Chapter 3
THE BUSINESS WIFE'S DUTY....
"Bob, dear, it could be just that you're getting too old to keep up the pace."
The words were coated with honey, the honey softness of Marg Smelton's carefully cultured voice, but behind them, he hard, shining green eyes taunted her husband.
"Thanks a lot, bitch," Bob snapped back with no effort to soften the impact of his words. "Are you saying you act like a tramp because you're not old enough to know better?"
The assortment of cutting remarks and crude insults was old hat to Bob and Marg Smelton after ten years of marriage.
When they married, Bob was twenty-five and ambitious. At twenty-eight, Marg was less than beautiful, somewhat spoiled, and the daughter of a wealthy industrialist who operated a string of companies which were potential P.R. clients to the ambitious young P.R. man.
It wouldn't be fair to say that in marrying her Bob acted without love and was motivated purely by ambition, but these were factors.
Love, by his definition, was something that took up a lot of time and effort without providing a reward in the market place.
He met Marg at the yacht club, discovered that with her background and social polish, she could be an asset to a young man on the way up and clinched the deal when he discovered how many companies her old man controlled to the point where he could influence a lot of major decisions.
From there, he fell in love with her, to the extent that he was capable of falling in love with anyone. Old man Powers asked him a lot of questions to assure himself that young Smelton wasn't just going after the family money, but Bob came up with a lot of right answers.
Not anxious to have a spinster daughter on his hands for life, the old man gave his blessings and the wedding bells tolled. If there was a faint overtone of blue chip stocks rustling, only Bob Smelton heard them.
Marg came to the marriage bed with a fairly impressive track record. She wasn't really promiscuous, it was just that since the age of seventeen, she had been aware that two can have more fun than one and that for maximum enjoyment, clothes should be removed.
Her first experience had been with an older girl at the exclusive private school. It turned out to be fun, so she played "drop-the-panty" with others.
She discovered males about a year later and they were even more fun. It always thrilled her to see how her charms could cause a male to become nervous when properly applied. Knowing she was less than beautiful, this power became important to her.
When a panting male begged for the thrill of feeling her thighs or stroking her breasts, she would hold out long enough to let his pressure build, then, with a sigh of resignation, she would allow the trembling hand to move into the front of her dress or well up under the hem of her skirt.
Eventually, of course, if the young man pleaded with enough conviction, her bra would fall away, he would ease her panties off and she would grant him the greatest of all gifts.
While most males she knew were anxious to go that far, none were sufficiently impressed to want to marry her. That shouldn't have been too surprising though. In her circle, there were other, more beautiful young women who would take their panties off and give their all, and, the young men with whom she travelled weren't at all impressed by her old man's money because they had enough of their own.
When Bob Smelton came on the scene, he threw her for a loop by talking about her beauty and charm without trying to get his hands on it
"I want you very much, darling," he would whisper as Marg became twitchy with impatience for him to overpower her, "but I respect you too much for that."
When he proposed marriage, she was so off guard about the whole thing that she said yes.
As they undressed for bed on their wedding night, she removed her clothes with all the erotic drama she could muster. Considering how often she had done it for men, she was really quite good at it. It was quite a shock after such a performance to see that her husband, while he said all the right words, was singularly unexcited where it counted most.
The challenge this presented was too much to be ignored. When they got into bed, Marg concentrated on making her husband rise to the occasion. She did achieve her goal eventually, but as he lay panting on her heaving belly, the groom looked a lot less dedicated to the task at hand than any of the young men who had lain there in the past.
He completed his duty that night with a great burst of enthusiasm, but Marg remained frustrated and completely unsatisfied. She tried to guide his hand between her warm thighs to provide what she wanted, but the hand was so reluctant that she gave it up as a bad job.
During the remainder of the Mexican honeymoon, Marg permitted her disappointment to show and Bob was bright enough to see it. He was also intelligent enough to see that this could be a mistake.
To her delight, he became quite ardent in his physical attentions to her. Determined to take him all the way after his slow start, she even managed to guide his face between her thighs and lead him through a nice session there that provided a beautiful climax.
Bob looked more than a little pale when she told him that it was her very favorite way of doing it. He began to wonder if he had paid too great a price for his business asset, but it was too late to return her so he forced himself to go along with it.
In time, Bob discovered that if he gave her what she wanted often enough in what he considered the normal manner, she wasn't so insistent on forcing his mouth between her thighs.
Although Bob became apprehensive every time his wife became flirtatious toward him, he was delighted when she acted that way toward influential client people or those who could be considered hot potentials.
This led to their first big fight. There had been a party at their home, one of the many Bob insisted on throwing. For the want of something to do, Marg began flirting with one of the men who bad come alone.
To her dismay, she saw that her husband seemed to encourage it. Determined to arouse his jealousy, she stepped up the pace.
By the time the last of the guests had left, Marg had done everything but put the make on the man. Alone then, she waited for some reaction from her husband.
"Hey, baby, you were really great with Dan-ton," he enthused. "You had him in the palm of your hand all the way."
Marg was stunned by that and it took her a while before she could respond.
"The palm of my hand? I damn near had him in the crotch of my panties. Don't you care?"
"Come on, baby," he patted her on the rump without seeming to realize what he was doing, "that's what the world of business is all about."
"Is that right? Why don't you invite him again and I can slip into the bedroom with him. If you think I handled him well tonight, you should see what I could do with my panties off. Would you like to set it up?"
"You don't have to make it sound dirty, Marg. A business wife should understand how these things are."
"Well excuse me all to hell," she flared. 'The mistake is all mine. I thought I was a wife, not what you call a business wife. I don't remember anything in the ceremony about peddling my ass so my husband can make it big in the world of business."
Seeing how badly he had slipped, Bob tried to back down, but it was too late. The argument ended, but for a long time, Marg's angry tirade went on. She called him a lot of names he didn't like and made a lot of threats.
It came to an end only when he drew her to him and began fondling her through the sheer nylon panties with his hands and his mouth.
When he saw it was working, he bravely slipped her panties down and off and parted her thighs as he pushed her back on the bed. Acting as though he really meant it, he pressed his mouth to the warmth of her and kept it there until he heard her crying out in ecstasy. When he was sure she was asleep, he went to the bathroom and used a lot of mouthwash.
Things were never quite the same after that. Marg forced herself to admit that her husband had married her not because he really loved her or thought her beautiful, but rather, because she was good for business.
When she flirted with their male guests, Bob was pleased because he thought she understood. She didn't bother telling him that she was doing it for her rather than for him.
She didn't tell him either that from time to time when her vanity needed it, she found some anxious male and did more than just flirt with him.
Marg was very discreet about her affairs though, so Bob didn't find out what was happening. A few of their friends were suspicious about her activities, but one doesn't mention that sort of thing to the husband so all went well.
This morning though, the cold war had heated up. At the party last night, Marg had thrown herself at Carl Jordan so hard that people were staring.
Carl wasn't a client, he was an employee. To make it even harder to bear, Carl had looked pit-tingly at his boss as he rebuffed the clumsy attempts at seduction.
Anyone but that bastard Jordan, Bob thought as he searched for new words to throw at his wife, words that would get through her skin and sting her.
In the end, he found nothing but a bunch of well used old words that didn't hurt her at all. She just added a few familiar ones of her own and slammed them right back at him.
Slamming the door behind him, Bob started for the office. As he drove with his usual lack of care or consideration, he wondered whether Jordan would rub it in.
Bob Smelton could be forgiven for thinking something like that since it's just what he would have done had the positions been reversed.