Chapter 2

Thoroughly ashamed of herself, Joan sat quietly and in a semi-stupor as the white convertible sped along deserted streets. I've ruined a friendship, she thought bitterly. What could have gotten into me that I led him on so far? She'd only intended to make Harry a bit jealous, but now she'd undoubtedly hurt Tom. It had been inexcusably selfish of her to think she could use him like that.

Deep in self-accusation, she had failed to notice that the car was pursuing a direction at variance with either of their homes. Before she could question their position high in the hills above the city, Tom turned the car suddenly into a short side street and then immediately again so that it faced outward from a secluded parking place with the brilliant lights of the city below. "I thought you'd enjoy the view," Tom said matter-of-factly as he got out of the convertible and walked around it to Joan's side. He opened the door and helped her out, supporting her as she wobbled slightly. "It's too beautiful a place to pass without stopping on a night like this," he continued casually. He gave a short laugh. "Besides, it should clear our heads a little."

Joan allowed him to lead her to the outer edge of the parking place where they watched for a moment in silence the panorama that unfolded far below them. It seemed natural that Tom should put his arm around her waist as he stood beside her. Perhaps they were still friends, she thought hopefully. Tom was an adult, if she wasn't. He would understand what could happen to a girl taken unaware by her own emotions.

She flinched slightly as Tom's arm rose and his large palm cupped a full breast. No! she thought. I mustn't! But she made no further movement as strong fingers closed upon the soft globe fluttering from her rapid breathing. She could feel her taut nipple pulsating as the invading fingers first brushed against it and then returned to massage it lightly. Her groin felt on fire as Tom massaged her resilient flesh with increasing urgency. "Ooooh, Tom!" she breathed huskily from a throat that seemed clamped in a vise so she could hardly speak at all.

She thought fleetingly of Harry, and then the thought was gone. The only room in her crowded brain was for the sensation afforded her by the urging of the strong hand upon her breast that was kneading her and manipulating her into a white-hot fever of desire. She took a step backward and leaned more heavily against his arm, and Tom took hold of her and pulled her around to face him. He pressed against her, and a rocklike bulge in his trousers twitched involuntarily against her belly. The dampness between Joan's legs renewed itself as she thought longingly of what the huge thing would feel like boring its way inside her. It's wrong to think like that, she told herself desperately. But it felt so good. So gooooooood. She made no attempt to escape Tom's hard lips as once more they fused upon her own.

The kiss left her breathless. It was eager, expert, and demanding. Her mouth opened willingly to accept the tongue which probed her unresisting mouth. She was so far gone in sexual arousal and excitement that she didn't even mind the small moans of pleasure that escaped from her straining lips. Tom held her immobile for an instant, then released her so suddenly that she almost fell.

Joan couldn't stand it that the strong, supporting arms were suddenly gone. "Tom!" she whispered urgently. "Do it to me, Tom! Do it to me!"

She didn't really believe she had said the emboldened words, but the sound lingered in her own ear. She was shameless, and she didn't care: All thoughts of loyalty to Harry had vanished in her alcohol-dimmed mind. She just knew she wanted Tom. Knew she had to have him regardless of consequences. There was a hot flame in her crotch that only a sturdy male organ could extinguish.

Tom led her back to the car. Standing beside it, he kissed her on the mouth again while his hands went behind her and gripped the pliant cheeks of her buttocks, squeezing, compressing, drawing in, releasing, pinching, and pressing together her soft globes until Joan thought she would expire from pleasure.

Tom opened the car door and reached for a lever at the back of the seat, releasing a catch that held it upright. The seat descended into a reclining position, and Tom handed Joan into the car. She rolled onto her back after releasing the catch on the second seat herself, then lay back trembling, her legs slightly parted. She knew what was going to happen, and she wanted it to happen. No thought of love or loyalty could penetrate the sex-haze enveloping her.

Despite her desire, she felt a tremor of fear. This was all new to her. She hadn't had another man since her marriage. She felt almost like a virgin. She almost cried out as Tom leaned down upon her and their arms and legs and bodies came together in an unplanned, slow-motion embrace that engulfed all her sensibilities.

