid a bomb."
"For heaven's sake-he's only an old friend. What kind of language is that to use on-"
"You were holding hands and looking up at the stars a minute ago."
The ache in her stomach told her that the scheme had backfired. She had expected irritation or a sheepish apathy from Doug-not the fury which made his voice crack-and she knew his dormant temper had been aroused. Crossing her arms, Fay walked over to the trash barrel next to him. "Doug, calm down and listen to reason."
"This is the guy you told me about. The smoothie you went steady with, before I came along. Right?"
"Yes, but he's a respectable attorney now, and he did want to be friends with you."
"I'll bet."
Harry moved toward the building and scratched his nose. "I just remembered a very important date-er-appointment, with a client. He stepped in a bee's nest and got stung. Very nice to meet you, sir. It's unfortunate that you had the wrong idea-"
"Don't rush away on my account," said Doug. "You're too small for me to hit, anyway."
"Stop it!" Fay cried. "I thought I married a gentle, civilized guy. You're trying to frighten him and I think it's awful that you jumped to such a conclusion!"
"I believe we can end it without any law suit," Harry winked. "Let me know how you get rid of your bees, Fay. So long."
His face and neck were beet-red as he hurried to his car. Fay felt a cool tear running down her cheek. She drew a handkerchief out of her purse, dabbed it on her eyes, then glared at her husband.
"How could you be so utterly juvenile?"
"It's easy when you know how. I thought you'd go sniffling around other men, the way things have slid lately. We can't talk to each other, Fay. Something's wrong. The only answer is to lay down the law with one's partner-you understand the danger of temptation. I've done plenty of retreating with Inez, and it has to be the same from your end."
"But it wasn't a date! Years have gone by since I even thought about Harry."
She sighed, watching him parade up the stairs into the Haven kitchen. His calm closing of the door indicated that Doug would let the incident bound off his spine. They'd simply forget it. It took so much to rile Doug-and yet she feared for the object of his displeasure when he did get fired up-the wrong word with Harry could have meant a fight.
Crickets were chirping in the park at Ralan Street when she began to walk home. She sadly thought of her days with Harry. They had gone steady until Doug popped along, met Fay on a hayride, and asked her out. Their whirlwind engagement left Harry in the dark, although she did retain a strong hold on his affections and knew via woman's intuition that the attorney loved her. The love was dying, now.
After an amazingly good sleep, under the taut circumstances, Fay woke up in the morning feeling hazy. She felt that her grogginess might be due to the abrupt warm and humid weather.
She hiked the four blocks to her mother's house and found her on the lawn with a pair of clippers.
"You always seem to catch me when I have a garden tool in my hand," said the woman. "At least it offers one a Florida tan."
"And it burns the powder off your face. Can I help with the grass, ma?"
"No one can help."
"I suppose you mean that the weeds have beaten you, and the white flag is up. A fellow at the restaurant told me how to outmaneuver crab grass. The idea is to set your mower to a height of two inches and give the bluegrass some air. They'll whip the crabs. Guaranteed."
"I'm willing to try any new thing-except marriage."
"That's because you don't like boys as much as I do. Of course, a hot-veined creature of Rod's power would hurt anyone's faith in mankind. Here-I'll set the machine." Fay knelt on the warm moss near an oak, adjusting the bolt to a thicker level. "Don't take me seriously about Rod."
"My ears have been numb to your poetic voice since you were very young." She yanked at the pink sweater and drew it tight around faintly sagging but still voluptuous breasts. Sunlight glowed on the naked legs under her skirt. Fay saw where her own whistle-provoking dimensions had come from.
"There's one consolation. Although Rod gets me angry and jealous when he runs out whoring, Fay, I haven't given up the ghost. Hold this branch so we can pare a few of my roses."
She was trying to work off her depression, but the blonde knew better than to argue. A glimmer of hope coursed through her as she thought of Doug's jealous fit yesterday; the idea tingled and heated her with confidence. He would reason the matter out. Why had he nearly come to blows with Harry? Only because of the love which Doug felt-a possessive yearning to own his wife-capable of making him lash out at any intruder.
He's intelligent enough, she thought. Maybe the plan will go over; maybe he'll ricochet in my direction, after all.
"We don't have to worry about Inez from the intellect side," added Fay's mother. "She's rather stupid. All the girl wants in life is a kick-pleasuring different clients and telling dirty jokes. I remember that party we both went to-"
"She knows how to lure a fur off some rich old man. Doug would mean security-enough cash for her."
"So what have you done about it?"
"Plenty. I'm going to force him to admit that the only other person On earth is Fay Willaby."
"Good show. Out-think 'em, honey. We suburbanites have to guard against the rut-complacency-it puts rust on the wheel."
"Funny, isn't it? Everyone talks about upper-class suburbia-a myth and farce, when you look at the jaded, stagnant housewives." Fay could smell the powder and sweat on her body as she hoed the edge of the vegetable garden in the yard. She didn't want to keep chasing Harry. Whether or not she would have to continue the strategy depended on Doug's behavior, and how he treated her.
"I'm getting jaded, myself. Join me in the kitchen with a gin highball so we can start crying in each other's lap."
"Okay, mother. We'll drink to the love of sweethearts."
"The ornery rascals!" she enjoyed the brief break with her mother, and then walked home. Deciding to take a shower she lowered the bathroom shade, and took off the dress. She gazed at her body in the full-length mirror. Why can't I excite Doug? The fault has to lie in the emotion category. He has a buried gleam haunting his eye when he leers at the equipment nature gave me.
Her hips and thighs were sleek to the touch. Goose bumps ran along her neck as she rubbed the naked flesh around the navel, then slid her hands to her twin ivory mounds, feeling a throb in the sensitive rose-colored tips. Fire ravaged her loins. How she needed a man. Water sprayed from the shower and drummed at the curtain around her. She felt primeval in the freedom of nudity as her bones were soothed by the heat. Washing the soap away, she turned off the faucet and stepped onto a mat with the towel girded about her waist.
In their bedroom she knelt on the rug in preparation for exercise. It still irked her to think of Doug and his alibi.
The hernia operation had been five months ago; she knew he was recovered and healed enough to continue boudoir activities at a normal rate. But he kept rejecting her. Fay thought it amazing that she had remained true during his recuperation when another wife might have gone near berserk with frustration and satisfied her cravings with a lover.
Now, however, his rejections bore a deeper significance. She got on the floor and put weight on her palms and toes, levering down in push-up rhythm. Her arms vibrated with effort as she moved like a golden tiger.
Only after her body was damp with sweat did she halt and rest upon the couch to ponder again. Doug's sexual ability had returned. By shoving her away at night, deaf to her shaken and pulsating need, he had increased the insult. She figured that it offered a menace to her entire marriage as well as erecting a wall of resentment.
Sighing, she walked to the vanity dresser and turned on the phonograph. Her silk robe felt odd-strangely cool-it made her shiver when she tied the cord around her waist and stuck her hands in the pockets.
Today might be right for a test of Doug's willingness in the sex department, she thought, and an opportunity to find satisfaction and hurl away the demon of worry.
She met Doug in the arched foyer when he trudged through the doorway around noon. Standing high on her toes, she kissed him on the jaw.
"You taste like honey in July, Doug. I've been waiting for you to come home so we could-"
"Argue again?" he snapped.
She wet her lip and tried to entice his passion, squeezing a breast onto his arm, letting her warmth flow into him. "I'm not wearing a damn thing under this robe," she whispered. "I want to be different. Doug, let me show you how creative and new and Jezebelish I am."
"You've read too many wet confession stories."
He managed a dull smile, but the kiss he gave her was no more than a patronizing quirk. His duty. Indignant flashes ached deep within her. She wanted to cut him down and abuse his virility in equal doses and yell at this stranger who was moving toward the kitchen table. Fay held her mouth shut. She watched him sit down, grab his sandwich, and pour coffee from the thermos.
Although his apathy dug at her like a barbed knife, she did not let her voice waver. She came to the chair and put one hand on his shoulder. "Is that new dishwasher giving you a hard time?"
"The help can go pound sand, for all I care. I'm running a business, and they'll produce or take a ride with their pink slip. You can't be soft."
"Oh. Say, I redecorated the bedroom. A lot of junk is out of your way-the jewel box, my nylons. I may go to work on the curtains, if you'll tell me what shade-"
"Fay, I really don't give a rap about the fashion news right now. Just do what ever you want to."
"Pardon me." She nearly spat the words out. He had the disposition of a drugged cobra lately. Her brain whirling in confusion, she leaned over and kissed him on the ear. "Do you recall our honeymoon night, Doug? You were afraid to handle me until I pleaded and asked you to carry me in your arms. After that, everything was okay and you belonged to me and I was yours."
"Yeah, I remember."
"I want you to do it again," she gasped. "Now!"
"This is getting more like a silent picture every minute!" He slid the cake along the table and got to his feet, his brow curled distractingly. "You sure you don't want to be tied on a railroad track so the hero can save you? Look, baby. This week I'm buried up to here at the Joy Haven-there's too much on my mind. Give me a break."
She refused to crack; she blinked again and again until the tears disappeared. Moving toward the stove, she replied: "That drive-in is wrapping you in a shell. A husband ought to show flickers of interest in the home and what his wife does there."
"Now I suppose you've been neglected."
"Doug, you're never around when I need you. And heaven knows when you need me. All I ask is an hour in bed or at least the hint of affection, some residue from your dedication to the Haven."
Nice speech. It sounds like one hell of an attitude to have, where our bread and butter are concerned."
She was sobbing although she did her best to hide her shattered hope. "Shall I get on my knees and beg for the master to violate his slave?"
When he laughed then, it was like a slap in the face. "Odds bodkins-I could swear you're turning into a nympho. Sex in the afternoon, sex at night, always nagging for the short end of it. Take a nap and sleep the mood away. Just remember, old Doug is a human being and not a generator that can be pushed twenty-four hours a day. I've got work to do."
The casual manner in which he explained his reticence only widened the gulf between them. She leaned on the refrigerator and watched him go onto the porch, not even glancing back at her. He was so indifferent that he had refused to argue properly.
Fay was alone in the universe during the terrible moment of silence. It seemed juvenile to hunger for revenge, yet she knew there were men who would pay attention to her and treat her well. Doug must be taught that ugly fact. She loved him, but he kept asking for a rude awakening.
She located Harry's phone number in the book and called him at seven o'clock. She tapped the receiver, anxious, waiting with mingled dread and triumph, her moist hand trembling. An eon later she heard the nasal twang of his voice. "Feriso, here."
"We can greet each other without that military kind of address, I hope. This is your buddy Fay." She listened to his near-inaudible murmur which she knew, if translated, wouldn't be too complimentary. "You haven't hung up on me yet," she added, "and it could be a healthy sign. Are you mad?"
"Like a hot terrier at the end of summer."
"Don't let Doug worry you. He's already forgotten what he said."
"I expect this call to be monitored and taped so he can hang one of us on the bastile gate. Doll, it's been nice, but I just remembered another engagement."
"It was silly of me to bring you around the Haven. By trying hard, could you possibly accept an apology?"
"Well-"
"Harry, I goofed up and I'm sorry."
He sighed loudly, uncorking a few choice words in a language that she recognized as Italian. "How much do you like me?" she said.
"That depends on the mitigating circumstances, like they say in TV court programs. Enough to kiss and make-up? Sure. I acted pretty hasty when I ran out on you with a burr in my hide."
"You're a sweetheart." Relief zigzagged through her. "Thanks, Harry. I demand that we seal the reunion by sharing drinks at one of our town's sleazier dives."
"And I believe the record is going backwards to where it all started."
"Doug is tied down at the snack bar, so the unknown won't hurt him. Can you meet me in Ab's Diner in half an hour?" She held her breath during a lengthy pause, made more awkward by the knowledge of his fear. "Please?" she went on, coy and yet forcing Harry to know how lonely she had been. "No one will ever guess-and I promise you won't regret it."
"My eyelids are twitching already as I envision a night at some vacation cottage on the shore."
"Be serious."
"I am, Fay. You need a comrade to shoot the bull with, and why should I deny that I have the hots? We'll go for a ride. Less dangerous."
"Ab's, then?"
"Consider yourself in the good hands, fair maiden."
The receiver clicked under her as she hung up and felt the tension fade. A train roared along the track southwest of Redpine, hying commuters from New York City, a quaint whistle vibrating in the air around her. She applied fresh rouge and donned her jacket.
It took five minutes to reach the diner, where she waited until he came. He drove her up White House Lane toward the outskirts of town. In a truly sleazy dive whose name Fay didn't even notice, they occupied a comer table; he ordered whiskey sours from the yellow-coated barman.
"Okay, cherub," said Harry. "Tell me about the things you like-your hobbies and kicks."
"I'm wild over poetry and new recipes and men with blown-dry hair. But I insist we discuss your life during the boring time when I didn't see you. Have you prosecuted any monkeys?"
"First of all we drink, and then trip the light fantastic. Jabbering wears out an old man of thirty-four, hip though I am."
So Fay went along with him as they emptied glass after glass of heady alcohol. Her intimate dancing grip on him whirled her senses; they clung so near on the floor that her abdomen twitched and not a feather could have gone between her breasts and his solid torso. She hunted for the word to describe it. Cheating? No. Maybe a girl using a toy as it ought to be used, and gaining her weird, fresh thrill in the bargain.
"How do you like the refreshments?" he laughed when they arrived at the table again.
"Great! I taste whiskey, but not the lemon or sugar or orange slice."
"Above all, ignore the cubes of ice until we make a decision on tonight's heaven. What may it be, angel?" He stroked the flesh on her forearm while her vision grew hazier in the dim lighting.
"You're the funniest guy I met in all my born days, you know it?"
"I left my baby stage several moons ago," he whispered. "There's a place up the road-the Ace High-like a cabin with hot running water. This could be the last chance. I'll have to proposition you."
"No, Harry."
"I could show you angles on love that your cook never dreamed of. Gentle, breezy stuff. Brimstone and paradise, a rock to throw at the chef when it's all done, six bongo drummers hitting wild-"
"We shouldn't let it go that far."
"I want you, Fay! To hell with the preachers and dried-up eunuchs who try to tell us what's right or wrong."
She closed her eyes while the painting of a nude woman on the wall seemed to spin around them. Fay knew it was more than the romantic atmosphere and the liquor inside her. She thought of Doug, who hadn't paid her a thimble-full of attention since he began courting Inez-had he slept with her? Fay was sure he had.
Harry appeared to gain strength and seize the advantage. "You told me I wouldn't regret our date. Stop worrying about a husband who forgot you're alive, and learn how to breathe again."
Can he read my thoughts! She felt libido become an oozing, tingling itch in her pussy.
"You're right," she whispered'. "I do think a ride might do us some good."
For some strange reason, on the ride to the Ace High Motel all she could think of was her dream weeks earlier about her high school senior prom.
Harry finished his business in the dim little motel office in less than a minute and came back to the car with a key in his hand.
"We can leave the car where it is," he said. "We have Cabin Six."
Once they were inside the cabin, it looked even smaller than it did from the outside. There was just room for a big double bed, two straight chairs, a bedside table and lamp, and one floor lamp. No dresser, no closet. There was a stall shower in one comer.
"No luxury joint, this," Harry said. "Strictly for people with the hots and in a hurry."
"Harry!" she said, but she didn't really mind what he said, or what the place looked like either. The turmoil between her legs was the only important thing. She sat down on the edge of the bed.
Harry had taken off his coat and thrown it over the back of a chair. He was unbuttoning his shirt.
Then her mood changed, abruptly. Miraculously, she wasn't in a hurry any more.
"What's the big rush?" she asked, smiling up at him, leaning back on her elbows on the bed. She felt relaxed now, still excited and itching and wanting it, but some of the urgency had dissipated. She remembered that she'd slipped her panties off in the car, while she'd been immersed in recalling her senior-prom dream.
She raised one knee, slowly, lifting it high and wide, giving Harry a leisurely look at the shadowed furry crevice between her thighs, and crossed it over the other knee.
Harry stood staring at her, his mouth slightly ajar. He didn't look like a smart young lawyer at all, she thought.
"What's the rush?" he asked. "What a silly damn fool question." He finished unbuttoning his shirt and threw it toward the chair. It slid to the floor but he didn't notice and very evidently cared less. He was busy stepping out of his pants.
"But there's no hurry now," she said, swinging her foot. He was too eager, she knew. He'd been lusting after her too long. Once he got that thing inside her he wouldn't last a minute. She could see his cock throbbing under the poked-out leg of his shorts.
Fay uncrossed her legs and let her knees drift slightly apart. The hem of her skirt had slid up around her hips. Harry stared down at the dewy fur above her pussy, partly concealed between the soft walls of her upper thighs.
"Do you like what you see?" she asked.
"Another silly question," he said, having trouble with his voice. "I love it."
"You love it?"
"Yes."
"Would you like to kiss it?"
She opened her legs a little wider, suggestively. His eyes seemed to get bigger and his mouth was open again. Big attorney for the defense, she thought. Man of the world.
"Jesus," he said.
"The tongue, Harry," she said. "The tongue." She was remembering her dream again, the early part, on the dance floor.
And she was very excited now. Harry had nothing more to say. He dropped slowly to his knees before her as she lay back and opened her legs wide.
"Remember, you're in a motel room now, Harry. Not a courtroom."
She watched him as his head moved slowly forward. His mouth was open and he stopped to kiss the velvety skin above the inside of one knee. The tip of his tongue traced its way wetly upward, and his mouth made soft sucking sounds against the yielding warmth of her inner thighs.
Her skin was tingling wherever his mouth touched. His fingers found their way to the swelling soft furred lips of her pussy, and she felt the gentle pressure of his fingertips parting them, exposing the moist pinkness at the entrance of her starved, oozing cunt.
When she felt the tip of his tongue tentatively touching the hardening bud of her clitoris she groaned happily, embracing his head between her warm thighs.
"That's it, sweetheart," she said. She'd never called Harry that before, but he was a sweetheart now. "Lick my lollipop."
He began licking the squirming opening with long, deliberate strokes of his extended tongue, putting pressure at the end of each stroke, on the hot squirming head of her clitoris.
Fay began to moan, deep in her throat, but she knew he couldn't hear her. Her all-enveloping thighs covered his ears, clutching his head in a frenzied, tight embrace. She felt the licking stop as his stiffened tongue probed deeply up between the channels of her private ecstasy.
She reached down between the wide V of her upraised legs and took the back of his head in her hands.
"I love it, Harry," she said, gasping, releasing her thighs' embrace of his ears so he could hear. "You're wonderful. Lick it deep, darling."
She felt her hips pumping upward involuntarily to meet every deepening thrust of his probing tongue. His insides were a wet squirming mass of desire.
As her frenzy mounted, with Harry's hungry mouth making sucking sounds now, she knew she was going to come, and come soon, but she didn't want to come that way. She wanted that long hard probing prick pounding up inside her, fulfilling her, sliding deep, soothing the oven-hot itch of her insides. She felt the spasms starting and her hips jumped spasmodically.
"Slip it in me, Harry," she hissed frantically through gritted teeth. "Now. Quick. Oh, please, Harry."
He drew his head away from the bubbling spring of sensation between her legs and she saw his wet mouth smiling at her as she hitched herself back and lay across the wide bed, her welcoming thighs spread open as he mounted her. She reached out to guide the knot-hard head of his long, hard cock to the wet kiss of her thirsting cunt. It seemed to find its own way, and slipped through the parted portals easily, almost casually. She felt her twat gulping in the whole length of his shaft, as if it were a mouth, to feed every inch of her ravenous body.
Fay was trembling inside, shuddering outside, as her hips pumped and thrashed. Harry's tongue had brought her to the brink of orgasm, now his pounding prick was driving her over that brink.
"Deep, Harry, deep," she gasped, as she hooked her heels together behind his back and drove her hot melting mound against the bone foundation of his cock. He pounded it in to the hilt, driving it in faster and deeper with each successive stroke, and she came in a delirium of ecstasy, a delirium that washed away the tedium and frustrations of the past weeks.
"Doug!" she heard herself groaning, as she splashed through the waves and swells of her orgasm. Then, suddenly remembering, "Mmm, baby ... Harry, darling."
But he hadn't noticed. He was busy coming himself, spurting hotly deep inside her.
She relaxed, slowly letting her legs fall from around his back, feeling the waves of her pleasure diminish, subside, shrink to wavelets, receding on the sands of sensation, leaving them smooth and moist and unmarked, and ready for the next wave. They slept.
When she awoke, Harry was sleeping soundly beside her, on his back, his mouth slightly open. She raised herself on one elbow and surveyed his chunky frame. His broad rib cage was swelling and falling with his breathing. Between his legs, resting on the soft bed of his balls, his cock lay limp and lifeless.
Studying it with the rapt attention of a small child with a new discovery, Fay wondered what would be the best way to bring it to life.
She poked at it tentatively with one finger, but all it did was roll over on its side, looking weary, its wrinkled shawl of skin drawn close around its neck, just below the head, as if to keep it warm. Harry slept on serenely, breathing deeply, regularly, on the verge of snoring.
She crooked a forefinger around the neck of his tired cock and dropped it on its back, up along his lower belly, and studied the intricate network of soft wrinkles on the underside. With the tip of her tongue, then, she began to push the unresisting folds of tender skin around on the underpart of Harry's soft, rolling shaft. Getting more interested in her work, she began to lick the length of it, letting her tongue go broad and soft like a good paintbrush, stroking wetly from the base of the undershaft upward, toward the head.
She felt it begin to swell under her affectionate lapping motions. It rolled back and forth a couple of times, swelling bigger and bigger, starting at the base. Then, with the determination of someone getting up late from an afternoon nap, it sat up. So did Harry.
She retrieved her tongue and leaned back on her elbow, smiling at him.
"Hey," he said. His eyes were open but he was only half awake. "What's going on?"
"Nothing," she said. "But your friend there," and she nodded toward the stiffened prick, "was thinking about some more action."
"Without me?"
"I suppose you could come along for the ride," she said, and bent forward again to take the dark red head between her lips. Then she opened her mouth farther and took the head and neck completely into her mouth, extending her tongue down to lick the soft folds of skin along his undershaft.
"Jesus," he said. "That's lovely."
For some strange reason she found the feel of his cock in her mouth very exciting. She hadn't always, she remembered, like the feel of a cock in her mouth. But now she even liked the taste of it. She sucked on it with a sure, firm suction and slid her lips farther down the shaft, gulping as the head of his cock slid along the roof of her mouth to her throat.
"You're wonderful," he said, his voice tight, "but let's not waste it like that. Let's put it where it belongs."
She drew her mouth away slowly.
"You always were a clear thinker," she said.
He started to move around on the bed, to get over her, but she stopped him, pushing him with one hand on his rising hip.
"No," she said. "Lie still. Let me do this for a change. You just he back and enjoy yourself. Or try to."
"I won't have to try," he said, watching her.
She straddled him. He stared at the opening pinkness of her cunt as she lowered it toward the eager, reaching red tower of his upthrusting prick. She felt the lips of her pussy touch the pulsating tip, then her hungry cunt seemed to gulp in the entire smooth, warm head. She lowered herself slowly, impaling herself inch by delicious inch, tasting every bit of his stiffly penetrating shaft.
When her cunt mouth was pressed hard against his pubic mound, she began moving her hips in tiny, slow, sensuous circles.
"Oh, Christ," he moaned. "You're too much."
"Shall I stop?" she asked. Even now, wanting that cock thrusting inside her as much as she did, as much as she knew he did, she couldn't help teasing him.
"Good God, don't stop. Now, or ever."
She raised herself slowly, letting her pussy lips softly caress the slippery sides of his shaft. She let the hungry, squeezing lips linger, dallying every inch or so up the long stiff shaft. When her inner twat lips encircled the neck of his cock in the supersensitive area just beneath the head, she contracted her muscles, squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing.
"Jesus, you're choking me," he said rapturously. "It's wonderful!"
She felt enormous, bigger than the room, bigger than anything. But for the moment she was content with what she had, and raised and lowered herself happily, up and down the full length of the stiff probing explorer of her innermost delight.
She wanted to make it good for him, too. At the end of a down thrust she began her tiny sensuous circular motion again. She could feel the head of his prick, deep inside her, moving around between her wet resilient inner walls. Harry's chunky, husky body was one strong arch from his heels to his shoulders, like a bridge over a stream, as he strained upward, urging his cock deeper on her every downward plunge.
His ass, she realized, had not touched the bed since their fucking began. Feeling excited and ready to try anything, she slid an exploring hand under him, without pausing in her pumping joyride, and found the crack between the cheeks of his ass. She withdrew her hand, wet the middle finger in her mouth, and put her hand under him again. Her wet finger found the puckered parting deep between his buttocks. She pushed, steadily, and felt her finger sliding firmly into his asshole.
"Oooh," he moaned, with an intake of breath, and the upward arch of his body increased. "Mother never told me...."
Fay wasn't thinking, only feeling. Her entire body, radiating with rapture, was a mass of sensation. She felt her hips grinding and thrashing almost out of control.
"Lie still," she moaned. "Put your legs together and he very still, and stay in there. Keep your cock in there, tight."
Harry did as he was told, and she leaned forward, slowly bringing her legs together until she lay pressed flat on top of him. She squeezed her thighs together as he began to pump his shaft upward into her.
His cock felt much bigger this way, she thought. She heard him gasping as he pumped it into her, in unison with the wild thrashing of her own hips, and she knew that she was gasping too.
"Now?" she heard him ask. "Now? I can't last much longer."
"Me either," she gasped, squeezing herself even tighter around his slippery driving rod. "Now ... oh, now!"
She heard herself screaming, and in the last frantic flurry of thrashing hips his cock slipped out of her cunt somehow. She felt the hot spurt of his juices against her belly. Still she was coming, and coming, and coming again, as a large man with a large hammer pounded on the ringing, reverberating anvil of her inner delirium.
She rolled off Harry's husky body and lay quietly on her back, feeling relaxed in that delicious, fulfilled way that she hadn't known in a long time.
It was some time later that she touched Harry's navel and sighed, blinking at her tears. "Wrongness is only a thing we imagine, Harry. You're wonderful."
"I could he here with you forever."
"I wish it were that easy." The return to reality had come when she'd heard a clock ticking near his head and knew that he must drive her home before Doug finished at the restaurant.
THREE
She found Doug restless and apathetic toward her in the days that followed. At breakfast on Wednesday she remarked, "How do you like the way I toasted your bread, darling? Medium brown, to go with the crisp bacon you always had a yen for."
Her husband grimaced while hunching over the table, running the hot end of his cigarette on the ashtray. His answer was mumbled, incoherent.
Fay had tried every line of approach and couldn't figure the silence which governed him. His shirt was wrinkled, one button open, giving him an untidy but casual air; she knew Doug didn't really care what anyone said about his dress habits.
She added, "All suburban wives should get up early and make chow for their men." Standing near him, she used a napkin to wipe oily grease off the edge of the table-covering.
"I'll have the President present you with the Congressional Medal."
His comment only made her feel worse. "We certainly don't set any records for marathon conversations. Are you ill? Maybe an aspirin in water can start you up-sort of a shot in the arm."
"That sounds like one of your mother's clever ideas. Once in a while you might pay attention to what I say, if it's not asking too much." He squinted at the morning paper spread out before him.
She smelled hair tonic and the after-shave lotion he had smeared on his jaw. "I wish you'd tell me something, so I could pay attention."
"The cat has my tongue. Fay, will you move aside and let the sun peek in through the damn window? I know your mother wants to save the meal-ticket's eyesight."
"Correct. If you became disabled, I might have to find another job."
