Chapter 9
"Goddamnit, no! I won't go back to Jill. I don't want Jill. You're the one I love."
Paula gazed at the handsome nude man who sprawled in a chair near the motel bed. She, also nude, was stretched out on the mattress. A few minutes before, they had completed their fourth session of instruction in the art of making love, and Paula had just informed Lyle that he was graduated.
"Jill's your wife," Paula said. "She needs you."
"The hell she does! She walked out on me."
"That was because of the lousy way you treated her. Now you're a different person. Lyle, she wants you back. She's told me so."
"You've discussed me with her?"
"A little," Paula admitted. "After all, we're good friends."
"Yeah. Such good friends that you think you have to be noble. Well, you don't. You and I are entitled to some happiness, too."
"Your greatest happiness lies in returning to your wife."
"I'm not going back," he stated firmly. "Don't tell me you don't feel something for me after the great times we've had together?"
"Sure I feel something. But it's only physical passion. I pop like a string of firecrackers when you go to work on me, but I'd be the same with any attractive man who knew what he was about. You do now. You have a great deal to offer Jill. Everything will be fine between you two. Take my word for it."
"No!" he said and leaped to his feet. "You have no right to try to pass me back to her. I don't want her any more. Can't you understand that?"
He got onto the bed beside Paula and his mood changed again as he took her tenderly in his arms. "Darn you, you lovely witch," he murmured as he sucked at the hollow of her throat. "You're everything I want-now and forever. I love you, I love you, I love you. That should make it clear."
"But I'm married, Lyle, just as you are. I love my husband. I...."
He was scrambling atop her and she felt that his pecker was hard.
"No!" she exclaimed and forced her thighs together. She pushed at him. "You can't have me any more. We're through."
A strange wild exhilaration began beating through her. Since they had started dating, he had been a marvelous pupil, never giving her any trouble, but that was a trouble in itself. She hadn't had the opportunity to feel the wrath which she knew he was capable of generating and applying to a woman who vexed him. Now she realized she might feel that wrath today if she remained firm, if she spurned his declaration of love.
At the same time, she hoped she could convince him that his place was with Jill, because she really didn't want him as a permanent lover.
She still loved Joe.
She twisted and turned, keeping her legs together in spite of his strenuous efforts to part them. Now her fists began to beat at him. She hit him hard, glorying in the knowledge that she was making him very angry.
"God damn you!" he exclaimed as he struggled with her. "Open up! Quit hitting me!"
She did quit hitting him because she could see that her blows were not having a strong enough effect. She would have to try something else.
As he bent and tugged at her legs, which she had locked at the ankles, his handsome face wore a mask of determined concentration. One cheek was exposed and within her reach. She curled her fingers and viciously raked them down across it, leaving furrows where dots of blood sprang.
He gasped and let her go, clutching at his cheek. He took his hand away and found it red.
"Why, you wild hellion!" he exclaimed.
"Get off me," she said, "before you get more. I'll mar your face so no woman will look at you."
"You will, huh?" He was glaring down at her.
"Yes! I'm the boss here, you do as I say."
"The hell you're the boss! That's all over. Now I'm in charge."
He grasped her at the hips and twisted deftly, forcing her onto her side, then onto her belly. She didn't resist. She even cooperated with him without letting him know it.
He's going to whale me, she thought, excitement zinging through her. He's going to give me holy hell!
Lyle stared at her beautiful bottom with its perfectly molded halves which arched high, a deep tight cleft between them. Suddenly he wanted to punish that bottom severely, in a way that he couldn't accomplish with his hand.
He stretched and lifted his trousers from a chair next to the bed. His leather belt easily slipped out of the loops. He doubled the belt in his hand.
Paula gazed at what he was doing, fear overcoming her erotic excitement. A little rough treatment was all right, but he could kill her with that thing! He could cut her up!
"Lyle, for heaven's sake!" she cried. "I'm sorry!
Don't hit me with that!"
"I have to," he stated firmly. "You've been very naughty today and, worst of all, you told me you were the boss.-That isn't true. You've been my teacher, but never my boss. No woman runs me."
He raised the doubled belt, gripping it firmly by the plain end and the buckle which were together. It swung back and snapped as he cocked it.
"Lyle, no!" Paula shrieked. "In the name of Heaven!"
He brought the belt down with a whoosh, striking her across both buttocks, making a terrible slap. Pain knifed into her. She howled.
He lifted the belt again and once more it cracked against the back of his hand. He brought it down for a second time on her quivering ass.
She cried terribly, her hips bucking and twisting. The leather stung like nothing she had ever felt before.
He strapped her again and again. Crisscrossed red marks sprang up on the tender flesh of her rear end. Then, for the final blow, he turned the belt around and let her have the buckle.
It cut the skin.
She screeched fiendishly and, when' he saw the blood appear, he dropped the belt from his hand and bent forward, his open mouth against her buttock. He licked the blood and stopped its flow by keeping his mouth there.
Afterward he lay down beside her and began to kiss all over her neck and shoulders as he moaned, "I'm sorry ... I'm sorry ... I'm sorry...."
In spite of the intense pain she had experienced-or perhaps partly because of it-Paula felt a great warmth for him, and in just a few minutes she was crouching as he lay on his back. Her eager wet warm mouth surrounded the upthrust pinnacle of his manhood and she whimpered in her throat as she sucked noisily at him.