Tom's leg pressed between her parted thighs, widening them still more. He kissed her neck passionately, his moist tongue immediately pursuing a course under her throat, then down to the deep valley between her heaving breasts. Joan gasped at the feeling. Harry hadn't touched her in three months. No lips had made love to her breasts as these lips were doing. Tom pulled the straps of her dress from her shoulders and lowered it until her large breasts bulked large in the dim light and her quiveringly erect pink nipples danced in the air, reveling in their freedom. They were free to be kissed; free to be tantalized.

"Ohhh, God!" Joan whimpered, spreading her legs farther apart as Tom's hot mouth plunged from nipple to nipple, titillating each unmercifully. She raised herself slightly upward so she could feel the strong muscles in Tom's intruding thigh probing against the wetness between her legs.

Tom grasped her right hand and pulled it down to the long bulge in his trousers. Joan responded to the silent directive by stroking the throbbing penis while she marveled at its massivity. She rubbed gently at first, then harder, and she could feel her partner's excitement mount steadily. He tapped her shoulder, and she raised her hips again obediently as he quickly stripped her gown from her completely and flung it to one side.

Tom paused long enough to stare down at the female form beneath him. There was no blemish in the sleekly sensuous curves. He could even see the slightly darker patch of her soft blonde pubic hair beneath her skimpy white silk bikini panties. He tugged at them impatiently, and Joan once more lifted her hips to assist in their removal.

Joan rested on her back, scarcely breathing, while Tom hurriedly divested himself of his clothing. She waited for the instant when his straining cock would be freed from his shorts. Even after feeling it, her eyes widened at its sudden appearance. It was both thick and long, huskier than any she had seen. It probed the air proudly as Tom knelt on the seat beside her, and a rippling shiver of salacious anticipation caused the saliva to flow more freely in Joan's mouth as she thought of the big prick's breadth and length plunging deep inside her belly.

Tom knelt above her for an instant, his breath coming in quick, hard gasps. Then he plunged upon her, ravaging her breasts and naked belly with wet kisses. His enormous cock pressed hard against the soft flesh outside her thigh, its heat starting a whole new chain of sensations in her frantic, molten interior. She wriggled beneath him, trying to force it into herself, but Tom was in no hurry.

He stroked her sides and belly and her softly swollen mound. His fingers slid lower and plummeted into the feathery fleeciness of her pubic hair, tickling and teasing until Joan writhed in exquisite sexual agony. Then a finger darted down and plucked lightly at the ragged, fleshy fissure of her sexual parts and slipped inside.

"Ahhhhhhhhh!" Joan bleated involuntarily. "Oooooh, Tom!"

She surged upward with her hips to meet the finger and increase the pressure. "God, are you wet!" he exclaimed in surprise. "I could see a damp spot on your panties, but you're really wet."

Wet and unashamed, Joan thought fleetingly as the finger massaged her, rotating inside her in a circulatory movement, manipulating her inside walls with an excruciating deliberateness she had never experienced before. She held her breath as the hand covering her pussy moved slightly so that two fingers widened the lips of her splayed cunt and the finger of another hand massaged her clitoris. She jerked wildly beneath him as a fiery bomb seemed to go off in her interior, and then the finger returned to her lubricated open passage.

"Oh, oh, oh!" Joan cried as pleasurable sensation flooded her.

"How d'you like it?" Tom queried hoarsely.

"Ohhh, yes, yes, yes," Joan sighed. "Please, more!" Her hands cupped her own breasts as Tom's finger thoroughly aroused her as it plunged in and out of her clinging sheath.

Still he continued to manipulate his fingers inside her, sometimes one, sometimes two pressed together. Joan's cunt had felt tight and puckered at first from recent disuse, but as Tom pumped his hard-boring fingers in and out of her she gushed a torrent of sticky wetness over them that seemed to enlarge her materially. She was panting from pleasure unknown in recent months.

"Please, Tom," she whispered as beads of perspiration formed on her smooth forehead. "Please, I can't stand it any more! Please!"

"What is it you want?" he asked sadistically.

She knew what he meant. "I want you to put your prick in my cunt and f-fuck me!" she said unsteadily, the words at the same time shaming and further stimulating her.

They excited Tom, too. No longer in complete control, he was unable to prolong his titillation of Harry's wife, the target of his sexual ambition for so long. Her desire was so uninhibited and so fierce that he was caught up in her wake. "Yes, now!" he said savagely, and jammed his big cock between her wide-apart legs against the small, hairy, narrow opening of Joan's cunt. He probed brutally for a moment as Joan bit her lip at the soft-lipped entrance-violation taking place.

