Chapter 9

Don and Brenda lay side by side, in the comfortable familiarity of each other's bodies. It had been a long, active night but they were both still wakeful ... too excited to sleep.

"The supper was wonderful," she said, yawning, "but I wish I hadn't drunk the coffee. I don't really feel sleepy."

Don was in the near-hypnotic state that sometimes comes with exhaustion. He was too tired to move, but his eyelids obstinately remained open.

"Have a good time?"

"Sure," she said, "did you?:

"Ummmmmm, yes."

She was propped on her pillows with the sheet barely covering her beautifully round breasts. Her dark brown hair hung loosely over her shoulders, glistening in the light from the bed lamp. Her wide brown eyes looked bright and pleased.

She was so damn gorgeous! Don mused. It was no wonder that sometimes he felt that most shameful of all emotions ... jealousy. He knew it was crazy to feel that way, completely senseless. After all, she hadn't done a thing that he hadn't suggested, and done first himself. It was old-fashioned and just plain square to give in to those possessive thoughts.

The only trouble was, he didn't mind sharing her body. It was her mind and heart that he was jealous of.

"Don, tell me . . . not that it matters. But you and Lita made it the other day, didn't you?"

What ever made her think of that at this point? "Yeah," he said defensively. "I told you she laid the make on me. And after you'd turned me down for the five hundredth time ... well, I was easy."

"It's okay, I was just curious."

"I'm curious myself." He paused, knowing he should let it go and not mention something that would be sure to stir up trouble. But he couldn't help it. "How'd you enjoy the reunion with your old boy friend, Guy?"

"Old boy friend?"

"Come on, don't kid me. It was perfectly obvious. And his wife saw it too, in case you want to know."

"You talked about us."

"Of course we did. What do you think we are, stupid? Isn't it about time you told me about it?"

It was too late at night ... or morning, rather ... and they were both tired. She knew it wasn't the time to talk about Guy, nor about her wonderful secret plan. But on the other hand, perhaps it would be a good time to drop a hint, she thought. Just say a few words and let it go until morning. Give him time to digest the whole thing.

"He isn't important," she said truthfully. "Oh darling, I know I've given you a bad time this past year. And now we both know it was because of Guy. But I still say he isn't important in himself."

"I'm too tired for riddles," he answered curtly.

"Okay." She pulled the sheet over her shoulders and turned out the bed lamp. "It's no riddle if you think about it, darling. You're the one I love and always will. Guy is ... it isn't what he is, really. It's what he can give me. The one thing in the world I can't get from you."

Don heard her heavy breathing begin almost instantly, and knew she was asleep. He was on the verge of it, himself. His heavy eyelids finally were sealing themselves across his vision, and blackness came over him. He tried to think what it was she was telling him but the answer eluded him as he drifted into sleep.

"A baby!" Don said accusingly. "You're throwing it up to me that Guy could get you pregnant and I can't."

"Not throwing it up to you darling, just mentioning a fact." Brenda went on buttering her toast, but her hands trembled.

"I still don't want to adopt a child," he said. "But that's not the point, is it? The thing I don't get is, why Guy? There's a million men around who could get you pregnant."

She chewed her toast, and waited. "I get it," he said slowly, "he already did it." "Yes ... and I had an abortion." "Without my even knowing it? That's impossible!"

She explained placidly that the foetus was hardly six weeks old, and all that had been involved was a simple scraping of the womb. "You remember when I had that D&C last year? I told you it had been for cystitis or something like that."

"And that's when you got so cold ..." His voice trailed off as he thought of the past and put everything together. He'd forgotten entirely about that simple operation. Brenda never complained, she said it didn't hurt at all. The only thing was they had had to refrain from marital relations, as the doctor had put it, for a week or so.

And, come to think of it, they never had begun again, or at least not on the old basis.

"But if you're worried about Guy, forget it,"she said evenly. "I haven't seen him since the operation, until we ran into him at the party last night."

"And a good thing, too, from what Jenny says." Jenny ... that was his wife's name, Brenda didn't think she'd known anything about the brief affair, any more than Don had.

