Chapter 3
IT WAS THE NOISE THAT BRAD, thirteen-years-old, made the next morning as he breakfasted, preparing to leave for church that awoke Carl and Millicent Random from their haunted sleep. Well-trained from his earliest years, Brad was used to seeing to his own affairs; he was a son any couple would have been proud to call their own. This balmy, May morning he would walk the five blocks to St. Marks. Where, after Sunday School, he would serve as an altar boy, generally meet his parents after services, come home with them.
The dull slam of the front door awoke Carl first. His head aching with a dull throb, a sour taste in his mouth, a queasiness in his stomach, he came up on his elbows, surveyed his private world, thought it looked just the same as it had twenty-four hours previous.
Then he remembered.
It was like someone h-'d buried a fist in his put. the detonation of shock almost wringing a full-fledged howl of disbelief and rage from him. For long moments he clenched his fists, squinted his eyes shut, blocked out the cold light of day, the cold reality of his and Millicent's transgressions.
He thought it killingly ironic that it should be the saintly preparations of his son as he left for church that would serve as spark to set off the powder-train of damning guilt and remorse now threatening to destroy his sanity.
It was at that exact moment, Brad whistling blithely as he moved down the street, the sound carrying clearly through their partially-opened bedroom window, that Millie stirred beside him, sighed and yawned.
A second later she lurched viciously, almost as if someone had touched a cattle prod to the base of her spine.
Now an eerie, panicky wail broke from her, and she turned over and faced Carl.
Her face was ashen-gray, defeated; her eyes were frightened, the orbs darting wildly; her mouth was twisted into a grimace of self-loathing. "Carl! Say it isn't so. We didn't! It's a bad dream. I'll wake up any minute now."
"It's a bad dream all right," he replied grimly, unable to face his wife directly. "One we'll remember as long as we live." His voice became shattery. "It happened, Millie. Dear God, did it ever happen!"
Briefly, unable to face the gross enormity of their sins head on, they skirted the edges, questioned the ulteriors of their downfall. How many drinks had each of them had? What time had things gone haywire at the Hatcher home? What time had they finally left the house? Had they drunk some more once the trading had commenced? Could either of them remember what they'd said upon parting? Had Brad heard them when they came in? What-if anything-had they said to each other once they'd gained the privacy of their bedroom? Or had they merely fallen into a drunken stupor, into a sex-sated doze?
"Oh, God, Carl," Millicent moaned, her voice clogged with despair, "I'm sorry, so sorry. I don't know what got into me. I wouldn't have believed-that I could act like that-with another man. With Don. Lord, what must he think? I was a regular whore-on-wheels."
"You weren't alone. I was right there beside you. And so were Irene and Don. How're you gonna explain a thing like that? It just happened."
"It shouldn't have happened," Millicent said, her voice curdled with self-disgust. "If we weren't the kind of people we are. Something has to be wrong inside of us ... wrong with our marriage. Otherwise..."
"Don't blame yourself, darling," Carl soothed, laying a comforting hand on her bare shoulder. "I tell you it just happened. Too much booze, too much dirty talk. Then that sexy dancing. Christ, any human being would have reacted the same way."
"Don't touch me!" Millicent lashed. "I'm not clean. I'm tainted, corrupt ... I'm tainted forever. You're tainted too." She began to sob. "Oh, God, we'll never be the same again. What's going to happen to us . . .to our marriage?"
Carl was amazed that he was suddenly so clearheaded, that he could gauge this disaster in its truest, purest perspective. And though he thought to mollify his wife, soft-pedal their backsliding, he knew better. He knew that it was time for some straight talk, for some hard facts. God knew, everything was in the fan now anyway. What harm could a few more honest words do?
"Maybe," he said gravely, pulling Millicent into his arms despite her struggles, "we're going to save our marriage."
She jerked, fought him anew, her voice hysterical. "Save our marriage? What kind of idiotic nonsense is that? We behave like a pair of amoral animals, go to bed ... screw ... with our best friends ... That's supposed to save our marriage? You must be out of your mind!"
"I'm going to tell you something, darling," he said softly, forcing her to lie still in his grasp.
"Something I've never told you ... or anyone ... before."
Her face froze. "What is it, Carl?"
"I've wanted Irene for a long time now. Almost from the start. From the first time I met her, when I stood for Don at their wedding."
