enovel An Uncertain Wife James Bowie [Future Story Codes]

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An Uncertain Wife ....(65k)    by James Bowie

INTRODUCTION

Recently published statistics (ELLE, No. 1506, 28 October 1974, p.24) indicate that nearly one out of every three American marriages will end in divorce. This formidable figure means, in effect, that the age-old one-family system upon which our country was founded have eroded" at the seams, that our traditional life-style is no longer proving itself a viable solution for coping with the problems of our rapidly changing Western World. Grandmother's values and behavioral code, along with her washboard, outhouse, and freedom-restricting corsets, have been cast by the wayside; but today's woman has an automatic washer-dryer, a tiled bathroom, and a wardrobe of short skirts and trousers to replace Granny's out-of-date possessions, she does not appear to have developed a new morality which can serve as a family-unifying, society-strengthening base.

We, the Publishers, stand firm in our oft-expressed belief that it would be a waste of energy to shed a tear for the vanishing Puritan ethic. Repression of normal, healthy psychological needsboth physical and emotional needscan under no circumstances be the way toward the true personal freedom which is a prerequisite for national and international freedom. Recent and tragically eye-opening events in our highest government offices have driven the truth home to most thinking citizens: dishonesty has become The American Way of Life. This insidiously creeping plague of dishonesty has its roots in the home, where family members repress their real needs and dreams behind ill-fitting roles and character-corrosive disguises, where we are taught from the cradle to lie to others and, more dangerously, to ourselves.

It is with these sobering thoughts in mind that we proudly present our latest novel in the LIVERPOOL LIBRARY PRESS series of realistic and relevant fiction. AN UNCERTAIN WIFE, the latest volume to issue from the pen of renowned author James Bowie, who has spared no effort in delving to the depths of this problem with his usual perspective and sensitivity. His story is a simple one, his characters might be your neighbors, your coworkers, you yourself; but within this fundamental, straightforward formula, he has struck the chord of universality which is the mark of true literature.

Phil and Elena Greenwood are regarded by their friends and neighbors as "the ideal young couple", and they make a strenuous effort to live up to the role they have been assigned. He performs the part of rising young advertising executive to perfection, while she excels as the ultimate executive wife, pretty but never provocative, a saccharine smile on her lips as she busies herself with bettering Phil's career and with her various community activities. Since they each know the others' dialogues and motions as well as their own acts, they have almost stopped listening to, looking at, or thinking of their partner as a real personality.

Then, in the thirteenth year of their marriage, the charade of conjugal bliss began to disintegrate before their startled eyes. As an old, half-forgotten dream begins to haunt him, he turns to alcohol and other women. Soon, he's missing his cues and forgetting his lines, and the audience no longer cheers when he appears on stage. As for Elena, she finds herself wearing the wrong wigs and costumes and is so stunned by the new woman who stares back at her from the mirror that she simply walks out of the theater.

After three weeks of painful, but ultimately productive, drama, both man and woman are jolted from their roles as performing puppets into flesh and blood individuals who live and lust, laugh and cry, work and relax according to a new and very unorthodox code of rules. Some people will, no doubt, be narrow-minded enough to judge the Greenwoods' new life as immoral. To those of our readers who are shocked by this explicit exposure of how one American couple learned to cope with life in today's confused and troubled world, we can only say that we urge you to search your own consciences for hypocrisy.

In a world where the traditional morality has disintegrated into a mindless muddle of previously pertinent platitudes and placebos, it is the responsibility of every citizen to face the responsibility for his actions as clearly and openly as possible. One man's solutions are by no means applicable to the next man, but that is not the important thing. All that we, the Publishers, can hope is that everyone will face the facts as honestly as Phillip and Elena Greenwood learn to do in Mr. Bowie's inspiring novel. Today, as never before, honesty is the best policyin our bedrooms as well as in our politics. The responsibility for saving our great American way of life lies on everyone's shoulders!

In closing, we feel obligated to point out that author Bowie has, quite rightly in view of his objective, written a book which draws no line in exposing the sordid and ugly aspects of existence. While it can be argued that it is impossible and unwise to shield youngsters from the facts of life, we still feel that AN UNCERTAIN WIFE is so strongly written that it might possibly traumatize over-impressionable adolescents. For this reason, this explosive, eye-opening novel is only recommended for emotionally mature adult readers.

-The Publishers

CHAPTER ONE

"COME ONE! COME ALL! DISCOVER WEST COAST PHANTASMAGORIA, THE NATION'S NEWEST ART MOVEMENT, AND CHAT WITH LEONARD IRELAND, GRAND RAPIDS' ARTISTIC PRODIGY! FREE PUNCH!"

Tilting her honey-blonde head to one side, the slender young woman brushed an invisible speck of dust from the bodice of her new white dress and surveyed the garish red and gold poster with a cool and critical eye. As a member of the Grand Rapids' Cultural Committee which had arranged this art exhibit, she felt a personal responsibility for the decorations, though she herself had attended to the punch and left the more artsy-craftsy members to their own devises.

"Well, at least we drew in a big crowd," she muttered with a contemptuous wrinkle of her aquiline nose in the direction of the gaudy banner. Stepping gingerly so as not to stain her spotless white heels, she picked her way through the limp blossoms bedecking the steps and porch of the pseudo-Grecian building. Someone had been inspired to festoon the cement columns with scarlet tulips and golden daffodils to match the announcement banner and posters stuck up in shop windows all over town; another committee member, not to be outdone, had conjured up the idea of sewing still more blossoms onto umbrellas and fastening these contraptions to the porch roof. The effect, as far as Elena Greenwood was concerned, was more suitable for a carnival than for a serious, aesthetically educational exhibition.

It was my idea of serving free punch that brought in this crowd, she thought, haughtily wrinkling her aquiline nose. I was rightand all those people who were whispering under their breath that I'm a snob because I said: "Here in Grand Rapids it's cocktail parties people want more than culture!" were wrong!

Only Mrs. Hortense Ireland, doting mother of the twenty-five year-old painter, had seconded her idea. No doubt the well-fleshed matron, herself a strict abstainer from all alcohol save an occasional glass of sweet sherry, was shrewd enough to realize that it was easier to spend hard-earned dollars on cultural status symbols after a couple of drinks.

As Elena entered the incongruous glass-and-chrome modernistic entrance hall, all thoughts of the Cultural Committee faded. Oh, dear! she despaired as she caught sight of her reflection from four simultaneous angles. I really shouldn't have let the salesgirl talk me into buying this dress this afternoon. It was far too expensive, and it's much too girlish, too. I feel as garish and vulgar as these ridiculous decorations!

The young blonde wife came to a standstill, nervously surveying the sheer white dimity frock with its scooped neckline, hand embroidery around the waist and transparent sleeves. Even though she felt rather timid about appearing in public in an undignified dress like this instead of her normal decorous Peck and Peck jersey outfits, there was no denying that the shirred bodice, tight waistband, and soft yet subtly buttock-defining skirt made the most of her youthfully slim figure. Even the hat, a silly straw affair with a drooping brim bedecked with flowers, flattered the lines of her classic-featured face. And with her hair worn loose, as the saleslady had suggested, she truly looked more like a college coed than a mother of three and wife of a rising young advertising executive.

"Anyway," Elena muttered under her breath, her voice inaudible in the empty hall as a sound like that of the monkey house at the zoo or a grade school playground echoed in from the exhibition chamber beyond, "who gives a darn what these dumb provincial people here think? Today's the day Phillip is going to get his promotion and transfer to the West Coast office, and out there everything's more avant-garde!"

With a final defiant glance at the way her new open-toed, high-heeled patent leather shoes flattered her long and unusually shapely legs, the blonde housewife pushed open the doors of the main chamber and found herself surrounded by a loud crowd of well dressed patrons of the arts who were mingling around the large room in a way that seemed at first aimless, but on second observation appeared to be a circular route to and from the refreshment counter. It was so crowded that it was hard to see any of the paintings which lined the walls, save for one mammoth rendition of a reclining nude whose lush body went in and out of focus and changed from shades of dusky pink to blues and greens as one stared at it. Feeling a little bemused, Elena made her way through the chattering crowd until she reached the table where the punch was being served, along with stale-looking little cheese and cracker offerings, potato chips, and bowls of depleted dips.

Nodding politely to a fellow committee member who was serving the punch, Elena accepted a paper cup of the "Raspberry and Wine Sparkler", which recipe she herself had found in one of her copies of GOURMET MAGAZINE. Just because she had the misfortune to live in a hick midwestern city like Grand Rapids, Michigan, was no reason why she should lower her standards and serve the usual kool-aid concoction or fake Sangria.

"Such swell punch!" gushed the dowdy dowager behind the bar improvised from bridge tables. "What DID you put into it? Everybody's coming back for secondseven Jonas Johansen, the president of the school board, you knowand it's half gone even though my cheese canapes are scarcely touched! DO tell me your recipe!"

"Arsenic and quinine, seasoned with segments of toadstools and insecticide powder," Elena was tempted to reply, but she checked herself in time. Even though she and her husband Phillip and the kids would almost surely be moving out of this provincial city very, very, soon, habit still prevented her from being rude to the widow of the ex-school board president.

"Graves wine, club soda, raspberry juice, and fresh berries," she smiled with saccharine sweetness. "I'll give you the recipe if you want it, of course." Smile still affixed upon her patrician-featured face, she evaporated away into the flocking throng. Nine out of ten faces she ran into were familiarthe result of ten years here in Grand Rapids while Phillip made a career with Instant Igloo, the frozen food company in whose advertising department he worked. To each and every over-rouged housewife she exchanged pleasantries; each time she felt a little surge of self-disorientation ... this odd sensation of displacement must be because today was Instant Igloo's board meeting, at which Phillip would certainly receive the good news that their days of withering in the midwest were over once and for all. The children would frolic beside the Pacific shores, skins tanned golden brown, sinus colds a thing of the past; she would take enriching courses in weaving and ecology at California Universities; on weekends they would meander through ancient redwood groves, meditating on eternity and infinity and all those inspiring topics.

"Well, no, of course Phillip couldn't make it," she heard herself murmuring to Mr. Elton Ireland in a genteel tone. "So much to do at Instant Igloo, you know. Especially todayit's the big board meeting and all."

"Well, well," the father of the featured painter boomed with alcoholic exuberance. "So good to see you here anyway, Elena! And I must say that's one fine punch! Really tasty! You bet!"

"Glad you like it, Mr. Ireland," Elena smiled at the slack-jawed owner of some of the city's most lucrative concernsthree over-priced "Shop and Save" groceries, the "Hantly Homemaker Hardware Haven", and "Adult Literature" bookshops down in the darker, more slummy sections which no one was supposed to know about. "And such an interesting exhibit your son's doneif only I could see it a bit better ... such a crowd...."

"Yeah, he's quite a ladquite a lad!" slurred the intoxicated father. "Would you like to meet him? I see him over there, staring out the windows. That's how he always was when he was a kidstaring out at the trees and all. We thought he was nuts back then, 'cause he wasn't out playing in the Little League like the other kids, but now it looks like he's making a name for himself out there in crazy California. I can't say that I understand what he's trying to do with those weird colors and all, but the Missus and I are proud of himreal proud!"

"You certainly should be!"

"Hey, Leonard!" the pot-bellied businessman waved one pudgy hand above his balding head, splattering droplets of raspberry punch on his shining pate. "Hey, son, c'mon over here!"

A youth clad in a skin-tight pair of purple Levi's, a scarlet tee-shirt with "It's Only Rock and Roll" embellished in gold, and a pair of snakeskin boots a la Mick Jagger, sauntered nonchalantly toward them. Despite the fact that his longish dark hair was combed in a studiedly artistic wave over one eye, Elena perceived at once that he was sneering scornfully at the jovially jabbering guests. From one corner of his expressive mouth a Camel dangled at a rakish angle, and his entire bearing bespoke his utter antagonismor perhaps apathytoward his surroundings. Nevertheless, she saw a spark of interest flare up in his long-lashed dark eyes as he stared at her.

"What's up, Dad?" he demanded, still staring so intently at the blonde housewife in her sheer white dress that she blushed like an adolescent in spite of herself. "Just someone I thought you might wanna meet," slurred the father. Then, his duty of introducing potential buyers having been performed, he gave a tipsy nod and teetered off in the general direction of the punch bowl. "You two ought to have lots to talk about," he added over his shoulder. "She's a real cultured ladystudied art in college and all that...."

"So you studied art in college, did you?" The man's walnut-brown eyes seemed to undress her, to bore down to the depths of her secretmost soul, and in his voice was an undertone of intensity which sent her heart thudding against the tight bodice of her new dress. How exciting it was to be talking with someone who really was INVOLVED with and CARED about the important things in life, instead of with the stodgy, narrow-minded provincial burghers she was normally forced to socialize with! And he was so darkly dramatic in contrast to the big-boned blond types so common in this half Dutch-descended town!

"Yesat MSU." Her voice echoed breathlessly in her own ears, as though it were coming from a long way away, and once again she worried if her dress fabric really wasn't TOO transparent as Leonard's eyes glued themselves to her heaving bosom.

"II thought I'd be an art teacher. But-well, I met Phillip, my husband, and then the kids came, andwell, you've heard that old story before, I suppose."

"A common tale, but true," the youth quoted Shakespeare. "I didn't finish school, either. I dropped outor rather, I never bothered going back after I found my true vocation in Paris the summer after my second year. But never mind all that shit about college! The important thing is that you're extraordinarily beautiful! I simply must paint you!"

"Me? B-beautiful? Y-you want to paint m-me? But I'm nothing specialjust an ordinary housewife ... and I never thought of myself as especially pretty."

"But of course you're beautifulyour face has an ethereal, spiritual beauty that a true artist like me sees in an instant. No, you have a face and body destined for higher things than a life of peanut butter sandwiches and corporation carpools. I tan see the portrait already ... phantasmagoric RomanticismI'll start a new trend because of you, uhI think the old man was too loaded to introduce us."

"II'm Elena Greenwood." Unable to bear the piercing gaze that made her heart palpitate so fast and a strange heat blaze through her veins, the astonished housewife turned her attention to the pictures on the walls. Now that the crowd was starting to thin outdarkness had fallen, and the punch bowl was nearly emptyshe could see that the majority of the vividly colored paintings were of nude females. Naturally, she was to sophisticated to be shocked by something like nudity, but nevertheless the mere thought of posing for a portrait before this handsome man without a stitch of clothing on intensified her peculiar physical sensation till it felt as though liquid lightning were flowing through her bloodstream.

"Elena ... like Helen of Troy, whose beauty sank a thousand ships ... it suits you perfectly! My nameI prefer Leo to Leonard, by the way; don't you think Leonard sounds like a dental student?means lion. And that's what I try to express in my works: the beauty behind a powerful leonine brutality! You understand, I'm sureI can see it in your profound brown eyes!"

It was all rather embarrassing ... and as for "profound brown eyes", she'd always thought them a most ordinary shade of dung. Nevertheless, the good-looking California painter's charm was infectious, and she suddenly felt as though she were twenty again, eager to discover and experience all the world had to offer. Of course she'd long been aware that she was frustrated with the life she led in boring Grand Rapids, but somehow, in the long years of diapers and preparing gourmet dinners for the boss to help Phillip win the promotion at last, she'd forgotten this exhilarating sensation which made her entire body tingle with lust for life!

"Well ... your technique's veryuhunusual and powerful, yes...." Elena gazed around at the large canvases again, and decided that it must be the odd way they constantly changed color and perspective which was making her feel so dizzy and peculiar. "I ... I've never seen anything quite like them before!"

"I knew you would understand!" the handsome artist flicked his hair from his eyes with a sun-bronzed hand to better scrutinize Mrs. Elena Greenwood. "You have the soul of an artist, too! When can I start painting youtomorrow? Because I have to get back to San Francisco soon, and anyway, I like to work as soon as inspiration strikes."

"Well, don't know...." the blonde hesitated. "I'd love to be able to, butwell, I'm not sure my husband would approve of a paintinguhwithout clothes, and in this style." Here she paused, blushing like a schoolgirl as a sinful tingle of excitement shivered along her spine at the idea of standing naked in front of Leo Ireland. "He's sort of old-fashioned about things like that. And anyway, he won't want me to be away all day just now. You see, we're moving to San Francisco real soon, and I'll have a million things to do!"

"But how wonderful for you to be leaving this horrible dead city and coming out west!" Leo waved his arms with great drama, then clasped the blonde's slender arm warmly. "And I can paint you thereperhaps with Big Sur in the background, that might be a good idea."

The dark-haired young artist had a well-developed gift of people's financial status and vulnerable emotional facetsanyone whose creations were so bizarre had to be in order to earn his bread and butter. Within a minute he'd taken note of her expensive dress, the genuine gleam of her diamond, the scent of perfume as opposed to cologne, and he'd made all these observations while appearing to stare steadily into her eyes and at her figure. This was the trick he always used with potential female buyers; then, if he detected a positive response to his Romeo-like good looks, and if the women were not helplessly old or misshapen, he went into the "I must paint your portrait!" spiel.

Although he'd started out merely using his usual tactics of persuasion, it soon began to dawn on him that the married woman was indeed rather beautiful, just the sort of type he most liked, in fact. More interesting than her lovely face and shapely figurethe world was full of attractive women, after allwas her aura of being a truly sensual female. Leo doubted very much whether she was aware of her unawakened erotic potential, but he was certain from little hints like the way she shivered beneath his pressing touch, that she was ripe for the right male to turn her on.

And I, he gloated silently as he almost imperceptibly smoothed the satin-silk skin of her bare lower arm, I'm the guy who'll teach her what life's really about!

Leo had no doubt that he was an expert on what life was really about, for he felt certain that his relativeyouth was more than compensated for by his broad experience. Hadn't he hitchhiked from Copenhagen to Casablanca? And spent an entire year in a cold water garret in the St. Germaine district of Paris, sampling the cuisine and amour of more Mademoiselles than he could remember? And how about the past several years on the West Coast, where he was known as "a pacesetter, a challenge-to-come to Andy Warhol's position as top dog in the world of pop culture? Not so many guys of twenty-five had lived in houseboats in Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Sausalito; even fewer had screwed eighty-nine females of nineteen different nationalities! If anyone was the man to sexually awaken Mrs. Greenwood, it was surely he!

There was a little flutter of guilty trepidation in the blonde housewife's heart as they exchanged addresses and phone numbers, but she told herself firmly that it was only the effect of her cup of punch. Next time she'd better not throw in that uncalled for half bottle of vodka.

"I'll call you before I leave town," the youthful artist's voice dropped to an intimate whisper as he bent down to kiss her on both cheeks in the French style. "Ooohhhh!" Elena heard herself gasp under her breath. Then, with a proud shake of her honey-gold curls, she chided herself for acting like a typical unsophisticated midwestern housewife. Somewhat clumsily, since she'd never done this before, she returned his Continental kiss. God, she felt wickedbut wonderfully so, as though she were making arrangements for a secretive tete-a-tete in one of Paris' literary cafes in Montparnasse!

As Elena made her way toward the exit doors, she heard herself murmuring greetings to acquaintances as though a cloud of rainbow-hued birds sang inside her brain. Leo's eyes burned two red-hot holes in her back, and when she gave in to the uncontrollable impulse to glance back over her shoulder, he gave her a smile that made her very bones melt into foam rubber. Oh, God! What was happening to her? It would definitely be for the best if she didn't pose for him, didn't even speak to him when he telephoned. But would she have the willpower...? It was a good thing that she'd made a shopping list for the special celebration supper she'd planned in honor of Phillip's promotion and transfer, for she felt in no shape to deal with rolling her cart haphazardly up and down the crowded aisles of the "Shop and Save". Sirloin and mushrooms ... real butter and cream ... a giant-sized bottle of California Champagne and a quart of coke, for the kids ... fresh strawberries ... long-stemmed red candles ... a bottle of gin for Phillip's habitual before-dinner martini or two....

By the time she'd stuffed her brown paper grocery sacks into the tiny trunk of her Toyota and picked up ten year old Melinda and six year old twins, Dean and Deanna, the harassed young mother was almost able to ignore the strange and forbidden sensations which the young California artist had roused in her usually calm and collected soul. Almost ... but not quite! Even as she congratulated Melinda on having won the fifth grade spelling bee, even as she described once again the marvels of California for the fascinated twins, there was a secret thrill of forbidden delight lingering in the back of her mind.

Now she had another extra-special reason for celebrating the move to California!

CHAPTER TWO

"Oh, it never rains in sunny southern California, They say the skies are always bright out there! Never rains in California, But girl, let me warn you ... When it pours, oh, man, it pours!"

Flickering neon lights, garish gold and magenta, day-glow orange and emerald, half blinded Phillip Greenwood as he swung around to glare at the top-volume jukebox whose music was hammering inside his head quite as though it were echoing out of his own throbbing temples instead of from the gaudy machine. At least it drowned out the raucous joviality of his fellow Instant Igloo Advertising Department colleagues, he told himself with a silent snort of cynical laughter, and he continued to blink dizzily at the garishly whirling figures which embellished the Town Tavern's music machine. In his present mood, he'd rather look at anything at all in preference to his co-workers beaming faces.

Two buxom blondes in bikinis, buttocks bouncing, improbably oversized tits jiggling ... a swaying palm tree ... a harvest moon ... a guitar-wielding male, hips rotating like Elvis in his heyday ... "Never rains in sunny southern California, That's what all them California singers say...." Maybe it rains, the dark-haired advertising executive mused as he downed his second martini in one gulp, and maybe it doesn't, but I don't give a shit and I'm not liable to find out, either. It doesn't have a fucking thing to do with me ... not any more. And why the hell does that damn song have to keep playing over and over?

The answer to that question was all too obvious: the popular tune was being played in honor of the new appointee to the main Instant Igloo office in San Francisco, Boh Buford, whose round, clean-shaven face was glowing at him from across the wooden table like a Halloween pumpkin. And now Dennis Dingle, Vice President in charge of Public Relations, was ordering another round for everyone and raising his glass in a toast. Woodenly, mechanically, Phillip lifted his own empty glass and twisted his frozen features into the semblance of a smile.

"And here's to Bob Buford, our up-and-coming new appointee to the big Pacific branch office!" Dingle's high-pitched voice rose above the sentimental strains of the jukebox, and even though they were seated at the least popular table of this popular businessman's bar, the one in the back corner by the music machine with no view to the bar with its three delectable young barmaids, all heads in the wood-paneled room turned in their direction. "We all wish him and his pretty little lady, M'lou, all the best, and we wanna say, Bob, don't forget where you got it from! Let's hear it for Bobby, guys!"

"RAHRAHRAH!" Claps and cheers, clanking Of glasses, comradely slaps on the back. "RAHRAHRAH!"

Phillip stared at the circle of smooth-shaven, smiling faces; half of their conservatively short heads of hair were rendered ridiculous by receding hairlines or shining pates ... nine out of ten wore identical black-rimmed glasses ... one and all sported starched collars in white or shades of pale blue, festooned with ties half an inch wider than last year. Odd how he'd never remarked before now how much the same they all lookedhimself included. They might as well be a goddamn flock of meaningless clamoring penguins!

"Rahrahrah!" he parroted. "Here's to Buford!" What a goddamn hypocrite he was! He hated them all, every last one of them, especially baby-faced Buford who'd gotten the transfer and promotion he'd wanted, though he was six years younger and had only been with Instant Igloo seven years as compared to his ten. It wasn't fair! Really, it wasn't! And how the hell was he going to tell Elena, who'd worked so hard at concocting gourmet suppers for Dingle and being the perfect executive wife? Who'd been so sure he'd win the raise that she'd practically begun packing the bags already.

"But naturally you'll get the promotion this time, Phillip!" she'd exclaimed that morning at breakfast, serenely popping two saccharine tablets into her black coffee. "Who else could they possibly selectexcept Bob Buford, and you've got seniority over him. And you've been working like a dogall that overtime you've been taking on lately! Surely they'll take that into consideration."

"Yeah," he'd agreed. He'd hurriedly turned his attention toward removing his frozen English muffin from the toaster and carefully spreading it with genuine Scottish marmalade which Elena ordered from some hideously expensive gourmet supply shop in Chicago. What would her reaction be if she knew how many of those "overtime" hours had been spent in the Town Tavern? Better try to change the subject.

"Sure is good jam!" A particularly bitter hunk of orange peel suddenly lodged itself in his throat, but he succeeded in keeping from choking by taking a swift swallow of tasteless decaffeinated coffeehis wife had concluded that it must be all the cups of strong coffee he consumed during a hard days work which was making him so "moody"

"Really come from England, huh?"

Elena had refused to bite at the bait. Instead, she'd continued to regard him with that cool-as-a-cucumber stare which he'd come to dread so intensely that even now, hours later, his fingers drummed nervously on the vibrating metallic smoothness of the jukebox behind him at the mere thought of it.

"The trouble with you, Phillip," she'd declared in a tone that he'd learned not to argue with, "is that you lack self-confidence. If you don't believe you're the best man for the job, how can you expect anyone else to believe it? Let me tell you what I'm going to do today: I'm going down to that smart new boutique and buy a summer dress that'll be just right for our new life of casual outdoor entertaining, California-style. That's positive thinking!"

Well, I hope she didn't spend too much for the damn thing, Phillip scowled at his empty glass. But I'm sure she bought the most expensive dress in the shop, counting on that two thousand a year raise that didn't happen.

Had the troubled advertising executive turned to look out the window at that exact moment, he'd have been treated to the sight of his wife speeding by on her way from the Culture Center to the supermarket, with a very costly-looking new hat perched on her honey-blonde head. All thoughts of Elena had, however, faded abruptly from his mindas did his feelings of failure and professional inadequacy. Who cared if he were apparently incapable of playing the executive-on-the-rise role any longer, when pretty Rita was standing by the table balancing her tray of drinks against her beautiful breasts.

What a doll! he thought, and a smile transformed his face from he glum mask of woe it had been all evening. Taking a deep quaff of his fresh martini, he ran admiring eyes over her firm young thighs peeking provocatively from beneath the short hem of her pink checked pioneer-style uniform's mini-skirt, up over the straining mounds of her high, girlish breasts, over the flame-colored curls which caressed the milk-white flesh of her slender throat. Lucky guy who snaps her uphe won't spend the rest of his life trying to make love with a cold fish who won't even take off her nightgown, and then crawling back to his own cold twin bed.

