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From: Uther Pendragon <nogardneprethu@gmail.com>
Subject: {ASSM} "Foretaste" {Uther} (MF rom wl)
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Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2010 21:10:01 -0400
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                            FORETASTE
                       by Uther Pendragon
                    nogardneprethu@gmail.com

IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 18, or otherwise forbidden by law to
read electronically transmitted erotic material, please go do
something else.

    This material is Copyright, 1997, Uther Pendragon.  All
rights reserved.  I specifically grant the right for all
reproduction necessary for normal Usenet propagation.  I
specifically grant the right of downloading and keeping ONE
electronic copy for your personal reading so long as this notice
is included.  Reposting requires previous permission.

    All persons here depicted, except public figures depicted as
public figures in the background, are figments of my imagination
and any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly
coincidental.

                       #     #     #     #

                            FORETASTE
                       by  Uther Pendragon
                     nogardneprethu@gmail.com


"Love you!" I called as I came through the door one Wednesday
evening.  My wife, Jeanette came in from the kitchen.  She had
something in her hand as she hugged me.  The welcome-home kiss
was wet and warm, even though I couldn't really feel her shape
through my rain coat.

     Jeanette handed me the letter from my dissertation adviser
as soon as I'd shed that coat and my sports jacket.  "You could
have opened it," I told her.

     She shook her head 'no.'  Her aversion to opening other
people's mail stems from an incident several years before our
marriage.  She was perfectly willing to read over my shoulder,
though.

     Prof. Macleod wrote that the last draft of my dissertation
was "not only acceptable, but exceptional."  This, of course, he
followed with a page and a half of objections to words and
formatting.

     "Your work is done, at least," she said.

     "It's all your work, anyway," I said.  "I'm just along for
the ride."

     That was an exaggeration: I'm not ashamed of the background
and interpretation which I put into my dissertation.  But
Jeanette had contributed much more than her skill as a typist.

     I have long been fascinated by the diplomatic square dance
that took place between the time of the Drei Kaiser Bund and
1914.  That Germany would end up opposed to France might seem
fated.  But the opposition of England to Russia and of Turkey to
Austria, let alone Bulgaria, was as self-evident, beforehand; and
these didn't occur.  Almost everybody danced with almost
everybody.  I had been in the process of choosing a dissertation
subject, torn between two aspects of this dance when France
released a trove of foreign-office documents covering the period
of the Fashoda incident.  (The French are not precipitous in
declassifying documents.)

     Alone, I couldn't have done anything with the trove.  I
passed the French test for the doctorate, but that doesn't mean
that I'm really literate in that language.  And the test doesn't
even pretend to measure your ability to speak the language.

     Jeanette, however, had been studying French on her own for
several years by then.  She and I flew to Paris to pick which
documents were relevant and to get copies of them.  We stayed in
*une pension* for the two weeks that our funds permitted.  (The
air fare was on credit cards and those were repaid with loans
from my folks, but it was worth it.)

     She read the typed documents, learned to read the
handwriting, and gave me a precis of each document.  I chose
which to copy, and we returned with an extraordinary amount of
paper.  Her translation of the new information, properly
credited, will grace my dissertation.  That credit doesn't begin
to tell, however, what it meant to have those summaries when I
was hurriedly selecting documents to copy.

     I dropped the letter on an end table.  Then I picked her up
in my arms, whirled us around, and gave her a celebratory kiss.
"We've won," I said.  "I love you, and we've won."

     "I love you, too, Dr. Brennan."  She gave me a nice kiss.
Actually, when I'm holding her like that, the kisses are her
decision.  Our lips met, then parted.  Her tongue touched mine.
I couldn't say how much I loved her; if I'd have given her
another celebratory spin, she would have leaned back.  I squeezed
her butt and cooperated in the kiss.

     When she leaned back to look at me, she was grinning.  "We
did it," she said.  "You did it."

     "We did it.  Celebration?"

     "Lamb chops!"  She had obviously gambled on the contents
based on the return address.  If Macleod had wanted the
entire dissertation rewritten, the celebratory dinner would have
gone to waste.  (Although, knowing Jeanette, I figure that the
lamb chops would have been a consolation, instead.)

     "After dinner?"

     "We'll see."  After all, she isn't only my research
assistant and translator.  She works full time as a secretary to
the president of a family-owned firm, and she carries much more
than half the responsibility for our housework.  She has her own
agenda.

     "I will never," I said, "ever, be able to tell you how much
I love you."   But after her delicious dinner (and after our
various tasks preparing for the next day) I tried.

     I began with a slow kiss while we were both standing.  I
explored her lovely mouth with my tongue.  I took off her office
dress, hung it carefully in the closet, and kissed the skin that
had been under it.  I proceeded that way until she wore just
panties.

     Tearing the clothes from her and dropping them on the floor
might sound more romantic, but that doesn't impress Jeanette.
Maybe dropping clothes on the floor is too much like my usual
behavior.  Anyway, when I want to turn Jeanette on, neatness
counts.  Besides, I had lots of time for once; the alarm wouldn't
ring for ten hours.

     I eased her down on the bed while I continued the kisses.
Her spine tasted of salt, and Jeanette.   Just before I reached
her neck, I stopped to ditch my last piece of clothing, my
undershirt.

     Her thighs, pressed together near her knees, were an inch or
two apart where they joined her hips.  I lay down full length
over her, holding my weight on knees and elbows.  That placed my
phallus just in that crack between her thighs.  When I nibbled
the special spot on her neck, she shivered -- she always does.  I
could feel the motion of her back against my chest and of her
legs between mine.  Most especially, those shivers surrounded my
shaft.

     I rose and pulled the tops of her panties down over her
butt.  She turned to let me pull them off.  First her hair
appeared, then her mound, and then the lips which would part for
me.  The aroma struck me and hardened me just as I could see her
fully.  "Oh love," I said.  I stripped the panties down her legs
without any ceremony.

     It had deserved the ceremony I neglected, though, for she
spread those legs as soon as they weren't encumbered.  I knelt
between them and lay over her for another kiss on the lips.  Then
I hurried a line of kisses down to her knee before slowing for the
upward path.  I kissed the inside of one leg all the way until I
felt her hair on my cheek.  Then I repeated that path on her
other leg.

     I gave one kiss to her mound before I parted those lovely
lips.   The aroma was maddeningly arousing.  When I lapped up a
drop of her nectar, more came out.  Finally, although she hadn't
complained, I reminded myself that this phase was about pleasing
her.

     "You okay?" I asked.  It would have been one hell of a time
to break if she hadn't already inserted her contraceptive, and
Jeanette was totally reliable about that insertion.  Still, it
was our joint responsibility.  My asking acknowledged my part of
the responsibility.

     "Yep."

     Then I licked up a little more juice before tasting the
delicate nubbin at the top of that beauty.  She shivered.  I
licked first one of her inner lips and then the other.

     I reached under her legs and up over her abdomen to her
breasts.  My fingers played with her nipples as my lips and
tongue teased her vulva.  When her areolae were puffy against my
questing fingers and her belly turned hard under my forearms, I
sucked on her clit.

     "Oh?" she said.  It wasn't really a question.

     "Ihm hmmm."  It wasn't really an answer.  Since I hadn't
removed my mouth from her vulva, she felt that as much as she
heard it.  I sucked again, even more gently.

     She shuddered three times.  I could feel that her vagina was
contracting an inch from my chin.  It contracted twice more.
"Ohhh!" she said, then went limp.

     I immediately abandoned all contact on the erotic zones.  I
slithered up in the bed until I was beside her where I could give
her a reassuring hug.  "Lovely girl," I said, "sweet bride,
wonderful wife, *sexy* woman."  I meant every word to apply right
then, but it was also a historical list.  The girl I had married
had been afraid of many things, orgasms among them.  The wife I
had now enjoyed many things, orgasms among them; but it didn't
hurt to give her praise and reassurance every time she lost
control in my arms.

     I must say that I meant all those things I called her.  A
Jeanette orgasm is a marvelous thing, and I had been right next
to the epicenter.  I felt a bit proud, too.  *My* touches and
kisses had brought about that beauty.

     I lay there, and hugged her, and kissed her shoulder in the
intermission of the words of praise.  When she seemed recovered,
I kissed all over her face -- avoiding the mouth which was still
busy breathing.  "I *do* love you," I finished up.

     "Love you too."  She took another breath.  "Kiss!"  Giving
her time for one more breath, I kissed her mouth thoroughly,
invading it with my tongue in the process.

     When she broke that kiss to breathe again, I moved on to her
breasts.  And, while my lips were busy with her nipples, my
fingers played with her labia.  Finally, I inserted two of them
to rub the bump on the top of her tunnel.

     "You!" she said.

     I already had an erection, and that single word tightened it
so much that I hurt.  "You okay?" I asked as I climbed between
her thighs.  Hardly waiting for her nod, I spread her lips with
my fingers and placed Junior at her portal.

     My slow entry there was maddeningly delightful.  I felt her
tunnel widen around my invading head.  All those nerve endings in
the sensitive tip felt every micron of ingress.  Then her
lubricated tunnel smoothly clasped the shaft as it slipped
inside.  Finally, her most feminine part held all of me in that
most intimate of hugs.

     With the physical sensations of that tender friction came
the messages that she enjoyed my entry almost as much as I did.
As I slid into her, she inhaled through her teeth with a barely
audible hiss.  At the same time, she spread her legs a little bit
more to welcome me.

     When I had gone as far into her as I could go, when I
straightened my torso and adjusted my elbows so I could fondle
her breasts while they still supported my weight, she rolled her
hips to thrust herself up around me.  It didn't add much more
physical contact, but it did add her participation.  This was
something *we* were doing.

     When our bodies were adjusted, when we had savored that
contact for a moment, when -- to be honest -- I had kept still
about as long as I could bear to, I began to move out of her and
to reenter in the rhythm as old as the race.  Here too, she
participated.  She followed my lead as faithfully as she had
followed my lead in dances decades before.

     "You!" she said, moments before I exploded.  As I poured
all the product of that long erotic night into her, her last
thrust upward lifted me above the bed.  Then I felt her tunnel
grasp me convulsively again and again.