"Oh, Carl, no!"
"I've wanted Irene. I've wanted lots of girls. I can't help it. It's the manner of the beast, I guess. That's why I say that maybe this was for the best. That we both discovered this before it was too late. Before I did something I'd be sorry for the rest of my life."
"Oh, Carl," she choked, her eyes wild with anguish. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that I'm not happy with the way things have been going with our marriage. I'm saying that I was altogether too young to be married when I was. You know what I told you about never having screwed another girl? That's the God's truth, Millie. And I'm goddamned ashamed to admit it, I realize that it was a ghastly mistake."
"Ashamed? Carl, what kind of talk is that? Are you saying that you don't love me anymore?"
"I'm saying nothing of the kind. I love you more now than when I married you. You're the best of all possible women, of all possible wives. If you were to leave me, my life would be shot. I'd go to hell in a hand basket within six months. Love isn't the issue here."
"But then what is? If you admit you want to have sex with other women ... that you want to seduce them..."
"Screwing isn't love, can't you understand that? I can't explain it imagine-like, baby. You'll just have to believe me when I say that I love you, that I want to stay married to you, forever and ever."
"But you still want other women."
"Yes, I do. It's a crazy, mixed-up compulsion with me, something that's been eating me up inside the past few months."
"I've noticed. You've been different. It seemed to me at times that you didn't even know I was around. Sometimes even when you were making love to me. Were you thinking about other women then?"
"I guess. Don't you see what I'm trying to say, darling? I've never in my life had any woman but you. And God knows, they just can't come any better, any sexier than you. But still, even when I know that, I have to find out about other women, what they're like. I have to know!"
"I've never had any other man but you, Carl. You know that. I was a virgin on our wedding night. That mess! Did you need any more proof? But I don't feel this overwhelming need to go to bed with another man. I don't have this terrible curiosity about what another prick would feel like."
"Don't you? Now I think you're hedging, darling. If you didn't have that curiosity, you wouldn't be human. Every woman does. Every man does. Only it takes an exceptionally honest one to admit it. Women, I mean. Men admit it all the time. Every time they look up another gal's legs, whistle at her when she walks down the street. Being more basic, they are also more honest."
"Carl, I don't like that kind of talk. I swear, I've never been the least bit interested in Don, curious or..."
"Oh, come on, Millie. Come off it, will you? You think that's the first time you've ever flirted? What about that Christmas party a year ago? The way you took after Tom Annixter? Your id was showing, baby. Be honest with yourself for once. If you didn't have that basic drive inside of you, that thing with Don never could have happened."
"Do you have to keep harping about it? Isn't it bad enough that we did those horrible things? Must we talk it to death?"
"Were they so horrible?" He drilled in, took perverse satisfaction in seeing Millicent squirm. "Be honest with me, won't you? The truth, honey? Didn't you actually enjoy it with Don? Didn't you get kicks, experience feelings you thought were dead ... long gone?"
"I suppose you did. With Irene?"
"I'll level, Millie. I did. She's not as good as you by a long-sight, but she's very adequate, more than adequate. I liked the non-personal aspects of screwing her. like I was away from the world, on a vacation from all the problems and routines of daily life. Sex for sex's sake. If you once pulled down that mask of yours, you'd admit you liked it with Don too. You liked it very much."
"All right," she snapped resentfully, wanting to hurt him at that moment. "I'll admit it. I liked Don. I liked having him hump me. What's that supposed to prove?"
"It's supposed to prove that it's getting to be that time in our marriage. When we need something more than each other. And we need it with each other's agreement, with mutual complicity."
"I don't follow that."
"How many ways must I say it, honey? I was ripe. Ripe for a goddamned backstreet affair. With the first slut who came along. My curiosity was killing me. I felt like life was passing me by, like I was all done as a man. Sooner or later I would have found someone; I would have started cheating on you. Sooner or later you would have found out. You would have been hurt, hurt something awful.
Maybe we could have picked up the pieces, maybe not. Either way we'd both have lost something important to our marriage."
"Carl..." she gasped. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"
"I suppose I am, baby. What I'm saying is that if Don and Irene are willing to go on with this, I am. I'm hoping that you'll be willing too. Don't you see? It's the best of all possible arrangements. Accident it might have been, but underneath it all you've got to admit that it's been brewing for a long, long time now. Something's missing in their marriage too. Otherwise, when the chips were down, they wouldn't have caved in so easily either."