Now she felt her ears warming in irritation as he ignored her reply. He often harped on her mother's possessive attitude. But Fay had learned to reach her own decisions in life, and had done so for many years. She stepped away from the window, easing her hip gently onto his shoulder, thinking back to her youthful days.
He drummed his fingers on the paper and said, "You're about due for a luncheon date with the lawyer. Dear old Harry."
"I hope you're kidding."
"Why should I? Two lovebirds who enjoy their , own company don't let a marriage ceremony spoil the fun. I see a lot of things, Fay. I can tell when the Harry-type con-man wants to sleep with the object of his passion, although she may seem unwilling."
"We've gone through all that," she snapped. "It's finished. I mean-it never started between us, but I vowed to you that if he should call or-"
"Bravo! The oratory sounds good. Now let me go to work in the Haven so I can rest my ears-and I imagine you're worn out, too."
When he arose, she put an arm around him and tried to pull him close. "Please say you trust me, Doug."
"Knock off the high-school mush, huh? Call up Juliana and spend the day listening to her gossip."
He gave her a swift, brutal kiss and then elbowed her aside. Her fanny banged into the radiator with enough force to make her realize a few things. She watched him stalk into the bathroom. And her heart was worn with fear and anxiety, wondering why he had suddenly become surly and mean. Where had his gentleness gone? Did he somehow detect a flaw in her smooth facade, and suspect that she had taken Harry to bed while he, Doug, earned a living?
It gave her a cheap sensation. After he had left, she busied herself with odd jobs around the house-cleaning pots and decorating the parlor with new drapes. She then painted a chair in the den. Around noon Fay hooked up the garden hose and began to cool the cement driveway. Every so often she threw a jet of water on the flowers, budding quickly in the warm April sun. Her mind drifted back to the night she had visited Rod, her mother's boyfriend, in the tenement house which he partly owned; she could remember a dark elm near the sidewalk, old marble steps on the porch, and the tenement's grim interior. There were eleven flats upstairs and nine down.
She had danced with Rod, deliberately teasing him while mother sat on the divan.
"You move divinely," he had chuckled. "If I weren't going steady with your gorgeous mater, I'd proposition you."
"How flattering, Rod old boy!"
"I'm far from old when it comes to women."
"Because your blood is churning and your veins want to explode?" she had said. "I dare you to make a pass.
He whirled her about and tried to kiss her on the neck. Though lust was boiling within her, at the touch of his palm on her thigh, she knew Rod was much worse off. She laughed and yanked his quivering arm away.
"Naughty, naughty!"
"You're a typical broad," he had said angrily. "Hungry for attention, drawing men on before you kick 'em in the head. I pity the dud who puts a ring on that finger."
"I didn't think you cared, Rod."
Fay's mother had walked over to them, her brow furled. "Let's not get involved in a forum here. We have shopping to do, Fay, so let him alone before I forget what a gentleman he is."
Mother possessed the knack of making Fay feel ten years old, without alienating her. Later that night they had discussed her intimate dancing and teasing of Rod. Fay explained that she only wanted to show how sex-hungry Rod was, that he exploited women for their bodies.
"I really think you ought to break up with him, ma."
"Don't be silly. I wouldn't know where else to look for a rich beau. Besides, Rod and I happen to be falling in love."
Fay's mediation failed, however, and the months had gone by with a continuation of the torrid, illicit romance.
An airplane roared in the sky high above Redpine's residential area. Fay blinked, her thoughts returning to the present, the hose throbbing and wet in her hand. Now she had problems of her own as well as a marriage to save.
She took a stroll into Elk Park after dusk had fallen upon White House Lane. No matter how lonely she got, the need of waiting and seeing how things developed became clear to her. Could she turn Harry off like a faucet? She didn't know; he might phone her, as he had the right to do; it could evolve into a giant pot of fish with her on the bottom.
The air had a seaweed ocean tang that filled her nostrils during the long walk. She moved across the field where teenagers were playing soccer, and she could feel the grass, spongy and damp under her shoes. It was a day off for Inez. The redhead was likely taking-it-off at her part-time job in the Golden Goddess, which was Fay's destination.
The Goddess was a dingy cafe with ruts and stones in the parking lot. Fay went inside and heard the jazz group living it up with New Orleans stuff. She cut through the bar, frowning at two drunken laborers who gawked at her legs and breasts. A few minutes later she located Inez in a tiny dressing room.
"You certainly do show energy, I'll give you credit for that. Car-hopping would keep the average girl busy enough without a runway job on the side."
"Hi, Mrs. Willaby."
"Can I talk to you while the burly-Q fans squirm in their seats with pants at half-mast?"
"That's a new way of expressing it. You are fancy in throwing words around, ma'am. I stick to the vulgar junk and I earn loot by doing it, which is odd for a babe from the Gurt clan. My dad was a hobo."
Fay folded her arms, glaring at the "costume" worn by Inez. It amounted to a rope which held her G-string at a modest level, another cord around her breasts, and a gem in her navel. "You can forget the polite terms of address. I'm five years younger than you, Inez."
"I'll cry about it-all the way to the drive-in."
"Doug surely doesn't cry when you get there, does he? Which brings me to the reason for the call. I have better things to do than hang around a cheap dive, so let's make it fast. Lay off my husband."
"There's a lot of wax in my ear. Talk louder."
The waitress-stripper eyed her mirror on the vanity, adding mascara to her blatant make-up. In arching her back she made each mound of the buttocks jut out and shine nakedly under foggy lights. Fay quelled the dry rage in her stomach.
"Save any repartee for hounds who put the make on you. I won't let a hussy steal Doug away."
"We're, only pals. Men and women occupied at a restaurant hardly even think about sex. I mean-how much difference is there between the genders?"
"I'll tell you a thing or two, Miss Know-It-All. The next time you play up to him or-"
"Threatening a rival isn't in your line."
"We're not rivals, dammit!"
Inez got up from the chair and pranced off toward the dark hall. She rotated her hips, then swiveled around quickly, raising a hand to her breast. She squeezed it roughly. "Neat beef, huh? I get paid to show it, and whether or not Dougie likes me is none of your business. We never slept together, if that's why you're-"
"I'd love to push that lie down your throat, if I could be sure of my facts."
"Take a shower and cool the hot tongue for a while. Did I tell you about the sex-cottage I plan on renting for spring? It's right on the beach. Very handy, ma'am. You're invited to my first party when I get it set up."
"Did you hear what I said?"
"Anything between my boss and me is strictly imaginary. So if you're all done with the raving, I'll go dance on our sinful midway. And I'll dream about the cottage."
Fay clenched her fists, aware that she had no evidence or clues to go on. With grudging admiration she looked at Inez's superb figure as the girl floated onstage to a saxophone and piano accompaniment. What the hell's the cottage bit? she thought, annoyed and flustered. Either she's hoping to ridicule me or create a menace about her and Doug.
By the next afternoon Fay was in better control of her confidence. A square dance had been planned at the amusement island near the shore, and she registered surprise when Doug suggested attending it.
"How nice," she nodded. "I haven't gone to a hootenanny for ages-since the bit part I had with that TV show. You remember."
"The days of acting belong in the dim past. You and I are going out for togetherness."
She looked at his solid jaw, admired his profile. From their initial meeting she had loved everything about him.
"We're supposed to be mad at one another," she said coldly.
"No argument or rolling pin match can survive without two foes, and I threw in the towel. I was kind of rough, Fay. Grouchy." He showed only a hint of shame and regret in the way he pawed the living room rug with his shoe, fumbling for words. She knew that he considered the display of emotion as a rather weak habit. Underneath the hardness, however, lurked a boyish tenderness and the inability to express thoughts with precision.
She walked around the kitchen table, her long legs vibrant with young power. Her fingers trembled as she watched him gaze at the contoured skin above her knees. "Fay, I'm a dodo, first class. How could I talk to my baby as if she were a stranger annoying me at breakfast? I love you," he said quietly.
The touch of his hand on her bare forearm sent a shivering desire through her. "We're both kind of silly at times."
"I win the ribbon, unanimously."
"Odd though it sounds for a corn-liquor fiend to say it, I may lose my spirit for the square dancing if you don't hurry up and take us there."
"You'll go?"
"If I can stop shaking long enough to put some makeup on."
He grinned, kissing Fay on the wrist, nibbling at the downy hair of her arm as he slid the sweater high and paid homage to her body. She pointed to the scar near the right elbow. "Do you know where I got that from?"
"Luckily I've been the only man to see every part of you. I ignore blemishes." He put his mouth on the scar and drew her close. She let her body soften under the meekness, the humility he had shown, the eager hand that probed her.
"Well, I got burned in a fire in my bed three years ago-it taught me never to be careless. Of course, I was tired that night and I fell asleep. Manicurists had to keep long hours in Darien and it sure saved me when you popped up one day and started earning our money." She smiled and pressed his palm. "Let's try the rockabilly stuff, huh?"
The opening wedge of passion remained in her as they walked out to their car on the street. Could she and her man conquer the new bitterness so easily? She sensed a barrier between them, even after he had driven to the dance, parked near a frame ballroom and led her across the lawn.
Out on the beach she could see gulls soaring low above the water, bypassing a huge crab in the sand while they sought fish. Fay watched one gull suspend itself in the air and release an object from its beak. The clam hurtled down. It smashed upon a rocky reef and lay there, innards cracked open.
She heard guitars and a piano echoing in the hall. Somehow the vision of that clam-shell haunted her, as Doug caught her up and they joined a crowd of dancers. The birds were like men-cutting a tough girl apart and loving her and then easing away to let her quiver nude on a deserted shore.
You say you love me, Doug, she thought. But we can't explain why the spark is dim and getting harder to light, can we?
I'm dying for wine and a piece of that roast beef," he said when the band took recess. "It'll save you a chore. My wife shouldn't be asked to cook every night."
"Okay. A buffet meal is just what the doctor ordered."
"Join me in the Casbah-before our chums eat it all up."
She moved into the throng, barely heeding the din of voices and giggling as couples drifted away toward the woods behind the building. Many a virgin had met her Waterloo at these informal gatherings. Fay lined up with her husband and filled the tray with meat and cheese; the plate seemed to weigh thirty pounds. She attributed it to the insecure doubt in her heart. Doug had every outward appearance of sincerity, and yet she felt something was missing.
Maybe it involved the curt tone of his remarks. He called her a dove and a beauty and he used all the sweet terms from their courtship, but they sounded hollow.
And later that evening when dusk blanketed their home in the suburbs, she had a haunting sense of failure while she shampooed her blonde hair in the sink. The apology and formalities were there. Apparently Fay had made progress and could woo Doug into the fold with their old ardor-given time. But she feared that life didn't work quite so simply.
The electric dryer hummed in her ear. Sue sat on the couch near a dark, lonely window, and pictured Doug at the Joy Haven with Inez. They were undeniably in the middle of a good time, joking and even petting, as she had caught them doing on two occasions. What he gave me today was not love, she thought. It was synthetic and part of his duty and I'm really beginning to think we made a large mistake in getting married One of us has developed into a burden.
She blinked at the fog in her eyes and shook her head. No, dammit! He was right. She had let movies and TV operas and pipe-dreams work on her fancy until she expected too much of their union-she expected a knight on a white horse.
The towel felt good as she rubbed it in her thick saffron hair. Her scalp tingled with life, and she finally stopped crying and hunting for an answer. Maybe the Age of Knighthood had not vanished.
Fay had another of her horny dreams that night. Everything that happened, everything that was said, was just as clear as in the dream about her senior prom.
In this dream she was driving a convertible and had just picked up a hitchhiker, a tall, lean, blue jeaned youth with a beard and a duffel bag. She was wearing a short skirt and a blouse, mostly unbuttoned, and the youth's eyes kept sweeping over her, up and down, swallowing the sight of her. His eyes were a very light blue, like the sky that summer day, and steady. He had a ready smile and teeth that were unbelievably white, in his dark beard.
"There's beer in the cooler on the back seat," she said. "Within easy reach for you."
"Aah," he said, and reached.
"Open one for me, will you?"
The youth opened two beers and was grinning as he handed her one.
"Too good to be true," he said.
Then in the dream they were driving for a while in silence, sipping. Fay kept her can of beer between her upper thighs when she wasn't sipping, and she saw her rider looking at the can often.
On a deserted stretch of road between dense woods, she pulled the convertible off the road and set the parking brake. Her rider looked over at her, a question in his eyes.
"That damn beer," she said. "Back in a minute."
She found her way into the woods, peed, and started to pull her panties back up. And her heart began to pound. It was a lovely spot. Secluded. A little farther in was a stand of pines and a vast carpet of pine needles.
She bent and drew her panties down and off, stepped out of them, and stood straight, her skirt reaching only halfway to her knees. With the little ball of gossamer nylon that was her panties rolled in one hand, she made her way back to the car. The air felt cool under her skirt on her uncovered pussy.
"Lovely spot in there," she said to the bearded youth. "I thought we might stretch out and rest for a few minutes."
"Marvelous idea," he said. While he was uncoiling himself from the front seat, she reached over and dropped the little ball of nylon onto the floor in the back and tugged a blanket out from under some luggage on the rear seat of the car.
Fay led the way into the woods, carrying the blanket. By the time they reached the pine grove she had unbuttoned the last button on her blouse. When she spread the blanket with a flourish one breast waved free of her blouse, the nipple tightening and winking pinkly.
She saw the youth looking, and she smiled and stretched out on her stomach, facing him, propped on her elbows, her breasts swelling fully, deliriously, and swinging free.
He reclined in front of her, smiling slightly, looking at her free-swinging globes with no sign of embarrassment.
"Go ahead," she said. "Do whatever you feel like doing."
He slid his bearded face under her and took one breast lovingly into his mouth, sucking and licking, squeezing the stiffened nipple between his lips. Fay shivered all over and lowered herself slightly over his mouth. He spent a long time sucking the hard bud of a nipple until it felt inflamed, then transferred his mouth to the other breast.
In her dream, Fay was both excited and frustrated. Holding herself up on one elbow, she found that she could undo the buckle of his belt and unzip his fly with one hand. She slid that hand inside, exploringly, and found that he wore no underpants. Any more than she did.
Tugging carefully, she lifted his cock out into the open. With her hand clutching it around the base, she saw that it was very long and limber, not yet fully erect. While he was sucking at her breasts, she couldn't get her mouth down to his cock, so she did the next best thing. She stroked it tenderly, feeling her own juices running.
She felt his mouth free her breasts while his hand went to the zipper of her skirt. With two hands free she worked his jeans down over his hips, which he raised to help her. She saw that he'd already kicked off his shoes.
He had her skirt off before she had him free of his jeans, but not by much. She straddled his face, backward, her cunt touching the tip of his nose, and leaned forward, admiring the limber length of his prick as it lay on its back, up along his lower belly. The tip reached almost to his navel.
She bent forward slowly, extended her tongue, and began to lick the underside of his cock. The whole shaft pulsed, rolled, and rose. In moments it was rigid, fully erect, far longer than it had been only seconds before, a tall, proud monument to her tongue's skill. The shaft was brown and hard, like seasoned hickory, and the head was a purplish brown. The head was no bigger in diameter than the rest of the shaft, but was neat, pointed almost, like the blunted head of a spear. It seemed like the most business-like cock she had ever seen. Made for sliding easily into a cunt. She could feel her juices running hotly as his mouth moved lovingly up her inner thigh.
She lowered herself, making her cunt-opening more easily available to his hungry mouth. Feeding it to him on a platter. No hitchhiker had ever had it so good. She felt his mouth reach her welcoming wet cunt lips, his tongue probe deep into the eager open moist orifice.
She had his cock in her mouth now, sucking it slowly, lovingly, using the pressure of her lips to draw the soft shawl of skin around the neck up around the head, then letting it slide down again. Now and again she would stop sucking, push the base of the shaft back with her fingers, and tease the underside below the head with tiny, soft, sucking kisses. It was during this kiss-suck caress that she heard him moan.
"Ah, good," she said. "Let's fuck. Now!"
Quickly she swung her whole body around and straddled him at the hips, holding her cunt-opening just above the purple point of his straining shaft. His blue eyes looked at her imploringly. She let herself down slowly, inch by tantalizing inch, stopping here and there to squeeze the rock-like shaft with delicious contractions of the muscles of her inner cunt lips. He closed his blue eyes the first time she did that, and kept them closed.
When his long, hard prick was deep up inside her, probing, fully imbedded, she started to joy-ride it, slowly at first, then faster. His hips rose to meet her, sensing her tempo in advance.
She was pumping and grinding down on him now, in her dream, as his own frenzied hips pushed his demanding rod up into her. She was gasping, and writhing, as the exquisite torment built toward its peak, and she saw the youth's mouth twisting as if in agony, his eyes squeezed shut.
Then she was over the edge, in a pounding, writhing delirium of an orgasm. The bearded youth was groaning something unintelligible as he pounded his cock home-and came, in a bursting explosion that made everything seem like the Fourth of July.
And she woke up.
"Hot liquid fireworks," she mumbled idiotically into her pillow.
She raised her head then and looked at Doug, asleep on his back beside her. He was snoring.
She rolled over, away from him, and went back to sleep.
FOUR
Fay decided on a trip to Harry's office, and by four o'clock she was walking past a dry cleaner and beauty parlor in the north end of Redpine. It made her envious to watch people hurrying down the avenue. Men with delivery trucks, a maid or gardener on the suburban lawn. Although Doug had shown displeasure at her idea, she often thought of going back to her old job-commercial artist, even a waitress again.
She got in the elevator, which was empty except for the operator. When Fay glanced at the porcelain wall she saw her blue eyes and round chin and full sensuous mouth reflected there. She knew that her facial beauty ranked as only a hair better than average. From the neck down though, it was a different story.
As the elevator came to a halt; she moved across the hall and found the door open. Harry whistled at her from his desk.
"Don't you dare move a muscle, honey."
"Why?"
"Your chassis would send half the local beauty contestants home. The sun is outlining you. I can see through the dress, and-yep. You left the panties in your closet."
"Silly." She jerked a thumb toward the dim corridor behind her. "This building reminds me of Frankenstein's grave."
"It is sort of far out. I keep losing secretaries because they're afraid I'll rape 'em some dark, overtime night." The lawyer got up and hurried across the room to her side. "A gentle boy like Feriso! How it hurts when you realize the younger generation-"
"Do you?"
"Do I what?"
"Is rape the idea in the rear of that scheming brain when you chase stenographers?"
"Well-" He wrinkled his aquiline nose, then gave her a friendly pat on the derriere. "Sure, but we don't have to let it get around."
Fay winked at him to show she was joking, though he did seem more interested in feminine allure than in his profession. She moved away from his quivering hand. Her gaze held on a huge movie projector which stood in a comer of the office. "Are you turning Hollywood director?"
"My talent reaches beyond the range of Venus and Pluto. There's one helluva film in the can for showing to guests-like women-who go ape over the subject. 'Health Holiday' is what I named it. Excuse me while I do a pound of filing."
"You don't suffer from any lack of confidence, Harry. Boasting about concubines, winning hot cases for defendants who were doomed."
"The word you mean to say is 'ego.' " He rolled out the drawer of a cabinet and rifled through the paperwork.
"If you go any faster, the paper may burn right up. The Ferisos are quick and efficient, I take it."
She lit a cigarette and moved to the desk, dropping her match in an ashtray figurined by a naked, reclining woman. A sudden chill caught Fay as the wind drifted in through the open window.
He paused while writing a note on the upright cardboard file. Then he slammed the drawer, came over to where she stood, and hitched at his pants. "Your life isn't turning out according to plan, is it?"
"Not exactly, Harry. As a female less gifted than hustlers of your caliber, I couldn't find love. Doug was okay at first. The fact that he's kept me away from genuine warmth and fulfillment ought to be obvious. You saw how I-how savage we got, rolling on the Ace High bed."
"I had very little for anything except the problem in hand." He came around behind her, kissed the side of her neck and walked away. "You need more confidence-but don't join the ranks of egoists like me."
She sighed at a feeling of companionship in their teasing game. The wall near his umbrella stand was covered by a rectangular white screen. She saw the shadow of her own breasts etched in profile on the screen, and remarked: "I'll be the critic for your cinema art. Run the movie off."
Harry extended his pudgy arms and shrugged. He plunged the room into half-darkness by lowering the Venetian blinds and shades. Fay got seated on a folding chair while he hooked up the projector. She had a whiff of clothing and dusty film, and the flesh on her hips began to sweat as she gawked at the picture on the wall.
Eight or nine nude girls were hitting a volley ball back and forth over a net while three men stood amidst them. No one appeared to notice the naked state of the other, and Fay caught her breath at the stark manhood of one participant.
"You may observe that I wasn't shaken by the raw bodies and flanks."
"You?"
"Sure. Take a look at the nut without any Florida bronze tan. I'm reaching for the petite redhead, to pinch her."
A clattering noise echoed in her ear as the film wavered and then returned to more vivid imagery on the screen. She saw his smiling face near the net. "You old rascal! It must have been a nudist camp."
"Correct. Wait'll you see the high diving and swimming clip. I was invited to the joint in July during my vacation out west."
"Where the men are really men," she laughed.
"And the women are glad of it."
She watched the remainder of the film, awed by the neutrality shown by each girl whenever her bare breasts or thighs came in contact with a male. The lawyer turned off his machine and lifted the curtains.
"They acted like a few lesbians I've known, Harry. But I guess you survived it."
Harry hesitated, then looked closely at her.
"You used to work as a commercial artist, didn't you?" he asked.
"Yes."
"I have a new film you might get a kick out of. It's titled 'The Drawing Board!"
"Sounds like I might be interested."
"If you're up to this kind of thing. It's a-well, it isn't exactly a kid's cartoon."
"I'm not exactly a kid, either. You ought to know that, Harry. Roll it."
Harry shrugged, looking a little uneasy, then drew the curtains, fitted a new roll of film onto th projector, and started it up.
The film started innocently enough. After the title and credits there was an interior of what appeared to be a commercial art studio. Apparently it was night, because the studio was deserted, although the lights were on.
The film ceased to be innocent only moments after a young couple opened a door and came into the studio. The woman was tall, ravishing redhead, the man a tall lean blond. Fay realized then that Harry's movie equipment was more complete than she'd thought. He had sound, and this film had a sound track.
"Looks like we'll have to settle for the floor," the blond man said, stepping toward the woman.
"What's the matter with my drawing board?" the redhead said. "Or your drawing board? Or anybody's drawing board?"
"I hadn't thought of that," the man said.
His arm went around her, drawing her close. Fay watched the film, fascinated, as the redhead's wide, wet, scarlet mouth opened, the tongue twinkling pinkly as the man's mouth descended on it. One of his hands dropped down her back and up again, under the woman's skirt, raising the hem as his hand stroked and squeezed the ripe swelling mounds of her luscious ass. The redhead was not wearing panties.
Then, in one swift motion, the man had the tall girl's dress off, then her nothingness of a bra, and she was standing in front of him, smiling her moist red smile, her jutting breasts, even in motion, bobbing buoyantly, tantalizingly. The nipples poked out like pointing fingers.
"Back to the drawing board," the redhead said, turning away from the man. She swung a drawing board around so that its back was toward the windows at the left side of the screen, then leaned back against it, her legs apart, the wet open slit of her cunt framed in the tangled hair of her flaming red bush.
"You just reminded me," the man said, sitting down in a chair in front of her, "I haven't had dinner yet. Your pussy looks delicious, opening up like that. Most appetizing cunt I've ever seen. Mind if I taste it?"
"Eat all you want, Mac," the redhead said, spreading her legs even farther apart and leaning back. She reached down with one hand and with the tips of her fingers spread the lips of her cunt apart, exposing a tender mass of pinkness, moist and glistening. "Lap it up, Mac. Oh, eat my pussy, lick my twat, gobble my cunt all in."
The man named Mac leaned forward, his tongue extended. Fay watched, totally absorbed in the scene, forgetting where she was or who she was for the moment. She could feel the juices beginning to flow in her own willing pussy as Mac's tongue slid back and forth over the redhead's clitoris, then slid out of sight as his mouth enveloped the whole welcoming pink mass of the redhead's hungry-looking red twat. His head began to move as he began to suck, then to lick, with long, slow, rhythmic strokes.
"Like this?" Fay heard Harry ask.
She didn't answer him. Didn't even take her eyes from the screen.
The redhead's head was thrown back, her lips drawn up from her sparkling teeth, as if she were in agony. An agony of pure delight.
"That's it, Mac," she was saying, over and over, in a high, strained voice. "Lick it. Suck it. Gobble my cunt."
Almost trembling, Fay watched as Mac's hands fumbled at his belt, then slid his trousers and undershorts to the floor and kicked them aside without missing a single stroke with his licking tongue.
His long, white, rigid cock, partially obscured from view by one of the redhead's long, delicious legs, looked neglected, Fay thought feverishly. And impatient. Looking at the straining cock of the actor named Mac, Fay had to fight the impulse to push with her own fingers at the steaming impatience of her own hungry pussy. She wanted more than anything to walk right up onto the screen and straddle the eager swollen cock, to slide it up into her own cunt, where it belonged. Right this second.
Then she felt Harry behind her, his hands reaching around to squeeze and caress her breasts through her dress. She reached back and squeezed the hardness of his cock. Somehow the feel of it, waiting there for her, made her less impatient, less frantic. She could wait, now, knowing that a good hard cock was hers for the asking. Harry would have to wait, too. Serve him right.
"Wait, Harry," she said, without looking at him, without even looking away from the screen. "You started this. Now I want to see the rest of it."
On the screen, the man named Mac drew his mouth away from the wet vacuum of desire he'd created with his mouth, and stood up, his hard prick standing out before him, thrusting out and twitching upward with a life of its own. Quickly, he reached down to the side of the drawing board and turned something. The board tilted back, almost flat, and he tightened a knob, locking the board in place.
The redhead's open wet cunt was now in perfect alignment with the hard swollen head of his jutting prick, her lithe, lovely legs lifted and surrounding him at the hips.
"All right, Mac," Fay heard the redheaded actress say, "fuck me now. Shde that tall cock in there and fuck me to ribbons."
Her perfect white ass was pounding and thumping against the hard surface of the drawing board as the entire length of Mac's long shaft slid between the hungrily clutching twat lips, then slowly disappeared in the redhead's cunt. Fay squeezed her own legs together and groaned in torment, but kept her eyes on the screen and her hands away from Harry's cock, although he was still pressed close to her, from behind her chair.
She could almost feel the actor's long hard cock sliding into her own warm cunt. After she'd groaned, she had an impulse to put her hand over her mouth, but then she realized that Harry couldn't hear anything over the sounds coming from the couple on the screen-the gasps and grunts, the slapping, slithering sounds of their pumping, pounding, frantic fucking.
She was witnessing on the screen a scene she'd never have imagined in her wildest, horniest dreams-and she was witnessing it while sitting in the mundane, everyday surroundings of Harry's law office. She crossed her legs. It was the best thing she could think of to do for her own self-imposed torment.
On the screen, to the background sounds of moans and squeals and delighted laughter, the actor called Mac had locked his hands and wrists under the redhead's pumping, writhing hips, and without withdrawing his shuttling cock, without missing a stroke in his frenzied fucking, was carrying her around the room, stopping every step or two to give her a few extra-quick thrust with his slippery, spearing prick. Her long legs locked behind him, at the ankles, the redhead's face was contorted in an expression of agonized delight.
A buzzer sounded on Harry's desk. She felt the warm pressure of his cock against her back leave abruptly as he went swiftly to his desk and picked up a phone. He said only three muttered words before he hung up, then came back to her and put a hand on her shoulder.
"Oh, God," he said. "There's a client out there I have to see right away. Can you wait out there for about twenty minutes?"
She didn't even answer him.
He'd barely had time to turn off the projector and raise the window shades by the time she got to the door, opened it, and went out.
