Chapter 11
THAT FRIDAY NIGHT, WITH MAGNIFIED anticipation, Eddie awaited Belda at the back entrance of the library. He had made some trivial excuse to Marion to explain why he wouldn't be home until late. Not that it mattered. He came and went as he pleased, and she was used to it by this time.
As he sat in the car, Eddie perspired. He was nervous about meeting her. He felt he was falling in love with that gorgeous creature, and that made him nervous. He was nervous also because she was of such an important family, with so many connections; she and they could mean a lot to his future. Nervous to about the fact that he was, after all, a married man secretly meeting a girl.
Then he smiled to himself: maybe he was just sweating for the simple reason that it was an extremely sultry evening. In fact, that was what Belda mentioned to him when she got into the suto.
He hadn't even noticed her coming along the sidewalk, though he'd been watching for her. Then she was just there-and slipped in beside him.
"Drive," she said softly, and he pulled away into the twilight street. After a few mintues of silence, she mentioned, "Isn't it deathly hot? I'm sticky all over. Let's go for a swim." She looked at his silhouetted profile, and asked, "You do swim, don't you?" He knew she was referring to what he'd said about not riding.
Eddie smiled back. He loved the intimate tone of her words, and the ease of their relationship. "Sure, I do. But I didn't think you did." He recalled how marvelously attractive she was in her bathing suit beside the pool, the day of the party.
He thought that now she'd say for him to drive to the house and they'd take a dip in the pool. But she was way ahead of him. "We can't go to the house."
"Your father would disapprove-of us?" Eddie asked, somberly.
"Maybe. But I can handle Dad, he's no problem for me. But there might be guests or somebody dropping in. Why tell the world-yet?"
It thrilled Eddie all the way down to hear that. She was thinking of the future, and the future included him in her plans....
He was also pleased and relieved to hear that she apparently had her father in the palm of her hand. She seemed absolutely certain that she could get him to do what she wanted ... even to approving of a divorced man as his son-in-law.
Good lord, Eddie declared to himself. Here he was already mentally separated and legally severed from Marion. Well, why not? It would have to he. He would have to have Belda. Here was a woman! And a person who could offer him entrance into the world of politics and power. And was so lovely. Besides, Marion would have to go. This was his love.
The even more incredible thing was that Belda was in love with him. What more could life and the world offer him?
Since they couldn't go to her home or any public place to swim, Belda directed him to a side road off the highway, which led to a gate in the south pasture of the Kassnar estate. She had told him before about the river that bordered their estate. This dirt road took them through the pastures and down among the trees by the river. She told him where to stop, near a quiet inlet in the swift stream, with a rocky beach below a grassy area.
"But I don't have a bathing suit along," he said, hoping she'd say the right, spicy thing. And she did.
"So?" she said matter-of-factly, settling the matter.
However, she merely said they could swim in their underwear, and didn't suggest nudity, as he had prayed.
The stickiness of the weather had changed a bit. There was now a dry, gusty wind. A half-moon sent down some light, but skittering clouds passed over it from time to time.
As Eddie stood there on the grassy knoll, his heart was so full of emotion he had to swallow to keep from making some absolutely foolish, sentimental remark, and if he hadn't kept tight control of himself, he might have had tears in his eyes. It Was, he felt, such a moment of beauty in his life.
He was not nearly so much the master of this situation as he thought he would be. Wasn't he, he told himself, a man of much experience? Hadn't he undressed himself and many, many women? Hadn't he laid these naked creatures this way and that for what seemed centuries? Yet here he was, shivering like a schoolboy, feeling a wee bit embarrassed and getting down to his skivvies.
He couldn't quite understand this: but part of his nervous condition wasn't that he wanted everything to be superbly correct for himself and Belda. He. wanted there to be nothing coarse or gross or upsetting about it. He wanted it to be a pure and lively experience.
With a lump in his throat, he watched Belda. She was not embarrassed or hurried. She moved with grace and simplicity to remove her outer clothing. He saw her slim figure from the back, with the thin band of her bra and the briefs white against her tanned body, which was bathed down in silvering from the moon.
