Susie stared at the New Hampshire Highway that stretched before them like a parched throat. Dr. Chiver had turned his FM radio to a classical station, but her foot tapped impatiently to a speedier rhythm. Even that music. began to be obscured by the converging mountains. She wondered why he had insisted she drive with him rather than take her own car. He talked sparingly, and little of his conversation concerned the Sensitivity Retreat he had arranged for the weekend.
"Is John Duster a psychologist or an M.D., Doctor?"
"A psychologist." The radio's static annoyed him and he turned the dial. Silence poured through the well-heated sedan. "Graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles. A pioneer in the field of encounter groups and touch-therapy."
"How large will the groups be?"
"John and I want to leave that to the patients and therapists themselves. Whatever is natural whatever just happens. We don't want to over-structure. After all, his whole philosophy revolves around the principle of spontaneity."
"How much of the therapy will be sexual?" Susie drew on the unlit menthol cigarette and licked the padding of the filter as though it were candy.
"This evening we see as a get-together. If there are any sexual ties forged, that's all to the good. But tomorrow we go into intense encounter-group work, then touch-therapy in the afternoon- and saunas for the whole group after dinner."
"Do you think it's really safe?" she asked.
"Safe?" He seemed genuinely puzzled, Susie noted. "In that way?"
"Well, for the first time we're letting the patients deal with each other rather than exclusively with their therapists,". "But Susie, we have selected the patients carefully. These are not patients, say, like that Frank Mason or Evelyn Weir. These are patients who experience orgasm and sexual pleasure, but not as frequently as they'd like."
John Duster entered the huge room. He had given the fifteen in the group (including three therapists) their white smocks, instructing them to wear nothing underneath, He wore identical garb, and Susie noticed the movement of his cock under the thin linen! His calves, exposed below the hem of the shirt were thin and well-muscled.
Thick gym mats covered the hardwood floors. Eight women faced seven men across four feet of gray padding. Duster took his place at the end, between the rows. He bent his.legs under him to the lotus style, his delicate hands folded over his lap.
"I imagine that Dr. Chiver has told you who I am. Would you introduce yourselves to me and to each other?" He nodded to a pretty young woman at his left. Her name was Alice. She was small and well-tanned, with ebony hair and superb round black eyes. The women introduced themselves, using only first names, and then the men counted off.
"The one restriction we observed in bringing together the people in this room was a negative restriction, really," began Duster. "That was that none of you had met before in your dealings at the Clinic. Further, we are not going to create any false barriers or a hierarchy in this situation. So we're not identifying ourselves as therapists or patients."
"David," he said, addressing the man at his right, "I'd like you to begin." The man, in his thirties, responded to the request with puzzled uncertainty, wrinkling his forehead with an unasked question.
"What I'd like you to do," Duster said softly, "is to go down the line of women and free-associate. That is, let yourself say anything that comes into your mind."
David giggled. "Anything?" Susie was uncertain if he was blushing or not.
Steadily, Duster repeated the question, this time as a statement of fact. "Anything!" He looked down the long mat and did not turn his head either way. As if to himself, he spoke slowly. "Your feelings about their looks-we would be foolish if we were to deny the primitive and natural responses to a person's sexual attractiveness or lack of it-their facial expressions, any feelings or sensations they inspire when you look at them, anything that occurs to you when you heard their voices as they introduced themselves."
David's face colored with blushing. He began tentatively. "Alice… " He looked up at the girl, who flashed him a warm smile. "I was naturally very attracted to you," David began. "My eyes went to your breasts, but I couldn't figure out whether they were small or large, under the smock. I got an erection when one of your nipples became erect against the cloth, and I could see the nipple and the texture of the areola through the sheer linen. When you folded your legs underneath you, I tried to see your pubic hair, but all I saw was a dark shadow." He paused, and he turned to Duster for reassurance.
"Very good," the psychologist replied. "Very honest" He turned to the girl, who was in her early twenties, Susie guessed. "Do you have any response to what David has said, Alice?"
"I find him attractive too."
"Do you feel at all offended that he talked to you in a purely sexual way?"
The girl seemed surprised. "Should I be?"
"Perhaps, perhaps not." Duster now returned to David. "Do you have any other impressions of Alice, besides those you've mentioned? Try to imagine what she is like, what her personality is like. Invent things, if you must. We want to be careful not to restrict ourselves to intellect, logic, and deduction. Let us be free and try to amplify our intuitive abilities."
