Chapter 4

There was a strange inconsistency in Nan Mikell's actions the next few days; it thoroughly rattled her staff and those of her husband's business associates who dropped by from time to time to ask her opinion on matters of interest, and by the end of the week her secretary, Mills-inherited, like everything else, from Ed and still more attuned to the dead man's ways than to his widow's-was seriously considering giving notice.

Under the mask of bravado she wore so determinedly, though, Nan understood their confusion thoroughly, and sympathized with it. The experience was unsettling to her, too-perhaps to her most of all. After all half of her was still the timid soul, used to passively going along with Whatever Was Expected and swallowing her reservations about the strange and the new. This was hard to reconcile with the egotistical new creature inside her which kept goading her onward, insisting: Try it! Experience! Throw caution to the winds! And the two halves of her fought each other bitterly for control.

Well into the next week, Nan sat at her desk with a seat pile of bills before her, signing checks. And, as suddenly as ever, she felt the goad.

What does a man want? She asked herself. In bed?

Was it all the...the kinky things? The mouth stuff? (No, no! the voice inside her said. Use the words! The right words!)

All right, she said. Would it please a man better to have her...suck him off? To put his cock in her mouth and...and fuck her that way?

Wouldn't it be more fun for him if she learned to do it right? To make a delicious teasing game out of it at first-the way Helga had with her (and here she felt a sharp pang of regret, coupled with an eager sensation between her thighs)? And then increase the intensity of the experience, perhaps, a Utile at a time? Again, as Helga had done. (Oh, God! her hand went to her crotch, remembering. It was wet and sticky.) And then...and then....

(Well, why not find out, dummy?)

She reversed the pen and drummed lightly on the desk top, her eyes staring unfocusedly at the wall. Yes, she thought Why not? But...but not around here. Not with all the ghosts this place held for her. With the giant domineering, and certainly disapproving presence of Ed haunting the place for her so that every experience she had referred, inevitably, back to Ed and what he might think, just as her childhood experiences had always referred back to the rigidly Catholic household she'd been born to, with its fiercely inhibiting web of shibboleths and taboos.... No. She'd have to get away.

Yes! A holiday! That was it! and something...something different. Something...well, perhaps a little extreme, even.

No, let's be honest. Somewhere where you can meet men. Privately, discreetly, without having to worry about all these...these people of Ed's finding out. A holiday off by yourself, incommunicado, under an assumed name, perhaps.... The more she thought about it, the more excited she got And she found herself once again pawing at her crotch frantically, gasping with passion as her fingers rubbed her clit wildly under the thin dress (she never wore panties these days), moaning with pain and delight as she brought herself off again.

This time, with her eyes wide open. The old fantasies wouldn't do any more. And her present course, she fervently hoped, would remove her from the necessity of having to do this for herself for a while. The worst that could happen was that she'd have a new fantasy to occupy her mind while she did it The best? The best could mean...anything.

She gasped and cried out, jamming her fingers deep inside the wet may of her vagina as the pleasure-pain grew too much to bear and the agonized twitching of her clit drove her into yet another spasm of ecstasy....

Six days later, on a dark strip of beach near Nice, a new, almost unrecognizable Nan Mikell-hair cut short in a Vidal Sassoon-styled haircut, her face reshaped and restructured by makeup experts, her pert body decked out in sports clothing of the latest Mediterranean cut-released the hand of the dark, smooth-muscled young man she'd been walking with on the sharp-pebbled strand and turned to face him. He wore only bikini trunks and a thigh-length, open shirt, and, as her hands slipped inside the shirt and ran down his aroused skin, goosepimpled in the cool air of a Riviera evening, she heard a hoarse sigh escape his lips as his muscles tensed.

"Hey, baby," he said in his broken English. "Not here...you see...." And he put his hands on hers. "The moon...."

"It's dark enough," she said in English. Her own voice was husky with excitement "Hon, cher!," she went on in passable Bryn Mawr French. "Non, lais-sez-moi, comme ceci...." And, standing on tiptoes in her low espadrilles for his kiss, she let her hands wander down his front It was dark enough, after all. Nobody'd see. The flics didn't patrol this stretch of beach at night And her palm slowly, sensuously, rubbed the bikini front bulging with a thick and powerful load.

