Chapter 8
There was something about the woman's letters that got to Bob the worst way. It was almost as if she were truly sincere, as if she was just as desperate as he to reach out, to find someone to love. She was seemingly as frightened as he was that life would pass her by without once revealing that ultimate promise and bounty it was supposed to hold.
But then Bob had been conned before. Much to his dismay and painful disillusionment, he'd discovered that such depth of feelings could be faked. An unsuspecting man could be easily deceived. Backwoods simpleton he might be, but once burned was twice shy. Deliberately, he delayed in setting up an assignation with Penny Duquaine. Had she once-in the almost four weeks of intense correspondence-attempted to force him to quick meeting, to bilk him of incidental "expense money," he would have dropped her flat in a minute.
But there were no such damning giveaways. Instead, there were long, warm, yearning letters; there was openness and an understated revelation of a ravaged heart. There was a frequent exchange of pictures-Penny, again the eternally elusive blonde, petite and pretty, her physical endowments adequate, no more. Life had battered her to the point where the slightest indication that she delighted a mana real man-was enough to make her drunk with a long-lost sense of worth. Once again she was a woman, invested with stature and purpose.
Granted, she implied all this to Bob simply and timidly, but the meaning was there. And though she seemed perfect for him, the answer to all his prayers, he still wouldn't let himself believe.
Penny Duquaine was twenty-nine, married four years, the mother of two tiny daughters. She had waited as a virgin for marriage. Her heart overflowing with a boundless love, she had made that mistake so common among those of the truly loving nature: she had accepted the first man who'd paid her any heed at all; she'd mistaken infatuation for enduring love.
A year later, her second baby already on the way, the seals had been lifted from her eyes. And where she'd suspected that her handsome husband, Crane, had been seeing another woman on the side, she wasn't quite prepared for the ugliness of the truth. Had Crane ignored her, abstained from sexual relations with her for another woman, she could have borne it somehow. But when she found out he was homosexual, that he'd married her only out of a desperation of his own-she could not endure the pain.
Had it been another woman, perhaps she could fight for Crane, but this-
It was akin to tilting with dragons made of smoke. Impossible.
They hadn't divorced. Each living in his own part of the house, they'd remained together for the children's sake, for the security of Crane's high-salaried position in one of Lexington's most prestigious architectural firms. So the years had passed, until the day when she had to break out or go mad!
Bob had found her pathetic half-a-couple ad in his mounting pile of swap club brochures. "Affectionate, clean, and loyal," the ad had read, "with much love to share with the right man. Incompatible husband knows of this ad. Is there a man somewhere whose situation is the same as mine?"
The plea seemed too good to be true. It had been for this reason that Bob had proceeded so warily.
Now, an eternity later, sitting across from Penny, a white damask tablecloth separating them-the imagine supper club again-it seemed his heart was hammering so fiercely that it threatened to tear free from its moorings. She was right; she was perfect. She was what he'd been hoping for, praying for, but had never expected to find.
Because of their many letters, because of the long and reflective interim, it did seem they were friends, that they had known each other for a long, long time. A man and woman should always be friends before they become lovers, Bob thought, the ache in his heart terrible at that moment. When his expression betrayed him, when his hand went forth in search of hers, Penny's warm, twining fingers were waiting. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for them to touch, for their fingers to lock for all the world to-see. The twisted, crooked smile on her lips, the sudden wetness to her large, luminous eyes was almost too much for him to bear.
In that moment he wanted to take her into his arms, to kiss her, to hold and protect her. But he did nothing of the sort. Instead, he withdrew his fingers and forced his face to cautious impassivity.
Instantly, Penny sensed the invisible gate that had clanged down between them. "What is it, Bob?"
"Nothing, Penny," he lied, baffled himself by swift turnabout. "Nothing at all."
"You've been looking a long time, haven't you, Bob?" she said hollowly. "You've been burned too many times. That's it, isn't it? You don't trust me," a fervent pleading exploded in her eyes. "Do you think you're the only one?-I've gone through it too."