Then Tom speared her doughnut firmly, shoved in for an inch or two, and lowered himself upon her. "Ahhhhhhhhhhh!" Joan cried out as she felt the big head slip moistly inside her.

Her mouth pursed in half-pained, half-delighted apprehension as she felt it worming its course so deeply inside her ravening cunt that the hardened flesh seemed to be just under her breasts.

Joan rocked from side to side as Tom's prick thrust even more deeply into her heaving belly. "Oooooooh!" She cried shrilly. "It's-in, isn't it?"

For answer Tom surged with his hips, and Joan groaned as another inch of gristle penetrated her quivering sheath. But it was a groan of pleasure as much as it was of pained distention. She thrust her straining thighs even farther apart in an effort to get even more of him inside her. "Eeeeeeeeeeeii, don't stop!" she burbled. "Don't-stop!"

Tom was surprised at her abandon. Surprised and excited. Here he had been thinking of her as a mealy-mouthed little bitch who wouldn't say shit if she had a mouthful, and beneath him he had a sexual wildcat whom even in preliminary movements seemed to have her handsome bare ass on ball bearings. He hovered above her for a moment, his thick prick sunk inside her to his balls which brushed gently against the billowing, yielding globes of her bottom.

"Fuck me!" she pleaded. "Fuck me, Tom!"

He began to move upon her, slowly at first. An inch or two of the slippery prick outward, then a deep plunge inward. And again. And again. Then a further withdrawal, and a deeper plunge. He wanted this first fuck to last; wanted her to remember it so there'd be less convincing necessary the next time. Joan moaned at the penetration Tom was achieving, and strained her buttocks upward from the lowered seat, hungry for the plunging rod that was beginning to increase its speed.

Tom lengthened his strokes fractionally each time, grinding his rigid prick into Joan's quivering gash with her groaning beneath him. Mercilessly he drove his fleshy spike into her crammed cunt-walls while Joan sobbed in sexual frenzy. Her cunt felt as if it were about to explode. Never had she known such excitement as with this oversized cock fucking her furiously.

A succession of electric shocks burst through her body as she grabbed for his shoulders to hold him more closely to her. If the world had come to an end that instant she would have been unable to concentrate upon anything except the fucking she was getting. Her upraised hind cheeks began to twitch spasmodically as the interior muscles in her pussy grabbed at the hard-fucking prick and threatened to freeze upon it.

Then she could feel the deep-stirring tingle presaging her come, and she fought desperately to hold it off. She tried to make each second last as Tom pounded her belly with such furious strokes that she grunted audibly at each impact. Her quivering legs wrapped around him tightly as a giant wave slowly welled up inside her.

The first convulsion started almost lazily. It quivered deep in the pit of her convulsed belly and moved downward to titillate her prick-filled chasm. Joan's half-closed eyes flew wide open. "Oh!" she exclaimed tentatively, and then her cunt boiled over. "Ohhhhh!" she shrieked. "Ooooh! Tom! T-Tom!" Her stomach surged upward as she erupted internally. "Ohhhhhh, yes! Now! NOW! I'm-ooooh!- coming! I'm-aaiieeeeeeeeeee!-coming!" Her hands drummed on Tom's shoulders. "OHHHHHHHHHHHH-h-h-h-h!" she expired as her juices filled her passage, lubricating it still more.

Her almost maniacal frenzy overpowered Tom. Shoulders hunched, he almost stood up on his prick as he slashed it into Joan's overflowing orifice. He bellowed like a bull with his lips against her neck as his moment overtook him. With her own frenetic passion subsiding, Joan clasped his shoulders firmly as Tom's buttocks worked like a piledriver as he shot his load into her, hot fluid from his straining cock spurting deep into her wide open cunt.

"Good, good, good, oh good!" Joan whispered when she felt his spend filling her. Tom fell on top of her, completely spent, crushing her with his weight. Her legs splayed limply to either side as she tried to concentrate mentally on the pleasure she had been receiving a moment before.

But with the cessation of activity in the region of her aching pelvis her mind swiveled to other matters. She had loved it while she was getting it, certainly, but it was still wrong. A rising tide of guilt enveloped her. Being fucked by her husband's best friend in his car-what kind of a schoolgirl performance was that? She couldn't tell Harry; she couldn't expect him to understand that his own neglect of her was a primary cause. Not that it was an excuse. There could be no excuse. Her passionate nature had burst its normal discreet boundaries and turned her into a pulsating, slavering, female animal.

