Chapter 2
Carla snapped the door of the post office box shut and spun the combination lock. Straightening to her tall, voluptuous height as she leafed through her mail, she saw the man out of the corner of her eye. Another box holder, he too was pretending to go through his mail, but he was eyeing her, she knew.
She wondered with satisfaction which of her undergarments he was in the process of mentally removing. The bra, if he was a breast man, or the panties would be coming off first if he's a fanny man. Maybe he's a leg man, she speculated, cooking her shapely calf back at a saucy angle atop her spiked heel. For the man's better edification, she also squared her shoulders, causing her breasts to jut farther forward. At the same time, the cleavage at the top of her low cut white dress assumed a more bursting roundness. She really wasn't too proud of her breasts, had always felt them to be too small. But these modern bras were engineering marvels. It didn't take more than average natural equipment to give a man a show from the outside. She hoped her secret admirer was enjoying his fantasy exploration of her flesh. What delicious acts he must be performing on her body right this minute in his mind's eye. Well, they're still looking, she thought, pleased. That's something.
Deciding she'd given the man enough of a show for the day, she straightened her pretty head, with its elegant platinum upsweep and clicked off across the marble floor of the post office. Her gliding model's walk, chin held high, attracted more male stares to her slender but well padded figure as she passed out of the building.
Emerging into the dazzling heat of Delmar Boulevard, she observed with annoyance that a motorcycle cop was writing out a summons next to her illegally parked convertible. Well, it was nothing she couldn't handle. Fixing a winning smile on her beautifully made-up, high cheekboned face, she approached the policeman.
"Why, officer, what ever is the matter?" she asked innocently.
The young cop did a double take at the sight of her. Yes, this would be easy. She let her mink wrap fall back, exposing her soft, flawless shoulders, and stood close so he could appreciate her perfume.
The policeman struggled to reassume his official manner. "This your car, lady? It's parked in a no parking zone. You can't park right in front of the post office entrance," he said gruffly.
His eyes, though, were anything but gruff, she saw, as they flitted admiringly up and down her curves. "But, officer," she said in a hurt, sweet voice. "I was only gone two seconds."
"It doesn't matter, lady. I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you a ticket."
"Well, gee," she pouted prettily. "I didn't even see the old sign. It just doesn't seem fair ... I'll never do it again, officer."
She caught his eye and knew she had him trapped. He stopped writing on his pad as she batted her long, mascara-lashes over innocent blue eyes and smiled meekly.
"Well, I guess...." he began, flustered. "Well, Okay, look lady ... I'll overlook it this time, but don't ever let me catch you parking here again."
It could have been Christmas morning and the cop a generous Santa for the beaming look of joy and gratitude and admiration she turned on him. "Oh, thank you, officer, sir," she intoned lavishly. "And I'll never do it again, I promise. Cross my heart."
The cop watched with rapt interest as she crossed her heart, but she sensed it was the soft, mammarian casing, rather than the internal organ, which aroused his interest.
The cop retreated and Carla bent to slide into the driver's seat. As she did so, she turned to flash one more smile at him and caught him gaping reverently at her ripe buttocks, bursting at the seams of her dress.
She slid behind the wheel, a triumphant little smile on her lips. Yes, she still had what it took.
Wheeling the big Caddie carelessly into the heavy traffic, Carla's mind was full of busy thoughts. The party was tomorrow afternoon. So much to do. She'd have to check with the caterer again and with the hairdresser, because she'd forgotten what time her appointment was for. She'd better call Karen Tryon too. Carla actually hoped there'd be a check from the young girl's mother in today's mail. They'd practically promised to enroll Karen in the modeling course. Yes she must call and invite her to the party. It'd be a good chance to butter her up and close the deal. Joe could be very helpful on that score. Her eyes softened for a moment as she thought of the Guzzler's Gazette publisher. Good old Joe. It'd be good to see him again. A pleasant relief from Burt's increasingly sour puss. He'd been so nasty this morning. Imagine a man objecting to her having her own post office box, instead of having her mail sent to their apartment. After all, married or not, a girl's got a right to some privacy. He was being almost as snotty about this as he was when she'd told him she was going to keep using her maiden name, for business purposes. What a drag.
Carla tooled the open-topped Caddie aggressively through the traffic, south on Skinker, left into Forest Park, and then out onto Lindell heading east. She knew she made a glamorous appearance with the flashy car, sunglasses, the wind toying with her silver-blonde tresses. At least her marriage had gotten her these trappings, if nothing else. The spiffy automobile, the mink wrap, the fancy apartment. Not that Burt was rich, by any means. As a matter-of-fact, although he was close-mouthed about his finances, she was picking up bits of information that indicated he had no money at all. Darn good thing he had this newspaper job. Apparently a plug in the column was as good as cash for acquiring these little luxuries for his new wife. She shouldn't be too hard on him. He wasn't all bad.
