Chapter 10

The days added up into weeks, then the weeks into months. Mel was finding it more and more difficult to lead a double life. One part of him had to keep up the pretense of his new-and fictitious-job as the night air-traffic controller. The job justified the many hours that he spent at the many parties Hugh Laurens threw beside the pool of his sixteen-room ranch home, parties where Mel and everyone else were passed around like so many footballs.

The other part of him was the man who lied to his wife, who was nervous and irritable. Who never got enough rest. And who was never fired at Airways Flying Service, no matter how late he dragged in. He knew he had a job there for as long as he wanted it-provided he cooperated by putting out whenever Hugh and Jennifer Laurens asked him to.

The stress finally began to get to him. He frightened an advanced student one morning by flying too low above a power station, so low their radio reception vanished in a din of static. Mel had inadvertently pressed in on the control wheel.

"Christ, man, watch it!"

Furious with himself, Mel pulled them up again. "It's okay, Mister Traylor. I won't be that careless again. I don't know what came over me."

"Neither do I," Traylor snapped. He was a businessman in his mid-fifties who was out to win a twin-engine rating by the end of the summer. "I think you'd better take us in. I'm ready to start soloing, anyway, regardless of what you feel."

The customer was always right, so Mel shrugged and pointed the Cessna back toward the field. He set the twin down roughly, further irritating Traylor, suspecting that he would complain to Laurens regardless. He was right. While he was filling out a flight report, Cynthia, Laurens' new secretary, came looking for him.

"Boss wants to see you," she said.

He glared at her, which required an effort, because she was a pretty redhead just six weeks out of secretarial school. "About what?"

Cynthia's shoulders lifted. "He didn't say. But I think it's important."

"Being you, you would think that," he observed. "Tell him I'll be there in a minute." He watched the girl walk gracefully away, then wondered why he didn't make a play for her. Then he knew that Hugh Laurens would have his head on a platter if he did.

He finished the flight report and stalked into Laurens' office. "You wanted to see me?"

The president and chief stockholder of Airways Flying Service glanced at his secretary. "Yes. Will you leave us for a moment, my dear?"

Cynthia, with a sympathetic smile for Mel, went out and closed the door behind her. She could still overhear, however, if she chose to. The door between the outer office and Laurens' inner sanctum was a thin one.

Laurens switched off the intercom and removed his phone from its cradle. "Is it the parties, Mel?" he asked quietly. "Is it?"

"No, of course not," Mel retorted. "Hell, I got careless once and nearly piled up. It won't happen again, I swear. I won't louse up the safety record."

Laurens sighed. "I wish I could believe you, Mel. I can't. You have a conflict over the parties, and it's affecting your work. I should either fire you or forbid you to come to the parties again. Because I like you, I shall do neither. I just want you to take the rest of the day off and think about both. If you feel you should give up one or the other, the choice is yours. Do you understand?"

Mel stared at him. "Yes."

"You can go now."

Mel went out, feeling better. At least he had wangled a few free hours out of the old tyrant. He studied his watch. A quarter till eleven. He could either drive straight home and try to shore up his crumbling marriage, or he could call Shan and ... He caught Cynthia's eye as he passed, and smiled at her. A third voice had suggested itself.

He went to find his car, driving it to the front gate. When Cynthia came out at eleven to go to lunch, he stopped her. "Get in," he invited, patting the Chevy's passenger seat.

She looked surprised. "Me?"

"Yes, you. Or has old Laurens declared you private property and off limits to the hired help?"

The redhead's eyes flashed. "No one's ever declared me private property, and don't you forget it." She got in.

Mel drove them toward a little restaurant near the beach. "Know what we could do?" he asked. "But no, you'd never have the nerve."

"Tell me," she demanded.

"I could take you by your place after lunch, you could phone in with a migraine, and we two could hit the sun for the afternoon."

Cynthia was silent, mulling the proposition over.

"Well?"

"You could get me fired, but-all right. I know he dressed you down. Is this your way of getting even?"

"Partly," he admitted. "But I like you for yourself, too," he added. "I think you're one swell girl. I'd like to know you better."

"And your wife?" she reminded, pointing at his ring.

"We're splitting soon," he lied, and then asked himself if it was a lie. If he and Donna became any more distant with one another, they would be writing letters to each other rather than conversing. Their relationship had deteriorated that far.

"You're on. And you help me find a new job if I lose this one."

"I'll do what I can, if it comes to that," he promised. But he knew he would have enough trouble finding a new job for himself. There was another flying service in town, but they would be certain to know about him.

He forced himself not to think about the future, which was cloudy, or the past, which was tawdry. Instead, he and Cynthia dwelt on the present. By half-past twelve, they lay on blankets under a broiling sun, their particular stretch of beach deserted for a mile in either direction.

