Paula closed her eyes and tried to tell herself it was just another dream, that soon she would awaken afflicted with prickly heat, with a strained empty feeling in her belly, and with a dampness in her crotch. She opened her eyes and he was still there. His cock was still there. She could feel the hot hardness of his stringily muscled thighs pushing at the sensitive lower sides of her full-firm tits, forcing them upward until she looked like some totally besiliconed go-go girl.
But most of all she could feel the hot maleness radiating from the tip of his tool, so close now she could practically taste it. Unless she got on the ball and did something to break free and blow the whistle on this breaker and enterer, she was going to taste it very soon. And it was not going to be at all like the first time she had tasted it.
"If you'd like to step into the other room," Mr. Costello explained, "I can show you some historical references to the Oneida Community." Without waiting for an answer, he got up, which automatically removed his hand from somewhere above her knee. Paula gave a tiny sigh of relief. She wasn't a bit worried about nice old Mr. Costello but she had been very afraid that if he didn't get his hand off her thigh she might betray her totally improper thoughts with a nervous giggle. Silently, she followed the old man into the back office, which was equipped with a day bed, a single easy chair, a wall full of books, and a well-stocked refrigerator. "Umm yes, up there if you please."
Obediently, Paula climbed another rickety ladder steadied by her gallant employer and pulled a book from the top shelf. She sat beside Mr. Costello on the only seat where they could look at a book together, which happened to be the day bed.
She had been entertaining fond hopes of being initiated into a forbidden, grown-up world of racy postcards or any of the million interesting and secret things she was always being told she was too young to worry about. Instead, to her disappointment, Mr. Costello had shown her some blurry woodcuts of a bunch of farm buildings and a lot of nineteenth-century people dressed in nineteenth-century clothes from ankle to chin. She began to wonder if she could go home early that night. There didn't seem to be much work in the office.
"But what was so different about them?" she finally asked.
"No marriage," Mr. Costello explained.
Paula knew lots of unmarried people. So what?
"They found a different, possibly better way to solve mankind's basic needs."
She began to wonder if Mr. Costello was by any chance talking about a need that had been troubling Paula ever since before she had been old enough to demand a bra. With a tiny thrill of excitement, she managed a timid, "How did they do that?"
Mr. Costello gave her a faint smile. "As you've no doubt observed by this time, people in our society tend to pair off-formally or informally. Either way makes for monotony."
Paula sensed that she was approaching the brink of something important. She waited for Mr. Costello to continue.
"Not wishing to over populate and not having the benefit of this century's contraceptive devices, the Oneida Community managed to kill two birds with one stone: they lowered the birth rate while raising the communal libido."
Paula wasn't quite sure what he meant. Did libido really mean what she thought? Was he talking about-about screwing?
"Young men, as you've no doubt observed, are so high-strung and demanding that just about anything will suit them. This coincides rather neatly with an older woman's delight in being called on to teach and train all that eager young flesh at a time in life when she's no longer too concerned with an inconvenient pregnancy."
Paula tried not to gasp. He was talking about screwing, no matter how elegant his language or high-falutin' his choice of words.
"This imbalance in the community naturally left only the older men to pair off with the younger girls, a happy circumstance if one stops to consider all the ramifications thereof."
"Like what?" Paula demanded.
"Boys, due to their inexperience and being in the glandular prime of their young lives, tend to have a certain affinity with rabbits."
For once Paula knew exactly what he was talking about. She had visited her grandparents often enough and had observed rabbits in the process of making more rabbits. For the first time she had understood another girl's scathing, "He's a rabbit!" when discussing a football player of their acquaintance. She began to have a faint inkling.
"Young love inspires a great deal of bad poetry," Mr. Costello said wryly. "But love, like any other human endeavor, does not come naturally. The Oneida Community let the older women offer the benefit of their years of experience to boys just coming of age. These boys in later years paid their dues by performing the same service for the next generation of young ladies." Mr. Costello paused a moment and added, "Odd, you may think, but eminently practical."
Paula didn't know what to think. She had often wondered what it might be like to live in a society, in a culture, that permitted her free rein, allowed her to experiment and gratify the itch between her thighs without labeling her loose. But even more, she wondered how Mr. Costello's hand had managed once more to get between her thighs without her even noticing. Hastily, she clapped her thighs together but he did not remove his hand-not even when she crossed her legs.
So now what was she going to do? Paula abruptly realized two things: Mr. Costello might seem harmless, seem nice, but nevertheless, he did have his hand between her smooth, tapering thighs, had it well up the road toward that ineffable spot where two teen-age thighs meld into one firm, gently rounded, compact little ass. The second thing she learned was that she liked the feel of Mr. Costello's hand there.
She liked it there well enough to leave it there, to sit there on the day bed beside him with a book on their knees that described exotic sexual practices. She was curious about the practical results of the Oneida Community's sexual revolution. She was even more curious about what Mr. Costello intended to do with the hand he had now lost to the grip of her tight-clasped thighs.
His white hair was unruffled, not a hair of his splendid mustache out of place. His florid complexion was just a teeny bit more rosy than usual but, apart from that, Mr. Costello seemed unchanged. Paula caught herself thinking wild thoughts. He was talking freely about sexual revolution. What would his reaction be if she were to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him?