"What was she going to do to him? Or us?" "It isn't that," Don said wearily. "It's just that he's no good. He's always running around and conning some babe into thinking he's in love. But in the end he always runs back to Jenny."

"She told you that? Some loyal wife, isn't she?

Why does she take him back if he's so rotten?"

"Because she loves him, I guess."

Brenda tried to open her mind to the truth, if that was what it was. But to her it sounded more like sour grapes. Guy had never complained about his wife, but now and then he couldn't help but let remarks drop. Jenny was the one who ran around and had affairs with other men. And Jenny was the one who didn't want children, who was spoiled and petulant, who overspent and was only interested in clothes and frivolities. That was why Brenda's pregnancy had affected Guy so strongly ... because he wanted children and Jenny refused to have a baby.

Brenda had spent a lot of time shutting out the memory of Guy but it was all there, under the surface, waiting to come out. He was so sweet, she thought, so thoughtful. When he made love to her, he had a tenderness that made it more than just sex.

And it had happened again last night. They both denied it, but they knew it was there.

"It's Guy's money," she said, the contempt clear in her voice. "Jenny has a good thing going there and she knows it. She's not about to leave him as long as the dough keeps rolling in."

Don was looking at her as if he despised her. -"How can you be so naive, Brenda? Guy is in business with Jenny's father. He's never made a dime by himself but the old man carries him because of Jenny." "Lies! All lies!"

She didn't know why she was defending Guy or why they had to quarrel over a woman neither of them really knew. But she couldn't just sit here and listen to this bunch of crap, she thought, spilled out to a susceptible man by a jealous woman. To know the truth all she had to do was think of last evening. Jenny wanted attention, obviously. She couldn't come to the party on time like everybody else. She had to arrive late and make an entrance, complete with her lousy body paint.

Don slammed his cup down and shoved back his chair. "Okay, so you know it all. I'm going down to the office for a while."

He stalked out of the room and moments later, she heard the bang of the front door.

Brenda wanted to cry because they had quarreled, but she knew she was in the right. It was Don's jealousy that caused the fight. She'd known all along it would happen, as soon as he heard that she'd gotten pregnant by someone else. Otherwise he would have been able to see Jenny's lies for what they were.

She wandered around the house unhappily, knowing instinctively that Don wasn't really at the office. He didn't have any work to do there. Besides, she'd phoned and let it ring for a long time.

By the middle of the afternoon Brenda was strung up tight. She didn't want her marriage to be like this. On the other hand, she was not about to admit that Don was right when he wasn't. If he'd only call, she thought, she'd be sweet and simply avoid the whole subject of Guy and Jenny.

When the phone rang, she knocked a chair over in her hurry to answer it. "Hello?"

"Brenda? I was hoping you'd answer the phone."

"Ohhhh, Guy. Yes, I'm alone here."

"I just bet you are. You heard about the talk Don and Jenny had last night?"

"Did I ever! Don didn't even finish his breakfast."

"Jenny didn't wait that long. We were up all night arguing and she packed up this morning and went home to Daddy."

"Does she know about ... about the baby?"

"Yes. I lost my temper and ..." His voice was heavy. "Listen, honey, I want to see you. Talk to you. But I don't think I'd better show up there. How about coming here?"

It was reckless of her but she felt the same way he did, that they had to get together and talk it over. If Jenny had really moved Qut, his place was the safest they could find.

Brenda's heart tripped erratically and her palms were wet as she turned into Guy's driveway. The house was not too far away and hadn't been hard to find.

It was half again as big and expensive-looking as hers and Don's, she realized, as he let her in the door. But she already knew of Jenny's extravagance.

"Darling!" Guy took her in his arms and held her close. "This is so damn frustrating and miserable! I've been almost out of my head since I saw you last night."

"Me too." She freed herself from his arms, determined to talk things over reasonably, in an adult manner. Don's words were still burning in her brain and she was frantic to know the truth.

"Guy, Jenny told Don all sorts of things. Things that really aren't any of my business, I guess, but. . . "

"I can imagine." He sounded and looked as if he'd been up all night. Dark shadows underlined his usually sparkling brown eyes.

"Come and sit down, Brenda. I'm so tired of talking, but I'll tell you anything you want to know."