"Hey, Phil, old boy!" Dingle called out from across the table as Rita's wriggling backside vanished behind the bar again. "That's the first real smile I've seen from you all night! Ulcer acting up again?"

Goddamn him! Greenwood cursed his boss. That mother-fucker knows perfectly well I'm down because he recommended Buford over mehow come he has to kick a guy when he's already down? I'd like to ram his fat cigar right down his throat!

"Ulcer? Not at all," he succeeded in affecting a lofty tone, although all eyes had turned to him. "Never felt better in my life!"

"Glad to hear it." The older man squinted distrustfully at his underling's suddenly cheerful expression. "Gotta watch ulcersthey got a way of flaring up on you if you don't watch your drinking habits, y'know."

"So they say ... so they say ... "

"Harumph!" Dingle cleared his throat, adjusted and readjusted his bifocals. "Well, lads, we'd better drink up and get oh home before the little women think we're out romancing our secretaries, hahaha! Anyhow, tomorrow's a big day 'cause the big shots on the West Coast stepped up the deadline for the outlay on that big two-page ad for MIDWEST MOM'S MONTHLY."

Phil scarcely realized that Dingle was speaking, for his own words were ringing in his ears.

"Never felt better in my life" ... "Never felt better in my life...." Astonishment surged through him as he realized there was an element of truth in what he'd said. Okayso he'd lost out on the damn transfer again ... so now he could stop worrying about it. Wasn't he sick to death of the dreary dinner parties and patio picnics Elena arranged in her tireless effort to be a good executive wife, of the forced conviviality of weekend athletic games in the company clubhouse, of the strain of acting polite and obsequious around the detestable Dingle? And for what end? So he could sit in a more luxurious office with a prettier secretary okaying frozen fish advertisements instead of designing them? So he could acquire more status and more stress, a suntan and a zip code beginning with nine? Who the hell needed that? Elenathat was who! But what about him? What about the secret dreams he'd kept buried at the base of his brain until lately...? I'm gonna stop working my tail off like a stupid ass from now on in, he vowed. And I'm gonna dig those old paints and sketch pads out of the basement and start doing what I want on my days off instead of donating every minute of my life to goddamn Instant Igloo!

"Hey, Phil?" the voice of Andy Granger, who lived in a split level a few blocks from his own, interrupted his reverie. "Can I have a ride with you? The exhaust pipe fell off my Buick on the way to work this morning, and I had to leave it in the shop."

Greenwood looked up from his drink to see that his colleagues were obediently gulping their martinis and following Dingle out the door of the Town Tavern. Then he glanced back toward Granger, whose anemic blue eyes were blinking nervously at his wrist watch.

"Sorry, Andy ... I wasn't planning on leaving for a while yet. Why don't you ask Bufordit's not too much out of his way." A sigh of relief burst from his lungs as the young executive watched the last of his coworkers file past the smoke-clouded windows of the Town Tavern and climb into their respective automobiles. All the tables were clearing now ... he could see the lovely Rita busily carting away glasses and wiping tables; each time she bent over to perform her tasks, a succulent three inches of ivory-white thigh met his appreciative eyes. Luxuriating in the same delicious thrill of forbidden freedom he remembered from his boyhood escapades of school-skipping, he signaled the lush young redhead for a refill.

"Here you go, Mr. Greenwood! With two olives and easy on the vermouth, just the way you always want it!"

"Thanks, Rita, honey. You're a great gal! Don't know what I'd ever do without you!" It was said lightly, jestingly, but at the bottom of his heart Phillip knew it was God's own truth. These days the only refuge from the prison of his forty-thousand dollar mortgaged split level and the dreary retrace of office routine was found at the Town Tavern, and without this respite, he wondered if he wouldn't have gone stark raving mad long ago. Only at moments like this, with the voluptuous redhead leaning her ripely rounded hip against the jukebox beside him and winking at him with her special smile, did he really feel that life was worth living. What a hell of a state for a guy to be in when he was only thirty-eight!

"I thoughtcha looked a little blue when you first came in," Rita remarked as she bent over to survey the jukebox selections. "Something wrong?" Although the middle-aged man longed to confide his job woes in this sweet teenaged girl whom he felt certain would soothe his bruised and confused ego instead of bitching at him the way his wife was bound to when he got up the courage to return home, he did not do so. Sure, Rita would listen sympathetically, as she had on previous occasions when he'd been drunk enough to discuss his marital problems, but she'd also lose her respect and admiration for him. Chicks all liked men who were rich and successful; that was the way things were in this world, and just because he happened to find himself failing at the game of life, the rules were-no less inflexible.

"Nahjust the same old story," he smiled at her. Then, because it made him uncomfortable to tell lies, he changed the subject. "Gee, I sure like that perfume you're wearing," he grinned with a conspiratorial wink.

The curvaceous barmaid winked back, displaying an abundance of green eye shadow in the same exact shade as her large oval eyes. It was a private joke between them, this particular perfume, for he himself had given it to her on a crazy impulse one beautiful day earlier this spring when the first snowdrops and jonquils were poking up in his garden and in the flowerbeds in front of the Town Tavern. And it had been his wife, Elena's, thirty-third birthday.

"Pick up something for Elena's birthday, some perfume, maybe," he'd instructed his secretary, a rather dowdy and overweight girl whose lack of looks was compensated for by a shorthand speed of 190 w.p.m. and a computer-like memory for names, dates and phone numbers.

"Right-o!" Belinda had chirped. "She still wears Shalimar, hmmm?"

But she'd returned from lunch bearing a rainbow-hued cut-glass flask shaped like a dewdrop, something with the ridiculous name of "Dawn Dreams". "Every gal likes a surprise," she'd informed him. Phillip had been quite sure that the last thing Elena appreciated was a surprise, especially when it came in such a vulgarly gaudy gift wrapping, but he'd not said so to Belinda. One major flaw in his personality, according to his wife, was his reluctance to offend or hurt anyone else's feelings. Instead of sending his well-meaning secretary out for a bottle of Shalimar, therefore, he himself had popped into a drugstore after work before retracing his steps back to the Town Tavern for his usual after-work refreshment.

"Bought you a little surprise," he'd whispered awkwardly to Rita, his voice hushed so that Buford and Dingle at the other end of the bar would not overhear him. His face had flamed bright red despite himself, however, for another character flaw of hisalthough one Elena had never criticizedwas an inability to flirt easily with available members of the opposite sex.

The weird thing about the incident was that it had turned out to be Rita's birthday the very next day! And now he got the VIP treatment normally reserved for company presidents and vice-presidents, and lovely Rita's long-lashed eyes glowed with a special luster when she flashed her maddeningly sensuous smile in his direction. Yeah, there was no doubt about it: chicks liked guys who were prosperous enough to give them presents, show them a good time.

"Yeah, it's my favorite!" Rita was saying now. "It's got class, y'know ... not like that stuff from the five-and-ten. But c'mon now, tell me why you looked so down in the dumps!"

"Nothing, really." Phil took a long gulp of his drink as the girl turned toward him and bent down to remove the empty glasses from his table, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of cleavage. He couldn't be certain, but he was almost sure she wasn't wearing a brassiere! "Just a touch of spring fever, I guess ... "

"Gosh, me too!" A little wrinkle appeared on the auburn-haired adolescent's smooth, cream-complected brow. "When the weather's so super, I wanna be out enjoying myself not standing here in this stuffy old bar! Go out somewhere in the country, to the beach or something!"

"Yeah, I'm feeling the same," Phil agreed. Suddenly, as he watched her shapely leg sway left and right, right and left, in time to the music, he wanted to tell her the dream he'd never confided in anyone, including his own wife. Perhaps she'd understand about the yearning he felt for the old farmhouse he'd inherited from his grandparents, not more than a day's drive from Grand Rapids, with its fertile but neglected orchards and small lake surrounded by pines at one end, willows at the other end where it faded into a small stream. About the peace and quiet and clean, crisp air, the flower-bestrewn meadows where he could set up his easel and paint to his heart's content....

"Reeeeeeetah!" Willy, the black dishwasher, called from the kitchen beyond the bar. "Get them glasses in here, will yah? I wanna take off for my dinner break!"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming! Can't a girl stand still for a second around this place?" Rita saluted over her shoulder. Then her grass-green eyes turned to the man beside her, and she gave a pert wink. "Talk to you later, okay, Phil? You're sticking around for a while longer?"

"Sure ... I'm in no rush! Bring me another of these super martinis when you get a chance, huh?"

"You bet!" Phillip Greenwood fished through his pockets for a dime, his gaze never leaving the barmaid's shapely figure as she undulated in and out of the kitchen with her trays of dirty glasses and overflowing ashtrays. Then, sighing deeply, he made his way to the pay phone in the opposite corner. Thank God, Melinda, his oldest daughter, answered the phone instead of his wife.

"Mommy can't come to the phoneshe's making the hollandaise and it'll curdle," the ten year old informed him. "Aren't you coming home for dinner, Daddy? 'Cause we're having big thick steaks and strawberries, too!"

"Sorry, honey, Daddy just can't make it. You tell Mommy, okay? That's my good girl!" Feeling guilty but defiantly determined to do what he wanted for once despite Elena's preparation of a special celebration supper, the father of three marched back to his table. There was a fresh martini in front of his chair, and lovely Rita, a welcoming smile on her full red lips, was sitting there waiting for him....

CHAPTER THREE

"DAMN him anyway!" Now that the kids were finally in bed and the sound of the running bath water would drown out her voice, Elena Greenwood could finally give vent to the anger that had been boiling up inside her ever since her husband's phone call. The unexpected disappointment of Phillip having lost the promotionfor surely there was no other logical explanation for his absenceplus the strange excitement the handsome young California artist had generated in her earlier that afternoon, was simply too much for her! It had been all she could do to present a calm and controlled exterior in front of the impressionable kids ... as it was, they'd sensed her mood and acted naughty and quarrelsome.

In fact, if she were entirely honest with herself, wasn't it true that the three children seemed to be developing emotional problems in direct proportion to their father's tense and morose moods, her own frustration and consequent short-temperedness? The six year-old twins seemed to be suffering the | most ... Deanna's continual colds and stomach upsets could only be called psychosomatic, and the first grade teacher complained that Dean was a "holy terror" who refused to take part in show-and-tell and threw tantrums whenever he didn't get his own way.

All these months, she'd blanketed her worries behind the soothing thought that all would be well once they'd moved to the West Coast, but now she had to face the facts. Her marriage was not, after all, the model of perfect matrimony; and she and Phillip were certainly not the "ideal young married couple", despite the image they presented to outsiders.

How long had it been, for example, since they really talked to each other about anything that mattered? Or since they'd laughed together, had fun with each other like in the early, impoverished days of their marriage? Or since they'd made love....

Sighing, the svelte blonde housewife added an extra dollop of her favorite Moon-Drops bath oil to soothe her jangled nerves. Normally, a long, luxurious soak in the giant-sized lavender tub was just about the only thing that truly relaxed her, and she hoped that tonight the warm water and rituals with her huge collection of powders and perfumes would work its usual magic. God, she felt tied up in knots inside, like a coiled-up steel spring.

As she unzipped her new white dress and neatly hung it on the antique gold hooks which added the final touch of nouveau riche elegance in this expensively redecorated room, a razor-sharp jab of pain tore at her heart. How admiringly Leo Ireland's eloquent dark eyes had looked at her in this dress! Her own husband never looked at her that way ... he didn't seem to notice whether she wore grass-stained jeans or a copy of a Dior. It was so good to have met someone who made her feel alive and pretty and feminine again!

As she unfastened the hooks on her modest white lace brassiere and tugged down her matching white panties, the thirty-three year-old wife could not help catching sight of her slender naked figure in the full length wall mirror. Normally she did not really like to look at herself without her clothes onit seemed perverted somehow, like reading PENTHOUSE and PLAYBOY, or those books that said "forbidden to minors" on the front cover. Tonight however, she did not feel the familiar glimmer of reprehensibility when she regarded her slim but curvaceous body. Instead, she thought: What would Leo think of me if he could see me right now! A thrill of excitement so intense that she knew it must be wicked surged through Mrs. Greenwood's veins and she hurriedly stepped into the tub. Goodness, what was wrong with her? Instead of sympathizing with Phillipfor having lost his footing on the steep ladder of executive success, she was selfish enough to be angry because he'd not come home for her expensive and fastidiously prepared meal. She was feeling bitter because now she could not have her portrait painted sitting nude on a jagged boulder above the crashing waves of the Pacific....

Phillip needs my reassurance and comfort, she reminded herself. I must make him feel strong so that he can go back in there and fight for success at Instant Igloo! No matter how disappointed I am, I must be understanding and not let my unhappiness show....

Yet even as these virtuous thoughts floated through the honey-haired housewife's conscious mind, other more compelling emotions were teasing at the back of her brain and making her breasts and belly and thighs tingle in the most peculiar way when she sudsed them with her soapy washcloth. Leo would be surprised to find that she, a mother of three, still had girlishly firm breasts which, though not so large as some other women's, were perfectly rounded and did not have the slightest suggestion of sagging. He would appreciate the trimness of her waist, the gentle curve of her hips, the silken smoothness of her milk-white thighs.

"Phillip doesn't seem to care about my body any more than he does about my clothes," she was surprised to hear herself say aloud right in the middle of one of her righteous mental declarations of wifely duty. "He doesn't even take off my nightgown when we make love! I might as well weigh two hundred pounds and have breasts that hung down to my stomach!"

But maybe, she thought in another rare moment of honest introspection, maybe that's partly my fault. Maybe I haven't been sympathetic enough to his problems. After all, we aren't kids ... it's natural that love-making happens less as one gets older, I suppose ... and maybe he's too tense and nervous because of his high-pressure job. Butoh, I want to feel loved and appreciated!

Without allowing herself to think that her abnormally intense desire for conjugal relations had the slightest thing to do with meeting with the handsome dark-haired artist, Elena rose from her bath, dusted on her nicest talcum powder and harmonizing perfume, and donned a negligee which she'd not worn in years, something a sorority sister had given her as a wedding present. The garment fitted her perfectly even after thirteen years: in fact, perhaps it looked even more erotic now, for her breasts were slightly rounder, her hips more subtly fleshed than as a college coed. A shiver of what she knew to be sinful pride flooded the frustrated housewife's veins as she surveyed the way the translucent apricot colored nightie clung to her curves in a revealing but not sluttish way. Surely Phillip would notice her now!

Even as she was drawing the satin neckline ribbons a little tighter to better emphasize the grapefruit-round swells of her breasts, she heard car tires crunching on the gravel driveway and the creaking sound of the automatic garage door rising to allow Phillip's white Oldsmobile to enter. Did she look too obvious, too wanton? she thought worriedly. Should she put on the heavy-duty brassiere she normally wore during the night to keep her breasts firm and youthful? Well, too late to think of that nowPhillip's key was fumbling at the back door, and she wanted to be waiting for him when he entered their bedroom ... waiting with a smile and a kiss, tender words and comforting caress ... Scurrying into the big master bedroom, she turned the night lamp down low and arranged herself in her twin bed so that her flower bordered sheet covered her loins only as high as the sensitive "vee" of her pussy. Goodness, she felt like she had back in the days when they were just engaged and she was waiting for Phillip to arrive for a date which would inevitably end in a passionate necking session!

CRASH! Oh, God! What was going on down there in the kitchen? Elena sat bolt upright in her single bed, and an irate frown replacing the soft smile which had been lingering on her pink lips. Phillip must be drunk to slam the door so loudly he'd surely wake the kids and the neighbors! The sound of the fridge banging open, bottles clinking, and liquid splashing confirmed her worst suspicions, and all the warm excitation which had been flowing through her bloodstream minutes before froze to an icy bitterness.

Unsteady footsteps tottered up the short flight of stairs leading from the living and cooking area of the house to the sleeping section, and then the bedroom door flew open with another loud crash. There was no question of her husband noticing and appreciating her risque bedroom attirehe looked as though he'd be lucky to make his way across the room to his own twin bed without dropping his glass of what appeared to be straight gin on the spotless white wall-to-wall carpeting.

"I see you bought champagne to celebrate my big raise," he slurred as he collapsed on the bed and kicked off his shoes. "Well, you didn't need to, 'cause I didn't get it. Anyhow, I'm drinking martinis."

"So I see!" Elena spat in an acid tone. She drew the covers up over her neck, lay down so that her frigid back was toward her alcohol-glutted husband, and added, "But if you decide to grow up and start taking things like a man, then switch to Alka-Seltzer. There's some in the second shelf of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. I'm as sorry about the bad news as you are, of course, but what's the good of getting drunk? You'll just be useless at work tomorrow and let them think they've made the right decision instead of the wrong one!"

Phil blinked dizzily at his wife, compared her tightly compressed lips to sweet little Rita's pertly pursed, heart-shaped mouth, and decided he was in no mood for being nagged at. "You may be sorry, but I sure as hell ain't. Let Buford have the goddamn jobhe's just the sort of thick-headed, shit-eating flunky they need. But as for me, I'm sick and tired of playing that game! They made one hell of a good decision, and that's the fucking truth!"

"Phillip!" his wife's serpentine hiss echoed softly but clearly from beneath her blanket. "Wasn't it enough that you came home smashed out of your mind like a skid row bum and woke up the children with your racket? Do you have to scream obscenities at the top of your lungs, too? And what a lot of nonsense you're babbling! Be quiet and go to sleep!"

"Isn't nonsense!" The father's intoxicated voice fell to an indistinct mumble in deference to his offspring. "Is the trutruth! Fuck Buford! Fuck Dingle! Fuck Instant Igloo! I wanna be my own man, ya unnerstand, my own man!"

"You're not acting like a man at allyou're behaving like a little boy!" Elena was aware that she was acting extremely bitchy, but she just couldn't help it. Her whole bodyparticularly her naked breasts and the sensitive flesh beneath her golden brown pubic curls, was burning with white-hot needle points of fire which made her want to burst into tears, or scream at the top of her lungs. She'd meant everything to be so soothing and nice ... why had he spoiled it by going and getting drunk? Not daring to say another word for fear she'd explode in a violent outburst which would alarm the children, she lay stiff as a steel rod, fists clenched, breath controlled, until Phillip had gulped down his un-needed last drink, pulled off his clothes, tossed them carelessly onto the floor, and begun to snore loudly.

After some minutes more she rolled over to flick out the nightlight. In the lamp's muted glow, her husband's slumbering face looked as boyishly attractive as it had that long-ago day in the Michigan State University Library Gardens, the sunny spring afternoon when he'd pinned his Sigma Chi fraternity pin on her sweater and lightly caressed her breasts for the first time. What in God's name had happened to those two happy young lovers standing beside the river amongst rainbow-hued beds of May blossoms?

How had they turned into a squabbling middle-aged couple whose love, if it indeed still existed, was buried beneath layers and layers of trivial grudges and a general sense of ennui with life itself? She had been so sure, that day thirteen years ago, that Phillip Greenwood was the man she wanted to unite her future with....

Maybe, she mused, turning away to stare at the wall with a low sigh of discontent, maybe I should have picked someone moremore dynamic, more artistic ... someone more like Leo Ireland....

* * *

Toward morning, when the birds were beginning their loud dawn chorus in the Greenwood's well-landscaped backyard, the young husband awoke with a pounding headache and stumbled into the bathroom in search of aspirin and Alka-Seltzer. His reflection in the mirror made him grimace in self-disgust: bloodshot eyes with deep dark circles beneath them; rough stubble on his chin; a purplish blemish on his shoulder where he'd stumbled against the door in his drunken clumsiness. Was this the picture of a man who was responsible for the welfare of three innocent and helpless young children and a trusting, beautiful wife? No! It was the face of a worthless, irresponsible bum, just as Elena had said last night. She had been right, as usual.

The fizzling Alka-Seltzer water, together with two Bayer aspirins, swam down into his queasy stomach and up into his throbbing temples and worked their chemical miracles. His head began to stop buzzing so he could hear the chirping birds outside the ajar bathroom window ... his stuffed sinuses were depurgated to allow him to sniff the fragrant scents of lilacs and apple blossoms ... his vision stopped playing weird tricks on him. After a moment of breathing the clean suburban air, he made his way back into the bedroom and stood staring down at his wife's sleeping figure.

Jesus! he thought. She looks so young, so vulnerable. Not a day older than young Rita! At the moment this thought ran through his brain, he felt his dormant penis harden into semierection, and he remembered the dream which had initially awakened him. He'd been lying on the grassy, willow-shaded bank of the small lake on his grandparent's property, and Ritaclad only in a very skimpy pair of tight cut-off jeans, was kneeling between his spread out legs. As she lowered her soft lips around the bulging head of his cock and flicked out a strawberry pink tongue to delicately lick the droplet of sparkling fluid from his sensitive glans opening, her free-swinging breasts had danced in the dappled sunlight like two firm, ripe golden melons. He'd reached out to grab hold of them, and Stop it! Phillip commanded himself as his thickening phallus have a violent lurch. A cold wind of guilt swept through his heart as he gazed down at Elena's tranquilly slumbering figure, it was a warm spring morning, and she'd tossed off her blanket in her sleep to reveal that she was clad in a provocative gossamer nightie, a mere wisp of flimsy apricot colored silk. He'd never known his wife to wear anything except expensive but unerotic white linen shifts, and presumed she'd bought it yesterday, along with the sirloin and champagne to celebrate his promotion and the start of their new life.

But instead of eating her festive meal, he'd been flirting with a seventeen year-old barmaid! Instead of making tender love with his beautiful wife, he'd been having wet dreams about a girl young enough to be his daughter! What in God's name was the matter with him? Was he turning into some kind of pervert? Elena had always been a good wife, faithful and interested in his welfare, and if she acted bitchy sometimes it was probably because she was unhappyjust as he was. He ought to try to be more understanding, to draw them closer together as they'd been in the first few years....

Suddenly, as Phil stood above his wife brooding in the grey light of dawn, she let out an odd little moan, turned over restlessly, then opened her eyes. There was a curious expression on her faceperhaps she was as surprised at seeing him without his usual green-striped pajamas as he had been to see her in a sexy orange nightie.

"Ooohhh, Phil...." she murmured sleepily, lids drifting shut again. "Ooohhh, I'm sorry ... so sorry...." The naked young husband didn't know if she was sorry about the job, their quarrel, or the general state of their life and marriagehow could he guess that she'd just awakened from an extremely erotic dream starring Leo Ireland?but love and desire welled up inside him and sent his elongated virility shooting into eager erection. Christ, it had been years since he'd felt this aroused with his wife! He'd been turned away, rebuffed for trying "dirty things", and failed to bring Elena to orgasm so many times in the past that now he sometimes couldn't even get a hard-on and preferred to avoid sex entirely rather than risk that ego destroying indignity. It had been over two weeks since the last time he'd touched her....

"Uuuhhhmmm!" purred the scantily clad blonde. She was not really awake, and an image of Leo with his Romeo good looks and enchantingly melting brown eyes still hovered before her tight-shut lids. "Oohhhh...!"' Phillip didn't hesitate another moment. His potent penis was jutting from his taut-muscled groan at a ninety-degree angle and pulsing with white-hot urgency as he gazed at his wife's sensuous curves outlined by the translucent fabric of her tantalizing not-quite-see-through nightie. Two weeks without release for his natural masculine needs, the emotional turmoil going on inside him due to job failure and the haunting evocative dream about lovely young Rita Gibson had roused him into a feverish state of passion which threatened to consume him in its searing flames if he didn't find release for his painfully pulsing member. When Elena's low moans of lustful invitation reached his ears, a hoarse sigh shuddered from his throat and he fell upon the twin bed to clasp her slender body with animal-like urgency.

She wants me! he rejoiced as he grasped her resilient breasts in both hands and tweaked at their pertly tautened little nipples. This time she really wants my big, hard prick inside her pussy! And she's not even wearing that awful bra for once! If she's really wanting it, maybe I can make her cum....

"AAAhhhh...." the fair-haired housewife moaned again. "Ohhh, yessss! Gggoooodddd!" The thirty-three year-old mother was hovering in that peculiar state between sleeping and waking in which every sensation, every vision seems more vivid and significant than either dream or day-to-day reality. Normally, even when Phillip's caresses gave her pleasure, she was too inhibited to give him any sign of this arousal, but now the restraints engendered by a strict, puritanical upbringing were forgotten.

"All men are animals!" her widowed mother had declared in an embarrassing little "girl-to-girl talk" a few days before her wedding. "Even the nice ones like Phillip Greenwoodthey see a naked woman and they go crazy! Best advice I can give you is to just lie there and take it, or else they'll be out chasing other women. But remember, there's limits to the sort of things a lady will doin bed or out of it. Make sure he understands that from the first, and you won't have trouble."

"Gee, Mom," the twenty year-old coed had shifted her eyes uneasily, wondering if her parent had any inkling of countless wonderful hours she had spent parked on lonely lanes with him kissing her in that exciting French way and fondling her breasts till they tingled with forbidden fire. "I'm sure Phil's not like that ... "

"Mark my words!" the grey-haired mother had insisted. "You young kids and your modern ideas about sex! In the end, you'll see I was right, even if you just think I'm old-fashioned now!"

Indeed, Elena had dismissed her mother's advice as another relic she'd inherited from Grandma, a Swedish immigrant who'd brought with her from the old country not only a delicious recipe for marinated herring, but a wealth of folksy information about curing all ills, physical or emotional. She herself was a girl for the new generation which discounted such superstitions and Victorian hang-ups; sex, as all the marriage manuals proclaimed, was a healthy expression of affection between man and wife.

Now, thirteen years later, the attractive housewife often found herself remembering her mother's warnings. Of course she still believed all the collegeeducated experts who'd written the sexual education books ... but, well, she just didn't feel much of anything on the increasingly rare occasions when her husband plunged his throbbing manhood into her dry vagina, pumped in and out several times before flooding her pussy with his warm, thick seed, then stumbled across to his own twin bed and began snoring heavily. Of course she was glad it didn't hurt the way it had when she was first married, and that he wasn't always trying to talk her into perverted oral sex and experimenting with weird and immodest positions, as he'd been doing before she became pregnant for the second time, seven years ago; but, well ... she wished he'd display more ardor and interest in her body ... and she wanted to experience the mysterious thrill of an orgasm!....