     "Love you!" I gasped when I finally had breath enough.
Minutes later, I was able to move off her and participate in
mopping up the mess.

     We moved off it and spooned together in preparation for
sleep.  Junior, who doesn't know the meaning of the word,
"enough," stirred slightly at being pressed against Jeanette's
firm butt.

     "Y'know," I said, "this is really iffy.  But *if* Grand
Valley keeps me on, and *if* the pay raise for a doctorate is
enough, we might consider your going back to school full time.
We might not have much saved, but we are putting some away each
month.  I could teach again this summer, and you could take your
vacation as the first bit of school.  It would be tight. We would
have to clear it with Mom and Dad, of course, but they've been
hinting.  And they've been paying only single tuition this last
couple of years."

     Jeanette stiffened.  She lay silent in my arms, but I could
feel her stiffness.  Thoughts were running through that head
pressed against my chin, maybe she was redoing the budget; maybe
she was casting her mind back like I was.

     I had married Jeanette at the end of my sophomore and her
freshman year.  Economic circumstances had forced us to put her
education on hold.  While I took two more years of college and
four years of graduate classwork, Jeanette had been our
breadwinner.  My folks had picked up tuition, I had worked
summers, but she had provided everything else.  On top of that,
she had done more than half of the housework.  My studies, of
course, had been hard work; but they also had been intellectual
adventures.

     The only taste of intellectual stimulation that *she* had
received for six long years was her study of French, and she had
to conduct this mostly on her own.  I had encouraged this as best
I could, and so had my family.  My father, in particular, had
kicked in with an airmail subscription to a different magazine
every Christmas, and *Le Petit Larousse*, a short-wave radio, and
similar gifts on her birthdays.  Jeanette's response had been to
worry that she was being pampered.  Some days I had wanted to
shake her and say, "Look, can't you see that these people"
[especially your husband] "are exploiting you?"

     That would have been wrong as well.  We hadn't really been
exploiting her.  The situation, as she had pointed out herself,
had called for her sacrifice.  Since I hadn't been able to offer
relief from that situation, clarifying why she should be
resentful would hardly have been an act of love.

     Once I got to Grand Valley, she was entitled to one
tuition-free course a quarter.  An evening course in Jeanette's
case, since she worked days, and usually the same schedule as
the evening course I -- being a lowly instructor -- usually
taught.  Still, the schedule of evening courses wasn't set up
with people like her in mind.  The advanced French courses were
sparse.  When she didn't respect the accent of the teacher or
both courses offered were ones she had already taken, she found
herself taking distribution instead of French courses.  This
quarter, she was taking sociology.

     Still, maybe it would come to an end next year.  And, while
her independent studies wouldn't reduce the amount of classwork
that she had to take, it could well get her into more interesting
classes.

     I couldn't tell what of that Jeanette was considering, but I
could tell that she was thinking hard.  Then she pushed herself
out of my arms and onto her back.

     "We don't have to decide tonight," I said.  "Indeed, we
can't do anything until the Admin asks me back."

     "Bob?" she said.  I waited, but nothing else came out.  This
didn't sound good.

     "Yes?"  What question did she want to raise that she
couldn't raise lying in my arms?

     "What about children?" she asked.  I waited.  "We said we
would start a family when we could afford to.  I'm getting
awfully old.  If I start school in September, I'll be twenty-
eight then, and thirty before I'll graduate.  I know you want
this...."

     I wanted her to get her degree, but I had thought that she
wanted it too.

     "Well," I said, "we can't do either one until I have a
future here... or a future somewhere.  Why don't you think on it?
Run a budget both ways."  Was I trying to delay this discussion?
Not consciously.

     "I'll do that," she said.  After a bit she turned again and
pressed back against me.  We drifted off to sleep, and I left the
question of college for her until we had more concrete data.
(And until we had more concrete need of a decision.)

     On Friday, I sat down front in the audience to hear my
department chairman gave one of the lectures faculty present to
majors, grad students, and other faculty.  Dan was talking about
the humanity of the founding fathers.  He spent a lot of time on
Franklin's honorary degree.

     "You weren't pleased," he said when I came up after the
lecture.

     "I might have a reference for you.  Anyway, I have to talk
about next year."  We set an appointment for a week from that
day, since we didn't have a lot of non-class time in common.

     The next night, I called home on weekend rates.  First, I
asked Dad: "One of those books which are compiled *Scientific
American* articles.  These are biographies.  The article was a
biography of Ben Franklin centering on his work on electricity.
I need the name of Franklin's book from somewhere in the
bibliography.  I think the author of the article produced a more
modern edition."

     While he was searching, Mom talked to me a little and to
Jeanette a lot.  My parents definitely approve of my choice of
spouse.  Finally Dad came back on the phone.  He gave me the
reference.

     "Thanks, Dad.  Would you guys be able to swing another
full-time tuition payment?"

     "It's about time that we did something for Jeanette.  As you
know, your sister has another couple of years to go in med
school, but there is a lot of equity in the house now.  You can't
use us as an excuse."

     Actually, I wanted to use their willingness in the opposite
way.  "Well, I'm counting several chickens before they're
hatched.  We'll let you know."

     Sunday evening, having done all my history prep, I
alphabetized vocabulary cards in prep for teaching French.
Jeanette thinks I've overdone this joke, but -- considering how
much better her French is than mine -- it is funny how often I
test hers.

     She memorizes ten words both French-to-English and English-
to-French 'every day' most of the time.  When the words aren't
from the books and magazines she read or from the programs she
listened to on Radio France Internationale, they used to come
from a French-English pocket dictionary we bought (used)
specifically because it was so small.  Even so, it took her
forever to get through that.

     When she has learned the word, the card comes to me.  I put
the cards in English alphabetical order, as I was doing that
evening.  Then, somewhat later, I test her knowledge English-to-
French.  I actually give her three tests.  The first is maybe
fifteen cards which she has filled out in the last quarter.   The
few she gets wrong go back in her to-learn pack for the next
time.  The many she gets right, I store to go into one of her
boxes of known words.

     I test her on those, as well.  We are now on the words
beginning with "R," but I really doubt we'd ever get through
them if I added the new cards to the stack in the boxes.   Even
though I try to go through 25 words every day, there are still
thousands of cards left in the boxes ahead of me.

     Last is the English-to-French section of the pocket
dictionary.  I question her on that until she has enough new
words to learn.

     "Hoarse." I said finally.

     "Cheval.  Le cheval."

     I laughed and spelled the English word.

     "I haven't the faintest."

     "Enroue'," I said.  "Ee, en, ar, oh, you, ee-acute."   I
made no attempt to give the French pronunciation for letters.
"Have enough words to learn for next week?"

     "More than enough," she said.  "Though it seems to take
forever for your system to admit that I have memorized the word
at all.  It's mid-May, and how many March words did you drill me
on this evening?"

     "There are a few more than 800 cards in the pack."  (I keep
track of that.)  If you'd learned 300 in March, you'd have a
chance of six of those words.  As it is, five is more likely."
Immediately, I regretted saying that.  I couldn't have sustained
her level of effort for half as long as she has.

     "Well, I skip far fewer days memorizing than you do drilling
me."  Which is certainly true, or I would drill her on ten words
when I do, rather than fifteen.

     "Now, dear," I said, "I'm always willing to drill you.  It's
only *vocabulary* drill I'm lax on."

     "He says!"

     "Come here," I said, "and I'll show you."  But she skipped
away to the bathroom instead.  Later, however, she waited in bed
for me.

     "Ihm hmm," I said when I noticed her nakedness.  I kissed
her, licking her lips before seeking her tongue.  I caressed the
length of her body, from her breasts to her thighs.  Every inch
was responsive.  Her hand toyed with my nipples as mine had toyed
with hers.  "I love you,"  I said as I climbed over her near leg.

     Kneeling between her calves, I kissed her firm, upthrust
breasts.  Then I scattered kisses over her lovely, tight,
abdomen.  "You okay?" I asked.  I crawled upward and stopped with
Junior just outside her entrance.  We shared a lovely kiss with
tongue playing with tongue.

     She broke the kiss.  "What if I wasn't, Bob?" she asked.
"What if I were lying here fertile waiting for you to plant your
seed in me."

     Somewhere in my head, I screamed 'No!'  Junior, however,
jumped at the suggestion.  She felt him; when we're like that,
she could hardly miss.  She grinned at me.

     "One vote for," she said.  "Oh, come on inside.  I wouldn't
do that to you."  I slid into the warm smoothness.  She wrapped
her legs around mine.  Like this, I find her forehead easier to
kiss than her lips.

     But she'd brought up fertility.

     I loved the spread of her legs which clasped me in this
position, but there was no denying that the spread was really
intended to let a baby out rather than to welcome a husband in.

     I loved that taut belly that I could feel below mine, the
sexy belly I'd kissed moments before.  She put effort into
keeping that tautness while working as a secretary.  Would she
recover it after pregnancy?  Many women didn't.

     I shifted so that my hands could cup her firm breasts while
my elbows still sustained most of my weight.  She enjoyed my
hands on them, but I enjoyed her breasts more.  The smooth warmth
that I stroked, her firm conical shape thrusting the nipples into
my palms, this had been the ultimate that I could touch of
Jeanette for more than a year.  It still was a wonderfully sexy
experience.  What would filling them for a future child who
would drain them do to that firmness?

     And the smooth tightness I drove through.  Her tunnel was an
exquisite clasp around me.  It had been a tighter clasp the first
few times, almost painful; but it had stretched to accommodate me.
It would even stretch to accommodate a child.  What of the
tightness then, what of the elasticity which clasped me so
warmly.

     Even so, the idea of her fertility was sexy.  The idea of
her last openness to me, the openness of her womb to my seed,
undeniably excited me.  I should have been thinking of Jeanette
at this time, making sure that I brought her along with me.
Instead I was picturing her a tiny bit more naked, her uterus
without it's bit of latex.

     That idea combined with all the sensations I had been
enjoying.  Suddenly, my orgasm was moments away and inescapable.
"Oh love," I warned her, "I can't...."

