"Did you try out the timer?"
"The… the timer?"
"The fifteen-second timer, Howie," Ralph said patiently. Then he leaned forward across the desk, dropping his voice conspiratorially. "How far would she go, hey, boy? Just a little cheesecake, I'd guess. The girls are usually pretty shy at first."
"I… I don't know what you mean, Ralph." Howard was fidgeting nervously in his chair, his face flaming now.
"Oh come on, Howie," Ralph said, leaning back in his chair again. "There's nothing to be ashamed of, you know. Almost everybody who gets his first Polaroid-with-timer has the same ideas and does the same things. They're great little intimacy arousers. Get you hornier than hell, especially if you use the timer so that you get shots of you and the wife making it."
Howard stared at his employer with widening eyes. He had known Ralph was open and frank to the point of coarseness at times, but never had he expected to hear such personal comments coming from the man. Why, he was practically suggesting that he, Howard, engage in lewd practices like… well, like voyeurism, for God's sake! Self-voyeurism, at that!
Ralph opened the walnut humidor on his desk and selected an imported cigar. He snipped off the end with a tiny pair of gold scissors, lighted it with a gold lighter, and blew a cloud of blue-gray smoke at the ceiling. "You're not going to tell me you're less of a red-blooded man than I thought, are you, Howie? Especially after our little talk in the kitchen last night."
Howard bristled a little at that, feeling some of the heat leave his face. "What do you mean by that, Ralph?"
"Why do you suppose Norma and I gave you that Polaroid, my boy?"
"I don't know," came the reply. "Why did you?"
"Because I thought you'd appreciate the potential of such a gift, Howie, that's why. I got my first Polaroid four years ago, from Norma's sister, and I appreciated the potential right away. You seemed like the same kind of fun-loving, new-frontiers type that I am; if you hadn't, I wouldn't have allowed our friendship to bond as tightly as it has. Hell, I figured: why should I be having all the kicks, just because I've got a little more money in the bank than old Howie boy."
"You… you mean, you and Norma have…?"
"Taken pictures of one another? And together, fucking? Sure we have, boy. Why, thousands of people do the same thing all over the country these days. It's the in-thing with those in-the-know." He paused, measuring the younger man candidly. "But, of course, you already knew that, didn't you?"
"Uh, well, sure I did, Ralph. Sure I knew that."
Ralph allowed his smile to widen. "That's what I thought. I didn't really believe for a minute that I'd underestimated my star salesman." He chuckled softly, then leaned forward across his desk again. "Now come on, boy, give a little. Did you get some good cheesecake shots or not last night?"
Howard moistened his lips uncertainly. Ralph had put him in an awkward position: what he and Cindy did in the privacy of their own home was their business and no one else's – but then again, Ralph was a good friend and his boss, as well; and he was in a position to do Howard a great deal of future good. After all, hadn't Ralph been instrumental in getting him his last promotion and pay raise from the company president? Besides that, Ralph had more or less put this business of picture-taking on a masculine-pride level; Howard was one who would never admit to being a lesser man, much less to being naive in the ways of the world.
It wouldn't do any harm, really, he thought, to tell Ralph about the photos he had taken of Cindy the night before. It was all innocent anyway; Cindy would never approve, naturally – but she would never have to know.
Howard managed a smile, licking his lips again. "Well," he said, "as a matter of fact, Ralph, I… I did get some pretty good shots, at that. Some… some cheesecake, as you say."
"I thought so," Ralph beamed. "Pretty hot, eh?"
"Sure," Howard said, having committed himself. "Sure, they were pretty hot ones, Ralph." Ralph laughed. "Nude shots?"
Howard felt himself flushing again. "Well… well, not exactly. But they were pretty good anyway. Cheesecake you know."
Ralph opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a small manila envelope, which he placed on the glass top in front of Howard. "Not anywhere in the neighborhood of these, I'll bet," he said.
Howard frowned, looking at the envelope. "What's this?"
"Open it up and take a look, my boy."