She kissed him again: once, twice. And as she did, her fingers slipped inside the trunks and began, very slowly, to pull them down.

"Non...Non..." he said. But her lips silenced his protests-which sounded thoroughly insincere anyway-and the insistent hands continued pulling the rubbery cloth down...down his legs, to fall on the ground.

"Step out of them," she said. And she helped him. Then she knelt before him, her knees protected from the sharp stones of the beach by the trunks he'd shed. And her hands roamed softly around the thick thighs, the hard and muscular buttocks, before cupping the fat balls and caressing their tightly wrinkled skin and guiding the thick, straining cock to her eager and ready lips.

She'd picked him up on the street, in the narrow area between the Old Town and the big hill called Le Chateau that dominated the town. He'd been afoot; she'd been in the rented Alfa Romeo, driving with the top down, looking for a beautiful young man. She'd found him in a matter of moments. They'd driven to the Promenade, and here they were, only steps below the sidewalk above, with cars whizzing by overhead. And she didn't even know his name.

That was the way she wanted it No names, no personalities. Just eager and kiss able, caress able bodies in the dark. Two people meeting in the dark and making love, and then going their separate ways....

And now, as she'd expected, she found a certain excitement in the business of kneeling so abjectly in front of this nearly naked stranger, ready to serve him utterly, ready to.... Ahhhh. How delightful! She kissed the fat head of the quivering cock before her, kissed it first on the eye, which already bore a single bead of liquor gleaming in the dim light of the half-moon above, which she was quick to lick off with her little pointed tongue. Then she kissed it lightly, in a series of little pursed-mouth kisses all around the head of it, standing so hard and free before her. Circumcised: Jewish? Perhaps. She wanted to know nothing about him at all. She only wanted the experience of him.

It was so large, so thick! She'd have a time of it getting it in her mouth, she thought But she was determined to please him, to please him utterly, and her determination led her to redouble her efforts to do everything-everything-that would draw from the young man the greatest display of unbridled passion. And, her jaws straining, she opened her mouth wide to take him inside her.

And an odd sensation went over her. She realized that it felt...somehow good...in there. There was a kind of fitness to the big, round, hard head of it inside the soft and wet cavity that was her mouth. Softly, softly, she closed her lips upon it letting her teeth rest lightly just beyond the head, in the tender spot where he'd been circumcised.

Above her close-cropped head she heard his hoarse moan. His hands came to rest on her soft neck; he spread his legs to increase his pleasure, digging his sandaled feet savagely into the pebbles for support A tremor ran through his belly; she could feel it in his fingertips on her neck.

Abruptly, without warning, she darted her little tongue forth, licking fiercely across the bottom side of his glans. His body jerked with surprise; his cock twitched. The licking grew more frantic, more rapid. And now she let the sharp underside of her upper teeth scrape gently along the upper part of the head of his cock. His fingers tightened on her collarbones.

Undeterred, she let her fingers go to work on the shaft now, holding the head of his rod firmly in her lips, letting tongue and teeth nip and lick and lick and nip now and then, as her hands caressed the long and thick shaft, now lightly, now firmly: jacking him off, very slowly, very slowly and carefully, holding his pleasure back and back until he could stand it no longer.

But no, he was coming; hold it off now, make it last, make it last, until when he finally came it would be almost too much for him to bear. She let up on the shaft, stopped the action with tongue and teeth, and, holding the thick dick in her mouth, quietly, calmly, began caressing the tightly wrinkled skin of his fat and bulging bag, hanging free between the widely spread thighs.

They were covered, all around, with light hair. She touched this, caressed it, plucked lightly at it, and let her fingers rub softly all around the thick purse that held the heavy balls. They were large; each testicle was a handful for a smallish woman like herself. Her hands moved to and fro on them, her mind wandering with them.