Perhaps I'm frigid, she sometimes mused. Or perhaps mother was right, after all ... Now, however, her half-somnolent, hyper-sensitized condition enabled her body to respond to the stimulation of eager male hands gripping, kneading, teasing at her breasts. She wasn't quite sure whether the squeezing fingers belonged to her husband or to the good-looking modern painter she'd met yesterday, but she really didn't care, either. All that mattered were the delicious arrows of heated stimulation would last for a long, long time ... if only the man's hands would touch every trembling inch of her figure, even her forbidden triangle of secret feminine flesh which she ordinarily prevented Phillip from invading.

"So niiiccceeee...." Her low, involuntary plea was scarcely louder than the birdsongs outside, or the ticking of the clock radio on the bed table. "Uuuummmmm!" Inaudible as his wife's cry was, it echoed so loudly in Greenwood's delighted ears that he knew he couldn't wait one second longer to bring relief to his inflamed phallus. With a wild, bestial grunt of desire, he gripped the hem of the flimsy negligee and tugged it up to reveal a tiny pair of apricot silk bikini panties. They were so scantily cut that he could see several tendrils of gently curling golden pubic strands etched on her milk-white upper thighs!

"Oh, Elena!" he moaned as he grabbed hold of his aching penis and massaged its burgeoning length with one impatient hand. "I wanna be inside your sweet little pussy so bad, baby! And I wanna see you naked, all of you!"

But he was in too much of a hurry to have time to undo the intricate laced-up ribbon fastenings on the nightgown. Elena, coming fully awake at the sound of her husband's impassioned cry, gave a little cry of dismay as she realized that he had no intention of continuing the sensual foreplay an instant longer. As usual, he was simply tugging off her panties and planting his huge, iron-hard stalk of flesh up against her unprepared cuntal orifice.

"Ohhh, kiss me ... touch me...." she whimpered, and then, "Come back! Come back!" as the intoxicating image of young Leo Ireland vanished from before her mind's eye. UUUNNGGGHHHHH!" Phillip's bellow of lust resounded against the "cool mint" green walls of the master bedroom as he pushed aside silky strands of cuntal curls, rammed his pulsating cockhead up against the tiny feminine opening, and began his usual rapid in and out fucking motions in the standard missionary position.

What went wrong, the woman below him wondered in mute disappointment as he dazed eyes stared around at the familiar bedroom and tried in vain to enhance her own pleasure by arching up her hips, as one of the marriage manuals had recommended. It was all so magical, the way sex is supposed to be ... and, now it's just the same old nothing!

Even in the midst of his acute arousal, the advertising executive was dimly aware that his wife's little moans of excitement had faded away and that her body had stiffened into its usual unresponsive cold limpness. Damn! Once again, he was going to cum before she even got turned on! Shit! He'd really wanted things to be different this time!

The sex-crazed husband made a token effect to reach for his wife's silk-covered breasts and massage them again, but it was too late.. Deep in his testicles he could feel urgent sperm seething, churning, straining to explode in a hot, release-bringing rush down the long tube on the underside of his throbbing penis. It was no use trying to hold back the volcanic eruption of life-giving seedhe was too excited to even want to try!

"Noooooo...." Elena wailed, a soft, almost inaudible whimper of despair. "Not yet ... not yet...." Her low sob was drowned out by an inhuman bawl of fervored passion from the man heaving up and down above her. She held herself stiff as a poker while the heated rod of flesh which filled her tense-muscled vagina began to spurt out gush after gush of hot male seed.

"Lie back and take it" ... "Lie back and take it" ... Her mother's pessimistic omen echoed through her head as the huge impaling instrument released the last white-hot jets of its lava-like lust juices and began to shrink to a limp balloon inside her unsatisfied vagina. Elena felt so frustrated that she had to bite her lips to keep from bursting into tears.

Am I really frigid? she desponded. Isn't sex supposed to be more than this? Isn't it?

When the last waves of his release died away, Phillip opened his eyes to meet the sight of his wife's face. Her eyes were tight shut, her brow wrinkled in a frown ... obviously it had been unculminated for her, as always. He was a failure in his bedroom as well as at the office!

The sun was just peeking over the horizon in a burst of gold and scarlet as the despondent husband crawled back to his own twin bed and pulled his sheet up over his lean-loined limbs and sated, shrunken cock. Neither he nor his wife, who lay feigning sleep with her face buried in her pillow, noticed the magnificent sunrise. They lay separate, listening to the sounds of each other's breathing, enduring in lonely misery these last hours before the clock radio began its morning squawking and they would have to rise and once again go through the motions of their lives.

CHAPTER FOUR

"Thank God!" Elena Greenwood muttered, plastering a gay smile on her face to wave good-bye to her three children as they boarded the canary-yellow school bus. "At last I'm alone!"

Somehow, however, the silent kitchen with its sink full of dirty dishes seemed alien rather than a restful haven. Sighing deeply, the depressed blonde housewife quickly poured herself a strong cup of coffee from what remained in the percolator, added a liberal splash of cognac with a defiant toss of her honey-blonde curls, and carried the warm cup out onto the patio. Here, with the sun shining down on her and the fragrance of honeysuckle and lilac in the warm air, she might be able to pull herself out of this dark mood.

The frowning blonde housewife sank down onto one of the natural bamboo lawn chairs, took three deep breaths of fresh spring air, and swallowed a mouthful of coffee cognac. Before she could feel the tranquillizing cloud of relaxation spilling through her tense loins, however, the sputtering static of the next door neighbors' radio grated against her oversensitive ears.

"If I could stick a knife into my heart, spill it all over the stage!

Would it be enough for your teen-age lust?

Would it help to ease the pain?

Ease the paaaaaiiiiinnnnn...? Here's our cry! I know the sound of rock and roll, and I like it! I know the sound of rock and roll, and I like it! I like it, like it, like it!...." Sixteen year-old Gerry Flensburg next door must be skipping school again while his parents were off at their respective jobs counseling other "disturbed" adolescents from the "culturally depressed" areas of Grand Rapids, Elena thought dully. Well, more power to himit was certainly a beautiful May morning, if one were young enough to appreciate it, and being cooped up in a stuffy classroom would be equally as unpleasant as being a middle-aged, middle-classed housewife like herself and drinking cognac at nine in the morning to stave off the blues. But why the hell couldn't he turn his radio down?

"That's the latest from the Rolling Stones, folks! Now stay tuned for Paul Harvey and a rundown of today's news, brought to you straight from the wires of UPI and AP by: WLS ... in CHICAGO!"

With another heartfelt sigh, the depressed housewife picked up her drink and retraced her steps back into the cluttered kitchen. Best thing to do, perhaps, was plunge herself into house cleaning....

Just as she'd picked up her sponge and bottle of Ivory detergent, however, the phone began to ring. Hastily drying her hands, Elena ran to the kitchen extension. Even if it were only a fellow clubwoman wanting to gossip, it would be a reprieve from her lonely thoughts.

"Hello!" a familiar masculine voice sounded in her ear, and she suddenly felt her knees go so weak that she sank into a handy kitchen chair. "This is LeoLeo Ireland. You remember me, of course?"

"Of course...." Goodness, her voice sounded oddshrill and breathless and girlish. Taking a deep breath, she made an effort to sound composed. "Good morning, Leo. II didn't expect to hear from you this morning ... "

"Elena, something has come upI have to leave for San Francisco tonight! I must see you before I leave! Are you free this morning? I'd really like to make some preliminary sketches so that I can plan how I want to do the final portrait."

Elena hesitated only a brief second before replying. Why not? Now that she wasn't going to California after all, there was no possibility of her sinful attraction to the handsome artist developing into anything dangerous. What harm would there be in giving herself the pleasure of seeing him one last time?

"Yes ... yes, I'm free all day. Come over anytime!"

"Marvelous! I'll be right over!" The honey-blonde housewife replaced the wall receiver and stared dazedly around her. Suddenly she was aware of the beauty of the sunny late May morning, of the bittersweet odor of honeysuckle and background chorus of robins chirping as they built a nest in the blossoming apple tree outside the window. With a happy sigh, she poured her coffee cognac down the sink and energetically shuttled all the dishes into the dishwasher, then hurried to the bathroom to brush her hair and spray on some Shalimar. Just as she was about to change out of her simple pink house dress into something more sophisticated, the doorbell rang.

In the bright morning sunlight, Leo looked even more virile and impressive than he had beneath the glaring neon lights of the culture center. His golden-brown California tan, set off to perfection by a tight-fitting pair of bleached blue Levi's and unbuttoned denim shirt, gave him a healthy, youthful appearance which complimented the artistic elegance of his face and slim hands, and Elena discovered to her dismay that the same inexplicable physical sensations she'd experienced yesterday at the exhibition were once again working their insidious witchery.

"Come in, Leo!" she felt her smile trembling on her suddenly parched lips as she held the door open for him. "How nice to see you again!" The young artist, moving with cat-like grace and speed, stepped into the neat HOUSE AND ARDEN-perfect living room and set his burdensElena's punch bowl and the half bottle of Smirnoff she'd not thrown into the punch, and a briefcase containing his sketclipads, pens, and pencilson the low Danish modern coffee table. Then, much to the pretty housewife's shock, he kissed her on both cheeks as he'd done the evening before.

Blushing furiously, the disconcerted blonde returned the gesture. Of course his lips had not lingered longer on her burning cheeks this timeshe was simply imagining things!

"Ohmy punch bowl! How thoughtful of you," she chirped nervously, "I'd completely forgotten about it!"

"Yeah, and some booze, too! For once Dad didn't finish everything! How about a toast to the success of your portrait before I start sketching?"

"Great! Let me get some glasses and juice." Elena grabbed up the punch bowl and escaped to the kitchen. As she filled a pitcher with orange juice and ice and selected two of her nicest crystal glasses, the fair-haired wife had a sudden urge to giggle aloud. It was crazy to be drinking vodka with a gallant young painter right in the middle of the morning when she should be vacuuming or doing the marketing. It was positively wicked! What would people say? But she was sick and tired of caring about what the neighbors would sayshe felt alive instead of apathetic since Leo's call, and that was what mattered.

As soon as the curvaceous married woman hastened into the kitchen, Leo plopped down in the most comfortable-looking armchair and gazed curiously around the room. A great deal of information could be gleaned about people's characters, he'd found, by a quick survey of their books, records, pictures, and furniture. His own small apartment was carefully arranged with objects chosen to give a exotic and original picture of him for the benefit of guests; Mrs. Greenwood's room, though decorated with an equally meticulous eyes, strove to give just the opposite effect.

Everything's so "normal" that it doesn't give any clues about personality at all, he reflected. It's arranged to look the way a young upper-middle-class couple's house SHOULD look might as well be a model home.

The shelf above the expensive stereo contained all the classics which one learned about in a basic music appreciation course, plus some more up-to-date "classics" by Dylan, the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Elvis, The Moody Blues, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones. A small sampling of jazz and country and western completed the collection something for everyone, the right background sound for every social occasion. One could say exactly the same thing about the books, which stood in neatly arranged rows beside the stereo. All the obligatory classics from Shakespeare onward, their dust covers so neat and clean he felt sure no one had ever looked at them; a row of current best sellers; some travel books; and on the coffee table, of course, a couple of expensive volumes with pages of color platesone about early American glass, the other a collection of Granny Moses style paintings. The only discordant, and therefore interesting, elements in the living room were a dog-eared copy of The Whole Earth Catalogue and two amateurish pictures among the reproductions of Impressionists on the walls. One lake scene was rather well done, though not at all the sort of style he himself appreciated or admired. The other, a somewhat fanciful water-color of a winter landscape, was technically inept but had a certain charm nonetheless. He must remember to ask M s. Greenwood about them when she returned.

When the emotionally overwrought wife returned to the room she got such a shock from seeing Leo lounging on the chair where Phillip's heavier frame normally rested that she nearly dropped her loaded tray. Goodness, what would her husband say if he knew what was going on at home while he was hard at work at the office? Her hands shook as she poured two generous portions of vodka into the glasses, splashed in some juice, and handed one to her guest without daring to meet his intense gaze.

"Thanks, Elena!" His hand grazed hers for an instant, just long enough to send an electrifying surge of feverish heat seething through her veins. "Cheers! This is just the right way to begin a merry morning in Maydrinking a Screwdriver with a beautiful woman! Look!" he reached into his large briefcase and pulled out a sweet-scented bouquet of fresh narcissuses. "A present for you ... because you have the delicate beauty of a spring blossom!"

"Oh, Leo!! Oh, they're so beautiful!" When was the last time Phillip had thought to bring her flowers, aside from the obligatory anniversary roses which she quite rightly suspected were purchased by his secretary during her lunch break? Did he ever pay her admiring compliments? Or even look at her he'd not seemed to notice the seductive negligee she'd worn last night....

The self-pitying wife's little reverie was interrupted by another soft touch from the Ireland boy's warmly pressuring fingertips. This time he clasped her wrist in a gentle yet firm hold which sent shivers of involuntary excitation running down the length of her spine. At the same time, he leaned clear across the coffee table to peer deep into her eyes.

"Why, you're positively glowing!" he exclaimed. "Has it been that long since someone bought you flowers, Elena?"

Elena was so surprised at the way the youth had read her thoughts that she neglected to tug her hand away from his barely stroking fingers. What a remarkable man he was!

"Well, you know how it is when you've been married a while," she shrugged and tried to adopt a light tone. "You just don't think of things like that so much anymore."

"Marriage doesn't have to be that way," Leo pressed the older woman's wrist more intimately. "What good is it if all the romance is dead? If it had been TRUE love, would you be saying a defeatist thing like that?"

A fiery blush spread over the thirty-three year-old's face as she heard this virtual stranger mouthing the same depressing thoughts which had haunted her after last night's unfulfilling love-making. She knew it was unallowable to discuss her dissatisfaction with her marriage with good-looking Leo Ireland, even though he seemed to understand her as no one else ever had, especially when they were sitting here virtually holding hands. It was certainly high time she changed the subject to some more neutral topic!

"Let me just put these into some water!" she exclaimed as an excuse to remove her hand from beneath his without making an obvious point of it. A scheming half-smile played over the attractive painter's chiseled features as he watched Mrs. Greenwood scurrying into the kitchen, firm buttocks undulating beneath the flared pink skirt of her light cotton dress. His words had shaken her up, all right! It was obvious now that she was the epitome of a frustrated female. Probably hubby not only had ceased bringing home flowers, but had stopped screwing her as well! Seemed a shame, for she was a damn good-looking woman ... he could scarcely wait to talk her out of her clothes!

"Such lovely, lovely flowers!" Elena bustled back into the room, ever-busy, voice to shrill. "I adore the way they smell!" She sat down on the sofa, this time too far away for his hands to reach hers. "Tell me, Leo, do you really have to leave tonight. Because I've decided ... I've decided that I do want you to paint my portrait, for sure."

"Even if hubby doesn't like it?" Once again Leo read her thoughts. "Yes!" gasped the older woman breathlessly. She hadn't known she was going to say thatthe words had simply popped unbidden from her lipsbut as they echoed in her ears she knew they were true. "Yes!" she repeated with a defiant toss of her short, honey blonde hair. "Whether he likes it or not!"

"I really do have to leave tonightI gotta talk to this guy who owns some of the most important galleries for experimental art in Europe, show him my stuff and all that. If he likes it, it means an all-expense paid trip to Europea month in Paris, then two weeks in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin, Geneva, Milan, Nice, and Amsterdam. It's the chance of a lifetime!" He paused for a long gulp of vodka. "Anyway, I thought we decided to paint you in California, at Big Sur."

Once again, the agitated young wife found her body reacting as though it were controlled by some force other than her brain and conscience. Her lips began to tremble, and then the hot tears she'd been repressing ever since she'd learned she was condemned to remaining in Grand Rapids suddenly spilled from her blue eyes. The harder she tried to control herself, the more brokenhearted her sobs grew.

"Elena!" The slim-hipped artist leapt from his armchair to where the weeping woman huddled on the couch, and his arms encircled her heaving shoulders tenderly. "What's wrong, darling? Don't cry like that! Tell me what the matter ismaybe I can help!"

"I'm not mmoving after all," she managed to sputter through her tears. "Phillip didn't get the transferand he acted like he'd just given up trying, so now we'll probably rot here in dull Grand Rapids till the day we die, and never see anything of the real world, or" Her half-hysterical outburst was abruptly checked as she grew aware that her morning visitor's fingers were softly kneading the knotted muscles of her shoulders and the sensitive flesh of her tense neck. Although it felt wonderfully soothing, and she was certain he only meant to be kind, she knew quite well that it was an improper position for a married woman to be in with another male. Yet despite the fact that she believed she had every intention of pulling away from his magically massaging hands, she somehow could not bring her muscles to follow the commands of her mind.

What's wrong with me anyway? she fretted as another of those salacious shivers of delicious sensation sang up and down the length of her spine. I'm just not myself at all! I never, never felt so out of control before....

"Shhhh! Just relax, Elena!" Leo whispered against his sniffling hostess' petal-soft earlobe. "That sure is rotten news ... for me as well as you. I was really looking forward to being a good friend of yours ... not just to painting an outasight picture of you, but talking with you, showing you around San Francisco, everything! And you're too fine of a person to be chained down in a dead-end hick town like this. Much too fine! You were meant for better things!"

The young man's low, hypnotic voice stilled Mrs. Greenwood's tremulous sobs, but as his caresses grew even more insistent, more intimate, she could no longer ignore her qualms of guilt. Now his right hand had eased down to the sensitive small of her back, while his left continued to rub her neck and the space between her shoulder blades, and she told herself sternly that she must move away, no matter how warm and comforting his hard muscled body felt pressed against hers.

"You ... really mustn't ... do that...." she forced the low words from her lips with tremendous effort, but somehow, instead of removing herself from what was becoming virtually an embrace, she found herself leaning her head on his strong shoulder. "I mean, I appreciate that you c-c-care about me, and I really wanted to be friends, too ... but, but ... "

"But what, Elena?" The youth's hot breath was like warm honey against her ears. "What's making you so nervous? I'm only trying to make you feel better, because I think you're a very special person. Beautiful inside and outwhat a rare combination that is! What's wrong with my making you feel happier, the way you deserve to be?"

What IS wrong with it? a nagging little voice from the back of her brain began overriding the commands of her Puritan conscience. Isn't he rightdon't I deserve to be happy? I'm dead tired of thinking only about helping Phillip get his promotion and making sure the kids wear their sweaters and rubbers when it's raining out. Why should I spend my whole life slaving over a hot stove and scrubbing the sink? I'm a person too, and if I don't discover that now it's going to be too late and I'll be old and ugly and resigned....

"If I could dig down deep in my heart, Suicide all over the stage!

Would it be enough for your cheatin' heart?

Would it drive the boys insane?

This boy's insane!

Well, I came here today, 'cause I wanted to say; Here's our cryyyyyyyyyyy! I know the sound of rock and roll, and I like it! Yeah, I like it, I like it!

I know the sound of rock and roll, and I like it!" The fair-haired housewife's tousled curls jerked abruptly off of the youth's broad shoulder as her guilt-widened eyes riveted toward the big picture window. Outside the almost identical four-bedroom split-level next-door, two massive black motorbikes and a souped-up red Mustang with a racing stripe were parked, and long-haired Gerry Flensburg was sauntering across the front lawn, transistor in hand, to greet his hookey-playing friends. Normally the neighbor boy was more secretive about his school-skipping habitsperhaps today was the annual unofficial spring "ditch day" ... or maybe just a touch of the insidious spring fever which seemed to have addled her own wits as well....

"Th-that's what I mean!" she exchanged in a strangled tone as she finally managed to pull herself away from the delightfully caressing hands. "Whwhat if those kids saw us? That Flensburg brat has a dirty mind and the biggest mouth I've ever seenthe whole neighborhood would be buzzing by tomorrow!"

"Now, now, calm down, Elena!" Leo bent over, tried to grab hold of the agitated female's suddenly stiffened body. "Nobody can see in-not from any angle. I checked that out on my way inside."

What did he mean by that? Does he want to make love to me? Elena's mind screamed. Her whole body fell limply back against the couch as Gerry Flensburg hopped into the Mustang, which sped away down the elm-lined street with the fulminating motorbikes in hot pursuit. Does he really want me? Ok, God help me, I want him!

"You ch-checked it out...?"

"Of course! I intended to make nude sketches of youand I still want to, beautiful Elena! I'll take them back to 'Frisco with me and make a painting from memory, if that's what fate decrees. Please take off that dressplease let me see your magnificent body ... let me draw the ultimate female figure!"

Although Mrs. Elena Greenwood knew, deep inside, that she'd already made the decision to do this audacious thing when she'd declared that she wanted her portrait painted, long conditioned prudery prevented her from falling easily into the role of what amounted to an adulteress. Her cuntal "yee" was consumed with searing flames of desire, and her breasts strained against the nylon fabric of her brassiere in eager anticipation; yet still she continued to deny the urgent commands of her frustrated flesh, strived to pull away as Leo's skillful hands eased around her stiffened torso to clasp her tingling breasts.

"Butbut" she sputtered confusedly. "But you mustn't ... really, no ... no ... oh ... ohhhhhh...!" Somehow, without her realizing how it had happened, her handsome young guest had managed to slither his experienced hands around her to unfasten the metal hooks of her brassiere. For the first time, she noticed that the zipper running down the back of her simple pink sundress was unfastened, and that the intoxicating male hands were rubbing her bare flesh. Oh, dear God, it felt so wonderful! Why didn't Phillip ever caress her in this ravishing way? Barbarous bonfires of undeniable desire were rapidly building in the pit of her belly and in the dampening confines of her involuntarily moistening vagina. There was no possibility of denying the spontaneous sensations of thirsty lusther traitorous loins craved his fiery caresses, and no edicts from her watchful conscience could deny this physical actuality.

"Ummmmhhhhh!" her own voice moaned again as he commenced a tantalizing teasing pinching of her ultra-sensitive nipples. God! How had things gotten to this point? "Ohhhhh, nooooo...!"

Leo, perfectly confident that the shapely older woman didn't believe a syllable of her faint protests, continued his ardent fondling of her sensually curvaceous figure. In a few more minutes, she would be his! She'd be a mere mass of quiveringly hungry female cells, just like every other cunt on the face of this earth.

"What magnificent breasts! Perfect! Just as I'd hoped they'd look!" The aroused painter's voice was hoarse with lust as he tweaked the older woman's raspberry-pink nipples into two diamond-chip hard miniature erections. "I must see all of you, Elena! Every single inch of your splendid body!"

A dizzy wave of whirling, conflicting emotions roared through the half-naked housewife's head as she gazed down in numb astonishment at her own naked breasts. The nipples looked like two bright cherries beneath his persistently pinching thumbs and forefingers, and when he withdrew his hands to ease her pink summer dress all the way down to her waist, she noticed that the pale brown areas surrounding the tingling buds were puckering as they did when she got into cold water. Faint from embarrassment mingled with sinful pride in his passionate praise, she gave an inaudible moan and closed her eyes.

Leo,, too, made a strangled sound in his throat as he traced his hands over the unprotesting woman's satin-smooth torso, lithely indented waist, and the soft arch of her firm-fleshed hips. This seduction was going more smoothly than he'd dreamed possible! Once he had her modest pink housedress and decorous white cotton panties off, he'd go to work at oncenot with his pencil and sketclipad, but with his talented^ world-traveled tongue.

Moving quickly so as not to give the unfaithful wife a chance to think of her husband or the Ten Commandments, the young bachelor eased Mrs. Greenwood so that she was half lying against the arm of the couch. In one adroit motion he slid the lightweight rose colored gown over her long shapely legs and sandal-clad feet.

Very pretty feet, he noted distractedly as he pressed his lust-heated loins down against her naked body and gently kissed the pertly pointed tips of her well-rounded white breasts. None of the God-awful scarlet toe polish, just nice smooth skin. He decided he would leave on the open-toed sandalssometimes it gave him a kick for his women to wear shoes, particularly high boots, sexy black heels, or open-work sandals, which reminded him of Egyptian slave girls.

"God, you're exquisite! If you only knew how long I've waited to find my ideal woman!" The young artist had used this line with all eighty-nine girls he'd made love to, and could utter it in passable French, Spanish, and German as well as English. Often, as with the plump American Cordon Bleu student in Paris who'd whip up a little snack of something like canard a I' orange and a souffle de Grand Marnier whenever he paid her a visit, it had been a blatant lie. In the case of Elena Greenwood, it was merely an overstatement of the truth.

"A body fashioned for love!" he added, softly, meaningfully. "A modern Aphrodite!" For as long as she could, Elena blocked out the clamorous cries of her conscience, scrunching her lids tight shut as if that would make what was happening less real. She knew perfectly well that she was breaking every rule of human decency by allowing a virtual stranger to fondle her naked body, but her long-neglected loins were so starved for erotic attention that she couldn't bear to have these maddening caresses come to an end.

Just one minute more, she promised her conscience. One tiny second longer ... Then, as Leo's probing middle finger suddenly nudged against the ultra-sensitive flesh of her unprotected vaginal lips, she could no longer deny the lurid reality. Her blue eyes popped open as a shudder of delicious forbidden excitement wracked from the top of her golden head to the tips of her ten white toes, and a guilty gasp broke from her parched lips at the shameful sight of her naked figure sprawled out on the living room couch.

"Leo!" she hissed breathlessly. "Whatwhat are you doing? You mustn't! Please! Please, m-make your sketch before ... before we get carried away!"

Shit! Leo cursed silently. I screwed it up by moving too fast! Now I gotta waste time on more idiotic sweet talk, and already my prick's more than ready for action! "Why shouldn't I touch your beautiful body, Elena? Before I draw something I have to feel it, to know it with my body and soul as well as with my eyes. I can see from stroking your soft flesh that you're a true sensuous woman! Why do you deny it?"

"But Leo!" Elena shook her head dizzily, stared down in confusion as his hand continued to gently knead the white skin of her upper thighs. "II'm a married woman, you know!"

"So what?" the youth shrugged. "You're too intelligent to say something like thatwhy, you sound like a typical Grand Rapids' housewife! Love is eternal, universal ... everyone's birthrighteveryone in California knows that!

"If your husband hasn't been giving you the love you need, you have every right in the world to seek it with someone who understands you. You know itif you're honest with yourself! Doesn't it feel good when I caress your breasts, your thighs, your sweet, sweet pussy?"