"Come on," she said, and went tripping into the water-throwing herself straight in when she got to water a bit above her knees. She came up gasping and laughing. "Oh, it's cold!"
"It can't be," he said, moving toward the water, feeling the hot dry wind on his front. He didn't want to hurry in, yet he felt embarrassed that she was turned down to face him, and he just in his under Wear shorts.
"Coward!" she challenged.
So he ran and dove at her. She-was gone from the spot when he got there, and he came up short of breath. It was cold. And the water was so stingingly awakening after the sultry atmosphere of the city.
He began to feel easy with her now, like a playmate for a spirited little girl. He tried catching her, but she was a far better athlete than he had expected, and moved around like a dolphin.
But finally she allowed herself to be caught. He put his arms around her and kissed her wet nose. Then she slipped away. She dove down and the next he saw of her she was near the shore.
"It's so ishy to swim in wet clothes," she shouted to him. "Now don't look."
He pretended to look away, but he watched her unfasten her bra and throw it up on shore, and then wiggled the clinging panties down till she could step out of them. Her wonderful upright buttocks shown glistening white in the moonlight.
"I peeked," he yelled at her.
"Oh, you!" she exclaimed, turning and diving under to cover her nakedness in one flowing movement.
He stood there, chest-deep in the water, watching for her to come up. It was such a long time, he wondered if something had happened to her. Just as he was about to worry, he felt the sudden tug on the elastic of his undershorts, and a second later, Belda's other hand had knocked him off his feet, and the shorts were down by his ankles, and they came off one foot.
They both surfaced, gulping for air. He was coughing like mad, because he had gone under unexpectedly. She was laughing like a naughty little girl. "There!" she shouted. "Now we're both naked as jaybirds."
"I've lost 'em," he said of his shorts.
"Yes," she cried back in mischievous glee, "and when I get to shore, and throw your pants in, then what'll you do?"
She started to swim for shore, and he knew he'd better head right after her. She was such an irrepressible child, she might even do just that, thinking it was a great joke.
She got there on land first, of course, and for one moment before he arose from the shallow water, he watched that slender beautiful nymph trip across the grass toward his clothes.
Then he got out of the river fast and chased her. Thankfully, he had put his clothes behind a tree, and she had to look for them. Otherwise, she would have gotten them and run away with them.
But Eddie caught her just as she had picked them up. She was laughing almost out of control and struggled momentarily.
Then they both stopped horsing around. They became aware of their cool, naked bodies touching. He had his arms around her waist. He withdrew them just as she dropped his clothing and stepped back into the clearing.
The clouds that had hinted at a storm had thickened. The wind was not so inter mitten now, but steady and hot and getting stronger. It was blowing up a windy shower. The moon obscured more and more by scuddering black clouds.
He didn't follow her as she moved, out into the grassy knoll, and onto a point of land beneath which the waters rolled. He just watched the nude Belda with awe and wonder, as if he were seeing a fantastically beautiful creature from another world.
The hot wind was quickly drying their bodies. Belda stood, her legs apart, letting the wind blow away the moisture. Her hands were in her damp hair and she was moving her head this way and that to get the water out.
Eddie gulped again as he noted the slender waist and the sudden and wondrous swell of her hips. When she turned, one full, hard breast glistened with wet in the shifting light.
Overhead, the clouds thickened into a solid mass. From the distance came thunder. Then lightning.
As one of the bolts lit up the whole area, he saw that she had turned, her hands still in her hair. When his eyes got used to the dimness again after the flash, his heart leaped as he saw that her arms were stretched toward him.
Eddie moved toward her. They caught each other in their arms. A few drops of rain fell in tingling hardness on their bare shoulders.
His body felt the marvelous breasts and the eager, uplifted pussy. His hands ran down her back and up into the mad tangle of her damp hair.
It would be just as simple as bending her over and onto the grass. How dramatic, a small voice in the hack of his mind told him thunder, lightning-what setting for their first lovemaking.
