Chapter 1

Jeff Haines stood, reading the words for the third time, each word burning itself into his mind.

WANT TO SWING We are attr. swinging couples early 20's and 30's. Would like to meet groovy couples for stimulating get-togethers as a group. Only letters with phone and photo will be answered. No singles.

He closed the underground newspaper and put it back on the rack. There had been a box number with the advertisement and he had memorized it. Jeff looked around the liquor store. No one seemed to be paying any attention to him. He had stopped in this strange liquor store on the way home, out of cigarettes and remembering there were none at the apartment. He had taken the first off ramp from the freeway and driven through the strange part of town until he found a liquor store, and had parked and gone in and purchased a carton of cigarettes.

On his way out, he had noticed the rack of girlie magazines and racy newspapers. It was a natural thing for Jeff to notice because sex was on his mind almost constantly. Married a year to Anna, he was desperately unhappy.

It had begun immediately, on his honeymoon, and gotten steadily worse. Anne simply did not like sex. She was cold and aloof, and the fights they had had were all about one thing: sex. Anne simply would not put up with much sex and never anything other than what has been described as "the missionary position."

Jeff fought to subdue his nature, which was passionate and imaginative. Anne was a good woman, warm and friendly and really caring about her friends and her husband. He actually liked being with her in any social situation, and he never stoppedever so gentlycaressing her in bed. This wasn't always easy, for Anne had insisted on separate beds and she always had the covers up by her neck.

And the infuriating part, the thing that had Jeff pounding on walls and going blind with hot horny desire and tossing restlessly in his sleep while he dreamed of hot naked bodies, was a simple thing: the body of his wife, Anne, in the next bed.

A petite blonde, she had a flowing walk with her hips undulating in a free way under her dress. Above her narrow trim waist, her breasts loomed large and exquisitely shaped. And they, too, seemed to undulate and shake when she walked. Since her figure was so well-formed, so firm and young, she never wore girdles or anything more than panties, bra, and a garter belt. And it showed in her every high-heeled step.

Her face was pretty, with a pert snub nose and wide sensuous lips. Jeff knew that together he and Anna made an attractive couple, and any stranger would be sure that Jeff was getting more than his share of loving. Yet in bed Anne would insist on talking about "a decent life" and "the future." If, as he sometimes did, Jeff would get out of hand and press himself against her, Anne would ward him off and sit up in bed, her breasts jiggling under her negligee. He would lookwith a dry mouthat her nipples protruding against the material and would listen as Anne said, "Look at me, Jeff. You want a wife you can respect, don't you? Isn't mutual respect the foundation of a good marriage? Isn't it?"

"No, goddamn it!" He wanted so much to yell thator something equivalentat her and take her in his arms and rip the damned negligee off and caress her and feel her naked body underneath him, all lubricious and wiggling, eager to be fucked.

But he didn't yell. He looked away and agreed and they had another "heart-to-heart talk."

In defense of Anne, Jeff was drunk on their wedding night andhorny, eagerhad been too rough and crude and vulgar. Men had often appeared to Anne as animals, brutes, unfeeling lechers who wanted nothing more than her body. She dressed to hide her body and discovered it was an impossibility: the more she tried to hide her breasts, the more she drew attention to them; the more she tried to control her walk, the more studied and provocative it became.

Despite her thoughts and aims, she radiated a natural lewdness; a deep, heated, milky kind of sexuality. To see Anne in a miniskirt, to see her bare shapely legs and full curving thighs, was to imagine what was higher; to think of her hips encased in panties and her naked buttocks with twin white cheeks and her downy pubic hair and to just know that her vaginal lips were prominent and shapely.

Indeed, Anne had a way of walkingwhen she wanted tothat allowed her vaginal lips to rub together in a soft lubricated way that excited her clitoris which would swell and send tingles of pleasure coursing through her body. Anne was a natural "tease," a body so well built and proportioned that no man in his right mind would pass her by without a long lustful look.