Howard did that, extracting several glossy full-color photographs which had obviously been taken with Polaroid cameras. They were blown-up five-by-seven prints, and Howard sucked in his breath sharply as he saw what they graphically depicted. "My God!" he managed to whisper.
The top photo was of a lithe, buxom brunette with an angelic face. She was lying completely nude on her back on a rumpled bed, her slender legs raised and wide-spread so that the whole of her naked loins were displayed to the eye of the camera. Her hands were cupped teasingly around her pubic triangle, framing the wide-splayed splendor of her softly hair-fringed cunt. She was smiling coyly between her ruby-nippled, alabaster breasts.
Howard blinked and looked at the second photo. Another sharp intake of breath, and a small gasp. The same angelic brunette was in this one, but with her also was a dark-haired, handsome male. The brunette was straddling the man's loins, her widespread loins lowered down on the man's hardened penis, so that fully half of its huge length was sunk into her open vagina. She was holding its base between her thumb and forefinger, her small pink tongue held tightly between her full red lips and her eyes squeezed tightly shut in ecstasy. Her other hand was squeezing her left breast, very hard, so that the jutting nipple seemed to point directly at the camera.
Quickly, with beads of sweat lacing his forehead and a rising harness in his loins, Howard thumbed through the other pictures. One showed a different, gray-templed man kneeling between the opened thighs of a petite blonde with pear-shaped breasts, his long tongue snaked out so that it touched the swollen bud of her pink clitoris nestled between fleece-like blonde pubic hair. Another depicted a voluptuous raven-haired girl barely out of her teens with her coral-colored lips voraciously encircling the erect, swollen prick of a muscular hirsute man while he used the middle finger of one hand in the wet, glistening area of her soft pink cunt, her leg being raised so that the full extent of her womanhood was presented to the viewer's eyes while she sucked the man's cock and toyed with his sperm-heavy balls. Still another photo showed two couples, both in their mid-thirties, engaged in an orgiastic group session which Howard could not believe upon first sight, since it involved cunnilingus, fellatio, sodomy all at the same time. The final snap was of two blonde girls and a huge German Shepherd dog, the animal's long hot lolling tongue probing the pubic region of one of the girls while his wet red penis sawed into the upthrust cunt of the second.
Howard was sweating profusely, his breath coming in short gasps as his own genitals tingling with arousal, when he put the group of photographs back on Ralph's desk. "Good Christ, Ralph," he managed, "where did you get those?"
"They're really something, aren't they?" Ralph asked, snickering softly.
"I've never seen anything like that in my life!"
"And these're just one small example of what can be done with a good old Polaroid camera, Howie," said Ralph. "I've got other ones at home – wilder ones, if you can believe it."
Howard wiped his forehead with the back of one hand. His throat felt dry. "But where did you get them, Ralph? They… they don't look like model-posed pornographic pictures…"
"They're not," Ralph told him. "All the people in these photos are just like you and me, Howie average American citizens just out looking for a few kicks. They all belong to an exchange-photographic organization – the Polaroid Club. Norma and I are members ourselves."
"You… you are?" Howard could scarcely believe what his boss was telling him; he had thought he knew most everything about Ralph Taylor, his likes and dislikes, his interests and directions. He had never suspected for a moment that Ralph would be involved in this… this… well, this dirty picture club. Still, the photos were extremely stimulating, more stimulating than anything he had ever seen before. Just thinking about them made his prick tremble and begin to rise again…
"The way it works," Ralph was explaining, "we subscribe to this monthly newspaper the club produces. Couples write in, describing themselves and their photos, what they'd like in return, and so on. Then we exchange pictures."
"You mean this Polaroid Club is a nationwide thing?"
"Sure. There are four chapters – one in New York, one in Florida, one in Chicago, and one in San Francisco-Los Angeles. The New York Chapter puts out the newspaper. Hell, you can buy a copy of it right here in Morriston, under the counter of course. Costs a buck a copy."
"Here in Morriston?" Howard was incredulous.
Ralph laughed. "Uh-huh. Why, you'd be surprised at some of the locals who are members of the club; you really would be, Howie."