Yet, Eddie stopped. The rain gave him an excuse to say that they'd better get to the car.
Was she disappointed? he wondered. Or was she proud that he was a gentleman and didn't take her crudely on their first time out and just on the ground.
Later, Eddie wondered why he hadn't. And he knew the answer. He wanted everything with Belda to be beautiful-and proper. This was his one chance to do the right and correct and proper thing by a woman ... by the woman who would be his wife.
Ironically, this marvelous feat of self-control and longing for ideal was to ultimately cause Eddie the most harrowing trouble of his entire life.
It seemed he was going everywhere these days, and meeting everybody in the city and the state who was important. He was getting a very quick introduction to all the powers in the party, and they were giving him the once over. It all had to be very hurried since the convention was right around the corner.
Belda went with him everywhere; usually, so did her father. That was a matter of propriety, since he was a married man and Belda Kassnar's intimate interest in him must not become general knowledge.
Belda was falling deeper and deeper for him. Her man, that's how she considered him. Eddie was her choice, and he'd be the party's choice also. Her man-to shape into a successful national leader and into a husband.
Despite all they had to do in meeting officials and socialites, Eddie and Belda managed to have some moments alone. In those private times, they had some sessions of embracing and kissing, but nothing heavier. Eddie was constantly disturbed. by the new vistas of success that were being stretched out ahead of him. Belda had to spend much time briefing him on what he should do and say in their outings together.
There were a few times when it appeared that Eddie would revert to his more usual, normal self as far as sex interest was concerned. One afternoon when he was at the Kassnar mansion and they were seated on a couch in the cool library, she kissed him full on the mouth and then darted her tongue quickly between his lips and touched his tongue. He was surprised and excited. And, if the truth were known, shocked. He told himself he had to get a grip on himself or he'd let his swelling of passion get the best of him. He wanted her, but at the same time, he was let down to discover she was, after all, just a woman with the usual desires. He wanted her, in a way, to be above all that. Not that he didn't wish a flesh-and-blood mate, but he wanted everything about their relationship to be correct and proper. He didn't want her to be another broad he could knock over in ten mintues; just gently push her back there on the couch, sliding her skirt up as they went. No.
Then he thought-as he previously-that maybe she was testing him again ... to see if he'd behave like a gentleman. Well, he did-damn it!-and went home to take out his lust again on the cold, rigid body of his spouse.
The only other time of temptation for him was in Belda's room late one night. There was more opportunity for lovemaking and she was less dressed, yet strangely-it was even less to his thking than the afternoon of the French kiss on the couch.
There was to be a post-midnight luau at the home of one of the Kassnar's wealthy friends. It was for the young members of that fashionable crowd, and Belda thought it important that Eddie meet and mingle with them, for they represented not only donors to their political cause but potential active workers for Eddie's candidacy. Especially the young women, for whom Eddie was expected to have an appeal mostly on a sexual-attractiveness basis.
Belda was on a mad schedule, and she had had to attend a charity function that same evening. Eddie picked her up there and drove her to the Kassnar mansion where she'd change into casual clothes for the outdoor party.
Senator Kassnar was out, and the servents were a-bed. Belda motioned with her head for Eddie to follow her up the high, curving stairs to the second floor, after he had indicated he would wait for her down in one of the living rooms.
Quietly they ascended the deep-carpeted steps. He felt a tingle of anticipation, although he really had no reason to suppose that there would be anything to anticipate, unless he made the moves. Perhaps it was just the excitement of the new surroundings he was viewing for the first time. He knew of the Kassnar wealth, yet it was ever striking him anew when he saw some new manifestation of it. Such as now, stepping into Belda's quarters. A suite-not just a bedroom.
The evening had been hot and sticky. It reminded Eddie of that other evening they had been on the river bank just before the storm. Belda said she had perspired so at the charity function that she'd just have to have a quick shower, in order to be presentable.
She stepped behind an ornate and expensive Seventeenth Century French screen to undress. Stepping up on tiptoe, she looked over the top as she unfastened her brassiere. "I suppose this is being excessively modest ... after the river," she laughed, reminding him of her nakedness. "And, you are, after all my finance, almost."