     "Yes," she said.  She tightened around me and clasped my
butt with both hands.  All I could do was move my hands to her
shoulders.  Then I was driving into her and shooting my essence
into her.

     "You all right?" I asked some time later, maybe a minute,
maybe a year.

     "Could you move?"  I managed to move off her and on to my
side.  A couple of minutes later, I managed to extract the
blankets and top sheet from beneath me.

     Finally covered, she nestled against me.  She took my right
arm, which is the only part she can hug in the spoon position, and
placed it against her breasts.  She had both hands on it.

     "You really all right?" she hadn't answered that question.

     "Oh yes!"  she said.  "And I know what turned you on that
time."

     Well, she could turn me on any time.  She'd told me that she
enjoyed my orgasms, sometimes to the point of not wanting one of
her own.  Why not?  I certainly enjoyed hers, if not quite to
that point.  Still, I know my wife after all these years, and the
ease with which she sank into sleep signaled a quite recently
satisfied Jeanette.

     If I didn't follow her into sleep, it wasn't that my body
was unsatisfied.  My mind was churning inside a totally sated
body.  Was I pursuing the education option because I loved her
mind?  Or was I avoiding the child option because I loved her
body?

     I really did love her mind; I wanted it to experience a
college education the way that the best of the majors in my
courses did.  I wanted her to wrestle with whatever questions the
students of French literature struggled with in their classes.

     On the other hand, I did love her tight body.  I had never
denied that, even to her; and holding it like I was then would
mark one hell of a time to start.  I cupped the neat, firm,
breast -- avoiding the nipple which would disturb her sleep --
and committed the worries to my subconscious, and -- of course --
to the Lord.

     The next day on my way home from campus, though, I did worry
about it.  (In a full-length rain coat, I needn't fear thinking
about Jeanette's sexiness in public.)  Sure, she had priorities
which came before me even now.  If I tried to hold those firm
breasts or those sexy buttocks while she was cooking, she would
chase me away.  It was sweet agony to watch her dress on holidays
for the university which her company didn't take.  Sure, a full-
time student would behave worse.  I remembered writing papers
while she fell asleep alone; I knew I would get that back with
interest when she was the student.

     But motherhood, much less pregnancy, was full-time in the
way that neither of these was.  Lamb chops took a few minutes to
grill, even a cake was baked in a few hours.  A bun spent nine
months in the oven.  And it would occupy the parts of her that I
loved most.  For that matter, Jeanette was already committed to
breast-feeding.  Since that would give my son the healthiest
start in life, I wasn't about to argue.

     On the other hand, that would give our son priority in what
had been *my* playground for the last decade.

     On still yet another hand, the wife of a colleague was quite
visibly pregnant.  I love my wife, don't get me wrong; and I'm
certainly not about to break the seventh commandment.  But Sarah
Thorsen was so sleekly sexy with her swelling belly, that I'd
already broken the tenth.

     Whatever hand I'd gotten to by the time I came in sight of
my outer door, all that was irrelevant.  The decision was about
what was good for Jeanette.  That lively mind was entitled to all
the pleasures that I had enjoyed first.  Would she really prefer
the pleasures of parenthood to that?

     That evening, however, she didn't raise the issue.  Neither
did she Tuesday or Wednesday.

     Thursday morning, I was mentally preparing myself for the
first class while the two of us were eating breakfast.  She isn't
a morning person, and our breakfast conversations tend to be
short and practical.  "I'm going to be a total mess tomorrow
night."  She said out of the blue.

     "That's too bad."  Jeanette doesn't usually complain about
her periods.  But if she wanted sympathy, she would get it.

     "Could I have games tonight?"  This surprised me.

     Once upon a time, I had instituted the idea of 'games' to
diversify our sexual encounters.  On alternate Friday nights, I
would get to pick something adventurous; on the other Fridays,
Jeanette would get to pick what she wanted, seldom what I would
call 'adventurous.'  As we experienced some of that diversity,
the category of 'normal' sex grew.  Both from that, and from the
failure of some of my proposals, the category of 'adventurous'
sex shrank.  My games became less frequent, hers almost
disappeared.  Still, unless something else intervened, we went to
bed earlier on Friday nights and went to sleep later.

     But!  She could have control *any* time she asked, and she
knew that.  And we didn't get adventurous during her period,
anyway -- barring her occasional oral ministrations.  Besides,
Tuesday and Thursday were our nights for evening classes.

     Anyway, I heeded that warning.  I spent my office time
making sure that I was ready for the Friday lectures.  I came
straight home from my evening class, but Jeanette -- who had the
car -- beat me home and to the bathroom.  I made my preparations
in there, including another shave.  She was in bed and naked when
I got there.  I greeted her with a deep kiss.

     When she broke the kiss, she said, "I thought that this was
my game."

     "Anything you want."

     "Remember that 'T' thing you liked."

     I remembered it well.  She would lie down on her back; I
would lie down on my side across the bed; I would fit into her
that way.  I also remembered that she hadn't liked it.  I could
pet her like that, but only our groins touched naturally.  She
preferred much more body contact.

     I reached down to caress her groove.
"Do you want me like that?"

     "Please!"

     I fitted myself to her and pressed inward.  She was a little
drier than I liked, but she -- as she had asked -- was in charge.
She passed me the KY; with that lubrication, I was soon within
her.  The rest of my groin was pressed into her seat.

     "You asked for this," I reminded her.  It is a better
position when I'm doing a lot more petting.

     "Bob, are you really ashamed of me?" she asked.

     "Ashamed of you?  No!  I think that we have better
positions, but you put up with my experiments."

     "Ashamed of my education -- my lack of education.  Your
friends have doctorates, or almost.  Your family...."  My sister
is in her second year of medical school after taking all the
psychology she could as a chem major; my father has an MBA after
getting a *good* bachelor's in economics; my mother took courses
after getting an MAT in art history.

     "Does my family snub you?"  I knew the answer to that.

     "They are all very sweet."  To her.  My sister has said that
she can't understand what Jeanette sees in me, and Dad isn't
above asking whether I'm treating her well enough.  But they
never snub *her*.

     "Does the department?"  There I'm totally without leverage.
Instructors don't get their way on anything.

     "Not really."

     Having softened a little, I moved out and in twice.  If I
had continued much longer, I wouldn't have been able to stop.
"Do you want my hands on you?"  There is very little else I could
do in that position.

     "I want to have this conversation."  As far as I was
concerned, we'd had this conversation.  But I shut up; it was
Jeanette's night.  "If you're not ashamed of me, why is it so
important to have me back in school?"

     "Jeanette, think for a moment!  When you go back to school,
the faculty *will* snub you.  Not exactly snub, but you'll be an
undergraduate.  Right now, you're the wife of an instructor.
You're the equal of other instructors, since their spouses are
their equals -- maybe a little junior to assistant professors and
such, but so am I.

     "Anyway, their only way to relate to you will be as an
undergraduate.  I'm not trying to raise my status by raising
yours."

     "Then why," she asked, "is it important?"

     "Two reasons....

     "You gave up a college education in order to marry me.  I
want it to be a delay, and not an abandonment.  Second, you have
the active sort of mind that enjoys engagement with ideas.  I
don't want to stifle that.  That's why it's important, not some
fear that people are going to look down on you."

     "Bob!"  I shut up, but she didn't continue for a minute.

     "Bob, I did give up a college education in order to marry
you.  We are a family, and I've never regretted it."  She
squeezed me then, and moved against me and around me.  I had to
hold back from moving in response.  "Well, almost never," she
amended.

     "I didn't give up any engagement with ideas.  First of all,
I was never one of your sort of students.  I didn't stay after
class."

     "You were always bright."  Freshmen don't stay after class,
as a rule.  And she had only been a freshman.  We'd cut her
education off after that.

     "I talked about ideas with *you*.  Beginning in high school.
I'm a good student who gets good grades.  I work hard, worked
fairly hard even that year when you were taking me out all the
time."   She took a deep breath.  "I sit down all the time to
earn our living.  I handled that stinky paper I hated that first
year.  I clean and cook and pick up after you.  I've gotten up at
an indecent hour every day for years."

     "And it's been worth it," she concluded, "to have a family
with you.  I didn't give up classroom discussions.  Married to
you, I've had more intellectual discussions than any other time
in my life."

     Now, she wasn't being fair to herself.  "The discussions of
current events were your idea."

     "Most of the stories on historical events were my ideas,
Bob.  But I just push a button, and you roll them out."  She
pushed my belly button to illustrate.  My squirming was turning
me on, probably turning her on too.

     "Why," I asked, "are we in this position?"

     "Because I can't argue with you when I'm in your arms."
Then she remembered that the alternative for a family meeting was
sitting down in the living room or at the dining table.   "And I
think that we should discuss having children in bed."

     Now, to be terribly technical, we hadn't discussed having
children at all.  But the connection between our son and our bed
was that he would be conceived there.  At that idea, I hardened.

     Jeanette noticed.  "Oh, Bob, you think with him so often,
why are you two so opposed on this issue?"

     Now, I don't think with my phallus.  I hardly ever think
with my phallus.  And I wasn't really opposed to having children.
But I backed up the conversation a couple of steps.

     "Or you figure that I can't argue with you when I'm in your
vagina."

     "Bob, you can argue any time," she said.  "That's part of
what I love about you, don't you see?  That's part of all those
times when you talk to me."  She reached down to tickle between
my thighs.  Then her hand cuddled my scrotal sack.  I lurched
within her, almost coming.  "Come up here and finish this.  We
can finish this around the kitchen table another time."

     "Unless you have decided already."  That didn't seem very
likely, really.  If she was about to start her period, then
leaving out the contraceptive would hardly make a baby likely.

     "I wouldn't do that to you," she said earnestly.  "I want us
to be a family, and a family decides these things together."

     So I rolled over, and out of her.  On my way 'up here' I
kissed her breasts thoroughly, sucking each nipple in turn.
Despite that, despite the earlier artificial lubrication, she
was less juicy than she usually was when I reached her entrance.
I started to back up, but she reached down to pull the base of my
phallus inward.  She was wet enough for entry, and the excitement
from the greater friction started me on my pattern of moving in
and out.

