Chapter 3

It was as well for Astrid Fullhan's peace of mind that in the four years of marriage she had learned to trust her husband implicitly and to take him at his word. He had told her that he was going to meet with the advertising agency art director and most likely be invited to spend the weekend at the latter's home, and that it would be very good for his business if he accepted the invitation. Naturally Astrid had encouraged him.

But when Matthew Fullhan had arrived at the lobby of the Statler Hotel where Amos Denby had arranged to meet him, he quickly discovered that the original plans were going to be changed.

Amos Denby was a short but vivacious man in his mid-forties, with a waxed mustache, receding dark brown hair, and was a most capable commercial artist whom Matthew Fullhan deeply respected. So far as Astrid's husband knew, Amos Denby had been happily married for about twenty years, had two sons who were starting Harvard this fall and eventually going on to be lawyers.

The Boston agency of Clairmont, Thomas & Davidson had several million-dollar accounts, but unlike many New York agencies, it preferred to keep its personnel limited in the "close little family" tradition. This system had worked well for everyone concerned, and as the agency grew with its reputation for integrity and ability, more work came in than could be capably handled by Amos Denby and his two assistants themselves. That was how Matthew Fullhan had come into the agency picture and was now, for all intents and purposes, on a steady retainer basis with them.

Just two days ago, Amos Denby jovially informed the mild-mannered Summerton artist, the agency had acquired a sizable new account, an important regional fish cannery. The upshot of it was that Matthew Fullhan would be assigned a good deal of the work, and, if he were amenable to the idea, might have to commute to Boston every other week and be ready to spend a few days there until the schedule of assigned work could be put into an operation that would enable him to do most of the jobs at home and bring them in for final presentation.

Matthew Fullhan was enchanted with the prospect. It would mean at least ten to fifteen thousand dollars more income this year, and perhaps he could even move to Boston. While small-town life was pleasant, he was already beginning to feel the dreariness of it, although most of that came from the monotony of his marriage. Vaguely, he knew that Astrid hadn't turned out to be the sort of wife he had dreamed of when they had first met. She was still far too intellectual, and her magnificent body, even though it legally belonged to him, had given him very little pleasure. That was because he had always held himself in check, reminding himself that after all she had been a virgin and that she was decently brought up and couldn't be expected to try all the little tricks a really lustful female would.

The two men had lunch at the famous Anthony's Pier One, and Amos Denby ordered a bottle of Chablis to accompany the superb lobster which was the main entree. "Now listen, Matt," he leaned forward across the table like a conspirator, "I told you over the phone that I was going to have you out to the house this weekend. But if you don't mind, I'd like to go out on the town with you. You see, my wife's gone off to Baltimore to stay with a sick cousin, they went to school together, they've always been very close. So for the first time in a long time, I'm a bachelor. And damn it all, I want to make something out of it. This new account of ours calls for a little celebration, but I'm a gregarious sort of guy who likes to share my fun with a good friend-and that's what I consider you, Matt. You've pulled the agency out of a lot of deadline holes with your fine work, and you've got a celebration coming."

"Yes, but I don't quite understand, Amos," Matthew Fullhan falteringly replied.

"Do I have to draw you a diagram, Matt? You've been married, how long is it now-four years or so?" And when the commercial artist nodded, Amos Denby chuckled and winked, "I've been married about five times as long and it feels like an eternity. I mean, Bess is a fine woman, salt of the earth, but when a man gets close to fifty and he realizes there isn't much time left, it's time he had a fling or so. You need one too, man. Tell me something-how many girls did you sleep with before you got married?"

