Chapter 4
THAT LITTLE WITCH ! " PHYLIS MUTTERED UNDER her breath. The utility closet was large enough, but it was piled high with crates and boxes along both walls, so that only a narrow aisle remained for her and Wes to squeeze themselves into. When she bent over to peer through the keyhole, the rotund globes of her soft buttocks pressed against him. The sensation was quite pleasurable even more so because of the bizarre circumstances.
With one eye to the keyhole, Phylis watched her daughter and the boy, a rugged youth about Jan's age, over six feet tall and with the physique of a football player. Jan stood on tiptoes to ruffle his blond hair and to kiss him lightly on the lips.
"Drink, honey?"
He shook his head. "You know I'm in training."
The girl tittered. "In training for what?"
He reached for her like a bear, but she evaded him. "You know what I'm in training for. C'mere to papa."
The girl laughed and shook her long blonde hair out. It shimmered like spun gold. She had an ethereal golden beauty that was not of this earth, yet, at the same time, there was an earthiness about her that could stir desire in the male animal at the mere sight of her. She was wearing a sweater several sizes too small that seemed unable to contain her breasts. They possessed the muscle tone and contours rarely seen. Her pleated skirt was one of the daring Italian "shorties," that barely covered her buttocks. She kicked off her loafers and did a pirouette in the middle of the room in her bare feet. The skirt whipped up in a swirl high on her slender, bare legs, still higher, until the edge of her panties came into view.
The boy snorted and went toward her. "Hey, I like that." She stopped spinning and backed away from him, holding the skirt coyly with both hands.
"You can't see more, so there!"
"Pig!" the mother breathed in the dark closet and wriggled against Wes Parker. She was dimly aware of him, but, as yet, the sensation was dulled by her indignation toward her daughter.
Janet retreated to the couch, seating herself in a provocative position.
As the boy moved toward her. his eyes feasted. He hurled himself down on the couch and enveloped her in a bear hug. She giggled and met his mouth with hers. The boy's hand plunged beneath the skirt and began to caress her legs, the fleshy mounds of her buttocks.
"Disgusting!" Phylis said. She had all she could do to restrain herself from bursting out of the closet and stopping the scene on the couch before they Tent any further. But to do so now would be to humiliate herself far more than she would humiliate her daughter. The dean of Jane Richmond College in a dark closet with a man! And both of them in a state of obvious dishabille! Like wildfire the story would spread through Richmond, through Harvard, through Vassar, through Yale. She would have to go into permanent exile. So she watched helplessly as the crude youth pulled down Janet's panties, slipping them past her knees and over her bare feet. That was a shock to gaze upon her own child's lovely charms brazenly exposed to the lustful eyes and hands of this young bull, shocking to see how eagerly she responded to his caresses, how ready she was to accept his attentions. It nauseated Phylis to watch her daughter's slim hands tear greedily at the boy's clothing, to see how expert the slim fingers were in undressing this male.
Phylis gasped at the sight of him, the raw, brutal sight, terrifying and fascinating, and beautiful in a perverse way She saw everything with stark clarity through the keyhole. He knelt on the couch, completely obscuring the girl's body from view.
Phylis felt dizzy. Despite her enjoyment of her husband throughout her married life, despite her years and wisdom and experience, making love had always been a personal thing to her. She had never been a spectator, nor had she ever wanted to be. But here she was peering through a keyhole, a loathsome Peeping Tom, spying. Worse yet, she was her own daughter! She wanted to tear her eye away from the keyhole, to blot the awful vision out, but she was powerless. She shuddered as the boy moved toward Janet. She whimpered as one of Janet's hands darted out to guide him. She almost collapsed as the brute took her and Janet's exultant cry exploded in the room.
Passion hit her like a deluge. Wave after wave of blinding need rippled over her. Phylis gathered her skirt around her waist with one hand, and with the other hand she slid down her panties, over her upper legs and past her knees. The silk fluttered to her feet.
"Now, Wes! Now!" she whispered over her shoulder. Her hand fumbled behind her for him. He was as ready as he would ever be. It took him only seconds to fix his clothes.
Wes had never known such frenzied lust in his thirty-four years. That was drunken, abandoned, unprincipled lechery, pristine pure lust. No silly conventions. No preliminaries. No formal ritual such as the mundane affections between man and wife. He was glad for the darkness, for the cramped uncomfortable quarters.
She knew a tingling vibration of nerves and muscles, screaming out their excitement and anticipation. The moment was exquisite for her after the five long years since she had experienced that joy, the joy of being a woman who was wanted by a man, the joy of knowing the full strength of the man's wanting. There was much more for her than the mere easing of a tension. Loving was, for a woman, the very justification of her existence. She had all she could do to suppress the bubbling of her exhilaration, to keep from shouting out aloud, to keep from flinging the closet door open and shouting to her daughter.
"See! Is this the old maid who doesn't know what life is all about?"
Like mid animals! he thought, as he worked away. For the first time in his life, he truly felt like the aggressor. He had never loved a female in this manner, so wildly, enjoying the very limits of this power. Her muffled cry of pain and pleasure drove him to greater frenzies. He knew they were battering the crates and boxes on each side of them, creating a commotion that surely must be heard by the boy and the girl outside, but he didn't care.
Of course, he had no way of knowing that the couple on the couch were oblivious of everything outside their own seething passions.
They reached the peak together, the. two on the couch and their counterparts inside the dark closet. There could have been some telepathic empathy, some alchemy of chemistry that set up a sympathetic field of force among the four naked bodies gripped in the most powerful emotion known to mankind.
Colored balls of fire zigzagged before Parker's eyes like Roman candles. They rocked and swayed.
