An Uncertain Wife
by James Bowie
(LLP-442)


INTRODUCTION 

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wardrobe of short skirts and trousers to replace Granny's out-of-date 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-The Publishers 

 CHAPTER ONE 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You certainly should be!" 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 CHAPTER TWO 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Really come from England, huh?" 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 CHAPTER THREE 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 CHAPTER FOUR 

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

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

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

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

Would it be enough for your teen-age lust? 

Would it help to ease the pain? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would it be enough for your cheatin' heart? 

Would it drive the boys insane? 

This boy's insane! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 CHAPTER FIVE 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 CHAPTER SIX 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 CHAPTER SEVEN 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lover, lover, lover. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Forgive me, sweetheart," he murmured. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 CHAPTER EIGHT 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 CHAPTER NINE 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"PhPhil! There's somebody wwatching us!" 

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

"ELENA!" he exclaimed. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 CHAPTER TEN 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


THE END