She swirled her after-dinner brandy in her snifter. "I know what it is, believe me. A person doesn't just snap his fingers, find love someone to care about ... just like that. It should be the easiest thing in the world, but it isn't." She grimaced. "Although my experiences couldn't possibly have been as grim as yours. I went through my hell via the U.S. mails. A man, being the aggressor ... Do you want to talk about it?"
"Not especially, Penny. Just let it go at that. Y'r right; I am what you'd call gun shy, I guess. How about you? You wanna talk about y'r experiences?"
She laughed nervously, her blue eyes dulled by a look of hurt. "If you'd like. So you can make whatever judgments of me you have to make." She sighed deeply, peering into her brandy again. "There isn't that much to tell. I've only been seriously looking for a year now.
I've advertised twice. I've written to perhaps a dozen different men. They were fakes ... all of them until you."
His heart leaped, but Bob still warned himself. "Fakes?"
"Yes, fakes. Kids, immature and greedy. Operators, all so glib and knowing. Then the older men ... pathetic and whimpering, reaching out, grabbing at straws for the last time. I only answered a few of the letters. Once I even made an arrangement with one man. like with you ... "
"And what happened?"
"He was too old. He'd sent me a picture of himself taken twenty years before. I felt sorry for him, really I did. But I couldn't go through with it."
"Must have been awful," he sympathized.
"That's what I mean about you, Bob. It came through in your letters. Your sincerity. I sensed it from the first. And as much as I wanted to rush into it, I still held back. If you were everything you claimed to be in your letters, if you'd survived the hell you'd described to me. Then I knew we both had something to give to each other. I knew if nothing more could come of it, that we'd at least stick to our bargains, no matter what. Weak as Crane is, he still needs me, whether he knows it or not. He loves the children, really he does. And you love your children. Ardis is not right. There's going to come a time when she's going to need you so desperately."
"And in between?" he said tiredly, his heart dying momentarily in expectancy of her answer.
"In between we could make a life for ourselves," she replied gravely, her eyes locking, burning into his. "We could find whatever it is we've missed all these years. Jessup isn't too far from Garrett Park. A two-hour drive. We could meet often. I could even drive your way since Crane knows everything anyway. It could become our escape, our Shangri-La. A place to run to when things got too bad for us."
"Shangri-La?" Bob puzzled.
"It's a mythical Tibetan valley in a book I read once. A place where no one gets old, where it's eternal spring, and people are always happy."
"I ain't much on books," he said apologetically.
"It doesn't matter. I didn't mean to flaunt anything. Women tend to have more time for reading, you know. I'm no brain, if that's what you're thinking. I got through high school, and that's about all. I was a secretary for a while. Until I met Crane." She forced a wry smile. "End of biography. Some life story."
Again her fingers sought his; her hand closed on his. "How about it, Bob? Can you trust me? If I can trust you..." Her eyes became wet all at once. Her expression softened.
"Yes, Penny," he husked, wanting to bellow with relief and thanksgiving. "I think I can trust you. I think I want the same things you want."
Her gaze met his; their eyes held in fiery resolve. "Then what do you say we get out of here, go back to our motel, Bob? Haven't we wasted enough time as it is?"
He rose but waited while she drained the last of her drink, almost as if drinking courage. "Yes," he said softly, "I reckon we have."
A minute later they strode from the restaurant into the balmy night. Anyone looking at them would have taken them for honey-mooners; the way they smiled, the way their eyes locked in radiant yearning.
The motel, located in Jessup, a mere ten miles south of Lexington, reminded him too much of his first swap sortie-the time with the gold-digging Gail Turner. And yet, with Penny, warm and submissive, it was altogether different. Now, if it didn't blow up in his face the way it always had before.
"Do you mind, honey," Penny whispered as they clung and kissed feverishly, all too quickly delivered to rushing, roaring passion and need, "if I take care of it myself? I have a thing about that. Please? Bear with me? For the first few times anyway?"
Bob had attempted to unzip her gown down the back, to undo the snaps at the nape of her neck. Famished for the real thing, he'd wanted to taste her flesh so terribly that he'd become clumsy, rough in his attempts.