Belda put a robe around her and disappeared into the bathroom. He heard the shower running. He sat down on the edge of one of the dainty couches that looked as if it had just been lifted from the Versailles of several centuries back.
The turmoil was strong within him. What the hell was wrong with him, anyway? Sure, she was a rich girl, but she had a body-breasts, butt, the whole business-just like anybody else. Why not make use of it? What was this stand-offish stance he was taking on?
Well, he told himself, for one thing, he wished she hadn't said that about being her "fiance, almost".
She had meant it to show how close they were, but he had taken it as showing how far they still were apart. "Finance, almost". Sure, but he still had a wife. None of his brooding about the matter concerned that wife, except negatively. He resented her for being his wife and thus an obstacle. He felt absolutely no guilt about being unfaithful in his motives. He would shuck her without a second thought when the time came. But now she was there to remind him of a dull, dreary, dreadful past. And although committing adultery had meant not a damn thing to him in the past, with Belda, he didn't want it that way. He wanted nothing to spoil the purity of their relationship.
There was more behind his brooding mood. The running water, the bathroom, the luxurious bedroom-it brought back sick memories of that lovely woman from the law school, and how he'd come out of the bathroom to make riotous love to her. And then the terrible ending to that affair, with the divorced husband.
Too many memories, too many.
He was interrupted in his reverie when Belda emerged. She had wrapped herself in a large bath towel. She paused just as she came out the door. Almost automatically, he had risen-and they looked at each other. Her hand relaxed and the towel dropped around her feet.
It was a stunning sight. He had been awestruck to see her in the moonlight. He wondered later if the light and the circumstances had added a luster to her gorgeousness that would fade in more usual circumstances.
But no. If anything, she was even more beautiful. Eddie had seen enough women to know that full nudity is more often than not destructive of an illusion of beauty. Most women are far batter off when dressed or semi-dressed as far as appearance is concerned. The breasts, the stomach, the pubic area had to be great in order not to look unseemly. Most females couldn't pass the test, Eddie figured.
But Belda. Oh, yes. Yes, indeed! Belda could pass any examination for feminine loveliness. And it was the whole figure, not just the more obvious sexual attributes. It was the lovely hair; the divine face; the tanned, healthy shoulders; the slender waist; the impertinent hair against the untanned, milky hips; the long, strong legs.
Her smile was unsure. "Darling, do you like me?"
Eddie moved toward her unsurely. "I love you."
She persisted, "Yes, but do you-you know-do you like me?" A little flutter of her hands indicated her entire body.
He knew what she meant, and he wanted what she probably wanted. He took her in his arms, and she pressed his clothed body hard against her flushed, warm skin.
His embrace was warm, but not heated. After a moment, she sensed that he was not going to pick her up or guide her to the bed. To save herself embarrassment-perhaps even shame-she said as lightly as her played-on emotions could muster, "Darling, I've got to get dressed."
He let his arms drop, and she went about clothing herself. They didn't say much. He didn't even watch her, as he might have peeked at some other gorgeous female going about her intimate bedroom affairs. He felt a bit ashamed. Should he feel ashamed, he asked himself; for doing the right thing? It would have been more manly to have thrown her on the bed, but he had done the correct thing.
The luau was exhausting, what with so many people to meet in so short a period of time, and the strong impression he was supposed to make on all of them.
When he drove Belda home, it was nearly dawn. He tried to put much emotion in his good-night kiss, but they were both so tired by this time, it didn't matter. Still, he was the one this time to flick his tongue into her mouth. She smiled and got out of the car and into the house.
Eddie was worked up despite himself and his fatugue. He decided that when he got to his house, he'd crawl into bed with Marion, and just spread her legs and plunge in. What the hell did he care about how she felt, or all that love-play stuff? That was for lovers, and she was only a woman he lived with until he could respectably leave her. She was there to serve and she'd serve him all right.
There was only one hitch to this plan of relieving himself on the unmoving body of Marion-she had already been moving: she had left him.