Autumn came to New York State a little early that year. By mid-October the leaves on the tall maples in front of the spacious suburban home had already turned crimson and were beginning to fall on the well-trimmed lawn. Jane Brighton noticed this as she paused from the light housework she had been doing and lit a cigarette by the living room window. Bob had gone out to the liquor store to pick up provisions for the party they had planned for that evening, and she looked anxiously up the block for a sign of the station wagon returning to the house.
Weekends had been a joy to both of them since they had returned from North Carolina at the end of July, and the reasons for this were still somewhat perplexing to her. By all rights, she thought as she resumed her dusting, what had transpired in that sordid little country shack should have given both of them nervous breakdowns. But it hadn't. After a few weeks of recovery from the violent shock of her abduction, she had found herself opening to her husband in ways she had never before considered possible. He too had changed considerably; he had forgiven her for responding so lustfully to those mountain men – had shown that he really understood why she had done it – and there was a tenderness in his voice and a gentleness to his touch during lovemaking that hadn't been present before their misadventure. Divine providence? she didn't know and cared less, she giggled to herself as she pranced through the back door and shook out a living room rug in the brisk autumn wind. What counted was that they had changed for the better; they had suffered through a moment of crisis and had drawn on untapped resources of strength and understanding that had brought them closer together.
Jane shivered as she flung the rug over the back clothesline and returned to the house. The summer shorts she had been wearing for housecleaning were quite out-of-season and much too skimpy for someone of her modesty, she smiled, but she knew she looked good, deliciously good Bob had said, when she wore them, and she would be the last one to give up a good thing when she knew she had one.
She moved into the living room and double checked to see if everything was ready and in order for that evening. Some of Bob's business associates and the new neighbors down the block had been invited, and she looked forward to showing off the new fondue set and the china she had purchased for the occasion.
"Hey, there, hotpants," she heard from the driveway, and she turned to see Bob struggling in the front door, his arms filled with packages.
"Oh, darling, let me help you," she exclaimed, rushing toward him and lifting one large sack piled against his chest. "Such a strong, virile young husband," she whispered into his flushed cheek warmly, and assisted him with the liquor and groceries into the kitchen.
A few minutes later the young couple were seated on the back porch, drinks in hand. "Lovely Saturday afternoon, and we sure are looking good," Bob winked, resting a hand on her thigh and moving his fingers up her warmly responding softness until her smoothly tapering leg pressed firmly against his thigh.
"I don't know whether I've told you this or not," he said, moving his hand to the sloping area just below her groin. "But you've changed a lot. For example, three months ago you'd never think of letting me touch you out in the open like this."
Jane's smile brightened and she gripped her hand and moved it gradually across the plane of his knee, then slid her fingers boldly toward his loins. She looked down to see the cotton material of his slacks rise between his groin, feeling his leg press more insistently against her own. "Y-you don't say," Jane replied, not suppressing her smile of elation, even as the softly rippling sensations of anticipated pleasure tingled through her tightly. "I might add that Mr. Bob Brighton is still his old lecherous self, with a little more smoothness perhaps," she giggled in a faintly lewd teasing voice.
"Underneath this facade of sophistication," Bob joked lightly. "There lies a wild beast that if provoked leaps out."
Jane laughed and looked down again to their joined hips and her hand moving toward the large protuberance bulging from his pants. With a light tentative flick of her fingers she lighted her hand over it, and then pinched softly, feeling the head of his penis thrust up against his slacks into the cup of her hand.
For a moment, as her hand began to wander in teasing little circles down the length of his hardness, her mind drifted back to the mountains of North Carolina and the sound of the boy named Buck's harsh breathing over her and the southerner's rough callused hands running wildly over the tingling flesh of her naked body. She had willingly given herself to him and at the same time had taken so much pleasure back from him, and it had done her worlds of good.
"And do you love me?" Bob asked hesitantly, pressing a finger against her flushed cheek.
"Do I?" she responded, astounded for a moment that this might not be the case. And then she pressed herself close to him and her eyes began to mist softly. "More than anything else in the whole world, darling!"