The psychological ploy worked just as the skillful seducer had intended. When he reinserted his extended middle finger in the succulent pink folds of the older woman's desire-dampened vagina, she sighed but made no move to stop him. In less than a minute he'd located the tiny nerve-filled bud of her clitoris and was massaging it in a way he knew from experience was guaranteed to drive any female out of her mind with desire. "It feels good, doesn't it?" He wanted the ultimate triumph of hearing her say that she wanted him, needed him. "Be honest, Elena. Honest with me, honest with yourself!"

It was a moment before the bewildered blonde could collect herself to answer the youth whose thrilling manipulations of her most private flesh were driving her half mad with desire. Her eyes searched his handsome face as she considered his words as coherently as she could in her confused state of physical arousal. Of course she didn't want to act like a narrow-minded midwestern homemaker, but ... but....

"Oohhh!" The unfaithful wife's unbidden outcry echoed through her spick and span living room as Leo began to circle the tautening clitoral button with a quick, gently vibrating fingertip. "Ohhh, yes!"

I can't fight it anymoreit feels too good, her thoughts swam crazily. I don't want to fight it! Why should I? Don't I deserve to discover what love really can be after thirty-three years of being half a woman? Phillip doesn't care about me, so why should I care about him?

"Yes, what?" The artist's quickened breath swished against her ear, soft as a feather and warm as distilled sunlight. "Tell me how it feels, Elena! Tell me what you want!"

"It feels like ... like heaven!" The sound of her own words surprised her; it was as though someone else had taken control of her puppet-like body, someone whose salacious manipulation was leading her deeper and deeper into sin. "I never knew what it meant to be 'turned-on' before now, not really. My husband never never touched me like this!"

"Or like this, I bet!" The young woman's naked body stiffened slightly as the deliciously tormenting finger withdrew from her already moistening pussy with a salacious slurping sound. Before her weak moan of disappointment could leave her lips, heatedly gripping hands had fastened on the swollen mounds of her breasts, and Leo Ireland was pushing her to a reclining position and easing her quaking thighs apart to make room for his burrowing dark head.

Oh, no! Was he really going to kiss her down there? She'd never experienced this type of love-making, except in lurid fantasies of which she was deeply ashamed afterward, and she'd always told herself it was something dirty and degenerate which only a prostitute would allow. But now, as her young lover's warm, wet oral member slithered over the tumescent lips of her obscenely exposed vagina, she knew she couldn't bring herself to stop him as she'd stopped her husband the one and only time he'd attempted to perform cunnilingus.

Even as these delirious thoughts whirled through her head, inexperienced Mrs. Greenwood felt a sharp jolt of electrical intensity fizzling out from her inner thighs as he fastened his voracious mouth on her frantically pulsating clitoris, and the sensation was so inexplicitly exquisite that she thought for a moment she was going to faint from sheer pleasure, God, what had she been missing all her life because of her Puritanical hangups? Why hadn't her husband forced his head between her legs and shown her she was wrong?

"Such a sweet pussy ... soft like velvet, tight as a virgin!" The handsome artist's voice was muffled to a lewd slur as he nibbled even more hungrily on the married woman's involuntarily spasming cuntal flesh. "Like a pink rosebud all covered with dewdrops...." Somehow, the romantic compliments stilled some of Elena's qualms about the perverted indecency of what was happening. Her tensed body relaxed to a limp pool of sheer sensation as her mouth began a gentle erotic sucking movement on her outer cuntal lips, drawing them in and out in tempo with the incessant flickings of his talented tongue on her heatedly vibrating little" clitoris. One of his kneading hands sank down from her pleasure-straining breasts to squeeze at the sensitive globes of her naked ass-cheeks, and the combined effect of all this sensual stimulation stilled the last vestiges of her will to protest.

What if Phillip should walk in right now and see me lying here naked with a stranger's head buried up between my legs? she thought wildly. What if he saw me jerking and whimpering like a cheap slut ... a hundred times more turned on than he ever made me in thirteen long years?

Oddly enough, Mrs. Greenwood found that the fleeting vision of her husband's shocked and enraged face titillated some heretofore unsuspected masochistic streak deep inside her. As the Ireland youth's trembling tongue slithered deeper and deeper inside her to lodge all the way inside her fire-filled vagina! cleft, she was astonished to find her own loin undulating up to meet his ravenously sucking mouth.

"Oh, God! Oooohhhh...." The shrill, lust-strangled mewl didn't sound like her own voice at all! And when her glazed eyes looked down to meet the salacious sight of her smooth white stomach churning like a belly dancer's as it writhed upward to draw his darting oral member still further into her pussy, she could scarcely believe that this could be the body of the same woman who'd served her three children cornflakes and sent them off to school mere hours before. Mrs. Elena Greenwood, faithful wife of Phillip, charter member of the Grand Rapid's Cultural Committee, PTA room mother, and conscientious treasurer of the local Tri-Delt sorority alumnae, had simply vanished into thin air in response to this virile male's magically manipulating mouth. In her place was a wickedly wanton woman who cared about nothing save the wild pleasure spreading like liquid lightning from her tongue tormented pussy to every squirming cell in her naked loins.

"Yeah, that's the way, sweetheartmove that beautiful ass!" As his penis grew so heavy with lust that it jutted against his tight-fitting Levi's like the pole of a tent, Leo forgot to play the role of poetically romantic seducer. By now, he subconsciously recognized, nothing he could do would stem the tidal waves of her building passion. "Shake it for me! Squirm it up and down! Yeah, that's it!"

"Aaaggghhhh!" the corrupted housewife gasped in undisguised delight as he once again bent his wavy dark head into the "vee" between her trembling thighs. "Oh, God! Yes! So good ... so gggoooooddd ... sooooo gggggoooooodddd!"

Down in the pit of her womb, a powerful urgency was growing and vibrating like the string of a fine-hewn violin. Her dazed blue eyes opening in automatic obedience to a masochistic impulse to see every lewd detail of her degradation, and the orgasm she'd so often longed for but never known sped even closer. The wild oscillating waves surging inside her were cascading ever nearer, threatening to suck her under their turbulent whitecaps into a explosion so violent that she was almost afraid of it. Afraid ... yet yearning and striving for that mysterious summit nonetheless.

Ireland's breath was rasping from his lungs in hoarse grunts of bestial impatience now as he plunged his outstretched oral member still deeper up into the adulterous wife's feverishly twitching cunt. From the way her belly was rippling and her firm-fleshed thighs were tightly quivering around his body, he knew it wouldn't be much longer before she was shrieking out her initially unwanted rapture. Already her tight-walled vagina was twisting and palpitating around his deep-thrusting tongue, and he could taste the first faint bittersweet female juices on her butter-smooth cuntal channel.

Thank God! his mind reeled. I can't wait much fucking longer for some satisfaction! One week in this hick city without any pussy's driven me up a wall, and watching this sweet little bitch perform is the last straw. The minute she cums, I'm going to shove my meat into her while she's still too excited to think of objections!

Deliberately sucking and nibbling at every spot of the moaning woman's coral-pink vaginal flesh where he knew there was a sensitive nerve-ending, the impassioned painter strove to drive her to the summit of delight. His middle finger fell from her bouncing breasts to fumble between their tight-pressed bodies to once again locate the tiny clitoral bud, so that he was simultaneously plunging his tongue into her dilating like a small penis and circling the tautly swollen nerve-nub. From the strangled moan of inhuman bliss which burst from her slackly open lips, it was obvious that his oft-tired techniques were having their anticipated positive results.

"Ohhhh, Leo!" Her tousled blonde curls whipped against his bent head as she suddenly lunged forward to grab hold of his hair, her eyes wild with wanton excitation, nostrils quivering like a wild mare's, beads of perspiration coating her smooth forehead. "You're driving me crazy, and I love it! Suck mesuck harder! Make me cum, lover! Make me cummmmm with your mouth!"

"You bet, baby!" Leo grinned in satanic glee. "You're gonna cum like you never did beforeyou won't want hubby's puny penis pumping in and outta you like a rabbit anymore, not after you've seen what cumming can really be like!"

The instant he'd called out his triumphant words, the lust-demented artist sank his hungry mouth back down on Elena's moistly glistening pussy slit. This time he shifted his wetly devouring lips up to her erect little clitoris, ramming his out-stretched middle finger into the spasming of her pulsating pussy. His reward was a frantic wail of wild abandon.

"Aaaahhhhh, oooohhhhh!" A tight pressure constricted her churning belly and fire-filled vaginal passage, followed one second later by a mind-destroying eruption of ecstasy so profound that the convulsing adulteress lost track of time, space and reason. Without being aware of what she was doing, she dug her fingernails into the slaving male's neck so roughly that ten scarlet welts rose on his skin, and her legs clutched around him so tightly that he could scarcely breath.

The familiar taste of warm, faintly bitter female fluids gushed into Leo's mouth, sending his long cock jolting into full erection and threatening to break through the barrier of his size-too-small denim pants. God, this lady was a hot-blooded cunt beneath her prim exterior, just as he'd suspected! He could scarcely wait to plunge his painfully pulsing prick deep into that luscious pussy of hers!

"Soooo gooodddddddd...." Elena continued to babble in helpless bliss as wave after wave of hitherto undreamed of elation surged from the tips of her involuntarily curling toes to the top of her tangled blonde scalp. "I'm cccccuuuummmmiiiinnnnggggg! Oh, God, cccuuummmmiiinnnggg! Ohhhh, never stop, Leo! Never stop!"

The half-conscious housewife, floating in her rainbow-hued climactic vacuum of pure physical joy, failed to notice that her young lover's lips had already unfastened themselves from her spasming pussy. Even when her glassy eyes re-accustomed themselves to the bright mid-morning sunlight of her oddly unfamiliar living room and she realized that Leo was tearing off his jeans and shirt, she was too dazed by the incredible orgasm to comprehend what was happening.

"Now I'm going to sample that honey-sweet cunt of yours!" the ardent artist panted as he kicked off his cowboy-type boots and yanked his undershorts down to release his impatient prick from its uncomfortable denim binds. "If you thought that was good, sweetheart, you're going to go right out of your mind when you see what this can do for you."

Elena's smoky-blue eyes widened as she gazed at the huge pole-like thickness of the flesh weapon which Leo brandished in his left hand. It was at least twice as large as her husband's erected phallusthough come to think of it, she'd never really looked at Phillip's penis save for an uneasy accidental glimpse. Oh, but it must be largerit looked at least a foot long, at least twelve pulsating inches of virile, purple-veined penile flesh! "Wh-what?" she gasped stupidly, Then, shaking her tangled curls from her eyes and propping her still-shuddering figure up onto her elbows, she added, "No ... not that...." in a weak, most unconvincing little voice.

"Lie back down, baby," Leo commanded hoarsely. "This is going to be the most beautiful experience you've ever had!"

"But ... bbut...." stammered Elena, her gaze still riveted to the rampant flesh rod, which seemed to expand with each passing second.

"No buts! You want it as bad as I doI see it in your eyes! Just wait, ElenaI'll teach you what love-making's really about!" The shame-filled wife automatically shut her revealing eyes. He was right, of course; the powerful orgasm had seemed to snap something inside her, to loosen the floodgates of her long-neglected passions, and she knew she would not fight against the final, irrevocable sin of accepting another man's iron-hard penis inside the vagina which belonged to her husband alone.

"I'm afraid," she whispered with a weak half-laugh, "that I've already learned too much!" Suddenly, just as the handsome young painter's eager hands groped out for the out-of-control older woman's quivering thighs to make room for his throbbing phallus, a sharp ringing sound resounded through the room. Both of the illicitly coupling partners froze in mid-movement, their heads swinging toward the squawking telephone on the end table just behind Elena's slackly reclining .head.

"Don't answer it, darling!" the young Ireland boy panted, but the married woman had already reached for the receiver. "Goddamn!" he swore softly as his immense erection automatically shrank to half its former size inside his hand.

"H-h-hello?" Elena stuttered, then took a deep breath and regained some semblance of control. "M-Mrs. Elena Greenwood speaking." A familiar female whine echoed loudly from the other end of the wire; Leo shuddered and grimaced as he recognized his mother's unmistakable nasal tone, and the naked young adulteress gripped the phone so fiercely that her knuckles turned white as bone china.

"I hope I didn't call at an inopportune moment," the well-meaning matron simpered, "but Leo said he was going to make some sketches of you, so I wondered if he was still there? I have a message from California for him that sounded VERY IMPORTANT!"

"Yes ... yes, he'she's here. Just one moment." She was astonished with the alacrity with which the next falsehood fell from her lips. "He's out in the kitchen, cleaning his brushes, you know. I'll tell him you're on the line."

The good-looking artist, whose magnificent manhood had shrunken to a limp kleenex-size appendage at the sound of his parent's voice, winked at his partner in sin and accepted the phone.

"Mom? Yeah, you did interrupt meI was just getting ready to paint the ultimate stroke! ... WhatWHAT? Yeah, that sure is important! Yeah, you bet! Yeah, I'll call him back right away!"

Mrs. Greenwood, feeling as though she'd just been hit in the skull by a brain-deranging bold of lightning, found herself numbly pulling on her crumpled pink dress while her naked lover blew her a kiss and placed a collect phone call to the West Coast. Her familiar living room suddenly looked totally alien, and as she stared at the premium quality wall-to-wall carpeting, the discreetly modern Danish coffee table, the expensively framed photographs of her three smiling offspring perched on the mantle of the artificial fireplace, she felt as though she was sitting in someone else's house. Even her two year-old house dress seemed to hang unnaturally on her newly awakened sensuous loins; it belonged to a totally different woman, a woman who no longer existed.

"Elena, beautiful Elena!" Leo Ireland suddenly interrupted her coma-like reverie. His strong male arms encircled her frozen figure, instantly rekindling dormant fires of lust inside her still-churning bell, and she willingly returned his hot, tongue-tangling kiss. "I hate to have to say this, but I have to leave right now. Otherwise I'll miss my big chance of contacting this French guy, 'cause he's flying out of San Francisco sooner than I thought. Oh, my darlingwhat can I say?"

What can you say ... what can I say...? Elena's brain whirled in crazy circles. Her tongue splurged deep into the young artist's warm mouth, exploring his teeth, his butter-soft inner cheeks, with a hitherto fore unimagined intimacy. Suddenly, to her own intense surprise, she heard herself speaking in a breathless, unfamiliar voice.

"Take me with you, Leo!" she exclaimed, drawing his hard-loined young body close in an impassioned embrace. "I mean itI can't live this life any longer, not after what's happened between us. Let me come with you! Please!"

The twenty-five year-old experimental painter hesitated for only the briefest instant. Why not, after all? he asked himself. I've never had an intense affair with an older womanand it's just the sort of thing that belongs in the biographies that'll be written about me when I'm as famous as Andy Warhol!

"Of course, my angel!" Leo exclaimed in a tone which would have done credit to Byron or Shelley. "I didn't dare to dream that you would feel the same sentiment as me! Hurry!" He made a dramatic flourish with his elegantly shaped hands, then took a quick slug of straight Smirnoff from the bottle on the coffee table beside the couch. "Pack your bags let's hit the road ... let's find a brighter and better tomorrow!"

"A brighter and better tomorrow ... a brighter and better tomorrow...." The words echoed hollowly in the disoriented wife's mind as she hurriedly threw some clothes into a suitcase, adding the apricot negligee which her husband had failed to appreciate as an afterthought. Then, without allowing herself a glance at the photos of her children, she clasped Leo Ireland's hand and followed him out the door, down the sidewalk, into the front seat of his psychedelically-painted VW bus.

"A brighter and better tomorrow...." she murmured as she kissed him full on the lips, no longer giving a damn what the neighbors might choose to think about it. "A brighter and better tomorrow ... "

CHAPTER FIVE

"Damn!" Phillip Greenwood swore as he rummaged in the overflowing dishwasher for a passably clean coffee cup. "Goddamn the whole fucking world!" It sure was amazing how fast things fall apart, how easily destroyed the pattern of life which had seemed so unbendable actually was. In the five short days since his wife had vanished without the slightest hint as to her destination or the reason for her incomprehensible behavior, he'd made no attempt to do anything about the housework. Ten year old Melinda, poor kid, had done her best, fixing corn flakes for her younger brother and sister in the mornings, popping TV dinners into the oven in the evening, trying valiantly to take over the role of her mother who'd "gone to take care of poor sick Granny in Benton Harbor". Nevertheless, the four bedroom split level looked rather as though a tornado had hit it, and neither he nor his daughter had been able to figure out how to operate the dishwasher.

Thank God that Elena had decided to disappear into thin air just as school was ending, he thought bitterly as he plucked one of the daffodil-yellow breakfast mugs from the crowded dish rack and started rinsing it off in the sink. They were bound to realize something's wrong if they stayed here, and I'm no good at telling lies at the best of times. No, they're much better off staying with my sister, Penny, on a big farm with horses and dogs and all.

Suddenly his eye caught sight of a smear of pale pink lipstick on the cup's rim, and his hand trembled so violently that the cup fell and shattered on the crumb-littered tile floor. For a long moment he stared at the shiny golden shards, his attractive face creased with lines which had not been there a week before.

Just like my lifebroken, smashed, useless! He sank deeper into the morass of self-pity. I'm a failure as a husband, on the job, to myself. As the deserted husband was gloomily debating whether or not to give up completely and commence this bright Saturday morning in June with a few stiff drinks, the doorbell rang. His heart leapt to his throatas it did every time there was a phone call or a visitorthen sank back down to the pit of his stomach. Of courseit would be that fellow from "Midwest Mate-Locate", the private detective agency which the cops had suggested he contact after they'd been unable to come up with a clue as to his wife's whereabouts. Sighing, he made his way down the cluttered hallway and through the living room to the front door.

The instant he set eyes on the burly, sandy-haired man on his doorstep, Phil was on the defensive. Duke Ericson, as the man introduced himself in a vaguely southern-accented voice, was just the sort of brawny, he-man type he felt most uncomfortable with, and there was something smug and self-complacent in the detective's beefy face that affected him especially negatively. As he watched the man who looked more like a policeman than the real cops had stride across his living room and plop his heavy-muscled hips down on Phil's own special armchair, he decided that this was the last guy he felt like confiding in.

Ericson lit up a Camel non-filter and began firing questions at his client without any polite preliminaries. All the while his beady blue eyes circled the room as though there were clues to be seen in the record collection or the childrens' photos on the imitation marble mantle.

"What are the last words you remember her saying to you?" The ruddy-complected investigator was one of those people who leave their cigarettes dangling in the comer of their mouths until an inch or so of ash is wobbling on the tip, a habit Greenwood detested. Dennis Dingle, his boss at Instant Igloo's advertising offices, smoked his thin cigarettes in the same crudely arrogant manner. Although Phil normally tried not to smoke before lunch at the advice of the company doctor, he found himself pulling out a Kool.

Duke Ericson let the faintly flushing husband fumble for several moments with his out-of-gas lighter before leaning over the coffee table to offer his pocket matches. "Ireland's Oyster House, 500 North La Salle Street," he read on the cover as Phillip Greenwood gingerly lit up his cigarette. "Fresh and saltwater seafood; Maine lobster; beef."

The shadow of a satisfied smirk wavered over his broad face as he recalled the delicious lobster tails with dilled mustard sauce together with an attractive young redhead whose name he'd forgotten, but whose voluptuous curves remained vividly etched on his memory. That pleasant evening had set him back over a hundred bucks, what with food, booze, car park, and the high-class call girl's feebut what the hell? Business was booming at Midwest Mate-Locate, and the way he and his three partners were pulling in profits hand over fist, he could afford to have a good time every night of the week!

At least I have some fun with my hard-earned dough, the detective mused. He simply couldn't comprehend guys like this Greenwood character; obviously the guy earned a decent salary, but what good was it doing him? He was sitting there with a face as long as a hound whom someone had just kicked in the ribs, while his wife had gone off the deep end and fled from this pretentious split level prison he'd slaved to provide. It would be a sad story if he hadn't heard it so many times before.

At the thought of the missing wife, Duke reminded himself that sitting here congratulating himself on not having been stupid enough to fall into the marriage trap wasn't getting the job done. Lighting another cigarette, he glanced down at his wristwatch. Already it was past noon, and he wished that this spineless college-boy type would unbend enough to offer him the drink he customarily enjoyed this time of day.

"The last thing she said to you?" he repeated. Phillip stared unseeingly at the smudged white carpet, trying to decide what to say. As far as he could recall, they'd not exchanged so much as a grunt that last morning; he'd been late for work and had gulped his coffee in sullen, hungover silence with only a curt "morning" to the kids. That meant their last conversation had been that quarrel, which he didn't intend to discuss with this unsympathetic cop. At the onset of their unsuccessful dawn love-making session, Elena had made low purring moans, but he was equally loathe to mention those.

"Well," he began finally after clearing his throat two times. "I got home late that last night Monday, it wasand she was already asleep. She sort of woke up and muttered something like, 'Oh, Phillip ... I'm sorry!' But I don't suppose it meant anythingshe was probably half dreaming."

"Sounds like the usual storyanother man," the cynical detective remarked. "You got any idea who the other fellow is?"

"Oh, no!" Greenwood shook his clean-cut brown head positively. "Elena's not that kind of woman! She'swell, she's a lady, if you know what I mean." Jesus Christ! Duke snorted in silent disgust. One of them romantic nuts! I'll bet he smokes Kools 'cause he likes their pretty advertisements! And I'll bet my bottom dollar his "lady-like" wife's run off with some guy who she hopes will treat her like the whore all women really want to be!

"Didja make love the night before she disappeared?" he demanded abruptly.

With an effort, Phillip resisted the impulse to retort, "None of your damn business!" No point in antagonizing the man he'd hired to find his missing wife, after all....

"Yes, yes we did." His eyes still hovered over the carpet instead of looking at the detective. "But I don't see what that has to do with anything?" Ericson sighed and made an impatient gesture with one meaty hand. "Listen, buddy," he shrugged. "If you'd been in this business long as I have, you'd know that nine times outta ten the real motive behind just about any crime, and especially runaways, is sex. "

"Sex ... sex ... sex...." The burly detective had spoken his last word with such emphasis that it seemed to hover in the living room for several long seconds, rebounding from this fastidiously decorated corner to that. To Phillip's surprise, a chill little wind of jealousy began blowing in the back of his brain as an image, of Elena lying naked in another man's arms flashed before his mind's eye. It had never before occurred to him to be suspicious of his pristine blonde wifeshe seemed so indifferent to sex with him that it was hard to believe she'd seek it in a sordid extramarital affair which was bound to end in scandal.

"In this case, it's absurd to consider another man," he glared at the detective. "You don't know Elena! She's never been unfaithfulI'd know about it in a small city like thisand she's interested in other things. Art and music, cultural things...." Duke sighed again. This interview was getting nowhere fast, for the deserted husband seemed unwilling or unable to cooperate with him. He decided he might as well not waste his valuable time here, particularly since he badly needed his usual noon-time beverage.

"Yeah." He lit a last cigarette. "Well, Mr. Greenwood, you got any information to relate to me that's confidential? Anything that was too private to say to the. cops, but that might be important? And I'd appreciate some snapshots, too. The authorities have that posed portrait thing you gave them, but what I need is just casual shots, family picnics or some shit like that."

Instead of answering, the young businessman jumped up and began rummaging through neatly arranged boxes of Kodacolor shots. He hated the way Ericson treated the tragedy that had befallen him like a cheap criminal novel, like an everyday and somehow smutty occurrence. How was a dirty-minded clod like that ever going to locate Elena?

"The kids around?" The investigator's drawl interrupted Phillip's irate thoughts. "Kids see and hear stuff that no one else noticesthey're always good to talk to."

"I just put them on a train for my older sister's place up in the U.P.," Phillip explained as he handed six glossy color photographs to the other man. "But of course I couldn't let you talk to them in any case. They don't know what's happened, and I don't intend to fuck them up psychologically by letting them find out. That's why I thought it was best to send them out to Penny and Don's dairy farm, where everything's healthy and normal."

"Kids are hardthey can take a lot." Duke's broad shoulders rose and fell in another cynical shrug. "Nobody coddled me when I was a kid, and I'm none the worse for it."

"All the same" Phil began, but the detective was no longer paying attention to him as he scrutinized the snapshots attentively. It was obvious that the uncouth investigator liked what he was seeing, for his beady blue-gray eyes glinted beneath his bushy brows as he inspected the pictures of Elena.

Indeed, Duke was pleasantly surprised to find that the woman he was seeking was very good-looking indeed. Neither her decorous sundress nor her high-cut two-piece bathing suit could conceal the fact that she had a lush, curvaceous figure, and in the shot where she was bending over the bonfire to toast her wiener-these pictures had all been taken during a Sunday excursion to the nearby shores of Lake Michiganhe glimpsed an inviting inch of sun-bronzed cleavage which made his ever-alert penis thicken with automatic desire.

"Nice-looking dame," he stuffed the photographs into his wallet and rose to his feet. "Well, I'll be running along to talk with the Irelands ... the ones whose son was apparently the last to see her, you know. But I'll be in touch with you, tell you where I'm heading and so on, of course."

Stifling a sigh of relief, the ill-at-ease advertising executive saw his visitor to the door.

"Her hair's longer now," he offered in a last tardy effort to be helpful. "And she always wears Shalimar perfume."

"Shalimar, huh?" Ericson made a note of that fact in his pocket notebook, then gave the husband a condescending clap on the shoulder. "That's it, old manthat's the kind of relevant facts I need to know!"

Then he was gone, loping arrogantly down the sidewalk to his discreet dark blue rented car as Phillip watched from the picture window with his fists clenched in impotent rage. "Someone oughta punch him in the face and take him down a peg or two," he muttered darkly as the sedan took off with a loud squeal of tires. "I only wish I were the kind of guy who could do things like that ... "

CHAPTER SIX

"This one!" Leo Ireland, guiding a bemused Elena Greenwood by the arm, gestured toward some object in the haphazard jumble of wares displayed in "Greeks and Freaks" window. "No more of that stuffy bourgeois Shalimar scent-now you shall wear the fragrance of ancient Greece, like Helen of Troy whose beauty sank a thousand ships!"