Golly! What was wrong with her? She had kissed a couple of boys and hadn't been all that turned-on by the grabbing, hand slapping wrestling match that had followed. So why was she so excited at the thought of this nice old man putting his calm unhurried hands on her budding young body?
Of course she wasn't really going to do anything-much less did she contemplate going all the way. That was why it was so nice to sit around with an old man who wouldn't engage in the hand slapping wrestling match, who would not press her to go farther than she intended. It was so nice, so safe to sit here with Mr. Costello's hand between her legs and think all kinds of interesting thoughts and know nothing bad was going to come of it
"But what happened to the Oneida Community?" she asked, not because she wanted to know but because it was awkward just sitting here with Mr. Costello's hand trapped between her tight-clasped thighs and neither of them saying anything.
"It never actually ceased to exist," he said, ignoring his hand. "But times changed and the very nature of such an experiment means there will be no children to carry on. As times and sexual mores changed people everywhere started swinging just a little more and they just didn't get as many recruits."
"I see," Paula said soberly, thought she actually didn't see at all, mainly because she couldn't guess what was about to happen next. Was he just going to leave his hand trapped between her tight-clasped thighs? There couldn't be much fun in that.
They sat in companionable silence and she caught herself thinking in terms of those apocryphal strip poker games that boys and girls are always hearing about and never getting to play. If they were to get into a game, who would win first?
There was little doubt of that-unless she were to have a phenomenal run of luck. Paula mentally inventoried what separated her just-budding body from total exposure. She wore fuzzy, ankle-length bobby sox and saddle oxfords. She wore a skirt that might be considered daring at some parochial schools but nowhere else since it came well below her knees. Her button-up-the-back blouse was high-collared and long-sleeved. Beneath it she wore the only garment in her closet that had not come from the junior miss counter. Her bra was thirty four "C". On her slight, just-rounding body the effect was devastating whenever she forgot to keep her arms folded across her chest and or her shoulders hunched.
Apart from the aforementioned, the budding lady lawyer wore only a pair of sheer green nylon panties. She recalled abruptly that they were an old pair, bought a year ago when she had been much smaller across that portion of her anatomy covered by panties and, should anyone ever happen to see her in panties alone, it would be interesting to see her go.
But it wasn't going to happen-not for years after she had worn out and thrown away these getting-too-tight panties. Meanwhile, why couldn't she relax? Mr. Costello had given bona fides of a total lack of fogginess. Surely in his presence she didn't have to continue that arms-folded, shoulders-hunched posture which was her only defense against pimply-faced conquistador's. She threw her shoulders back and stretched.
The movement pushed her phenomenal pectoral protrusion forward startingly, until her blouse threatened to burst. For the barest of instants it seemed as if Mr. Costello might burst too. But the movement loosened her death grip on his hand for the barest of instants too and her mentor improved on the interval by moving his hand an inch closer to disputed territory before she remembered and clasped her crossed legs tight again.
The book of Oneida Colony pictures fell to the floor as Mr. Costello turned half-around to face her. "Tired?" he asked. "I often get tired in the afternoons. I find it very relaxing just to lie down for a few minutes." While he talked he unobtrusively got his hand out from between her thighs, leaving Paula with a vague sense of disappointment. She allowed him to scoot her down the day bed a few inches and swing her legs up on it. Soon she lay at full length and Mr. Costello sat-rather uncomfortably, she suspected-beside her on the narrow frame, half-turned to look down on her.
Smiling gently, he patted her shoulder and flicked a stray strand of long straight blond hair from atop her full firm tit. His hand came to rest where the strand of hair had just lain-square atop her tit. Paula felt a funny little twisting, turning sensation inside herself. It felt deliciously wicked. She wondered what would happen if she were to put her hand over Mr. Costello's. Not push him away-just put her hand over his to let him know that she was grown up and knew all about the interesting experiments they must have performed in the Oneida Community.
She wanted to try it, do anything that would keep this lovely old man near her. It was funny how she had never noticed before the utter maleness of his well-barbered, well-bathed body. Some kind of cologne, she guessed. It was several hundred percent nicer than the grubby goatiness of her own age group with their zits, their sweaty athletic preoccupations, and their eternal petroleum stinks from crawling around under ageing automobiles. Mr. Costello smelled nice.
But, like every woman of every age, Paula was endowed with a certain native caution. "There must have been accidents," she insisted. "What did these Oneida people do when something went wrong?"
"Accidents?" Mr. Costello raised his bushy white eyebrows. "Oh, you mean pregnancies. Of course they had a few. Young ladies of your age are notoriously fecund, just as are young men. On the other hand, we of the geritol set have been known to contribute on occasion to people pollution too."
"But what did they do?" Paula insisted, suddenly aware of all the disastrous implications involved in Mr. Costello's hand over her full, firm, never-been-kissed tit. Her taut young body was suddenly suffused with yearning for more hands in more places-a yearning rendered more piquant by a knowledge of the danger involved. If she were to suddenly end up pregnant it would mean the end of law school-the end of everything. What was she going to do?
"Modern technology," Mr. Costello said, "Is amazingly resourceful. And even if we were living in the stone age, there are certain methods and procedures which are infallible in the avoidance of pregnancy. Not only are these procedures totally foolproof, they're also much more fun and that's the ultimate name of the game, isn't it?"
Paula's eyes were much wider than they had been a moment ago. Now how, she wondered, had Mr. Costello managed to get all those buttons down the back of her blouse undone without her even knowing?