Chapter 2
That evening after dinner Barbi sat in front of the fire in her living room and waited while her husband busied himself upstairs packing for his trip. She held a book in her hands but only one page had occupied her attention for the last hour. She simply could not concentrate.
Her mind was across the lawn and through the orchard and down over the hill to the park and up the stream where she knew a solitary tent was pitched in the darkness away from the drop of the trees but near enough to the stream to hear the clean song of the water over the stones. She could, in her mind, see the glint of the light from a hurricane lamp upon his fair hair. She could see the reflection of the light on a damp spot on his thick, sensual lower lip. She could almost hear the whisper of the wind as it slipped beneath the tent flap and see it toying with the wide leg of his khaki shorts as he sat clasping his knees and thought of jerking off.
Engrossed in these thoughts she had become rigid. For a moment she looked wildly around her, and then shook herself and rubbed her moist palms hard together. She was intelligent enough to be struck more by the symbolism of the boy beating his meat in her fantasy than in the purely erotic content of the wish-projection.
She breathed deeply and reached for a cigarette from the ivory cigarette box beside the chair. She lit one and inhaled deeply and her face relaxed in thought. She was horny!
This thing had to be faced. From one extreme she was going to another. Once upon a time she had seduced a friend of her father, a man old enough to be her father. Now it was in the conscious part of her mind to seduce a boy young enough to be her son. Her nipples glowed and erected at the use in her mind of the word seduce. That was perfectly true. The thought of his hard young body astride hers, his strong, wiry thighs pounding on hers as he drove his small white hardness into her made her writhe for a moment in her chair.
Then she smiled and the fantasy was relieved f r a moment as a typically feminine thought struck her. What the hell was she saying, that she was almost old enough to be his mother? She was thirty-two, almost. Gerry was fourteen. Oh, no!
Her smile faded as she realized that this was straight-forward justification. These were terrible thoughts and must be stamped out. Face it another way. If Tom were actually gone now on his trip, and that boy walked in that door and came to her and touched her and let his young hands wander over her taut body and she were aware of his bright, hard young sex erect and wanting to dare the passage between her thighs, then, would she allow him? Her thighs felt hot and she closed her eyes to concentrate on rendering herself a fair answer. She was saved the necessity by the sound of the door clicking. Her heart thumped and her vagina contracted.
It was Tom.
"Well, that's it," he said.
She breathed deeply.
"Yes," she concurred, that's that."
He walked over to her.
"I beg your pardon, darling?"
"Oh, nothing."
He sat down in the armchair opposite her. "Throw me a cigarette," he said. "My case is empty."
She opened the box and threw him one. He lit with an old silver lighter and leaned back. He looked so middle-aged.
"Well, that's that."
"So you've said," Barbi replied.
He looked at her.
"What's the matter with you, darling? You sound almost hasty."
She shrugged, "Sorry."
He looked at his glowing cigarette tip and frowned. "I know it's a drag, I mean, having to go away like this, but you know how it is. This will be a really fantastic opportunity for me. If I manage to win this case, the results could be absolutely stupendous."
She closed her eyes in irritation. The excitement! If only he could display the same excitement in bed!
He was going on. She forced herself to listen.
"Company law is my specialty and fraud is really something that offers tremendous opportunities in the field."
Bored, her mind snapped into coarseness. She thought, he's worrying about a silly court case halfway across the world and I'm wondering what it would be like to be fucked by a boy of fourteen!
The thought was so vivid, that for a moment she looked at him, feeling half-convinced that she had given voice to this domestic atrocity.
Tom's face, however, was calm and comfortable. He puffed on his cigarette and expanded on his ambitions.
"All this could lead to government work. Great practice and all that could lead to even greater work. Could be quite fantastic. You do see my point, don't you, darling?"
"Oh, yes," she replied.
"By the way, I've left you a dozen blank checks signed. You'll probably need them for household expenses."
She looked at him. "I could pay that sort of thing until you get back."
"Let's do things properly," was his only reply.
She laughed, "And you paying all the bills is doing things properly."
"Barbi, you are in a damned funny mood tonight. You know very well how we work things."
"I wonder if I do," she mused.
"What's the matter with you. It's not that you're upset that I'm going away, is it?"
She shook her head. "No, no, it's nothing like that. It's just that I'm a bit nervous. Take no notice of me. I'll be all right."
"That's my girl!" her husband smiled, smugly.
She winced at the expression, which he seldom but seldom, if ever used, but which annoyed her immeasurably when he did. But she said nothing.
He crossed his legs contentedly. "I phoned the old man just now. He'd heard I was going. Gave me a couple of tips on procedure.
He paused and then broke into a short chuckle.
"What's the matter?" she asked. Tom threw back his head and laughed. "Gave me a word of advice about the natives," he chuckled. "Oh?"
"Yes, told me to be very careful of the local girls. It seems that some of them are damned attractive and only too keen to collar themselves a rich man."
Barbi didn't feel up to arguing the logic or-likelihood of this belief so she said nothing.
"Of course, you can see their point of view," Tom added.
"I'm afraid I can't," she replied tartly.
"What do you mean?"
"What I say-I can't see their point of view."
"My goodness, you are being bitchy tonight, darling. Oh, well, I suppose it's my going away. Don't worry, honey, I'll be back the very second it's possible."