Now, her exploring fingers found a light twitching in his crotch: a muscle somewhere moving spasmodically. Her hands roamed, looking for it-and found that his anus was clenching and unclenching, almost beyond control. Her fingers went forth, exploring, little by little-and caressed the spasming orifice rightly. His body shook uncontrollably in response.

"Ahhhh," she said, removing her mouth from his rod for a moment, still holding lightly to the shaft with one hand. He shivered as the cool night air hit the wet surface of his glans; his knees shook. Undeterred, she worked up a bit of spit on her forefinger, worked it under him, and slid it, one millimeter at a time, up his anus.

The hard legs trembled. And she had to steady him on the pebbled beach with one helping hand as her finger passed the first barrier and slid into the next chamber, where the muscles of the sphincter gripped her fingertip hard.

Fine; now she'd go to work. The other hand jacked firmly back and forth on the thick shaft of his penis, guiding it inexorably to her ready and eager mouth which, wet and warm, opened to receive him.

She first began to suck on the head-the very tip, no more, keeping the circle of her lips just ahead of the hard edges of the glans but sucking hard, as on a piece of particularly juicy candy. And with each suck she'd twitch the questing finger buried deep in his body. And with each twitch she found that the finger-lubricated by the thick gob of mucus on it-would sink farther into his body.

His hands now began running sensuously up and down her neck, caressing. The motion was wild, uncontrolled. He was beside himself with the agony and delight of what she was doing to him. And, knowing this, a little thrill went through her....

But now her finger reached a particularly sensitive place inside him-the prostate? perhaps-and his hard buttocks closed about her hand, almost hurting her.

Very good, she thought I'll save that for when lie's ready, ready to come. If ll drive him crazy.

And she went back to work with the free hand, rubbing-now with the smallest most delicate motions of her nails, now with soft and tender fingertips-the length of the shaft before her, feeling the straining, engorged blood vessels on the sides of it, feeling her fingers disappearing into the thick bush of his crotch hail as she carried the long, masturbatory stroke back to his body before running it forward again.

And her mouth....

Her mouth now went to work in earnest sucking the big head in, letting it back out (with an extra lick along the bottom side from the rolled surface of her tongue) in a bobbing motion that accelerated to a wild and uncontrolled frenzy. Yes! He was getting closer! He was moaning steadily now; his body was shaking; his knees were jerking. Now was the time....

And, as her head bobbed up and down, sucking madly, her left hand pumping strongly on the shaft of his cock, she suddenly thrust the embedded finger of her other hand deep inside him, shaking it back and forth, rubbing the tender skin inside his body at precisely the right place. His bodily spasms became mighty tremors. His hard buttocks thrust forward, shoving his belly at her; his strong fingers dug mightily into her neck muscles....

"Mmmmmmeeeerrrddddde. . ." he cried. And his powerful loins pumped into her mouth a thick jet of heavily viscous liquid. She gagged. She pulled her head away, but his hard, hands forced her to stay where she was. Her lips opened, pushed him out; but the thick liquid splattered over her face, dripped from her chin, soiled and stained her chic little jacket.. .She tried to pull away, but his heavy grip lay on her neck, bruising her. He forced her face, again and again, against his wet and suddenly limp penis, forcing her too kiss it, rubbing her face back and forth against the dripping head of it, smearing eyes and nose.

"Non," she said desperately, struggling to get up. Laissez-moi...." But then the broad hand swept back and forth across her face, slapping her, her head flying wildly to and fro as the bruising strokes battered her cheeks, themselves already wet and slimy with the juice from his massive testicles. "Vache" he said. And then he said a lot of things that were much worse, more degrading and insulting, as he continued to hit her. Nan fell, sobbing, to the pebbled beach, hardly noticing when the policeman's flashlight picked her out where she lay and the young man, cursing, picked up his discarded trunks and ran for it. She was still weeping, unable to move, when the policeman found her and bent to help her.

Lesson one: All men are not necessarily like Ed....