She'd never felt so horny and so frustrated in her life.
She got through the rest of the day somehow but woke up the next day feeling depressed. After cleaning the house, she wheeled her sports car from the garage for a ride to town. How do you find amusement, she thought, something to keep your mind off sex on a gray, cloudy day like this?
One option occurred to her while she had coffee and doughnuts in Ab's Diner, its flower-laden interior gay and freshly painted. Funland would be a good prospect for an hour-or-two of diversion. She had a weakness toward the hurdy gurdy music and atmosphere of the amusement park. Downing her Java in Ab's, she moved out to the road. Not for a minute did Fay let her mind wander. The picture of Doug and her own dangerous liaison with Harry pounded at the woman's consciousness in rhythmic beats.
Her car purred along the highway, at peace with the world. She guided the wheel in a firm though unexpert fashion over the bridge and onto a lot paved with coals and ash.
She walked into the arcade where she killed time at the bowling game, nickel movie, and wheel of fortune. When she got back on the oval promenade she nearly ran smack into Inez Gurt.
"Another day off?" she asked the tall, uncannily stacked redhead. "The wind is coming across that big field and ruining your beautiful long hair. And I see you're blinking in the daylight."
"Us owls have trouble with any atmosphere beyond a junky cafe. Anyhow, I never have to run after men."
"I certainly wish you wouldn't!"
"They go after me like dogs on a bone. Which reminds me of the joke I heard at your mother's party, Fay. Did you hear it? This dog walks into a bar with his hind leg up in the air and says to the waiter-"
"You're one of the lucky types," she cut in. "Most women have to keep chasing men, as I do with Doug."
"So the cocker spaniel said-"
"I don't want to be an audience to your filthy humor."
Inez shrugged. "Who cares, then? I really know how to get your goat, eh? The boss' wife and the employee never do get on very well."
Am I getting mellow with this whore? Fay wondered. Martial music blared out of the speaker, its bugle and drum tempo filling the width and breadth of the park. Fay was silent for a moment when Inez began swaying to the loud song.
"I wear the largest cup in New England," she laughed.
The maddening jounce of her breasts grew more openly defiant as she moved her torso up and down. Fay gulped hard. A brief flash of jealousy brought fire to her innards; she could imagine how easy it would be for the waitress to conquer a man.
The girl jammed her purse under an armpit and said, "Anyway-the dog said-"
Fay stepped over to a water fountain and had a drink, which cooled her rising irritation. She vowed that no one could destroy her tranquil mood today. She glared at a popcorn stand near them. "Inez, you lead a disgusting life."
"Ha! Look who's talking. At least I don't go around like a teenager, worrying if my eyes are dreamy enough for the next lawyer who jumps in. Do I, honey?"
"I hope we never meet while you're trying to seduce Doug."
"Oh, the hell with all your witness crap. It's too much for anybody. Denying that I've seen Doug is giving me a pain right here-I can't be bothered with jealous wives."
In moving away, Inez made sure that every male in the area knew she was wearing no bra under the jersey. Live, wanton breast-tips were vivid on the web material. Fay figured she had traded tit for tat; she had used the word whore, and was called a jealous juvenile in return. But name-throwing would solve nothing.
She began easing toward another game wheel on the oval. Already she saw Inez with her boyfriend at the refreshment stand, where they hugged each other and chewed on popcorn.
Fay realized that her chance meeting with the waitress had actually ruined the afternoon; she won a kewpie doll and a transistor radio and then decided to go home.
Early the following morning she paid a call to her mother's house for their regular painting session. They sat in the yard at a large picnic table near the charcoal fryer, on hammock-style chairs. The curving weight of her body gave her a light-as-air feeling as she ran paint along the canvas in her lap.
Mother said, "Sketching the harbor view of Manhattan was a great idea. Most of your brainstorms are good. But what color shall I make the damn sunset?"
"That's where imagination begins," said Fay.
"And where I have to leave off, due to lack of technique-and other things. You never had it so bad with a pupil."
The young blonde wiped off her brush and took another look at the oil which her mother had nearly finished. Every detail was apparently there-Chrysler Building and the Empire State and a hundred rooftops jagged on a skyline. Yet, the indefinable aura of the city did not breathe in mother's drawing-and she knew it as well as Fay. "Ma, you've improved a lot since the early days, and it makes you happy. Why knock it?"
"Nothing created by man or beast would ever lend real joy to me. It's a question of hunting for identity. Freudian enough? Or maybe I do need a release from the shop grind of inspecting flashlights. Have a plum."
She threw a soft purple plum over her shoulder at Fay, who caught it and sucked on the ripe juice. The sharp tang eased her hunger.
"Just like drinking from a lover's mouth," she joked.
"Pretty close. Now will you use the stick and knock the other ones down? We may get stale if we push all our energy into art."
"Anything your heart desires, I'll fix it up."
"I don't think we have to get sexy about the bloody affair."
The girl arose, smiling in the warmth of maternal affection, a tiny bone cracking in her knee as she stretched. The long hickory pole was green-thin and rubbery. She raised it high, poked at a branch of the tree, and dislodged one of the dark plums.
"All the matrons at our sewing club are anxious to meet you again, Fay. I hope you're at the next gathering."
She nodded under the sad, unhurried cadence of her mother's lingo. "With bells on." She continued jamming the stick into leaves until there were ten or eleven plums at her feet. Picking them up, she walked over to the table and dumped them on a cloth cover, veins of her arms surging with the exercise. "That top branch gets rather high after a while."
"Do you believe I'll ever get enough practice so I can paint nudes?"
"We'll do our best to find out how good you are."
"There's one thing I do know. Fay Willaby is a fine daughter. The greatest."
She leaned over and kissed her mother on the cheek. Then Fay resumed work on the giant picture that she had begun. If it turned out nicely, she might even try selling it to collectors who moseyed through town every so often, on the prowl for fresh talent.
After an hour in mother's yard, Fay rode down to Redpine Hospital for a visit to the children's ward. The fact that she had skipped a bridge society meeting didn't phase her. If the choice had to be made between two ways of spending the early afternoon, she would rather help youngsters recuperate. She figured the motive had something to do with her childless state.
Later, while driving home, she thought about her husband. Right now there seemed to be a good deal of improvement, and she had hopes for their full reconciliation. Fay parked near the curb and walked onto her lawn, noticing that her neighbor was coming up the sidewalk. "How are you today?" said Fay.
"About as well as can be expected, like a hypochondriac on the radio once said. Gosh, you're wearing a thick amount of lipstick! But you still look gorgeous. If I tried it-"
"If you wore that much gunk, men would love you for it, Julie. It goes with the bleach.
Winking, the slight but hauntingly sexy widow folded her arms and shoved both breasts upward. They were round, small, compact. "I can't let people think I'm from the Victorian chastity age."
"Some of them would think it." Fay couldn't resist the dig; she knew that any repression in Juliana's character would remain there and not be voided by peroxide from a jar. "Bring me up to date on local happenings in the neighborhood."
"Just the familiar old things-suburbanites worrying about their status-over activity-Mrs. Ryan had a wingding of a party Friday. Six orgies in the dry swimming pool, I heard."
"Nobody got raped?"
"Oh, come now, Fay! You're hip on what the story is. One third of the wives in our milieu have either cheated or else they're hung on the edge, trying to decide. Rape means unwillingness."
"Your percentage is kind of high. But I'd say that a poll of the single women might turn out even worse."
"Wouldn't be a bit surprised. The delivery men concentrate on married chicks, though."
Their conversation lasted another five minutes while Juliana probed for juicy controversial trivia. She had a comer on all local exposes. Fay didn't mind, as long as the topic wandered away from nympho wives and infidelity.
On Sunday evening she went to The Littlehorn bar for a rare highball. She had never depended on alcohol before but her loneliness had a way of getting under her skin and changing the old pattern of her life. Above her on the wall was a painting of the house strip queen, who had posed naked except for loin cloth and pasties, a farce on the huge breasts.
Fay gulped the vodka mix without bothering to roll it in her mouth. Cold soda speared a course down through her gullet and she could feel it settle.
The man wore a toothy smile as he waved through the mob toward her place at the bar. Sudden recognition produced a warm, identifiable sensation as she turned on her stool to face him.
"Benjie! I haven't seen you in a dog's age."
"Someone ought to pinch me and say it's all in a dream. Then I find her-lovelier than ever. Where have you been hiding, Fay?"
She accepted the gentle hand-shake and smooth kiss of Benjamin Lake as he eased beside her at the mahogany counter. Blinking at the nostalgia within her, she said, "You haven't changed a bit from the days when we were going out together. Same green eyes. Same lean figure and quiet power in your movement."
"They're traits which I find helpful in selling brushes. You're married now, of course."
"So they tell me."
"I'm still a yo-yo, but having one heck of a time on the end of the string."
Benjamin was a natural gregarian-if not the life of the party, then its most popular member. She paused to admire his thick, well-combed hair. He had retained his good-looks and the flair for social amenity which had once made him, at seventeen, a leader on the high school front.
"Every so often I think about you," she added. "It's hard to forget the first boy you kissed."
"I wouldn't know. Never kissed one. God, you grew up and blossomed so well that it hurts me! The fish who got away. Are you living in Redpine?"
"Yes. Doug found a north-end shack for us. Oh, dear-I need cigarette change!"
"Renfrew of the Royal Mounties came in full preparation."
They walked off from the bar and halted near a vending machine. When he dropped a coin in the slot, he was smiling again. "Benjie, I enjoy seeing a man who's happy. We have our share of gloom around the house, and I probably show it."
"Sorry to hear that."
She nodded, thrilling to the warmth in his hand as he gave her a pack of cigarettes. "The wedding ring is a fickle symbol. I love Doug, but there are moments when I admire a person who can stay single." She sighed. "Let's not dwell on my trouble. You're selling brushes and going from rich to richer."
"If I am, it's news to me. You know what else I remember about you, Fay? In junior year you were the best damn hurler on the girls' softball team. Romantic, huh?"
"I've retired," she laughed.
He winked at her and did not move his hand away from her thighs as they stood close near the exit. "Marriage will come out a bad second to your charm. I see a lot of wives on the route. Snobs without enough brains to act civil-nice girls and nymphs-jealous women ready to condemn all husbands for being philanderous. But I won't join the French Foreign Legion. Not with mature babes like you around."
"Thanks for the compliment." His eyes were cutting at her and she figured he had read her correctly. So many of her old flames had turned out to be whorehounds, that Fay did suspect men of ulterior motives. She knew it was juvenile. Mass categorizing will hurt you on any topic-at college and in the world she had tried to remember that warning, and to trust Doug.
Benjie said, "I've found a drawback in rock-headed realism. Where do the books and statues and other fine works of art come from? Who puts zing into boring humdrum? Not us. Only a dreamer can do it, and you're a dreamer if I ever saw one."
"Very true. And my starry-eyed emotional nature can also bring a heap of woe."
"Please translate."
She cleared her throat, unwilling to extend her meaning. Doug was practical and she reached for rainbows that were forever beyond her. Their conflict might rank as none of Benjamin's affair. The cafe smoke bit at her tongue and she heard a roar of traffic on the road outside.
"Some day I'll give you the whole story. Would you care for a beer?"
He jerked his arm out and frowned at his watch. "Duty rears it grinning head. If I'm late for this call, she may phone another salesman. Maybe you and I could write a rain check and go through old times then."
"I wouldn't be surprised if we do."
Waving at her, he hurried into the melange of stags and out to the avenue. She drank a third vodka and-soda before leaving The Littlehorn. Benjie would be safe enough in a liaison, because he had the intelligence to keep their relationship on a friendly level without sex.
She drove back home and was chilled by the dank, lifeless aura of the house. She hadn't wanted to involve him in her burgeoning marital conflicts. Maybe he'd understand, though, she thought as she wriggled into bed, wearing shortie pajamas, her fanny and thighs naked and her breast-ends rigid with desire. Doug was at the Haven again. The fog of slumber came down, conquering her thoughts, offering a kind of relief to her loneliness.
When Fay awoke she had no idea what time it was. The window had remained dark and she knew the neighborhood slept under a deathly black cape of night, and she was afraid.
Another crash echoed from her yard. It sounded like garbage cans being thrown around; she moistened her dry lips and drew the linen sheets away, trembling.
Divergent thoughts, undulating with panic, ran through her mind as she put her robe on. The noise could mean a burglar, vandal, cat-nearly anything. Fay's pulse thumped in fear and she listened to the bed groan when she got off it.
No one was near the porch. She walked along the rose garden and saw a light shining beyond their trash can. It was the gas lantern which Doug kept for night illumination.
A raw chill numbed her, and she paused before reaching the huddled form of a man on the ground. It was Doug.
When he fastened his eye on her, he sat up and hooked both arms around his knees. "Hope I didn't wake you out of a calm sleep. The lousy can jumped up and hit me in the leg. Maybe it's 'cause I'm four sheets to the wind and gettin' windier by the second. You're starin', my angel!"
Relief coursed through her. "I thought it was a prowler."
"Sorry to ruin expec-expectation."
"You're not hurt, are you?"
"Confucius say-man who can feel no pain is in great shape. I heard a few other jokes about him, too, but they're dirty."
She could imagine what they were, and exactly who had told them to Doug. Inez had a knack for telling stories. "Doug, you scared the hell out of me." She squinted at him while he eased onto one knee and shook his head. "You had more than one too many, I'd say."
"Cafes are out to make money, like we are."
"Here-I'll help you to your feet, so we can at least end up by going in the house arm-in-arm."
"I can do it alone. What do you think I am, Fay-an infant?"
She managed to catch an undercurrent of anger in his tone, though it was hidden by gaiety and alcoholic slur. He swung around and his shoe kicked the trash barrel. She watched the aluminum cylinder roll away and slam into their fireplace.
"When Doug gets home," he chuckled, "nobody sleeps!"
An ominous growl at the edge of the lawn caused her to spin around. Two yellow eyes grew bigger in the darkness and she stood in awe while the neighbor's dog came trotting over toward her. He barked viciously. Aware of the collie's pugnacious nature, she gasped in panic.
Doug said, "Get outa here, you flea-bag. Sleep with your maiden Aunt Juliana and keep her company."
"You shouldn't tease him."
"Why not?"
The dog appeared to know by animal instinct that something had barbed Doug's voice and made him hostile. When sober, he would have bent over and handled the dog with tenderness. Now he mimicked and grunted back at him.
"Hey, mutt. You're on Willaby land and whatever I do is none of your business. Scat! Go on!"
Crouching down, the dog waited until Doug lashed out and booted a wad of paper at him. Then the red collie charged.
Fay screamed in horror as she saw them fall onto the rubbish. Her husband was in no condition for wrestling of any kind. She winced at a ripping sound as long teeth shredded his jacket. Her mind refused to function during the first attack of the beast. But her love for Doug would not let her stand idly by; there must be something she could do, a way of frightening the attacker.
She looked for a weapon on the ground. Only newspapers. "Let go of him, you crazy dog!" Her plea went for naught as Thor continued to pin Doug underneath him near the brick fireplace.
Fay rolled up one of the papers and her glance caught the lantern, and she remembered what Juliana had said. Thor didn't like fire.
Opaque glass shattered on her third try with the scroll. She held it on the wick's flame, ignited the paper, and yanked it away from the lantern.
Confusion whirled in her brain, but she managed to regain courage and advance upon Thor.
"I'll help you, Doug! Push him over this way if you can."
"The bastard weighs a million pounds!"
She got nearer and waved the torch at him. Sparks flew out with the wind, peppering the collie's fur, alighting on Doug. Fay smelled wool catching fire. Terrified, she waved the hot wand again and felt a surge of victory when Thor raised his oval head, backed away, and finally ran off to the sidewalk.
A weird silence gripped the yard, bathed in wavering shadow. Flame licked at her wrist and she threw the weapon aside.
Doug got up and brushed an area of confetti-small holes in his trousers. "This isn't how I want to have sizzling pants. The regular sex method is better. Fay, you're a real woman."
"On a thousand-dollar bet I couldn't repeat what I just did. Unless you were in trouble again."
"Boy! we'll have to make Julie straighten out that lousy animal. Coming in for a shower and Java?"
"Yes, Doug."
She had hoped for gratitude or affection on a grander scale than he was showing, but then, she thought-liquor's cold in his veins and we have been at odds. I'll give him time. She walked along beside him into the parlor, then heated a pot of coffee on the range.
He was singing in the shower, not at all hurried, probably forgetting already how a collie had jumped him. That was Doug. She grew tired of waiting and went to bed alone.
The next day she kept herself busy by baking a cake, while Doug was in his den with a paperback novel.
She answered the delivery man's knock at the door, nodding to him on the porch where he stood.
"Today we only need one loaf of rye, O'Hara. You look like you're ready to stock up the garrison for a ten-week siege."
The breadman shrugged, moving in a flat-footed gait across the foyer, pausing near her. His full lips were clenched as he juggled the bread and pastry that filled his arms. He gave Fay a gray, bulging bag and sighed at her. "Who can fight city hall? At the warehouse they tell me that I'll develop a mighty grip from carrying this stuff. I'm a peon."
"You don't care for the job."
"Everyone has to work-except the lovely girls and artists. You're both."
She watched O'Hara edge onto the linoleum covering the kitchen floor. When he glanced at her rump, invitingly snug under the sheer robe, she again made the silent observation that he would enjoy bedding her.
"Nice interior you have, Mrs. Willaby. Japanese curtains, a wild set of bowls and juice cups."
"Oh. For a minute I wasn't sure how you meant 'interior.' "
He leered and ran his tongue along the moisture beaded on his mouth. "My wife finds trouble telling the difference between a sock and a pair of shoes."
Fay listened to him stutter briefly; she folded her arms and froze out the idea which he must have had on his brain. "Will there by anything else, O'Hara?"
He chuckled, making a federal case out of arranging the handle on his portable case. Then Doug's deep voice boomed behind her.
"I wish you'd let me in on the joke so I can laugh with you."
She turned and saw him flip a quarter in the air and catch it. Like an actor in a gangster movie, she thought. It might be funny to see how the delivery man reacted now that Doug had surprised him.
"Nothing special," said O'Hara. "It's the way I was born-I get a charge out of everything that happens in our world." He furrowed his brow and flashed a toothy grin as he backed away toward the oak doorway. He nearly fell over the easy chair. "You can expect me Saturday, for the collection."
Doug was not angry. He moved ahead and put an arm around the man. "We'll be waiting on pins and needles. By the way, kiddo-have you heard what today's lottery number is?"
"I quit gambling after I lost my shirt on the nags. Or rather, the company's shirt."
"Irish, it's been fun talking to you. Keep a stiff upper and don't let any worms get you."
She was glad that Doug had a spark of his good humor left, although he must resent the lust revealed in O'Hara's eyes. Fay walked up to the door and encircled her hand around the knob. "And forget the devil's food cake. I've been making vanilla cake with tan frosting-it's cheaper than buying yours-and it helps my art."
"Yes, ma'am.".
The visitor gulped out a phrase that Fay couldn't decipher; then he hurried down the porch enroute to an orange truck parked outside. She turned again toward her husband.
"Our happy friend is a card, if he gets a chance to talk. He's about given up on fighting life, though."
"He should try poetry, as you did."
She smiled when Doug snuffed out his cigarette in the tray and tucked a finger under her jaw. "You smell good, baby," he whispered. "Soap and freshness and a lilac in June-perfume to drive the guys wild. You can even take a dull mechanic like me and inspire him."
"That's good news. My imagination lately is about as fertile as a Jersey bog."
"And when I kiss you on the neck, you don't hear bells?"
"Doves." She arced her body in gentle response while he stroked the bottom of her spine and talked in her ear. She loved the tobacco aroma of his breath. More important-she loved it because he had swung in her direction after all the bad, frigid nights. "Whatever you had in your coffee," she gasped, "it must have done miracles."
"That type of flattery may throw us on a soap-box again."
Her hopes fell momentarily at his release, as he went to the double window and drew the shade. "Will you come in the parlor with me for a sec?"
"Any time you're like this, I'd follow you to the end of the world. O'Hara seems to be good medicine."
"He stinks."
She tightened the web cinch on her robe and tugged at the orlon until it moulded her breasts in a breathtaking silhouette. He had the curtains closed when she arrived in the parlor. A sense of victory flooded her at the sight of his muscled arm, quivering with passion.
"I was proud of you for cutting O'Hara down. Gossip at the drive-in has him in every other bed on the route. He eats up wives."
"Give me a breather, so I can figure out whether or not that's complimentary."
"The little things add up. I know you're faithful and I'm sure you haven't been intimate with Harry or anyone else."
She felt a damp shame in her eyes when she saw him come near and bend over, kissing her lips.
"Thank you, Doug."
"We had to knock off the kid stuff-the arguing and fouled-up threats. I love you, honey. It was like tearing out my gizzard on the days we had trouble communicating. And to hell with Inez."
"She's-only another waitress. Deep in my heart I knew it, but I want to hear you put it in words."
"I dropped her and I won't even act friendly with the broad, because of what almost happened. To us." He groaned as she replied to the fevered desire in his hands and mouth.
Her voice became a tiny, hungry whimper. "I can forget that Harry's alive."
"Be patient with me, Fay. You got nailed with a restless bunny who grew up toting a chip on his shoulder. I remember when I was young. My three brothers were tough-I tried to outdo them in sports and mom kept pushing and belly-aching at how we had to better ourselves. That's why you see wings on my feet."
"Don't you dare repeat the sordid saga of boyhood!" she grinned. She put her finger on his hp. "I've heard it already. We got married and from now on I'll do my share to keep the vessel on water."
"Fay! I want you."
Tears of triumph glistened on her cheek and she moulded her bust upon him, searing his shirt with hard nipples. He coughed at a nervous spasm.
"I'm sorry about Harry!" she cried. "Who is he? Who are all the Inez's and Harry's and-"
"The line of rhetorical questions will get you nowhere, my lady. And I'd better stop with the halfa-buck adjectives. We're together. You hear the message, I hope."
It's coming in loud and clear."
"We're talking too much," he said.
"Yes."
Wordlessly, they moved into the bedroom. She shrugged off her robe and got out of the rest of her clothes in seconds, conscious that Doug was doing the same. She moved over to the bed and lay down on her back.
Doug was beside her then, his open mouth finding her own mouth's warm welcome. His tongue plunged in and began a frantic tango with hers. His hands were all over her, sliding, squeezing, stroking, pinching at her inflamed nipples. She felt a finger sliding urgently into the open wetness of her cunt, as she tore her mouth from his and opened her legs, spreading her thighs in a wide, wanton welcome.
He arched over her, bracing himself on his elbows, and she flung her legs joyously around his lean hips, hooking her heels behind him. His face, smiling gently, was directly over hers, his eyes looking steadily into her own. She reached down and swung his great log of a cock toward her, bringing the swollen head against the outer lips of her silently screaming cunt.
Doug eased the shaft forward an inch, two inches, until part of the head was engulfed in her quivering twat-opening. Then he stopped, holding his hips immobilized. Oh, God, she thought, what a time to tease!
"Please," she almost sobbed, between her squeezed-shut teeth. "Please. Put it in."
"All of it?" He was smiling at her now. My God, she thought, I'll never be a tease again.
"All of it. Every long, thick hard inch of it." It was almost a prayer, the way she said it.
He began to slide it into her then, slowly, an inch at a time. She unhooked her heels from behind him and let her legs lay wide apart, spreading the red carpet of her cunt for his entrance, but as his thick rigid cock approached the end of its first trip into her depths, her knees jerked up spasmodically and her legs began to flail around his back.
When the great shaft was fully imbedded, to the hilt, his pelvis grinding hard against hers, she hooked her heels behind him again and raised her hips, pushing herself tighter against him. His hands came up behind her, holding her shoulders, as he drew the shaft slowly outward, then plunged it in again. It seemed to reach even deeper, as the walls of her cunt-cavern opened wider to accommodate the length and breadth of his so-well-loved and solong-missed cock.
"That's it, darling," she said. "Deep. Deeper."
He began to fuck her deeply, with long, slow, driving strokes, and her hips rose and fell, rose and fell, in perfect time with his own slow rhythm, her twat lips clutching and sucking and holding the slippery shaft, as if reluctant to let go, on every outstroke, squeezing and embracing every deepening plunge to her inner depths.
Her eyes were squeezed shut and she could hear only the sound of his deep breathing, mingled with her own panting moans. Then, gradually, she became aware of the sound her own hips and buttocks were making, pounding on the mattress, and she knew that the rhythm had increased. She heard a slapping, muffled sound, too, and knew it came from the wild pounding of his heavy balls in the moist crack between her pumping buttocks.
Her own moans were louder now, becoming gasping little screams, and she knew her fingernails were raking the smooth skin of his back. But she couldn't help herself, couldn't stop, couldn't stop anything she was doing. The pounding of her hips sounded as frantic as the frenzied struggles of an impaled moth, and then her climax was on her, searing, pounding, choking her in a surge of sensation.
"Now," she screamed, "oh, God, now!"
He drove his cock deep into her, in a pounding fury of lightning strokes, and as she shuddered and jerked convulsively she felt his hot juices spurting into her, gushing deep, flooding her quivering cave. She put her arms and legs tight around him, and just hung on, as he kept the hard core of her ecstasy buried deep inside her, letting the diminishing waves of her passion wash over it.
It was a long time before the spasms subsided enough for her to let go of him.
FIVE
It was quiet in Ab's Diner the night Fay ran across Edsel Vaunet beside her booth. His girth cut off the light as she sat up and nodded to him, a giant caricature with fat under his jaw and a cigar between his soft red lips.
"I thought I saw you mooning in the comer, Fay. One word from me and you'd enter a life you never dreamed could exist."
"No," she said firmly.
"The doc claims that I have no communicable disease. If you're worried about dirty money, just remember-it goes a long way-and I own plenty. So why the beef?"
She looked at Vaunet's pink gums and false teeth. He had a good share of courage. His bold proposition made her angry and yet it fascinated her. "You rich people with too much free time on your hands are a real problem. Join a club."
"That's the general idea."
He pinched her as she threw the napkin away and arose from the table. She cracked him on the arm with her iron-handled purse. Backing toward the swinging glass door, she waved at him.
"See you in the bridge tourney."
Moving out to the cool air, she walked down a concrete stairway toward the parking lot. He followed.
"Many of the bourgeois think we're lazy. Keep one thing in mind, beautiful-I hustled my fanny to gain the oil fortune. So how about it? Doug would never know, and I'm sure you'll relish the caviar and boat ride and all the trimmings, even if it is only for a weekend or-"
"I'm tempted, Mr. Vaunet. But the wedding vow does mean something to a bourgeoise."
"Then you'll go."
"To the hairdresser. She's probably pacing the floor right now, and I can't afford to be any later. Good-day."
"You'd send me back to that hen-pecker of a wife?" he yelled.
"Pretend she's a movie star with an hourglass figure. That ought to keep you out of mischief."
Fay had other choice remarks in her arsenal but held them back. She thought; Yeah, I know it takes some nerve to make a pass at a wife in the neighborhood, but Vaunet was born with gall. He gives away oil derricks to concubines.
She pondered the notion of telling Doug about how the man had approached her. There didn't seem much future in the expose, though, as Vaunet could retaliate horribly. He'd buy out the Joy Haven, or unearth a means of ruining it. Fay took a right on Running Boar Avenue as she heard the traffic noises near the diner fade behind her. Out in the middle of the road, children were playing.
She wondered if Ed Vaunet would continue to annoy her. Did he know about her quick affair with Harry? Maybe the word had somehow gotten around Fay shuddered at the thought. She moved up a graded driveway that led to the Cafe Wersham, its imposing neon and brick walls standing in sentinel-like pride, an alcoholic beacon. She did like Vaunet. Gregarious, well-read, he had undoubtedly charmed the pants off many girls; but Fay was now anxious to reaffirm her faith in Doug.