Matthew Fullhan's face suddenly flamed and he lowered his eyes. "Why-I suppose-"

"You probably went to a whore the first time, or else you fumbled around with some girl at school and it wasn't too wonderful," Amos Denby filled in for him. "Look, you've already told your wife you're going to stay the weekend at my place, and from what you've told me about this Astrid of yours, she isn't the kind that is going to be phoning you up every hour to find out where you are and why. My boys are off in school, God bless them, and so we've got the weekend to ourselves. And, as it happens, I happen to have the phone number of a very talented young lady, a college graduate no less, and she's got a friend who's sort of an amateur in the business, if you know what I mean. The agency will foot the bill for the whole shindig, and it's my treat. You're coming along with me and we're going to let down our hair and have a high old time. They may talk about banning books in Boston, but they haven't banned good hot enjoyable fucking yet, and I don't think they ever will. Well, Matt, just don't sit there with your mouth open like a fish out of water-what do you say?" "My God-I couldn't-" "And why the hell not? Astrid won't ever find out. Listen, I can tell by that hangdog look on your face, you've never really had an orgy, now have you? Wine, women, and song, that's the ticket to make life sweeter, especially when you're celebrating a big deal such as you and I just pulled off this week for ourselves. Deep down inside of you, Matt, I'll bet you've dreamed about sleeping with another woman lots of times. It doesn't mean you love that wife of yours any less, it just means you've got some imagination and want a little variety and spice in life before they throw a shovelful of dirt in your face. And I'm not going to take no for an answer, you hear me?"

"Well, I don't know-" Torment was registered on Matthew Fullhan's pleasant, regular features. Amos Denby was a tempter, leaning forward with a sly grinning look, and the prospect of a Rabelaisian night suddenly seemed an exciting and mysteriously tempting adventure. He thought of how Astrid had never let him see her naked, and had sometimes sighed when his hands began to squeeze her breasts or tried to ease under her to feel and caress her bottom. "Oh please, Matthew, do get this over with, we're grown people and we should be sensible, you know."

Perhaps he could pretend. Perhaps there would be some girl, who wouldn't know his real name any more than he would know hers, who would have a body like Astrid, and she would be all naked, or perhaps just in clambering, black, gauzy nylon stockings and high heeled pumps, and maybe even red garters high on the tops of her long ripplingly muscled thighs. And she would have earrings, and smell of perfume and her flesh would be ivory, and her nipples would be a dark, dusky red, like eyes winking at him, and her lips would be red, too, and they would move down his body until . . .

Beads of sweat oozed on his forehead and he felt his heart beating faster. He swallowed hard. Just maybe once in his life, and if Astrid never found out, it certainly couldn't hurt her. After all, theirs had been such an intellectual union, it wouldn't hurt just once to prove to himself that he was still a man capable of passion and lust. . . .

"All right, I think you want it as much as I do," Amos Denby knowingly chuckled. "Let's have a drink for the road, and then I'll go make me a phone call and then we'll plan our little party for tonight and maybe Saturday night too. You can still get home by Sunday night and everything will be wrapped up nicely and you'll have had yourself a helluva good time."

Matthew Fullhan couldn't believe that it was happening to him, but it was. After their luxurious lunch at Pier One, Amos Denby had had the doorman flag a cruising cab, and then given the driver an address in South Boston. Half an hour later, he was standing nervously in the lobby of an elegant three-story six-flat building in a very quiet residential section with hardly any street traffic, and Amos Denby was ringing a bell on the third floor opposite the nameplate of "S. Phillips". Almost immediately, there was an answering ring to let them in, and Amos winked at his bemused friend as he opened the lobby door and gestured for Matthew to follow him upstairs.

On the landing of the second floor, an extremely attractive coppery-haired young woman, about twenty-seven, was standing waiting for them. She wore a black toreador blouse, red satin slacks, and black high-heeled pumps, and the cuffs of the slacks lifted enough to show Matthew Fullhan that she was wearing the gauziest black nylon hose he had ever seen in all his life.

"Glad to see you, Amos. And you've brought your friend. Eleanor is here already, so let's go in and get acquainted," the redhead said to Amos Denby as she gave Matthew Fullhan a gracious smile of welcome.

Still as if moving in a dream, Astrid's soft-spoken, mild-mannered husband followed his agency friend into one of the most luxurious apartments he had ever entered. The living room was huge and magnificently furnished, even to a fireplace and a bearskin rug in front of it. The floor was thickly carpeted, there were elegant green drapes discretely drawn over the large bay windows, and a soft indirect lamp in the form of a statuette of a naked nymph raising her arms aloft with an exquisitely provocative smile on her sculptured face cast the only illumination in this enormous room.