She started to cry; she couldn't help it. "I told Don about my being pregnant... I didn't mean to. That is, I didn't mean to get into a big hassle with him. I had this bright idea ... I guess it was crazy."

"Tell me about it," he said soothingly. He sat close to her on the sofa and put a comforting arm around her.

"It's insane, I guess. I don't know. I never even got a chance to tell Don, but I thought maybe he'd let me get pregnant by someone else ... you, maybe. He doesn't want to adopt..."

Guy chuckled and nuzzled her forehead. "You little nut! I can just about see him going for that. That'll be the day pigs fly."

She knew he was right and it was a crazy idea. But she wanted a baby so badly, she thought, and so did Don.

"Don't talk for a minute," Guy whispered. "Just let me hold you." His arms held her tightly and he rocked her gently back and forth. "I was surprised to see you at a swap party," he said. "And I never did ask you, but I assumed you were using something. A diaphragm, or else you're on the pill?"

"The pill."

Her mind lulled by his nearness, she looked around the room. It felt strange and dangerous to be here, she mused, in another woman's house, but Guy wouldn't let her come to any harm. He was always so thoughtful and understanding.

"I'm not cold, not really," she murmured.

"Cold?" He laughed and pulled her closer, his hand going to one of her full breasts. "I told you last night, sweetheart. You are something very special to me. When we make love, I'm in heaven."

His hand moved back and up, to the zipper on the neck of her dress.

"The hell with Jenny and Don," he said, pulling the zipper tab down. "You're all upset... I know what'11 relax both of us."

Brenda felt happy and guilty at the same time, making love to another man in his wife's handsomely decorated living room. But she didn't really care. Her emotions had been on such a see-saw lately that she was worn out with thinking. She let him undress her and lay back on the sofa while he quickly stripped off his own clothes.

"You've changed, sweetheart," Guy muttered in her ear as he lay close to her. "You're ... you're bolder now and I love it!"

"Do you? Do you really?" '

"Yes. Take hold of my cock, darling. Hold it in your hands."

He fondled one of her breasts and she felt the heat starting through her body. "Oh, yesss, that feels so good," she moaned as she took hold of his already swollen dick.

"Make love to me," she moaned. "Put it in me, fuck me good!"

"Not yet, not yet. I want you to suck it, sweetheart, put it in your mouth. You've never done that for me."

She flung her head down and her warm lips encased his throbbing meat. She loved it ... loved the thick smooth skin sliding tautly and the acrid taste on her tongue. She let her tongue glide down the underside slowly and then played and kissed her way around the swollen head of it.

He pulled her hips up next to him and shoved her thighs apart, his head going into the split of her crotch. She felt his tongue laving her cunt lips and curling around her clitoris. She began to moan and vibrate, the excitement shooting up through her and stabbing into her trembling body.

"Do you like that?" he muttered. "Do you like it?"

"Oh yesss, yes!" Her body writhed and she shot her hips forward to give him greater access to her pulsating vaginal lips. She wanted it all at once ... his tongue sucking her clit and shooting up her cunt. Her buttocks tautened and her thighs spread farther apart while he licked and sucked, his hot tongue shooting its way into the wet, warm opening.

She wanted to please him at the same time. She bobbed her head up and down, trying to take the full hard length of it in her mouth and throat. Her lips worked avidly and her tongue caressed the blood-engorged head.

"Ooooohhh!" Guy groaned deep in his throat and released her, sitting up quickly. "Hurry, darling, hurry! I want to put it in your and fuck the living bejeezes out of you!" He grabbed her roughly and reversed her position, her body flopping loosely as he climbed on top of her.

Hastily he shoved his hardened prick betwen the quaking lips and drove it home with a strong flick of his hips. She felt the slap as their bellies met and thrust her pelvis forward to take it all, up to the hilt. Guy was right, there was something special about it that not even that big-dicked Terry had given her. Guy whispered soft, loving words as he pounded up and down, and his hands never stopped roving her eager body. He loved her, she knew he did.

"Fuck me, fuck me," she groaned in her passion-roughed voice.