People were sitting at group tables within the cafe. She headed for the bar and noted that the click of her heels had become inaudible under the din. No music. Just talking. The Wersham always gave her a creepy sensation-like a morgue of frightened men and women who tried to jabber death away. She kept looking around for Harry.
She saw him pouring beer from a stein at one end of the counter. He wiggled his eyebrows at her when she got near.
"Who does your embalming?" she cracked. "The owner must think a jazz band would wake people up."
"All our patrons hate jazz, and I'm one of 'em."
"Harry-" She weighed the pros and cons of hedging, and saw how necessary a direct statement would be. "Ethics may be hard to take, when a guy is physically attracted to his woman, and vice versa. I mean, we're not really in the same boat."
"Oh-oh! I detect the melody of a cute song. Reach me, doll."
She ran her tongue along a dry upper hp. He drank half the beer without meeting her eyes, making it all the tougher.
"I have to be ethical with everyone. Doug and I went over the whole thing, excluding you, and a clean slate is the only answer."
"So what? Keep going while you're ahead, Fay."
"Until we get straightened out, I can't see you any more. I love the numbskull. You're not mad, I hope."
He cleared his throat and swallowed hard. His reply shot out with machine gun speed. "Yeah, I watch old movies, too. Love is too big for both of us and don't call me, I'll call you. Maybe you won't find it easy to get rid of Feriso."
"We can still be friends."
"There's another cliche. Baby, you're so far out that you're in. Shall I finish the drama by socking you in the teeth?"
She sobbed and lowered her head, knowing that any whore deserved the kind of treatment he suggested. He swore in Italian. Flinching, the girl looked up and saw Harry slam his empty stein on the bar.
"Life hasn't created a term for the emotion I have now," he growled. "Let's drop it. May your regret be less than the disgust I feel-if you'll pardon me, Lady Godiva, true chums beckon."
She watched him disappear into the crowd of people at the door. It hurt her ego to know he could toss their relationship off so calmly. Or was the devil-may-care just a front? I wanted you to be mad, Harry. If anything serious had begun to develop, I might lose my bravado and go back to you.
That much indecision was enough to make her realize a hard fact. She and Doug were far from reconciled. All doubt must be swept away. Nevertheless, she moved with a new bounce in her stride on the walk to her suburban home, and she was proud. You crawled before you could swim.
On the following day she ran through a few charcoal sketches in the den. Two ladies' magazine editors, who had already bought her art work, had given Fay the okay on a completion. But even this hobby failed to hold her interest. With Doug at the restaurant, she needed diversion again-the kind which mother or Juliana could not supply because of their female gender.
She hiked along a maze of renewal and construction projects where dusk had fallen upon the locked cranes, benches, and dug-up turf. Growing developments required water and sewer mains. She arrived at a shopping center, gazed at the mob which wandered through an overhead arcade, and did a double take when she saw Benjamin near the newsstand. He appeared fascinated with the magazine in his grip.
She came around the salesman and covered his eyes with her hands. "Hi, Benjie. Three guesses."
His head jerked, then he went along with the gag. "An Egyptian mummy? A beauty contest winner who got tired of loving me from afar?"
"You men only recognize something when it's thrown down your gullet."
"For our third guess-"
"Here I am, in the flesh." She released him and edged away to the counter, winking in his direction.
He ran a thumb through his sandy beige hair. Pointing at Fay, he exclaimed, "Every Thursday ought to be so lucky. I drift up to suburbia, mix shopping in with the job, and who do I get? FeeFee."
"That name makes me sound like a Paris can-can nude."
"How have you been?" he asked, dropping the newspaper and periodical at his side.
"Loaded with cheer. I know you came this way to hunt quail, but maybe we can chat for a while."
"Now you're in an area where I shine. At society parties they call me the worst dancer and best talker on the seaboard. Shall we yuk at the dumb math teacher we had in junior high? Reminiscing is fun. Or I could show you the brush line from fantail to prow, and hope you buy some."
"I have a better idea-I hereby invite you to my parlor for a drink."
Pursing his hp, Benjamin nodded. "There's a democratic idea, which proves you're still the angel I came to adore in our youth. Not an ounce of snobbery in you. I accept the invitation, Fay, as long as Mr. Willaby is tolerant."
"He works during the evening."
"Ah hah! Then we'll go through my entire brush line."
He picked up the heavy case and gestured with his arm, clicking his heels. "I left the chariot at home but we can hail a cab for the ride."
"A young fellow of your strength should be able to walk three blocks," she prodded.
"Shades of the infantry marathons! I hope you don't mind if I stare a little-very rarely do I escort such a beautiful blonde."
He retained his gay, light air as they eased up toward Ralan Street and headed for the Willaby yard. She wanted this to remain platonic. Wives had a prerogative in the matter of enjoying male companions. And Doug surely didn't help bar her from other men by his long hours at the Haven, his up-and-down moods, the bachelor attitude he had toward marriage-leaving her alone every other weekend.
Fay saw nothing evil in an innocent dalliance with Benjie. When they got to the porch, she touched the neckline above her V-necked dress, a puffy-skirted linen affair with a red cotton belt. She flushed at the interest he gave her sheer stockings.
"You really put the single babes to shame," he said. "Very few of them would think of wearing high green alligator shoes. They set off the dress and make your legs-toot sweet."
"Thanks, Ben. Do you ever see any of the gang around?"
"Heck, no. They disappeared and ran away into a profession or trade or marriage-I'll catch up at our ten-year reunion."
She unlocked the door and stepped across a rug toward their parlor. For some reason, the framed picture of Doug on the mantel caused her heart to dip. Why am I worried about him? She thought. He must be enjoying himself with the customers right now. I can't look at four walls and keep talking to the birds.
"How about a Manhattan?" she offered.
"Crazy. Hey, I was just thinking-they had a fine movie at the Bijou last week. It opened with a situation like ours. Hard-working bach, friendly wife-"
She moved aside and bent over the stereo knob; "Tell me the whole story after I put some life into this crypt." Turning the volume higher, she walked to her built-in wall bar and took out the glasses. "I always thought you'd be a salesman, or a publicity agent." She mixed rye and vermouth, adding the ice and bitters.
"Ma'am, I did work as a PA for almost one year," he replied. "Too much socializing ruined me."
He lounged back in the davenport as she came forward with the cocktail glasses. "Mud in your eye. If you don't like arty stuff, I can throw another record on. Rock and roll, disco-"
"That one's cool enough. Sit down and keep me company."
The stereo had a soothing quality which grew even more relaxing in the next half hour as Fay listened to her classmate ramble. He had a good, resonant tone in his voice. They talked about school and romance and old flames; by her third Manhattan she began to feel melancholy.
"You should have been a radio announcer, Benjie."
"Am I that lousy of a salesman?"
"No. I mean-your gift of gab and the mellow voice." She closed her eyes and felt her brain whirl, and she knew there was too much liquor in her. She snuggled down on the couch. A ripple of desire caught her throat when Benjie's hand pressed into her thigh.
He blinked at her, and she could see her reflection in his twinkling eyes. Easing one arm around her, he said: "Would you mind if I gave a brotherly kiss to the hostess?"
"I have a much better idea," Fay said.
Benjie was undressed except for his pants and shoes by the time they got to the bedroom. In his joyous haste he kept shedding clothes en route.
Fay threw down the bedspread on the bed with one hand and tugged at her dress with the other. Benjie helped her out of the dress with one hand while he unbuckled his belt and zipped down his fly one-handed.
Her dress off, Fay slipped out of her panties and bra and in a flash lay in the middle of the big bed on her back, her knees up, her legs wide apart. Benjie, at the foot of the bed, was kicking off his shoes and as he bent to get out of his trousers, the urge to tease that was always simmering in her bubbled to the surface. Benjie was positioned perfectly, at ringside; she'd put her pussy on display.
Fay opened her legs wider, braced her heels, and raised her hips high off the bed, revolving slowly clockwise. She knew that the lips of her twat would open on each swing, revealing the pink petals within.
Benjie had raised his head to look toward her on her second swing around, and he stood bent, frozen, immobile, as he stared. She was delighted with herself, and with Benjie's bug-eyed stance.
"My God!" he said. "It's alive!"
"Pussy-on-the-merry-go-round, we call this act," she said. It was as good a name as she could come up with on the spur of the moment.
"Are you giving me a moving target?" he asked, standing erect finally and dropping his shorts. His cock stood straight out, pointing toward her, the vertical slit of an eye in the head squinting at her. Even head-on, Benjie's cock looked big, bigger than she'd had any right to expect.
"You might call it that," she said, changing direction suddenly to revolve her hips and her cunt counter-clockwise. At the top of her second gyration she stopped, pushed her cunt upward and forward, and reached down and spread the soft furred lips with her fingers, putting the bright pink interior petals on display.
"Oh, Jesus," Benjie groaned from where he stood. "It looks good enough to eat."
"You hungry?"
"No."
"Good. No eating my pussy then."
"House rule?"
"At this particular moment. It's fuck time."
"It sure is," Benjie said, and in one graceful movement was up on the bed, his hips suspended over hers, his back arched. Fay reached down and guided the apple-hard head of his supremely cooperative cock to the moist warm petals of her pussy.
Benjie gave one sure, slow thrust, and his cock slid full-length into the devouring soft mouth of her ravenous cunt.
But Fay had teased too long, on top of putting up with too much frustration in her love life. To her own astonishment, as Benjie began to fuck her deeply, slowly, with grave concentration, she found herself coming-and no way to fight it. Her hips began to pump furiously as she dug her nails into Benjie's lean wiry back.
"Oh, my God, Benjie," she almost whispered. "I'm coming. I'm coming. It's too soon, but I'm coming."
"Keep coming, honey," Benjie said, pumping his cock into her in time with her own crazy fuck-rhythm. "Come on, Fay. Come big."
And she came big, fluttering and writhing and gasping, as he held his rock-hard cock still inside her, his pelvic mound pressed tight and immobile against her squirming cunt. She felt impaled, as her legs flailed in the air around Benjie's ears and her hips beat' a soundless, hysterical tattoo against the mattress, except that her agony was an agony of joyous sensation.
Benjie stayed that way, hard and tight and still inside her, while her spasms subsided. Then she felt his cock moving slowly, almost imperceptibly, in her sated cunt, withdrawing only a fraction of an inch, then pressing tight against her moist matted mound. She realized that Benjie was moving his cock only to keep it erect, until sensation returned to her and she would be ready again for the kind of action that led to another orgasm. He was so kind, her old friend Benjie. So understanding.
Before long she found that her own hips were moving to meet Benjie's subtle little thrusts, and heat and sensation and desire had made a comeback in the depths of her almost insatiable cunt. She raised her legs and put them around Benjie's hips, hooking the feet behind him.
"It's fuck time again," she said, looking up into his face and smiling. "How come I never knew you were so wonderful?"
Benjie smiled back at her, withdrew his cock so only the head remained inside her outer cunt lips, then plunged the entire shaft deep in one long, fluid motion.
"Ooh," she said. "Aah! That's it. Fuck me deep."
He fucked her deep, and he fucked her shallow, making quick rhythmic motions with only the head and neck of his cock inside her twat. She found herself all at once in a kind of happy, mindless delirium. She hardly knew where she was, and cared less.
She squirmed and pumped her hips and groaned and gasped as Benjie's long hard shaft drove deep into her twat depths. Her nails raked his back and her heels urged him even deeper. Several times she heard herself utter a sort of shuddering, stifled scream, but Benjie never ceased his relentless, controlled, dedicated fucking.
Despite her mindless ecstasy, she was a long time coming this time. Benjie stayed with her to the fluttering, gasping end, and when she began to come he came with her, spewing what seemed like pints of warm gism deep into her squirming depths.
They lay entwined for a long time after her spasms had subsided. Fay had no idea how long they lay that way, but suddenly she at bolt upright in bed.
Unmistakably, she'd heard the sounds of fee crossing the porch. Then the front door opened.
SIX
In their desperation, they set a new record for putting clothes on. Fay was first to go through the bedroom door, but not by much. Benjie was only a few steps behind her.
Fay gawked at the tall, pennant-breasted girl who was standing in the middle of the living room.
"Excuse me for barging in!" Inez Gurt laughed. "Maybe I should have had the decency to knock first, huh? But there was no car in the driveway or garage, so I figured-"
Rebounding from the shock, Fay shrugged. "You're supposed to be on duty at this time of the evening, Inez."
"Yeah, I am. Normally." The unexpected visitor gave Benjie a look that generated enough heat to singe the clothing off his wiry, lithe frame. "My-ohmy, you certainly do have a most affectionate group of buddies."
Benjie frowned at the implication, although Fay could see the new lust in his cheeks. He enjoyed being leered at by a stunner of Inez's proportions.
"And I like you, too," he replied. "What might your name be?"
Fay knew her complexion was beet-red after the awkward and embarrassing entrance of the redhead. "Her name could be a lot of things. We call her 'Inez' in our kinder moments, and I'd love to know what she wants here."
"Is that a bra hanging over the edge of your dress, my dear?" Inez deliberately swaggered her hips as she came along the rug, smiling.
Fay saw the pink lace under her own neck. "You ask rather dumb questions, though I imagine the habit lends you feminine allure. The gentleman and I were having a game of cards." She rearranged the bodice and walked straight up to Inez. In that moment she felt like wiping the smirk right off the waitress' face, and would have done so, had they been alone. "If you want Doug, he's at the Haven."
"As a matter-of-fact I do wish to see him. We changed my hours and he gave me a schedule-but I lost it."
"Why didn't you phone?"
"I called the drive-in and he wasn't around. Out on a delivery, I guess." The voluptuous redhead wore enough perfume to halt a regiment, and Fay nearly gagged on the odor.
"Doug hasn't said a word to me about an employee work list. Anyway, Inez-he isn't home. I'd offer you a drink except that we ran out of vermouth."
"Did you, now?"
She had the smugness of a canary-eating cat as she scratched her narrow waist and sighed, making the erect breasts jog up and down in the process. Fay realized how guilty she must appear. Alcohol in the air and her clothes rumpled-what else would an intruder think? Especially the prostitute who lived for the chance to woo Doug into illicit romance.
"Baby, I'm nothing but a common salesman," Benjie remarked to her. "Brushes for the kitchen, attic, cellar, yard. You name it." He shoved the loose samples into his bag and clicked it shut. "Are you interested?"
"I usually go in for more-uh-personal things," said Inez.
Fay was helpless and she knew it. She watched the redhead pry a finger in her ear, and then swivel toward the porch. "Sorry we couldn't help you," Fay commented drily.
"Oh, Doug should turn up somewhere along the road. Nice meeting you, Mr.-"
"Lake," he grinned. "Women used to yell 'Benjie' and I answered."
"I'll bet you did, handsome."
It seemed to Fay that a giant scooper had dug away her innards. She was frightened, ashamed, pessimistic about Inez and how the girl would handle her information. Fay watched her move out to Ralin's oak-shaded sidewalk, and heard the heels clicking on the concrete. A sinking sensation grabbed at her.
Benjie went to the blue-tinted mirror near the patio and straightened his necktie. He had regained much of his savoir faire after the interruption.
"That doll didn't sound very keen on taking orders from you. She does work at your hubby's restaurant?"
"Yes, Ben."
"I can tell by looking at her that she's been around the horn. Reminds me of a B girl I met in Juarez. Wowie! Such a time you didn't believe could exist."
He related the saga of his youthful experience with the whore, although Fay paid no attention. She had her mind on other things. Would Doug learn about her salesman and incriminate her? More likely, Inez would build the suspense and withhold her secret for a while.
"You're not even listening, Fay."
Benjie's reprimand woke her from the short reverie; she went to the doorway and stood near him. "Kind of beat, I guess. Do you have to leave so soon?"
"If we go back you could get in trouble. I avoid it as the plague."
"Not very flattering."
"Well, I mean-"
"Inez will keep her imagination and her tongue in check, I promise. Tonight was fun, Benjie. Hashing over old days-"
"That's safer than building brand new ones. God, why do I carry so much junk in my suitcase?"
He tried to be calm as he moved down the stairs and across the lawn. But Fay was sad and filled with regret; she leaned her head on the jamb, watching him vanish in the shadow beyond a street lamp. Every time I put my foot down, she thought, it lands in a pail of hot water.
Doug was restless and preoccupied as they sat eating dinner at the Bastogne. She leaned her elbows on the table, and admired the tapestry and gold chandelier above them.
"This cafe always reminds me of an oriental building," she told her husband. "Chinese food, pagodas, dormers."
"Oh, yeah? The bill looks American enough." He frowned at the yellow paper in his hand, digging a pile of change from one pocket and throwing it on the tablecloth. "We seem to have champagne taste and a beer bankroll."
"You mean I have." Fay didn't know how to handle him during these bitter moods. "It's lucky that one of us grew up with the habit of thrift."
"Our marriage would get dull and boring if we both ran out and tried every new dress on the market. Here comes the waiter again. He's a good boy-I wish I could afford to tip him."
"I know it hurts your feelings when you stiff anyone."
He ignored the barb and tapped a half-dollar on the arm of the vacant oak chair beside him. She studied Doug's profile. The cleft chin was hidden; there was power and youth in his nose, small forehead, and unblinking eyes. He gave off a wiry, rangy appearance. She thought he'd make a perfect cowboy in some movie epic. His reference to her money-spending traits had rankled a bit, though she considered herself quite normal in the area.
They got up when the fat, bald waiter approached their table. Doug took her hand and smiled. "Ready for the miniature golf jag?"
"As ready as I'll ever be. I'll beat you before you know what happened, if you don't cheat."
"Let's not bring up the cheating subject."
The cherubic waiter nodded as he counted the greenbacks and left change in a deep ashtray. After loosening his collar he adjusted the towel on his forearm. "Will that be it, sir?"
"Don't spend the whole sum in one place!" replied Doug.
"You're very kind."
"In the boy scouts they voted me most likely to succeed."
They walked off toward an exit, and she knew the waiter had not appreciated his small tip. But it gave Doug no outward cause for alarm; during a rough boyhood he had learned to conquer the sensitive part of his character. She moved into the passenger side of the sports car while he gunned the motor.
He rolled the car out toward the heavy traffic on the highway. She gazed at various buildings haunting the road's bank-restaurants and plush niteries that hungered for southwest Connecticut's upper-crust money. At each red light, Doug raced the engine impatiently and then roared away, ahead of other vehicles.
"No one seems able to out-race you today," she commented.
"I'm wild for kicks," he laughed. "See the police barracks ahead? If it weren't for those party poopers, I'd jam her up to seventy or more, and get rid of the slow drivers."
"The golf course is only another mile."
Again he stopped talking as he scratched one ear and began to whistle and study the ribboned highway illuminated by his headlights. When he passed the grammar school, he drove into a paved lot and halted the car. They walked to the window of Putterville. Doug bought tickets, and a few minutes later she was hacking her club at a ball on the miniature golf track.
On the third hole she blew a very easy putt. He kidded her with a horse-laugh, writing the score down on his card. "Already you're two strokes behind, angel. A female athlete falls out of shape without practice."
"My shape doesn't appear to annoy you very much."
He gave her a playful whack on the derriere which should have relaxed her tight nerves. But she had the idea he was only using her as a gimmick, a toy to sate his roaming spirit. And yet, half a husband was better than none. For the time being. Could he sense that her mind was not on the game, either, and that she could dwell on the memory of Harry and Benjamin Lake, and even O'Hara, with pleasure?
A gap still yawned between her and Doug. Maybe he had learned things which he didn't mention, and the prospect filled her with dread. She wished that by some miracle Inez would disappear. Then Fay sighed, wondering if that were the real key to her problem.
Above Fay, the sky had an azure brilliance that kept clouds in meek, hazy obedience low on the horizon. She heard tugboats moan from the harbor. Other people found enough work to do, but she was smitten with an inadequate sensation again-a drifter not doing her share in society.
Dry yellow paint had begun peeling off the fire hydrant near her. She walked past it, going beyond an ice cream parlor where a crowd of youths lounged away the day in cars and around benches. Her eyes smarted under the cool wave of fresh air. They were tired from her study with the nude painting at home; she knew their bright blue luster, evident in such clear weather, had dimmed amid bloodshot veins. I don't care how I look today. Who's interested in the opinion of other women, anyhow? She walked across the boulevard and saw the mob filtering out of a hall. Mother was on the curb with Max Perdini. Fay hesitated, then moved forward. Mother was powdering her nose while she obviously struggled to conquer a giggly fit at whatever had been said. It was good to see her laugh for a change.
Max ceased talking when Fay cut in. "Ma, I hope you won back your thirty dollars in the bridge contest."
"We didn't gamble today. Just sociable."
She seemed rather annoyed at the arrival of another party in the conversation-even if it were her own daughter. Fay nodded to Max.
"How's our party doll making out?"
"I was about ready to go home and correct English papers, Fay. If I can tear myself away from Shirley's crew."
Fay kidded, "Don't rush off on our account-you're like a breath of ocean air and you arouse my creative spirit."
"Such a lovable child. Be good to her, Shirley. We'd hate it if her husband ruined the young rose of womanhood in potential genius."
"I'll give you a buzz," said mother.
Max watched them march away toward the bowling alley and diner, carriage erect, hips swaying provocatively.
"How quiet the north end is," mother said to Fay as they began hiking toward the hairdresser's. "Aren't you glad we found a home in suburbia and ran out on the tenement bind? Of course, another mile away from town and we'd be in the wilderness-abandoned-you have to strike a happy medium."
"I wish I could strike a happy something. Maybe you ought to initiate me in the bridge club."
Later that afternoon Fay put her cooking ability to the test. She combined pork and salmon, set the dish on a cupboard in her kitchen, and waited until the oven heated up. Doug was in the bathroom, shaving.
When she heard the knock at their front door she figured it to be some peddler. But Vaunet's obesity and soiled, grinning teeth welcomed her from behind the screen.
"Hi, Fay! Dropped in for a cup of sugar, in the age-old neighborly rite."
All she needed was some dirty innuendo from this character, with Doug in earshot and probably ready to accuse her again. "They have grocery stores on Third Avenue," she snapped.
"Well, what do you know about that? I thought we'd get more kicks by coming over to you and borrowing. Hey-the griddle has a real fine odor. Barbecued hog?"
"Roast luau for two. I'm surprised at you, Mr. Vaunet, a man of your wealth and travel experience."
"It's been years since I made the Honolulu tour." His hand went to the zinc knob on her door, but she slid the lock shut and scowled at him. "Just trying to be-"
"A good neighbor. Well, I used all our sugar and you're fresh out of luck. My husband-"
"The magic word isn't necessary between us, honey. I shall fly off on quicksilver wings. You were friendly enough at Ab's the other day, but now you reject my disposition and a request for food. Maybe you don't want to join the happiness ranks."
"I think your carefree joy is a front, sir. If you'll excuse me."
"Ah-the memory of Ab's."
She winced, slamming the plywood door shut to drown out his loud voice. Why did he harp on their brief meeting at the diner? She headed back toward the oven and gained a whiff of roast pig; she envisioned an apple in its mouth, and further imagined that the pig resembled her, Fay. Vaunet was surely doing his best to make her sound like one.
She reached for a pack of cigarettes and felt her pulse jump when the noise echoed behind her. She turned quickly, trembling. Doug threw another of his shoes on the floor and grunted, "I wish I knew where by damn razor blades are."
"Doug! You scared me out of a year's growth."
"You can afford it." He stared at her heaving bosom, came across the room, and put his hand gently under the sweater.
She gasped when his palm contracted flesh and toyed with the bra. He squeezed one breast before easing away. "Fay, you're wonderful. And Vaunet thinks so, too. I saw him gawk at you during the whole time he carried on that chat."
A warning signal flared inside her at the irritation in his eyes. "The man has to be humored, like a baby at the candy store."
"Are you the candy store for him?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"After the progress we made, some loaded sugar daddy flies in and hangs out the help-wanted ad. I hope you enjoyed the game at Ab's Diner. Too bad old Doug wasn't around."
Her fear chilled to anger. "He was lying about that scene. I froze him away and he had to get even-the spoiled kid again."
"Why would he eh?"
"You know how bored the rich can get. He thinks-oh!" She went to the table and yanked a dusting rag from the chair. "I'm being thrown on the witness stand and I don't care for the idea. You said you love me. Is that how far your love and trust-"
"Since Harry came along I'm not sure what to believe."
She began to sob as she ran the cloth along their provincial chair. He came over to where she stood; his shirt and khaki pants were wrinkled, smelling of grease after a morning with the outboard motor in the garage. He wrapped his hand about her wrist.
"Vaunet screws anything in a dress. Pardon the rough dialog, Fay, but you must understand the truth. For a wife with energy and leisure time, evil takes on a new look-and she can even admire the weekend pitchmen."
"I won't listen to you!" she cried. "Is this the reward I get, for being faithful?"
"You miss the point."
She worked her arm free and backed toward the refrigerator, panic and despair conquering her thoughts. "So now I suppose you think Mr. Money Bags rolled into bed with me already. Say it!"
"He'd make a fine lover in the cash department. I do believe you, though."
"Thanks, darling."
"I'm only arguing that leisure and temptation are partners in crime. You won't run off on a spree with anyone as long as we love each other. I want to keep that love intact."
"You go about it in one hell of a way." She hurried to the arch leading to the bedroom, and whirled around toward him. Her eyes were damp with tears. "Save the lecture for your own bad conscience."
"Don't get the wrong attitude. I hate to see you
... M cry.
"Oh, it's only a pose for my new acting role, Doug. The conniving spouse. If you're fed up with it, just say so."
He wet his lips nervously, cracking the knuckles in his hand. She was glad he had the decency to allow a moment of silence at this point. Otherwise she'd fear that he did suspect her putting on airs. With a final aggrieved look, the woman turned away and flung herself on the bed, where she remained alone in shaded darkness.
Before long she fell asleep. And right into another one of her horny dreams.
This dream went back a few years, too, because in it she was babysitting for a boy who looked about ten or eleven. He was all eyes when she sat down and crossed her legs. Her skirt stopped almost a foot above her knees. She swung her top foot back and forth, slowly, making the calf swell and fall seductively before the boy's intent eyes.
Again, the dream was more real, more intense than reality. In the dream, the boy tore his eyes away from her legs and left the room, returning with a large flat cardboard box which he set on the floor. He got to his knees in front of the box and opened it carefully.
She saw a jumble of colored cardboard pieces inside the box. A jigsaw puzzle. The boy's gaze returning to her legs while he lifted pieces out of the box.
She recrossed her legs, slowly, giving him a glimpse into the shadows between her upper thighs. The boy stared and licked his lips.
"Do you like them, Will?" she asked.
"What?"
"My legs."
He blushed. He thought there was something naughty about looking at her legs.
"Yes," he said. "They're beautiful."
"Thank you. But you don't have to be embarrassed to look at my legs. Nice legs are meant to be looked at by men."
"I'm not a man yet."
"You're getting there. But boys can look too."
He stared then, openly, at her legs, looking upward, putting his chin on his hands as he lay belly down on the carpet. In her dream Fay was beginning to feel very excited. She uncrossed her legs and squeezed her thighs together.
"Would you like to see more of them?" she asked the boy.
"More of what?"
"My legs." She let her knees come slightly apart. Her short skirt was about as high on her thighs as it would go.
"I sure would."
"Would you like to do more than just look?"
"What do you mean?"
"Would you like to touch my legs? To feel them?" His eyes widened. He swallowed hard. "Yes," he said. He had trouble saying it. "Come over here, then."