     She pressed up against me on every in-stroke.  Her hands
moved up my arms and then down my torso to my waist.  "I can't,"
I said, meaning that I couldn't hold back at all.

     "Bob!" she said as I sped up.  The orgasm was boiling upward
and out my phallus.  As I pressed deeply within her, she rolled
her hips to meet me and pulled me in by my butt.  I shot into
that welcoming heat.  "Yes," she said and squeezed my butt.  And
then "yes," again, to welcome each of two more shots and finally
a fourth.

     Seconds after the last shot, I collapsed on her.  She moved
her hands up and hugged me.  Occasionally, she patted me on my
back.  When my energy finally came back, she handed me a Kleenex.
I cleaned myself off as I came out.  Then I rolled over as she
cleaned herself and the bed off.  I was far enough over in the
bed that she missed the wet spot when she cuddled against me.

     I reached down to her mound.  She pulled my hand upwards.
"It's still my night," she said.

     "You didn't."

     "*You* did," she replied.  "And quite enthusiastically,
too.  Don't you see that's the same thing."  I not only couldn't
see, I couldn't guess what it was the same as.

     But she continued.  "Bob, you want me to have whatever you
enjoy.  Now, I can't complain.  That's love."

     "I do love you."

     "Oh you do!  And that's wonderful.  And that's so different
from what I was used to.  Don't you see?  I gave up some things;
but I didn't give up what you think, and I didn't give them up so
Bob could have something for himself.  I gave them up so I could
be married to Bob."

     "You are the sweetest girl."

     "I'm perfectly serious.  I'm Mrs. Robert Brennan.  I wanted
to be and I am.  You hug me, and you talk to me, and you come
home every night to me.  And I know you always will.  You look at
those old magazines and those young coeds; but, when you spill
out all that lust, it's finally in me.  And, as long as you do,
I'll always have a place in your life and in your heart."

     "That's unfair," I said.  "I've loved you forever and ever."

     "Well, you do love me.  Nobody else does -- ever did.  And,
when you want me to have fun in classes like you did, that's your
love talking.  And I love you for it.  And, when you say, 'Oops,
Bob had an orgasm; Jeanette didn't,' that's love talking again.
Do you want to give me an orgasm so that score will be more
even?"

     Put like that, I didn't.  "Are you saying that you don't
really enjoy sex?"

     "Oh no!  Once upon a time, maybe.  But, even then, I
enjoyed your orgasm our first time in a tent.  And I enjoyed
yours a few minutes ago.  But, what you were really asking, of
course I enjoy mine.  Can't you tell?  And that is because of
you.  Twice!  Because you taught me to enjoy them, because you
taught me to have them, because I could trust you enough to have
one in your arms.  I couldn't ever imagine losing control that
way, but Bob would hold me and pet me and want me to come.

     "I enjoy sex the way you do, if not always.  But I enjoy sex
many more ways than you do.  I enjoy seeing *your* climaxes, they
are fun in an entirely different way, and they are profound, too.
Do you realize how much you trust me?  Do you realize how much
this means?"

     "I love you," I couldn't think of anything else to say.

     "You do.  I don't think you meant love right then, but Bob
loves me.  You don't know how often I told myself that our first
year: Bob loves me, and Bob wants me.

     "And," she continued another thought, "I enjoy having you
hug me and hugging you.  I enjoy having you inside me."

     "I enjoy hugging you, too," I told her.  "Who insisted on
the skin-to-skin in the first place?  If you haven't guessed, I
enjoy being inside you, too.  We couldn't do it for long
face-to-face, but we could lie with me inside you like this all
night."

     She giggled.  "It wasn't a guess, Bob."  She reached back
and fitted Junior into the crease between her buttocks.  "Still
my game."

     "I didn't think you liked that T shape."

     "I don't.  I mean, I like having you next to me.

     "Look," she continued, "how important is this college stuff
to you?  And is it that, or is it not having a baby?"

     "Same question back at you.  You know, you're awfully eager
to have a baby growing in you, taking up space inside.  You're
awfully eager to have a kid screaming in the next room, taking up
your time and attention.  He'd have to be your priority, you
know.  Parents act that way."

     "Do you really think I'd neglect you?" she asked.

     "No.  I'm really more afraid of you're neglecting you.  You
do for me, you know.  That's what this is about, you neglected
your education for me.  Now are you going to neglect your
education for my son?"

     "I told you.  I didn't neglect my education for you.  In the
first place, as I said, I wanted to be Mrs. Bob Brennan.  I made
sacrifices for that, and I would make them again in a minute...."

     "You would Jeanette?  Has it been good?"

     "I would.  There have been one hell of a lot more pleasant
surprises than unpleasant.  You know, sex was a sacrifice I was
prepared to make for you."

     "I'd have never asked you to give up sex."  How could she
think I would?

     "No.  I was prepared to give you sex for the hugs I needed."

     "I'm sorry."  I love sex; I won't pretend I don't.  But it's
not something which should please only one person.

     "Don't be.  I said 'prepared.'  That wasn't good enough for
you.  How much you could make me enjoy sex was one surprise.
Anyway, I needed the hugs and I still do, if not so often and not
so much.  And I enjoy them when I don't really need them.
Anyway, I didn't expect to suffer through sex; I'm not a
Victorian.  I just knew that you needed the sex like I needed the
hugs.  I sure didn't need the sex back then."

     "Back then?" I asked.

     "Yes, you egotist.  You have addicted me.  I need you now.
Are you satisfied?"

     Well, I felt better.  "You didn't seem to need me ten
minutes ago."  Maybe it was longer.

     "I needed you.  I asked for you.  I just didn't need a
climax.  Really, I enjoyed one; I told you so.  I just didn't
want a Jeanette climax."  Well, I certainly enjoy her orgasms;
but I want my own, too.  Maybe it is a man/woman thing.  Maybe it
is just a Bob/Jeanette thing.

     "I love you," I said.  That's one certainty among all the
peculiarities.

     "I know you do," she said.  "You want good for me.  It's
just sometimes you want *your* good for me."

     Was that what I had been doing?  I held her close and
thought about that.

     The night brought no more revelations, and Jeanette was no
more lively than usual at breakfast.

     I had made the appointment to see the chairman of the
history department to discuss my reappointment, but other matters
came up first.  Dan was understandably more concerned with my
reaction to his talk.

     "You seemed unhappy with my report on 'Doctor' Franklin," he
said.  I could hear the quotation marks around "Doctor."  For
that matter, his lecture had been brutal about Ben Franklin's
reputation as a scientist.  I was glad he'd brought it up.

     "Well," I said, "it's not my century.  Not my continent for
that matter, but...."

     "But?  But he was one of your boyhood heroes?"

     "It's not that.  Hari Seldon brought me into history, and
he's fictional.  It's just that when you American-history people
tell us that Franklin didn't do anything for the progress of our
knowledge of electricity, you cite previous American historians
who said that earlier."

     "And that isn't good enough?"

     "When the historians of science say that he did make
discoveries, they list the discoveries and cite a book he wrote.
Professor Macleod taught me that 'Primary sources are trumps.'  I
just wish you'd read the book Franklin wrote.  There is a modern
edition."  I slipped a card over to him; it said:

"Benjamin Franklin's Experiments,
a new edition of Franklin's
Experiments and Observations on Electricity
edited by I. Bernard Cohen
Harvard University Press, 1941"

     "Okay.  I'll try for interlibrary loan.  Speaking of Prof.
Macleod, and he isn't the only man who thinks that primary
sources are trumps, how's your dissertation coming along?"

     I put out a hand and twisted it.  "Comme ci, commme ca.  The
writing is coming along; the schedule raises some problems."

     "Your continued teaching has always been contingent on your
receiving your degree.  We normally grant one extension of a
year, but that is our limit; and I can't guarantee that."

     "My understanding is that my deadline is this coming
September," I said.  "I can meet that.  To do so, however, I
need to go back to Boston for the defense.  They can't get a
committee together before our summer session begins."

     "You're that close?"

     "Nitpicking issues of format.  I have it on a word
processor, but Macleod wants to see one more draft, and there
isn't time before summer.  I'd like to teach in the summer
session."  (And they would like to have me teach then.  Tenured
faculty wanted to go somewhere else, and summer courses tend to
be basics for people who flunked the first time.)  "But I have to
go back for the committee, and would like to go back for the
ceremony, which neatly corresponds to the last day of our exams."

     "Well," he said, "you know that reappointment decisions
aren't simply up to me.  But you have a good record as a teacher,
and finishing the dissertation on time is less common than not.
If the administration decides to reappoint you, I'll find the
people to cover your classes and proctor the exam.  Didn't you
help cover when George was sick?"

     "Yes."

     "Worry about this quarter.  Let me worry about next."

     By not stopping off in the library for any research, I got
home well before Jeanette.  Dinner that night was ramen over
rice, and I could cook ramen.  The rice was leftover.

     We had first adopted ramen as a meal when we were broke
newlywed students.  (Now there is a redundancy.)  Three packages
of ramen cost less than a dollar and could feed us in a pinch.
Two packages with vegetables or scallion tops in it could make a
dinner with toasted-cheese or peanut-butter sandwiches.  It
made, as tonight, a great topping for rice.  After a while, we
acquired a taste for it.

     Our expenditures had seemed to increase faster than our
income the first year in Michigan.  Our lifestyle hadn't felt
extravagant, but our bank balance looked like we'd been
extravagant.  Jeanette had needed a car to get to work. We had a
dining room in the new apartment, and needed a table and chairs
to use it.  The sofa bed, despite some great times, had started
being a little hard on our backs.  We'd kept it as a sofa, but
bought a real double bed.  With the time that each of us was
putting in on the dissertation, a second computer had made sense.
The rocking chair wasn't strictly necessary, but had been worth
every penny.

     We had seen the food budget as one place to practice
moderation, aside from having learned to enjoy the cheap food.
We have never gone back to the tightness of the early days,
however.  My meatloaf recipe is no longer a birthday treat; I put
a generous helping of frozen mixed vegetables in the soup water
before the ramen.

     Anyway, our next two years at Grand Valley had shown better
economic results than the first.  The furniture was paid off, the
car nearly so.  We were current on my student loan, had paid my
folks back for the airfare, and had money in savings.  We were,
after all, deciding between two different expenses which we had
delayed until now.