Joan stirred uneasily beneath Tom's bulk. "Let me up, Tom," she murmured. "We must have been out of our minds. Suppose someone had come along and seen us?"

He grunted something unintelligible but finally heaved his weight up from her pinioned body. Immediately her stomach and cunt felt chilled with the removal of the warm male body covering them. Joan felt a fresh wave of embarrassment as she realized how she must look, spraddle-legged and still on her back. She sat up hurriedly, snapping her thighs together to conceal the focal point of all that delicious but forbidden activity.

Tom was silently pulling on his underwear, his expression unreadable. Joan scooped up her white bikini panties, still damp from her dance floor excretion, and stuffed them into her handbag. She pulled her dress over her head and wriggled it down over her hips, resting her weight on one plump haunch at a time as she pulled the gown beneath her. She had to get out of the car to get it properly settled around her lower body, and she knew it must be a mass of wrinkles even though she couldn't see clearly in the semi-darkness.

Tom was under the wheel when she got back into the car. He started the engine and had the car in motion before Joan was fairly settled in the seat. She wondered what he was thinking. That his best friend's wife was a hot piece, no better than a whore? She shuddered at the thought that he might tell Harry. "I-I don't know what happened to me, Tom," she said honestly, acutely humiliated that she should have to apologize for her conduct. "Can we-can't we just forget that it ever happened?"

The quick glance he cast in her direction was inscrutable. "We'll talk about it over coffee at your place," he said. The convertible descended swiftly from the hills and nosed through the streets in the direction of Harry and Joan's house.

"There's nothing to talk about, really," Joan declared with attempted firmness. She glanced at her wristwatch. It was after two a.m.! "And I don't think you should be coming into the house at this hour even for coffee."

There was no mistaking the white glint of his teeth as Tom smiled at her remark. "We'll talk," he said with finality.

They completed the balance of the ride in silence. Joan removed her house key from her purse nervously. She didn't understand this new facet of Tom's personality. Surely he didn't expect to trade on her moment of weakness? Just because she had succumbed temporarily to his male strength and her own loneliness?

She unlocked the door hurriedly and led the way inside, hoping that no one in the quiet-seeming neighborhood would be up late enough and be curious enough to see Tom enter with her. In the living room she was greeted by the empty martini glasses from her early-evening drinking. That had been her downfall, she thought as she switched on a lamp. The liquor, and Harry's recent neglect of her. The two had combined to make her putty in Tom's hard hands. She shivered internally at the recollection of those hands racing over her nude body. How could she have been so abandoned?

The familiar room renewed her feeling of guilt about what she had done as well as her concern about Harry. Dear God, what if Tom were the type to kiss and tell? Harry might even divorce her. Joan's entire body felt chilled at the thought. Well, she'd beg if she had to for Tom's silence. Her marriage was too important to her to risk its loss.

"Tom," she began as her eyes took in his rumpled suit and then went instinctively to her gown. It was wrinkled even worse than she'd feared.

"I take my coffee black," Tom said casually.

Joan hesitated. She wanted him out of the house, but she couldn't afford to antagonize him. She went into the kitchen, turned on the light, and spooned coffee into the percolator. Her thoughts were racing as she stood there waiting for the coffee to perk. Exactly what was it about Tom's attitude that she found so disturbing? She couldn't quite place her finger upon it.

And then he was lounging in the kitchen doorway, hands in pockets, watching her with a half-smile on his lips. "I want to talk to you about tonight, Tom," she said quickly. "It was a -a terrible mistake."

His smile widened, but the flat planes of his hard-looking features showed no softness. "A mistake? Who're you trying to kid, Joan?"

"I mean it," she insisted. "It was the liquor, and-"

"The liquor!" he snorted. "You practically raped me on the dance floor, and how about your reactions in the car? Didn't you like it? Say no honestly and I'll walk out the door right now."

Joan bit her lip. "You know I can't say that," she admitted. "I-I did want it." She continued on recklessly. "I needed it, if it comes to that. But it should never have happened. I lost-lost control, that's all. I never dreamed of being unfaithful to Harry, even though-even though-"

Tom was still smiling as she faltered. "Even though you're a horny little big-assed bitch who loves to be fucked by a big prick?" he asked.