Awkwardly, he got to his feet and crossed the room to her, then got on his knees on the floor. He moved his hand up toward her bare, smooth, swelling calf, then hesitated. "Go ahead," she said.
Tentatively, with the backs of his fingers, he touched the velvety swell of her calf. His other hand came up then, to palm the firm swell, and moved toward her knee. Then both his hands were all over her lower legs, caressing, squeezing, kneading the resilient smoothness. One hand found the yielding softness of her inner thighs above her bent knees and explored farther.
She was very excited. She stood up suddenly.
"You said you'd like to see more?"
"Yes," he said, looking up at her. There was some thing almost imploring in his eyes. He was terribly excited, she could see, even more excited than she was. She detected a bump in his pants, a short way down one leg.
"I'll be right back," she said.
In a hallway outside what had seemed to be a living room she raised her skirt, stepped swiftly out of her panties, and slipped them into the handbag she was carrying. Feeling excited and daring and very naked underneath, she went back into the living room. She had a wonderful idea. She had always wanted to do this to boys who tried to look up under her skirt, ever since she was a little girl. Now she was a big girl, and she had just the boy to do it to. A little boy. An eager, excited little boy. She wanted to watch his face.
He was watching her closely as she came back into the room.
"You said you wanted to see more of my legs," she repeated, trembling a little in her excitement.
"More of me?"
"Yes."
"Lie down-on your back."
Looking at her, his face filled with wonder, he did as he was told. She walked over to where he lay, slowly, letting her hips sway, stopped, raised her tight skirt a few inches to give her leg room for a long step, and then, deliberately, she stepped over him, squarely above his upturned face. Her pink pussy would open fleetingly, she knew, directly in his gaze.
After she'd stepped over him she turned and looked down at his face. He looked only bewildered, and then she realized that the only light in the room, from floor lamps, had left her upper thighs, and her pussy in particular, in deep shadow.
Before she could say or do anything, the boy proved himself to be a man of action. He darted out of the room and came back carrying a flashlight, swiftly resuming his position on his back on the floor.
"Do it again," he said, and she had to laugh. Her nervousness had left her, but not the excitement. She stepped over him again, slower this time, and he beamed the flashlight upward between her opening thighs.
She stopped in mid-stride and turned and stood, legs apart, straddling him openly. She looked down at his face. She felt very tall in her high heels.
The boy was staring up under her skirt, his eyes bulging. He was gripping the flashlight with both hands. His knuckles showed white.
"Jeez," he said. "It's hairy."
"Would you like to do something besides look at it?" she asked him, holding her triumphant position, standing tall, her legs apart, letting him look to his little heart's content. The flashlight never wavered.
"Like what?" the boy asked, still staring.
"Like touch it?"
"Jeez. Would I."
She stepped away from him and crossed the room, looking around. She chose the arm of an easy chair as being just the right height, and sat on it, facing him. He had followed her across the room and stood in front of her. He didn't have his flashlight.
She raised the hem of her skirt partway to her hips, planting her feet apart as she did so. She thought of the doctor and nurse games she'd played when she was a very small girl.
"I've shown you mine," she said. She even remembered the words. "But you haven't shown me yours."
He didn't have to be coaxed. He was proud of his equipment, it seemed. He unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants-his undershorts with them-and stepped out of them quickly, kicking them aside.
He stood up straight then and looked into her eyes. She looked down at his stiff, slender, palpitating prick. It seemed to be looking back at her, poking toward her at an upward angle, as strong as a hickory branch. It was smaller than the few hard-ons she'd encountered, of course, but its slenderness made it look longer than it was.
Fay was very excited in this part of her dream. She brought her thighs together, squeezing her hot, moist pussy tightly, but it didn't do any good.
"Hey," the boy said.
"What?"
"I thought you were going to let me touch it. You can touch mine." She reached out and took his poked-up, stiff cock in the palm of her hand. It poked upward even farther, with a sudden violent throb. Holding it beneath the head, between thumb and forefinger, she moved her hand back and forth, feeling the soft glove of skin slide on the slender hard shaft of muscle underneath.
With her free hand she pulled her skirt to her hips and opened her legs wide. The boy stared down at the pink opening lips of her pussy.
"Jeez," he said. It seemed to be his favorite word. He reached out and with his middle finger touched the moist tenderness squarely at the parting of the lips, then somehow his finger pressed fleetingly on the swelling bud of her clitoris.
She jumped, then squirmed on the arm of the big chair. He kept his finger where it was, letting it slide across the quivering focal point of her torment. Then he slid it part way up her slippery channel, between her tight inner lips.
"Jeez," he said. "It's all wet."
"Yes," she said, and she knew exactly what to do then. She had no choice.
"Put it in, Will," she said.
"What?"
"Put your cock in there. In my pussy. Don't be afraid."
"I'm not afraid," he said, "only, I never did that before."
"Me either," she said. "Come on, Will. Now!"
She inched forward on the broad arm of the chair until her wet open slit was poised at the edge. It was exactly on a level with the straining taut tip of Will's uptilted slim shaft. She still held it between her fingers, and as he moved toward her, trembling in his eagerness, she guided the point of his eager young cock to her hungering cunt.
Awkwardly, the boy reached out and grasped her behind the hips, pushing his own hips forward at the same time. His slender cock slid easily into her wet warm pussy.
She squirmed in delight and wrapped her legs completely around the boy's slim, trembling, pumping hips. It hadn't hurt, she was telling herself happily in her dream. Maybe this was the best way to lose the "cherry" the girls always talked about. With a little boy. With a little boy's slim little prick.
The boy's face was contorted as she squeezed him closer with her legs, trying to slow his frantic pumping motion, to hold him quiet for a moment in the quivering mass of sensation between her thighs.
But she was too late. He was shuddering all over in the soft grip of her legs, and she could feel the lively stiffness of his young prick dying in spasms inside her, spurting something warm and wet into her. Oh, God, what should she do now? She was almost crying in her excitement.
The boy's hips pressed backward against her encircling legs. He was trying to leave her, to take his limp little cock out of her clutching cunt.
"Stay there, Will," she said frantically. "Stay in there."
"But it's gone down," he said. "It's all soft."
"Leave it in there anyway," she said, almost sobbing, grinding her cunt close against his bony little pelvis. "Just stay there."
"All right," he said, and put his hands back where they'd been, behind her churning hips.
"How long," she gasped, holding the flaccid little morsel pressed tightly between her pussy lips, "how long before it gets hard again?"
"I don't know. Not long."
She had an idea. She reached around behind her and unsnapped her bra, then brought her hand up in front, pushing her sweater and bra up and freeing her breasts. The nipples, she noticed, were tightly-squeezed pink points, pointing out from the firm white globes.
Without being told, the boy reached up and fondled one luscious breast, then the other. She watched him as he ran a finger across the responding, tingling tip of each nipple.
"Suck them, Will," she said, being careful to keep him tightly between her legs. "Lean forward and suck them."
He didn't have to be told twice, and as he sucked she felt his prick start to swell again, lifting itself and getting hard and poking itself deeper into her yearning insides. Soon it was fully erect, as hard as before, throbbing again.
His hips began their nervous, trembling, erratic pumping action again, but this time she was able to slow him down with the pressure of her legs clamped around his hips.
"Slowly, Will, slowly," she gasped, meeting his every stroke with a thrust of her own.
"I never felt anything so wonderful before," he said, looking earnestly into her eyes as he pumped his prick to a new pinnacle of pleasure.
"Me, either. Do you know what we're doing?"
"Having intercourse," he said, dropping his eyes modestly but pumping away without hesitation.
"That's right. That's what the doctor books call it."
"There's another word for it." He was looking into her eyes again. "What is it?"
"Fucking."
"Why, Will!" She widened her eyes at him.
"That's what the kids call it."
He was pumping faster now, his lively stiff cock whipping her oozing juices to a froth. The pressure of her legs couldn't hold him to a slower stroke, but she didn't care. She was all on fire inside, ready to burst into flame, and she didn't care how fast or how furiously he fucked her.
"What was that word again, Will?" she moaned.
"What word?" he grunted, pumping. "Intercourse?"
"No!" She was having trouble getting words out. She unclenched her legs from around his back and planted her feet on the floor, planting her cunt tight against his pounding bony pelvis. "The other word-the one the kids use."
"Fucking," the boy panted.
"That's it." She had her hands at his hips, pulling him tight. Now she lay back along the broad arm of the chair, raising her legs high, giving him clear access to her cunt.
"Fuck me, Will," she groaned. "Fuck me hard. Fuck me fast."
He whipped his young cock in and out of her tightly clutching cunt with frenzied speed. He was snorting, and she saw that his nose was running, but he didn't care, and she didn't care. She felt his rigid shaft give one last frantic tremor, and then she came with him, her climax overwhelming her in a series of grinding spasms. She screamed, and screamed again.
"Sssh," Will cautioned, looking over his shoulders. "You'll wake the baby."
On that idiotic note, Fay woke up.
She reached down and found that her upper thighs were slippery wet.
SEVEN
Fay was in no hurry as she stepped along the concrete promenade separating a double row of shops and stores at the Toga. Beside her were mother and Rod; ahead of her yawned Mykon's department store.
She tried to identify with her mother's problem. They rode the escalator to an upper floor in Mykon's that was loaded with car parts and supplies. Rod gave his aging mistress a friendly pat on the rear as they walked toward a maze of tires.
"I need rubber on the convertible," he told her, "and I'd better grab 'em while the sale's on. Can't afford a blow-out during one of our trips."
"You might get killed, Rod. I'd go crazy if that happened."
Fay watched them embrace quickly. The man was obviously in no mood for games, and ignored mother's cooing.
"Whenever I touch you, it's all fire and hunger," she pursued.
Fay said, "We drove up here for automotive parts, ma. Why do you annoy dear Rod with junk? He's more interested in buying wax to put on his bald head so it'll shine in the dark."
"Very humorous," he growled. "You'll be joining me, if you keep using that dye on your hair."
"The bleach makes me think I'm a Hollywood star."
"Hah! They have better ways to reach the top-like sleeping with the right men."
"You know all the angles on the ambition ladder." She had a sense of victory and satisfaction in the effect her words produced on him. Outwardly, she made it resemble light joking and teasing. But he deserved any insult that could be thrown at him; she saw him pause near a display and finger the material.
"Shirley, I think these tires will be fine."
Mother hurried to him and gave the merchandise a dour look. "I'm not really handy at judging that sort of thing." She rested on his arm, laying her head on his shoulder as they waited for the younger, eager salesman.
It made Fay despondent when she saw them in the same old bind. Rod, aware that mother liked to fawn over him, anxious to avoid any show of emotion toward her. He had her up a tree. It seemed ironic that mother, who advocated the policy of outwitting men, had met her Waterloo with a character like Rod and danced under his puppet strings.
He bartered with the clerk for a while and completed the purchase. Then he led the two women back down an escalator for their journey home.
Fay thought of her argument with Doug, concerning Vaunet. She was sorry she had barked at him but he actually offered no alternative because of his rapidity in assuming guilt where none existed. Of course she had lied in denying her sexual union with Harry. But Doug had no right to force her on the defensive without cold facts behind him.
"I wish you'd learn to get along better with Rod," mother told her. "Some day he could even turn out to be your dad. If I can hook the fish."
"Marriage is a great institution-for lunatics," he added with cruelty, "but not for us."
Fay furrowed her brow when they came near his big green convertible. She winked at the aging man, and yet let him know she was serious. "Love 'em and leave 'em, eh, Rod?"
"You're the only one who's done any flying from the nest."
Mother said, "Just ignore what Fay says. Quoting lines of drama and literature gives her an odd, arty feeling. Under the hard shell, my daughter admires you."
He laughed, entering his car via the driver's door and then leaning over to open the passenger side. Fay got into the rear seat while mother sat beside Rod.
"I find that rather impossible to believe," he said. "Until now, I was a rat who used women for my own hideous joy."
"Well, I turned over a new leaf, Rod. Exploitation can be mutual. If I'm nice to you-who knows? On some vague future day you may get me a job in industry and help the Willaby finances."
She smiled at his irritation as he guided the heavy car up the turnpike and east toward suburbia. The engine's throaty hum made her feel like sleeping. When he arrived at her driveway minutes later, Fay bade them a tired good-night, and walked away slowly onto the porch.
By the next afternoon she managed to figure Doug's reason for popping off at her. Why would he expand a minor chat with a neighbor, blow it out of proportion and condemn her for it? He had certainly never been touchy or presumptuous.
All women resented being treated harshly. Fay had come to the unavoidable conclusion that her husband might be going out with Inez and, squeezed in the bear-trap of conscience, reverting his own guilt upon Fay. Does reverse psychology work that way? she thought. Maybe I can wangle a definite answer out of the villainess who brought the whole mess into the open.
She decided to make her stab at a cross-examination while her nerve was up. Around three o'clock she took a walk into the slum district. Going up Jod Terrace, she heard Spanish guitar music in the air and saw the foreign title on a movie marquee; ahead of her yawned Inez's tenement.
It looked like something out of the Roaring Twenties. As she moved up the creaky stairs, Fay's mind kept relating Inez and Benjamin Lake-the moment of truth when the redhead had stumbled upon them in Fay's parlor.
She reached the landing and headed for a gray door, murky in the dim hall. Perhaps her journey would be fruitless. She bit her Up, knocking again at the door, and finally the sound of footsteps greeted her. Inez stood in the foyer with a robe covering her fantastic body.
"I thought you might be stripping at the Golden Goddess," said Fay.
"Sorry to ruin your day. By being home, I mean Shall we bury the hatchet or give you a lesson in how to be an exotic dancer?"
"Neither."
"I'm pretty good at burying hatchets, when they belong to cute men." She frowned at her watch. "It was wonderful to see you, ma'am, but I'm really busy, and-"
"Oh, did I interrupt you in the middle of prayer? My question won't use up more than a second, and then we can both go to church-"
"The humor's not coming through. I gave up on religion years ago-it hampers my style. But do continue with the meowing. I suppose we'll have another dose of holier-than-thou about Dougie."
A rash of anger shot along Fay's back. She stepped toward the younger woman. "Have you let him in your pants yet, Inez?"
"Meow to you, too! Of course I haven't-and although I'm not exactly a genius, I'd be nutty if I said yes. So wake up, ma'am."
She didn't know what to say. Was it her own imagination putting the shifty guilt in Inez's eyes? "Don't take offense, honey, but everyone calls you the town pump, and with good reason."
"Listen to her! The fancy college broad. Doug told me about you in the university-writing for their magazine by day, and having panty raids after dark. The same shoe fits both of us."
"Stop throwing the blame on someone else. I want to know if you raped him the same way you took your own brother." She was glad the accusation had come out. There didn't seem any other method of lighting a fire under Inez and disrupting her charm.
But the reference to a childhood error enraged the waitress. She flung one arm ahead and seized Fay by the collar of her blouse, yanking hard. "I'll shut that lousy mouth!"
Fay saw red stars of pain fly into her vision when the fingernails raked her breast. She grabbed Inez's long auburn hair and swung her around. Applying an arm-lock, she gained revenge by scratching the hot-tempered girl down the spine, tearing her robe, drawing blood on smooth-fleshed buttocks. Inez screamed.
"Who taught who a lesson?" Fay cried. She pushed her foe away roughly and saw her elbow hit the jamb. "I don't want anyone tampering wit Doug's affections."
"You little bitch."
"Little? I'm big enough to hit you, Delilah, so look upon it as a word for the wise."
Inez sobbed, covering the tears in her eyes with both hands. Then she came bouncing back toward Fay, one arm hefted and her complexion a wild red Fay steeled herself against the charge.
A male voice barked out, "Keep fightin' like that and I'll phone police headquarters."
Inez froze in her tracks and Fay turned toward the man. He was thin and old, but authoritative in his rapid movements. "I'm ashamed of you," he finger wagged at the redhead. "Actin' like a brat who couldn't think of what to say. I heard it all."
She replied, "This is like personal business, and I don't think you have any right-"
"Whatever happens in the tenement is my affair, Inez."
The answer dawned on Fay and she adjusted her bra where it had torn, exposing a dark nipple "You're right-we should save the brawling for TV. Are you the landlord?" she asked, panting for air.
"That's what the notarized paper says."
After an awkward moment of silence Fay nodded and gestured to the wall beside him. "No damage done. I believe the girl's cooled off, so I may as well be on my way. The conversation had about ended, anyway."
He sputtered and gave her a dirty look, but she walked calmly toward the stairwell. Behind her she heard the landlord's bitter wrath as he chewed Inez out. The bout had accomplished virtually nothing. Fay wondered if it might have been better to leave things alone. But she couldn't go on living with Doug under the shadow of suspicion. A break in the armor would have to be accomplished soon.
On Monday morning she dragged her old sketches into the parlor and looked through them. Each one represented a key epoch of her art career: The black woman who had posed naked for oil artists in night school-five girls lolling about a swimming pool, their bare womanhood caught in Fay's brush.
She didn't feel much like starting another canvas. You're a lazy bum, she thought. She opened a photo album and delved more deeply into the past. A warm glow coursed through her as the pages flipped by, showing her with buddies and girl friends at varied social events, and pictures taken at parties.
Fay arose and walked to the wall cabinet in search of liquid refreshment. She poured brandy over white creme dementhe, drank it down, and mixed another. She tried to relax on the divan with a crossword puzzle. But ennui and-the stinger's reaction upon her blood made her restless and suddenly the urge to exercise came over her.
By drawing the shade and Venetian blinds she threw the house into a twilight dimness. At the bathroom mirror she paused, removing her jacket and sweater. Next came the skirt, bra and nylons. She sipped at the stinger while closing her eyes under the stereo melody; she wondered how good a burlesque queen she would have been. Her pink, nude chasis gleamed in the mirror.
No female with pride wanted to see fat appear at the wrong places. Hands folded on her head, Fay hopped up and down, squat-jumping in rhythm with the music. She soon developed it by a swinging her arms. Her white breasts throbbed and bounced wildly around the rosy areolas.
When she got tired she sat down and felt the perspiration heavy on her body. A timid knock echoed on the door. Throwing a robe over herself, she called out, "Who is it?"
"Bread delivery, ma'am."
O'Hara again. She knew her resentment toward him ought to be at a high peak, but the liquor had ruined her inhibitions. He might be good for a laugh.
"Well, bring the damn stuff in before you catch cold out there! My door's open."
He entered, flat feet clapping on the rug, his mouth agape when he saw her bare thighs where the robe had fallen back. O'Hara whistled.
"I see you've been rubbing sun-tan oil on already. It won't be warm enough for the beach for another month."
"Put your glasses on, O'Hara. My skin is shiny from a very ordinary thing called 'perspiration,' and your eyes may tilt at any moment. Close the door."
She could almost feel the heat of his probing stare, and started to reach up and pull the robe closer around her, but stopped her hand. The hell with it. Let the poor man look. She had panties on. A glimpse of her legs and the swell of her breasts wouldn't do the man any harm.
"I feel a little dizzy from all that exercise," she said, and sat down in the big easy chair and crossed her legs, letting the robe fall open from the waist down.
"Too early in the day for exercise," O'Hara said, tearing his eyes away from her legs only for the moment it took him to close the door behind him.
"Would you like a drink?" Fay asked. Her invitation was out before she knew what she was saying. She couldn't figure out why she was having an attack of the hots, especially in the presence of O'Hara. He was anything but handsome.
"Never too early in the day for a drink," he said, looking as surprised at her offer as she had been making it. But not surprised enough to stop staring.
"How do you feel about a stinger?" she asked, getting up and crossing the room to the wall cabinet. She could feel his eyes on her back, and let her hips and ass sway, just for the hell of it.
"Never had anything called a stinger," O'Hara said. "But if it's liquor, I'm for it."
She made another stinger for herself and a mammoth one for O'Hara. After she'd handed him his drink she had another idea.
"Excuse me for a minute," she said. "Make yourself, comfortable."
In the bathroom she slipped out of her panties and dropped them into the hamper. The tease in her was taking over. It would be such fun to tease O'Hara, to arouse him and send him on his bread route at a fever pitch of lust. When she came back into the living room and sat down, she crossed her legs with abandon, not slowly but not quickly either.
O'Hara stared. He couldn't have seen much but he stared anyway. Maybe he'd sensed something.
"Maybe I should leave," he said, gulping, "before the king walks in."
"He's at the Haven," she said, sipping. When she leaned forward to put her drink on the coffee table her robe gaped open at the top and one luscious breast swung free, out in the open.
She looked over at O'Hara, smiled, and drew the robe back in place as she sat back. But not hurriedly.
He stared at her for another long second, then swallowed his stinger in one huge gulp. Then he coughed, violently.
"What the hell is that?" he wanted to know, when his coughing had subsided.
"Brandy and creme dementhe," she said.
O'Hara was looking over at her with a kind of lustful worship. He was sitting in a chair facing her.
"Thank you, O'Hara," she said. "I need compliments in the morning."
"You shouldn't need them any time," O'Hara said. He was feeling bolder, from the sound of his voice. "Do you suppose I could have a shot of brandy without the other stuff?"
"Help yourself."
He did, swallowing a generous dollop of brandy before he came back to his chair. He was smiling as he sat down. She leaned forward to pick up her drink, letting her breasts swing forward almost out of the gaping robe.
"Do you like what you see?" she asked. It was probably the silliest question she had ever asked, she thought. His eyes seemed ready to pop out of his head.
"Sure do," he said, smiling and looking at her quite boldly now. But it was a warm, friendly kind of boldness. Brandy, she thought. The wonder drug. "Would you like to see more?"
"You don't need an answer to that."
"No," she said. "I guess I don't. Well, on account of your kind words to a lonely lady, I think you should see more." She moved her shoulders slightly, casually, and the top of her robe parted loosely. Her full breasts jiggled and pouted, one of them fully exposed to his gaze. She could feel her nipples rising.
Without saying a word, O'Hara got up and poured himself another shot of brandy and swallowed it. He poured another and brought it back with him as he sat down again in the chair facing her. "You're too much," he said, not smiling now. "You haven't really seen anything yet," she said, and uncrossed her legs, letting the robe fall away from her thighs. It was belted at the waist. Then she moved her feet and let her knees drift slightly apart.
From where he sat, O'Hara was looking directly up between her thighs. He had to see at least a hint of her pussy, shadowed though it was. She opened her knees a little farther, making sure he got some glimpse of the tender treat between her legs. "Like it, O'Hara?" she asked. "Can't see much," he mumbled. But he sure was trying. She laughed.
"How about this?" she asked, and raised one leg and draped it over the arm of the chair, giving him an open view of her parted, pinkly pouting pussy.
"Jesus," he said, and licked his lips, just once. It was the sign she'd been hoping for, she realized, for the last few minutes.
"Would you like to go down on me?" she asked, feeling the stingers swirling around in her head.
"You mean lick your pussy?" O'Hara asked, looking numb.
"What else would I mean?"
"I've never done that," O'Hara said, looking embarrassed at the admission.
"Why not?"
"I don't know."
"Haven't you wanted to?"
"Well...."
"You can get to be an expert," Fay said softly, smiling tenderly at him, "in one easy lesson. I'll teach you everything you need to know."
O'Hara was standing, his hard-on poking out inside his pants leg. "All right," he said. "Anything to oblige a lady. But then can we do something more in my line?"
"I'll fuck you to a frazzle, if that's what you mean. Right after your lesson in lapping cunt. My cunt. My tender, juicy cunt."
"It's a deal," O'Hara said in a choked voice.
He shucked his trousers and shorts to the floor and stepped out of them, then moved across the room like a man in a trance and dropped to his knees.
Fay moved her hips forward in the big easy chair and raised the leg that wasn't draped over the arm of the chair, lifting the bent knee high and swinging it outward, spreading her feast even wider to O'Hara's hungering mouth. Her moist, open cunt was even with the edge of the chair's seat cushion, tilted upward, in the ultimate of warm, inviting welcomes. O'Hara's open mouth moved unswervingly, but slowly, as if savoring the anticipation of the taste of her twat, toward the moist magnet of her juicy muff.
"Wait, O'Hara," she said, her eyes on the tongue that was protruding now, only inches from her pussy. "Don't start gobbling it yet. Let me spread it out for you, so you can see what you're doing. It's the only way to learn."
She reached down with both hands and with the tips of her fingers gently spread the soft yielding lips of her cunt, opening up the tender ridges and folds of pink tenderness. Pussy on a platter, she thought, a little drunkenly. O'Hara will be served.
"Now," she said, "touch it here, with just the tip of your tongue." With her forefinger, she indicated the swell of her clitoris.
With the stiffened tip of his tongue, O'Hara touched the hardening bud, then ran his tongue up and down, then across, with swift, fluttery strokes.
"Ah, that's it," Fay murmured, feeling her hips starting to undulate of their own accord, lifting her cunt upwards. "Lick my clit, lick it up and down, back and forth. With your whole tongue now. Aaah, that's it." Oooh, it felt so good. A natural-born nookie nibbler, this man.
"Now," she said, sounding to herself like a high school teacher in class, "slide your whole tongue in, as deep as it will go. Into my cunt."
O'Hara did as he was told. She writhed a little more as his tongue plunged deep. A ah, delicious. She took her fingers away from the lips of her cunt and placed her hands gently behind O'Hara's head.
"Now suck," she said. "Gobble my cunt. Eat my whole juicy pussy."
But O'Hara didn't have to be told. His whole mouth covered her cunt now, sucking, licking, kissing. His tongue stabbed deep, then withdrew to tease her clitoris with little fluttering licks, back and forth, up and down, then slid deep again. His mouth never left the oasis of her bubbling, boiling twat, sucking thirstily, hungrily, as his tongue plunged and delved and explored.
"Ah, O'Hara," she breathed, "you'll never learn any more about eating cunt than you know now."
But O'Hara apparently didn't hear. He was too busy with his frenzied lapping of her pussy. And he was making a lot of noise-wet, sucking sounds.
Fay put her finger on his forehead, urging his face up, his mouth away from its pleasure between her warm thighs. She was suddenly, urgently in need of a hard, reaming cock.
"Enough of this foolish lovemaking," she said, looking into O'Hara's glazed eyes. "Now, right now, let's fuck. Fuck, do you hear me? Fuck, fuck, fuck."
O'Hara got to his feet and just stood there, looking at her as if not sure exactly what to do next. But there was nothing uncertain about his cock. It stood out from his body like a lower limb on an oak tree.
Fay stood up and let her robe slide to the floor.
"Lie down on the rug, on your back," she said in an urgent whisper.
"I thought we were going to fuck," O'Hara said. But his tone held more curiosity than complaint.
"We are," Fay said, smiling tensely. "We're going to fuck right now. But we're going to do it my way. I'll fuck you, since this is a first for us. Just lie down. Face up. Cock in the air."
O'Hara did as he was told, with a look of wonder on his face.
And all at once Fay's need was not so desperately urgent. It was her turn to savor the sight of her pleasure to come, and "come" was the word.
She sat down again on the edge of the chair and focused her gaze on O'Hara's upright, swollen cock. God, it was a big one, long and thick and hard, with a shiny, deep-purple head.
"I love your cock," she said, reaching out and squeezing it gently, turning her head to look into O'Hara's face.
"Well, I love your cunt," he said. "It tastes so delicious I want to find out what it feels like when it swallows my whole cock."
"Swallows is a good word," Fay said. "I want to eat up your big beautiful dick when I take it into my twat. Devour your cock in my greedy cunt."
"Please," O'Hara groaned. "Can't we fuck now and talk about it later?"
"One thing you ought to know by now," Fay said. "A lot of the pleasure of fucking is in the anticipation, in what goes on before."
O'Hara groaned again, but didn't say anything. His hand came up to brush one gently jiggling breast.