Guy ground his pelvis into the squirming, tactile flesh as she answered thrust for thrust, her hot cunt clutching at his dick when he withdrew and opening wide to meet his pounding advance. She strained her back, opening up her loins, lifting them both bodily up from the sofa.

Relentlessly he pounded down until she felt his hot load shoot into her, while she gave a little satisfied moan and fell back against the cushions. They lay there together, his cock still inside her and although he'd come, she felt him moving as if to milk that last small ounce of pleasure from it. She clamped her vaginal lips together, making the walls of her cunt open and shut and smiled as she heard him moan deep in his throat.

It wasn't finished yet. His half-hard dick pulled back an inch and moved forward and she kept up the milking, rhythmic clamping. He swelled inside her; she could feel it as clearly as if she could see it.

Guy put his head on her breast and sucked on each of her tits in turn, his mouth warm and wet on the sensitive flesh.

"I could go on like this all day," she said dreamily.

Guy laughed and told her that while maybe she could, he wasn't quite up to that. But even as he said it he began to grow harder in her and she gave herself up to the desperate fucking that followed, letting him set the pace and only being there, being ready. He laughed in her ear and she knew he'd caught on to her trick, that he'd last longer that way.

It was long enough too, because when he came she did too. It was a shattering, heart-stopping, moaning and clawing climax. She arched her hips high in her frenzy, almost dislodging them from the narrow sofa, and when it was over she was limp, exhausted.

"You are just heavenly," Brenda said, as she mopped herself with a kleenex. "Light me a cigarette, honey, and now maybe we can talk."

They went over it all again. Brenda didn't have the courage to quote Don exactly but she tried to let Guy know what Jenny had said.

He shook his head sadly. "I'm not just saying this now, in a pinch, Brenda. You know that. I've told you before that my sweet wife will say anything, anything to get what she wants."

"I don't know what to do."

"There's nothing we have to do," he said. "She'll have a few days'vacation with Daddy, and then come home. Your Don will get over his anger. It'll all be okay, you'll see."

Brenda looked at him doubtfully. Was that what she really wanted to hear from Guy? She wasn't sure.

10

"... and so I thought the hell with it, and I went out and got drunk." Don sounded as miserable as he felt. He sat with his head in his hands, only raising it occasionally to sip from the cup of hot black coffee. It was his second cup and already the liquor fumes were fading from his brain, leaving him miserable physically as well as mentally.

"Those things happen." Bill's voice was carefully bland and Don sensed the lack of sympathy.

"Well, what would you have done?" he asked, a trace of belligerence in his voice.

"I'm sorry, Don. I know this seems terribly important to you now. But it's really a tempest in a teacup, isn't it? I can't see that there's any real problem. I mean, we all have our little upsets and quarrels now and then."

"Yeah ... and I suppose I'm keeping you from enjoying your Sunday. Poor Lita, she's probably bored to death waiting for me to sober up and get out of her kitchen."

"No, no. As a matter of fact," Bill hesitated, and then made up his mind. "We already knew a little bit about the situation. You see, Jenny showed up here a couple hours ago. She was all upset, too. I didn't know whether you felt like seeing her again, so I didn't mention it."

"Hell, it isn't her fault! But anyhow, I'll be on my way."

"Not unless you want to. And I don't think you will when you see what's going on ... Lita and Jenny have been working up a little surprise for us."

Don wasn't in the mood for a party, but on the other hand, he had no desire to go home and start up the fight again. Or, worse, have to put up with Brenda's cold silence.

"If I won't be in the way ..."

Bill laughed. "Not at all! I think you'll probably add a lot to the gathering. Come on, they're in the bedroom."

Don poured himself another cup of coffee and let Bill add a healthy splash of brandy. It was enough, he figured, to put himself right back in the bag, but he couldn't care less.

The bedroom door was closed. Before he opened it, Bill turned to Don with a smile that had something lecherous about it. "Don't be surprised at anything that happens," he said.

The curtains were closed and at first, all Don could see was the stretch of thick carpet and furniture in the gloom. Then he blinked his eyes, and blinked again. His first thought was that it was either a repeat of last night's party, or else the party had never really ended.