"Just turn your head, Bob," she whispered from behind him. He heard the squeak of the bedsprings when she sat to remove her stockings. "You undress too. Then come to me."
He thought it was the strangest thing in the work! that now, of all times, his penis should be so lax, should hang at a semi-rigid droop when, inside, he was afire with lust for her. Then, thinking it would be up by the time he went to Penny, he began undressing.
She lay on her back, her blonde hair loose, flowing around her head on the pillows. Her arms were spread in artless grace at each side. One knee was slightly steepled, and, all in all, her naked pose was one of the most provocative, thrilling things he'd ever seen.
But still he hesitated. Old suspicions die hard. It was to this that he accounted for the continuing flaccidity of his penis. And when he faced Penny straight on, and her head rolled over, when her eyes slowly wandered over his body-
"You're beautiful, Bob," she intoned, her body frozen ivory in the dim light. "So hard and rangy. Those shoulders, that waist, your bel-" Then her eyes widened, and before she could catch herself-"Bob? What is it? What's wrong? I thought you'd want me ... that you'd be wild to have me by now. What ... V
"It's all right," he lied. "I get that way sometimes." His panic mounted; he wished he might crawl into a hole somewhere and hide. How could it be? For all those other whores, filth who hadn't, for a second, really counted, he'd been hard as a rock. But for Penny, whom he was sure was the greatest woman ever to cross his path-God, he cursed, don't play tricks on me!
She opened her arms. A moment later he fell toward her in slow motion grace. Momentarily he balanced himself on his fingertips, letting his head hang between his shoulders. Reverently, he kissed Penny's tummy; he let his lips graze her flesh; he let his tongue meander in her dense thatch. And when he allowed the fiery, hard keel to cleave the puffy, dewed, hairless petals of her vagina proper-
Penny started, writhed, gasped. "You mustn't, Bob. I'm not clean. I..."
"I must, baby," he intoned, never stopping for a moment. "You are clean. The cleanest, most holy woman I've found in a long, long time. If I don't thank you ... worship you ... this way ... then what good's prayer anyway?" He burrowed his face deeper, letting his tongue execute long, sloppy strokes; he swirled deeper; he teased her clitoris.
"God, Penny! I've wanted to do this to a woman f r so long. A woman who wants to be loved, really loved..."
She spasmed convulsively. Then she went limp; she surrendered herself completely to him. "Oh, Bob, Bob ... Yes, dear God, yes! I do want that. I do. I've wanted that for so long. I never thought a man would really ... that a man would want to do that for me. Lord knows, Crane was never about to..."
"No, baby. Don't talk about him now. Forget. Forget everything. There's just us. There's just this." And with a howl he buried his face deeper in her folds; he strained to piston his tongue deeper into her hole. He gloried in the agonized whimpers and grunts which broke from her as he swirled his tongue around her clitoris. She bucked and jittered. Long wails abraded her throat. Once more her thighs pressed his ears, shut out sound; her legs twined behind his head; her heels slid and drummed on his back and shoulders.
In that exquisite captivity he heard the clockings of his tongue, the liquid stirrings of her folds. Her pantings boomed down from a great distance, widened in concentric circles' of lust, and he went berserk and actually fought to burrow deeper.
There was a brief respite after Penny experienced her first orgasm. One moment her churnings were haphazard, wild; the next, they were controlled. It was as if his tongue was a miniature tool, a tool which she held stationary by placing her hands alongside his face. Then, when her motions became frenzied, when she pumped her hips in exact cadence. "God, oh God!" she gasped between clenched teeth. "It's good, so good! So very good! I never dreamed ... I'm coming, darling! Coming! like I never came before! Oh-oh-oh-ohhhh! Sweet, so goddamned sweet. I'm dying! I'm-"
She fell away finally and fought to dislodge him. "No, baby," she pleaded. "I can't stand anymore. I must rest. Please, give me a moment's rest."