The couch was extremely broad and had a low back, and it was upholstered in green to match the drapes and the carpet. As Matthew Fullhan seated himself, he uttered a sigh of contentment. This was real luxury. The redhead stood in the center of the room with Amos beside her, his arm around her waist, while he whispered into her ear. She eyed Matthew Fullhan, then nodded, and whispered something back which made Amos Denby laugh and slap his thigh.

"Matt, this is Suzy Phillips, my best girl friend," the gray-haired art director announced. "Eleanor's going to be your girl, and she'll be out in a jiffy. Now just the way I told you, Matt, everything is taken care of, so all you have to do is relax and enjoy yourself. And in case you've got any hangups about group sex, I don't happen to be an exhibitionist, so Suzy and I are going to take one of the bedrooms and leave you and Eleanor to the other or the living room, depending on where you want to have your fun. There's a sideboard over there at the other side of the fireplace as you can see, and it's got wine and liquor and also crackers to nibble on if you've still got a hollow leg after that lunch we just tucked away under our belts. Have fun, and don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"But-Amos-I don't-" Matthew Fullhan began, rather helplessly.

"Now then, Matt dear," the redhead moved towards him, and he could see that the toreador blouse had only her warm pale white-sheened bare flesh under it without the least hint of a bra, judging from the deep V-cut, "you mustn't be shy at all. Amos and I have been friends for some years now, and he's already told me a good deal about you. And I've told Ellie, and she's going to make you feel the way you did in your college days, you'll see. But I like to see a man blush and be bashful, it shows that he isn't a born wolf. And that's the best kind-Ellie will know how to put you at your ease, you can be sure of that. Shall we go now, Amos darling?"

"You said it, Suzy, I've been thinking about you ever since I sat down to lunch with my friend here," the gray-haired art director enthusiastically chuckled. He had slipped his left hand down to squeeze Suzy Phillips' high-perched, firm, narrow-spaced oval buttocks through the red slacks, and Matthew Fullhan, as he stared, couldn't take his eyes off her willowy, lithe body. He was willing to swear equally that she had nothing on under the slacks anymore than she did under the blouse. But by then they were already walking out of the living room and he was left alone with his jumbled thoughts and also the very self-conscious realization that he was getting a tremendous erection just thinking about the possibilities of this wonderfully luxurious, almost soundproofed apartment and the fact that a gorgeous young girl would be all his in a very few minutes ... to do the things he had always longed to do with Astrid, but had never dared to try or even to talk to her about!

And then he gasped and his eyes widened with disbelief: slowly, a saucy smile on her ripe red lips, her large, widely spaced blue eyes very wide and childlike with their look of expectant surprise, a slim, honey-haired young woman entered the living room from his right and came to stand before him, smiling down at him in the most inviting way. "Hi there, I'm Eleanor," she declared.

His eyes devoured her as if half-believing this voluptuous siren would suddenly vanish and the entire dream dissolve. She was almost Astrid's height, with a more slender waist, and yet her hips and breasts seemed equally opulent. Her glossy yellow hair hung in a thick cascade just below her shoulders, framing her vivacious, oval-shaped face, much in the way the famous movie star Veronica Lake used to wear her hair over one eye and cheekbone to suggest sultry and inscrutable passion. She had on a provocative short-sleeved red satin jacket which left her midriff bare and showed off the shallow wide niche of her navel as well as enticing, smooth, tawny-sheened skin that rippled and quivered with a sensual vibrancy at every breath. A yellow satin skirt hugged her hips, perhaps by elastic waistband or snap fasteners, for it clung to her without any visible means of support and shaped out boldly ripe yet long thighs, sumptuous buttocks with a gradually widening cleft between them. The skirt descended just below her knees, and as his eyes flicked covetously over her entrancing body, he could detail the high-set sleek calves snugged in shimmeringly transparent beige-colored nylons. She seemed taller than she was because of the spike-heeled black leather pumps with glistening rhinestone buckles shaped like hearts on her instep.

