Chapter 12

THE EVENING HAD BRIGHTENED for me. My senses were abruptly alive and singing. I shucked my sweatshirt and slacks, took a hasty shower, shaved. I had just slipped into a robe when I heard a furtive tap at my door.

I opened it. Sandra brought perfume and a gust of cold night air. I closed and locked the door and we faced each other. Her eyes were as black as the night outside-they seemed to be all pupils.

"I've missed you," she whispered huskily.

She stripped before she touched me. Then she pulled loose the cord of my robe. I knew better by now than to make any move.

The madness began. She threw herself into my arms, kissed me savagely. I had not yet fathomed her insistence she be the aggressor-her demands were fiercer than Nell's gentle guidance and had, I was sure, nothing to do with any personal attraction I might have had for her. Did it pertain to a predecessor of mine in her affections? Or simply to herself?

She could really go way out. She had some odd-ball ideas-dark corridors of passion I thought were worth exploring.

I remembered one evening when she had insisted on giving me a bath. She had made herself my servant. She had stripped and had worked over me, making me soak in a hot tub while she scrubbed every inch of my body. Then she had dried me with a rough towel and had given me a rubdown. Her smooth hands had worked the oil into me while she perspired nakedly. Next she had oiled herself and kneeled beside me, her mouth busy on me, trailing all but unbearable sensations over me-until she had flung herself violently on me.

Later she had explained.

There are things I've always wanted to do. I can do them with you. I can never let myself go with Howard. Our sex is a ritual. I think he even believes I'm a little frigid. That's the way he believes a woman should be. Perhaps I am with him. But fantasies grow in my mind. I can act them out-get rid of them-with you....

What about the guy I remind you of? Did you also gePrid of fantasies with him?

Yes....

That was what we had said that night. I had not known whether to believe her. She was a strange woman, but very much a female. I was unable to imagine her as cold or inhibited-even with her husband.

Sometimes I had the uncomfortable feeling that there was something sick about Sandra. I had no doubt that she was a highly intelligent woman, also highly civilized and organized. But she left the last two qualities behind when she got into bed. She turned primitive. But I still respected her intelligence-without quite trusting it.

Now she lay beside me, smoking and talking. She asked me about Debbie's wedding and I told her.

After a while she put out her cigarette. She propped herself on an elbow and looked down at me fondly. Her fingers touched my hair and caressed my cheek.

"You're sweet and handsome-and so young, darling. You're achingly young." A shadow touched her eyes. "But you're troubled, too, aren't you?"

"Not when I'm with you," I said.

Her fingers gently massaged my brow, smoothing away, temporarily, fines of confusion and anxiety. She sighed. "I see you on the campus every year-oh, not you personally, but so many like you. The young of today. You're vital, intelligent-and troubled. What's bothering you, Mark?"

"How should I know?"

She frowned slightly.

"You youngsters today take sex too lightly. You start too soon. The girls around the campus-most of them think virgmity is a cumbersome bother. This off-campus sexual permissiveness-I wonder what it all means. Is it the direction society is heading?"

I gaped at her. Had she forgotten that she was lying naked beside me-that she was part of the sexuality she deplored?

She sighed, still looking disturbed, and continued talking half to herself.

"It makes it hard for me to stay faithful to Howard. Boys like you come into my office. You look at me in that knowing way. I see you with girls on the campus. I think about you young people, knowing that very possibly that night you'll be somewhere in bed together. I think about it and I go home to Howard and there's no satisfaction there. The restlessness keeps building up in me-the fantasies-"

Suddenly she stamped out her cigarette. She looked at me. Her hair had fallen around her face. She was bent over me. Her breasts seemed out of proportion to her willowy figure-they were swollen like ripe fruit. Her eyes burned with fierce intensity.

In a husky voice she whispered, "Mark, I want your youth. Give me its excitement-the excitement you give to the young girls on the campus-"

She flung herself on me again.