He drew his mouth away and contented himself with licking around the edges of her vagina, working his tongue into her crevice, exploring her lush pubic mat, even going to her perineal area, flirting with the puckered velvet of her anus itself. She writhed when he did that.
"Please, darling," he said. "Let me. Again? I've wanted to do that to a woman f r so long. Jist once more? I'd be so proud. You liked it, didn't your
"Like it?" she snorted. "God, that doesn't begin to describe it. I loved it! I'd love to have you do that to me all night, if I could stand it. But it's so intense; it makes me feel all crazy and dirty ... like I want to do everything, say everything. Dear God, Bob! And Ardis doesn't want you to..."
"Shhh, baby. We weren't going to mention them, remember?" His tongue laved the perimeter of her vagina again; it vibrated in the tiny indentation of her urethral opening. "Oh, let me, Penny. Just once more. Can you stand one more?"
She squirmed. "I'll try. I'll be as brave as I can. If that's what you really want."
His adoration was slow and slavish this time. And gradually, as Penny once more commenced to huff and puff, as her hips began that exciting swivel and lurch, he was more confident. He felt her fingers flirt timidly with his belly, his hips. And now they tickled his fur, ventured down the semi-rigid phallus. With a proud, jubilant sigh, she wrapped her fingers about it and began to squeeze and pull his flaccid penis. And yet she made no move to rearrange her own body, to pull his member to her lips as those other whores had done. There was no need for theatrics. There was time for that part of things. And when the moment was right-He felt his heart swell. Then something else began to swell, and Penny's flawed, astonished murmurs were the ultimate praise. A hot spasm went through him, and his penis bucked involuntarily in her fist; a drop of his come splashed his thigh and ran trickling down his leg.
"Oh, Bob," she said, her voice filled with awe, "it's so big, so beautiful." Then she took him completely by surprise. "Such a big prick! Such a gorgeous, horny prick! He thrills me. He makes me ... afraid."
Bob couldn't explain the feeling of intermixed elation and disappointment he experienced. It seemed that Penny had stepped down off her pedestal at that moment. He wouldn't have believed that she'd ever use language like that. Then he damned himself for being a prude. God, you're getting more like that damned Ardis every day.
Penny sensed his chagrin. "What's the matter, baby? Did I say a no-no? You don't like me to talk like that?"
"It's all right, I guess. You surprised me, that's all."
"Don't you think I haven't been reading those books too, honey? Don't you think I haven't been held in check far too long? There's nothing wrong with it, really there isn't. Why should we be coy, play games? You can use those words with me; I won't mind. Treat me like a whore if you like. I think I'd like it."
She stirred, drawing his face up from her Vagina. Her eyes Were molten as she stared down at him. The words came out evenly, slowly, almost as if she was challenging him. "I love it when you suck my cunt," she gritted. "I love to hold your cock. I'll love it even more when you shove it into me. When I'm full to bursting with fat, cunt-stretching prick. Try to understand, Bob. I've gone without for so long! You can't know how hard up I am!"
She fell back and crowded his face to her vagina again. "Please, Bob. Tell me what you want. You use the words, too. Tell me you need me!" Her voice snagged, trailing off into a wail. "Good God, somebody must need me!"
"I need you, darling," he choked. "Just feel how much I need you."
"Feel?" she taunted. "Where should I feel?"
"Please, baby. Don't. With some other woman, maybe. But not with you."
"Where should I feel, Bob?" Her tone became feral, almost vengeful.
"You know where. You've got it in your hand."
Her fingers tightened murderously. "Where, dammit! Where should I feel you?"
"My cock," he forced the words. "My prick."
She sucked in her breath. "I'm feeling your prick," she chanted eerily, "your gorgeous prick. Where do you want me to put it? After you're done sucking me and ... making me come again, I mean."
"Between y'r legs ... In y'r..."
She dug her nails into his testicles. "Say it, damn you!"
"In y'r cunt. In y'r beautiful, hot, slippery crack. In this dirty clam, here. Oh, God, Penny
... I didn't mean..." He was blushing!
"Mean to," she snarled. "I want you to talk to me like that. Dirty and low down. Just the way I feel inside now. Just the way I feel up inside of this pussy of mine."