"How-how do you do?" his voice was strangled, and he felt perspiration oozing from him.

"Don't be scared of me, Matt. You see I already know your name, Suzy told me. May I sit down? Or would you like a drink first?"

"If you'd like one-I-I don't mind," he faltered. There was a lump in his throat, and he suddenly crossed his legs because he was fearfully conscious of the throbbing turgidity of his penis and wanted to hide it. She was so young and fresh and delicious, he couldn't even begin to think that she slept with other men. Such smooth lovely skin, such gleaming white teeth, and a dainty Grecian nose that crinkled when she smiled. And she had a lovely soft husky voice as if there were just the two of them there in all the world and she was going to confide in him. He squirmed uneasily, because the throbbing in his penis became maddening. And all of a sudden he could look back over the four years of his marriage to Astrid and realize how much he had missed in the conjugal embrace. There had been no whetting of his erotic senses by clothing or by posture or even by attitude. No, it had all been in darkness, submissive and yet impatient darkness. And now this gorgeous young girl was to be his tonight, and nobody would ever know about it!

"Fine, Matt. Now how about a Scotch on the rocks? That's what I'm having." "That'll be fine, M-Miss-" "Oh, silly, call me Eleanor, or Ellie if you like. That's what my friends call me at college."

"College?" he echoed.

"Oh yes. I'm doing some postgraduate work at a teachers' college near Fall River, Matt. Some psychology courses. I want to learn all about people so that I can study their reactions and appeal to them more. Here's your drink. Now tell me about yourself."

She had gone over to the sideboard and poured out a stiff shot of Scotch, brought it back to him, and now seated herself very closely beside him with her own glass, crossing her long beautiful legs and waggling her uppermost pump. His eyes fixed on it, and he squirmed again because the aching in his penis was almost unbearable by now.

There was a wonderful smell to her, a spicy perfume he couldn't identify-Astrid used only a very modest cologne and almost never used lipstick-and it was permeating his senses and drawing all his attention to this intoxicatingly delicious young woman so close to him. He took a sip of his drink to give him more courage. "There-there really isn't much to tell, Miss- I mean-Eleanor," he began.

"Just relax. We've all night and maybe all weekend, if you like me. Don't you worry about a thing, Matt. Amos and Suzy have fixed things up and they won't get in our way at all. Besides, I wouldn't let them. You see, I know a little about you already. That's from Amos. You're a very shy and sweet person. I can see that for myself without knowing anything more about you. You're married, aren't you?"

Normally, Matthew Fullhan would have been on the defensive, suspicious of any such personal questions, especially from a callgirl. But now, thanks to his loneliness and his looking back over the four years of a monotonous marriage without romance, thanks also to the magnificent lunch and the wine and the incredible knowledge that this weekend was going to be paid for by the agency that gave him most of his livelihood, Matthew Fullhan found himself more than ready to talk about himself . . . something he almost never did at home.

Eleanor proved to be a wonderful listener. She looked at him with grave large eyes, nodded, put in a sympathetic word or gasp or a lovely shaking of her head which set her honey-gold curls dancing deliciously, to encourage him. In about five minutes he had conveyed to her the fact that he was married but that his wife hadn't turned out to be his dream girl, that this was the first fling of its kind he had ever known, and that he thought she was extremely beautiful.

She tilted back her head and laughed softly, "You're just too good to be true, Matt. You poor darling, I suppose when Amos told you about Suzy and me, you were picturing a sort of den of iniquity and all sorts of painted floozies, weren't you ? Well, as you see, I'm not really painted and I'm certainly not a floozie. Shall we say, I'm just your companion, to help you relax and unwind. Shall I get you another drink?"

"Oh no, Eleanor, I've had too much already today."