     I crushed the packages of ramen, "dujours" in our parlance.
When the water came to a second boil around the vegetables, I
dropped the noodles in, tore the packages of seasoning, emptied
them, turned the soup off, and covered it.

     When Jeanette came through the door a few minutes later, I
had the table set and the meal one minute from serving.  "Love
you," I said.  We had a kiss and a hug around her coat.

     "Mmm, love you," she said and unbuttoned her coat.  When I
slipped my hands inside, she relaxed against me in a long hug.
"Do I smell soup?"

     "Uh huh.  The stove's off, no hurry."  I cuddled her against
my chest, my hands innocently on her back.

     "I really am a mess, just as I said."

     I kissed her forehead.  "Can't I hug my wife without my
motives being suspect?"  After all, I had fixed dinner partly
because she had complained Thursday morning that her period would
be starting.  I knew that my access would be cut off.

     She rubbed against the slight firmness in my groin.  "Like
that?" she asked.  "Bob I never suspect your motives."

     "Never?"

     "Never *suspect*."

     "My wife doesn't understand me."

     "Your wife understands you perfectly."  She rolled against
my middle again.  Junior, totally in response, firmed more.
"It's just that your wife isn't going to do anything about it
tonight.  Wait a few days.  Want me to finish setting up?"

     She did, putting the rice and the soup in separate
serving dishes.  With trivets, we could have had the soup pot on
the table.  The rice was already cold.  But I will admit that the
table looked better her way.  We could have been in a restaurant.

     After dinner, she gave me another kiss.  "Thanks for
cooking," she said.  Then she had her own tasks while I washed
the dishes and outlined my lectures for the next week's history
of Western civ. class.

     When I came to bed, she was wearing a flannel nightie and,
my hand discovered during our kiss, panties as well.  Still, she
cuddled into the spoon position as soon as I lay down.  After
smoothing down her hair -- I love it but not for breathing -- I
rested my right hand on her belly between the navel and the
sensitive parts.  That was two layers of cloth, probably more,
above her skin.

     "I talked with Dan today," I said.

     "What did he say?"

     "Reappointments are really the responsibility of the
administration."

     "This is news?" she asked.

     "Not really.  I just wanted to convey that the degree was on
track.  Besides, there are the problems of timing."

     "And?"  She rested her hand above mine, which I took as a
sign of approval.  She took no notice of Junior, who was -- by
then -- pressing her nightie between her thighs.

     "He made helpful noises," I told her.

     "Urk, urk, urk.  Urrrk?"

     "A little more helpful than that.  He'll probably recommend
reappointment, though he didn't say so.  There is no reason to
believe that he'd take it to the mattresses if his recommendation
isn't approved."

     "Why wouldn't they approve it?"  She rolled away from me.

     "Any number of reasons, nothing that I can control.  The
legislature may appropriate less money for universities this
year, or give a lesser share to Grand Valley.  They may have a
project for the money they get.  Still, we get lots of students;
and they all take history courses, if mostly surveys."

     She pulled up her nightie until the side was at her waist.
She took my hand in hers and guided it back to a similar spot,
but under the nightie.  When she snuggled back against me, Junior
was now pressed into her buttock.  Really, he was pressed against
the wrinkles of her nightie.

     "It is the other side of the academic life," I continued.
"There is only so much you can do.  Remember when Peter got sick?
I covered some of his classes."

     "Yes.  Was that so hard?"

     "Oh no!  Though it did take some time I planned to put into
the dissertation."  I still have to learn the subject every time I
teach something new.  Peter who had taught that course the three
previous years, probably was more on top of the course than I
ever would be -- from much less prep time.  "But Peter is one of
the ones with grad students.  A couple of dissertations came to
screeching halts right then.  I did what I could; there aren't
all that many of us in European history.  Still...."  Still, as
she knew, a man who hadn't finished his own dissertation had no
business advising on another's.

     "Do you think they'll turn you down 'cause your wife's so
ignorant?"

     "First of all, you aren't.  And you shouldn't take the word,
'administration,' so seriously.  Somewhere in the admin, there's
a folder which has your transcripts in it."  Else she wouldn't
have been able to take those night courses.  "Somewhere in the
admin, there's a folder which says that I'm married to Jeanette
Brennan.  Nobody has both folders."

     "Well, the folder with my transcript says that I'm married
to you.  That's how I get tuition."

     "Look, those guys are hardly judging me.  If Dan recommends
me, that helps.  And he sure had better.  The problem is that Dan
probably recommends too many retentions, he is a nice guy.  If
the doctorate comes through in time, and I don't see how it could
miss, that helps."

     I slipped my little finger under the elastic waist of her
panties, meanwhile raising my eyebrow in question towards her.  The
eyebrow was a total waste; she had her back to me.  After a
minute, I eased my hand further into her panties.  She dug her
butt against my lap.

     "But mostly, they aren't looking at me at all.  They are
deciding how many history instructors to reappoint.  When they
look at the list, they'll count that number down and draw a line.
I just hope that 'Brennan' is above that line.  If they are
barely looking at me, they aren't looking at you at all.

     "Really," I continued, "it's a shame they aren't.  You're
charming.  You're intelligent.  You're friendly.  You're just the
sort of person that they *should* want in the university
community.  It's just that I doubt if that's one of the things
they consider.  The department, now; the department knows you and
likes you."

     "You're projecting," she said.  Clearly she meant it
psychologically.

     "Really, I'm not.  They all like you.  Maybe the men have
more reasons than the women, but have any of the wives actively
made you feel unwelcome?"

     "You're not?"  She giggled and rolled her butt down and then
up.  When she finished, Junior was trapped between her buttocks.

     "I'm not attributing my feelings to others just because I
feel that way."  Sliding my hand slightly lower, I could get the
middle finger on one of her lips below the parting and my ring
finger on the other one.  (Does the right hand have a ring
finger?)  By pressing with one and then with the other, I could
move her parts against each other.  Tonight, she wouldn't have
enough moisture to touch her clitoris directly.  "Anyway," I said
as If I hadn't paused, "have the women been unwelcoming?"

     "Well, they're polite.  But I feel such a dunce, especially
around the women faculty."  Two of them are still working on
their dissertations, as I was.  The others all have doctorates.

     "You're too smart to compete on their specialties.  As for
current events," I said, "you had a plan to deal with that problem
years ago.  We tried the plan, and it was a tremendous success."
This was an oversimplification.  Jeanette had proposed that our
evening meals feature conversations on current events, with the
content provided by *Newsweek*.  For the first years, I had been
ahead of her.  I had been paying more attention before her
proposal, and -- after all -- the study of history provides a
context for many news stories.

     After Dad started giving her subscriptions to French
magazines, the lead passed to Jeanette.  She read about events
that didn't make it into American consciousness, events before
the American press realized their importance, and perspectives
that didn't reach these shores.

     Dad gave her a two-speed tape recorder at the same time as
the short- wave radio.  After that she really took off.  She
would tape news programs in French and play them at half speed
while she rode back and forth on the MBTA.  At first, she played
them again and again at half speed and then at full speed.  She
almost ignored content, concentrating on simply being able to
understand the announcer.  Now, however, the two-speed tape
player only comes into use when she is listening to period drama.
She now listens to news programs in French every day.  She is
abreast of the politics of France, naturally, but also of the
rest of Europe and many parts of the third world that Europeans
notice and Americans don't.

     These days, I discuss current events at dinner less
frequently than I learn about them, via *Radio France
Internationale* and my wife.  And, meanwhile, the magazines keep
coming.  Dad switches them each year, which gives Jeanette
exposure to a broad perspective on contemporary French society as
well as the quite variegated vocabulary which was the intent.

     Working at the office, interpreting and editing for her
husband, working hard at the current events, taking courses at
night and studying for them, Jeanette has had less time than she
would like for reading French literary classics.  What she has
read, however, far exceeds the requirements for "liberally
educated English speaker."

     All the time I had been thinking this, my fingers had been
going back and forth on Jeanette's lower lips.  Perforce, my palm
was pressed against her fleece-covered mound.  Junior, who was
caught against her buttocks had reacted to all this sensual input
as well.

     "Bob," she said suddenly, "you're not going to sleep.  Why don't
you go take a shower?"

     Now, I'd had a shower that morning.  Still....  I took a
shower.  I was even hopeful enough to take extra care cleaning my
groin.  When I returned to the bedroom wearing a towel tucked
around my midsection, she had the lamp on her side of the bed
lit.

     Jeanette moved over to my side of the bed.  "Here," she
said, patting a pillow on her side.  That whole side was without
the top sheet and blankets.  When I lay down on my back, the
light from the lamp shown on my left side.  "Put your hands
behind your head," she said.  She unwrapped the towel so I was
lying on it.

     Junior was already moderately firm, but not yet stiff enough
to choose his own direction.  She moved him to lie against my
belly.  Then she kissed the base where the scrotal sack emerged.
Junior twitched; I might have twitched all over.  She adjusted
the lamp-shade so that my groin was in the center of the patch of
greatest illumination.  She knelt between my legs and trailed
kisses from Junior's base to just short of his head.  She looked
me in the eye.

     "You enjoy this, don't you?"  she asked.

     "Very much!"

     "Good!  Keep your hands behind your head."  She raised my
left knee and kissed that thigh.  Then she repeated with the
right.  I now had my feet planted on the bed and my knees bent.
Her forehead brushed against Junior as she kissed into the fold
of my groin.  She fluttered her eyelashes against him.  Then she
kissed around the hairline down there.

     I tried to steer her head so her mouth made more direct
contact.  "Put your hands back behind your head," she said.  I
did.  "You like this don't you?"

     "Desperately."  It's not as if denying it would have
convinced her.  "You are wonderful."

     By this time, Junior was fully stiff and hovering above my
pelvis.  With one hand, she pulled him downward until he was
almost vertical.  This caused a mild pain, but the clasp of her
hand on the lower shaft was delightful.  She watched me as I
watched her lick her lips.