"I was drunk, Carl. Bombed out of my mind. And when you were so nasty to me, when Don started kissing me and plaving with me ... I just naturally..." Her voice died.
"You just naturally reverted to type. Don't you see what you're saying? That you have basic, animal needs, just like I do. This is phony, darling; phony as all hell. Our marriage, the whole setup of our society. Man or woman might have been intended to live with each other, to pledge their lives to each other, raise children, live in the bonds of matrimony. But some screwball fouled it up way back there somewhere. Man was never intended to have only one sexual outlet. He's an animal; he has animal needs. And if those needs aren't satisfied..."
"Are you serious, Carl? Do you think that I'd agree to an arrangement like that? Even if Don and Irene did?"
"They will. I know they will. They've got problems."
"Just like that? Swap wives? Wallow like a bunch of unprincipled pigs? Oh, Carl, wake up."
"I am awake. I've never been more awake in my life. I liked that last night; I need it, more than I can begin to say. And if not with Irene, then with some other woman. I'm saying that I don't care any more. I want my marriage, of course. But if I can't have that, if I can't find out what it's really like for myself, then I'll go my own way, no matter what you say. Whether it means our marriage or not. Listen, darling. You have to listen to me!"
"But it's wrong. It's evil and forbidden. It can only harm our marriage in the long run."
"It can only help our marriage. For once we've found out, exolored our sexual potential ... then we can make an honest, judicious choice. But if we don't try it ... We'll be like blind moles, groping in the dark. We have to know both sides of it."
"No Carl ... oh, no!"
"Where's the harm? Can you tell me that? Who's getting hurt? If for the first time in fourteen years of married life, we're actually being honest with each other, isn't that a conclusive clue to the physical benefits of playing the field? Mate-swapping, if you want to call it that?"
"But how can you tell? After just one night? One experience like that?"
"That's just it; we can't tell. That's why we have to go on. To find out just what it is that makes us tick. What can be evil about it? Or forbidden? If four consenting adults enter into an agreement? Nobody's cheating on anyone else; there's no cause for jealousy, for suspicion, for a feeling of being neglected or left out. There's no room for one-upmanship. I had Don's wife; he had mine. You had Irene's husband; she had yours. How can any one of us say he's been short-changed; that he got the dirty end of the stick?
"Which is exactly what it would be if we started slipping around on each other. You'd get hurt. Even if you agreed to let me slip around within the bounds of our marriage, you'd still hate me, be resentful; the marriage would be wrecked. But this way, both of us seeking out new partners together, both of us experimenting, achieving our God-given sexual potential, exploring it to the utmost . . .who can be hurt? If I had a girl friend she'd have a hold on me; things could get messy: she could make trouble. But with both of us going into this with our eves wide open, both of us knowing about what the other did with his partner the night before..."
"Oh, God, Carl!" Millicent blanched. "Certainly you don't expect ... even if I were to agree to go along with this ... that we'd talk about it afterwards, do you?"
"Of course I'd expect to talk about it. Not talking would be betrayed of swapping's realest purpose. It would be infidelity, don't you see? If we kept secrets from each other? No. All our cards on the table. Honest from the very start. Just like we're going to talk about what happened between me and Irene, you and Don last night."
"No, Carl. I couldn't."
He chuckled, and gauging the flush in her cheeks, the impatient rise and fall of her naked breasts, Carl knew that his wife was sexually agitated. That with just the slightest push on his part-all would come tumbling out. Thus he moved close to her, kissed her harshly, kept her to the kiss until she stopped struggling. His right hand slid down her body, caressed the stiff, dirt bush of her cunt; his index finger actually invaded the pouty slit itself. "Of course, you can, baby." He flung the sheet off her body, totally revealed her belly and thighs, the long, sloping thatch of her cunt. "You can tell me all about it. And I'll tell you. But for now I think it would be best if we got up, washed up a little. You comb your hair, do your face. I'll brush my teeth."
As direct giveaway to her truest desires, Millicent said, "But what about Brad?"