She swerved the oar into the circular drive of the Ritz-Lindell and braked to a lurching stop. Tossing the ignition key to the doorman, she smiled seductively and said: "Here, Chico. Will you be a darling and park it for me? I'm in such a hurry." She clicked rapidly into the building without awaiting his reply.
Entering her spacious apartment on the seventeenth floor, her face registered annoyed surprise. "Burt, what are you doing home so early?"
"Hiya, Angel," Burt greeted her with a wary smile. He was standing at the living room bar, pouring a drink. She bustled across the room to brush a preoccupied kiss onto his cheek. As she did so, his free arm outstretched to circle her waist but she had already careened lightly away.
Going to the mirror to adjust her make-up and coif, Carla said peevishly: "Burt, you're drinking. It's only four o'clock and you're drinking. You'll be staggering by dinnertime, won't you?"
Defiantly, Burt added an extra finger of Scotch to his glass before setting the decanter down. "I am not drinking, Carla. I'm having a drink ... You like one?"
"No." Turning to face him, she added: "Did you file your copy today? Why are you home so early?"
"Yes, Carla, I filed my copy," Burt said wearily, with the air of a patiently suffering long-married man. "I filed my copy the same as I do every day, and I'm home early because I finished early."
"Did you get in the plug for my modeling school like you promised?" she badgered.
"Yes, I got in the plug like I promised." Burt sank tiredly into a soft chair and sipped at his Scotch.
What a grouch he is, thought Carla, looking down at him. I can't even ask a simple question and get a civil answer. She contemplated his frailness, his thin, grey-dusted hair, his pale, lined face. It wouldn't be a bad face, she decided, if he ever got rid of the barroom pallor and took a little sun. Or smiled....With a little jolt, as she met his eyes, she realized he was smiling. Just the faintest of smiles, as he gazed at her in silence. She carefully matched his pleasant look, masking her true throughts behind her patrician face.
"Burt, honey, I didn't mean to nag," she said in a more agreeable tone, "but you know that too much drinking isn't good for your health."
Burt's smile faded. "Who's drinking too much? This is the first one I've had today. Can't a man have a civilized scotch in his own home?"
Such a nasty, quarrelsome man. To think this nondescript little guzzler was the big celebrity she'd thought she was marrying. Celebrity indeed. If his readers only knew. Here, after only two months of marriage, she sometimes felt like screaming at the very sight of his face, with his annoying, contrary ways, and his drinking. True, her physical standard of living had improved, but being Mrs. Burt Goslin was hardly the gay, glamorous whirl she'd expected it to be. Outside of a few measly plugs in his column, how had it helped her career?
"Burt, I simply refuse to talk to you about it, you're so unreasonable," she scolded, rising. "You're nothing but a nasty, drunken old bum." So saying, she stalked haughtily away into the bedroom, her luscious buttocks jiggling angrily.
In her large, luxuriously appointed boudoir, Carla yanked a cord that opened the drapes and allowed bright sunlight to flood the room.
Seating herself at her dressing table, she surveyed her flawless face in the mirror and felt better. Her huff was evaporating, but she still couldn't help being peeved at Burt. Mickey, for all his faults, hadn't been a drunkard. A little jealous maybe, but even though he'd become a bartender, practically living with the stuff, he seldom drank hard liquor. She paused, a dab of cold cream on her poised fingertips, thinking of Mickey. How young and foolish they'd been. Getting married like that the day after high school graduation. She tried to remember who'd been more nervous at the wedding, Mickey or their classmate and best man, Joe Barnes. Just because she'd gotten pregnant had been no reason to run off and get married. That could have been fixed. It had all come to the same thing anyway, when she'd had the miscarriage.
Oh well. She shrugged and began massaging the slippery cream onto her pink cheek. It was all 'water over the dam now. She remembered how painful the divorce had been. As bad for Grams and Gramps as it had been for she and Mickey. They were so hurt. They'd been the only parents she'd ever known, taking her in and somehow bringing her up on their meager income after her father had died and Mom had gone off to live in Chicago. She'd sure let them down. Well, it couldn't have been helped. Mickey, fine boy though he was, just didn't have any ambition. She'd wanted him to go places, and he could have, but the big dope was content to be a bartender. His only ambition was to someday have a little place of his own. Who wanted to be a bartender's wife all their life.