Nan was surprised to find herself so self-confident, so self-possessed, lying to the police like that. It was so easy! The story fairly tripped off her tongue: he had volunteered to show her the city, he had taken advantage of her.. .The flics professed to believe every word, found out who she was. Rich and powerful ladies, for the record, do not tell lies about young men trying to rape them, forcing them to unnatural acts, beating them. Rich and powerful ladies (and how strange it was to think of herself that way, after being led around by the nose by Ed's lawyers and business managers since his death!) did not get their names in the paper for the things which happened to them while driving in the quiet evening streets of a dull city like Nice.

So her story was accepted (and thank God the young man had got away!)...but there were enough inconsistencies in it that somehow, some way (the French are good at this sort of subtlety) she was given to understand that it might just possibly be the best thing if the remainder of her holiday were spent elsewhere. Not out of the country, perhaps; not out of the Department, even, you understand; just out of the jurisdiction.... Nan smiled her understanding smile-the new Nan, bold and confident, was very much in the ascendant just then-and told the prefect that she had reservations for tomorrow at...and here she mentioned a famous St Tropez hotel, accessible only to those with money and power. It was a bald-faced lie; she had no reservation, but the strange, heady feeling of flexing the muscles she'd inherited from Ed as majority stockholder in Eastern Petroleum was upon her. She knew, as sure as she knew her name, that a call on the long-distance wire would force some poor devil out of his room on an afternoon's notice. And the two halves of her new, sharply divided, personality warred constantly within her as to whether or not she should feel shame and pangs of conscience over this. The no's had it. She'd never see the person she'd displaced. Why should she worry?

At St Tropez you could bare your breasts on the beach and dare a man to stare at them, giving him the insolent glare from the eyes-the glare that said no, while the little smile at the corners of your mouth said well, perhaps, but you'll have to do something out of the ordinary to interest me. Yet she couldn't fool herself, and ultimately she couldn't fool the men. Her nipples grew long and hard under the gaze of the hard-eyed young men of the beaches, belying her studied indifference. It flustered her; there were still a lot of things left for her to learn, it appeared, in the matter of being blas‚ and indifferent to sexual overtures. Half of her wanted to retreat; the other half said Press onward! Free yourself! Enjoy!

And one afternoon she found herself stretched out on her blanket tanning her back, when she looked up to see beside her, no more than a yard or so away, a bronzed and lovely young woman with close-cropped hair like her own, busily engaged in taking off the last stitch of clothing on her smooth and hairless young body.

The girl was bare-breasted, as Nan Mikell was; her nipples, erect in the cool breeze that swept across the sunny beach, were dark, almost black. She was kneeling on her own blanket a soft knit thing in blue, and her neat little hands were engaged in untying the knot at the side of her bikini pants-a knot which, so far, had steadfastly refused to come undone.

Nan Mikell looked at the brown young body. It was small-boned, trim, without an ounce of excess fat upon it; yet the effect of it was one of a careless and fiery sensuality. Every tiniest square millimeter of flesh on the little body was dark with suntan, bursting with youthful health and vigor. The face was square-more piquant than pretty, an American might say-with a thin-bridged but otherwise quite Roman nose that gave her little face a classic Mediterranean beauty that prettiness might not have done. The hands and feet were small, the hips sturdy.

"Oh, look," the girl said in easy rule-of-thumb English, "It is stuck. And I have broken a nail. Merde." Then she looked up with dark guileless eyes and said, "See? Do you think you could help me, please?"

Nan raised herself on her elbows, feeling the little breeze sweep across her breasts, naked too now in the open air. "You...you're going to take them off?" she said. She looked around her nervously. "Here?" The beach was dotted with singles and couples. The feminine population of the beach was about evenly divided between the bare-breasted and the women wearing bras. There were no families there; the children's beach was quite a long way down the strand.

"Oh, poopoo," the girl said. "Everybody does it." This in spite of the fact that not a single bare bottom could be seen from where they lay. "Wait an hour. Half the people on the place will be naked. And nobody will care. Can you help me?" She said all this in the most matter-of-fact way.

"Here," Nan Mikell said. And she smiled at the girl--which brought a puzzled look before acceptance took over. People were not so free with their smiles in Europe-even in so Americanized a part of Europe as the French Riviera. After a beat's pause, though, the girl smiled back and offered her brown hip for Nan's sure-handed aid.