"He'll be gone until noon. He'll understand if we don't show up at church. It won't be the first time. We'll have the house to ourselves. We should be done by then, don't you think?" He pointed down at his cock. "Look at him. Sniffing the wind like a coon hound. Oh, God, honey, I want you! I mean really want you! like I haven't wanted you in too damned long!"
Moments later they were both out of bed, both racing for the connected bathroom. "Darling," Millicent gulped as they crowded into the shower together, turned on the water, fervidly began scrubbing each other, "I feel so strange, so wild. like a million hornets were buzzing inside my belly."
Carl drew her into his arms, kissed her passionately, devouringly; he gloried in the dig of his burning cock into her velvety, springy belly. Now he took the soap and wash-cloth from her, began to lovingly lave away the ravages of last night's lust from her breasts, from her belly, from her very cunt itself. And how in hell-he raged, his need monolithic-after the way Irene hauled my ashes last night? How can I have it this bad for my own wife?
He groaned agonizedly as Millicent signalled her own scorching passion, reached down, feverishly handled and tugged at his swollen billy. "Oh, God, darling," she intoned in eerie tones. "What's happening? Why do I feel this way? Hurry, Carl! I can't wait!"
They were in bed again. And their bodies restored to pristine purity anew, redolent of soap, tooth paste and last minute splashings of cologne and shaving lotion, they kissed and embraced, ground their loins together in heathen desire. Millicent reveled in the hardness of her husband's prick, in the slick slide of it on her inner thighs and belly as they wrestled and writhed. She recoiled in pleasurable, gut-jumbling shock as he worked his lips into her throat, articulated the sotto voce question.
"Oh, please, darling," she protested. "Don't ask that. Don't spoil this. Do you have to know?"
"Of course I have to know. Don't you get it? Even now? This's all part of it. Did you go down on Don?"
She snickered lasciviously, evaded the question. "You tell me. Did you go down on Irene?"
"Damned right I did. You'd have thought someone had lit a firecracker to her there, the way she sizzled and jumped. She came in ten seconds flat."
"And Irene?" Millicent forestalled, amazed at the melting fires this kind of talk, the vision of Carl with his face buried between Irene's pretty, white thighs, triggered within her cunt. "Did she return the favor?"
Carl sighed thickly, inserted a strumming finger up Millicent's hole, immediately began to torture her clit. His pecker throbbed, and he felt a drop of his love-sap squeeze out, trickle across Millicent's leg. "Damned right she did. She wasn't going to at first, but I put the pressure on. Before I was through she was sucking like it was the last one left on earth; she really dug it. She kept saying she and Don had never done that before, that they'd never gone down on each other. And you know, I kind of believed her. She was clumsy as all hell. Clumsy and cute. But then she came on strong ... I had to all but yank it out of her mouth."
"Oooh, baby," Millicent whimpered, a hot shudder knotting her spine, "just talking about it kills me. Then that educated finger of yours. I believe you. I believe Irene. That's what Don kept telling me. Some garbage aboout unnatural and perverted. A woman shouldn't do that to a man."
"So you did, honey? Blow him?"
"Hell, yes. I thought I saw you doing Irene even as Don dragged me out of the living room; I wasn't going to let you get away with anything. I was drunk as a skunk, baby, remember? I wasn't responsible. You aren't mad, are you?"
"Of course not. Damn it, if you're going to screw then screw. Go all the way. How was he?"
"You're better, Carl. But it was different. He's not circumcised like you. It was kind of interesting, peeling back that foreskin of his, working my tongue around his knob. He all but died when I did that." She groaned, thrashed even more violently. "Oh, God, Carl! What is this? I feel like I'm melting inside, like I'm going to run out in a puddle."
"That's the way you're supposed to feel, darling. One of the bonuses of playing around, I guess. Tell me more." He paused, was amazed that he felt so little jealousy at the thought of his wife having her lips wrapped around another man's dong. "Did he eat you then?"
"He was kind of prissy about it at first, but then when I told him no wash, no screw, he changed his tune. like you said about Irene, once he got started he didn't want to quit. He couldn't make me come that wav ... he's not as talented as you ... but he sure worked at it. I got on top at the end, worked up and down on his tongue while I did him. He groaned like a baby when I made him stop, insisted on the real thing now. Please, Carl! All this talk ... it's got me wild. I feel like I'll pop without you if you don't jam it up me soon. Carl! Damn you, screw me!"