Two naked bodies, skin gleaming white in the dimness, lay on the bed. Their arms and legs were entwined lasciviously and they were kissing passionately.

That was Lita, sure enough. The faint light caught her auburn hair and made it glisten like a halo. But who was the guy? Then he blinked again and saw what was happening.

There was no guy.

The slim white back bent over Lita was too delicate and curvaceous to belong to a man. He could see the fine ridge of the spine and faint impression of her rib cage, narrowing down to a slim waist and flaring out again in a very feminine fashion.

Smudged color across the flesh puzzled him until he remembered Jenny's body paint. It had worn off here and there, but obviously she hadn't showered since the night before. The still discernable tracing of leaves and flowers cast an abandoned, lewd light on her twisting figure.

Not that she needed anything to add to her obvious sexuality.

"Pheeeww!" He whistled softly and turned to Bill, expecting to see anger or disgust. But his friend's mouth hung open slightly and his eyes were glazed, fascinated. Whatever was happening wasn't unpleasant to Bill, nor could it be new to him either.

His wife was making love to another woman, and Bill loved it.

Don lifted his mug and drank the hot coffee in one long gulp. The brandy burned all the way down but it settled his nerves.

Were these women ... hell, he couldn't even think of the word. Lesbians, yes, that was it. But that couldn't be! he thought.

He remembered Lita's highly-sexed body, and the way she'd enticed and seduced him. And not just once, but last night at the party as well as the other evening, with the whipped cream scene. No Lezzie could deceive him like that, he thought, there was no way!

Yet there was nothing fake about her rasping breath and the avid delight of the arms which pulled Jenny closer and closer.

Bill turned toward him, still moistening his dry lips, and said, "What's the matter, Don, shocked?"

"Well... a little."

But his fascinated gaze turned right back to the lewd activity on the bed. He realized that it was the idea of homosexuality, rather than anything that was actually happening. As a matter of fact, his tired body had begun to perk up already. The aches and pains dissolved in a warm feeling of strength and, he had to admit, in a stirring in his groin. There was something about seeing those two going at it that excited him, fantastic as it was.

"Sit down here."

He let himself be pushed into an armchair without taking his eyes off that luscious heap of female flesh.

Jenny raised her head and kissed Lita's cheeks and forehead and closed eyes, her sharp tongue darting out to lick quickly at the other woman's rapt face.

Lita's hand crept up and stroked Jenny's buttocks, and the pearly ass visibly quivered at the touch.

The two began moving their hips together, pressing their bellies hard on the firm female flesh. The long, tonguing kissing continued uninterrupted.

Don discovered he was gripping the arms of the chair, his knuckles white, his breath coming raggedly. He couldn't seem to sit still. His buttocks squirmed uncontrollably.

Then the girls moved. He watched open-mouthed as the two lovely women, their breasts dangling, hips swaying, turned end for end. Lita thrust her head between the other's thighs and with a quick movement, turned the submissive body so that Don was looking directly into the raised, exposed cunt. Then his view was shut off as Jenny's body lowered onto her friend's face. He couldn't see the hot, forceful tongue licking and stabbing into the eager cunt, but his imagination supplied the missing details.

Meantime, Jenny was doing the same thing for Lita.

Lita's slender fingers held the half-moons of Jenny's buttocks, pulling them wide enough so he could even see the small, brown asshole. Her fingertips worked against the pliant flesh, leaving white ridges from the strength with which she clutched them.

Don didn't need to look down to know that his cock was swelling into a ridge on the inside of his trousers. But he did look at Bill. In another chair, he was also completely hypnotized, with one hand in his crotch, stroking up and down.

Nobody ever told me about this, Don thought. Real life, loving women ... and they're making it together! Jesus H. Christ! They better hurry up before I get in the middle and make a sandwich!

And it didn't take them long, at that. Before the men's hypnotized gaze, the women came almost simultaneously. Don could see the ripples running over that sweet white flesh and his heart rose up and choked him.

"Pheeeww!" He whistled again without realizing it.

The girls rolled off the bed and stood up laughing, and the spell was broken. For a moment he thought they'd been joking, that it was all a fake put-on to astonish him. But there was nothing phony about their flushed cheeks and fast breathing.