"She seems soft-I'm sorry, I mean you seem soft," David stammered, staring into the girl's eyes. "I mean, not just soft physically, but that you would let yourself drift. Be taken advantage of even. I have the sense that you demand comfort before you demand anything else, even to the exclusion of other things, things I would myself consider more important. My guess would be that you are dependent, dependent on men. That, when you were a child, you were especially dependent on your family."
"Is any of that true, Alice?" Duster's concentration turned from David to the girl, whose eyes had widened during the brief monologue. "It's very strange, but… other people-people who've known me quite well, for a long time-have said the same thing."
A fortyish executive type leaped into the discussion at this point. "Susan-that is your name, right? Do you feel threatened by the men here?"
Susie was normally quite shy in groups, but in the spirit of the meeting she felt impelled to speak. "I think," she began, and she was suddenly aware that the attention of the others in the room was her possession. She felt a flicker of fright, but it was as though she'd been plunged into a pool of cold water. Her body was already growing to relish the icy immersion. "I think," she started again, and this time she continued.
And so the therapy began. It continued until noon.
"I was encouraged by the direction of the morning meeting," John said at the start of the afternoon session, "but if there are any of you who don't feel ready to undress before your friends in the group, I can t see that there wouldn't be any purpose served in pressuring you to' do so.
"Those who do feel free to take off their smocks, please go ahead however," he said as he rose and took off his own. A single tug disclosed his hair-shaded crotch to Susie's view. The cock hung like a thick, twisted rope. The dome at its end looked like a serpent's head. Susie stirred and unconsciously rubbed her buttocks against the floor; her thighs moved closer together and crumpled the ends of the pubic curls.
She stood. The hem of the thin linen garment chafed her thighs just above her knees. She bent her legs forward at the same time that she pushed the smock up her sides. Her face was covered with the white sheet as her pubic weeds were disclosed. Air brushed through the tangle, and she blushed beet-red behind the smock. The garment touched her firm areolas. In the next moment she was nude, though she clutched the lifeless smock in her right hand. Someone pulled on the cloth and she glanced down at her side. Susan, who had been sitting two places down, was now nude and on the floor behind her. She watched the smock unfurl as it floated to the floor.
Susan's breasts heaved with her intake of breath. Large, they were not rounded but curved at their tips which, like Susie's, were frozen hard and sharp. Her legs were folded Indian-style, but Susie could see the beginning of the hairy triangle, sparse threads of pale brown. Hair of the same color as that which covered Susan's box flowed down straight and clean over the girl's shoulders. Her eyes were an almost translucent green. Susie blinked as the young woman reached up for her own still-folded hand. She neither resisted nor complied. It was as if she were waiting for a sign.
Behind her John Duster sat cross-legged and continued to speak, while the other members of the group were engaged either in disrobing or in watching others disrobe.
"What I'd like to get across to you-what this therapy is supposed to get across to you, is that it is possible to be creative in human relationships.
"Here at the retreat we realize that, though we may never see each other again, we must try to create art with and among ourselves, this moment. Each second is an instant in eternity, and we must try to make that instant a perfect one. For this, we have certain tools: honesty, openness, trust, and our own natural instincts, including the erotic urges."
Susie's eyes had been fixed upon the twin aqua colored pools of Susan's eyes. At last she let her body relax. Her palm, limp within the other woman's, now squeezed at the transparent bones and rolled the tissue over Susan's knuckles. She lowered herself gracefully to the floor.
"I want you to touch each other, remembering the words from the song: If you're not with the one you love, love the one you're with.
"Just touch the person nearest you, touch them because you want to. Disregard the sex-that's why you were seated in a row with others of your gender. Touch… feel… experiment with sensation and emotion."
Susie felt herself dissolve into a cloud as Susan's fingers pushed down on the soft muscle of her breast. The inside of the green-eyed girl's palm scraped gently against Susie's erecting tit. Tentatively Susie put her fingertips to the surface of Susan's belly, just below the navel. Susan's thighs closed together and hid the slash from view.
As if in a dream state, Susie found herself diving for the muff.
The walls of Susie's box expanded around Susan's tongue and clamped down as the soft flank twisted against confinement. The flat of Susan's thumb jammed the raw anal opening, and the nail singed the sensitive sphincter tissue.