Fay let her hand slip loosely, tantalizingly, down the thick length of O'Hara cock. It felt like some sort of thick hickory handle, encased in a soft sheath of tender, velvety skin. She was being a maddening tease, now, she knew. It was punishment, but a tantalizing kind of punishment that she'd let explode into some frantic fucking, very soon now.
"It's like a mouth, you know," she whispered, looking into the strained features of O'Hara's face, feeling the steady pulse in his swollen undercock against the warm sliding palm of her hand.
"What is lute a mouth?" O'Hara asked haltingly, in a tight, choked voice.
"My cunt, O'Hara," she said, in her husky, insinuating whisper. "My cunt is like a mouth, with lips, and a little tongue, and a palate, a very soft palate. My cunt can taste, and lick, and suck, and gobble, and swallow. All in a soft, gentle way, you understand. My cunt is a very nice, warm, loving mouth, to taste and swallow up that big, hard, delicious cock of yours."
"For God's sake," he said, with his eyes closed, "let's fuck."
She still had his cock in her hand, as she leaned forward from her perch at the edge of the chair. She started sliding it up and down, very slowly, moving the soft sheath of skin around the hard shaft.
"Just for a second," she said, "I want the taste of your cock in my mouth."
She slid to the rug beside him, opened her moist warm mouth wide, and enveloped the swollen head of his cock, letting her tongue slide underneath to lick back and forth on the sensitive skin just under the head.
"Mmmm," she moaned, taking O'Hara's cock deeper into her mouth, sucking it and licking it at the same time.
"Aah," O'Hara breathed. "Oh, Jesus, but that does feel wonderful. You are probably the world's best and most beautiful cocksucker, lady."
"Flattery will get you anywhere," she said, taking her mouth away from his cock. The time had come. She didn't want O'Hara to explode without getting his cock inside her. She gave the underside one last loving lick and sat up, shaking the hair out of her eyes.
"Ready, O'Hara?" she asked, smiling at him. "Holy Christ," he said. "What a question." Fay stood up and stood erect astride O'Hara's hips. She looked down, and with secret delight watched his face as he stared up at the moist pink welcome of her ripely parted pussy. She began to bend her knees then, and let herself down with tantalizing, deliberate slowness toward O'Hara's hard, straining cock, feeling her twat opening wider as her upper thighs spread and her knees came into contact with the rug.
She reached down to guide the great hard head of O'Hara's cock to her open, oozing, ravenous cuntmouth, but it was only token guidance. His big thrusting cock would have found that safe, warm berth of her cunt in total darkness. Her twat was a flesh magnet to the steel of his tortured cock.
Just before Fay let her hungering cunt suck in the head of O'Hara's fevered prick, she looked down. The light blonde triangle of her pussy fur was glistening with her wetness, the neat open cleft of her cunt lips showing the delicate, quivering little ridges of pinkness inside. Her whole cunt, she noticed, seemed a much deeper pink than usual. O'Hara's busy mouth and tongue, she supposed, had brought up the color.
She lowered herself a little more, slowly, until the hard swollen head of O'Hara's thrusting cock touched the open wet outer lips of her cunt.
She lowered herself farther with exquisitely slow timing, not touching the rigid shaft with her hand now, not needing to, until the whole purple head of his cock was engulfed in the joyous welcome of her cunt entrance. Then, inch by inch, she lowered herself on the upthrust shaft, feeling the hard probing muscle sliding easily up inside her, spreading her slippery, tingling cunt walls, until it was all the way up, deep inside her, and her cunt was pressed hard against his pelvic mound.
She raised herself slowly, feeling her cunt sucking greedily at O'Hara's thick, rigid shaft, and when her inner cunt lips were at the neck of his cock, just below the head, she squeezed, contracting her cunt muscles, once, twice, again.
"Holy good Jesus Christ," O'Hara whispered hoarsely. "This has to be heaven."
His eyes were squeezed shut as he started to raise his hips, to arch his cock deeper into the soft, smothering delicacy of her cunt.
"Lie still, O'Hara," Fay said. "Let me do most of the work."
She let her cunt slide down his shaft once more, so the hard knob of his prick head was deep up inside her again. Then she began to fuck him ever so slowly, lifting her wetly clutching cunt up and away from his body deliberately, tantalizingly. Her twat lips clung firmly around his shaft like the lips of a mouth, sucking. Then, when her cunt was up around the neck of his cock, she'd lower herself again, slowly, until he was fully imbedded. God, it felt wonderful, that big thick cock deeply up inside her. Delicious was the word for it. She could almost taste it.
She had to smile. She'd pretended she was doing this for him.
Fay kept it up for a long time, sliding up and down slowly, tasting every thick inch of the long hard shaft, and there were plenty of inches to taste. Every once in a while she stopped her sliding, up and-down fuck trips to squeeze his cock with practiced little contractions of her inner cunt lips.
But O'Hara seemed to have reached some kind of plateau of ecstasy. His eyes, she noticed, were half-closed, as if he were about to drop off into dreamland. About that time, Fay's twat sent her a message: some of the hard swelling was diminishing, O'Hara's cock was losing some rigidity.
Swiftly, Fay wetted the middle finger of her right hand in her mouth and reached down behind her. She probed beneath the soft heavy sac of O'Hara's balls, found the puckered entrance between the cheeks of his ass, and pushed. Her finger slid up into his asshole, to the middle joint.
O'Hara's eyes popped open and his hips arched up in surprise. Fay felt his cock swell, stiffen, and become hard as granite again in her slippery cunt grasp.
"Now, O'Hara?" she asked. "Ready for the finale?"
O'Hara only grunted, and looked at her, then managed a grin. His cock was in her to the hilt.
She slid her finger deeper into his asshole and began working it in and out-all the while sliding up and down his shaft, faster and faster. O'Hara arched his hips upward as he pumped his massive cock up into her, meeting her every descent.
Impaled as she was on that big spear of muscle, Fay had the feeling of being in complete control, as if the great willing cock pounding up into her, fucking her into a joyous jelly inside, were her very own toy to play with, to pleasure herself with. O'Hara's cock, O'Hara's instrument, became her instrument, the bow to draw across the strings of her rapturous violin of a cunt. She was making beautiful music inside herself, sliding up and down to a rhythm of her own making. The hickory-hard head of his cock became a drumstick beating on the tom-tom of her taut, vibrating cunt depths.
Fay had a whole symphony going as she slid up and down, fucking in a frenzy. But gradually her selfish vertical fucking took on a jazz rhythm, her finger working in and out of his asshole on the offbeat.
Fay began to ride her hips back and forth as well as up and down, giving O'Hara's pumping shaft a furious fucking workout. But he was game, and his hips kept pumping his cock frantically up into her, as if asking for more. Her lively, sliding clitoris ground against the hard mound at the base of his cock with every squirming thrust. Her inner cunt lips were squeezing, contracting spasmodically, clutching the slippery hard sliding shaft.
Then a shudder passed through her, from the inside out, and she heard a quivering moan starting deep in her throat. She could hear O'Hara moaning, too, and her private symphony swelled to a crescendo, then exploded in a climax of roaring sound and rapturous sensation. Her hips were squirming, her cunt in a delirium, and she was coming, and coming, over and over again.
Her cunt muscles kept tightening and loosening, squeezing spasmodically, as her climax went on in a sort of clenching delirium, in waves, again and again. She heard herself groaning and moaning in her private agony of delight. She couldn't help herself, and she didn't care.
And then she was acutely aware of O'Hara's juices spurting up inside her, immersing some of her inner fires.
After a long while, Fay slid sideways, feeling O'Hara's slackened cock fall from her sated cunt. She lay on her back, her legs apart, her cunt oozing sperm and contentment, and looked boozily up at O'Hara, who had gotten to his knees.
"No bread today," she said weakly.
"Maybe I should have told you this before," he said, smiling feebly.
"What?"
"Man does not live by bread alone."
"Oh, shit," she said.
But she found the strength to laugh.
EIGHT
North Hill Stadium, its high walls creaking with a capacity crowd, thundered noisily as cars zoomed along the track. They maneuvered like midgets, had the raucous sound of a power truck, and yet were only stock cars. Fay shivered in the evening chill that hugged the grandstand.
Near her, men with popcorn and beer in their hands leaped up and down, voices raw as they cheered. Caught the spirit she got to her feet. Accidentally her arm bumped another man, and Fay hardly noticed the spray of soda on her coat because she was busy yelling. Orange and white arclights dramatized the victorious vehicle.
The North Hill's chaos dimmed to firm rumbles and the overflow crowd drifted away toward exit ramps. She enjoyed the jostle of men's elbows and hands until one character began to squeeze.
"Get the hell off," she warned.
"Who are you talking to?" he demanded.
She edged away, fear thick in her mouth, and he followed as she approached the bleachers and a cafe patio. He was a giant, with freckles on his face.
"This is no feel-day for sex maniacs," she said when he lurched toward her again. "Keep it up and I'll yell cop."
Gaping at her for a moment, Freckles then nodded. "Sugar, I don't have any doubt that you would."
The quickened paces of her breath fell to near normal as he faded away in the melee. She sighed a warm, relieved feeling. Out near the parking lot, there was more room to move and she started up a sidewalk in front of the beer garden. Already the thrill of the race had gone.
She wondered if she were at the point where only sex could make her whole. A few years ago she had gone to a psychiatrist and he had offered his own diagnosis of her sexual drive. His words vibrated in her memory.
"You're at the right stage of an inferiority complex, Miss Mondeu. A childhood hangover. By hunting for the ultimate with men, or one man in your case, you've overcome much of the weakness. You'll be all right."
Now she was a twenty-four-year-old wife and plagued with a jaded, merry-go-round feeling. The stadium lights grew dim on the right of her. She looked ahead on the sidewalk and was surprised to see Rod at the comer. Waving, he hurried to her side.
"Fancy meeting you during a stock-car heat," he began. "Actually we're not in the North Hill perimeter, but I sure feel 'in heat.' Looking at you does things to me."
"The last I heard, we agreed to disagree. You're a Don Juan and I'm a brat who loves her mama."
"Don't build up the guilt inside me, Fay." Mother's boy-friend was talking slowly and there was an amazing gentleness in him. "Have you doped out the reason why I've gone from bed to cot, using up females like pills?"
"Because it's fun."
"No. I failed in my rise up the corporation ladder, and none of our helicopter connections in Hartford made any difference. Sex-hunger fed my ego after that."
"Rod-'Seducer Extraordinaire.' We are being psychological today, aren't we?"
He moved in closer and held her tenderly by the arm. "I'll prove how I defeated the yen. There's a cottage on Eagle Street-I bought it last month to give me a suburban address. Join me for a highball. Friend to friend."
"Mother wouldn't be happy if she heard about it."
"Shirley would click her heels. For as long as anybody can remember, you and I have been at one another's throat. She'd love to see the trio come together for a change."
Fay eased over to a street lamp where she put her hand out and examined the sheen on her nail polish. An odd attraction seized her. Rod was older-but not really hard to look at, except for his sparse hair, and even that had a peculiar charm.
"A cottage," she murmured. "It helps you forget urban life and the pressures."
"Yeah. What do you say?"
"I'm rather tired and-"
"The house chores can wait until you've seen my beautiful adobe hacienda. I hereby vow to remain esthetic and gentlemanly and platonic-if you do."
Her funny bone was tickled by his cautious reservation. She knew from the look in his eye, and her own feeling of emptiness with Doug at work again, that a cottage tryst held danger. She might well yield to this man. And yet, aware of the involvements and possible back-tracking in her character, she tucked both hands into her coat and nodded.
"Okay, Rod, I'll take a chance on riding with you."
Fay gave him credit for picking a rural atmosphere that could help any devious scheme he had in mind. She paused at the open doorway of the cottage. Her hair and black sweater ruffling in the wind, she studied the marble statues near his patio.
The enclosure was surrounded by concave glass. His yard held a swing and a water fountain, and she yawned as Rod mixed the drink beside her.
"So I've gained entrance to the revered summer home where you drink spiritual joy, where you get away from it all. All we need is a dancing girl."
He gave her a glass of rum with lime juice in it. She turned aside and heard a bird twitting as background for Rod's conversation.
"Women don't see things in our light. How can I explain the value of a retreat paradise here, under God's sun?"
"You believe that there is a huge esthetic gap between the sexes."
"There are areas of conflict where a man and woman see eye to eye."
She walked around the fireplace and had a seat on the hammock near the patio. He coughed as ale went down his throat the wrong way, then came over to join her on the canvas hammock, his eyes measuring the bulge of her breasts.
"It's so quiet in the boon dockers," she murmured. "I feel like a tiny, worried specimen under nature's panorama."
"That makes two of us."
But she really did have a worthless sensation, knowing she had cheated and betrayed Doug. The reasons for her infidelities seemed valid at the time. There couldn't be any degradation lower than what she already experienced. Did it make any difference if Rod embraced her?
He fed her another highball and she drank swiftly.
"Baby," he said when his tongue loosened evermore, "you talk about guys with a despair complex. For years I dreamed of being an exec with tha damn helicopter company. Now it's all over. I could have stayed in New Hampshire and grew old there."
"We're as old as we feel."
"Friends are the only genuine commodity on earth-I mean, who actually count. I always hoped you could be-"
"A chum, Rod?"
"Yeah." He set the glass down and reached over to kiss her. Their lips and teeth ground together in exploratory madness. "We can't have any turning back," he whispered. "I know what's going to happen and yet I don't know how, exactly."
"Over-confidence will get you in trouble. Hey, I'm throwing the philosophy at you so much, I could double for Confucius."
"He never had a pair like this!"
Fay let the aging Lothario work on her sweater and she gasped when he undid the final button. He yanked the orlon away. Hungrily his fingers stripped each thong sandal off her feet and then he paused while passion ravaged his eyes.
"What makes you think I'll go along with you?" she whimpered. A vein pulsed in her forehead as he shrugged out of the shirt and pants. They made a rustling noise, piling up on the floor. "I'm not strong enough, Rod. You've had women who could run all night and beg for more."
"This is a challenge for both of us. I want to make love to you."
She didn't resist as he took her hand and led her across the room to a giant bunk. Reaching behind her, Rod unsnapped her bra and flipped it free.
"Beautiful," he breathed as her breasts pouted up at him, swaying and jiggling ever so slightly. She fought to hold her own lust in check as he bent to kiss the firm, yielding mounds and ran a palm across her rising nipples. But it was a losing battle.
He knelt before her and peeled her panties down and began caressing her thighs and belly. She quivered as he kissed her navel, then moved down.
"All right," she said tensely, and moved her legs apart. "If that's what you want, go ahead and kiss it. Suck my cunt till you're satisfied."
But it seemed that his mouth could not be satisfied. She moved back to lay across the mattress with her legs apart, and he kept licking, and sucking, and gobbling, till her cunt was on fire.
Then, after a long time, his cock was in her, and she was responding, fucking him back in a fury, her hips undulating, then thrusting, then pumping wildly.
She kept her eyes squeezed shut, and knew it was guilt she felt. Her mother's man, that's who she was fucking. But she couldn't do anything to control her mouth, she discovered. She couldn't squeeze it shut, as she could her eyes.
"Aah, fuck me, Rod," she heard herself gasping, over and over. "Deep-fuck me, with that big hard cock. Fuck, fuck, fuck...."
Later, she couldn't remember the moment when it was over. All she could remember was that Rod was humming gaily as he paraded around the room in the cottage.
She did remember walking home.
NINE
A calmer attitude governed her throughout the nex day at home. Doug was busy reading an antique c magazine and said little to her. At five o'clock h drove away in the sports car, ostensibly for his jo at the Joy Haven, but she had a few doubts.
Why did he appear so interested in old cars all of a sudden? She remembered a huge ad in yesterday's paper telling of the auto show to be held at one of the parking lots downtown. Banners on Rhol Avenue had also advertised it. Would that be the occasion for his new interest.
She arrived on the lot as twilight was falling, reducing her vision and hampering her search for Doug.
Not many people had shown up, though, and she had free access to the roped-off arena. She saw an early Packard among the displayed vehicles. Near the Packard was a roadster; both had likely been constructed in the 1930's, Fay deduced.
She came around the high-waved hood of the sedan. When she recognized the couple who meandered up the catwalk beside her, she halted in her tracks. The man, if he wasn't her husband, would surely get by as a twin. He wore a suede taper-crown hat and mohair jacket with narrow lapels, and blue trousers.
Inez had draped herself coyly on his right arm.
The juvenile urge to gain revenge by throwing nasty names at both of them now influenced Fay but she figured it would be more effective to play it cool. Walking toward them, she waited until she was seen by Inez, who nudged Doug.
"Look what the tide carried in, Dougie boy. Your happy and fiery spouse."
He nervously fingered the handkerchief on his lapel, then looked at her. "Fay, I didn't expect to see you out here."
"Watching the one-eyed monster and babbling in art can only go so far. Rumor had it, there were some beautiful models on the rack, and I hopped down quick like a bunny." She stared at Inez before continuing. "The surprise is mutual."
"We need a delivery truck at the drive-in," he replied to her unspoken query. "I'm at the antique show on business. For the right price, I'll buy a truck and hope it works out."
"Oh business?" she purred.
Inez laughed, lowering her jaw to hide a narrow healing scar where she had been scratched in thenbrief fight; Fay didn't realize she had cut the woman there.
"Your hubby and I had a gorgeous ride up near the lake on the way downtown. Testing my new car." She hugged his arm and let a breast crumple into his muscled sinew.
Fay swallowed her anger, stepping ahead to a facade overhung by fluorescent tubing. "Travel isn't my way of enjoying leisure, honeycomb."
"Doug likes it, though. How domestic can you be? There are days when even the big, handsome husbands get tired of the four-walls romance scene. Am I right?"
He put his thumb on her nose, pressed gently, and remarked: "I won't be dragged into a rehash of that forum. I love Fay as a wife. You're my head waitress and secretary and never the twain shall join."
"Another misquote," Fay added.
"I'm hardly the infallible brain on our team. Come with us and lend your opinion on the trucks I look at."
"Three's a mob where business is involved." She did a quick burn when she saw the redhead pull his head down and kiss him. He didn't try to move away.
Inez said, "Doug, you're the only boss I ever had who brought out my mother instinct."
Regaining her poise was difficult, yet Fay managed a nonchalant veneer during the affectionate horseplay that went on. She saw the open desire in his eye while gazing at the girl. He nodded toward people who had formed a sightseeing gang near the platform.
"An official of the used car corporation is ready for his speech. Let's move on. Does my wife think she'll be able to make it a trio?"
"I'd hate to mess up a deal with my lack of bargaining knowledge. Anyhow, ma's alone tonight and she needs company."
"Don't we all?" asked Inez.
"I'll be home early after work," said Doug as he walked off with his swivel-hipped companion. "If you're awake, we might talk about the price of tea in China. Or even the birds and the bees."
"How thoughtful of you, my dear."
She tried to conquer the resentment and aggravation in her heart. Of course he hadn't used sarcasm or flaunted Inez-the whole image of rivalry was building up within Fay, making her read devious intent where none existed. She dug at her eyebrows, then opened her eyes. The couple had vanished into the crowd.
A motorcycle roared along the avenue, raising dust in its wake. She headed away from the comer and cursed her meek reaction to Doug and his grim air. Oh, he had appeared joyful on the surface. But she had lived with him long enough and she could tell when something bugged him in their relationship.
She felt weary as she approached her mother's suburban home. A haunting premonition stirred within her. It was like the dread silence before a hurricane, and it probably had overtones of her marriage problem-how much time did she have? The hours grew vitally important when you fought to win the prodigal love of your own husband.
Mother was in the den, polishing her nails. Fay suggested a game of cards and they walked out of the Mondeu abode, which had yet to dry from a parlor paint job.
Ten minutes later they were lounging in a couch on Fay's rear porch. "You've got it made. With a fellow around the house, your repairs and plumbing are done without any panic."
"I do a good share of work, ma. Suburban life used to be the ideal for us women. Now the swing has boomeranged to the city, where it all started, and I've found that no escape or dream-world exists."
"It took enough time before you wised up."
"Amen. Are you dischanted with our neighborhood, too?"
"The idea of living in a Redpine flat, back in the hubbub, has entered my mind. Every other week there's some type of headache with your own home. Patch the roof, cut grass, shovel the walk."
Fay drew a card off the pile which had grown on the formica table. "Another problem is your daily commuting."
"Heavens, yes. I get worn out riding to and from the shop in all that traffic."
They played for a while longer, and mother didn't pursue the discussion. Fay enjoyed her milieu, though, even if its moral standards were fading along with the country as a whole. People like Ed Vaunet had wealth and position. They were fascinating to know-she often wondered why mental illness and anxiety plagued so many of their rank.
"Gin," said mother as she spread the cards in front of her. "I wish Rod were as simple to beat."
"You'll always come out second to him, the way he abuses you."
"I deny the charge, daughter. Anyone can tell he loves me. Honey flows out of his lips when he speaks my name, and that ain't easy, with the handle pa gave me."
"Finding a guy who loves the female soul and body is our whole point. I'll deal this one."
Mother arched her brow quizzically and Fay occupied herself with the pasteboards. She'd never live it down if anyone discovered her affair with Rod. Mother would hit the ceiling. The double sex standard didn't apply where members of a family were involved, and Fay hated the memory of Rod. She vowed that no other man would ever touch her while she was married.
The night became deathly quiet as she rolled her hair up on curlers. A clock above the radio in her den said nine-thirty. She walked to the front door and saw mother moving with a slow, unspirited gait up the road toward her own house. Fog under the street lamp gave Fay a weird, abandoned feeling.
She thought of manicuring her nails. When the phone rang, she picked it up quickly and said, "Hello?"
"I called to see if Doug is all right-I mean, we can't let any of the scratches infect him."
She sighed and recognized Juliana's rambling tone. "We already forgot the jig with your dog. No damage done. A case of hot temper on both sides and they're real buddies now, Julie."
"Thank God. I hope you understand why I have Thor watch over the place. A poor widow hears many an evil sound in the wee hours."
"Like the noise of a creaking bedspring?" Fay teased.
"The union of creatures for pleasure is not wicked in itself. But folks must learn to be faithful. Did you hear about the Ryan girl? Married to a cab driver and entertaining one lover after another in that big Cape Cod. As I talk this very minute, her shade's down and I can see them dancing in there. Can't wait to see who walks out."
The gossiper's clinical description had the advantage of humor. Fay rested the phone mouthpiece on her chin and envisioned Juliana at the far end, squinting through window shades at the Ryan parlor. Such prudery didn't seem believable. Juliana likely had a few Prince Charmings who adorned her maiden bed, although she exerted every effort to emit a pure aura around herself.
"Julie, there's just too much monkey-shining on Ralan Street."
"You aren't just whistling Dixie. I pity the women and their husbands. Infidelity has a reward, though, and they'll get burned for sure, throwing fire at fire."
"Maybe there's no other weapon a girl can use. I'm sure I'd be too nervous to try any shenanigans though."
The strategic pause from her friend became annoying then. Fay cleared her throat. "It was nice talking with you. I've got some work to do and we'll have to hang up, but keep me posted on Mrs. Ryan."
"Oh, she'll spread the word via her own behavior. See you at the garden meeting."
She put the receiver down and swore at each innuendo in the neighbor's second-hand information. Did anyone see me with Rod in his cottage? she thought angrily. That juicy tidbit would really start a fire if the wrong people got wind of it.
Only a murmur of voices carried from the kitchen behind her, where the cook had gone with his waitress. Fay spun the top of the stool, heard it creak mournfully, and then walked to the entrance.
She was disappointed at the lack of business. Even on a rainy morning, in the lull after coffee break time and before lunch, there should be more people around. She hummed in rhythm with heavy raindrops pounding on the macadam outside the Joy Haven. Without any wind, the rain came down like an army of shiny straight arrows.
Turning away from the window, she headed for the juke box and examined the song-titles. One of them was You Don't Love Me No More. It seemed apropos for all her friends and kin lately-herself and Doug, mother and Rod, Harry and the newest secretary in his law office, whoever she might be. Nobody loved anybody. And yet Fay wanted to prove how much she adored her husband.
In the past few days he had grown colder than ever. She reached for her purse and then remembered she had left her change on the bureau shelf at home. She moved toward a cash register behind the horseshoe counter facing their parking lot, and a door slammed near her; she swivelled about while Doug came in the room.
"Hi," she began brightly. "Did you manage to buy a good delivery truck at the show?"
"The boss said he might put one on display Friday."
She pointed at a calendar above the coke machine. The painted photo of a woman leered from the calendar, and her gay grin was all she wore. Fay said, "Today's Friday."
"You wouldn't be fooling me again. I have trouble reading my own wife, but at least I can keep an eye on the week as it flies by." He made sure his words were understood, in every implication. Jamming a toothpick under his thumb, he approached her rapidly. "See how the dirt gathers near the cuticle, Fay? We have to get rid of it."
"I wish you'd come out and clear the air. Say what's on your mind."
"There are folks who let me know what gives, in our family, so I really don't need to pry."
A wave of fear hit her as Doug fingered his crew cut and began breathing irregularly. She was sorry that she had asked for a clarification. Her scalp tingled and she could sense a turning point in their marriage-and not in the proper direction, either.
"I was a goddamn water boy at high school," he thundered. "As a player I didn't have enough beef down here." He gave her a whack on the hip which shot pain into her loins.
"Hey!" she complained.
"You know how to use the old back end, though, huh? I'm fed up. The days of water boy Willaby are over. I hear you've been going out with a crumbbun salesman named Lake, and putting on a dance for our dear breadman."
Shock numbed her for a fatal, incriminating second. Her brain then snapped into action and she saw the need of emergency treatment-lies, improvisation, anything-to soothe him. "A dance for O'Hara? That's a wild fabrication not even suitable for an answer."
"Did you strip in front of him and lay down at his feet?"
"Stop being ridiculous! Now you're the one with the big imagination and-"
"Go ahead and deny it."
"Of course I'll deny any such thing, Doug."
He laughed and stalked over to the counter, where he picked up a sugar bowl. Cursing, he slammed it down with every ounce of his strength. The glass shattered in his hand; Fay felt her heart skip when she saw red blood oozing in the sugar near his fist.
"How about Lake? I believe you call him 'Benjie' in the cozier moments, like when he has you on the couch at night. Inez saw you and told me what happened."
"He only stopped for a drink while he showed me the brush line."
"Yeah, sure!"
Tears began to form in her eyes as he probed for truth and found it in a cruel, dramatic attack of silence and glares. "Darling," she whimpered. "He means nothing, other than an old schoolmate with a fine personality." She touched his arm with quavering hands but he yanked free.
"You and your innocent trips downtown! Who got a ride in our sports car on the days when I had to stay here? Benjie? How many times did you kiss him that night?"
Shame and defeat poured down her cheeks and there was not a thing to reply. She shook her head, sobbing.
"We can forget the O'Hara burlesque show. Inez didn't see him, but she had a gander at you and the salesman necking, all right!"
"Doug-he only kissed me once."
"And then you defended your staunch maidenly honor." He jerked a handkerchief from his pocket, wrapped it around the bloody gash, and raised his bandaged first. "Any man would find you impossible to live with, when you do these things. You're bawling like a kid. I thought I married a sophisticated, mature-"
"Ben and I were innocent." She clung to Doug's shirt even as he fought the jealousy, his jaw firm and the skin on his face reddening. "As platonic as you and Inez here in the Haven."
"How can I even begin to trust you or believe that answer, Fay?"
"I'm sorry," she wept. "He never got any further than-"
"The subject's dead and I may puke at any minute. Put yourself in my shoes. A husband can take plenty of crap from the girl he loves, and I do love you, hon-at last count. There'll be trouble if you keep pushing it."
"Wait. Please don't go away like this."