She smiled at herself in the mirror, measuring how much she'd changed for the better. The radiant beauty smiling back at her was a far cry from the gawky, long-legged kid who'd started adult life twelve years ago as a bartender's wife. She'd learned a lot and been around. Maybe not to all the places she'd aspired to, both geographically and professionally. But, even now, maybe there was still time to get there. The mirror image told her reassuringly that none of her charms were ebbing, and this marriage to Burt Goslin could turn out to be a springboard yet.
"Carla? ... What are you doing? His voice was gently placating.
She looked up to see Burt's face sticking in through the door, smiling hopefully. "I'm just taking off my make-up," she replied noncommittally.
"Can I come in?" he asked, coming in. "Want to make up?"
He came up behind her and leaned to plant a kiss in the soft hollow of her slender neck. Well, at least he doesn't have a glass of booze in his hand, she grudgingly acknowledged.
Burt's hands slid around and cupped the firmness of her breasts, kneading them softly. Oh-oh. What's he up to? What does the old bird have on his mind? As his kneading hands pressed her more firmly, she thought she knew. But she wasn't sure she felt like it just now.
"Does this feel good, honey?" asked Burt, examining her face in the mirror, as if trying to read her mood. "I love your breasts, you know." He kissed her lightly on the cheek and she was aware that his lips were warming.
"Do you really like my breasts, Burt?" she asked in a more cordial voice, fishing for reassurance a-bout this one imagined flaw in her physical perfection.
"Like them? I love them. I like kissing them.
Like this." To demonstrate what he liked to do to her breasts, he took her earlobe between his teeth. He twiddled it for a moment, and then grasped it with tongue and lips and manipulated it with a pulling, sucking motion.
"You don't think they're too small?" she pursued, her voice growing ever gender. She swallowed at a sudden salivary emission and she knew she was beginning to respond to Burt's attentions to her earlobe and breasts. His hands kept kneading them.
"Too small? Are you kidding?" His hands bunched the spring blobs together and upward so that they swelled above her bodice. They both examined the glassy cleavage in the mirror. As Burt compressed the spheres roundly together, a faint, delicate network of blue veins could be seen beneath the pink-white skin.
"I mean, maybe they're not exactly models for sheer bulk," he added with a smile, "but they'll do, baby, they'll do just fine."
Thus reassured, Carla leaned affectionately back into his kissings and enjoyed the tingly feeling that was radiating from her centers as a result of his breast play.
Burt caught her eye in the mirror and arched his eyebrows inquisitively. "I sure wish I was playing with these without a dress in between ... I wish I had them in my mouth." His statement had the air of a timid question.
Oh well, what the hell, she thought. He was getting her a little worked up, actually. The old boy was stricken by the mood so seldom, it really wouldn't be right to turn him off. She felt a juicy tweak inside her as a man's face, handsome and virile, flashed into her mind. Now if it were Joe Barnes standing there playing with her breasts and kissing her like that, she could really get to feeling wild. She'd probably be crawling all over him right this minute. Joe. It had been a long time, she thought hungrily and it had been so very, very good with him when they'd had each other's bodies. She wondered, could they...? Would they ever...? Oh well. Burt was here in the room with her, and Joe wasn't so she might as well make the most of it. It was her wifely duty after all, wasn't it?
She slithered to her feet in his arms and looked tenderly into the aging newspaperman's gentle face. Taking him by the ears, she rocked his head playfully. "Does my baby want to play naughty, humm?"
Burt just nodded, slightly but eagerly, as though he had feared rebuff until this very moment and still wasn't quite sure she was preparing to give herself to him. His eyes flickered with desire. Carla felt a swell of unaccustomed, genuine affection for him. He really did care for her, didn't he? Maybe even loved her. She ought to treat him better, she decided.
She snaked her arms about his shoulders and distributed her warmth up and down the length of his body. In her high heels she was as tall as he. She nibbled his lower lip for a second and then kissed him hard, her mouth wide open, her tongue flicking deep. Burt's masculinity responded almost at once, she noticed with confident pleasure. Yes, she could still get almost any man's blood flowing.
"Get ready, Burt honey," she whispered. "I'll be right back." She stabbed a tongued kiss into his ear in parting, and went into her wardrobe.
She lifted two of her sexiest negligees off the hanger bar. Since this was such an infrequent occasion in her marriage routine, she might as well do it up right for him. She selected the aqua negligee, an excitingly feminine bit of transparent fluff, and laid it aside while she undressed.
Reaching behind to unzip her dress, she let it fall, giving it the required help around the resplendent curvatures of her hips. She stepped out of her heels before the full length mirror and, undoing the clasp of her bra, shrugged out of it. Two pink, red-tipped breasts popped juicily into view. She completed her glowing nudity by sliding panties, garter belt and stockings to the floor, and then posed before the mirror.