His words shocked her while at the same time they stirred lewd thoughts she sought to thrust from her mind. "I s-suppose you feel you're entitled to t-talk to me like that," Joan said. Her voice shook as she strove to retain her dignity. "Please be charitable, Tom. Please. I still-I still can't believe it really happened. Don't make it harder for me. I'm so-"

"The coffee's ready," he interrupted her.

Joan tried to control her shaking hands as she lifted the percolator from the stove and poured them each a steaming cup. Tom sat down at a chair near the table and considered her above the rim of his cup as he sipped from it. His bright-eyed inspection of her combined with his hard grin increased Joan's nervousness. Her stomach felt cold.

"What makes you think tonight was an accident?" Tom asked suddenly.

"Th-think? Well, wasn't it? I mean, certainly it was. I-"

"I've been wanting to fuck you since fifteen minutes after Harry joined the firm," Tom cut her off.

Joan could feel herself reddening. "Oh, well," she tried to toss it off, "everyone looks at -looks at everyone else sometimes and-and thinks-"

"That the someone else would make a good fuck?" Tom interrupted. "Did you ever think of me that way, Joan? Did you ever look at me and say to yourself I'll bet ol' Tom could put his prick in my hot cunt and give me a really great fuck?"

Joan pressed both hands to her flaming cheeks. "W-why do you feel you have to humiliate me by-by talking like this, Tom?" she asked unsteadily. "I know what I did was wrong, and I'm ashamed of myself." She felt tears coming to her eyes. "Isn't-isn't that enough? Do you need to torment me?"

"Getting back to the 'accident' tonight," he said as though she hadn't spoken. "Would you believe I had Harry sent out of town so he couldn't make the party tonight?" Joan stared at him blankly. "Would you believe I told Alice to stay home so I'd have my chance at you alone?"

"Oh, n-no," Joan whispered, horrified.

"Would you believe I told Alice I was going to fuck you tonight, Joan?"

Joan couldn't help herself; she burst into a freshet of tears. She tried to quell her choking sobs while she wiped at her streaming cheeks with the backs of her hands. "You're-you're des-despicable!" she managed to get out.

"Sure I'm despicable," he agreed comfortably. "And you don't know the half of it, Joannie, dear." The hard glint was back in his eyes. "Because you know what's going to happen as soon as I finish this cup of coffee, Joan?" Her half-fascinated, half-nauseated gaze was riveted upon him. "I'm going to take you upstairs and fuck your bare ass all over your bed. All over Harry's bed."

Joan drew a deep breath while she tried to quell the fluttering in her interior. This was unbelievable!

"No, Tom," she said. She tried desperately to make her voice matter-of-fact. "I made a mistake, and if you force me to I'll confess it to Harry, but I'm not going to let you ruin my marriage."

"You'll do exactly as I say," Tom said evenly.

"No, I won't."

"Yes, you will. Exactly. If I phone you tomorrow morning and tell you come down to my office and put your big behind on my desk for a fucking, you'll do it."

His conviction shook her even more than the lewd picture conveyed by his words. "Wh-why say such an awful th-thing?" she asked shakily.

"Because Harry has been manipulating one of the accounts at the office, and if you don't do as I say I'll turn him in."

The sound of his words hung heavy between them before the silence began to build up in the kitchen. A thousand thoughts raced through Joan's feverish mind. Her illness last year. The tremendous bills. Harry's growing moroseness and preoccupation, irritability even, indication of a growing burden. She sensed that what Tom said was true. He was too sure of himself, too positive for it not to be true.

"I thought you were a friend, Tom," she managed to say at last.

"I am a friend," he said debonairly. "A friend who's wanted to screw you for a long time, dear."

"But how can you s-say-how can you plan such dreadful-"

"Dreadful? Delightful," he cut her off. "Don't forget I'm a friend who's kept Harry's guilty secret to this point." He set down his coffee cup with a deliberate clatter. "Now what about getting that luscious ass upstairs so I can give you a real fucking?"

Joan's breath seemed caught somewhere deep in her throat. What good now to confess to Harry her moment of indiscretion? That was the least of Harry's and her problems. If she couldn't talk this grinning satyr out of his inclination- and instinctively she knew she couldn't-then she was definitely in for whatever he chose to do to her. She had to protect Harry at all costs.