"You're right, too much always dulls the senses, and we want to enjoy this both, don't we? Now I want you to tell me everything you're going to do and have done to you, Matt dear. Don't be ashamed, it's all natural, and I'll let you in on a little secret-I really love it. You see, postgraduate courses cost a lot of money, and so I try to help meet expenses by just picking and choosing once in a while a nice friendly escort like you. I'm not about to make this my regular occupation, believe me. That's why you're to think of me as a girl you've met for the first time and that you've suddenly got very excited about, and I'll be the same way about you, and we can both make each other very happy. Do you understand?"

He nodded, his throat too choked to speak. It was the realization of all his dream-fantasies, to be alone with a beautiful girl who had as much as told him that whatever he wanted to do to her would be more than acceptable. It would be just impossible to think of such a thing happening between himself and Astrid, he knew, and that was why this marvelous sexual contrast had given him such a tremendous erection that he knew if he didn't do something quickly, he was going to make an utter idiot of himself.

"Let me take off your coat and tie, and then unbutton your shirt. And then I'll get myself a little comfy for you, Matt dear," she artfully proposed. She took his half-empty glass and set it down on the glass-covered coffee table before them, put her own there too, and then bent to him solicitously. He was trembling as she deftly and expertly removed his suit coat and then his tie, hanging them neatly over the back of a nearby chair, and then returned to unbutton the buttons of his shirt down almost to the last one. Then, with a soft little laugh, she moved away and faced him, put her hands to her skirt and made a quick movement, letting it slither down to her ankles. He caught his breath, trembling, his eyes fixed to the wanton display of her voluptuous beauty. She wore black net panties with legs so brief that the base of her upstandingly rounded, deeply cleft buttocks were bared, and in front he could see a thick triangular bush of dark-golden cuntal curls. The beige-toned nylons clambered high on her beautifully rounded thighs, snugged there without a wrinkle or flaw by the narrow tabs of a black satin-elastic garter belt, extremely narrow and just under the waistband of her panties. He found it impossible to speak, and he was bathed in sweat and he was trembling, but most of all his penis was rock-hard and straining to be free.

"Like me a little, Matt dear?" her voice was huskily seductive, soft, just audible for his ears alone.

"Oh my God, yes, Eleanor-you're-you're beautiful!"

"I'm glad you want me. I can see you do. Silly darling, don't cross your legs so much, don't you think I know that you've got a terrible hard-on and that you want me ?" Sinuously, felinely, she moved to sit beside him, an arm around his waist, and her right hand moved to the zipper of his trousers. In reflexive action, he pressed both hands nervously against hers, staring at her, gulping, "Ellie- my God-Ellie-I don't know-"

"Shh, darling, just relax, I told you," she soothed, "I told you I was taking courses in psychology. I don't have to be very advanced to know that you've never done anything like this before, not even with your own wife. And we're not going to talk about her. Tonight, maybe tomorrow too if you want me that much, I'm going to be your wife, and I'm going to do all the things you've dreamed about but never really were able to talk to me about before. I want you to understand that. That's what is going to make it so exciting for both of us to find out what you like and for you to find out what I like, too. Do you see, dearest?"

Once again, he was so stricken by the multitudinous emotions seething in him that he could only nod and gulp and stare at her, with a desperate fear that suddenly she would vanish into thin air and that he would be back home in the huge double bed astride Astrid in her nightgown and hear the sound of her regular breathing and know that it was still another night of frustration.

"That's fine, Matt dear. Now listen, have you ever been played with? I'll show you what I mean. Just spread your legs a little-that's a good boy. There now-oh my goodness, isn't he big and strong! That's a lovely compliment you're paying me, and I know it's sincere, you devil you!"

As he had obeyed, his face scarlet now, Eleanor had quickly and delicately dragged down the zipper of his trousers fly, moved her slim fingers against his shorts, opened them, and drawn out the surprisingly turgid, broad, plum-shaped glans and the dark-veined, angrily straining shaft of his manhood. Irresolute and fearfully self-conscious now, because this was the first time that a woman had actually manipulated his organ and, still more incredibly, in a lighted room where he himself could see what was taking place, he tried to put his hands against her wrist as if to prevent her startling act.