The younger couple on the couch raged at each other more like wild animal than lovers. Growling and yowling, the girl sank her teeth into his shoulder and clenched her arms around him. He pushed her back against the couch so hard that the old relic tottered on its legs and pitched over backward. They rolled off and somersaulted on the rug like playful kittens. But never did they lose the rhythm.
Soon after, the boy dressed and left the house. When Janet went upstairs to wash up, Phylis and Wes came out of the closet. As she took him to the door, she whispered to him with shame, "I don't know what hit me, Wesley."
He laughed. "I know."
She giggled girlishly "You must think I'm terrible."
"I think you're pretty wonderful," he said sincerely.
"So are you." She squeezed his hand. "I'll see you again, won't I?"
"Certainly. Monday morning at school."
She blushed. "I didn't mean that. Like today. We will be together again?"
He avoided her eyes. "I'm sure we will. Let's see what happens. That's often the best way, like today."
She kissed him lightly on the lips and he went out of the house. Dusk was casting a purple twilight over the landscape as he approached his own home on the edge of the campus. He puffed nervously on the pipe and walked past the front walk. He didn't want to go inside just yet and face his wife. His thoughts were too tumultuous.
Wes had always had a blind spot where his impotence was concerned. Actually, he never had thought about that as impotence. There were always countless excuses with which to rationalize. Overwork. Worry. Lack of sleep. Sue had heard them all a dozen times. He liked to believe that she accepted them, but he knew better. Now, the explosive encounter with Phylis had stripped away all pretense. His libido had not waned over the years. If anything, his virility this afternoon had been at a peak never surpassed at any time in his Hie. And, paradoxically, that pointed up the impotence that plagued him with his wife. That was impotence, he admitted that. For that was the cogent meaning of the word. It mattered little if a man derived some perverse thrill from taking a woman in a dark closet while her daughter was making love with another male in the next room. What did matter was how he performed at home with his wife. If he couldn't bring her pleasure, then he was impotent.
That night at supper, he startled Sue. "I think we ought to adopt a child," he said.
She laid down her fork weakly. "Are you serious?"
"Of course I'm serious."
Two spots of color rouged her cheeks. "You know, I've been doing a lot of reading lately. Sometimes people go for years without having a child, then, suddenly, for no apparent reason, they do. What I mean is, maybe we could try for one of our own again. Really try." She dropped her eyes.
Realty try.
Wes knew perfectly well what she was driving at. If we had more love, maybe something would happen. He thought about the interlude with Phylis, and that spurred his confidence. Hope leaped for him. Maybe the episode would disrupt the pattern of his inadequacy with Sue. He even was aware of the beginning of desire for her.
She looked very pretty and desirable with her blonde hair freshly washed and brushed, shining in the candlelight and her eyes soft and demure. She was wearing a white angora sweater that made her breasts appear as big round powder puffs. Her nylon skirt, charged with static electricity, clung to her like fly paper. He had forgotten what a cute derriere she had.
"All right," he said in answer to her question. "Let's give that a try."
Excitement made her voice shake. "Right now?"
He laughed. "Oh, I guess we can wait until the dishes are done."
Sue was already up and carrying her plate to the sink. "No! I mean why wait if you feel like that now, honey."
Wes lit a cigarette. Her eagerness amused him. He could see her trembling beneath the clinging skirt. The sight sent a pang of revulsion through him.
She rushed him through his coffee and dessert, rushed him into the bedroom. Her sweater and skirt were off before he could untie his shoes. Her naked breasts fairly exploded out of the bra. She threw herself down on the bed, kicked her legs and wriggled out of her panties. She was panting for him, he could see, the way Phylis had been paining for him. But something was different, something elusive and irritating to him.
He was outraged when Sue tugged at his shorts, to help him slide them over his feet. He lay back beside her and went through the motions of arousing her. He kissed her breasts and stroked her. His hands drove her to a peak of frenzied passion. And all the while her hands were working feverishly to prepare him. But for all her ministrations, the flesh remained cold, dead.
Sue was almost in tears. "What's wrong? You wanted to before. You said so."
"I did," he snapped. "Before."
"You will. I'll make you." To his astonishment, she buried her face against him, kissing him, adoring him.
He arched with a snap, simulating passion, but he knew no sensual excitement, only the curse of unwilling flesh. He was now so bowed that his weight rested on his heels and the top of his head, so contorted by mock sensuality that his eyes stared at the wall behind him. He reacted this way partially to encourage Sue and partially to hide his face from her. She mustn't see his eyes squeezed shut, his lips pulled back not from nervous, ecstatic command, but with the extreme bitterness of a person who knows that fulfillment will, for him. remain always out of reach.
But Sue was not so easily discouraged. She was a woman totally intent on achieving the gift of motherhood, despite the price. She became like an irresistible animal, her Adrenalin spreading, giving her the strength of a man. She leaped to his lips, biting savagely, pulling sideways, drawing blood. He groaned, but again from pain, without any accompanying primordial lust. His basic male senses were quietly in repose.
Sue tried to become the aggressor, with force enough for both of them. She lunged upward, flipping him easily, reversing his position. His breath gushed from him as his stomach hit with impact at the bedclothes. He lifted his head to speak, but Sue had already applied herself, moving along him swiftly, using a newly learned knowledge of nerve centers. At once, his eyes bulged and his whole body, catapulted forward with nervous reaction, his head crashing at the wall, but no signal of pain was sent his brain, so over-keyed was his nervous system.
Sue stopped abruptly, seeing that his body was reacting nervously but that he was not even close to achieving the excitement she so desperately needed.
After a while he got up and dressed and went down to get a drink. As he descended the stairs her hysterical sobbing assaulted his eardrums.