He waved at her in disgust, yanking the chef's hat over his brow. She lowered her chin and stared miserably at him when he stormed off to the kitchen; there didn't appear to be much hope of mending this new hole in the bastile.
Another wife might rationalize and find merit in Doug's accusation. But Fay grew bitter and sad during the next twenty-four hours. Gaining a certain revenge might be an aphrodisiac-it would nullify his foul distrust or prove she had a mind of her own.
Luckily, Harry had remained in the office and she saw a light in the open door when she arrived. At the sound of her footsteps the lawyer looked up from his desk.
"If you want to apply for a job, we don't have any." He narrowed his eyes, but she figured he was more receptive than he let on. "Genies pop up when I snap my finger," he said. "They all have the same features-a head made out of ice, gold on their finger-"
"Lately I've made a career out of apologizing to you, Harry."
"Oh, you did more than that. For one dizzy hour, I thought we were compatible and on the road to glory. Now the road ends up nowhere."
She was relieved in knowing that he could talk about their brief affair. His silence would have shut the door on her. Walking to the desk, Fay idly toyed with the comer of his big blotter and said, "Forgive me. I really would like to hash things out-and be on your side again."
"Has old Dougie been giving you rough times?" he asked cleverly.
"Rough would be a mild term for it. He's an ogre, a beast, a watchdog on the wrong gate of hell. I've rebounded and I hope you catch me in your fat arms."
"In four years as a lawyer I never had a nuttier apology laid on me. You said we were all done."
"I'll go off my rocker at home, Harry. Listening to wild denials, having Doug name names without any proof." She held her breath and sat on the edge of the desk while he arose and came around toward her.
"So now you hit the bongo drum?"
"Pardon me?"
"I'm a lousy drum in your hand, and when you pound it, there's coy music in the air. Start from the beginning. Save the marriage woe for lovelorn columnists and tell me how I figure in our scene. Something's up."
"Let's talk about it in your car."
"Why?"
"I need a friend-a shoulder to cry on. And maybe I need lovers who can put things straight. For heaven's sake, go for a ride with me before I cry again."
He smiled and rubbed his aquiline nose. "You might persuade me. Let's hear the begging."
"All right," she said. "Will you drive me to Elk Park?"
"You don't have to make that request twice."
They didn't even talk on the way to the car.
Harry knew his Elk Park. He found a spot so secluded that even Fay didn't know about it.
When he leaned over to kiss her, Fay was ready for him, her mouth warm and open. Their tongues met, his probing, hers fluttering and teasing. His hand went around and unsnapped her bra, then cupped one freed globe. She felt the nipple rising, tightening, poking out between his squeezing fingers.
His mouth left hers for a moment to suck the hard buds of her nipples, and one hand softly stroked her inner thighs. His mouth stopped sucking for a fleeting moment.
"Why don't you shed the armor plate?" he asked.
"Why don't you?" she asked, and unzipped his fly by way of encouragement. But he didn't need any encouragement. His pants and underpants were suddenly off and on the floor somewhere, and he was watching her as she arched her hips, slipped off her shoes, and peeled down her panties and kicked them off with her toes.
She lay back in the seat with the hem of her skirt across her upper belly, her legs slightly apart, the whiteness of her inner thighs and lower belly making her pubic bush stand out darkly in the gloom. She felt the wide front seat of the car slide back as far as it would go and was thankful that Harry drove a big American car and not one of those small disasters with bucket seats.
All at once, he was on his knees in the space on the floor, tonguing his way up her inner thigh. She felt his fingers brushing aside the long silken hair on her pussy, to give him clear access to the swelling lips of her cunt. He kissed those lips warmly, once, then his fingers opened them and she felt the stiffened tip of his tongue shuttling across the elusive little eel of her clitoris, then probing deeper. Oooh, that felt so good. Erased all her troubles from her mind.
She brought her thighs tightly together against his cheeks, shuddering a little, wanting him to go on but wanting him to stop even more.
"Enough," she said tightly, through set teeth. "Let's just fuck."
His tongue left her cunt, reluctantly, and he raised himself between her open legs and started to arch over her. She put the palm of her hand flat against his chest.
"No," she said. "There's a better way, for the front seat of a car." He stayed as he was, arched like a bridge. "How?"
"Sit where I'm sitting."
They changed places, his cock bumping against her tingling flesh. She took a position over him on the seat, one knee on each side of his hips.
"Ah, yes," he said, beginning to understand.
She let herself descend slowly. The wet warm mouth of her cunt enveloped the thrusting tip of his cock, then swallowed the whole hard head. And kept taking more, hungrily.
When she'd hit bottom, when his cock was full length up inside her cunt-depths, when they were fur-to-fur and bone-to-bone at the pelvis, Harry bounced her back upward with a great surge of his hips, and she began her long, delirious fuck-ride in earnest. She fucked with controlled abandon, riding the cock-horse with the skill of a born horsewoman, posting and returning to her seat in perfect rhythm.
She was almost out of her mind with the joyous sensation of the hard pumping cock driving up into her, but she kept herself under control, relishing, capturing in every subtle fold of her cunt the rigid thickness pumping her to the point of delirium.
Harry seemed to take over then, fucking deeply up into her, driving upward with long, slow, demanding strokes, and her sliding cunt rose and fell in perfect time with his rhythm, her cunt lips clutching and sucking and holding the slippery shaft as if reluctant to let go, with every upward stroke squeezing and embracing his pumping cock on its drives to her inner depths. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she could hear only the sound of his tortured breathing mingled with her own gasping, panting moans.
The controlled frenzy of sensation went on for a long time, longer than Fay could keep track of even if she'd wanted to. When she was on the brink of coming she held off for long moments, waiting for him to come with her. And as his long, deep upward thrusts continued without any frantic quickening of pace, she realized that he was waiting for her, too.
"Now, Harry," she whispered into his ear. "Now!"
He quickened his pace then, fucking her furiously, driving his cock up into her in a pounding series of lightning thrusts. Her hips writhed downward, her cunt squirming and grinding against him in a frenzied struggle to get more cock inside her, to gulp in more, to feel more. And then her climax was on her and in her, searing, pounding, choking her in a frenzied rapture.
"Oh, God, yes, now," she almost whimpered as he drove his cock deep, the deepest yet, and held it there. She felt his warm juices gushing into her, spurting deep, flooding her, as she shuddered and jerked convulsively. She put her arms tight around him, and he kept his cock buried deep, letting her diminishing spasms swirl around it.
It was a long time before the spasms subsided enough for her to let go of him. It was a long time before she was able to say anything.
"No wonder motels are going out of business," she said finally.
TEN
Doug came into the room at a time which she figured to be about midnight. Before he threw the lights on, she knew he had been drinking, as he had a brewery odor on his clothes. Fay sat up in bed, wideeyed. He staggered past the flowered couch and his arm swept around in a blind arc that knocked over a pole lamp. It bounced off the table near her feet.
"We certainly greet each other warmly, Doug. Are you in another of your non-loquacious moods?"
"It's far too late for any nine-dollar words and hoi polloi jokes." Ramming his shoe upward, he kicked the bedroom screen, but she knew he was less drunk than he pretended.
"I thought Hurricane Flora was here. If you need exercise, try wrestling with me. Or just give mama a kiss to build a dream on, so I can say good-night and let you-"
"Good-night, my love. Farewell." He laughed as he sat on the mattress with her and bent his head down, rubbing his brow. "Damn that bartender and his ale." Then, squinting at her, "For three long years I won't be around for you to tuck under the pillow. Nice, huh?"
"Have some coffee and sleep it off." She tried to disregard him but realized he had something up his sleeve.
"How come Rod or Ed Vaunet aren't with you? My wife always did prefer older men." She wiggled to an upright position, bent low, and reached for a cigarette on the table. Her nightie fell loose at an angle which gave him a view of her breasts to the nipples. "Darling, would you hand me your lighter from the vanity? If I'm going to make a pot of java-"
"You are not. You'll listen and pay attention while I talk."
"Please stop interrupting." She gazed across the room at the rouge and lipstick compacts, a vase, and cheap jewelry on her vanity. She abandoned the idea of smoking. "I haven't seduced Rod for twenty hours now," she cracked. There was no way Doug could find out how close he had been to guessing the truth.
"Fay, are you going to deny that you went to bed with him?"
"Yes."
"Okay, then-he until it comes out of your belly button." He stood up and clicked his heels, saluting at the hamper. "You were lovely, at one time. Since you let guys like Harry throw a party and do their manhandling, you've changed. Beauty and the beast. You faded and rotted."
"I won't even bother answering that. You're inebriated and sour."
"At two o'clock this afternoon I joined the army." He wet his hp, and brought a hand down roughly and spanked her derriere once. "Uncle Sam'll do the honors and I won't have to worry about my ever lovin' spouse. Call up all the boys you want."
She saw him drape his form on the divan and glare out the window. She avoided the subject he had mentioned. "Will you cut out the whore business when you refer to me?"
"A little teasing never hurt anyone."
"I'm glad you're a bad liar. For one minute you had me on the ropes. I thought maybe you did enlist."
"I did enlist, FeeFee. I joined the goddamn army."
He was stone cold sober at that moment. She hurried to the couch, her mind reeling with the stunning news as she sat on a leatherette arm. Her fingers clutched his jacket.
"Why did you do it? Your restaurant will die, after all our work and the days you gave up. Who put such a notion-"
"Every man has something of the wanderer in him. I want to see the world before old age arrives."
"We'll be separated for long periods!"
"You're old enough to find a way of beating loneliness." He moved aside, got up from the cushion, and stepped back toward the mural. "And as far as the Haven goes, forget it. Our real estate agent has the joint up for sale. My dear wife Fay should not be burdened with keeping the show on the road while I'm gone."
She felt numb with shock. Her whole universe, her marriage and the drive-in enterprise, had tumbled down upon her.
"Vacationing from one another wouldn't be so horrible an idea," he added.
Her own voice had the crudity of sandpaper when she replied, "Doug, I love you and I always will. Corny? Yeah, but I was hoping you'd remember that when you came up with a rash judgment."
"Your faithfulness wouldn't cut any ice. In two weeks I have the physical."
"I'm begging you to change your mind."
"Too late. The moving hand writes, and having writ-"
"How will I find the strength, the desire to go on alone while you're at some camp?"
He waved at her and paraded away toward the bathroom without revealing any false sentiment. "See you in bed after I grab a hot shower. I'm pooped."
Fay was crushed mentally and emotionally and bodily. In reading between the lines she could see that Doug had only joined the army for one reason. To get her out of his hair. She blinked at the warm tears alive in her cheek and cursed the day she had thought of using Harry and other men to goad her husband.
During the next few days she endured the agony of suffering silently. Doug was happy-but not when she came near him; he did plenty of jabbering on the phone and with pals who came to visit, though he remained a sphinx with Fay.
She rejected the thought of a talk with her mother. It would be a case of the blind leading the blind, as Rod's cruelty gave mother enough trouble of her own. Fay saw that no one could help dig her out. from the ruins of her once-carefree life.
She sought solace in work-she baked pies and. sewed and toiled over the house until it shone. The warmth of Benjie Lake's friendship had never left her mind. At noon that day she drove her car beyond the highway, heading for his apartment on Rob Hill.
Scenery on the curvy, shaded roads lent the hope of green summer. In her gloom she barely noticed the change in the shubbery around her. The kaleidoscope of white and purple flowers only made her gray outlook the worse for wear. She parked near his apartment and hurried to the second-floor room in search of a man who might well be her last real friend.
But the door was locked. The disappointment spurred her to action, and she knew Benjie didn't sell brushes at that time of day. She rode out to the Cafe Wersham, but drew a blank there too, and proceeded north on Running Boar Avenue.
One of his hangouts, the men's club downtown, was smoke-filled when she arrived in the lobby. She proceeded to the pool-room and opened the door. Interested sharks gave her the eye as she looked in; luckily, Ben was there and he waved at her. Nervously she waited for him to complete a shot. Then he swung off toward the high vaulted doorway and took her hand. "It's a good thing you came along. Another run of 'Chicago' would eat my whole pay, with these sharp cookies."
"Maybe you should fly in and win half of it back."
"That's how rich men get poor. Want a cup of coffee in the luncheonette?"
"I'd like nothing better."
"Cheer up," he laughed as they cut across toward the snack bar. "I hate to see old mates from Redpine High act glum when I'm so gay. Therefore, I'll put joy in your tears. It's only logical."
"And you're a fine one for logic, Ben. Can we play marriage counsel and help me out of a jam?" She slid into the booth where only thin rays of sun could filter down from the draped window. Darkness seemed proper for her, today. She knew he had always been a clever, almost brilliant man, and he would understand her yen for a sympathetic ear.
After ordering coffee and cake from the waiter, Benjie put his palm over hers on the table. "I've missed you something awful. It was embarrassing when that broad caught us. You're beautiful, though. Any character with red blood in him would have succumbed."
"Doug hasn't done very much succumbing."
"Aha! Now we reach the marital stage of our conversation. He ran off with another girl and you want to become my bride."
"Be serious."
"I knew he wasn't right for you, Fay."
"He's joined the army and sold our restaurant and I get the idea he'd like to trade me in too. If we weren't so madly in love."
The young salesman nodded, mixed sugar and cream in their cups, and fell silent. She watched the waiter throw a check on the table before rushing away. Benjie looked peaceful-cherubic and content.
"I'm certainly no angel," she went on. "But anything I did was for him."
"Upon close analysis," said Benjie, "I do see a weird train of thought involved. Doug was drifting away. You hoped he could be angered into realizing whom he was married to-and eliminate the horsing around."
"Yes, I thought so."
"About all I can do is offer you encouragement. Keep on being the good wife-show your love-maybe he'll cool down in uniform. I'm sorry to hear about it."
She chewed on the vanilla cake and it tasted like ashes. "Ben, I'm so rotten unhappy with this."
"My experience in the romantic line only extends to a few snobs I meet on the route." He looked at his watch and whistled. "Post time." Reaching over toward her, he kissed her on the neck and then whispered, "Snap out of it, babe. If it would help any, I'd make sweet love to you for a night or a weekend or as long as you want."
"Do you believe that would solve anything?" she demanded.
"It's the best method of healing a broken artery." He got to his feet without even batting an eyelash, while he placed a dollar upon the food check. "Friends are put on earth to console one another-hey, I really must get with the brushes. I'll walk you to the street."
"If you don't mind, I'd rather stay here for a minute."
He grinned and saluted to her, as though funning it up at a picnic. She was depressed-disillusioned at him for such a materialistic reaction, and for bringing up sex as a tonic. Fay was utterly confused. She waited until her coffee was cold, then walked mournfully out to her automobile and drove away.
After Doug passed his physical, the days ran by with alarming speed, and Fay became resigned to the future. There was still hope. She would see him on weekends at the army camp where he'd be stationed. Absence might make him realize what he had been missing, through restlessness and a refusal to buckle down under marriage's duties.
Only a portion of the blame had been his, she knew. On Tuesday she drove her car down to the shore, along a road decorated by a new shopping center.
Summer would be here soon and Fay couldn't let the season change without an apology to Inez. The truth hurt, when you saw how presumptuous a woman could be. Fay didn't really believe, now, that her husband and the waitress ever indulged in carnality or wanted to sleep with each other.
She parked on the cobblestone yard in front of the cottage. Walking toward the cement-stair porch, her heels bouncing on weeds and rock, she felt the nearby ocean in her blood. How could she admit her shame or make it up to Inez after all she had done? The door of the cottage was open. She found the auburn-haired beauty hanging a curtain on one of the windows, her dress billowing in the breeze.
"Inez, I imagine you know about Doug going in the army."
"For once the old imagination isn't playing a trick on you."
"Of course I hate to see him leave. But we're adults. You're right-a woman who's madly in love will read things between the lines that aren't there."
"I couldn't say yes or no to that. Love is a foreign word in my lingo."
Embarrassment crept down Fay's throat and she felt as if she were a grammar school child being cut down by its principal. Hunting for the right words, she moved further into the room. "You'll find a nice guy and marry him before too long."
"You didn't come here for a parley on the subject of my bachelorhood. I'm used to being alone. I'm so fucking used to it that I laugh at marriage and never even think about slashing a jugular vein. So what's up, Fay?"
She paused to watch the girl sew a top of the curtain where it hung on the rod. Inez had tried suicide once-a jar of sleeping pills after a lover ditched her-but she recovered well. It would be harmful to mention the event or harp on her dubious moral reputation.
"That hair-pulling match we had," offered Fay. "I'm sorry and I want to apologize-"
"Oh, forget it! We all leap out of our skin when the air is wrong."
"There was a lot more involved-jealousy, for instance. Can you forgive my suspicion? I was crazy; at first I thought you and Doug might be going on the town. It was easy for me to get mixed up because I do love the fellow."
"Big deal. This crummy pin won't go in the hole. Ah. There we are."
She saw the voluptuous waitress reach higher, almost ignoring her visitor. "Are you angry, Inez?"
"I'm reasonable enough to know when a person's sick, or busy. And reason tells me that if I don't get the blasted drapes hung in another hour, I've had it. Doug put us out of work. I need a job, and don't you think I have to look for one?"
"I'm sorry."
Fay eased away toward the porch and was grateful, deep inside. Though her apology had not really been accepted, Inez showed logic. A rational view that failed to melt the ice around her words or make her a friend.
Suburbia breathed in a pulse of daylight activity as she guided the car toward her home on Ralan. There were people sight-seeing near the park, delivery and repair trucks moving about, children cavorting in a dream paradise which for them had become the reality of suburb life. Fay put the car in her driveway and entered the kitchen.
Not long after she began working on a cake mix, the phone buzzed and she went to the den to answer it. Mother's voice echoed on the wire.
"How's everything, doll? I ran around all day shopping-now I'm in a cafe with Max. Lordie, I can hear my heart pounding from the fuss and bother."
Fay had an ache of compassion within her. "Liquor isn't good for you, either," she warned into the phone. "The doctor said you might be prone to more trouble if-"
"Prone? That's a hot one. My bad nerves are the cause of it, and beer will soothe them. Max is showing me her album of flower photos."
"Very good. Has Rod come around to see you lately?"
"Only once since our little game in the parlor, but don't worry. He'll call up sooner or later. I wish you'd tell me how you are, today."
"In great shape, mother-believe me."
"Then I have to run away and get another brew while the foam's high. Be careful with Doug."
"I promise."
The clicking receiver gave Fay a somber feeling. Rod's temperament and shoddy treatment had caused trouble in mother's relationship with him, evil and illegitimate though it was, they were not nearly as close as before. Fay had a lurking fear and premonition about mother's future with him.
The Gem Country Club towered three stories in the air. Seated near the cocktail lounge door, Fay Willaby stared beyond a hustling bar and admired the architecture.
She looked further, and out the window. Fat golfers occupied canvas chairs on the terrace. Their day on the links had ended but they conducted a post mortem on the vagaries of the sport, and, probably, what might have been.
Turning again to her table, she examined the wet rings made by the beer glass. Around her, strange men and women chatted-the wealthy and titled and joyous elite; for a moment she yearned to be in their shoes.
Edsel Vaunet waddled through the open archway, saw her alone, and hurried to her side.
"Fate must be throwing us together. I see a lovely woman at our cocktail party, a girl with diamonds in her hair, and yet she has no companion. I pity her."
His middle-aged romantic overture had worn thin. She snapped: "Save the over-acting and your pity. Juliana's in the ladies' room."
-"She must have invited you to our palace of kingly coin and pleasure."
"Brilliant deduction, Mr. Holmes."
"Mr. Vaunet. And if you'll agree to the wondrous night I have in mind, you can call me Ed. Or even Poopsie:"
Scowling, she ignored him and gazed at the pane of glass on the entrance. "Don't you ever bring your wife along with you on these hunting expeditions?"
"She's talking to a bunch of friends near the podium. And they're in her own league, as far as age and dullness go."
"You're a little decrepit yourself." Fay had reached the limit of patience with him. She saw Mrs. Vaunet in a comer of the room, not appearing to care about his tarrying with a loose neighbor.
"And why am I? Because that battle-ax can't creak the mattress any more." He boldly sat on the chair next to her. "Tonight, Fay? You and I?"
"Shut up before I call the manager and have you thrown out on your fat ear."
"Such a temper!" He grinned, chewing on a cigar and patting the huge girth of his abdomen. "The Gem's manager is on my payroll at the oil outfit."
Wagging her finger at him, she let her rage erupt as she stood up and grabbed her handbag. "You're a dirty old man. I told you a few times to crawl off my back and stay off. It takes a very stupid person to think a neighbor's wife is fair game-"
"Knock off the name-calling, sweet," he snarled. "Everyone knows about your sleeping around with any clown who asks you."
Anger chilled to a cold vindictiveness as Fay brushed past the heads that had spun around at the sound of her argument. She went across the lounge and stalked up to Vaunet's wife. Tapping the woman on the shoulder, Fay said, "I want to help you out of a jam."
"Beg your pardon, Mrs. Willaby?"
"Go over and use the polite tact on hubby dear. Or hit him over the noggin for all I care. He just asked me to shack up with him."
The spindly dowager widened her eyes, sputtered, and moved away from the group of murmuring acquaintances. "How dare you embarrass me in front of my friends and-"
"What do you think Poopsie Ed just did to me? You're female, so I know you're possessive and jealous. Tell him I'll scratch his eyes out the next time he bothers me or makes any kind of a pass. He can't buy me the way he buys half the town of Redpine, Mrs. Vaunet."
The stunned woman blew air out between her wrinkled, white lips. "Well! If you're in dead earnest and aren't stretching the truth, I certainly shall approach him. But it's hard to accept the say-so of a girl with your-reputation."
"You, too? Go join Poopsie for a round of golf-he's yours."
Fay raised her chin up high and stormed away. A waiter, his jacket immaculate and eyes bright, minced over toward her.
"I'd like to see your membership card, Miss."
"Go to hell," she snapped, furious at the Vaunets. "Even if I had the money, I wouldn't be able to stomach the clientele in here. Excuse me."
The sensation of victory and resurrection didn't last long. She went out to the lot, gunned the sports car engine, and sped off toward a four-lane highway without waiting to let Juliana hear what had happened. Fay cursed the couple because they had made clear the very thing she hoped to hide from herself.
Any reputation for cleanness or fidelity that she might have had, any good name among the suburbanites, anything a decent wife cherished-were gone.
She sobbed quietly and blinked at the dark road ahead of her car's beaming lights. The country club was far behind her. But someone had destroyed her future or at least damaged it beyond repair. Whether it was O'Hara or even Juliana, she couldn't even guess. And perhaps it didn't really matter.
The next few days flew by. Doug took his oath and went to basic training at the army camp. The abrupt halt in sex relations hurt her, almost as much as the void of loneliness and yearning that she harbored for him. Anxiety wrapped her in a shell at home. It felt like a hundred years before the day came for her trip to the camp, and she hoped that he would see things in a new light when she got there.
The marshland bogs of New Jersey were brown, vast, rolling out from either side of the road. At the gate, an M.P. gave her directions to the barracks where her man would be. Youths milled about like ants, headed for the post exchange or mess hall or a night of liberty in town.
Fay walked into a bungalow marked Day Room-Visitors. She dabbed at her hair, biting her tongue anxiously as she found Doug and another soldier seated on a giant footlocker. Doug smiled thinly but was preoccupied with the fanned playing cards in his hand. "Let me have three," he told his comrade. Then, waving at a low stool near them, he said: "Rest your weary old carcass, Fay. We need a kibitzer to umpire the game and see that Joe doesn't pull anything from under the bed."
The ruddy-faced lad giggled. "Here's your trey-read 'em and bawl."
"Thank you," she said. A nail was protruding from the wood, and she carefully avoided it when sitting down.
"Sorry I couldn't arrange for a throne," said Doug. "I know how you fret about ripping your new dresses. Pair of queens, Joe."
"I got their mates, and you lose."
Fay waited patiently during the game, although he didn't even give her a generous portion of his attention. It disappointed her gravely. Finally she remarked, "I hope you haven't been hurt during the long hikes or commando tactics. If you'd write a letter every so often, I might-"
"Listen to her," he laughed at Joe. "She thinks I'm a baby who forgot how to handle himself. Joe, do you have a girl at home?"
"Nope. Just an unfaithful wife."
Her heart sank and she wondered if they were putting her on. When she noted how Doug was sneering at her bare knees, she yanked the dress lower and covered them up, angered by his cool treatment. Maybe it was too late for her to be indignant.
"I thought we might have an ice cream soda at the snack bar," she volunteered. "Alone. There are a few things we need to hash out."
"My friend and I are playing cards. And I'll be damned if I can beat him." Doug rubbed his jaw while leaning on the iron bar of a cot and drumming the pasteboards on his thigh. "We can talk here, unless Joe annoys you."
"Of course he doesn't."
"How's mama doing?"
"With Rod? Not much better than I've been doing with you. Doug, adopting a role as a hermit is one course I never thought would be necessary, but apparently it is. I haven't seen any of those-men."
He gritted his teeth in a phony grin, then elbowed Joe on the ribs. "I think she's meeting me halfway. We husbands are like the priest in a confessional, when they offer forgiving thoughts."
"Stop changing the subject and have a gander. Full house."
Their reluctance to include her in the conversation made it hard for her to retain any poise. No matter what she said, Doug was taking offense. When had he started being sensitive? In their early romance and his Joy Haven business, he had been the original hard-boiled man of the world, whose inner emotions she rarely could reach.
As he continued dealing, Fay looked sorrowfully at him. "A job would keep me from getting lonely. They want a girl in the library-or I could join a car pool and do some typing in the engine factory I think too much. It's because I miss you so terribly, and we're drifting further away from each other."
"Blame Uncle Sam for it. Or Uncle Benjie, if he has more to offer."
"Doug, are you asking me to fall on my knees and beg for forgiveness."
"We can do without the ham acting." There was a dull light in his eye when he looked through her and riveted his gaze upon Joe. "Hey, buddy-I drew the Yankees in the pool today."
"I got the Mets."
Doug roared with laughter. "You might as well give up and run home. They don't even score when it's handed to them, so how could you win? At least I had some luck in that draw."
Fay lowered her eyes as his meaning became clear. He was referring to her. Though she attempted to ease in with his mood and be friendly with Joe, she didn't believe they should have a third party during her visiting time. Her husband's indifference only accented the removal and departure of genuine love.
He was far away, distant, ready to flare up at any criticism or suggestion. She hit the final straw when he denied having promised her an evening in town.
"I'm on guard duty," he moaned as he got up from the footlocker. "You made an error, baby. I had a pass last night-you're one day late."
"Oh? Then I may as well drive back home and let the defense of our nation go on." Her voice shook and she felt abandoned.
He checked his watch. "Holy cow, I'm late. Joe, will you see that my ever-loving spouse reaches the car without some rebel attacking her?"
"Ain't you forgetting I'm from Alabama?" Joe whined.
Fay said, "I can find the road on my own. Thanks for the hospitality, both of you."
"Keep up those diet exercises you've been fooling around with," said Doug as he hurried across the room. "They make you gorgeous."
She didn't trust herself to reply. Spinning on her heel, she moved away toward the parking lot before Doug and his leering friend could see how the color had drained from her.
Drinking before lunch had its bad and good points, Fay knew. She could see only one reason for her presence in The Littlehorn, on the day after her return from camp. She wanted to be around when mother needed help in recovering from news evil enough to wipe out a company of love-starved divorcees.
"The shock will wear off, ma, but you have to let it wear."
Shadows from the apse blanketed the cedar walls and a comer of the cafe where Fay sat in a booth. Mother stretched her legs out and leaned back, tilting the chair away. "You know something? My next line would be right out of a soap opera."