Laughing uncertainly, the honey-haired runaway housewife allowed her young lover to guide her into the boutique. The air was heavy with the sticky-sweet scent of Indian incense, just as in all the other "head shops" they'd visited in these first few days in San Francisco, and the usual beads, rainbow-hued scarves, and psychedelic or obscene posters cluttered the counters. At first all these shops had seemed excitingly exotic, but now, as Leo purchased a. small vial of "Athenian Essence", she found herself gazing around in vain for something she'd not already seen.

"It smells lovely!" she smiled at the youth as he dabbed the new perfume on her neck and wrists. "So exotic...." Actually, the heady oriental musk made her feel slightly nauseated, but she wouldn't dream of offending the handsome artist by saying so. And hadn't she been sick of wearing Shalimar all the time, just because unimaginative Phillip invariably presented her with a huge flask on her birthday? No doubt she'd get accustomed to this "Athenian Essence" in time, just as she'd come to understand why everyone else in California liked the odor of incense so much.

Now they were back out on the sunny street, and somewhere nearby a church bell was chiming three o'clock. Back home in Grand Rapids it would be lunch time: was Phillip remembering to buy Campbell's chicken-noodle soup, the only kind Deanna would eat? How had he explained her sudden disappearance to the innocent youngsters? Suddenly, as they passed a pay telephone, she had a crazy urge to dial Michigan long-distance and make sure everything was all right.

"Come on, Elena!" Leo was tugging on her arm. "Here comes the cable car! Let's take a ride to Fisherman's Wharf! I'll show you the Cannery and Ghirardelli Square, and then we can go to the Castagnola Restaurant and eat baked oysters oreganata on the half shell while we watch the sunset over the Golden Gate Bridge!"

The familiar thrill of physical delight, only a little less magical than at first, flowed through her veins at the touch of the youth's intimately" pressuring fingers. All thoughts of her abandoned offspring, and of what Phillip would say when he saw the enormous bill she'd run up on the Diners' Club card, were firmly erased from her head as she felt her twenty-five year old lover's heated lips mesh against her mouth.

"Wonderful idea!" she cried gaily. "Let's go!' Hand in hand, looking for all the world like one of the advertisements for Rice-A-Roni, the attractive young pair ran off in pursuit of the cable car. Passersby could not help but smile a the blithely carefree couple, who obviously hadn't a care in the world save for their deep mutual love.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Business was usually slow on Saturday afternoons at the Town Tavern, particularly on sunny summer days when the businessmen who lunched there during the week would be either playing golf or grilling hot dogs for their families at the forest preserve or beach. Rita Gibson, youngest and prettiest of the bar's three waitresses, worked the tables and the bar alone until Marlene and Norma arrived at five for the big evening rush. Since she earned few tips and had no one to flirt with save Willy, the black dishwasher whose undressing eyes "gave her the creeps", the seventeen year old redhead disliked her job more on this day than on any other.

"Gee, I'm glad to see you!" she exclaimed with genuine warmth when Mr. Phillip Greenwood came slouching in about three-thirty with a sour expression on his pleasant featured face. "How come you're not out at the Country Club with the rest of the guys on a nice day like this?"

"Wasn't in the mood," mumbled the young advertising executive, slumping down on a stool at the end of the bar and lighting a cigarette. "Hey, Rita honey, could you fix me one of your super martinis double quick? "

"Sure thing, Phil!" The shapely adolescent gave him a curious glance, then bustled away to fulfill his urgent request. She had a hard time comprehending why anyone who had enough bread to drive a spiffy Oldsmobile and live in a big house on the outskirts of town should be depressed, but because she was fond of the good-looking, polite businessman, she felt sorry about his obvious case of the blues and made an effort to understand his problems. Maybe there were some compensations to her own life, even if she did live in an ugly little room above the Town Tavern with a shower that ran cold and a view of garbage cans in the back alley. At least she didn't have to put up with someone who treated her mean, the way he claimed his wife did.

"Here you go, Phil!" she flashed a bright smile as she handed him his drink. "You sure look like you need thiswanna tell me what the trouble is?"

"Thanks, Rita, you're a sweetie. Have one for yourself, huh?" As the comely barmaid poured herself her usual weak vodka and orange juice, she listened in astonishment to the sad story her favorite customer blurted out. It was incredible! How could any woman in her right mind walk out on a nice guy like Mr. Greenwood? No, it didn't make any sense at all!

"II haven't told anyone else about this," he finished his tear-jerking tale with a weak grin and held out his empty glass for a refill. "I know you won't mention it to people, either. Wow, y'know, I feel better already just having told you my problems!"

Rita's pretty face turned a proud shade of pink. Some people might think she was just a dumb high school dropout, but it wasn't everyone in this world who had the ability to cheer up an important, collegeeducated guy like Phil Greenwood.

"Course I won't say anything to nobody," she reassured him. "I ain't a blabbermouth like some people I know. Don't you go talking to Marlene, for instanceshe's got a mouth ten miles wide!"

"Why should I talk to Marlene when I can talk to you, Rita?" Suddenly two customers entered the Town Tavern, out-of-town salesmen demanding steak sandwiches and extra-large beers. The abandoned husband watched the young girl efficiently filling their orders with a charming smile and enticing wriggle of hips calculated to earn her a handsome tip. As usual, he was guiltily aware that his frustrated phallus was lurching into semierection and causing an obscene protuberance in his lightweight casual trousers.

But why the hell should I feel guilty? he asked himself, gulping his martini, staring defiantly at the inch of nubile white flesh which appeared as Rita bent over to give the salesmen their sandwiches. A cold wind blasted through the back of his brain and turned the blood in his reins to ice-water as he thought of the most depressing part of his situation, the fact he'd not even told Rita yet. The dirty-minded detective had been right, after all; he'd considered his unpleasant theory for at least an hour after he departed, till some instinct led him upstairs to once again search through Elena's dresser to see what she'd chosen to take with her.

The sexy apricot-colored silk nightie had been missing! Humiliation and rage flooded through his system in equal proportions as he considered what seemed to be undeniable evidence of his wife's adultery, and he abruptly contemplated the awful possibility that this had perhaps been going on for years right beneath his naively unsuspecting eyes. Christ, maybe the children he loved so deeply weren't really his ... though everyone remarked that all three had "Greenwood eyes", and that young Dean was the spitting image of his father.

Suddenly lovely Rita was standing in front of him again, her nipples thrusting pertly against the ruffled bodice of her uniform, her scarlet-nailed fingers pushing a fresh drink toward him.

"I made this one light on the booze," she winked. "Too early for you to get smashed, y' know!"

"Jesus, you're a doll!" For the first time, Greenwood did something he'd been longing to do ever since the succulent redhead had come to work at the Town Tavern nearly a year ago. It was only an innocent touch on the arm, the sort of casual pat one might give a child's hair or a puppy's soft fur, but it nevertheless sent his blood pressure soaring and his penis throbbing into painful tumescence. Her skin was so silken-smooth, like warm velvet ... so youthfully yielding ... so sensitive, so responsive....

"Sure is nice to have somebody give a damn what happens to me!" he murmured under his breath so that the salesmen, who were throwing him jealous glances, could not hear. Then, in the same hushed undertone, he related the sad facts of his wife's unfaithfulness.

"Gee whiz!" Rita had a special way of shaking her flame-colored curls so that they grazed the milk white skin of her slender neck like caressing lips. It was a trick she'd painstakingly perfected in front of her cracked bathroom mirror, a hint .she'd picked up from COSMOPOLITAN magazine, but she correctly surmised that no mere male would ever guess that.

"What' I don't get," she continued in a soothing voice, deliberately twitching the muscles of her arm slightly, ever so slightly, beneath his timidly stroking fingertips, "is how any gal could do a thing like that to a nice guy like you. I really think it's crazy!"

For an endless instant they remained locked in this intimate position, until the teenager broke away with a coy little laugh which could not quite mask her sudden twinge of embarrassment. Round hips jiggling in their usual provocative manner, she sauntered toward the jukebox and pushed her favorite selection, a song from Leonard Cohen's newest album.

"Lover, lover, lover, Come back to me ...!

Lover, lover, lover.

Come back to me...!" The singer's heartfelt plea echoed throughout the bar, drowning out the two salesmens' raucous snickers at their smutty jokes and the clatter of dishes and muttered curses issuing from Willie in the kitchen. Humming along with the melody, the seventeen year old barmaid half-danced back toward the bar and swung her curvaceous figure up on the stool beside her morose customer. Her poise was completely recovered now, and she couldn't understand what had come over her to feel so flustered at an innocent touch.

I've been fighting off guys' wandering hands ever since I was twelve and changed almost overnight from a skinny little kid into the girl with the best figure in the class, she reflected as she swung her shapely leg back and forth in time to the music. I should hope I know well enough by now when a guy's really aiming to get inside my panties, and when he's just being friendly. Mr. Greenwood never tried anything nasty before, and I bet he never will. I wonder why ... I mean, I know he likes me and all....

"'Lovers' is a bit of a misnomer as far as Elena and I'm concerned." Phillip's caustic snort broke through the young redhead's thoughts.

"Huh," She turned her wide green eyes up toward his face, smiling questioningly. "Mis-?"

"The wrong word, I mean," the older man explained, keeping half an eye on her rhythmically swaying calf as he spoke. "Well, I told you before how she froze me outI was dumb enough to think she was frigid instead of suspecting she was getting it from some other guy. Shit, I feel like a lunkhead! A real ass!"

"Doesn't make nothing better to go around blaming yourself," admonished the olive-eyed adolescent. "I say you should try to cheer up, Phil. From the way she sounds to me, you're better off without her. Have yourself a good time now that you're free! And I think you're crazy to pay some detective fellow a lot of dough to try to find her."

"Well, I don't know...." Phil brooded, still staring as if hypnotized at the shapely calf in its ultra-sheer stocking. What nice round knees the girl had! And what a gracefully arched little foot in her patent leather platform shoes!

"Well, I know!" The pretty barmaid jumped down from the high stool as she noticed one of the salesmen gesturing for another beer. "You're too nice a guy to be feeling bad!" In fact, the older man already felt ten times better than when he'd first walked into the Town Tavern. Rita's dry martinis had warmed his blood and stilled his anger, and everything seemed less impossibly complicated in her charming company. In a rush of alcohol-inspired insight, he realized that he really didn't want Elena back now that he knew she'd cheated on him. Of course he'd still keep Ericson on her trail, but only so that he could divorce her properly.

She's set me free! he exulted inwardly. Free to do what I want instead of what she wants ... free to be myself instead of trying to be a perfect executive to please Elena. No more wasted weekends of dreary dinners and boring bridge rubbers for this guy! First thing tomorrow morning I'm gonna dig out those paints and try some sketches without having to worry about anyone criticizing me 'cause I've gotten so rusty.

At the prospect of renewing his old hobby at last, Greenwood's black mood melted away as if by magic. He felt young and strong and full of life, ready to tackle anyone and anything. First, he decided, he'd try some nature scenes using watercolorsthat had always been what he was most skilled atand then he'd do some cartoon drawings to send to the kids. They'd be surprised to find out that their Dad could do something besides chauffeur them around town and bring home the bacon!

But first and foremost, he was going to ask lovely Rita to have dinner with him. For months he'd been wishing he could do that, feeling sorry for the hard-working girl who apparently subsisted on stale Town Tavern sandwiches. Now an invitation for an elegant dinner was certainly the least he could do to thank her for lifting him out of the doldrums and making him see that his life was beginning rather than ending.

More customers had begun drifting into the popular bar, for it was almost cocktail hour, so it was some time before the busy barmaid had a free moment to rejoin him at the far corner of the counter. While waiting, Phil amused himself by considering which of Grand Rapids' better , restaurants he would choose to wine and dine the winsome redhead. A couple of acquaintances entered, their balding pates burned the same shade as the scarlet tulips in the window boxes from an afternoon on the golf course, but they left him alone when he made it obvious he wasn't in the mood for gossip or golf scores. Once, he'd have felt obligated to act more sociable with the influential older men, but now he was an artist who was not bound by ordinary conventions.

That place on the outskirts of town might be nice, he mused, the one where they grilled steaks and chickens over an open fire. Perhaps, though, Rita might get more of a kick out of the chic little French restaurant which was the only place in town you could get escargots and a good Chablis. There was also the luxurious fish place where you could select your own lake trout from a oriental-type pool in the center of the dining room and watch murder being performed on the spot. Elena had always liked that place best, but personally he'd been unable to bear the taste of fish after a few years at Instant Igloo.

At the thought of his wife, Phil's happy half smile was abruptly wiped from his face. Suddenly he recalled that the last time he'd seen his Diners' Club card, he'd been handing it to Elena to use for some fancy club luncheon, and indeed, when he'd turned the contents of his wallet inside out on the polished wooden bar, it was nowhere to be found. To make matters worse, he'd forgotten to go to the bank to withdraw some cash and pick up his new checkbooksa chore his wife normally took care ofand all he had in his pocket was a ten dollar bill and some small change.

"Whee!" Rita appeared beside him again, her face flushed a becoming shade of rose and tiny beads of perspiration glittering like transparent miniature pearls on her daintily formed upper lip. "What a rush! I sure do wish Marlene and Norma would think of something besides horsing around with their damn boyfriends and get here on time Saturday night. It's too much for me to handle all alone!"

"You poor kid!" the young businessman sympathized. "Listen, I was gonna ask you out to dinner, but I just realized that my bitch of a wife ran off with the Diners' Club card, and I haven't got any bread. Gosh, I always mess things up, don't I? I really wanted to pay you back for cheering me up."

"Gee, that was sweet of you, Phil!" Rita had to smile at his woebegone expression. "But you don't owe me no favors! I mean, I like talking to you."

"I'm not just doing you a favor," smiled the brown-haired husband. "I like being with you, Rita, and I'd much rather give you a treat than sit around in that big lonely house of mine." The pretty waitress opened her mouth to explain that in any case she only got a half-hour break on Saturdays, but to her own surprise she found quite a different sentence coming out of her lips. Whether it was the sad expression in nice Mr. Greenwood's hazel eyes that changed her mind, or the odd quickening of her own pulse, she had no idea.

"Listen!" she said with a conspiratorial wink. "You know what I'm gonna do? When Marlene and Norma get here, I'm gonna say I'm too sick to work. Then we're going to go to your house and I'll fix you supper. I'm a good cookI had to cook for my kid brothers ever since I can remember because of Mom having to work."

"That sounds great!" Phil's heart leapt with partly vindictive excitement at the thought of letting sweet young Rita take over the place that had belonged to Elena. His snobbish wife would be furious if she knew that she had been replaced by a mere bargirl! "But I don't think there's much to eat. I haven't thought of buying anything except corn flakes and peanut butter for the kids."

"Don't worry about that!" The redhead flashed an impish grin as she refilled his glass and started to move down the bar to serve other impatient customers. "That's my specialty making something edible out of nothing!"

"Look, Phil! Quick! A falling star! Make a wish!" Greenwood's neck snapped upward just in time to see a fiery comet shooting across the star-studded sky to explode in a dazzling splash of blue lights. It was such an unexpectedly spectacular sight that, if it hadn't been for the low gasp of the young girl beside him, he'd have thought he was so intoxicated that he was hallucinating.

"Wow!" he murmured reverently. "You only see something like that once in a lifetime!"

"So our wishes are sure to come true!" Rita giggled. "What didja wish, Phil?"

"It won't come true if you tell!" Phil chuckled at her girlish enthusiasm.

"That's not true! When I was a kid, we said that if you whisper it very softly in the ear of someone you trust as much as yourself, it'll still come true!" The middle-aged businessman suddenly recalled that the farm kids he'd played with during long-ago vacations with his grandparents had recited the same superstitionbut with a slight difference.

"We used to say it another way." He leaned toward the young girl, feeling dizzy with happiness as he smelled her cologne mingling with the fresh night air and the lilacs just round the corner from the patio. "We said: 'Only tell your dearest wish, To the one you dare to kiss!' " Rita laughed again. She felt warm and giddy and giggly after the delicious bottle of wine they'd consumed with her dinner, exactly in the mood for kissing and cuddling.

"That's cute!" she exclaimed. Setting down her glass of Chablis, she wrapped her arms around the astonished businessman's neck and planted a warm kiss on his neck. Ohhhh, that felt good! She could feel little veins throbbing against his skin, could smell the faint fragrance of his shaving lotion.

"I like your way better!" she added, and impulsively kissed him again. Phil Greenwood felt as though the comet had crashed inside his brain, and his lanky six foot frame shuddered noticeably as his frustrated phallus leapt into instant semierection. Jeez! he marveled. I feel like I'm a sixteen year old kid or something! Not wanting to offend hershe'd already confided how she hated the way men were always trying to pinch her bottom and take advantage of her just because she happened to be working as a barmaidhe-edged away and crossed his long legs to hide his burgeoning hard-on.

The strong jolt of electrical excitation which erupted inside her young loins shocked Rita; normally, she was quite in control of her emotions, knew exactly how far to go or not to go with whatever male she happened to be with. But tonight some strange impulses were searing through her bloodstream, urges which she was reluctant to resist.

"C'mon!" she urged again. "Tell me what you wished on that super shooting star! I gave you a kiss, so now you gotta tell me!"

"What did you wish?" an embarrassed Phil answered with a rhetorical question. "That's not fair! I asked first!" But when Rita noticed that the thirty-eight year old businessman was so embarrassed that he was actually blushing like a tongue-tied teen, she stopped teasing. "I wished," she said quietly, "that life was always as good as it seems tonight. A great dinner with one of the nicest men I've met in ages, good wine, the moon and stars shining so pretty and all ... "

"Yeah, that sure was a good dinner," Phil once again complimented her on the chicken dinner she'd cooked. "I really had forgotten that we had that huge freezer down in the basement." He knew he was babbling nervously, but he couldn't help it. What if his innocent young guest should notice the shameful bulge growing ever larger in his groin? "Fact is, I feel like I'm living in somebody else's house. I keep finding things that I must have dished out a lot of money for, but didn't realize were there. When I look around at all these crazy gadgets, I think of the cheap, old-fashioned inventions in THE WHOLE EARTH CATALOGUE and feel guilty."

Rita was a little surprised to find herself disappointed when the older man changed the conversation from the romantic route in which she'd been half consciously heading it. She wanted to talk about the moon and their emotions, not some dumb book she'd never heard of. This situation was a complete switch from any she'd ever found herself in before; normally, she was fighting guys off instead of trying to encourage them to act less gentlemanly.

"THE WHOLE EARTH CATALOGUE?" she repressed a sigh, deciding that the nice looking man was just shy and she must let things take their own course. "What's that?"

"Come on inside and I'll show you," he stood up, half-empty wine bottle in hand. "Those damn mosquitoes are starting to bug me out here, anyway." Actually, looking at the picture-filled book wasn't as boring as the young Gibson girl had feared it would be. They sat side by side on the soft couch, sipping their wine, their hands grazing each others in a way that sent chills of anticipatory excitement surging through her system. Of course she didn't want him to attack or anything, but it would be nice if he'd show that he cared about her and thought she was pretty.

As Phil pointed out his favorite gadgets in the dog-eared book which he'd leafed through every evening when he was not compelled to socialize, the sexually aroused redhead beside him let her thoughts float far away. A series of images ran at double-quick time through her wine-stimulated brain, and she found herself feeling more and more in the mood for love-making.

All those times she'd extracted mens' prowling hands from inside her bodice, slapped them away as they fumbled to reach underneath her skirt ... how often had she refrained sometimes with the greatest of difficultyfrom allowing herself to feel any passion when their hot, wet tongues entangled against her own, or their teasing fingers tweaked maddeningly at the sensitive mounds of her breasts? ... How many times had she defended her purity?

Sometimes the guys had gotten really angry, calling her a cocktease and worse, and in her heart she had to admit that they were at least partially right. She liked to flirt, enjoyed males' admiring glances and compliments, knew that wriggling her hips and parading her melon-round breasts were a sure way to earn bigger tips and dinner dates. But who could really blame a girl for that, considering the rotten wages they paid at the Town Tavern? Of course she appreciated pretty things and wanted to have fun while she was young and pretty!

But over and above all, she wanted to protect her virginity. When she finally met Mr. Perfect who would be somebody respectable and well-to-do, someone quite like Phillip Greenwoodshe was determined to be the sort of woman he wanted. Not a tramp like her co-workers, Norma and Marlene, who'd spread their legs for any Tom, Dick or Harry who happened along, but the sort of girl who could wear a beautiful white wedding gown with pride.

The only time she'd come close to allowing her fertile young body's natural needs overpower her ambitions was back in high school. In the tiny mining village where she'd lived until she'd finally saved enough babysitting money to pack her small cardboard suitcase and catch a Trailways bus bound for Grand Rapids, there'd been virtually nothing for the youngsters to do except experiment with their budding sexuality. In spite of the fact that one was ostracized by the townspeople if one didn't show up every Sunday morning at one of the three churches, at least half the local girls were thickening around the waist when they took their vows at the altar. Thank God she'd had the wits to realize that unless she escaped she'd end up married to her boyfriend, Dirk, by necessityotherwise she'd have a lot of screaming brats and look like an old hag at twenty-five, as her former classmates would.

All during her sophomore and junior years at high school, she'd worn Dirk's heavy ring on her finger wrapped in angora chosen to coordinate with her clothes. Each Friday and Saturday night they were together, attending basketball games and mixers at school, going bowling, or making an appearance at someone's party.

Invariably, they would leave these group events early, for with every passing weekend their "drives through the woods" became a more important part of the date. Every weekend, she came a little closer to losing her virginity.

By the end of their junior year, they'd progressed to the point of oral sex. It had been wonderfulalmost as good as going all the way was fabled to be! Now, a full year later, shivers of delight still raced up and down Rita's spine as she recalled the magical sensations which Dirk's eagerly lapping tongue had sent rushing through her naked loins.

Would Phil Greenwood be shocked if she suggested they try this thrilling sexual game? All the kids in her high school had played around with pussy-licking and cock-sucking without guilt ... but of course this collegeeducated guy was from a different world than those bored kids in a dull hamlet on the upper Peninsula, a world with quite different rules and values.

On the other hand, how could anyone, no matter how cultured, be opposed to an activity which brought such marvelous ecstasy? Rita felt fairly certain that it was simply not possible.

"Lookit this one, for instance!" Mr. Greenwood was saying. "That sure would be handy if I ever get the chance to fix up that old farmhouse I told you about the other day!"

"Ummhmmm...." Rita murmured in feigned interest. She just couldn't get excited about all this old junk, which reminded her of her poverty-stricken girlhood. Then, as the man shifted the big book on his lap to point out some detail, her heart started thumping against her ribs and an excited "Wow!" burst from her half-parted red lips. He had a hard-on! A magnificently large one!

I know what I'll do! the seventeen year old barmaid thought as the curious agitation which always filled her at the sight of a man's member magically swelling to a massive flesh pole surged through her veins. I'll give him a blow job! I know I'm good at that, and I like going down on a guy as much as they like me doing it! That's something his wife never did for him, I bet!

Running her raspberry-pink tongue over her smooth lips in hungry anticipation of the treat to come, the voluptuous redhead fidgeted impatiently until Phil finally came to the last page of the seemingly endless volume. To her disappointment, however, he kept the book balanced on his lap so she couldn't see the enticing bulge between his long legs.

"Shall I get another bottle of wine?" she purred. After a year of working at the Town Tavern, she was well aware of alcohol's inhibition-destroying properties. "It's the nicest wine I ever tasted, and it makes me feel so warm and happy inside!"

"Great idea!" agreed the man. As she removed the cork from the bottle of French Beaujolais, the pretty barmaid formulated a plan which she put into effect the instant she returned to the living room. Her eager hand reached out to squeeze his, "accidentally" knocked the book onto the coffee table, then quickly came to rest on his lean-muscled upper leg. Out of the corner of her feline green eyes, she saw the huge swell give a responsive throb.

"Hey, Phil," she laughed, a low, husky laugh like that of the movie stars she admired. "Y'know, you never told me what you wished on that shooting star!" Much to his discomfort, the married man felt an immature hot blush sweeping over his neck and face. That was exactly what he'd been praying she wouldn't say! He always made a hopeless muddle of lies, particularly when he was drinking, but how could he possibly speak the truth when his wish had been so unspeakably lecherous?

"C'mon, Phil!" Rita urged. His obvious embarrassment gave her a shrewd idea of what sort of wish it had been, and she was determined not to give up until she'd forced him to admit that he desired her. "Tell me! It's not fair not to! Don't you trust me?"

Suddenly, before he knew what he was doing, Phil's mouth began mumbling the words he'd vowed never to reveal.

"I wished ... I wished that you'd ... that you'd go to b-bed with me...." There was a pregnant pause during which their quickened breathing echoed above the loud ticking of Elena's pretentious Baroque cuckoo clock. Rita squeezed his quivering thigh a second time as the stunned man took a big gulp of wine to alleviate his discomfort, then bent her head toward him to whisper into his beet-red ear.

"Gee!" she cooed. "That's sweet of you, Phil! Oh, I'dI'd been afraid you didn't think I was pretty ... sexy ... "

"I'm sorry!" Greenwood kept his eyes lowered as he uttered his shame-faced apology. "I shouldn't have said that to you. Of course I think you're theuhthe cutest gal I know ... but I don't want you to feel like I'm a dirty old man! Please just forget I said it, okay?!"

"But I don't want to forget it!" The teenager was astonished at her own boldness. "Maybe you think I'm just a little girl, but I'm no babe in the woods! I've made out all alone for a year now and I know all about life ... and about love...." Phil's aching penis gave another shameful throb as he noticed that the lovely redhead was staring at it. The harder he tried to talk himself out of the erection, the bigger it seemed to grow!

"All about love?" His voice sounded hollow in his own ears, as though he were speaking in a vacuum. "All about love?"

"Well, not all, of course," Rita hastened to clarify her statement. "I mean, I'm not one of those girls who goes all the way with just any guy. Maybe I'm silly, but I think there're some things that should wait till you're really in love, so much that you want to marry the fellow. But," she paused, meaningfully edging her small white hand upward until it grazed his swollen groin, "you can have lots of fun without going too far, if you know what I mean!"

The middle-aged man's hard-muscled body jerked as though he'd touched a live electrical circuit, and an incoherent exclamation of irrepressible lust tore from his parched throat as his uninhibited guest began stroking the straining mound of his manhood with feather-like fingers. Although he wasn't exactly sure what she meant by "lots of fun without going too far", he realized that the fact that she was young enough to be his daughter was no longer sufficient to still the fires of his flaming passions.