Susie rolled her sweating palm down the slope of the girl's breast. Her other hand explored the wet privates and pulled the shreds of flesh just outside the well-oiled vagina. The side of her hand rubbed the cleft, and the fingers moved in. One leg was to one side of Susan's head, while the other just touched the girl's cheek on the other side. Susan's groin was behind and beside her-even with her butt. Susie pushed her fingers up the twat as if milking it, her rhythm steady, even, and direct. Susan clutched the underside of her thighs and dug her fingernails into it. Her other hand reached down to the beaver. She rolled the polyp with her fingertip while Susie plunged inside with two digits.
Susie felt a rough fingertip trace the curve of her ankle as it curved to her foot. She looked down and saw a large, masculine hand. In a moment he was stretched out on his stomach, his head next to hers. She looked at him. He was so near that the craggy features of his middle-aged face filled her vision. He came closer, and his breath was warm. He touched her lips softly with his own. His tongue bristled against the enamel of her front teeth. She did not open her mouth wide, but let him struggle toward her throat. When he was deep inside her mouth, she fought him playfully with her tongue. She wrapped it like a blanket around his as it swept against her inner cheeks, and over the surface of her side teeth.
The man's name, Susie remembered now, was Gus. Gus' other hand pushed at her belly while his fingers pressed Susan's cheek. The young brunette raised her mouth from Susie's beaver and bit his finger. "Ouch!" he exclaimed, wincing. Recovering his composure, he chuckled manfully and leaned back. He swatted her naked behind with his open palm.
Susan, enraged, pushed up on her hands and stared at Gus with fury. Her arm aimed for his face, but he easily grabbed her forearm. His hands slipped to her waist and pinned her arms to the side of her chest. He leaned back and brought her toward him, on top of him.
She kicked him, but her flailing limb hit the floor, stubbing her toe. Gus' strong arm brought her beaver to his mouth. He sucked her cunt while she was still in the air. Susan rested her cheek against the floor, her breast bounced like twin pillows, and Gus' face was invisible below her hairy groin. His hands pulled at the cakes of her butt, and Susie knew instantly how to repay the pleasure Susan had been giving her.
The girl's ass was smooth as a baby's, though the smell between the hillocks was less overstated. The buttocks converged. Susie scraped the rims of the cheeks before pushing her nose into the thin wedge to seek out the ging. Her tongue stretched and squirmed until it smeared the raw sphincter with saliva. Her forefinger pushed at the opening until the first joint was swallowed. Her other fingers crawled to the front of Susan's body, and they caught the stroking of Gus' active tongue.
She pulled her hand back and remolded the muscles of Susan's buttocks. Susan meanwhile raised her upper body from the floor by pushing up on her palms. Soft, liquid moans escaped her throat.
Gus' hand found Susie's box. Two of his fingers slipped inside the willing cage. Susie, on her knees, thrust her pelvis forward to make easier the penetration, which Gus could effect only by touch with his face, covered by Susan's stomach and genitalia. At the same time, her breasts pointed downward and rubbed against the back of Susan's thighs. The surface of the areolas was stiff with friction.
Gus reached clumsily for her breast and squeezed it unmercifully. The pain of the pressure was a sensual counterpoint to the fingering of her vagina. The organ opened wide with each new surge. The dilations and contractions of the wet genital muscles were more frequent and seemed more intense.
Four fingertips at once waved the fragments of exterior skin this way and that until the clit grew diamond-hard. The bones squirmed together and entered the box in stiff concert. Gus pushed up on the soles of his feet, and Susie felt his hard stick jam between her own rear mountains. He grabbed at each of the twin muscles and tried to hold them apart while he speared the virginal second hole. She obliged him by swiveling down his prick, but she seemed impenetrable as the head of his dork touched the hot entrance. She pulled her sucking squirming mouth away from Susan's asshole and tried to push her bottom down on the penis.
She gasped when the head was inside her. The room was a dark void, unbroken by sound. His fingers pushed down upon her rounded shoulders so her body would float further down the shaft. Each inch was a stabbing pain that split her insides. The burning anal walls separated as the divining rod searched for her source.
Susan stirred on the periphery of the tableaux. But she moved not to warn Susie but to Gus. As she looked down, Susie, wondered if the girl would attempt revenge for Gus' intrusion on their lovemaking.