     She opened her mouth as wide as possible, surrounded the
head, then closed her lips until I could feel their moisture on
the top of my shaft.  She licked the head.  Keeping her eyes on
my face the whole time, she sucked mildly and then raised her
head so that her wet lips touched every bit of me until they
passed the tip.

     She blew gently across the now-wet head.  I was close, so
close.

     "Pass me the Kleenex, would you?" she said.  I released my
hand to get the Kleenex box from my nightstand.  She took two
tissues while I held the box.  While I replaced the box on my
nightstand, she folded them in quarters, using my belly as a
table.  She released Junior to hold those two squares of Kleenex
in her left hand.  "Clasp your hands again."  I interleaved my
fingers, almost the same way I do for prayer.  Then I put them
back of my head (and on top of the pillow).

     She slipped her hand under my scrotum.  "Are there lots and
lots of little Bobs in these?" she asked.  "You know, your head
-- the big one -- is the only part of you that objects to having
kids.  All the rest of you wants as many as possible."  She
kissed up my shaft.  "Let Junior think of my being fertile."

     Well, Junior was quivering in desire by then.  *I* think it
was the ministrations of her lips.  She removed her hand from my
scrotum to wrap it around my shaft.  Again, she watched my face
as her mouth enclosed me.  She licked the head and then bobbed
up and down around me.  She renewed the suction as I started to
push myself upward and into her.

     "Jeanette," I said.  I was much too far gone to stop.
Gallons and gallons poured through my phallus as she continued
sucking.

     When she spat it out, however, it didn't overflow the two
pieces of Kleenex.  She threw them away before getting out of bed
and walking over to her nightstand.  There, she opened a can of
soda and poured it into a glass.  She stood drinking for a minute
before topping off the glass.

     "Scoot over," she said.

     I scooted.  "You are wonderful."  She is.  She's lovely and
desirable and sexy.  She's also so persnickety that she has to
have a glass for her soda.

     "Want to kill the Coke?"

     I took the can.  *I* don't need a glass.  It wasn't
particularly cold -- she must have got it out of the refrigerator
while I was taking my shower -- but it was wet.  It was diet
Coke, so drinking it after brushing shouldn't rot our teeth.  The
caffeine so late at night was something else.  But I only got a
quarter of a can, and Jeanette is immune.

     She finished after I did.  She hung my towel over the closet
knob.  She turned off the lamp and got into bed.  She took my
hand in hers after she snuggled against me.  "Cold!"

     "What did you expect?"

     She held it for a couple of minutes before putting it back
over her belly.

     "You are a wonderful girl,"  I said.  "A wonderful woman."

     "And you have a warm hand."

     I moved my warm hand under her nightie.  A few minutes
later, I cupped her mound.  Again, my fingers went back and
forth.  This time I was rubbing her outer labia through her
panties.

     "It's not being opposed to having children," I told her.
"It has nothing to do with thinking you're undereducated.  It has
to do with wanting you to have the experience you missed."

     "But, Bob, it's the experience you chose.  I wanted us to be
a family."

     "We aren't?"

     "We are," she admitted.  "More, maybe, than most couples.
We do talk, just like your family."  Jeanette's first real
experience of my family had been a series of family meetings.  In
those, even my bratty kid sister tries to stay on-topic.  Anyway,
the conversations that Jeanette and I have at the dinner table
had been her idea.

     "Your idea," I reminded her.

     "But real families cross several generations.  Your family
keeps traditions, Brennan traditions, Grant traditions."

     And that we do.  "Jacobs traditions?"

     "There might be some good ones.  I'd have to check with
grandparents and cousins."  If her opinion of my parents is
exageratedly good, her opinion of her parents is unrelievedly
bad.  What I've learned at first hand confirms the direction of
her belief, if not the intensity.

     She rolled away from me to reach her nightstand.  Before I
could feel rejected, she handed me the tube of KY.  I squeezed a
significant blob on my right middle finger.

     "Lift your panties, will you?" I asked her.  She pulled them
higher and tighter around her.  That hadn't been what I meant.
When you are lying in bed, two significantly different directions
are 'up.'

     "Give me space," I said.

     Turning on her back, she cleared away bedclothes and nightie
as well as lifting the elastic of her panties.  I was able to get
my hand in there without spreading the jelly all over her pubic
hair.  She had to replace the cap on the tube before putting it
back on her nightstand.  Then she covered us back up.

     "Brrr," she said when I finally reached her labia with the
lubrication.  Well, it was cold for that sensitive spot.  I don't
know what choice I'd had, though.  She'd been the one who chose
to leave the tube on her nightstand rather than on the heating
vent.

     I let that hand rest for a while.    "You know," I said,
"this business of being a family is all your accomplishment.
I've brought some customs from my family, like family
meetings.  But the structure is something you've done.  Or am I
ignoring things I've imposed?"

     "'Imposed' might be the wrong word, Bob.  Some things were
unconscious on your part.  An anthropologist would say that all
sorts of things were unconscious on both our parts.  But I had a
choice about anything strange to me.  I can remember your asking
if I were comfortable with your saying all the graces; it was
funny."

     "I was perfectly serious.  My father either says them or
passes them around -- asks someone else to say grace on a special
day.  I don't know whether Mom ever got asked, but *you* did.
I'm not into playing the paterfamilias.  I have a partner."
Which might have been a little hard on Dad.  He listens to Mom;
she can bring him up short, although she almost never does, when
he won't listen to anything else.

     "You offered me the option of saying the prayers, Bob.  What
you didn't see was the option of starting meals without prayer."
Would you start a meal without saying thanks for it?  That is
important to me.  "But that wasn't imposition.  I considered it,
and wanted to continue the Brennan tradition that way.  I just
thought it was cute that you hadn't considered it."  I think of
Jeanette in many ways, but most often as sexy; she thinks of me
in many ways -- some of them complimentary -- but most often as
silly.  "Besides, so many of your special prayers mention me."

     "Well, yes."  I started spreading the lubricant.  "God may
be the ultimate cause, but the cook is the proximate cause.
Besides, I am grateful for you.  I just need to remember it
more often.  And I'll admit that regular grace is often
perfunctory.  It's like saying 'I love you,' as I walk out the
door."

     "I'm glad about that too.  And I didn't start that."

     "Not the same thing if you had.  Anyway, I *do* love you.
Sometimes in the morning, we both need reminding of that."  By
this time, my finger had run into the little string.  I carefully
tucked it as far back as possible to keep it out of the way.
Jeanette giggled.  As I said, mostly she thinks of me as silly.

     "Well, I love you too.  If that love is faint in the
mornings, so am I."

     "Anyway,"  I cut out a few parentheses, "If you want to say
the grace, you only have to warn me before I start.  Do you
really have problems with sitting while I say it?  And we do have
the structure of a family; and it's your accomplishment; and, if
I've imposed something, you can tell me that.  We can change."  I
finally reached the center of all her feeling.  This was where the
lubricant was most important, and I had enough of it left.

     "Or we can keep it," she said.  "Grace structures the meals,
and it's a Brennan structure.  It's just that some of the things
we've done are important for you."

     "I've never said it wasn't.  For that matter, I really
apprciate the things you've done to structure us.  Even when I
wouldn't have bothered, even when I would never have done it, I
can see the difference between living in a home and living in a
dorm room."

     "You can Bob?"  She spread her legs to give me better
access.

     "I certainly can.  Maybe I'm more grateful for other
things."  I leaned over to kiss her.  Meanwhile my finger kept
moving.  "But I'm grateful for that, too."

     "I'm glad.  Beforehand, you seemed to want to marry me as
much as I wanted to marry you.  Afterwards...."

     "I found out that being married to you was even better than
I had expected.  But I wanted to spend time with you; I wanted to
sleep beside you every night...."

     "You wanted to have sex with me," she said.

     "Well, I would have called it 'making love' with you."

     "You would have called it by words I won't use."  And she
wouldn't use them.  She was raising her mound now, to give me
better access to her clit.  But, as far as she was concerned, my
hand was 'down there.'

     "Anyway, I wanted marriage.  You wanted marriage.  Maybe we
didn't want the same aspects of marriage."

     "Maybe."

     "But admit that you've enjoyed my aspects."  She might be
pushing her mound up into my hand, but she wasn't going to make
any such admission.  "I've certainly enjoyed yours."

     "Comforting hugs?"

     "Well, hugs," I said.  "And I enjoy that you want me to
comfort you.

     "Anyway," I brought us back on topic.  "Your putting me
through college was part of being married.  Consider that putting
you through is part of being married too."

     "And having children?  Is that part of being married?"

     "Certainly it is.  You have to ask yourself what would be
best for you to do first."  A woman with a BA can bear a child;
can a woman with a baby attend college full-time?

     "We have to decide as a family.  I'm not going to force a
baby on you if you don't want one."  This was important to her.
She stopped moving against my hand to say it.

     "A little Jeanette?  I'd love one.  The thing is, I want the
college more, but I want it for *you.*  I can't say that this is
what we'll do because it would be best for Jeanette; not if you
*really* want the other.  You're a person."

     "I'll weigh it up.  You're right, it is still a little
iffy."  It was a lot iffy.  On the other hand, maybe the first
hand, I was certain that I could rub slowly all over her
sensitive vulva.  By now I could concentrate on her clit.

     "You're the person I love." I said.  Something was wrong
with the way I'd said it before.  "Especially, I can't run you."

     "Love you," she said.  She was silent, if moving
appreciatively, for a few more minutes.  "Love this."

     That was the last thing either of us said about my
carresses.  Shortly afterwards, she tensed.  I kissed her while I
stroked her clitoris directly and continuously.  When she gasped
into my mouth, I let go and snuggled against her.

     She left for the bathroom soon after, though.  I took the
opportunity to wipe off my fingers.  They felt like KY, not like
her.  When she got back, she snuggled against me it the usual
spoon.

     "Love you," I said sleepily.

     She pushed back against me.  "Love you," she responded.

     Monday, a little more than two weeks later, I found myself
in a meeting of one of those committees the administration wants
the faculty to hold.  People made their points, and when the rest
of us weren't totally convinced, repeated those points as if we
hadn't heard them.

     "Thank God," I muttered as the meeting broke up.  I was a
little louder than I had intended.