"Jesus Christ!" he swore through clenched teeth. "You're driving me crazy, baby! Do ... do you really mean it?" Instead of replying at once, the experienced barmaid bent down to unbuckle his belt and ease down the zipper of his bulging fly. Then her face, transformed now into a sensual mask of desire, rose toward him to kiss him full on the lips.

"I think you're one of the greatest guys I ever met, like I said before," she mumbled as their mouths meshed in a warm, delicious kiss. "And I think you've had a rotten deal, so I wanna make you happy. Happy like your wife never did!"

"Oh, you sweet, beautiful doll!" With a tortured groan of long-denied carnal hunger, the deserted husband crushed his lips against Rita's responsive mouth, simultaneously groping out to cup his shaking hands around the pliant mounds of her girlishly high-set breasts. They pulsed against his palms like two warm little birds, and he cried out again as a wave of prurient lust wiped away the last of his scruples.

"Go down on me, Rita!" he implored the shapely redhead. "Will you do that for me, baby? Kiss my cock ... "

"Oh, wow! Will I ever!" A low hiss escaped from Greenwood's heaving lungs as he dizzily watched his trousers being skillfully eased down over his ankles. The gray pants were followed a split second later by his white cotton jockey shorts, and his lust-enlarged rod jumped up from his sparse-haired belly, hard as a flagpole and longer and thicker than he could remember having seen it for God knew how long. Scarcely daring to breathe, he watched the flame colored curls sink down toward his taut-muscled groin.

"Ooohhhhh...." The young girl's voice was just as charged with erotic excitement as his own, as she reverently ran a teasing finger along the huge, purple-veined cockshaft. "It's so long and thick, Phil! I never saw one so big!"

Her index finger flickered down the length of his pulsating phallus until she reached his testicles. Gently, lovingly, she caressed the super-sensitive sacs, shivering in pleasure at the velvety warmth. Then, with a hungry little cry, she applied a teasing pressure to the nerve-filled area just behind the base of his sperm-heavy balls.

"Christ, Rita! That feels so fucking good! How in God's name did you ever learn to make a guy feel so fine?"

"Easy! 'Cause I like to make guys happy ... and 'cause it's fun for me, too, of course!" She wanted to suggest that he might fondle her own fire-filled genitals at the same time already, droplets of desire were dampening the soft russet curls of her pussybut she didn't want to appear too audacious, to shock him and make him think she was a slut. Probably, once she got him really turned on, he'd start fingering her of his own accord. With a shiver of excruciating anticipatory excitement, she sank her head and flicked out her tingling tongue to lap up the moist drop of pearlescent pre-lubrication fluid which glistened on the narrow glans tip of his burgeoning cockhead.

"Yeah, yeah, oh God, yeah!" the delighted businessman moaned. "Oh, you sweet baby! Yeah, suck my cock!" Rita never closed her eyes while she performed this erotic oral duty, for she gained a wanton thrill from seeing, her own bright pink tongue gliding up and down the deeper red male shaft and from watching her lips straining around the impossibly wide flesh weapon. Little jolts of strange masochistic pleasure raced through her veins like wildfire as she eased Phil's masculine loins flat down on the couch and positioned herself so that she was kneeling slave-like between his spread-eagled legs. Somehow, she managed all this without once disengaging her ovaled lips from his hotly pulsing penis.

"Uuummmmmm!" she murmured in the ecstatic tone of a gourmet about to partake of a rare vintage wine. Indeed, she would have been hard-pressed to name any taste that gave her a more vivid pleasure than the slightly acrid pungency of a man's warm, cream smooth sperm! "Oooooohhhhh, your prick feels so gooodddddd inside my mouth, Phil!"

"Aaaaaggghhhh!" The advertising executive's grunt of incoherent bliss followed on the heels of the zealously slaving girl's soft moans. Christ almighty, he'd never felt anything so wonderful in all his thirty-eight years! Sure, some of the coeds he'd dated before meeting Elena had gone down on him, but it hadn't been like this; they'd clenched their eyes tight shut and performed the chore as though it were repugnant to them. As for his wife, whom he'd been foolish enough to remain faithful to for thirteen long years of sexual frustration, she'd naturally refused to even discuss the possibility of fellatio.

"That's it, sweetheart!" he groaned out his encouragement in a voice that was no longer timid, but coarse with lewd animal lust. "You suck me so damn good I can't believe it! Ohhhhhh, so damn gooooooddddddd!"

It was incredible, positively mind-bending, so watch the way the intrepid adolescent molded her glistening red lips around his burgeoning flesh pole. Rita might be only seventeen, but she knew more about sucking cock than he himself did! What magical tricks she was performing on his frustration-fevered phallus: first, snaking her strawberry pink tongue along the pulsing nerve on the underside of his thick potency; then teasing at the sensitive glans with her tongue tip; finally sinking her straining mouth all the way over his rampant member, right down to his sperm-swollen balls!

Why the hell couldn't Elena be as much of a female as this child-woman? his frantic brain demanded. A second later, however, as the sensuous barmaid began pumping up and down on his ever-expanding cockshaft in imitation of a madly fucking vagina, he forgot his runaway wife and everything else in the world save the maddening sensations coursing like liquid lightning through his satisfaction-starved loins.

As she slavishly worked her strained-to-the-limits lips from Phillip Greenwood's secreting glans tip to the base of his erotically jouncing balls, the young redhead clamped her own thighs together in order to stimulate her palpitating pussy. God, she felt hother panty crotchband was drenched! It had been a long time since she'd been this turned on not since those lascivious backseat petting sessions with her high school steady. Oh, dear God, she felt almost excited enough to throw her scruples to the wind and beg him to ram his magnificent member deep into her wildly yearning vagina!

Feeling more wantonly passionate than ever due to her salacious thoughts, she slithered her talented tongue all the way down to his pulsing scrotal sac. An acute odor of masculine flesh sent her head swimming with demented desire as she delicately lapped at the pliant, sparsely-haired testicles, and she frantically pumped up and down on the iron hard cockshaft while she delighted in the obscenity of kissing his velvet-textured balls.

"Jesus Christ!" bellowed the older man, and his entire body tautened like a steel spring as he felt his orgasm rushing upon him. "I can't stop it! Gotta cummmmmmm!" With every ounce of energy in his lean-muscled body, Greenwood tried to hold back his climax and prolong this erotic bliss as long as Rita was willing to continue her obscene oral caresses. It was no use; sperm was churning wildly in his blood-bloated balls, and even when she removed her torturously titillating lips from his testicles to resume her ministrations to his turgid thickness, the impatient seed still demanded immediate release. A stream of guttural groans spewed from his lust-twisted lips as he stared in wild-eyed ecstasy at the puffing and contorting cheeks of his teenaged lover.

The furiously sucking barmaid crouching between Phil's suddenly stiffening legs knew that he was almost ready to cum even before his barbaric cry echoed through the living room, for she could feel the thick vein on the underside of his plunging potency shuddering against her tongue. Down inside the desire-dampened "vee" between her own desperately rubbing thighs, the long-denied needs of her healthy adolescent loins flamed to a bonfire whose red-hot demands for satiation could no longer be endured.

I want to cum, too! her frustrated-disoriented mind shrieked. Not from squeezing my own legs together, or from a finger, or even a wonderful wet tongueI want to cum with a real live prick pounding inside my pussy!

This same conscience-corrupting voice had cried out inside her head before, nearly every time she and Dirk had nakedly necked in the fold-down back seat of his Dad's station wagon, but up until now, her moral objections had been capable of resisting the dangerously tempting commands. Tonight, however, in the embrace of this kind and handsome married man, her willpower seemed to have deserted her.

No one's a virgin these days, anyway, she rationalized in crazy confusion. Why should I have to masturbate every night just so I can fall asleep, when everyone else is having themselves a good time? Anyhow, if I meet an old-fashioned type guy who does give a damn, I can always make up some story, or fake itMarlene said she's gotten away with that lots of times, 'cause guys all dig making it with a virgin so they'll believe whatever they want to believe ... And if I waited forever, I'd never find a nicer guy to turn me into a real woman than Phil Greenwood. He's a gentleman with a college education and all, not some pimply kid or a big-mouthed slob who just wants to blab about it all over town so's he can feel like the big shot he knows he isn't. No, Phil's a great guy! I trust him, and I know he'll be gentle and nice ... like a father....

These jumbled considerations churned through the alcohol-addled adolescent's head in the short space of five seconds: perhaps she'd unconsciously made her fateful decision that afternoon, when he'd touched her hand in the bar; or even a month before, when he'd given her that fancy flask of perfume. In any case, Rita Gibson was now too overcome with lust to reflect for a moment longer on her motives. With a shrill little whimper of out-of-control longing, she jerked her head away from the man's turgid virility just seconds before his rampant virility exploded in an eruption every bit as awe-inspiring as the comet they'd observed earlier in the evening.

Rita, together with nearly all the other sexually-sophisticated girls in her isolated Upper Peninsula hometown, knew a useful trick for keeping a male from ejaculating. It took a little practice to locate the exact spot, but experience was one thing the seventeen year old barmaid had in abundance. Panting heavily, eyes glazed with amorous anticipation, she pressed the sensitive area which would stem the urgent tide of Phil's orgasm.

"Wh-what?" stammered the red-faced husband in astonishment. "What the hell...?"

"Wait, Phil!" the olive-eyed redhead was breathless with excitement. "I'd love to taste your thick hot cumfeel it sliding down my throat and all. But ... but I wanna feel you inside me worse. I want your cock to be the first one that cums inside me!"

It was several seconds before the satisfaction-denied male could comprehend anything save the painful pulsations of his penis, which had shrunken to semierection as though by black magic. Even when the significance of the teenager's plea sank through his lust clouded consciousness, he couldn't believe the evidence of his ears.

"Huh?" he gasped in dizzy disbelief. "Y-you're really a virgin?"

"I told you I don't put out for just anyone!" Rita's long-lashed green eyes fluttered shut for a brief instant, then opened wide to stare at him in longing. "I want you to be the first guy who really turns me on to being a woman, Phil, 'cause I know you'll treat me good, and 'cause I like you one heck of a lot! Please!"

"Christ almighty!" It was difficult for the young businessman to understand that any female who could suck cock the way the young redhead could was really still in possession of her maidenhead. From what he read in the papers these days, gals of fourteen were screwing their boyfriends and taking the pill; a sexy chick like Rita Gibson was the last one he'd have thought would hold out against the modern trend. Not that he himself had seriously considered that she might go to bed with himhe liked her too much to think of her as an "easy lay", and anyway, he wasn't the kind of guy who found it easy to commit adultery so long as he'd believed Elena to be faithfulbut he'd vaguely thought she must have a boyfriend of her own age or something.

"Please, Phil!" The adolescent was so aroused that she no longer gave a thought to her imageshe needed satisfaction too much to care if he thought she was a tramp. "Please, do it to me! Make love to me!"

The astounded father of three was unable to reply as he stared at the voluptuous waitress hastily unfastening her clothes. Since she'd come straight from work, she was still clad in the skimpy pink-checked gingham mini-skirt and ruffled imitation pioneer blouse that she wore in the bar. In an instant, she'd untied the drawstrings fastening her drindel-style skirt, letting it drop carelessly onto the carpet to reveal that she wore no slip, only a tiny scrap of sheer pink panties and a pair of transparent pantyhose. Then, much to his delight, she was removing her blouse to free the un-brassiered orbs of her proudly straining young breasts.

"God, Rita!" he found his voice at last. "What a beautiful body you have!"

"I want to make you happy with it...." The lush adolescent slowly slipped her see-through stockings down over her lithe legs and stepped out of her wispy rose-colored nylon panties. "Happier than your wife ever did...." she added in a cat-like purr as she took a step toward him, then stopped to stand poised before him in radiant virginal beauty ... Like a sacrificial offering on an ancient altar ... the man's mind whirled dizzily.

The sight of Rita's cream-white naked figure sent Phil's potent phallus springing to full life again. Feeling as though he were in a dream, he reached out a trembling hand to stroke the warm satin flesh of her left breast. All worrisome inhibitions about committing adultery with an underage adolescent vanished as a flood of primitive passion spilled through his bloodstream, and with an inarticulate roar of animalistic ecstasy he crushed the voluptuous redhead against him.

"Oooooohhhhh!" A soft, almost childish mewl bubbled from the seventeen year old's throat as the older man grasped hold of her tender breasts and roughly squeezed their puckering pink nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. Suddenly reminded of his ten year old daughter, Melinda, Phil at once released her from his brutal embrace and contritely eased her virginal body down onto the sofa.

"Forgive me, sweetheart," he murmured.

"You got me so turned on with that magic mouth of yours that I'm kinda out of control! But I'll be gentle, I promise. I'll make this first time good for you...." Greenwood's voice faltered away as he recalled that the only experience he'd had in deflowering virgins had been on his wedding night in that awful Honolulu honeymoon hotel. They'd both been jet-lagging and exhausted from the huge wedding; Elena had been too frozen with fear to respond as she'd always done before to his kisses and gentle caresses; he himself had been so ridden with conflicts about whether his proper role was one of considerate gentleman or lusty male stallion that he'd gotten blind drunk before heading for bed and had come the second he'd penetrated his wife's ravaged vagina. But the worst thing of all, the thing that he hated to remember, was that another newlywed couple in the room a paper-thin wall away had made love all night long. Only when the loud sounds of city morning traffic and humid, smog-gray light of dawn had seeped in through the coy lace-draped windows of the hotel the unknown but detested strangers ceased their passionate sighs, shrieks, caterwauling climactic outcries.

"Well, as good as I can," he added in a sheepish voice thirteen long years later as he stared at the lovely copper-tressed bar girl. "I mean, uh, the only virgin I ever was with was my wife ... and I guess I made pretty much of a mess out of that."

"Of course it'll be good, Phil, darling!" Rita soothed, reaching out one slim white hand to stroke his hungrily heaving hardness. She'd raised her three brothers virtually single handed while her widowed mother labored at her tiring shift work job as canteen cook for the Carsten Coal Mining Corporation, and she now had an instinctive ability to build up a male's bruised ego. "Good for me, and good for you, too! And don't you go thinking about your wife now! This is just between us ... our own super-special night, okay?!"

"Okay, sweetheart!" the middle-aged executive breathed in a husky voice.

"Try our super-special Lake Superior Fish Sticks with your favorite Instant Igloo Timesaver Tartar Sauce tonight! No more sweating over a greasy fry pan, 'cause Instant Igloo's done all the dirty work for you! We skinned 'em, fried 'em, packaged 'em in our super-special silver foil that keeps all that vitamin-rich goodness inside and is throw-away efficient, too! And wait till your family tastes our super-special Timesaver Tartar Sauce, a Cordon Bleu concoction that'll tickle your taste buds! We created this super supper 'specially for all you Moms out there in the working world, because we understand how hard you try to conserve those pennies and those precious minutes with your loved ones! So look for those super-special Instant Igloo Lake Superior Fish Sticks in their own Timesaver Tartar Sauce today at your local supermarket! You'll be glad you did!"

Brushing the inane advertisement which he himself was guilty of composing from his conscious mind, Phil Greenwood sank his sex-starved loins down on top of the warm resiliency of young Rita's curvaceous naked figure. Now his pruriently pulsating potency was mashed up against the lush satin-smoothness of her full-fleshed thighs, his chest was pressed against the gyrating globes of her glorious breasts. Jeez! Was this really happening to him!? It was like one of those wish-fulfilling fantasies he mused over in mens' magazines when Elena wasn't watching him! Too good to be true!

"Really, Phil, please!" Rita pleaded. "Take me now! I wanna feel your big hard prick inside me quick, before I chicken out!" Rita waited with bated breath as the man nineteen years her senior propped his sport shirt-clad body up onto his elbows to run hot, admiring hands over her prone figure. The gentle strokes, running from the top of her tousled auburn head to her tingling white toes, calmed her growing apprehension. Now that it had actually come to the point where he was about to impale her tiny vagina with his enormous penis, she was beginning to have second thoughts about the defloration which she herself had insisted upon.

"W will it hurt very much, Phil?" she heard herself whispering in a quaking voice. "Itit's so very big ... "

"I'll be careful, baby," he tried to reassure her, "but, yeah, it'll hurt at first, I'm afraid. Look, if you don't want me to "

"I DO want you to!" interrupted the precocious teen. "Tonight you're gonna make a real woman out of me, Phil, even if it hurts!" Panting with desire, the eager married man slid his caressing hands back up the shapely columns of Rita's long legs until he reached the silken-skinned fullness of her naked thighs. Gently, very gently, he eased them apart, shivering with erotic pleasure as copper-colored cuntal curls tickled against his fingers.

"What a sweet pussy!" he murmured. "So soft and pretty! I never saw a red one before!"

"Ooooohhhhhhh!" squealed the anticipation-tortured teenager as her older lover's fingers parted the russet fringe of her pubic hairs and came into contact with her ultra-sensitive cuntal lips. "Oohhh ... oooohhhh ... so nice, Phil!"

After thirteen years of Elena's tight-lipped silence during love-making, the redhead's shrill cries of unfettered pleasure were sweet and healing music to Greenwood's ears. His ego swelled in equal proportion to his elongated phallic member, and for the first time in some years he remembered the exhilarating feeling of taking pride in himself and his masculinity. The young barmaid had been right when she declared that he was better off without his wife; he was only glad the cold, cheating bitch had run away before destroying the last remnants of his manhood.

But why the hell am I thinking of Elena at a moment like this? he asked himself, pushing the image of his runaway wife's slender, golden-haired body from before his mind's eye to focus all his attention on Rita Gibson's younger, more lushly rounded loins. It delighted him to discover that her coral-pink pussy slit was already moist with desire for him, and that her glistening cuntal lips swelled and quivered beneath his fingertip.

"You're all wet!" he marveled aloud. "All ready for my hard cock!" The suspenseful wait and extreme emotional intensity of the moment had made the sex starved virgin's vagina even more sensitive then normal. Each gentle touch of Phil's exploring finger sent red-hot arrows of passion shooting through her shivering figure, and her fears of his enormous manhood faded before the force of her arousal.

"Oh yes! You bet I'm ready!" Her voice was so husky with lust that she scarcely recognized it. "I've never been so ready for anything in my life as I am for your beautiful big cock! Pleaseput it in my pussy!"

With a fevered groan of relief, Phil guided his impatiently throbbing thickness toward the inviting slit of glistening cuntal flesh. He had feared that the inexperienced virgin would require so much foreplay that he would be unable to keep from ejaculating the moment he entered her, that she'd be left frustrated the way his wife always was. Rita's talented tongue had left his potent penis so achingly excited that he knew he had to plunge it into her vagina at once if he were to be able to bring her the orgasm he so desperately wanted her to experience.

"Just relax, sweetheart!" Phil murmured as his blood-engorged cockhead grazed the petal-like folds of her shining pink vagina. "Try and relax your cunt musclesit hurts more if you tense 'em up, you see."

Rita's lush young body spasmed slightly at the first contact of the older man's blunt-nosed penis against her still-pure pussy. An odd little smilehalf excited, half fearful, almost childish and in absurd incongruity with her woman's ripe loins and heavy make-up flickered over her flushed face as she stared into Phil's eyes. Then, as he'd instructed, she took a long, shuddering breath and let her naked body fall back lamely against the sofa cushions.

"Okay, Phil...." she whispered. Though she wanted to hide her nervousness from him, her voice refused to sound calm. "All relaxed!" The longer she looked at the middle-aged man's massive member, the more certain she was that it would never fit inside her small vaginal orifice. It was just not possible! Why, a thrusting tongue or prodding finger seemed to fill her feminine passage completelyhow could that baseball bat sized instrument ever enter her without tearing her pussy to shreds?

I must be built wrong down there! she despaired silently as the heated cockhead continued to nudge against her quivering cuntal mouth. Unaware of the millions of other innocent girls who'd thought exactly the same thing, she blinked back the tears which filmed her olive-green eyes at the sad prospect of never being able to enjoy a normal sex life.

"Spread your legs wider!" panted the man above Rita. "Jesus, sweetheart, you're so tight! Am I hurting you?"

"No, no!" the seventeen year old denied breathlessly. "I mean, it hurts a littlebut it's a nice, exciting kind of hurting!" Encouraged and aroused by her reply, Phil strained harder to plunge his aching erection into the willing virgin's tiny vagina. Yet despite the fact that she'd spread her legs so far apart that tendons stood out on her ivory-white inner thighs, despite the fact that his iron hard cock was now pushing with impatient insistence instead of gingerly caution, the tight orifice continued to resist his invading cudgel. Gritting his teeth in determination, he made a last effort to flick his lean but powerful hips forward with every ounce of energy in his lust-maddened body.

"Oh, it's no use!" the girl whimpered tearfully. "I'm too small, andaaaaahhhhhh!" Her piteous words ended in an abrupt shriek as the older man's bulbous cockhead suddenly pushed an agonizing inch inside her spasmodically tensing pussy. Explosion after explosion of red-hot pain thundered through her body like an out-of-control fireworks display, and as the lustfully panting male continued his downward invasion, her anguish became so intense that she thought she couldn't endure it a moment longer. Only by biting her lips hard could she keep from crying out in pain again and hurting Phil's feelings.

Greenwood, unaware of the torture which his marauding member was inflicting on the naked virgin, moaned in ecstasy as he forced his way down into the snug-walled cuntal channel. Her vaginal muscles clutched his pulsating cock like a butter-smooth kid glove, flooding him with a pleasure so intense that he couldn't have stopped now even if she'd begged him to do so. No mere command of his brain could control the primitive power which drove his phallus straight through the momentarily resisting f membrane of young Rita's maidenhead!

"AAAAggghhhhhh!" It was impossible for the pain-overwhelmed barmaid to repress her scream as scorching fingers of fire blazed through her vanquished vagina. Yet even as she wailed out her agony, she dizzily realized that the thin tissue of her girl-head had been shattered and that she was now a real woman at last. The fateful step had been taken and could not be retracted, and she was glad! So blissfully ecstatic, in fact, that the thrilling emotion nearly annihilated her suffering.

"Oh, God, Rita!" Phil groaned aloud in delight as his heated cockhead crashed against the spongy plane of her cervix. He let his throbbing thickness lie still for a moment to give the girl a chance to grow accustomed to its huge blood-engorged bulk, staring down in demonic delight at the awe-inspiring sight of his mammoth manhood buried to the hilt inside the teenager's copper curl fringed vagina. One thing that had always deadened his sexual enthusiasm for Elena had been her insistence on making love in the darkness ... was she as prissy and fastidious with her lover...? There he went again! Thinking about his unfaithful wife when he ought to be enjoying the beautiful redheaded barmaid who'd so willingly offered him her virginal body! What the hell was wrong with him anyway?

"Rita, baby!" he pulled his eyes away from the titillating spectacle of her cock-stuffed cunt to state into her flushed face. "Your sweet little pussy feels so good! Am I hurting you too bad, honey? 'Cause you're making me feel like heaven come true!"

Rita forced her numb lips into the semblance of a smile. Even when the torturing flesh pole flexed inside her cock-filled passage and sent stars spinning in front of her pain blinded eyes, she hastened to reassure nice Mr. Greenwood instead of acknowledging her dire discomfort.

"It don't hurt so bad now," she lied bravely, forgetting her grammar as a fresh flood of pain wracked from the top of her tangled auburn curls to her ten involuntarily curling toes. "And anyhow, it don't matter! What matters is that you've made me into a woman, Phil!"

Gratified, guilt conveniently pocketed away until such time as the desires of the flesh had been sated, Greenwood flexed his potent penis more violently and then commenced a fierce fucking motion which sent his swollen testicles smacking against Rita's well-rounded buttock cheeks. He felt like a conquering caveman, and as though he had the inhuman power to keep on ramming into her moistly clasping cuntal channel from here until eternity. He only hoped he could make this marvelous young girl as blissfully happy as she was making himthat was the least he could do to repay her for having restored him to virility.

Oddly enough, even as the barmaid uttered her well-meant white lie, the pain actually begun to abate. She still felt completely stuffed with rigid male cock flesh, but the sensation was no longer only painful. Little masochistic flickerings of pleasure-pain began to dance in her bloodstream, and in another minute the red-hot poker of torture had metamorphosized into a soaring delight which sent gurgles of relieved happiness spewing from her half-open lips.

"Uuuuummmmmmm ... ooooohhhhh ... ggoooooodddd, Phil! Soooooo gggooooooooddddddd!" Phil's impaling flesh pole plunged more furiously than ever at her heartfelt whimpers of abject ecstasy, spearing with satanic strength so that his sensitive head crashed against her womb, then rearing out like a wild stallion in preparation for the next smooth downthrust. Never before had he derived such mind-distorting bliss from the act of lovemaking, and never again would he be content with the insipid variety of desensualized sex which had sufficed during his thirteen year union with Elena.

"That's it, baby!" he heard his own voice, coarsened with implacable lust, echoing through his familiar living room. "Fuck back! That's the way!" Instinct had led the voluptuous redheaded barmaid to wriggle her round ass-cheeks up to meet the pummeling strokes of the older man's rampaging cock. Now, with a babble of enthusiastic and incoherent syllables, she began undulating upward with all the energy in her erotically aroused young loins. Writhing in wanton abandon on the big couch, she squirmed up and down in sensual synchronization with Phil's masterful member, and with each passing second her own pleasure soared higher and higher.

"Oh, God!" she cried out suddenly. "Phil! It's gonna happen! I'm gonna cum!" Deep down in her wildly churning belly, powerful chords of ecstasy were vibrating in signal of her coming climax. The sensation was significandy different than the feeling she received from a thrusting tongue or probing finger ... it was stronger and sweeter, so adamant that it filled her with awed amazement.

Why did I wait so long to find out that fucking's the greatest thing in the world!? her desire-demented brain screamed as the teasing waves of imminent orgasm rose to a thunderous whitecap of passion. Then floodgates burst deep inside her, and she was screaming in mindless ecstasy, floating away to another universe of sheer blissful sensation where there was nothing save flesh pressing against flesh and exploding into undreamed-of delight.