"I still don't see why it's the point of view of big-town girls to want to get themselves a rich man. I may be dense but I just don't see it. Why not just a good man?"
"Then I'm afraid you must be dense, darling, because it's quite obvious why they should."
"All right, why. Tell me why."
"Now look here, darling..."
"Tell me why!" she shouted.
"Well, just because it is natural."
"So it's natural for a woman to want some bastard of a rich man bouncing up and down on her belly. I suppose they're better lays," she snapped.
Tom was stunned into silence for a moment. When he could speak he almost stuttered.
"Barbi, really!"
"Do you think it's natural that a sharp woman should want to go to bed with country men rather than men of their own class?" Barbi demanded.
He was horrified at the way she spoke.
"Now you're being downright disgusting," he said. "And I must say I've noticed that when you get excited, and that is usually about nothing. You do tend to become coarse."
"Oh, thank you. Now answer my question. You said you can see the point of view of a city girl wanting a country man. That seems to me that it doesn't need much imagination to extend that to the country man being naturally attacted to a city woman."
"Nothing of the kind."
"No, I know what it means," she interrupted. "It means that you believe in the superiority of the rich, backward race and that with city people you're dealing with thoughtless animals. Frankly, I often think it's the other way around."
"Perhaps you'd like to screw with a city man," he snapped.
"If he could do the things I like done, when I like them done, know how I like them done and I could respect him, it wouldn't make one bit of difference to me!"
"This sounds to me like a conscience apology!" he said.
Could it be she was thinking of adultery?
"I don't doubt it does to you!" Barbi snapped back.
"If I thought ... " Tom started to say.
"If you thought what?" Barbi cut in her eyes now blazing with fury. "If you thought I'd ever been fucked by another man?"
Tom leaped to his feet and raised his hand. Barbi raised her face towards him.
"If you thought that, what would you do?" she sneered. "Not forgetting, of course. That what I did before I met you is just as much my business as what you got up to before we met is your business. You knew I wasn't a virgin when you married me. What are you going to do now? Worry about how many pricks I've had?"
Tom's jaw quivered in a spasmodic convulsion and his fingers writhed as he tried to summon up the conviction that would let him lay his hand across his wife's mouth.
"Well," she asked, in a small voice, exchausted by the flush of obscenity that had made her speak like that.
"You usually confine this kind of talk to bed," he said.
"And you can't understand it here?"
"I can never understand it, but there I have been able to tolerate it. Now I wonder if I was right to ever do so. What a terrible thing you've said, Barbi."
"Just a minute. I haven't said that I've ever had an affair with another man, since we've been married. All I've said is that I wouldn't be ashamed of it if I did."
"A small practical difference."
"I should have thought that as long as the difference was practical that was all you needed to worry about."
Tom began to pace the floor. This always irritated her and now it did so more than ever.
"Are we happy together?" he asked.
She was in no mood to compromise.
"I usually feel a distinct absence of misery," she said.
"That's a horrible thing to say."
"You keep accusing me of horrible thoughts and of saying horrible things. Hasn't something occurred to you?"
He looked at her.
"What do you mean?"
"Perhaps I'm a horrible person?"
He took rather longer to reply to this than she could have wished.
"Well, you certainly have some horrible ideas. Now, look here, let's face it, Barbi. You are very, well, sexy."
"Can you bear to face it?"
"Yes, I can."
The smile left her face.
"You can bear to face it but you can't bear to do anything about it."
"What are you saying?"
"I thought I was being obvious."
"You mean that I should arrange some treatment for you? Well, that has occurred to me."
She almost allowed her jaw to drop as she assimilated this remark. Then she threw back her head and burst out laughing.
"The man is absolutely convinced I'm a nymphomaniac!" she shrilled.
"My interpretation of nymphomania is an inordinate preoccupation with sex on the part of a woman," he said, softly.
'That's mine, too," she nodded. "How would you like to hear my interpretation of impotence? I think impotence is an inordinate preoccupation with anything but sex on the part of a man!"
"Are you suggesting that I'm impotent, or undersexed?" he demanded furiously.
"Darling, just leave it that you're sexy, but not a stud. Just be my Saturday night stallion and don't get ambitions higher than your balls!" '
"Barbi!"
"Tom!" she mimicked.
"You've never been like this, at least."
"Out of bed," she supplied.
"I've never inquired into your past," he said slowly. "But it's beginning to look as if I should have."
"I could say the same. I might have found that you had a pathological history of unbridled sexuality. You probably masturbated twice a day between the ages of fourteen and twenty."
"Fourteen!"
She shut her eyes. Why had she chosen that precise age for her taunt? She could see Gerry again! He was in a sleeping bag now. His hand was gliding up and down his erect cock, forcing the white skin back over his crimson knob. His face was set and his eyes startling. He convulsed and she saw the thick spurt of his gray sperm as it gushed out of his pulsing cock. She shuddered deliciously.
Oh, to be holding that rapidly pulsing penis between her writhing lips and feeling the hot gush of his spunk in her mouth! She opened her eyes and thrust her hands, palm to palm, between her clenched thighs. She could feel the wetness of her passion in her panties.
She looked at her husband who was staring at her in almost frightened amazement.
"Let's go to bed," she said. "You have to be up early in the morning."