"How often-oh, so often I predicted the outcome of this affair."
"Fay, those words are-"
"Undignified and boorish." She folded her arms and felt as if her own intestines had been wrenched free and dragged under the sun to bake. However, the misery belonged first to her mother, who was again refusing any comment on it.
"I love vermouth," she whispered, swirling the cocktail glass in her hand.
"This den is too grim for any clear thought. I insist we take a stroll out in the pure morning air."
"You mean I'm getting nervous from the alcohol. Very true. Lead on, my darling daughter Fay, and we'll cry in each other's bonnet. I'm certainly not going to grow an ulcer worrying about him."
They moved out of the room together, and the girl smelled an odor of grass mingled with factory smog and dust. She knew that a stroke was nothing minor. Mother had suffered one while laboring in the dry cleaning shop a few years ago. Any undue pressure would cause the danger of relapse on a victim now in her early forties.
Fay dropped the train of conversation about Rod as they walked ahead in silence. It took a real asshole to break off with his woman so abruptly; he had given no warning. Their ruptured affair would harm mother's attitude toward men.
Whom had Rod found? A wild, throbbing young beauty with the morality of a tigress and a flaming personality to go with it? Probably.
Mother kept wetting her lip and studying her fingernails on the languid walk toward the north end. She looked old. Worn out, used, despondent in a vain search to bring meaning to her life.
There was a tang of mown hay in the air as they neared Elk Park. Fay tasted the rural atmosphere, and thought back to her high-school era. There had been hayrides and weenie roasts and bike rides on an autumn-bright hilly road. Happy times. Even that night when Alphonse petted her and did his best to go further, she had slapped him and gone away from the barbeque diamond with no hard feelings.
The vivid memories touched a chord within her. Such a happy, devil-may-care mob of children. Where were they all today? It might be interesting to have the reunion Benjie spoke of, and find out how many of them had reached a vacant, grim adulthood-the swan song for youth's brief period.
She glanced at her mother, marching wearily beside her. Fay thought: we were both on Cloud Nine in the good old days-but look at how we've fallen.
Fay nodded as she replied on the phone to Benjie, although he certainly could not see the moving of her head. "Yes, I'd like that," she repeated. "The inside of your room is a mystery so far." Her palm sweated and she knew there had been enough reason given for Benjie's invitation-and her yielding to it.
"I'm glad I had the bright idea of calling you tonight," he enthused. "No rock will be left unturned as I await you during the next half hour. My best china will shine."
"Do you think it's right. Ben?"
"A pair of lonely cats hearing highbrow music are accepted in the etiquette fold. Hurry over."
"You talked me into it."
She gulped hard, easing away from the phone in her parlor and gazing in the mirror. Her leather Bavarian shorts, the pink wide-collared blouse and tan loafers had a casual aura of sex. She put her sunglasses on. Under the strain of her crying needs-the hunger of security and happiness with a man-there was nothing wicked in the decision. She had hoped that Mr. Lake would call.
After locking the door of their tomb-quiet home, she drove the black sports car up to Eagle Street. Holes and ridges on the pavement caused a rocking action under the tires. She felt her breasts, unguarded by any bra, bounce near her hand as she gripped the wheel.
His apartment yawned on an upper floor of the brick edifice near the cathedral. Fay had a dour sensation when she headed up the stairwell. She tapped on the knocker, saw her friend appear in the shadows and step back.
"Welcome to the horrors and joy of the sanctum, Fay."
"I hate to keep you from your brushes and the friendly beauty contest winners on the route. But I do want to please you. The only thing is-we divorcees get mixed up." She moved into the room and watched Benjie close the door with a ring of finality.
"Divorcees?"
"A figure of speech. I'm praying that Doug will drop his hard feelings and come back. Theoretically and in truth, it's not even a separation. Lord, I shudder at the thought of losing him to the army."
The salesman grinned suavely. "Here's the interior you were talking about. Folksy wallpaper, a zinc chandelier, and a few chairs. Nothing out of the ordinary."
"I like it," she whispered. On his end table sat a collection of rose china, framed against the wall paper's early Americana.
"A kiss for the revered host?"
She let him draw near and put an arm around her shoulder. He opened his mouth frankly as they embraced, building a fire within her at the union of tongues.
"Fay, you're more gorgeous than anyone I ever saw-from Maine to Hollywood," he gasped. "And I've been around. Corny? Yeah-but only a dyed-in-the-wool poet could do justice-"
"I won't enjoy the applying of metaphors now. Try another kiss, with feeling, as they do in the song."
His hand ran up and down her vertebrae, hunting for a bra strap under the fabric, and finding none. Her lips were fused upon his. A wanton throb boomed to life within her. She allowed him to undo the buttons of her blouse. He lowered his head to kiss each jutting nipple in turn.
"I want you badly, Benjie," she said. "I guess I need you."
"That's good of you to say," he said, looking into her eyes.
"What I'm trying to say is, where's the bed?"
Without any need for words then, he led her to it, and they were out of their clothes in seconds. She climbed up onto the bed and lay flat on her back, her legs apart, her knees raised. It had become the most natural position in the world for her, she thought.
He got to his knees between her open thighs, without delay, and lodged the head of his already erect cock at the grateful entrance of her moistening cunt. The head of it was the size and shape of a lemon, she thought, looking down. Only the color and texture were different. And she'd never seen a lemon with a vertical slitted eye at the conical end of it.
She spread her legs wider, bracing her heels flat on the bed as she lifted her knees higher, elevating her cunt to welcome his entering thrust. He worked his hard shaft into her slippery twat slowly, until her cunt was distended and full-feeling, his large satisfier of a cock all the way up, deep inside her.
Fay could feel her inner lips and cunt muscles squeezing and contracting automatically around the thick hard shaft. It was a trick she'd been doing for some time now, and now she was doing it, or her cunt was doing it, just naturally, without her thinking about it.
Love, she thought idiotically. Real love. Love of fucking was what she was feeling, she knew. She vowed at that moment never again to go so long without it, as long as she could draw a breath. And as long as her cunt could draw in a stiff cock.
Benjie withdrew the entire length of his shaft slowly, leaving only the head within the wet warmth of her cunt entrance, and held himself poised, the head just spreading the inner twat-mouth. Fay quivered, and tried to suppress it, but Benjie knew-knew that she was already at the very shuddering edge of orgasm.
He thrust his cock forward then, in one deep plunge, and held it that way, stiff inside her, probing, filling her whole consciousness as well as her cunt with nothing but quivering, blinding sensation.
Then, uncontrollably, Fay was coming, writhing, squirming, thrusting her cunt thirstily upward, as if to engulf more of that big rigid shaft. She was moaning deep in her throat. Still Benjie held himself arched over her, letting her gorge herself on his iron, immobile cock.
As her spasms slowly subsided, Fay became aware of Benjie watching her face, smiling faintly. His cock, rock-hard and rigid still in her weakly gulping cunt, was the beginning and end of her every sensation.
He began to stir his hips slowly, grinding the hard base of his pelvic knoll against her wet tender mound.
"Now that you're over that girlish excitement, Fay," he said, smiling gently at her, "why don't you relax a while and really enjoy it?"
She had to smile back at him. She was in no mood and no condition to take a dignified mental stance with him. She lay still, her thighs and cunt spread in open abandon, and felt his shaft slide out of her twat's soft clutch, almost to the end, then slowly plunge back in, filling her once again with cock and contentment.
Without her consciously willing the motion, she felt her hips starting to respond, slowly at first, raising almost imperceptibley to greet each long deliberate fuck-stroke. She had thought she was finished with all sensation for a while, but she felt the responding flesh-joy building inside her again, a much deeper, warmer, rounder, fuller pleasure, somehow, than the preceding delight. It reached to' the roots, not just the ends, of every responsive nerve inside her.
Without being conscious of it, she moved her legs to hook her heels inside Benjie's, giving her the leverage she needed to pursue her new dedication. Formed for fucking, she thought. Me. Fay. The exquisitely tuned and oiled machinery of her hips and cunt began to move in earnest then, superbly complementing the deliberately slow, delicious shuttling of Benjie's own accomplished tool.
They fucked slowly, sensuously, giving each other the ultimate in pleasure, for a long, long time, and Fay lost track of everything except the delicately demanding suck of her cunt around Benjie's insliding shaft.
Gradually, very gradually, in perfect accord, the-rhythm of their fucking increased in tempo. Soon Fay heard herself gasping, unable to control the sounds issuing from her throat. She was only dimly aware of the words.
"Drive it deep, Benjie," she could hear herself saying. "Push that big cock deep into my cunt, all the way up to my throat. Fuck me hard, Benjie. Fuck me harder."
Then she was both deaf and blind with sensation for a long moment as she came, and came, and came. He held his hard, stubborn cock very still, deep in the wet delirious flesh-trap of her cunt, as she writhed in her own private ecstasy, and then he came with her, pumping and squirting deep into her, bathing her silent, secret fires.
ELEVEN
Noise and laughter echoed from the lawn in what first appeared to be an athletic game of some kind, judging by the racket. On closer inspection, when she neared the oval hedge and looked at a crowd of people on the terrace, it developed that Juliana had done her share in adding to the upside-down chain of events. She was throwing a party. Fay saw many couples from the area in attendance, and thought it a direct turnabout for a prudish woman.
The reason's probably none of my business. Fay shrugged, angled away toward the sidewalk, and had barely set foot off the lawn when they intercepted her. She couldn't believe her eyes. Rod and Julie, arm in arm like youths in the throes of puppy love.
"You don't have to peek over the hedges, darling," meowed the widow.
"We do everything over the counter and above board in this gang," Rod added. "Real nutty suburbanites, we are. If you walk on the patio now, you'd even see a few boys getting laid."
"Stop that foul language," said Juliana.
"You're the only woman around, whom I'd rank as a lady. Any cussing that I've done is due to my love for you, honey."
Fay watched in amazement and folded her arms while Rod patted the widow's hip. It took a moment before Fay adjusted to the unusual pairing. "This is one for the books. Next thing I know, you'll be telling me the shindig was called to announce your engagement."
"What's wrong with that?" Rod winked.
"After the way you dropped my mother, it takes some nerve-"
"We parted by mutual consent."
Juliana held one hand up and waved, using the other hand to fiddle with her peroxide hair. "Fay, would you cause such an ado about nothing, when I had thought of asking you in as a guest?"
"Sorry, Julie." Her dander was up and she didn't really care what anyone said about her. "He lies through his teeth. I had him pegged for a lecher and he sure made my prediction materialize. After he's all done using you, dear Rod will throw your cadaver aside and vanish in thin air. As he did with mother."
There was a brief pause which sounded to Fay as though it had been carved out of the dark, mosquito-laden night and hurled back at her.
Rod moved ahead, grunting. "Still the wise-acre brat with no brains. We had a niche for you on the crew, but now-you come out and preach phony loyalty."
"I love ma," snapped Fay. "That's a concept no sex-fiend would understand. And I should have clawed your eyes the first time you dated her.
Maybe all this misery-"
"That'll be quite enough from her," Juliana objected. Seizing him by the sleeve, she yanked until be stopped walking toward the intruder. "Come on, Rod. She'll soon be insulting me and our other guests."
Fay glared in the ray of the street lamp, disappointed that he had not swung at her. She shook her head in Juliana's direction. "Lady, you picked one of the rottenest apples in the orchard. He'll be around just long enough to find some kicks."
"The last three nights in a row," he sneered, "I refused better-looking broads than you. Now I've got Julie and you're up a creek. Write a note to the soldier boy at camp. Ask him how much faith he has in you-and the milkman or postman or-"
"Let her go," said the widow. "My friends are waiting for us."
He squeezed her rump and then drew her close, edging away toward the terrace. Fay had a whiff of fried chicken and whisky and powder which hung around the female guests.
Rod yelled his parting shot at her. "We're gonna play Pin the Tail on the Donkey, in a while. You're invited to be the ass."
"And you can go straight to hell, Romeo."
Her ears sizzled from the cut of his jibes, the gall he showed in dealing with the fair sex. Somehow, either via money or persuasion or raw virility, he had taken the prude widow out of her shell and made her a slave. They were undoubtedly shacking up together. Rod wouldn't bother with her or any woman under normal, platonic terms, and he considered Juliana only another conquest to hang like a scalp around his belt.
A faint drizzle began humming on the evergreens along the road. Fay sighed, her bare legs moist with rain as she went back toward home. Everyone in her neighborhood, enemies and loved ones and acquaintances, were going to the dogs. Would it be optimistic falderal if she looked for an upward trend? Surely there couldn't be anything else for her on the bottom of the barrel. Or could there?
The main corridor of Redpine Hospital brooded in silence. Fay crumpled the tissue paper in her hand and heard the nurse's shoes ticking a rhythmic pace on the tile. It was Saturday morning-rain throbbed against the pane of a nearby window-the weather had continued to be miserable and she knew there couldn't be a more apropos setting for her visit.
She leaned on the wall, sorrow thick in her breast when she murmured to the nurse. "If it's really bad, I wish the doctor would come out with a diagnosis. I'd rather be fully informed. Are you sure she'll break out of it?"
The nurse was grimly attractive, a young angel in white who looked cute in her blue-banded cap. "Your mother has a good heart," she replied. "The attack hit her hard, but not in a lethal way."
"She'll be as fine as ever?"
"Allowing for a month's rest, we do think so. The nervous strain was obvious from her conversation while the drug had effect. You must know how the pressure originated."
Fay sighed with relief at the promising word and the frank opinion. All about her, in wards and semiprivate cubicles, hospital air hung in waves-medicine, ether, human bodies at a low ebb, fresh linen and paint. "Yes, I do," she nodded. "She loved a man and he ran out on her."
"Is she alone-I mean as far as a husband would be concerned?"
"My mother is single. The factory where she works may have gotten her down, too."
"The doctor and I both agreed that the physical end merely told half her story. Emotion-depression-they're powerful. With a daughter like you, I'm sure her recuperation will go on without a hitch."
Flattery seemed irrelevant, but she thanked the nurse and gazed sadly up toward the closed door of the room. "May I have a word with her? If she's awake, I'd like to-"
"Of course you may. Sleep is vital, though, and we'll have to make it short. Follow me."
Fay still found it hard to believe the shocking news. A heart attack was something that always happened in another family, an un-likely event, fuzzy lines in a newspaper. Shame haunted her while she accompanied the nurse along the hall. Mother had fought insomnia during the past week and had lost precious hours of sleep due to worry over Rod.
And why had he left her? The reason must be more involved than his yen to conquer a juicy tidbit like Juliana and other well-to-do women who caught his fancy. Maybe he had retched on a bellyful of the Mondeu clan. Mother was only a pawn for him. But Fay-yes, indeed, Fay had thrown herself at other men and done her best to give a whorish impression, creating the inevitable blotch on her name.
Rod might fear the reaction to his friendship with a known harlot. Gaining a higher position in the helicopter firm meant so much to him; any scandal would ruin his chance. And so he had turned away from Shirley Mondeu and her daughter.
The net result filled Fay with self-recrimination and she couldn't avoid the sensation of being responsible for her mother's condition. She began to cry again, softly, as the door was opened and she moved into the ward.
"Only for a moment," said the nurse.
Mother lay on the bed with her head propped on two pillows. The deathly pale tinge of her face was depressing to behold. Fay whispered, "I don't think you should wake her up. Tomorrow's another day."
Grim, overcast skies shed a mournful aura upon the walls, and the wind hummed on the windows. Mother's eyelids jerked suddenly. The wan smile at least proved she had regained her hold on life and hope. "You don't have to be so quiet, Fay. I'll get rid of my blues in a day or so."
"Oh!" She managed a wry chuckle and came nearer the bed as relief lightened her mind. "It's so good to hear you talk. Mother, I didn't sleep a wink all night, but the reward is heavenly. Are you stronger?"
"Like a mare with fresh feed."
"I'll bring candy and paperback novels with me next time. And I want you to stop worrying."
"We Hungarians are made to last ninety years," the woman rebutted slowly. "These old feet will be dancing and running to the shop before you know it. Smile, baby. Rod's out of my blood, so all will be right with humanity."
She coughed under the exertion of speech, even at so mild a pace. Her eyes closed again and the sheet covering her bosom heaved with her effort. Fay felt the nurse at her elbow.
"Tomorrow should be another day, Mrs. Willaby. We'd hate to delay the fine progress she's made."
"Of course."
Mother raised her hand gradually as they backed away from the bed. "Be a good girl. Stay busy around the house and everything will work out."
The brief visit had done wonders for both of them. Fay eased into the corridor with a new spring in her stride, glad that half the battle was over.
Fay drove home and spent the day puttering around the garden and improving her sketches. She had already decided on continuing her career as magazine illustrator and ad artist. There were potential job irons in the fire. Late that afternoon, tired of thinking about Doug and fed up with the dead quiet from camp, as he had not written her in twenty-six days, she went for a walk along the seashore off Redpine Bay.
Gulls dotted the clear sky whose dome encompassed the park from one horizon of grass to the other. Old retired athletes sat on benches near the ball diamond. She went past them, to an arena crowded with people in chairs, gathered for the outdoor symphony and concert. High above her, one gull rang forth its bizarre call and was drowned out by the human melody of brass, cymbals, and violins.
It was operatic stuff. Wild, imaginative-but happy. Fay stood near the rows of elderly folk enjoying their weekend before the upright dias and orchestra. She noted a vivid contrast between the music's theme and her own gloom over the dire woes that had befallen her.
A girl came strolling up the cinder track. Fay wanted to be indifferent and hostile, but had only resignation within her as she watched Inez Gurt approach.
"Fay, I'll bet you're wondering how a girl like me got into a nice place like this. Opera is for the longhairs."
"I often doubt that, Inez. Nobody really belongs to anything. I mean-we all start off at zero and pick out a goal later, and pursue it-if we have the nerve. Do whatever pleases you."
"Maybe you and I can-" The girl paused, fingering the sexy mass of red hair which streamed down onto her bosom. Few women could get away with that coiffure.
Inez inhaled as she jutted' her fanny out provocatively. "We smoked a peace pipe at my house-remember? I want to be sure it holds. Okay?"
"It holds."
"Gosh, I feel sorry for you, kid. Not in a way that you'd call 'pity.' It always seems to be the innocent babes who get hurt the worst-like in the hillbilly joke. Drowned in a vat of corn liquor while rescuing her boyfriend."
The humor was probably not intended as anything mean or ironic. Fay turned away from the .concert band, now playing a Viennese medley with a death motif, and walked toward the moss. Her toe ran a line across the damp ground. She glanced up at the waitress and added, "I lost my virginal maidenhood a while ago. But thank you for the interest."
"Speaking of maidenheads-I began wrestling with the other gender in the fifth grade. Is that a record? It sort of makes you yawn at girls who save it for marriage and then choose the wrong guy."
"That's a very deep idea. Believe me, Inez. You're smarter than I'll ever be, and I'm glad we ended up pals." Pausing to tear the petal off an iris near the hothouse, she continued. "We could have a friendly race to see who gets her job first."
"You're looking?"
"Yes."
"I have a warm lead and it'll be a surprise all the way around if I make it with the position. You should try to mingle with folks. The earth seems brutal and lonely, but you need genuine friends as much as I do."
Fay put levity into her laugh, though Inez was touching upon sore points. "The rain clouds are really staying over me."
"We complain about trouble, even when most of it happens through our own fault. So ends the sermon." The firm-busted redhead blinked gently and waved toward a crowd filing away from the outdoor arena. "I guess the opera's all done."
Trouble. Fay thought that her only tragedy would be facing the world without a man. "At least I have Doug, in spirit if not the flesh."
"I hope you keep him. There's a rumor going about the waitress field-they say he's sold on the army. It looks bad for you."
"Why?"
"The service could be his brand of life. No chains, on the movie-it would hurt me, Fay, if he were done with marriage. I like you."
Momentary panic and bewilderment seized her; she had to deny it. "A rumor is something invented by jaded gossipers. Doug loves me. I'm sure he does."
Inez frowned, scratching her thumb on her hp to clear the lipstick off. "I'll be praying right along with you."
Dust rose in the air as people herded across the baseball diamond, and she saw Inez meander away toward an apple orchard. A line from literature ran into Fay's thoughts-the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune-She was grimly despondent. Mother's heart attack had followed other choice events: Harry Feriso throwing in the sponge, Vaunet and his violent frustration, Juliana in the rumor mill with her housewife cohorts."
The concert musicians had finished their gig. She moved slowly away to the road and heard one trombonist blowing off-key. The notes were hollow and had no meaning beyond a chaos that reminded Fay of her own life. She wished he'd play a cheery tune.
Another two weeks passed before any letter came from Doug. The sound of the mailman's walk, as he strode up the concrete and hammered noisily at the box, gave Fay a flutter of hope.
She walked onto the porch and yanked the letter out, tearing its red-white-and-blue envelope. Doug wrote in the same way he had been talking lately. No emotion in the words-a frank, polite manner.
"... things are fine at camp, Fay. I have hour upon hour to use on plain old thinking. There seems to be one course open that you and I can take without getting fouled up in weird juvenile stuff-"
Her eyes grew dim under a wet, painful haze; she reread the sentence many times and it still bore the tragic message. He was initiating action for a divorce-grounds of mental cruelty on her part, much as he hated to employ such an uncivilized phrase. The slick paper became ashes in her hand. She sagged down on the couch and shivered at the cool air drifting through the screen door.
Bad news was a thing she could endure. That horrible letter near her feet was more than that. It offered shock, disaster, the end of an era and the realization of hard truth, grief without release, freedom in chains. He would give her other details later.
So nice of you, Doug, she thought. Tune in again next week for the smashing denouement of our drama The days hurried by, and Fay felt that someone was laying a whip on her back, demanding the reason why she loved Private Doug Willaby. She had imagined that passion fire threatened destruction of her marriage. Her own retaliatory attack, inflaming him through jealousy over Harry and nameless other men, had sealed off her escape routes, one by one. Now she felt like the dying Egyptian queens. She stood in the pyramid's core and sand had begun rushing in and the huge stone blocks were entombing her forever.
The Joy Haven restaurant had been sold; she didn't know who owned it and she didn't care. It was a segment of her forgotten past. One day, unable to live with her lonely self, Fay walked up near the resort lake where Benjie worked as a motel desk-man at the Figure Eight Inn. Speedboats droned on the gray water and she could smell pines and summer in bloom.
She found him, finally, in the last bungalow from the main office. He was emptying ashtrays into a wastebasket when she arrived at the open doorway.
"I'd almost given up on finding you," she said.
When he looked up at her the mixture of surprise and delight on his face gave her a warm feeling she couldn't define.
"Wow," he said. "This must be the happiest surprise I've ever had."
She came through the door and just stood there awkwardly, looking at him.
"I've made some terrible mistakes, Benjie," she said.
"You're not the only one. I've heard about you and Doug. About the divorce."
"That's no mistake. The divorce, I mean."
"Oh?"
"Doug was a mistake, in the first place."
"I could have told you that," he said, not looking at her.
"Benjie," she said, and had trouble with her voice. "Benjie, I don't know how to say this, but I've been thinking about you, I've missed you."
"I've missed you, too," he said, looking at her now. "More than I can tell you. But I haven't wanted to mess you up, with what you've been going through."
"You couldn't mess me up, Benjie. Ever. Just the opposite."
Then he was in front of her, and his arms were around her.
"I've been a fool, Benjie," she said.
"That makes two of us," he said, and reached around behind her to push the door shut.
She went one step further. She reached back and locked it.
They broke records for getting undressed, as they had once broken records for getting their clothes on. Then, without any recollection of getting there, she was stretched out in the middle of one of the cabin's two double beds. When Benjie joined her and leaned to kiss her, she closed her eyes and tried to pretend it was the first time, or at least the first time with Benjie.
He must have been wanting to do the same: as her mouth opened hungrily and her tongue sprang up to meet his, his hands roamed the smooth tender surface of her back, feasted on the cool yielding swell of her buttocks, teased and caressed the backs of her raised legs, her inner thighs. He untangled his tongue, unglued their mouths, tongued the insides of her ears, kissed the side of her neck, her throat, while his hands dept moving over the whole quivering, responding surface of her body, caressing, squeezing, stroking, pinching.
His mouth moved down to the yearning swell of her breasts, and his lips caught fire one hardstanding plateau of nipple, then the other. Fay reached down and put one hand around the base of his swollen cock, as far as her fingers would reach. And as she remembered from before, the tips of her fingers barely touched the tip of her thumb.
She was filled with a feeling of warmth, of coming home at last, as well as with an eager, pulsing excitement. Benjie's middle finger was sliding back and forth across the tender, swollen twig of her chtoris, and her legs spread wider, all by themselves, it seemed, as her hips began to revolve.
"Now?" Benjie asked.
"Now," she said. "Please."
She reached out and took the hard shiny red apple of his cockhead, the apple of her eye, and guided the shaft toward the wet, waiting lips of her moistening cunt. With the head firmly lodged in the soft embrace of her outer cunt lips, she removed her guiding fingers and Benjie took over.
She groaned as the shaft slid along inside her cunt channel, her cave of sensation, seeming to widen the walls, extend her horizons of pleasure. When his cock was imbedded halfway, Benjie stopped, teasing her.
"Mote?" he asked, looking down into her face. "Yes, darling," she said. "More."
"Benjie's shaft continued its deepening journey. Fay raised her legs and spread them wide with her hands as Benjie made one long, plunging, downward thrust, the pelvic bone at the base of his cock grinding to a halt in her matted moist bush, the entire hard length of his shaft inside her gulping, grateful cunt.
She embraced his hips warmly with her thighs, her feet hooked tightly behind him. Slowly, he slid his cock out almost all the way, held it there for a long moment, then sank it deep into her again with one long, probing stroke. Fay gasped, choking, and her hips rose to push her cunt lips tight against the base of his shaft.
"Fuck me hard, Benjie," she said through clenched teeth. "Fuck me deep. Fuck me forever."
Benjie began to fuck her then with a slow, steady rhythm, driving the entire length of his big cock deep into her with every stroke, and her hips joined in his timing, bringing her sucking, loving cunt up to greet his every in-stroke, grasping and holding and clutching wetly at the stiff shaft on his outstrokes.
They fucked in perfect harmony for a long time-Fay could not have guessed if it was five minutes or five hours or five days-and she wanted it to go on forever, but she could not keep her surging excitement from mounting, inevitably, toward a frantic, frenzied climax.
Benjie picked up the stroke, sensing that the end was near for her, and whipped her into a mindless frenzy with long, pounding strokes. He banged his rock-hard shaft into her, again and again, with a thump, a jolt, and soon she was surging into a crazed frenzy, crying out soundlessly as her inflamed cunt made wet sucking sounds around Benjie's slippery rod.
Suddenly, Fay was screaming, as her body went rigid and she came, once, twice, and again, while Benjie's warm juices spurted up inside her. Her eyes were closed but she saw skyrockets, first, then a great wall of red as the spasms hammered at her insides.
Benjie waited until she was completely limp before he pulled out. She lay back happily, not wanting to talk but unable to not to.
"Why has it taken us so long, Benjie?"
"To find each other, you mean?"
"Yes. To find out enough about ourselves to recognize each other. That might be a better way to put it."
"Because I've been dumb," Benjie said. '.'And aside from that, there was Doug."
"There isn't Doug between us any more."
"Thank God for that."
They were lying there, just holding onto each other.
"Do you like your new job?" she murmured into his ear. It seemed silly, saying anything so mundane, but it seemed that they'd somehow said everything that had to be said.
"It only looks like a job," Benjie said. "I own the place, for better or worse. Me and the bank."
Own it? Run it? This heaven of a place by the lake?
"I hope you need a partner," she said, rolling close to him again.
"Like I never needed anything before," he whispered.