As the young girl's naked body began thrashing and spasming beneath him in the throes of an obviously violent climax, Phil's breath exploded from his lungs in a caveman-like roar. Seething spurts of thick white cum shot from the swollen sacs of his testicles down the tingling rod in the underside of his pussy-impaling penis to spatter the walls of her convulsing cuntal channel in jet after jet of life-giving seed. As the wondrous ecstasy of release swept through him, his inhuman cries mingled with Rita's to form an obscene chorus of wanton lust.

Finally, after a seeming eternity, their mutual orgasms began to fade into the satiated peace of post-coital satisfaction. Greenwood's body fell limply on top of the teenager's, and for some time their perspiration-glistening figures lay locked in a silent embrace on the sperm-stained living room sofa. Finally, the middle-aged man began to snore gently, and the barmaid beneath him fell into a state of dream-like semi-consciousness.

An hour or so later, the unfaithful husband woke up with a start of shock from a dream in which he'd been painting a large nude portrait of a woman with Rita's vibrantly voluptuous body, but Elena's patrician face and cloud of honey-gold hair. He gaped dumbly at the adolescent, who was really sleeping now and whose face, in repose, looked as young and innocent as that of his ten year old daughter. A shudder of guilt wracked through Phil's half-naked body, and he hastily crept off of Rita to stumble into his discarded trousers, and take a fortifying gulp of his tepid wine.

Quietly as he tried to move, the absence of his pressuringly warm loins woke the young barmaid. She turned to him with a sleepy smile on her pretty face, a happy and tender smile which erased Phil's growing guilt.

"That," she murmured in a husky, soft voice, "was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me in my whole life!"

CHAPTER EIGHT

Here in the shade of the ancient redwoods, it was dark and cool and very, very quiet save for the babbling brook down in the ravine below and the chattering of birds. Elena Greenwood switched off the ignition of her rented Ford and sat for a few moments letting the fresh fragrances of eucalyptus and pine fill her lungs and the forest sounds soothe the aching throbbing behind her temples. Then she got out of the nondescript white auto, carefully locked all four doors, and started off down an overgrown trail leading down toward the creek.

After only a few short minutes of feeling springy grass beneath her sandaled feet and a refreshing breeze blowing through her hair, the thirty-three year-old runaway wife's mood of depression had faded to the point where she began humming under her breath. At first she was unaware of what she was singing, but gradually she recognized the melody and an ironic little smile flickered across her pensive face.

"Alas, my lord, you do me wrong, To cast me out discourteously.

For I have loved you so long, Delighting in your company...." Although the young mother had heard the song uncountable timesher ten-year-old daughter, Melinda, had been preparing to play the piece in a piano and vocal recital she'd never paid much attention to the Medieval verse that accompanied it. Now, since all her attention was focused on trying to comprehend why she had deserted her husband and three beloved children to chase halfway across the continent with a penniless painter, she applied the song to her own bizarre situation.

Was poor Phillip sitting at home thinking thoughts like this while he tried in his clumsy but well-meaning way to cope with three young kids? If she were honest with herself, it was hard to imagine that her abandoned husband was remembering how he'd "delighted in her company". Hadn't she been the epitome of a cold bitch in these last years of their marriage, freezing him out of his rightful role as lover even though at least half the blame for their lackluster sex life surely rested on her own shoulders? Hadn't she been too selfish to admit to herself that the pressures of his job and of her ambitions for him were quickly driving the young executive toward alcohol, ulcers, and apathetic depression?

"I wouldn't blame him if he's sitting there in Grand Rapids thinking, 'Good riddance!'," she murmured aloud as she paused halfway down the ravine to scoop up a handful of wild strawberries. "But ... but I hope he misses me ... I hope he still loves me like I love him, and Wants to start over again...." As she started on down the winding path again, Elena knew she'd made a wise decision when she impulsively rented the Ford this morning and took off alone, heading along the coast in the direction of Santa Cruz. This was the first time she'd been alone since arriving in California three weeks ago, and it was also the first time she'd felt calmly composed, capable of making a mature decision. Life with Leo in the restored Victorian mansion where he and some half dozen other young artistic types, plus two large black hounds and a teething infant, was so innervating that it left her drained, disembodied, disoriented from herself.

The funny thing was, she mused, that although they were constantly on the go, nothing very much ever seemed to get accomplished. Leo liked to sleep late, and then the hours of daylight would dwindle away in endless "rap sessions" about artists, poets, movies, music, topics about which Mrs. Greenwood knew little or nothing. Invariably, these discussionswhether held in the communal Victorian kitchen or in some friend's apartment, boutique or houseboatwere inevitably accompanied by a constant consummation of marijuana cigarettes, which gave her a cough and a headache, and cheap wine, which soured her stomach.

Life only really began after sundown. They'd visited most of San Francisco's better restaurants by now, thanks to her Diners' Club card, and been to as many discotheques, folk music clubs, jazz caves, and pop concerts. Her young lover had gone to underground foreign movies, all the "in" art galleries, and electronic music ... but somehow he never got around to beginning the promised portrait of her. Apparently, he was waiting for someone to front him the money to buy new supplies of oil paints and canvases.

Thank God the art supply shop didn't accept Diners' Club cards! Suddenly the runaway housewife reached the bottom of the ravine and found herself standing beside a deep, clear-bottomed stream which widened into a small pool a little further on. With a determined shake of her honey-blonde curls, she firmly thrust all bitter thoughts and worries from her mind. Leo was immature and impossibly egotistic, to be sure, but she wasn't going to dislike him because of that. On the contrary, she was deeply grateful to him for having awakened her dormant femininity and shown her what it meant to be a real woman.

Feeling hot after the steep climb down the wooded ravine, the young housewife decided to take a cooling dip in the pool before heading back up to her car, driving to San Francisco, and using her husband's Diners' Club card one last time to catch a plane bound for Michigan. Without the slightest inhibition, she pulled off her jeans and the see-through Indian blouse Leo had bought her at one of his favorite boutiques, kicked off her sandals and jumped into the water.

Even if she'd not been so lost in thoughts about her future plans, it is un-likely that Mrs. Greenwood would have been able to hear the footsteps which had been tracking her down the trail with practiced stealth. For one thing, the noise of water bubbling over pebbles was too loud; for another, Duke Ericson, Midwest Mate-Locate detective, knew how to follow someone without being seen or heard. Despite his brawny figure, he knew plenty of tricks to enable him to walk as silently as an Indian.

Totally oblivious that her every motion was being observed with great interest, Elena splashed happily as a child in the cool water, performing some water ballet stunts she recalled from her girlhood and humming the same "Greensleeves" tune to herself. Then, tired out, she flipped gracefully onto her back and floated, ivory-white breasts bobbing on the surface of the clear pool, gently treading water and thinking serene thoughts.

Perhaps, she mused, if she and Phillip were living in a quiet place like this surrounded by beauty ... perhaps then Her reflections were cut off abruptly as there was a loud splash followed by a curt male command barked out in the cadence of a shotgun. Instinctive icy fear flooded through the naked young woman's loinsoh, God, why had she been so naive as to go wandering around in these deserted woods all alone ... what about those Santa Cruz murders she'd read about in the Grand Rapids' newspapers last year??and she dived down under the surface of the water and remained there until she felt her lungs would burst and there was nothing to do but rise to the surface for oxygen.

A burly man, clad in the Levi's, Levi jacket, and cowboy-style bootwhich were as commonplace here in northern California as gray flannel suits were back home in the Midwest, was standing arms akimbo on the bank. Although there was nothing unusual in his attire, Elena nevertheless felt an aura of menace emanating from his muscular body. There was something cold and implacable in those steel blue eyes and that square chin ... something so masculine that it could only be called brutal....

He's a sex-crazed rapist! I'm sure of it! her terrified mind screamed. Treading water desperately, she swung her head from this side to that in futile search of an escape. It appeared to be impossible to climb up the bank on the opposite side of the pool; it was-edged with moss-slick stones higher than she was tall, with no noticeable hand or foot holds, and on the top was a dense barrier of blackberry briars. Still, maybe she could chance itit was preferable to being ravished, mutilated and murdered by some maniac....

"I said, git outta that water, lady!" the man on the bank commanded again. "Double-quick, y'hear. I don't like being kept waitin'!" Elena's heart leapt to her throat as she stared at the stranger, and a terror more piercing than any emotion she'd ever experienced before froze the blood in her veins to ice water. Her scream of fright caught in her constricted throat, distorting her lovely face to a mask of contorted dread, but loathe as she was to follow his demand she found herself slowly breast stroking in toward shore. Suddenly she realized what he reminded her of: an evil and corrupt stereotype cop in a film about the American south. In the same instant that this similarity shot through her fear-befuddled brain, she noticed that his left hand was poised just above a suspiciously shotgun-shaped bulge in his pocket.

"What's the matter, Mrs. Greenwood?" The thickset male moved several steps in the direction of the water's edge, a malicious grin on is beefy face. "Something frightenin' ya? C'mon, now! Git your sexy body outta that water! I got some business to discuss with ya!"

"Mrs. Greenwood?" How on earth did he know her name? The terror-stricken blonde, who'd frozen in paralyzed panic in an awkward kneeling position, half in and half out of the protective water, wished with every cell in her naked body that she'd never left her safe split-level home. Surely this horrible monster had been sent by the fates as due retribution for her sin of deserting her family to follow the lusts of the flesh....

"Git over here, I said! You deaf or something?" As the man's huge paw whipped into his pocket and pulled out a small pistol, Elena was riveted into instant obedience. Gasping for breath, she scrambled out of the pool and made a desperate effort to grab at her discarded clothing. Before she could lay her hands on her jeans and blouse, however, the heavy set stranger had moved toward her with incongruous panther-like speed and clasped hold of her slender wrists.

"Don't bother putting them on," he snickered, twisting her wrists till she winced with pain. "We can have our little discussion real good just like you are."

"II don't know what you're talking about!" She'd read somewhere that the best way to pacify a psychotic rapist was to keep talking to him until, hopefully, his wave of madness temporarily passed away. "H how' do you know my name? Oh, please ... please let go of me and let me put my clothes back on! Please!"

Tire cruel-faced stranger seemed to find the shivering blonde's fright highly amusing. His thick lips curled back in a cynical sneer, and a gruff guffaw burst from his throat as he leered meaningfully at the married woman's lush body.

"I don't know why you got hang-ups about stripping off your rags all of a sudden," he mocked. "You only like pretty-boy types like Leo Ireland, is that it? Look, you don't have to be afraid I'm one of them Santa Cruz rapist fellas. I'm just a mana real man, the kind ya got no experience with yet!"

"Whwhat?" Elena stammered stupidly. How did this rude invader know all about her intimate life? "Whwho are you? What do you wwant with me?"

"Ya know perfectly well what I want with ya," the husky male shot her another lecherous leer. "But I also got some message from your husband, Phil. Ya still remember him?" Suddenly, this bizarre situation began to make some semblance of sense to the panic-stricken runaway wife. In the same stunned instant she also realized that she did indeed know what he wanted, and that some perverted sector of her personality was actually filled with a wicked masochistic curiosity at the idea of being taken by a brutish animal.

"So you're really a policeman!" she blurted out, uneasily aware of the way his beady steel blue eyes beneath their beetle brows had fastened onto her suddenly tingling breasts. "H how did you find me?"

"No. I ain't a goddamn copI'm a classy private investigator! But dontcha worry your pretty little head about that now!" In a brusque, abrupt movement, he pulled her vulnerably unclothed figure tight against his hard-loined bulk so that the metal studs on his denim jacket were bruising the tender skin of her straining breasts and his oversized belt buckle was painfully pressed against her ribs. Elena scarcely noticed the pain his garments were causing her, however, for her entire attention was focused on the throbbing, impossibly immense bulge at his groin which was crushed against her crazily churning belly.

"We got more important business to take care of first!" the strangely compelling male continued, and then before the frightened housewife knew what was happening he'd pushed her down onto the soft grassy bank. When she gaped up at him, wild-eyed, wet hair hanging in lank strands before her face and distorting her vision, she saw him ripping off his denim jacket and unfastening his wide leather belt.

"Nooo!" she gasped in a feeble voice. "Don't you dare touch me! Are you crazy? Youyou can't do this!"

"Baby, I always do exactly what I please!" The brawny man's jeans dropped down over his hefty haunches, and he kicked them into the bushes with one well-aimed motion of his boot-clad feet. Stupefied into temporary silence, the thirty-three year old adulteress gaped in open-mouthed disbelief at the enormous flesh cudgel which burst into triumphant freedom when the detective's jockey shorts followed his Levi's into the Scotch Broom bushes edging the pretty forest pool. Not only was it a frightening shade of purplish-red with darker purple veins throbbing in desire, but it was at least as long as Leo's abnormally long member, and twice as thick! Surely no woman could accept an object like that! It would kill her, rip her sensitive vaginal passage to shreds!

"Yeah, I always do what I pleasethat's the way to get by in this-here world!" Ericson's thick-jowled face had turned a ruddy shade of rabid-red which exactly matched the hue of his mammoth manhood. "And if you're smart, lady, you'll do what your hot little body really wants without creatin' no complications."

Elena felt as though she were about to faint as the powerful male eased his body down beside hers on the fragrant early summer grass. Oh, God! this vile, vulgar brute was going to violate her no matter what she might do to resist him!

But ... but did she really want to fight against him?

"Stop! Don't touch me!" she whispered in a voice hoarse and almost inaudible with fear mixed with some other indefinable emotion. "Nnnooo!"

"You want to be fucked as bad as I wanna fuck you, lady, and it's no use pretending different!" Ericson's huge paws cupped around her heaving breasts, roughly kneading them into white-hot mounds of tingling tumescence. "And don't try no funny business, now!" he added threateningly as he deftly sidestepped a weak, poorly-aimed kick. "You'll be sorry if ya do! I got a gun, y'knownot that I need to use that when I got my two hands!"

All the blood bleached out of the helpless wife's pretty face, and her body suddenly felt limp and useless as if her bones had been composed of water. It was no use to try to fight back, that was all too clear. The one thing she could do to bear this ultimate humiliation was to repress the insidious fingers of wicked arousal which were tracing an unwanted avenue of excitation from the top of her head to the tips of her fear-trembling toes.

Or at least not let him guess that he's turned me on in spite of myself, she amended as the man whose name she didn't know slid his big wrestler's hands down from her breasts to her futilely squirming buttocks. Now his burning lips and sharp teeth were teasing at her tingling nipples while his thick fingers massaged her ass-cheeks, andself-honesty being a quality which she'd acquired, for better or worse, these past few adventurous weeks she could no longer pretend that she even wanted him to stop his audacious attack. No, this inhuman brute must never, never know that I'm every bit as much of a slut as he thinks I am.

"Ya like it when I do that to your tits, huh, Mrs. Greenwood," leered the detective.

Between the cleavage of her traitorously throbbing breasts, the humiliated blonde had a clear view of the rapist's lust-glinting eyes, the stubble on his square chin, the faint scar on his forehead. A sudden whiff of bourbon sent her stomach churning in cartwheels of near nausea, and she hastily clenched her eyes shut. He looked like a man who would kill without compunction if the need arose, who had no doubt already taken the lives of some of his fellow humans. Elena, simultaneously repulsed and perversely fascinated by the thought, shuddered violently.

"Nooo ... please, nooooo...." she murmured in a last unconvincing attempt to put a stop to the carnal aggression. "Youyou can't get away with this! I'll tell the authorities, and you'll lose your license or whatever it is you need to do your nasty work! I'll"

"You won't do any such thing," the self-confident brute sniggered. "Just keep remembering that I got lots of real evidence that you're no Pollyannareal evidence like tapes and photos that's one hell of a lot more convincing than some hysterical broad's accusations!"

There was no answer from the helpless blonde housewife save a strangled gasp. Even if she'd been able to think of some rejoinder to his damning statement, she'd have been unable to voice it, for the sturdy-bodied detective had unexpectedly and unceremoniously flipped her limp body over so that she was flat on her belly with her half-open mouth pressed against the fragrant June grass. It was all she could do to breathe as his hulky figure slammed down on top of her and his red-hot poker of stiffened flesh insinuated itself between her splayed-apart thighs.

"Lady, maybe I don't got a college diploma like your husband, and maybe I don't give a fart about art, but I know one thing they don't. What you want is to be fucked half to death by a real man like me, a guy who'll make ya do all the things you were always too uptight to admit you wanted to do! I'm doing your husband a favor by turning you on to what screwing's really about, by showing you that you're nothing but a whore like every other cunt on this earth. So you might as well stop pretending you don't want it and lie back and enjoy it, as the old joke goes."

He's right! Elena moaned in silent disgrace. She suddenly recalled the times when her husband had asked permission to kiss her pussy or make love in some new position; of course she'd felt obligated to say no, but afterward, lying lonely and unloved in her twin bed, hadn't she secretly longed for him to lunge at her and force her to do as he commanded? He's right, but I won't give him the satisfaction of letting him know it. Oh, why did I have to discover the truth about what went wrong with my marriage in such an ugly way?

"I know what you're thinking, bitch!" Duke gloated. "But pretty soon you'll be begging for more of my cock, even if you think you're too high-class for the likes of me now!" Gross conceited slob! Elena thought angrily, and she wrenched her head from the grass, intending to flash him an arrogant glare. Then, as she saw that he was aiming his enormous male weapon not toward her desire-dampened vaginal, but rather toward her never-before-touched anal orifice, she gave a low shriek of horror.

"Not there! You must be mad!" she was too stricken to know what she was saying. She'd never even dreamed that such a perversion existed until last week, when Leo had explained it to her after they'd seen the shocking uncut version of LAST TANGO IN PARIS, but her artistic young lover had assured her that only crude and boorish truck driver types ever indulged in this unnatural and unrefined act. "You filthy animal! Don't you dare!"

The detective's only reply was to shove his tree-trunk like legs between her thighs to spread them further apart, then to dig his fingers into her resilient ass-cheeks to expose the fear-quivering little brown anal ring. Guttural pants of lechery spewed from his sneering lips as he thrust his blood-throbbing cockhead directly against the inviting circle of cringing rectal flesh, for there was nothing he enjoyed more than taming a reluctant female into slavish subjugation with his mammoth member. After spying on Mrs. Elena Greenwood's extensive sexual activities for a week and a halfno point in making contact with her as soon as he'd found her, he'd decided, for he knew she'd not been ready to go home to hubby till now, and in any case he was paid on a daily basishe was more than ready to enjoy her delightfully ravishing body.

"Aaaaggghhhhhh!" screamed Elena, more in fright than in pain, as the hot, rubbery cockhead prodded against her forbidden orifice. "You can't! You'll kill me!" The sound of the young woman's walls only seemed to excite her molester more than ever. His rampant rigidity shoved harder than ever against the resisting ring of her virginal rectum, eliciting a second cry of genuine agony, and his stubby fingers tangled in her damp hair to tug her head from the grassy bank and wrench her swan-like neck all the way around.

"Dontcha wanna watch the action, Mrs. Greenwood?" he taunted in sadistic glee. "Once ya get used to ass-fucking, you're gonna dig it so much you'll wanna show that dumb college boy husband of yours how to do it to ya!"

The horrified housewife's clear blue eyes bulged from their sockets as she found herself staring at the salacious spectacle of the rapist's monstrous manhood menacingly making its way down between the billowing white cheeks of her trembling buttocks. The obscene sight, coupled with his crude comments, so stunned her that her body momentarily slumped limp and nonresistant on the cool grass. At the same time, her rigidly tensed anal muscles automatically relaxed "YEAH! Here goes, ya fucking bitch!" Erickson's bull-like bellow resounded through the forest glade, drowning out the lewd popping sound of his oversized penis bursting through the elastic ring at the end of Elena's anal channel as well as the normal sounds of gurgling brook and chirruping birds. Without a thought to the pain and injury he might be inflicting on the virgin back passage, he drove deeper, ever deeper, into the dime-sized orifice until his blood-bloated testicles were bouncing against the satin-smooth mounds of her quaking ass-cheeks.

Searing flames of agony sliced through the young wife like daggers-edged with tongues of white-hot fire, and blackness swam before her pain-dazed eyes. For a moment she seriously thought that she was dying, or at least fainting, and she was almost sorry when full consciousness returned a minute later and she was encompassed in a seething sea of physical anguish and mental degradation. "Stop! Stop! Oooohhh, ppllleezzzzzzzz STOP!"

"Hang loose, honey! You'll get used to my prick, even if it's bigger 'n hubby's! Just relax them muscles and let me fuck ya like you've never been fucked before!" As far as the cynical young detective was concerned, this was one of the most exquisite sensations his well-traveled penis had ever had the pleasure of experiencing. The hapless housewife's virginal rectum was so delightfully tight that he could feel every vein and crease of convulsing flesh inside her cock-stuffed channel. In addition, the tantalizing feeling of his lewdly swinging balls brushing against the firm-fleshed warmth of her widespread ass-cheeks was sending him soaring to rare heights of erotic excitement. In an effort to prolong these lickerish moments of anticipatory pleasure, he forced his conquering cock to lie embedded inside the tight passage, now and again letting it throb. Each time he did this, the pain-wracked blonde's body spasmed in agony, and Duke chortled in malicious delight.

Finally, after an eternity of torture too intense to voice vocal protest against, Elena felt the policeman's punishing penile pole withdrawing from her aching anus. As it withdrew, membranes of tissues were torn along with it so that her over-stuffed passage was left raw and chafed.

I won't be able to walk for a week! her pain-dizzied brain whirled. But thank God it's over! I was afraid he might be so sick he'd try to ejaculate inside me back there, but I guess no one could be so degenerate.

"Don't worry, sweetheart!" the private investigator once again seemed to read her thoughts. "We're gonna have lots more fun before I'm through with your hot little body!" Before the assaulted body had a chance to consider what his vulgar remark might mean, she was once again yelping in piteous pain as the hot, wet flesh stalk sank back down into her ravished rectum. This time, however, her muscles were less tense and the huge rod of flesh slid far more easily into her forbidden orifice. There was still a wracking discomfort, but the pain was supportable now. In fact, shameful though admission was, she had to concede that her traitorous buttocks actually twitched in wanton response.

"That's it, ya tight-assed bitch!" gloated the egoistical Ericson. "Fuck back! Wiggle that sexy ass of yours!" As he cried out his obscene encouragement, the lust-maddened investigator was not only pumping his potent penis in and out of her spasming anal passage with all his might, but also rubbing her sensitive clitoral bud with one hand, pinching her nipples with the other. triumphantly aware of the effect his practice-perfected manipulations were having on the curvaceous blonde's body, he chortled in sadistic satisfaction and slammed more frenziedly than ever into her clasping rectal tunnel.

"Feels good, huh?" he taunted. "Ya like it after all, don't 'cha?" Elena gave an involuntary little groan of regret as the man's teasing middle finger suddenly withdrew from her tingling clitoral bud, then bit her lips in shame at her wanton admission of arousal. Clenching her teeth, she made a last vain effort to hold her sensually seething loins rigid and unresponsive.

"WHACK!" The sudden stinging slap against her undulating ass-cheeks stunned the subjugated housewife, for a shuddering second. Then to her astonishment, something seemed to snap inside her skull as waves of wanton masochistic delight billowed through her lust-bewitched brain.

"Answer me, slut!" the brutalizing man ordered, thwacking his wide palm down on her pliant white buttocks a second time. He'd slapped her so roughly that his own hand smarted from the contact, but he scarcely noticed in the throes of his carnal excitation. "Tell me ya like it! Spit it out, you uptight sorority girl snob! Tell me how bad ya need my big prick pumpin' into your hot little asshole!"

Since she had absolutely no intention of responding to his vulgar command, Elena Greenwood was totally demoralized when she heard a shrill female voice wailing aloud in wanton rapture.

"Yeah, do it, do it! Fuck me in the asshole! Put your finger back in my pussy, you bastard! Yeah, do it! I want it! I need it! I need your great big prick! I NEED IT!" The voice was coarse, vulgar, totally unlike her own ... yet it must be hers, for there was no one else in the deserted glade. As the lewd echo of her wicked wails rang in her ears, the thirty-two year old adulteress realized that the last threads of decency were slipping out of her grasp and that she no longer cared about anything save the satisfaction of the illicit lusts of her flesh. It was a force too strong to be denied, a force which had made her life a nightmare of misery for the past thirteen years because she'd repressed it. Now she knew that her body's needs must be pacified, and that she need not feel shame or repugnance for this undeniable fact of nature.

I'm free! her mind reeled dizzily, but decidedly. Free! Thank God! At last I'm free, free, free!

"Yeah!" she shrilled again, thrusting her ripely rounded hips up toward her assailant in abandoned excitement. "Fuck me hard! Harder! Give me your hot cum!" At the sound of the housewife's unexpectedly ardent response, Duke Ericson felt his pent-up sperm seething in unrelenting impatience within his swollen testicles. Once again he groped for her nerve-filled clitoral bud, wanting her to cum too, determined that she would never forget this passionate incident beside the meandering northern California stream. His other hand dug so deeply into her pliant breasts so viciously that he could feel warm droplets of blood oozing inside his fingernails.

"Aaaaaarrrrggggghhhhh!" The shriek spilled from her lips like a triumphant battle cry of liberation, then faded away into a soft whimper of delirious delight as the most monumentous orgasm of her life exploded inside her nakedly writhing body. "Oooohhhhhh God! Uuuaaaaaaaggggaaaaaahhhhh!"

Hot, thick spurts of seething male seed shot from the detective's oversized instrument into the moaning woman's convulsing cuntal channel, and then both their nakedly writhing figures were transported from reality into another universe where nothing existed save the sensuality of flesh slithering against perspiration-slickened flesh, of ultimate ecstasy which excluded all mundane memories of tomorrow's responsibilities. They thrashed and groaned aloud, clutching at each other's shuddering bodies in wanton inhibition, as the bittersweet waves of rainbow-hued delight crashed over them, then fell into semiconscious silence as the sounds of babbling brook and chirping birds once more asserted themselves in the wooded ravine. Some hours later, when the sun had drifted below the soaring redwoods and cool June evening air was stealing over the forest, the detective and runaway housewife both awoke to the sound of an owl hooting somewhere across the stream and the sight of a perfectly full golden moon. They stared at each other for a silent second, no longer in arrogance or fear, no longer with passion or lust. Now, the look in the eyes of both the naked man and the naked woman was one of mutual admiration and respect.