Not bad. Not bad at all, she appraised, posing her naked voluptuousness in a series of modeling stances before the glass. She had the height and bone structure of a high fashion model, but a hell of a lot more meat in the right places than most of those skinny broads she'd seen. Including in the bosom she was sometimes inclined to fret about. Her blue eyes ran up the luscious form in the mirror, over the strong, straight legs, the thighs and hips that were so perfectly turned and firmly fleshed. Her tummy was as flat and trim as ever, she saw, its skin still creamy smooth and shimmering with a youthful bloom. And, yes, the breasts too contributed to the picture of womanly perfection. They weren't large, perhaps, but nonetheless they were well proportioned to the rest of her faultless shape. Broad and firm, they stood high, their ripe swell set off by rich red points the color of ripe cherries, which apparently made much better eating than cherries, she thought with a little smile, remembering men in her past. Burt surely seemed to enjoy the taste of them. As had Joe and Mickey and, really, all of them.
With a satisfied last look, she slipped the flimy negligee on over her blonde curls, and returned to the bedroom.
Burt lay nude on his back on the bed. As she entered, he propped himself up on an elbow and gazed appreciately at her.
"Hey, that's some swinging little outfit," he praised.
She went to the bed and gently pushed him back down. Sitting beside him, she toyed with the sandy hair on his chest. His hands glided up her stomach to cup the soft underswell of her breasts. She closed her eyes to relish the pleasurable sensation as he took each red point between thumb and forefinger and gently rolled them back and forth.
"Ooh, I love that Burt. Does it show?"
"Sure does," he replied, in reference to the jutting transfiguration that was taking place in the contours of her nipples. In repose, she knew, the tiny points lay buried in the centers of their fleshy red circles inward. The constricted thrust of her aroused nipples extended outward and upward nearly an inch. One lover-had it been Joe?-had once called them sexy football cleats.
"Don't stop, Burt," she breathed. "That's starting to get me very hot." She groped a hand lower on him to ascertain if her husband was sharing similar urges. Grasping him, she learned that he was.
With an eager grunt, Burt raised up, threw the negligee up around her neck, and pulled her back down to him, taking one of the new throbbing nipples wetly into his mouth. Her passion flamed higher as she wiggled around, straightening out against him, and pushed the nipple hard against his tongue and teeth.
She moaned her pleasure at the delectable sensations Burt's busy mouth was delivering to all points of her shapely body.
"Now the other one, honey," she murmured feverishly, pulling his head back and tonguing him with a hurried kiss on the mouth. "Do the other one now." She popped the other red flesh antenna into his willing mouth. He might not be the world's greatest lover over all, she reflected in passing, noticing that her hips were now writhing wetly against his frail torso, but he was sure good at what he was doing to her now.
She grabbed him hard with her free hand, wanting to pull him along with her on her frenzied accent, to be sure he would be ready when she was. Ah yes, she recognized, kneading him, he was almost ready. And she was too.
She pulled away and lay back, spreading her throbbing nudity fully before him. Burt was quick to respond. His breathing was now coming in grants and groans because of her intimate and nimble handling. The coarse sounds coming from his throat complemented her own irregular panting.
He took her quickly, his first thrust causing a rapturous gurgle to escape her.
"Oh, that's right, Burt, that's right, that's just the way", she encouraged him in a breath-baited tremor of a voice. She grabbed his ears, digging her fingernails in. Even in the grip of her passion, she realized her sharp nails must be painful to him, but she couldn't help it. She yanked his face to her bosom, forcing him to renew his worrying of the now spectacularly spiked and swollen nipples.
Burt labored harder and faster, his body a miniature pile driver, gasping for breath. She felt the exquisite pain rising mercurially, her floodgates of fulfillment just on the verge of bursting, when....
He stopped. Burt sagged his sweating cheek to her chest and lay there panting.
"Wha...?" But she didn't have to ask what had happened. A tell-tale stickiness in their now still embrace told her the love-making session was at an end. She wanted to scream. Every nerve end in her taut body cried out for completion. No use saying anything to Burt. There was nothing he could do about it.
"Oh, Carla," Burt finally managed, finding his voice. "It was ... you were so wonderful." She patted him gently on the back. No use telling him and spoiling it for him but she knew what she had to do, if she didn't want to start chewing on the rug.
"Let me up, honey," she said tenderly. "I have to run to the bathroom for a minute."
Burt shifted and lay on his back looking at her with eyes of love. As she crossed the room, her golden-pink nudity still swollen and glistening with their mingled perspiration, her need was a terrible coiled spring inside her. She felt a little guilty a-bout the private attention she was about to give herself, but there was no choice. It figured to turn out this way, .she thought disgruntledly as she closed the bathroom door behind her. With an old man and a drunkard for a husband, what could a girl expect?