Everybody was looking at him and he didn't know what to say.

"That was something else," he said lamely, feeling his erection fade in his embarrassment. "Hope you didn't mind my being here."

"Mind? We've been waiting for you," Lita said between breaths. "And it wasn't easy, either. Waiting, I mean."

"That's right," Jenny chimed in. "We knew you'd be feeling blue so we decided to put on a show to cheer you up. But it almost ... " she shot a smiling glance at Lita ... "got out of hand while we were waiting!"

"I never saw anything like that in my life before," he said solemnly.

"I thought not." Bill sounded a bit smug. "I know you're new to swapping so I figured you still had hang-ups. You and Brenda both."

He looked quickly at Jenny when his wife's name was mentioned but she was smiling, combing he* hair in front of the mirror.

"It doesn't bother you when they, you know, make it with each other?"

"I should say not! In fact it turns me on more than anything else ... I'm ready for a little nooMe right now, in fact. And after last night, I didn't think I'd ever want to see another tit or ass again!"

Lita came over and perched on the arm of Don's chair. He put his hand up and met the smooth, resilient flesh of her hip. He jumped as if he'd touched a hot stove.

"You've got a lot to learn," she said sweetly, running her hand over his forehead. "But I'll say this much, you're a good pupil!"

Lita reached down and tugged at his belt buckle. He jumped up quickly and opened it and unzipped his trousers, stepping out of them. "Me next, honey?"

"You next, but sit right back down again."

Removing his shorts and feeling like a fool in his sport shirt and cardigan, he let her push him back down in the comfortable chair. Just that small contact with her had brought his cock to life again and it soared up and out, the tiny slit on the end oozing clear fluid and looking like another eye.

"I feel in the mood for pole-vaulting," Lita kidded, standing straddle-legged in front of him. "And Jenny got me all wet and ready for you ... feel!"

She took his hand and pressed it between her legs. Her lubricating juices matted her pubic hair and seeped onto her tender skin. His hand burned again from the contact.

He wanted to get up and haul her onto the bed but she pushed him down again, saying, "Sit still, darling." With a movement that should have been awkward but wasn't, she got on her knees in Don's chair, her legs in a "V" over his body.

"Here we go," she teased, "sliding down the Maypole."

She took hold of his cock and aimed the head at her dripping cunt lips, shoving it up and in. Wriggling her hips like a madwoman, she slowly lowered herself on the fleshy spike. Her face flushed and her eyes gleaming with lust, she leaned forward and dropped small, hot, butterfly kisses on his face as her pulsing vagina absorbed all of him.

His knees moved almost by themselves, in short rapid strokes that bounced her up and down on his blood-engorged dick. It was awkward and yet totally erotic. Every time her entire weight slammed down on his groin he thought he'd pass out from sheer ecstasy. Her ass bounced on his bare thighs while he clutched her breasts and used them like reins, guiding her stroke.

A slurping noise made him turn his head sharply and look across the room. What he saw built his excitement even higher.

Jenny was tossed face down over the arm of a chair, her bare ass held high by Bill's tight grip. With heavy grunts and a strained face, he was pumping away ... into the painted girl's asshole.

Don gulped and remembered his similar adventure with Lita. His cock swelled inside her cunt so that she had to slow down and let her inner walls adjust to the greater size of their invader.

"You like?" Lita said sweetly.

"I like," he panted. "And I like you too, very much."

"Are you really hot?" she asked, twitching her hips enticingly.

"Don't you know it?" He was almost too agonized to speak.

"Okay, wait a minute ..." she looked over at the other couple and said, "Hey, Bill, don't get off yet! Let's have fun together!"

When she slipped off his cock he wanted to cry but she eluded his hands and led him over to the bed.

"Let's see," Lita said. "You get there, Don."

She positioned him on his back and again climbed on. "Giddyap, horsie!" she yelled playfully.

Meanwhile, as if by prearranged signal, Jenny and Bill joined them. He didn't know what was going to happen but he found out, when Jenny squatted over his face, lowering her pussy until his mouth and nose were pressed into it firmly.