Tom was growing impatient. He crooked a finger at her. "Come over here, bitch," he said brutally.

Joan rose from her chair with shaky legs. How could she not have seen before the cruelty so close to the surface in this man? And she was his plaything, at least until she could talk to Harry. If only he were lying about Harry's manipulating an account... but she knew he wasn't lying. Too many hitherto ignored signs all pointed in the same direction. "Wh-what do you want?" she asked when she was standing beside Tom.

"I know you're bareass naked under that gown," he said. "I saw you put your panties in your purse. Pull up your dress and turn around into the light and give me a good look at the back of your lap in all its bareass glory."

For a long moment Joan stood motionless. Instinctively she knew that if she made this first concession she was committed. But what was she to do? If Tom were vindictive enough he could even have Harry fired. She couldn't risk it. She faced about, pulled up her long skirt, and bunched it under her armpits.

Behind her she heard Tom's soft whistle. "Bend over," he said huskily.

Tears welled anew into Joan's eyes, but she obeyed.

"What an ass!" Tom marveled. "What an immodest, brazen, ribald, unchaste, licentious, profligate, lascivious, carnal, libidinous, unblushing, shameless bare behind!" Joan shuddered as his hands stroked her satiny, snow-white, elastically malleable hind cheeks, softly resilient under the groping hands. Despite herself a quick glow stirred within her.

"Did Harry ever count the downy little hairs all over your lovely bottom?" Tom inquired. He slipped a hand between Joan's plumped-out hind cheeks, deep into her crevice, and her whole body quivered. Tom noticed it immediately. "Getting hot again, aren't you, sweetie?"

"N-no!" Joan tried to deny the stirring in her flesh.

Tom crooked a finger until it touched Joan's swelling cunt-lips as his knuckles pressed against the lower slopes of her bottom. An involuntary deep sigh along with a shivery ripple in her buttock-flesh escaped her. Tom laughed and got to his feet. "We're wasting time," he said briskly. "Take off the dress."

Mechanically she reached for the clasp at the back of her neck, unfastened it, then stepped out of the dress as it cascaded down her bare back. Cooler air licked over the sensitive nerves of her exposed skin. Her nipples rose with the new tactile sensation, and she covered them with her palms. She could see the slope of her own white belly and the upper crescent of her blonde pussy-hair. Could this actually be happening to her in her own kitchen?

A sound from behind her caused her to look over her shoulder. Tom was undressing. He stripped off his underwear and stood clad only in his socks, his penis soft and swaying meatily with his body movements. Joan stared at it with dry lips and constricted throat. That was what had given her so much pleasure before, she thought guiltily. It looked so harmless now. She wanted nothing to do with it, of course, but her body wasn't taking dictation from her mind. A dampness welled in her vagina, moistening her inner walls and relaxing the dainty, sensitively springy lips of her vulva.

Tom's hard palm cracked unexpectedly with stinging force upon Joan's nude right buttock, and she yelped. He laughed as he took her and bent her over his upraised thigh so that her bare bottom plumped out again as his hand played pattycake with her brimful, marble-white gluteal region. "How long since you've had an old-fashioned bare-bottom spanking, Joan?" he inquired.

"N-not since I was in high s-school," she said faintly.

He gave her another slap before releasing her. "We'll have to give you one some one of these days," he grinned. "Good for the tired blood. Who gave you your last spanking, your old lady or your old man?"

"My father."

Tom nodded knowingly. "I guess he enjoyed a look at a ripening girlish bare ass, huh?"

"My father wasn't like that," Joan said with as much dignity as she could muster considering she was nude in the presence of an almost nude stranger.

Tom smiled but didn't pursue it. "Upstairs," he commanded, and Joan's heart lurched in her breast. "To the fucking chamber, milady. One stiff prick coming up for one juicy twat."

Helplessly Joan squeezed her eyelids together against a fresh onslaught of tears. She knew that crying would only make this man angry. This incredible thing was really going to happen to her. Nothing she could say or do would save her from being violated on her own bed. The devil of it was that Tom's lewd speech was exciting her. It was enough to make her wonder if she really knew her own nature. Where was the cool dignity she had always considered an integral part of her personality?

From the corner of her eye she saw Tom raise his hand.

Hastily Joan walked to the kitchen door and into the living room to the foot of the stairs, trying to still the trembling in her legs.