After an hour, they reached the stage where they would neck after a swim. Or before. Cynthia proved to be an amateur kisser, but he soon fixed that. She mastered his lessons quickly, and it wasn't long before she could really kiss the way a man wanted. Now he figured she was ready for an out-and-out sexual pass.

They sat on the sand and kissed for a few minutes before he made his first serious move. French-kissing had heated her to the point where she was beginning to squirm around a little, so he placed a hand over one of her breasts and cupped it, squeezing gently. She twisted even more wildly for a few seconds, while he tenderly massaged her tit. She broke free of the kiss.

"We'd better stop, Mel," she protested. "We don't want to get carried away. I like you and everything, but we can't do that."

"Good," he approved, continuing to play with her big tit. He slid his hand under the top of her bathing suit and felt for the first time the silky warmth of her flesh. She panted as his fingers reached the erected nipple and began toying with it. "I'm glad you're excited. I want you to be excited. Very, very excited."

"No! It's wrong!"

"It's right," Martin murmured, nuzzling her throat and feeling her breast, to his relief, shudder with excitement. "We can do anything we want because we're adults. And I want you. Don't you want me?"

"But you don't understand," Cynthia groaned, trying to push him away. "I've never gone all the way. I'm a-a virgin!"

Mel was astonished. He couldn't have been more surprised than if she had told him that she flew with Doolittle's Raiders.

"Okay, so you're cherry. What of it?" He pulled her breast free of her suit top, caressing it more skillfully. "That doesn't change the way I feel about you."

"You mean-?"

"I want to be the first to love you." He bent his head and closed his lips around her engorged nipple in a kissing motion which quickly turned to suckling. Cynthia moaned and began to stroke the back of his head and neck. Mel realized that she had given her consent. He quit nursing on her breasts long enough to undress what little of her was still covered, dropping his own trunks at the same time. His prick stood up long and hard. He lay down beside her and ran his hands over her nude body, marveling at the firmness of her flesh, the warmth of her body. She began to tremble.

"What are you doing? Mel, what in heaven's name are you doing?"

"You'll see." He pushed her thighs apart and wormed his face between them. His mouth found the delicate lips slitting her pubic mound. His tongue began wetly fondling her cunt. Cynthia whimpered deep in her throat, writhing around in response to sensations that she had probably never experienced before.

"Oh, my God, Mel, that's driving me right out of my mind! Don't stop! Please don't stop!"

He increased the biting and the tonguing, heard her words dissolve into a babble of enjoyment-meaningless sounds that expressed the sheer delight that she felt as his darting tongue and urgent mouth opened new vistas for her.

They reached the point where she was helplessly tossing and turning with pleasure. Mel changed positions, placing himself between her parted legs and aiming his cock straight into the moistened valley beneath her tangled mat of pubic hair. Cynthia had closed her eyes. She seemed only vaguely aware of what he was doing now. But her legs lifted wide and high, in an instinctive gesture of surrender.

Gingerly, he pushed his cock against the velvety, slippery, wet cunt-lips, felt its stiffness slowly penetrate into the oozing warmth. She cried out once as he forced the throbbing meat past her hymen, breaking it for all time. Now he was in, where he wanted to be, and she was no longer a virgin. He lay still, giving her time to recover from the shock.

"I-can feel you inside me," she whispered. "So big and hard, it's-it's-"

"That's the way it's supposed to be," he comforted. "Don't worry. You'll like fucking." He hoped so. Otherwise, he would never get his prick back into her cunt again.

She had yet to scream at him to stop, so he began thrusting his prick into her depths and withdrawing it to its head, keeping the coital motions easy and unhurried. She grunted involuntarily each time that he drove his cock inward, and she sighed each time he pulled it out again. He was fighting, by now, to keep control. Cynthia's cunt was tight and hot, and his gun had been ready to go off the moment he laid a hand on her. But he managed to hold himself in check. He wanted, if possible, to bring her off first, to insure that her first fuck would be a totally complete one. His motive, he would have been the first to confess, was purely selfish; if a man didn't make a girl happy the first time he got into her cunt, he'd have the devil's own time getting invited back again.

Finally Cynthia stiffened, her abrupt tension a sure sign that she was getting ready to come. Her gaspings became louder and more drawn out. Then she exploded into a frenzied convulsion of movement, wrapping her legs tightly around him, seizing him around the neck so that he could hardly breathe, uttering sharp cries of pleasure as she climaxed for the first time.

Then she slumped back, temporarily sated. Only now did Mel dare let go. He rammed his prick into her in a rapid series of thrusts that brought his cum spurting in satisfying spasms of release. He was satisfied that his load had been delivered He collapsed, too, beside her, certain that she hadn't been disappointed.

Certain, as well, that he hadn't solved anything. His "problem" was still with him.