     "You sound," said the man next to me, "like someone who is
not utterly convinced that a statement on the purpose of the
University will save the world."

     "Have you read the last statement?" I asked.

     "No.  Is there one?"

     "I haven't the faintest idea.  I wouldn't have noticed if
there were."

     "You have a point.  Sam Bronowsky."

     "Bob Brennan."

     "Brennan.  Heard something good about you.  Ham.  No, sorry,
It's another Brennan, entirely.  And nothing that I heard.  A
woman in my evening class."

     "Maybe it is my wife, Jeanette," I said.  "Do you teach
sociology?"

     "Yes," he said, "possibly my best student.  Writes clear
papers.  Don't help her with them, do you?"  I assured him that
any writing help flowed in the opposite direction.  I felt proud.
If his evening class was anything like mine, "writes clear
papers" was a unique achievement.

     Maybe that pride added a few percent to the feeling as I
called out "Love you," immediately after I closed the apartment
door.

     "Love you.  Letter on the sofa."  It was hard to miss.  I
glanced at the university envelope, then dropped my coat before I
tore it open.  Jeanette came in from the kitchen.  "Read it
first."

     I did.  "Reappointment."  That was expected, if reassuring.
"Assistant Prof. -- *tenure track* -- a year from September, if
the degree is completed on time."

     She wrapped her arms and legs around me.  Her lips were hard
against mine, but her unbound breasts were soft against my chest.
Now, Jeanette in an Iranian chadoor would be more arousing than
all the coeds in their spray-on jeans; Jeanette without a
brassiere, Jeanette against him without a brassiere, would get an
erection from a statue.  But, as they say, there is more.  My
wife is a feminist on many things, and can pull me up short when
I take her assent for granted.  In bed, however, she prefers the
responsive to the initiating role.  When she dresses without her
bra, she is amenable to my advances for immediate sex.  Junior,
like a little Pavlovian puppy, rose to the signal that he would
be fed.  "Can dinner wait?"  I asked as I started for the
bedroom.  "I love you dearly."  I wanted to get the coming-home
"I love you" out of the way before we got any deeper into the
serious stuff.  The thought was a little silly in context, but we
always said it after the first kiss.

     "And I love *you*.  Dinner will wait."  After negotiating
the doorway, I set her down and we had another kiss.  I'd
expected to see the impish smile that she usually wears when she
springs one of these delightful ambushes.  Instead, her
expression was almost the same desperate solemnity that she had
worn walking down the aisle towards me.  I tried to process this
datum, but was too distracted.  "You do the shirt," said Jeanette
as she dropped and began untying my shoes.  I was briefly unhappy
about that; my feet had done more sweating than I wanted her to
smell.  Clearly however, the lady succumbing to my advances had
no intention of consulting me on the script.

     Naked, I removed the blouse and skirt which were her entire
costume.  She was quite damp, but her nipples were not erect.  I
took care of that little problem before pushing her toward the
bed.  "Are you okay?" I asked perfunctorily.  With the time she'd
spent planning this, she wouldn't have ignored contraception, not
Jeanette.  Hearing no answer, I looked in her face.  She shook
her head while biting her lip.

     "You said that we could," she said.  The surprise broke me
out of my rut.  She dropped onto the bed and sprawled out.  "Look
at me."  I caught her meaning.  The breasts which I loved to kiss
and suck and hold were really intended to feed a child.  The wide
hips and separated thighs which had cradled me so often and so
delightfully were separated to allow a baby's passage.  On the
other hand, I loved that body almost as much as the spirit which
inhabited it.  Did I want those pert breasts distended while
Jeanette nursed and droopy ever after?  Did I want that svelte
waist and smooth skin swollen?  Sometimes my modest proportions
were too much for her tunnel, and I had to move slowly until she
accommodated me.  How could it endure being stretched by the head
of a baby?

     On the third hand (or perhaps another organ), I found the
situation incredibly erotic.  Woman is a mystery, and this
particular woman is more mysterious than any other.  I had
pierced the mystery of her virginity, had seen and touched and
tasted the mystery of her vulva, without removing more than the
outer veils from the central mystery.  Fertility is yet another
mystery, and I was beguiled -- if a trifle frightened.

     "Are you certain?" I asked.

     "I'm *decided*," she said.  Certainty in our situation would
be foolish; and my wife, her choice of mate excepted, is never a
fool.  She'd made her decision, however, and would live with it.

     "Oh darling.  Oh God, darling," I babbled.  I was almost
crying.  We were not being precipitate; we'd discussed the matter
to death.  Now, however, we were committed.

     I knelt beside the bed to kiss her again.  Somehow, we had
the sort of tremulous, desperate, kiss that we had shared when
the kiss was as far as we went.  Her temples were wet when I left
her mouth.  I kissed those tears away.

     I got totally hung up on her breasts, kissing them all over
between sucks on her nipples.  I think that I was asserting my
claim before some baby displaced me.  Finally, I kissed lower.

     "The pad?" I asked hopefully.  This raised her for my mouth.
We had oral sex less often than not but used it for our special
times.  This time was special, but I couldn't argue if she saw it
as a time to concentrate on the genital aspects.

     "Please," she said.  She lifted her hips as I slid the pad
under her.  I knelt between her feet and kissed her thighs.
When I reached their juncture, she was spread open to receive my
kiss.  The most enticing aroma in the world led me to her center.
If you had told me the previous week that there could be a more
delightful taste than the one that I had then, I would have
scoffed.  The taste this evening, however, was as heady but
slightly sweeter.  I blamed my imagination for a moment, thinking
that the consciousness that this act could end in a child must be
misleading my senses.  Then I realized that this was the first
time that I had tasted her when she had not inserted her
diaphragm and spermicide.  Every previous time, there had been
the slightest bitterness hidden in the taste.

     I tore myself away from the feast long enough to say, "You
are glorious."  Then I returned to teasing my darling.  When I
felt her tense on the edge of orgasm, I inserted two fingers.  I
found the spot on the front of her tunnel and stroked that while
I sucked the nubbin on top of her valley.  My shifting had
inevitably cut into her tension, but soon it returned.  Then it
redoubled.  She bucked under my lips before I felt a rhythmic
grip on the fingers that I had inserted.  My beloved came in a
rolling orgasm.

     Then she fell limp.  I covered her perspiring body with the
sheet.  Lying next to my sweet wife and hugging her, I felt
delighted in her recent pleasure, protective of her present
defenselessness, reverent toward that mystery of future
fertility, and a little proud of my part in the proceedings.
"Bob loves Jeanette," I crooned.  "Sweet, dearest, darling, you
are safe in my arms."

     "Oh Bob," she said when she'd recovered.  That was my cue to
kiss her.  She hugged me when I did.

     I was conscious of the soft breasts under me during the
kiss.  I stroked her side, and my strokes grew more intimate as
her nipples hardened.  "Love you," I said on the way from her
mouth to her breast.  Soon she returned to the state of tension.

     When I started to move down in the bed to get between her
legs, she said, "Help me with the pillow."  She then tried to get
her pillow between her hips and the pad.  I braced myself and
lifted her legs while she slipped the pillow where she wanted it.
I couldn't resist kissing that sweet derriere before lowering it
onto the pillow.  I hadn't figured out what she was trying to do,
but anything which allowed our union was fine with me.

     The position was too much of a temptation, though.  Once
between her legs I kissed and licked her center until the scent
and taste aroused my phallus to demand participation.  Then I
slid up her body and kissed her forehead before slipping in.
Enclosed in her, I paused to savor the warm welcome and to say,
"Love you; love you a lot," before beginning the ancient rhythm.

     When we were first married, we experimented with most
positions.  Some we found wanting and discarded, some we found
wanton and retained.  I had found as the years progressed,
however, that fairly subtle variations in position or motion
could produce great changes in sensation.  At this angle, I could
sink more deeply into Jeanette than I ever had before.  She, on
the other hand, could hardly move her torso.  She crossed her
legs behind me after a little experimentation and contented
herself with putting pressure on my butt with her ankle and heel.

     I stopped my strokes in favor of a rotary motion of my hips,
stirring within her and rubbing my groin against hers.  I could
tell that she was approaching her orgasm when she groaned
something which sounded like "You," and tried to reach between
us.

     "Do you want me to go first?"

     "Yes," she said clearly.

     I resumed stroking in and out, setting the rhythm that I
knew would take me over.  When my phallus swelled in
anticipation, she grasped the base with two fingers.  "Oh love!"
was all that I could say before I came in gouts and grunts.

     "Stay there," she demanded before she, too, was taken beyond
coherence.  Her moans were accompanied by clutches at my
suddenly-sensitive member and the drumming of her heels on my
thighs.  I did my best to obey.  I stretched above my love on
extended arms, letting my bones carry the weight that my muscles
were too weak to carry at that moment.

     I watched my dearest in the twilight.  Her torso shivered in
time with her inner clutches, and there was a grimace on her
face.  Then she relaxed and blushed at her earlier insistence.
The pink reached her breasts, and her nipples came out again to
say hello before they slowly sank away.

     A final quiver of her tunnel forced my shaft out.  She
looked disappointed, but clearly that cork could not be put back
into that bottle.  I moved off her and to her side.

     "I love you," I said.  She was still up on the pillow, but I
hugged her across her shoulders with my right arm.  "I love you
desperately."

     "It's all right, then?" she asked.

     "All right?  It was tremendous.  You are wonderful."

     "I mean all right about the baby."

     "Having a baby will be marvelous.  Depriving you of an
education for years more will be terribly unfair."

     "Oh Bob, do you think your colleagues will sneer at me?"

     "For having a baby?  Their ZPG commitment goes only so far.
Haven't you seen how all the women cluster around Sarah Thorsen,
and that kid will be her fourth."

     "For not having an education.  Everybody around you knows so
much more than I do."

     "You've been to faculty parties.  When does the conversation
leave you behind?"

     She giggled at that.  We are both ignorant of the present TV
programs.  When we were first married, we had decided that we
could afford neither the money nor the time for television.  By
the time that we could afford the money, Jeanette was deep into
her French and didn't want to spend several hours a day being
entertained in English.  When we were home but not dealing with
each other, I read and Jeanette either read or listened to her
French radio.