"You told me this was the way!" Jill exclaimed. "You said you could bring him around. Well, you haven't. He won't have anything to do with me. I called him, and do you know what he said? That he loves you, not me. He said he never wants to see me again." Her speech ended in a storm of bawling.
"Jill, for God's sake get hold of yourself!" Paula said. "You just have to give him a little time, that's all. I haven't encouraged him. Lord knows, I've been trying to turn him off. But he's no namby-pamby. Especially now."
"Please don't tell me what a good lover you've made of him!" Jill shrieked. "I couldn't bear to hear that again. Whatever he's learned, he doesn't want to try it on me. Just you!"
"Baby, I'm sorry. What more can I say?"
"I don't know," Jill admitted. "But I'll tell you this-you'd better figure out a way to fix things. Either that or I'm going to have a talk with Joe."
Stark fear touched Paula. She and Joe had agreed beforehand that there would be no playing around after the swap. If he were to find out she had been seeing Lyle, he might leave her.
"You wouldn't do that," she said, alarm evident in her voice.
"That's what you think." Jill's voice was hard. "These last two weeks without Lyle have been miserable for me. I'd even take him back the way he was before. I love him. I need him. I'm not going to let you take him away from me."
"I told you, I haven't encouraged him. I've been trying to get him to go back to you."
"Well, try harder, baby!" Jill said, her voice sharp and penetrating now. "Because if you don't, I'm going to wreck your pretty marriage just the way you've ruined mine."
Paula hung up the phone with trembling fingers. She couldn't believe that what had started as a more or less innocent night of erotic fun had turned into this. But it had. And now what was she going to do to save herself?
Lyle had refused to listen to her pleas. He had insisted that she continued their affair and, in all honesty, she had gone along not only because she feared what he might do if she didn't, but because she derived a great sensual enjoyment from him. He had become a master practitioner of all the techniques she had taught him, so that now he thrilled her much more intensely than her husband did. Still, she believed she loved Joe. And even if she didn't, she wanted to hold onto their marriage. Men came and went, but husbands-especially ones who made good salaries-were not so easy to acquire.
She and Lyle had a date for the following evening when Joe was set to go to a lodge function. He wouldn't be in until after midnight, he had told her.
She went directly to the bachelor apartment where Lyle now lived and, within five minutes of her arrival, they were both nude and writhing on his large bed. After he had kissed her all over, she thrilled to the expert stroking of his lengthy cock. He knew just how to do it now-starting slowly, pacing himself, staying deep for a while and moving just a fraction of an inch up and down so as to stimulate her clitoris without over-stimulating his shaft. Then, when she was exactly ready, he took dominant command and pumped her furiously until she came, screaming and shuddering with a deep vaginal release.
Afterward she pleaded with him:
"At least, let Jill believe there's a chance. Tell her you want a little more time to think things over and clear your mind. And tell her you're giving me up."
"No! I'll never do that. I want you to have a talk with Joe. We can't continue the way we are. I can't go on sharing you."
"Lyle! Please! You've got to help me."
"We have to help each other," he said, "and the only way we can do that is to be together ... all the time ... not just at odd moments when I can get away from the bank or when Joe's out for the evening.'"
It seemed hopeless.
She tried to reach Jill first thing the next morning with the purpose of pleading for a little more time. She believed Lyle would tire of her after a while and that he would drift back to Jill of his own accord.
But Jill didn't answer her phone.
At that moment, she was entering Joe's suite in the Personnel Department of the Kerr Electric Motor Company. She had to wait until he completed an interview which was in progress, after which she was shown into his private office.
He greeted her pleasantly and with curiosity.
She soon made clear her reason for coming to see him, crying as she related how Joe's wife had violated the agreement on which their recent Saturday night swap was based. She embellished matters a little, indicating that it was because of Paula that she and Lyle had broken up.
"I've pleaded with her to stop seeing him," Jill said. "I came to you only as a last resort. I wouldn't have done it otherwise."
"I'm glad you did," Joe said as he rounded his desk to comfort her. He patted her on the shoulder and lent her his handkerchief.
He was thinking, So that's the way Paula wants it, hm? All right. What's fair for her is fair for me. If she can enjoy the advantages of-marriage and play around on the side, so can I.
As a matter-of-fact, he had been thinking a great deal about it since the date he and Paula had had with the Carpenters at The Springs. There were lots of other husbands and wives they could swap with, including people who worked for his company. He had sounded out a few of the guys discreetly and found they were as fascinated with the swapping idea as he had been before he had tried it. And like a great many other pleasurable experiences, the fascination increased after the first exposure.
He had no desire to leave Paula. Marriage served a purpose in his life as it served a purpose in hers. But it wasn't everything. They had each had experiences with others before they were married; now, by mutual consent, they had had outside experience during their marriage. There was no sanctity to protect, so why shouldn't they both have all the fun they could get?
He gave Jill what sympathy he could and promised to have the matter out with Paula that night. Jill wiped her eyes and thanked him as she left his office.
But actually he saw little hope for a solution of her problem. He wasn't even going to try to solve it. Let Paula screw around with Lyle if she wanted to. There was a cute little girl in his outer office whom he'd been wanting to lay. There were opportunities for many other experiences on his own as well as for swaps.
Joe smiled to himself and figuratively rubbed his hands for the prospects.