"Put your clothes on now," Duke Ericson finally broke the eye hold as he stood up and tugged on his discarded jeans. "Gets damn cold in these woods once the sun goes down. Anyhow, we got a long drive back to 'Frisco."

"Yes...." Elena stood up too. Her legs felt shakey, and her backside felt raw and bruised from the vehement ass-fucking she'd received, but there was a tranquil little half-smile on her pretty face all the same.

"And a long flight back to Michigan...." she added after a second, pulling on her jeans and fastening her sandals. "It should be a nice flight, though, what with the moon and the stars."

"We won't be able to see nothin' but clouds once we hit the Rockies," the detective predicted. "Storms and tornados from Wyoming to Wisconsin, the radio said."

"We?" she ran her fingers through her hopelessly matted blonde curls. "You're-you're coming too?"

"Course I'm coming too. I got no more business here in 'Frisco, and anyhow, I'm curious to see this reunion. Besides, I prefer to pick up my check upon delivery of the goods as a matter of principle."

"Oh,-don't worry about Phillip paying you," the young wife reassured him as they started up the moonlit ravine toward their cars. "He's the kind of man who always pays his bills on time."

"But is he the kind of guy for the kind of woman you are now? That's what I wanna know! Is he enough of a male to handle the sexy female you've become?" Elena wished he hadn't vocalized the tiny doubt which she'd pressed to the farthest corner of her own brain. For some minutes she stared at the ancient, moonlight-mysterious redwoods, searching for answers to the nebulous questions floating through her heart.

"I won't know 'till I see him, of course." Her own voice was so calm and serene that it surprised her. "But I think so ... I hope so ... "

CHAPTER NINE

"Light's still on in the bedroom...." Elena Greenwood glanced out of the corner of her eye at the detective as he brought his car to a stop in front of her oddly-unfamiliar-looking Grand Rapids' home, and a little smile flickered over her heart-shaped lips. Despite his vulgar mannersor perhaps because of themshe'd grown oddly fond of the investigator during the past twenty-four hours which they'd spent together. The smile was in remembrance of erotic hours they'd enjoyed in his Chicago apartment after a strike at O'Hare prevented them from getting a flight to Grand Rapids.

"Oh, now don't use that tone of voice," she said lightly, and despite the smile her tone was already a little distant as her full attention focused on the scene she was about to have with her husband. "Phillip's not the sort of man to fool around with other woman!"

"That's exactly what he said about you!" The detective couldn't help but be amused by the young wife's certainty that the husband she'd deserted had automatically remained faithful to her. He had unearthed rumors about Greenwood and the barmaid in his first day of sleuthing around Grand Rapids, and investigation had proven them one hundred percent true. Now, since he himself had rung up the manager of the Town Tavern, a fellow who owed him a favor or two, and asked him to let Rita off tonight, he knew perfectly well what was going on in the Greenwood's bedroom; but he decided to wait and let Elena discover the truth for herself. This promised to be a most interesting evening!

"He's probably relaxing with a martini and THE WHOLE EARTH CATALOGUE," Elena remarked as she fished in her purse for her house key, led the detective into the darkened living room and flicked on the lamp on the end table beside the couch. "Goodness, what a state the house is in! I don't think the rug's been vacuumed since " Her voice broke off into a soft little gasp and her suitcase dropped to the floor with a dull thud as she glanced down at the coffee table. An expensive bottle of French wine, nearly empty; two glasses, one with a lipstick stain on the rim; and a flower-bedecked package of Eva cigarettes beside an imitation pearl and garish rhinestone studded lighter. For a second she gazed helplessly at the cynically smirking detective, her face wan and pathetic, her hands knotted into tight fists at her sides.

"Oh, no!" she whispered. "No! I don't believe it!" Somehow she had never seriously considered the possibility that Phillip might not want her back, even in her new state of liberated sensuality, because he'd found another woman who made him happier. The blood in her veins froze to ice water as she realized how much she loved her mate of thirteen years and how bleak her future would be without him. So intense was her trauma that she scarcely realized Ericson had taken her by the arm and was guiding her robot-like body up the short flight of steps leading to the bedroom level.

"Oh, wow, Phil! Outtasight!" a shrill female voice echoed out from the ajar master bedroom door. "Ooohhhh, you're doing such groovy things with your mouth!"

"That's 'cause your pussy tastes like honey, sweetheart!" Although the man behind her had shoved her right up against the crack in the bedroom door, it was some seconds before the horrified wife's vision cleared enough for her to see the salacious spectacle ensuing inside. When she did at last make out the two naked figures, she shuddered like a leaf in a gale and tried to close her lids again. Somehow, she couldn't ... something inside her was compelling her to watch the lewd exhibition.

"Lookit 'em go!" whispered Duke in Elena's burning ear. "Looks like the old boy's picked up some new tricks while you were enjoyin' yourself out west!" The first two things that the stunned prodigal wife noticed about the girl who'd usurped her place in the bed was that she was younger than she herself, much younger, and that her breasts were a great deal larger. Jealousy flooded through her veins like liquid lightning, and a sort of anger began to blend with her sense of shock.

"Oh, Rita!" Phil's familiar voice called out in a tone far more passionate than she'd ever heard before. "Oh, Rita, Rita! Your lovely pussy tastes too good to be true!" So her name is Rita, Elena thought dizzily. Well, she's not really prettyshe's got a shop girl face and wears too much make-up-but she's got that look that men like. She's sexy and warm and alive, the way I never was with Phil. Oh, it was stupid of me not to have suspected to find something like this going on....

The flame of anger which had sprung up inside her faded to a glowing ember of heartfelt determination to win her husband back from this auburn-haired adolescent. There was only one thing to be done: she must choke down her pride and walk into that bedroom. Yet even after this decision had been made, she remained paralyzed in the corridor, white-knuckled hands clutching the door jamb for support, ears smarting at the sounds of Phil's obscenely licking tongue delving into the strange female's copper-fringed cuntal slit, eyes glued to the sight of his thrusting tongue sinking snake-like into the pinkly glistening folds of pussy flesh.

"Go, woman!" Once again, the sandy-haired private eye read her thoughts. "Ya know what ya gotta doso get on in there and do it!" It was ridiculous thing to be doing, considering that this had been her private domain for seven years, ever since Phil got his first big break at Instant Igloo and they'd been able to afford this four-bedroom house in the best section of town, but Elena nevertheless found herself knocking on the door. Her first rap was so hesitant that the unclothed couple on Phil's twin bed didn't look up from their amorous oral embrace. Feeling numb as an icicle, she lifted her hand to try again, but before her knuckles reached the natural pine wood of the door, some uncanny instinct apparently alerted the young redhead to the intruders' presence.

Rita Gibson's long red locks fanned out around her head like the halo of an irreverent Christmas pageant angel, and her olive-green eyes bulged from their heavily mascaraed sockets as she saw the two strange faces peering into the bedroom. With a sharp gasp of shock, she pushed her older lover's burrowing head away from her vaginal "vee" and clamped her naked white thighs tight together.

"PhPhil! There's somebody wwatching us!"

"Huh?" The adulterous husband whirled around, his impressive erection deflating to a limp facsimile of its former ferocity as his astonished eyes caught sight of his runaway wife. She looked different, so subtly altered that for the briefest split second he failed to recognize her: her honey-goldhair was falling loose around her suntanned and freckled face instead of being tied back in a demure knot at the nape of her neck, and that body hugging, girlish white sundress was simply not the sort of garment his decorous wife would dream of wearing.

"ELENA!" he exclaimed.

"Yes ... yes, I've come home ... at an awkward moment, apparently...." The fair-haired housewife hadn't meant to sound hard and bitchy, but her words had issued forth in that tone despite herself. To her dismay, her husband's regular-featured face clouded over with fury. What she didn't knowcouldn't knowof course, was that his rage was at least halfway engendered by guilty contrition at being caught in this incriminating position.

"Well, whaddya want, bitch!?" he snarled, forcing himself to think of the whopping Diners' Club bill he'd received just that morning to drown out any silly sentimental emotions that might otherwise creep into his soul. "More bread? Or what?"

It was extremely difficult to reply calmly and tenderly, but somehow Elena managed to do so. I must remember that I love him and need him ... and that I've done him wrong, like in that Greensleeves song, she told herself as she took a hesitant step into the bedroom. The sticky-sweet odor of the teenager's tawdry cologne, mingled with the intoxicating scent of male and female sexual secretions, made her head reel so violently she feared she might faint. I love Phil, love him with all my heart, and we've meant to be together, she fortified her lagging spirits to keep from bursting into sobs and fleeing from the room, out of the house, away from the neat suburban lawns of placidly slumbering Grand Rapids.

"I want to be your wife now, Phil ... really your wife," she whispered. "I've changed, darling! It doesn't matter what you're doing now, or what I've done ... the only thing that matters is that we belong together, and that now I'll be a better wife to you so that we can make a new life together...." Greenwood gulped and shook his head in dazed disbelief. How often he'd dreamed of hearing his wife speak these words, without ever daring to hope she ever really would do so! The fantasy had drifted through his mind continually these past few weeks, not only while he lay in his lonely bed, or yawned away the afternoon at his desk, but even on lovely young Rita's nights off when he had his potent penis deliciously embedded in her melted-butter vaginal depths. Now he was half convinced that all this was simply another, more vivid than usual hallucination.

"You mean that?" he spit the words through tight-clenched lips. "You really mean it?"

"I mean it, Phil!" Elena was so disconcerted by the ferocity of her husband's glare that her voice cracked with emotion. "I really have changed! And I really want to be a better wife-in bed and out of bed, too! Please believe me! And please, please forgive me!"

"Yeah?" Phil barked. He wanted to believe her so badly that his longing tightened his abdomen into a steel fist of pain, and torrential winds roared inside his throbbing temples. Blood boiled in his veins like lava erupting from an erupting volcano as he suddenly lost control of his reactions and his intrepid phallus leapt back into urgent erection.

"You want me to believe that you've changed? That you're gonna treat me like a man the way Rita does? You expect me to believe that, huh?"

"Please, Phil...." This distraught young wife could no longer hold back her tears. "I know you have every right in the world to be furious, but please don't hate me! Please! Because I love you, I truly love you! Oh, how can I make you believe me?"

At the sound of the other woman's low sobs, Rita Gibson raised her head from the pillow in which she'd buried her burning face. Was this beautiful blonde really Phil's wife? she marveled, her own shame forgotten momentarily as she gaped in amazement at the slender, patrician-featured young wife. She'd imagined her lover's spouse to be one of those overweight, overbearing matrons who wore too-tight jersey trousers, too-bright blouses, and a head full of curlers bristling like the spines of some ghastly fish ... the sort of woman who was always shouldering everyone out of the way to be first in line at the supermarket checkout counter. Nothing Phil had said about Elena had led her to expect someone so young and graceful, so elegant even clad as she was in a casual pair of Levi's.

"If I was you," a gruff male voice echoed from the doorway, "I'd make her prove how much she's changed!"

Three heads whipped around to stare in surprise at the detective, whom they'd all forgotten, and for a moment there was total silence as they contemplated his words. "Make her ... prove it...?" The young husband's dazed eyes flickered from the smirking cop to his wife, then to his nakedly cringing girl friend, then down to his own rigid virility. "Yeah ... make her prove it!"

Little fingers of fear began fluttering inside Elena's nerve-tautened belly as she stared at the expression on her husband's face. Never in the fourteen years she'd known him had Phil looked so brutal, so ferocious ... why, he suddenly looked more like burly Duke Ericson than his mild-mannered self! He'd never struck her before, but she wouldn't have been surprised now if he'd given her the beating she undoubtedly deserved.

"Get out of your clothes, woman!" Greenwood took a menacing step in his wife's direction, his massive member jutting out before him at a ninety-degree angle, his eyes wild, his fists clenched into two tight balls of fury. "You're gonna show us just how different you are!"

"Oh, God!" Elena gasped in involuntary shock, and her cheeks turned from scarlet to bloodless white back to red again in the short space of ten seconds. Had Phil lost his mind completely? What awful humiliation did he intend to inflict upon her? Yet even as these despairing thoughts churned through her bewildered brain, she realized that her hands were obediently undoing the buttons of her blouse, and that deep inside her belly a little flame of masochistic excitement had been ignited.

Flushing, wondering if the three pairs of eyes staring so intently at her could. tell that she derived a sinful thrill from being forced to display her naked loins like a slave girl on a block, Elena slowly removed her white cotton dress and dropped it onto a chair beside her. Then, clad only in a brassiere and panties so sheer that her nipples and pubic "vee" were visible through the fabric, she cast a look of appeal toward her husband.

"Youyou really mean it, Phil?" she whispered. "You bet I do! Get naked and then you're gonna put on a show for me, woman! You're gonna ... you're gonna...." Suddenly a lewd inspiration spread over his face. "You're gonna finish the job I started on Rita here! You're gonna kiss her pussy!"

Ericson decided that Greenwood wasn't such a bad fellow after all. Even he himself hadn't thought of this excellent plan: Yes, this was going to be one hell of an evening, undoubtedly the most pleasant he'd ever spent in Grand Rapids! The little barmaid looked like she was hot stuff, and he was anxious to get his hands on her once the "show" was going full swing. From the look in her cat-like green eyes, he had a shrewd suspicion this wouldn't be the first time she enjoyed another female's caresses.

The detective had, as usual, correctly summed up the situation. At the onset of adolescence, when the precocious redhead's lush body had already been that of a young woman, but the boys her age were still playing with yoyos, she and a girlfriend had innocently and tenderly experimented with their budding sexuality.

Now, as Rita heard Phil's curt command, she remembered those long-ago evenings with Wendy Neilsen and felt a sharp tremor of desire shoot through her naked figure. The older woman's body, with its slender curves and golden tan, was intriguingly beautiful; and the idea of touching her before these two handsome men was so obscenely arousing that droplets of desire oozed from her tongue-titillated vagina.

Mesmerized into tongue-tied immobility, the flabbergasted housewife gazed first at her grimly glowering husband, then at the pretty teen-ager curled up in an incongruously childish position on the bed. Obviously she was not the only one whose personality had undergone a drastic transformation in these last three weeks, she reflected dizzily. The man she'd married wouldn't so much as dream of such a depraved punishment, an action so obscene that even in her new state of sensual liberation she couldn't conceive of actually performing it.

"Go on, bitch!" Phil's impatient order jolted Elena from her reverie. "Get moving! Strip down to your birthday suit and show us how good you are at eating pussy! I bet you'll like it as much as you liked giving your lover head after one of those fancy dinners you charged to me!"

Moving as though in a dream as crazily surrealistic as one of the faraway Leo Ireland's phantasmagoric paintings, the svelte blonde unhooked her flimsy brassiere and let it drift to the floor. Her trembling fingers fastened on the elastic band of her see-through bikini panties, hesitated a split second, then eased the wispy strip of nylon lace down over the round globes of her buttocks and her shapely legs. All the while, she was staring at the girl called Rita, who returned the intense look with a shy, quavering tremble of her scarlet painted lips.

I can't do this! Elena's mind screamed even as she took a timid step toward the twin bed. It's too much! Behind her, she could hear the hoarse, quickened breathing of her husband and the detective whose savage flagrancy had unleashed the last buried twinges of puritanical guilt from her soul. There was no use in denying to herself that their burning gazes didn't excite her, or in pretending that she was not deriving a perverted masochistic delight in performing this unspeakable act at her husband's command. Elena knew that not only did she richly deserve this humiliating punishment, she also wanted it in the fullest sense of the word. Surely, by displaying her liberation and devotion in this lurid manner, their marriage would be cemented by a better, stronger bond than ever before.

As Greenwood watched his sun-bronzed wife's lush body stepping onto the rumpled bed to kneel beside the unclothed figure of his mistress, his reactions were exactly the ones she'd hoped they would be. Love and lust mingled in equal parts in his boiling bloodstream, sending his pulsating potency into the most impressive hard-on of his thirty-eight years, and a low groan burst from his parched lips as he saw a flickering flame of genuine arousal glinting from his formerly frigid wife's big blue eyes.

"Go on, slut!" he growled, and although his words were crude and cutting, there was an undertone of tenderness in his voice which belied their crass context. "Put your cheating mouth on her cunt and suck it good! That's the way! Yeah!"

The honey-haired housewife's heart thudded against her naked ribs as she bent over the body of her teenaged rival and took a deep breath of her feminine fragrance. The scent of plebian perfume was no longer offensive; instead, it was exciting in the same way the detective's lower-class accent and scurrilous vocabulary were, and at the same time it roused a sort of empathetic magnanimity. The poor girl was almost young enough to be her daughter, and it was a shame that she was already being exposed to all the ugliness and suffering this world had to offer.

Or was it, really? God knows she hadn't benefited from her own sheltered upbringing ... Then, as her head bent down toward the delectable copper curls of the adolescent's unashamedly offered vagina, Elena Greenwood's brain whirled so wildly that all thoughts of anything save her preposterously pummeling passions were wiped from her conscious mind. So that's the way I look there, she shuddered in the throes of unexpectedly arousing lesbian longing. And that's how I taste ... bittersweet, like honeysuckles....

"Ahh ... ahahah ... ahahahah...." Rita's almost inaudible moan of unrestrained ecstasy resounded through the married couple's bedroom so loudly that it almost drowned out the labored breathing of the two ardently observing males. Her lavishly mascara-coated lids fluttered closed in an extreme welter of turbulent titillation, and her coral-pink pussy lips appeared to open like a budding flower before the panting mens' eyes.

"Lookit at them bitches go at it!" The aroused private investigator yanked down his fly, pulled out his proudly protruding potency, and began to massage its aching length just as Phil Greenwood" was unconsciously doing. "Look how hot those two luscious sluts are, willya!"

Phil glanced toward the detective, his initial dislike of the ruggedly-built bachelor forgotten by the intoxicating immediacy of his stimulated sexuality. In any case, he no longer had any reason to feel inferior to the burly private eye; He was the male who'd ordered these two lush-bodied females into this obscenely arousing embrace, and after this triumph nothing on heaven or earth could demasculate him again!

A discomposing cloud of carnal excitation swam before Mrs. Greenwood's glowing cerulean eyes as she delicately snaked out her timid tongue to taste the tantalizing droplets of female fluid which clung to young Rita's vaginal lips like dew sparkling on early morning a wild rosebud. Her mouth involuntarily inched open to nibble at the silken cuntal flesh, timidly at first, then with increased assurity as her passions gained total control of her reflexes. Remembering what gave her the most pleasure when Leo and the private eye had tongue-fucked her own vagina, she deftly prodded against the curl-fringed slit until her ovaled lips were gently squeezing the adolescent's nerve-filled clitoris.

"Ooohhh!" yelped Rita in unrestrained delight. She fluttered her mascara-smeared eyelids shut, deciding to ignore the bizarre circumstances and incompatible characters involved in this orgy and simply relish the riotous physical pleasure. Of course it was completely insane that her lover's wife was so-called frigid sucking her pussy as tenderly and skillfully as though they were the best of friends and had performed this forbidden feminine love act many times before, but what did that matter? The only thing in the whole world that mattered at this moment was the soaring sensation of pure bliss which scorched like wildfire through her naked loins.

Elena's arousal was intensified many times over by the younger girl's display of grateful rapture, as well as by the dim realization that the two males were pumping their pulsating, heavy-veined cocks with frenzied fists as they watched her lapping tongue and nibbling lips. A low moan, muffled and incoherent due to the teenager's convulsively upthrusting vagina, vibrated through the dimly lit bedroom as a warm gush of female lust juices oozed from her own unprotected vaginal opening onto the wispy golden curls of her pubic fringe. Her unexpectedly ardent response to another woman surprised hershe'd thought she was doing this for Phil, to save their marriagebut did not shame her. In fact, she found it impossible to think of any erotic act which would fill her with the old guilty sense of self abomination. Everything we do with our bodies is beautiful! The thought coruscated across her inhibition-expurgated brain like the bright banner of a rainbow vaulting triumphantly across the grey banks of sated storm clouds. So long as we feel pleasure, and Phil and I truly love each other in the fullest sense of the word, we're free to experience everything life has to offer! Free! Absolutely free!

"Wowwwwww!" The teenager's terse trill of tempestuous titillation was accompanied by a vehement undulation of her naked figure and a fresh gush of fragrant female juices. Elena half choked, but managed to keep her eager lips clamped to the spasming folds of young Rita's desire-drenched vagina. Overwhelmed by an irrepressible compulsion to bring this delectable redhead to a magically mindless orgasm through the amoral ministrations of her mouth, she gyrated her tingling tongue deeper into her deliciously damp vaginal canal, back up to circle the miniature erection of her clitoris, then down into the pulsing passage once more.

"Uuummmppphhhppphhh...." the sexually-liberated Michigan housewife mewled. Two throbbing cocks thrust to even more turgid tumescence at her wanton wail, and Phil Greenwood's feet moved toward his naked wife before he realized what he was doing. The detective, with a somewhat cynical smirk, watched the other man lurch robot-like toward the lush bodies of the two deliriously writhing females. This was undoubtedly the ingenious executive's first genuine brush with the realm of uncensured strident sensuality, his very first orgy; no wonder he couldn't control himself until the moment when it was time to interrupt the two whimpering women's carnal caresses.

Nevertheless, when the crushing pressure of her husband's familiar, yet alienly ardent, hands brought a gasp of eloquent excitation bursting from Mrs. Greenwood's cunt compressing lips, both the dedicatedly unmarried detective and the amoral young barmaid felt a slight spasm of jealousy. There was a luminous, long-lingering love in the eyes of both husband and wife as she twisted her slenderly graceful neck around to stare at his lust-ruddied countenance, and something almost painfully powerful in the mingled lust and tenderness with which they regarded each other. Both their healthy bodies quivered in expectation as his hands grasped around her lewdly uplifted buttocks, and he fell upon her with an ardency which was based on something more substantial than the basic fulfillment of their sexual appetites. Neither Rita nor Duke quite comprehended what the difference was, never having experienced such an emotion themselves, but they could not help but realize that this was more than an everyday orgy for Mr. and Mrs. Greenwood.

"Get ready, you cheating bitch!" growled the vengeance-bent husband. "I'm gonna give you the fucking of your lifelike I should have done years ago!"

"Aaahhhhhh!" Elena's first shrill shriek was one of genuine agony, for her husband's mighty member had sliced straight to the hilt without thought of pain or injury he might be inflicting on her unprepared vaginal passage. A second later, however, she was once again digging her tingling tongue down into the younger girl's convulsing cuntal orifice and simultaneously bucking up her cock-stuffed backside to meet each of Phil's punishing strokes.

He's giving me everything he's got as a man, her mind reeled in crazed delight, and I'm going to give him everything I've got as a woman! Oh, he's righthe SHOULD have done this a long, long time ago....

"Yeah, Phil, you make me feel so good," she raised her mouth from Rita's wildly writhing vagina for a second to gasp out. "I love your big, beautiful cock slamming into me hard like that! Oooohhh, that's goooooodddddd! Harder, darling, harder! Punish me like I deserve!"

Ericson suddenly felt he could not wait another second without getting some satisfaction for his superbly swollen phallus. With a leonine roar, he lunged toward where the auburn haired barmaid lay moaning in ecstasy on the bed and roughly shoved his blood-swollen shaft between her halfparted red lips. She gasped and chokedher eyes had been closed, so she'd not expected his ardent assaultbut then gamely caught her breath and began applying the same sensuous stimulation to his pulsing cock as her own fire-filled pussy was receiving.

Husband and wife caught sight of the newest orgy entrant at the same instant, and the rhythm of their furious fucking tripled. Beneath them the bed began making ominous sounds of protest against the weight of four frantically jouncing adults, but no one noticed the squeaking noises.

"Yeah, Duke!" the lust-demented housewife's voice rose so distortedly from the twitching folds of the young barmaid's pussy that her words were virtually incoherent. "Fuck her good, like Phil's fucking me! Fuck her like an animal ... like a whore ... oooohhhhhh!" Suddenly, just as all four over-excited orgiasts were racing toward volcanically explosive orgasms, the bed springs gave a last protesting groan and sank to the floor. Sweat slickened bodies were thrown into a crazy confusion of arms and legs, bellies and breasts, cocks and cunts, and shrieks of hysterical laughter resounded through the room as the climax-craving quartet scrambled to find an appropriate orifice.

"I'm cuuuuuuummmmmmmiiinnngggggg!" Elena was the first to scream out her passion. She neither knew nor cared whose huge hardness was spewing its jets of thick white sperm into her convulsing womb, for the only thing that mattered now was the wondrous release of ultimate fulfillment.

Anyway, she thought just before she reached the crest of her thunderous climax, Phil and I have the rest of our lives to make love ...!

CHAPTER TEN

"Yes, darlings, they're beautiful! Where did you ever find so many ripe ones?" A fair-haired woman, whose slender figure and smooth face were youthful as a college coed's, but whose luminous azure-blue eyes had a calm tranquility too wise for a schoolgirl, smiled and turned away from the loaves of bread she was kneading to accept the overflowing buckets of ripe red raspberries her children handed her. Bending down, she gave them each a floury kiss and hug.

"On the other side of the lake," the small boy explained. "Near where Daddy planted the new apple trees, y' know. And there's heaps and heaps left, Mom!"

"Well, why don't you kids hurry and pick them before the birds get at them?" Mrs. Elena Greenwood emptied the tin buckets into a big wooden bowl and handed them back to her offspring. "Then you can have raspberry jam to eat all winter longand raspberry cobbler for dessert tonight, too!"

A contented smile played across Elena's lovely face as she watched them race off down the slope leading to the lake below the farmhouse, their sun-bronzed bodies gleaming in the sunshine, their laughter wafting back in the June breeze. Then, as her ears caught the sound of her husband's pick-up truck laboring up the hill, her smile grew more tender than ever. Pulling off her apron to reveal a very shapely pair of suntanned legs in tight white short shorts, she hurried out to meet him.

"Success!" he cried out triumphantly, clasping her lithe body close to his hard-muscled chest. "My stuff's going to be exhibited in Lansing, Detroit, and Toronto. And that's not all! I sold onefor five hundred bucks hard cash!"

"Oh, Phil! How wonderful! Which one did you sell?"

"The best one, of coursethe big nude of you!" In their big, old-fashioned four-poster brass bed upstairs, the young couple celebrated his success until the afternoon sun had slipped over the horizon.

THE END
An Uncertain Wife ....(65k)    by James Bowie





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