In the liquor store, Jeff swallowed and with elaborate casualness picked the paper up again and turned the pages. There were other ads for couples. There was one ad for a couple looking for a "bi-gal." The ad had apparently been placed by the wife, for it concluded with "Come and share my handsome husband with me."

Jeff tried to shift his position as he read on, finding the ad and reading it once again. BOX No. 848?C, GLENDALE. He had to keep shifting for a wild lewd idea was forming in his head and his prick was swelling in his pants and threatening to bulge out in a most conspicuous manner.

On a wild impulse, he walked to the counter, the paper in his hand while his other hand fished in his pocket for change. He tossed fifteen cents on the counter and hurried from the store.

He put the paper under the front seat and drove back toward the freeway, his mind entertaining a wild idea, an idea so insane that it both frightened and excited him. Driving with one hand, he nursed his erection into a more comfortable position and squeezed it with his hand. It felt rock hard and he was dying to get fucked. It was the idea he had in his mind that made him so excited: supposing he was to answer that "swinger" ad?

His heart pounded as he imagined what could happen. He could use a phony name and list his office phone, and he was sure he could find a snapshot of Anne and himself at the beach. He could rent a mailbox at the post office near where he worked and could see what happened. What the hell, he told himself as he drove, it's only in fun, and who's going to get hurt? What Anne doesn't know won't hurt her. If only she was more responsive, I wouldn't do a thing like this.

By the time he got home, he had convinced himself that he was not only right, he was morally justified in seeking a little fun. It all was, somehow, Anne's fault.

There were many things to sort out, as he felt he must be careful and consider all the possibilities. He had to think about the consequences of what he could be getting into, and be very careful. Jeff worked for a fund-raising company and had to think constantly of his reputation. And there was Anne to think of. And, inevitably, inexorably, there was the couple to think of. He tried to imagine what the wife was like.

The more he grappled with the idea, the more he thought of the wife, and the more he thought of the wife, the more excited he became. He spent two nearly sleepless nights tossing in his bed or sitting by the window, looking out at nighttime Los Angeles and smoking one cigarette after another.

On the third day, he rented a box. Two days later, he sat down at work after hours and typed out the letter on his secretary's typewriter. "Dear Mr. and Mrs., We saw your ad and decided to reply. We are interested in swinging with groups. Enclosed is a fairly recent picture. If interested, please send photo and letter." He decided to use his own name, gave the number of his post office box, and listed his office phone.

Then, with his hands sweating and his heart thumping, he dropped the letter down the mail chuteand immediately wished he could get it back, that it would miraculously shoot back out of the mailbox and into his hand so he could tear it to shreds and throw it away.

That evening, at home, watching TV, Anne said, "Shouldn't we talk about the future?"

Jeff closed his eyes. Above all, he didn't, at that moment, want to talk about the future, for the letter he had mailed was now part of the future. Supposing it was a trap, some sleazy kind of blackmail scheme? Supposing the police had put the ad in as bait to get a line on swingers? After all, there were swingers. Just last week he read about a wife-swapping club that had been exposed somewhere in the Midwest. Exposure could happen here. "What about the future?" he asked, trying to mask his anxiety and weariness at Anne's yakking.

"Well, I've thought of becoming active in some church. What do you think?"

"Church? Oh, well, maybe sometime."

"We could meet a lot of nice people that way. We could meet other married couples our own age that we had something in common with."

For one wild moment, he thought that Anne knew about the ad and letter already, that she had divined it by power of some puritan sixth sense. Yet she couldn't know. "It's a thought," he answered, his voice calm and flat. His jittery brain imagined going to some church and seeing it full of hedonistic naked couples in the throes of a big orgy.

God, he told himself, I'm horny.

He hurried to bed in order to catch glimpses of his wife's milky, moving, sensuous body. She undressed and dressed again in the privacy of the bathroom, insisting that everyone was entitled to privacy and pointing out, to his disgust, that she afforded him the same right. And it was true: she never came into the bathroom while he was undressing, and, if he undressed in the bedroom, she went discreetly into the bathroom.