Instead, Susan's flashing green eyes searched for his scrotum, which hung out of sight between his spread legs. Her fingers jammed the loose skin to his body and made the double almonds obvious below the wrinkled surface.
Her hair caressed the soft surface of Susie's behind as she inhaled the juice-bag in her mouth. Gus groaned with the force of the suction. Her tongue went beyond the skin to lick at his hair-strewn rectum.
She blew into the crack and scraped the edges of her teeth on the rounding curve of the buttock. Her hand traveled up Susie's ass, tracing the inches of cock-shaft until they disappeared inside the therapist's ging.
Susan moved her lips to the base of Gus' stomach. She smoothed the pubic hairs with her tongue, making them glossy with spit. Her forefinger curled around the half-planted instrument and touched the flat of her thumb and the other side. Gus writhed at the pressure of the clamp. She released him. Her mouth returned to the dangling sac.
Gus teased Susie's clitoris, pulling it, rubbing it. He let go easily. His fingertips filled her navel. His other fingers stroked the sides of her belly and crawled down to the lines that divided thighs from crotch.
Susie knew she was about to come. She grabbed Gus' hand and forced the palm hard against the clitoral ridge. Spasm after spasm of orgasmic wave snapped her body. Susan raised her mouth off of Gus' scrotum and scraped the small of Susie's back with her teeth, while her arms moved to the other woman's breasts. She pinned the boobs back to Susie's chest. They were firm and hard under the support, and the nipples pushed into her own damp palm.
At last each movement down the cock's pole was slower, almost regretful, as if each inch was to be the last. Finally the cock pointed straight inside, visible only below the twin muscles.
"Why didn't you come?" rasped Susie from her pedestal.
"Too tight. It was like the blood inside my prick clotted, waiting to come out."
Susan was at his side. She ran her tongue over his upper and then his lower lips. His mouth opened, and the teeth parted. His tongue slid out as if in welcome. She turned her face against his. His slight beard scratched her nose. She bent her spine and then relaxed again, letting her breasts fall on his heaving chest. His fingertips smoothed the creamy skin there.
Painfully, because now she felt the rawness of the muscles that had to be whipped apart for her pleasure, Susie came up off the massive dark. Susie reached behind and aimed the tip of her index finger at her own sphincter. The skin was coated with pinkish fluid-blood, she realized, but not in quantity to indicate serious damage.
She lay back on the mat. Half-asleep, she watched a mural of copulating men and women, in twos and threes and fours-even one man alone, drawing the foreskin of his Denis down its shaft and exposing the purplish glans with each new tug.
Susan, on her knees, her torso messed in on both sides by Gus' thighs, had taken the first few inches of manhood inside her mouth. Her teeth gnawed at the shaft while her finger pulled down the skin. The side of her forefinger rubbed the glans until Gus grunted with ecstatic agony.
She took her mouth off the dong and whipped the skin up and down the organ until globs of white cream flew from the slit. They landed on the back of her pumping hand, inside the webbed pubic hair, on the surface of Gus' belly and thighs.
The lava surged until he.was spent. Susan licked at the come, cleaning the back of her hand as a cat might. She took the wads of white semen from his skin with the tip of her tongue and swallowed it in greedy gulps.
Gently, Gus clutched an ass-cheek while his other hand went for her musky-smelling vault. He rolled the stiffened ends of three fingers in circular motion over this pinkness, and Susan's hips thumped with pedestrian rhythm until at last her pelvis outraced the steady rotation of fingers over clit.
She slipped her beaver forward and absorbed the fingers inside her stretched twat. Like knives, the fingers cut through the slick mesh of muscle and vaginal fluid. He pulled the fingers out and covered the inflated button with moisture before plunging deep inside the greedy hole once more.
She felt herself being torn apart and swallowed, devoured by the suction that drew her away from all contact with reality with her situation, with time and place. Where was she, indeed, she wondered for a fraction of an instant. But when she turned her head, the first thing she saw was John Duster on his knees, fellating the man who had introduced himself as George. The other man stood, bent backward, his hands on his hips. All of his pecker but the head was outside Duster's mouth. The instrument was long and thick. The head for the one moment that Duster's mouth opened to disclose it, was pink, fat and bulbous-and covered with saliva.