It was all so...so matter-of-fact The phrase, once again, was the only one that seemed to fit It was like running into a girl at the beauty parlor-back when she'd still gone to beauty parlors-and having her ask Nan to pass her a copy of Redbook from a nearby table; she couldn't stay under the drier and reach it Nan's fingers tugged deftly at the stubborn cloth and suddenly pulled it loose; the green cloth slipped down the girl's thighs, again matter-of-factly, and she just as simply opened her legs to let it fall. And she was suddenly naked as an egg next to Nan, on an adjacent blanket

"Ah," said the girl, "thank you. That feels much better."

Nan's eyes could hardly leave the girl's crotch. It was nude-of clothing, of hair, of anything. Instead of the black patch of hair, there was a brown expanse of skin ending in a brazenly naked fold of flesh as bare, and as innocent as that of her daughter Mickey, when Mickey was a baby-but where Mickey's innocent little bottom had been sexless and inoffensive, merely something to make messes with, this was a mature woman's slit with-she saw as the girl turned toward her, smiling-open, dangling lips that hung brazenly down between her open thighs, emphasizing the fact of the shameless nudity she had so suddenly placed on display.

She looked up, embarrassed, to see the girl smiling at her. "You should try it," the girl said. "It feels much nicer you know." She lay back, baring the startlingly naked body-so much more naked because of the shaved area where her legs met-to the sun, smiling in friendly fashion at Nan. "Oh, come on, my dear," the girl said. "Nobody will mind. Look," she said, a gay laugh in her voice. "Even men do it."

Nan, blushing, followed where the girl's gaze led her. And to her intense embarrassment-where had things come to, after all, on a public beach?-she saw, not ten feet away, two deeply tanned young men in their late twenties, their bodies superbly trained, walk slowly past her, deep in conversation, oblivious of her own bare breasts, oblivious of her companion's shameless and shocking nudity-and as bare themselves as was the girl next to her!

"Voom!" said the brown girl on the next blanket "Ah, cherie, yon can have the one with the blond hair. Look at the...the rod on the other one! Ooh, babee!" And, laughing, she moved her brown hand to her hairless mound, giving it a long and shameless rub before resting the brown hand beside her on the blanket

Nan blushed again; she couldn't help it Neither could she help looking where the girl's finger had pointed; the young man's penis, bouncing along at rest on his own berry-brown young body, must have been well over nine inches long in its current flaccid state. How large must it be erect?

"Mon dieu," the girl said. "You are blushing!" She smiled; it was a nice, wrinkly-nosed smile. "I have...a girl friend, you know, who has slept with him. She says he is..." here her hand made an eloquently disdainful motion, "...nothing." She smiled again. "I know many men better."

"Heavens," Nan said. She couldn't get used to all this...openness was the only word for it. She'd had to take a half-dozen very stiff drinks to get herself ready for her disgraceful little escapade at Nice. No, be honest; she was all but blotto. And this open parading on the beach...."I'm afraid I'm not quite used to all this," she said. Her hand waved at the beach around her. As the girl had said, more nudes were beginning to appear. As she watched, a stunning redhead slipped her sheath dress over head, folded it neatly, and sat down next to it on her red blanket twenty feet or so away from Nan's. She was model-like in her thinness, and still had the white marks from her bikini bottom. She must be as new to this as Nan was.

"Stick around," the girl next to her said with a merry laugh, "youll be quite at home before long."

"Look," Nan said, "I'm sort of new here. I mean, I haven't any friends." The impulsive act was also something she wasn't used to-but, it appeared, there was a new side to her, and when it was in charge she would do things that would never have occurred to her before. "I...would you like to have dinner with me tonight?"

The girl looked across at her, a friendly look in her laughing eyes. "Why...why, certainement, my dear. I will...how you say...show you around." She reached over and gave Nan's hand a friendly squeeze. "Now," she said, rolling over to bare her pert bottom to the warm sun, "would you oil my back for me, please?"