Her fingers came down, driving his face into her folds again. "But for now," she grated, completely out of it by then, "some unfinished business. I want you to suck the skin off my cunt. I want you to lick my clit. I want you to make me come, to turn me inside out. Lack, damn you! Lack my begging cunt!"
Bob, stunned, thrilled to the core of his being, did exactly as Penny commanded. He licked. He licked as if his life depended upon it. He licked with a fantastic, unerring skill, a skill that shortly had Penny flopping and gurgling like a flounder on a spear.
"You devil!" she shrieked. "You dirty devil! It's here, oh, it's here! I'm coming, coming, coming! Oh, heavenly, heavenly! Put it out with your tongue! That fire ... put it out! With that lovely ... cunt ... lapping ... tongue! Oh, it's so good. I can feel it all the way up between my eyes!"
Finally she expelled him from his slippery, hot lair. She dragged him atop her. She drove her lips onto his, made a dedicated rite of licking her own juices off them. Now her tongue darted into his mouth, twined in serpentine frenzy about his. She wheezed and bucked and swiveled beneath him, her fingers sliding up and down his raging penis, sliding it in the vestibule of her vagina. He knew if he didn't slam his penis home at any moment now-
Then his fat penishead was over the narrow sphincter of her vagina. He paused. He knew a brief moment of fear. What if he should prove too big for her! The same apprehension must have haunted Penny also, for now, she said. "Quick, lover. In! No matter how much it hurts. Before I lose my nerve!" Then, in a last vainglorious scream, "Fuck me, damn you! I want to be fucked so terribly!"
Slowly, determinedly, he guided his penis into her. He hissed and gasped; he marveled at the tightness of her vagina. Mother of two she might be, but long months of neglect had made her tight-excruciatingly tight. Slowly, slowly he went into her. Deeper, and still deeper!
"Tell me!" she rasped. "Am I goodT?"
"Y'r good," he groaned viciously, "y'r damned good. Y'r cunt ... wrapped around my prick..."
"Tell me! I want to hear it all!"
"Y'r cunt, angel. It's so tight, so blasted tight! I ain't never been in one as tight as yours. It feels like I won't never be able to get it out"
"Try," she slurred delightedly. He drew back, dazzled at the wetness of it. Then he was pumping into her, her slot more flexible than before. But still there was that wringing, glans-scalding sensation, that fire that sizzled back into his guts, into his balls. "I'm sorry, baby," he said, beginning to slam her more swiftly, more ruthlessly, as if he were battering the gates of the city, "but I can't wait. It's been too long already. I have to come. I have to..."
"Come, darling," she crooned, her torso moving in perfect cadence to his, her pelvis slamming and twisting and rocking and pulling. "Oh, come! It's been so long since I've felt a man unload in there, since I've felt a prick boom and throb inside of me. Yes, come..."
A delighted yip broke from her. "Oh, darling! I do think I'm ... Yes! It's happening! I'm coming too! That cock of yours! That monstrous, delicious cock! Oh, slam it!"
She went into an even deeper frenzy. "You prick!" she gloated as one, then two quick orgasms smashed her, shook her like a rag roll. "You sweet prick!"
Which was all it took so far as Bob was concerned. He sprang forward and shot a thunderous charge into her. His balls boomed shot after shot of thick, hot come into her womb. His come slimed her font, douched her belly.
He groaned, clinging to Penny. He buried his face in her throat. He kissed and chewed and clamped his teeth in her soft flesh. He snorted unashamedly. Then, as that kaleidoscopic play of lights in his brain went dark, as that intense sense of relief and fulfillment and rightness filled him-
He was as amazed as Penny was to find himself sobbing into her shoulder. Great, hawking sobs of gratitude and relief. He sobbed as if his heart would break.
Penny hesitated only a moment. Then her arms gathered him in; she held him painfully tight. Seemingly she couldn't hold him closely enough. Now she began to cry also. "Let it come out, darling," she blubbered. "Let it all come out. Get rid of it once and for all."