He didn't have to be told twice. He scrambled up over Millicent, opened her thighs expertly, began lowering his swollen-to-bursting cob to her. Her fingers intercepted, piloted, forestalled him at the last, and she chose to massage the weeping font of her pussy with its lust be-slimed head. An attention that made Carl shrivel inside, tore actual groans of agony from him. "How can it be?" she grated. "How can I talk like this? Tell you things like this? Oh, God, I must be losing my mind!"
"Lose it then, dolly. Let it all snap. Let's make this one the lay of the century."
"You know it, darling. Go ahead, now, shove it in."
"Shove what in?" he chuckled teasingly. "Shove it into what?"
She groaned, shuddered anew, as she recognized the familiar game-overture to holy lay-they so often played with each other. "Shove your prick into me, you bastard. Your big ... fat ... juicy ... long ... prick. Shove it into mv hot ... yearning ... juicy ... hole. Into my ... hungry ... for ... cock ... cunt." By then she was literally spitting the obscenities from between clenched teeth. Her voice broke, became essence of all the primordial lust the world had ever known. "Damn you, Carl! TAKE ME! OH!"
And with that, he lunged savagely forward. Down, then up, his gnarled horn ramming up. against the vaulted cavern of her twat, figuratively grazing her navel, a brutal assault which Millicent howlingly welcomed. Then the exquisite, thrilling, satisfying juggernaut fell back, rested an infinitesimal moment, its fat, drooling head nuzzling the very mouth of her womb. A second later the great trunk was pistoning heedlessly, plundering, ravaging, threatening to pestle her secret flesh to bleeding mush.
Millicent screamed vaingloriously, caring not a whit whether anyone outside heard or not. Almost immediately she experienced her initial orgasm, a fury that seemingly lifted her off the bed, sent her slamming up against the nearest wall. Now she was down upon the bed, pinned to the mattress in that inescapable way she loved so dearly: she was a servile receptacle, vehicle, even a carrier to be ridden, to be used, to be emptied into. And still that gorgeous, raping cannon pumped in and out of her.
There was (once she'd disposed of at least three or four chain-reaction orgasms) a momentary lull in their exertions, and though she still continued to rock up in precise cadence to meet her lover's pronging, to swivel back, seemingly wring that beloved neck, there was still abstraction, there was room for conjecturings, sensation-lashing interrogation:
"Tell me about Irene. Is she as good as me? Does she bang as good? Her cunt ... what's it like? Is she tighter?"
"She's tighter, darling," he gasped, the bizarre dialogue triggering even greater rapture for Carl as well. "But it doesn't make that much difference. You'd screw circles around her any day of the week. That kid's got lots of homework to do before she comes up to you." He rammed Millicent in a rapid-fire volley, then slowed into even, prolonging cadence once this orgasm was ended. "How about Don? What kind of equipment does he carry?"
The question fueled even more heathenish lust within Millicent, and she swung her buttocks up in precise can't and rhythm, wrung that pounding meat with rippling muscles, with swiveling backstroke. Again that blast-furnace heat backed up in her belly, and she fought for fresh orgasm. "He might be bigger, darling. But just a ... little ... bit. He's ... like ... Irene ... I ... guess. He's got lots ... and ... lots to ... learn ... yet. He ... can't ... swing ... his ... meat. . . the ... way ... you do! Oh, God, no! You damned right he can't! Again Carl! Oh, here it is again. Won't I ever stop coming! Oh, baby, baby..."
Her belly slammed up against his with a squishy plop and bang; her legs clamped behind his. Her pelvis ground and stung; her cunt affixed magic lips to his rod, sucked and milked it fiendishly. "Shoot, damn you!" she hawked. "Up me, damn you! Shoot, shoot! That heavenly load. Splatter my guts. Oh, God, God ... Now! Oh, yes, yes ... Heavenly! It's hot and thick ... it's gorgeous. Wash, baby! Oh wash your cock-happy wife! More, oh, more..."