"Oh my goodness, you poor darling, you really are hung up, I can tell," she crooned, shaking her head so that her curls danced once again. "Now you let me do something nice to you, and see if you don't like it. If you don't, I promise you can take me over your lap and spank me for being a naughty girl. By the way," and this with a sly wink at him that made his blood boil, "I happen to like that too once in a while, Matt darling."

And suddenly her head had bowed over his lap and he felt the delicate caressing of the fingertips of her other hand while with right thumb and forefinger gripping the middle of his rampant organ, she began to touch and tickle him from scrotum to testicles to glans, blowing quick little gusts of breath against the sensitized plum-headed tip of his agonized and ferociously erect penis.

"OHH-oh God-oh Ellie darling-oh, it's so good-oh Ellie-" he groaned, his head tilting back, his eyes closing, and now again out of instinct but this time as the first steps towards a sexual emancipation he had never before experienced, Matthew Fullhan put his right hand against the soft sculptured neck of the honey-haired callgirl as if to hold her to that sweet ministration, while the fingers of his left hand dug into the soft yielding upholstery of the couch in this Tantalus-torment which seemed to draw the very essence out of his being, the marrow out of his very bones.

"Is it good for you, Matt?"

"So good-oh Ellie, don't-don't stop-oh my God-oh it's just wonderful!" he moaned.

And then he started and squirmed, with a cry of ecstasy: Her soft lips had taken hold of the very tip of his glans, implanting a suctioning kiss, and then the pert pink tip of her tongue stabbed at the puckering lips of the meatus, rubbing them briefly, exacerbating them with a maddening friction that almost made him ejaculate in violent orgasm. Only by a supreme effort did he hold himself back, his whole body wrenched and shuddering from the sweet torment of her oral wooing.

"Would you like me to take you in my mouth to start with, darling?" came her thrilling, unexpected question as she suddenly looked up at him her eyes roguish and knowing.

"Oh God-Ellie-but I want-I want to love you too-" he blurted.

"Of course you do, sweetheart. But don't forget, we've got practically the entire weekend. And don't you know that once you take the first edge off, then you can make love for an awfully long time and thrill the girl you're doing it to? Oh I see I'm going to have to teach you, your little wife for tonight and tomorrow is going to have to show her nice new husband lots of wonderful things he doesn't know about, and I'm so glad I'm the one to do it for you, Matt. You poor boy, you've just been starved, haven't you?"

He fought back the impulse to say yes to her, because that would be out of self-pity, and conscience told him that he couldn't really accuse Astrid for his own failings. He ought to have been man enough to have exerted some mastery over her, or at least to have talked things over so that perhaps they could have had a better time in bed. But that thought was swiftly dashed as once again the beautiful young blonde bent her head down and this time her lips accepted all his glans within their keeping, slushing her tongue over the tautly throbbing head of his spear, while all her fingers now did magical and evanescent things all over his scrotum and shaft and testicles till he felt that his very sap was being drawn from him from the innermost depths of his being to drain him completely.

Grinding his teeth, his fingernails biting into her soft neck, his other hand digging into the couch, he fought the urge to yield, prolonging the sweet torture all that much more beyond endurance, thus learning the first lesson which a connoisseur of voluptuous erotic lovemaking acquires, that there is no need to hasten when the night is long and desire fresh and hot and stinging.

Her head turned and moved, her lips and tongue attacking his glans and now the shaft just below the narrow, deep circumcisional groove with a quicker cadence. With a cry, he could no longer endure the devastating siege of his manhood, and he called out to warn her, himself shocked at such a primitive and unchaste act. But he heard her hiss, "Oh yes, now, give it to me!" And then again her lips fixed over his bulging glans, and with a hoarse shout of untold rapture, Matthew Fullhan felt himself explode.

He heard and felt her swallowing, drifting into a sweet limbo of black, peaceful release, and then she was beside him, her arm around his shoulders, her other hand stroking his cheek, whispering, "You poor darling, you've needed that for ever so long, you know you have! And now, let's go to the biffy and clean up and get all nice and naked and then you can love me the way you want to. Come on, Matt dearest, your new little wifie wants you to show her what a man you really are!"