She was modest, she said.

Modest? She was a cold-blooded bitch! Jeff raged in his mind as he lay on his back, pretending to sleep. She was a goddamned puritan, she was mean, and she was rotten to tease him so.

If only, he thought, if only she didn't have such a fantastic body, if only she were a little fat or flabby, if only she wasn't put together in such a loose wanton way, it would make it all a little more bearable.

But she wasn't fat or flabby and she slithered across the room, her head down in modesty, her hands against her thighs in order to mask them but only calling attention to the way they rippled and moved under her negligee. "Good night, dear."

Jeff heaved a sigh and mumbled, "Night." And then stayed awake for hours, thinking and fuming.

At work the next morning, Jeff jumped and almost yelled the first time the phone rang. And, as the day rolled on and each call turned out to be business, he began to relax and feel a little foolish for expecting an answer so soon. After all, he had just mailed the letter yesterday. By late afternoon, he was convinced that he would never hear from themthat strange husband and wife who advertisedthat it was all a hoax, that the whole thing was just a come-on to sell something.

"That's it," he whispered aloud to himself, "Just a trick to get you to buy something."

And then the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Mr. Haines? Jeff Haines?"

Immediately, when he heard the voice, he knew that this was no business call, that his letter was being answered. His face flushed with excitement, his heart started pounding heavily against his ribs, and he fought for control of his voice as he said, "Yes, this is Jeff Haines."

"Ah," the voice said, and it was a husky animal sound, a dark sexual sound. "Well, Jeff, I'm standing here in my underwear and looking at a picture of you and your wife."

"Oh."

"Oh? Is that all you have to say?" He heard a smug chuckle. The woman on the other end must have held her mouth very close to the phone, for it seemed to Jeff she was whispering right in his ear as she said, "I could think of a lot of things to say."

"Oh?"

"There you go again." A throaty peal of laughter came like ribbons into his ear and he found himself laughing with her.

"What's your name?" he asked, finding that the laughter relaxed him.

"Mmmmm, I've been called a lot of things. All of them nice," she whispered in his ear. "My name is Carol Johnson and my husband's name is Rick and we think we'd like to meet you and your wife. By the way, what is her name?"

"Anne. Pardon me, would you tell me something?"

"Anne. That's a nice name. She looks like it fits her. Sure. Ask away; what did you want to know?" "You said before that you and your husband would like to meet us. Right?"

"That's right."

"Well, how does he know? I mean, did you show him the letter and picture?"

There was an astounded pause before Carol's voice said, "Of course. What did you think? I'd never do anything he didn't want to do nor would he do anything like that to me."

"You showed him and he said okay?"

"Of course. Why not?"

"He knows and he approves?"

A hint of suspicion came into her voice. "Yes. Why are you asking me so many questions?"

"I'm sorry. I'm... we're new to this and it's just amazing, that's all. Is he home now?"

"He's sitting right here listening to us. Would you like to talk to him?"

"Wow. Eh, no, not right now. I'd rather talk to you." He couldn't hide his rutting excitement any longer and he stammered and stuttered. "Now, let's see, w-w-what do we do? I mean, that is, w-w-what happens next?"

Carol's laugh came across low and throaty and then he heard her voice pull away from the phone and she moaned, "Ooooooohhhhh, baby!" Then her voice came back to his ear in a low whisper, husky and wet. "Hello? Still there? What happens next, over here, is going to be wild! Hello, Jeff? That's a lovely name."

"Thank you. So is Carol."

"Yeah," Again it sounded as if she flung the phone away and Jeff heard her voice moan out, "Ooooooohhhhhh yessssss, ohh, please do that!"

"Carol?" he said.

Her voice came back into his ear. "Yeah, Jeff. Mmmmm. You wait for a letter and if you like what you see, give me a call."

"There will be a picture of you?"

"Mmmmmmm, he's taking it now."