     "Okay," she said.  "It's more often 'West Wing' than plate
tectonics."  I resisted the opening.  I have read *Scientific
American* since my youth (and there are still articles which I
can't follow).  Jeanette has an unreasonable overestimate of the
average difficulty of the magazine.  I have gradually tempted her
into reading selected articles on history and paleontology.  She
could have known about plate tectonics if she hadn't been so
stubborn.  On the other hand, Jeanette *is* stubborn; and I love
her, stubbornness and all.  Right then, I maybe loved her more
than usual.

     While I had been thinking that, Jeanette had been thinking
her own thoughts.  "Do you feel outgunned at departmental
parties?" I asked her.

     "Not really.  But you seem to worry about my getting enough
education."

     "I worry about your getting the college education that
marriage robbed you of.  That doesn't mean that you come off as
uneducated in casual conversation.  I never worried about that."
The truth is more complicated, as truth so often is.  I had
really worried about depriving her of her education.  When she
had first brought up the question of her appearing jejune,
however, it had seemed plausible.  It no longer did.

     I had married a girl, after all, not yet nineteen and often
unsure of herself.  This was a woman.  She ran an office and a
household.  She had managed to navigate through the public
transportation systems of Paris and Boston.  (Boston is harder.)
When we had discovered that many of the documents that we wanted
were handwritten or partially handwritten, she'd found a library
with a handwriting text for *eleves* from 1911.  We still have
photocopies of that as well as of the documents.

     "Well," she finally said, "nobody seems to look down on me."
That's an understatement.  Jeanette makes conquests wherever she
goes, not exclusively male.  Which reminded me.

     "I met your current instructor today.  He says you're a
great student, and that he really likes your papers."

     "That's nice," she said, "but the standards for
undergraduates might be a little lower than those for faculty
wives."

     "Well a PHT counts."  That's 'Putting Hubby Through.'  Then
I changed the subject.  "You look awfully uncomfortable.  Let me
remove that pillow."

     "No!"

     "You going to stay like that until the rabbit dies?"

     "Ihm hmm.  Which reminds me, would you do me a favor?"

     "For the sexiest woman in the whole world, I'd do anything."

     "Yeah.  But what would you do for me?" she asked.

     "You are the sexiest woman in the whole wide world," I said.
"For you I would wrestle grizzlies, swim the Atlantic, climb the
highest mountain, vacuum a carpet, anything."

     "Would you finish up dinner?" she said.  "It's ramen and
sandwiches."

     "Well ... I dunno about that.  Do I have to crush the
dujours?"

     "Nope.  I already crushed them."

     I kissed her belly between hair and navel, about where sperm
was meeting ovum if her wishes were coming true.  "Swim well," I
said.  She giggled.

     "And," she said as I carried shorts and trousers out the
door, "you'd only vacuum the *center* of a carpet for me."

     Washed and partly dressed, I finished fixing the ramen.  She
had the vegies already in the water and the blocks of noodles
broken into small chunks.  I started the water boiling before
finding ham sandwiches on a plate in the refrigerator.  Jeanette
had been a real busy girl since she had seen the envelope.  Since
I crushed the blocks for her as often as not, her crushing them
this time was a release of nervous energy while she was waiting
for me.  Or, maybe, she had anticipated my joke.

     I dished up the soup, grabbed the sandwiches and squeeze
bottles of catsup and mustard, and put everything including
napkins and a trivet on a tray.  Jeanette had covered herself
with a sheet, but she still looked both ridiculous and sexy in
that position.  I put mustard on her sandwich before handing it
to her.
     "Now," she said, "that is care."
     "No problem.  There are lots of lips to kiss which won't get
mustard on them."  Jeanette and I love each other dearly, but we
aren't particularly compatible.  Her liking for mustard is only
one example.  "I suppose," I added, "that you want me to feed you
your soup, as well."

     "Would you?  That would be sweet."

     "Put my pillow under your head.  I won't pour it down your
throat. You'd choke."  So I put the trivet on the sheet, just
south of her breasts, and spoon fed her while I ate a sandwich
with my left hand.

     "The spoon," she said, "would be less likely to spill if you
kept your arm away from my breast while it is full."

     "I'm the one who washes the sheets," I responded.  "Anyway,
they'll need a washing after this meal."  Just to please her,
however, I changed the path of the full spoon.  "I suppose that
you have some complaint about the return path as well."  She
didn't, but her giggles spilled more of the soup than would ever
have dripped off the spoon.

     As you might guess, this meal took quite a long time.
Jeanette finally had to visit the bathroom.  We finished in the
kitchen after that.

     "Let's eat out night after tomorrow to celebrate this new
contract," I suggested.  "Do you want to pick me up after work,
or should I come home first?"  I would be teaching an evening
class the night in between, too rushed for any celebration.

     "I don't know, Bob.  I think we have to tighten the budget
again.  We still aren't living on your salary, and *three* of us
might have to fairly soon."

     "Not for the next nine months, certainly."

     "But still."  We had handed in new W4s at the new year.  All
the deductions were on my check, and hers represented her after-
tax earnings.  This made it easy to see that, even when the car
payments ended, we would be spending more than I brought home.
I'd get a little more in the fall, with added seniority and a
doctorate; but, as she had said, still....  We don't want to send
her back to the office when our son is still in diapers.

     "Whatever you say," I told her.  "You know that I enjoyed
tonight's celebration more than any restaurant meal."  I started
to wash the dishes and she went off to do her own work.  We went
our own way in the apartment for the next several hours.  I
graded papers, and she did some cleaning and straightening before
retiring with what I thought was _Contes Drolatiques_.  Instead,
I found her busy with a calculator, pencil, and paper when I got
to the bedroom.

     "What are you doing?" I asked.

     "Rethinking our budget."

     "Going to leave me any pocket money?"

     "One beer a quarter," she said.

     "As long as you leave in enough for the daily call girl."

     "Fat chance.  You're oversexed, but you're not *that*
oversexed.  Besides, you're too tight to pay for what you can
get free."  Besides, as she didn't mention, my pocket money
doesn't cover much more than lunch.

     "But my wife doesn't understand me," I said.

     "Bob, no one.  In the whole blooming world.  Will ever.
Understand.  You!"

     "I'll take that as a compliment.  Done?"

     "For tonight," she said, handing me the stuff.  I put it on
the dresser before turning off the light.  She scooted over, and
I snuggled next to her.  "We really don't have enough in
savings," she continued.

     "Darling," I reminded her, "we got married on the prospect
that you would look for work.  We moved to Boston on that same
fine prospect.  We have more in savings than we ever had before.
We have a positive savings rate and several assets.  We each have
medical insurance.  I don't like going to my family, but they are
there if something goes wrong.

     "Anyway," I finished, "we are further from the pit than we
ever were before.  Why are you worrying now?"

     "I'm worrying because it's not just us anymore.  We took
those risks for ourselves.  It's not fair to bring a tiny baby
into a risky situation.  Oh, Bob, tell me that it is going to be
all right."  She turned to face me and pressed herself into my
arms.

     "It will be fine, darling," I said.  "Everything will be all
right.  I'm here for you, and for our child.  Don't worry."  I
hugged her tight and gave her little protective kisses on her
forehead.  "You rewrite the budget.  I'll pack a lunch.  We know
how to live cheap, you and I.  If we don't have your salary, we
don't need the car.  Did you figure that in?"

     "You're right.  And I didn't"  She kissed me full on the
mouth.  Now, I knew that this hug was for comfort.  We had
already had glorious sex that evening, I was getting too old for
seconds, and we both needed our sleep.  I knew all that, but
Junior didn't.  As Jeanette's tongue sought mine, it started to
stiffen.  She smiled, which interfered with the kiss.
"Somebody's feeling ambitious," she said.

     "Ignore him."  I pulled her back into the kiss, but she
pushed her thigh against my erection rather than ignoring it.  I
never really feel that I've kissed Jeanette enough, but this kiss
had clearly served its purpose.  When we broke the kiss, she
turned and snuggled back against me.  Her nipple was surprisingly
firm against my palm as I cupped her breast.  I didn't laugh
aloud, but I think she felt the snort of humor against her neck.
She pushed her hips back against Junior in retaliation.  "Are you
serious?" I asked.  "Are you ... ?"  I was going to say, "okay,"
but that was no longer a question.

     "Want to try?" she responded.  I kissed the back of her neck
in answer.  I played with her nipple rather than simply holding
it.  When my hand went lower, she reached back to hold me.  Only
when we were both ready did we move our torsos apart.  She fitted
me into her and then pushed back against me.  There was the
slightest instant when I wasn't going in right, but then I
slipped into the familiar warmth.

     "I love you," I managed to say before my attention moved
toward our juncture.  She rolled so I could slip my left hand
under her.  Gripping both her hips, I drove within her slippery
tunnel.  This seemed to last for a voluptuous eternity before I
felt my orgasm approach.  I reached between her legs again.  A
few brushes of my finger around the little nubbin were enough to
carry Jeanette over, and her internal clutches brought my pulsing
release.  We lay there in panting lassitude until I passed her a
Kleenex.

     When her back again pressed against my chest, I started
singing.  "Bob loves Jeanette.  Bob loves Jeanette.  Bob loves
Jeanette.  And I love you."  As I cupped her breast once more, my
thought drifted back to our earlier conversation.

     We had entered into another relationship.  Our child was not
yet born, not even a fetus, but -- at most -- a blastula.  We,
however, had been planning as parents.  It was my last thought
before I dropped off.


THE END
Foretaste
Uther Pendragon
nogardneprethu@gmail.com
1997/05/08
1997/10/21
2000/04/07
2001/11/25
2010/10/11


This is one of a series of stories about the Brennans.

The first story in the series is:
forever.txt "Forever"
The next story in the series is:
/~Uther_Pendragon/brennan/effort.htm
"For Effort"

 The directory to the entire series is:
/~Uther_Pendragon/brennan.htm

For a quite different, and quite short, story:
/~Uther_Pendragon/story/show.htm
"Show and Tell"

The index to almost all my stories:
/~Uther_Pendragon/index.htm
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