Carl groaned stentoriouslv. loosed several vicious curses, spat, "Lover, sweet lover," into Millicent's ears. Then his monstrous prick boomed-once, twice, three, six seven times and he felt like its tip must be shattered from the high velocity of his ejaculation. Had not Millicent's dead-end cunt been there to receive his discharge, he was sure he'd have lobbed the great gobs of sperm halfway across town; he was sure that he'd have been turned inside out in the process, gone careening through space after them. "Dear God!" he gasped when, at long last, the final salvo was fired, and the commotion inside his soul temporarily subsided. Even so, his prick didn't immediately fade. Even as he emerged from sensualist torpor, he became aware of Millie's cunt still sucking, still pumping at him.
Her amoral gloatings and exhortations cut the haze in his brain gradually. And as he disembarked from his just-completed voyage to the sun, he vaguely interpreted the meaning of her bravura declaration ; he was filled with an exalting sense of victory. Still Millie pumped; still she defied sensation: "If this is what trading does..." she slurred, "if this is the way it'll be every morning after..." She yipped a new climax, flung herself that much more insanely at Carl. "Don and Irene. Oh, God, yes. Every damned Don and Irene in town!"
At that moment she tumbled downward into a bottomless abyss of delight. An abyss ringed with fire. Fire that burned and seared, that intensified orgasm intolerably.
But if Carl and Millicent were experiencing paradise as aftermath of their night's debauch, the thing Daphne Gwynn-debauchee in her own rite-was suffering this same Sunday morning was as opposite as heaven to hell. And now, in the bedroom of the luxurious house she and her husband shared on West Broadmoor Avenue, she was groveling abjectly before Kenyon where he sat naked on the edge of the bed:
"Tell me, you little harlot," Kenyon seethed, his eyes glittering. "Tell me with those sweet harlot's lips of yours. His name. His business. Anything you can about his family, his background. And most important of all: his lovemaking equipment. Describe it. Tell me how it felt when you touched it, when you kissed it. Tell me how it felt when he pushed it into your evil, corrupt cunt. Tell me the things you forced him to do to you before you let him push himself into your evil belly. Tell me, harlot!"
And though the lovely, black-tressed creature had not done half of the things her husband imagined her doing (Ray Hollander had been a very lackluster lover all in all; he'd insisted on a straight-forward session, with no frills whatsoever permitted), she catered to his sick whims nevertheless; she knew it would do no good to deny having done them. Slowly, levelly, pausing between long, slavish lickings and suckings of her husband's prick, she filled him in as best she could on Hollander's background, she glowingly described what had been, if anything, substandard male pudenda. Until now, at Kenyon's psycho insistence, he, punishing her every recalcitrance by ramming his rod so deeply down her throat that she almost vomited on the spot, she got down to the nitty-gritty:
"He wanted me to suck him," she lied. "Just the way all you men want to be sucked."
Kenyon slapped her sharply beside the face, punished her with another gagging stroke. "No, slut," he rasped. "That's not so. It's not men who want to be sucked. It's women who want to suck! Don't you ever forget that. It's you who wants to suck me, isn't it?" He pulled her hair cruelly. "Say it! That's so, isn't it! You, not me. It's the woman ... the filthy crawly woman ... the inferior..."
"Yes," she gasped, the pain eviscerating, "oh, yes, Kenyon. I'm sorry I even hinted that. It was me. I wanted to suck him. I was crazy to suck him. I like that best of all. It's the most important thing in the world to me."
He calmed somewhat, became more gentle with her. Then, his voice an aberrated hiss: "That's better, my dear. Much better. Tell me about it. What did you want to suck?"
"His thing ... his penis."
He slapped her again. "You know better than that, Daphne."
"His prick," she chanted, almost as if by rote. "His cock. His fat, juicy cock. I was crazy to get it down my dirty, cocksucking throat."
"That's better, darling. Go ahead. Tell me all about it. How big was it. How did it smell? How did it taste? Did you want him to come ... to shoot. . . down your throat?"
"I did, I did. I wanted it terribly."
"Wonderful, darling. Tell me. But don't stop licking me. Yes, like that. The underside. With the flat of your tongue. Suck now. A little harder. Don't bite, do you hear! like that. Suck, oh, suck..." For a time he was content with this obeisance. Now humiliation commenced anew:
"Tell me, Daphne. What did it feel like when he shot down your filthy, degenerate throat. What did it taste like?"
"It felt heavenly," she gulped thickly, despair nearly incapacitating her. "Hot and thick and delicious. It was..."
Daphne Gwynn's endless morning in purgatory went on.