He took his cue and with a rapacious tongue and lips, plundered her wet, gaping maw. He breathed in the musky scent of her sex and slurped his tongue over her slit, scooping up her juices as he laved her clit.

He felt her move suddenly, tilted forward so that her body lay along his chest and her arms braced on either side of him. Her viscous flesh was still in his mouth but at a different angle, a better one, where he could plunge his tongue into her, tongue-fucking her cunt.

He knew the reason for the move a moment later, when her entire body was shaken as if she were being regularly and rhythmically spanked from behind. She slid back and forward, her clit coming into slamming contact with his mouth.

Bill had joined them, and once again was fucking her in the ass.

To Don, it was weird and fantastic but he loved every moment of it. Completely caught up in the overwhelming sexuality, blinded by a bush of hair and scented thighs, his dick repeatedly assaulted by Lita's cunt, he lost all sense of time and place.

He could hear and identify each separate gasp and moan. Lita had a high, snuffling sound she made when she was excited. Jenny kept moaning, mumbling all the time: "Oh fuck, fuck . . . you're killing me, Bill. . . fuck, fuck me harder!"

And Bill was beyond words, evidently. His rasping breath was the loudest sound in the room.

Bill came first. Jenny's body was no longer buffeted from the rear and she ground down harder on his face, hunting her own release.

The other three came more or less simultaneously. Jenny gave a garbled scream and fell away from him and he drew a deep breath of air into his tortured lungs.

Then he and Lita went into climax together like a set of clashing gears, bouncing hard and out of control against each other's crotch. He felt the wet sperm shoot out of him and she was poised over his belly for a long moment. Then she too fell to the side and he let his body go in the heart-stopping moment.

"I don't know where to begin," Jenny said again, combing her hair in front of the mirror. She shot a quick glance at him and added, "I have a hard time understanding your wife. Or liking her."

Don felt on the defensive even though he too was angry with Brenda. "She's all right, just a little mixed up."

"I suppose so," she sighed. "But I'll bet you twenty dollars she and Guy got together this afternoon. By themselves. That's the part I don't get."

He had to admit he didn't either.

"Let's go back to the kitchen and have a drink." He couldn't think of anything to say to Jenny now that they were alone. They'd talked last night but they both were high. He didn't want to go into it all again.

She slipped into a robe of Lita's and found one of Bill's for Don. Just before they entered the kitchen she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"I'll tell you one thing that's not going to change. Guy's my husband and we're going to stay married, Brenda or no Brenda."

"Amen," he said fervently.

Lita fried bacon and scrambled eggs. Don manned the toaster and kept a pile of hot, buttered toast coming. They ate together in a strange sort of relaxed companionship, a buddy-type warmth he hadn't known since high school days. But even that made him feel guilty and selfish, as if he were excluding his wife.

"I'm going to run Jenny home," Lita said after she finished stacking the dishes. "You two have a cigarette and talk."

Once more Don was reluctant to get up and go home. The atmosphere here in this kitchen was warm and affectionate, and he didn't want to leave it. But he knew he had to.

"No, seriously," BUI said, "Lita's right. She thinks I should talk to you and tell you how we feel about things. You may not agree, but it won't hurt to listen."

Don was surprised but pleased. They sat there a long time. Lita came home and showered and was watching television, and still they talked.

Don had never had to think about a philosophy before, or the meaning of anything he did ... including swapping. He and Brenda never felt the necessity to discuss things as Bill and Lita evidently did. And that was part of his trouble, he learned.

He learned a lot of other things, too.

Physically and mentally exhausted but satisfied and content, he went home at last. He was glad to see Brenda's car in the garage, and gladder still to find a note:

"Darling, I'm so tired and have taken a sleeping pill and gone to bed. See you in the morning. I love you. Brenda."

She was curled up under the covers, one hand nestling against her cheek. Her mouth was sweet and relaxed but he thought he could see traces of tears on her face.

Poor baby, this wasn't her fault, all these misunderstandings and arguments. It wasn't really his, either, he was beginning to see. Now if he could only express himself as well to Brenda as Bill had to him, perhaps they could make a truce and start over. Their marriage was too good and too important to lose by one of them going off on a tangent.

He hoped he could make Brenda see it his way.