"You… you just exchange photos, that's all you do? I mean, you hear so much these days about wife-swapping…"
"That's not our bag," Ralph said with a slow smile. "We're strictly out for our own kicks, together. Oh sure, some of the others undoubtedly go in for that sort of thing – witness some of those pictures you just saw – but that's their business, not ours. I mean, what the hell?"
"Sure," Howard said.
"There's not a damned thing wrong with this picture exchange that I can see," said Ralph. "We're being faithful to our wives, aren't we? Those of us who are in the club for personal gratification, I mean. All we're doing is getting ourselves and our wives turned on watching some other people doing it, and they're doing the same thing watching us. And it does get you turned on, Howie boy, believe me."
I believe you, all right, Howard thought. I can remember how excited I got last right, taking pictures of Cindy – and they weren't anything more than some harmless cheesecake. I wonder if I dare…
He shook his head, as if to clear it. No, there was no use thinking about trying to carry his thoughts past the pure day-dream stage. Cindy would never allow him to take pictures of her stripped completely naked, even though she had agreed to the cheesecake photos of the previous night, and she would most definitely never allow anything as lascivious as self-photos of the two of them making love. For God's sake, even if she did agree to go that far, she would certainly not agree to let anyone else, much less strangers, see the photos.
And he shouldn't expect her to, damn it; what was the matter with him? Cindy was a sweet, moral girl, faithful and passionate and able to satisfy his every need up until now – so why was he thinking about asking her to do something which fairly shouted of perversity and lack of respect for privacy and personal intimacy? Why should he be so excited at the possibility of seeing more of these photos which Ralph had just shown him? Why should the thought of watching other people making love and performing perversion on a regular basis bring the sweat out on his forehead, and bring a tightness to his chest and loins? Well, he couldn't explain it; it was beyond his comprehension. He knew only that the idea of seeing Cindy in a provocative position in a photograph, as he had for the first time last night, turned him on like he had never been turned on before. And the sight of these photos of strangers today had had the same physical effect on him.
He realized Ralph was speaking to him. "… do you think, Howie boy?"
"I'm sorry, Ralph. What did you say?"
"I said," Ralph repeated, "what do you think of the idea of the Polaroid Club?"
"Well, I… I suppose it's all right," Howard said hesitantly. "For other people, I mean." He averted his eyes.
"But not for you, eh boy?"
"No, I… I don't think so, Ralph."
Ralph smiled knowledgeably. "Sure now? I can tell by your face that you're interested, Howie."
"No… no, I'm not, really, Ralph… I'm not." Howard got quickly to his feet, conscious of his sweat-sheened face and neck. "I… I think I'd better get to work. There are some contracts that have to be drawn up…"
Ralph also stood. "Okay, boy," he said. "But think it over, will you? We'd be mighty glad to have you aboard; it's really a wild bag." He chuckled. "And if you're worried about Cindy going along, I've got just the remedy."
Howard had turned toward the door. Now, without conscious thought, he found himself turning back to his superior. "What kind of remedy?" he heard himself ask.
"Take these pictures with you when you go home for supper tonight," Ralph said, pushing the photos and the manila envelope across the desk toward Howard. "And on your way, stop and buy a copy of that newspaper I was telling you about – the Polaroid Club News. I'll tell you where you can pick it up. Then you leave the paper and the photos where Cindy will be sure to find them…"
"No, I couldn't do that," Howard said, shocked. "It's… not right! Cindy would never forgive me…"
"I think you're underestimating not only your wife but women in general, my boy. Why not give it a try? You're interested, I know you are. You can't fool old Ralph. Take it from me, all you've got to do is put the bug in the wife's ear, get her on the track. Once they see the kicks involved, they're only too happy to go along. I know, boy; Norma was the same as Cindy, shy and retiring, when I first heard about the Polaroid Club. Now she's open and much warmer – and hell on wheels in the rack, let me tell you!"
Howard felt uncomfortable in the face of all this candidness, the unexpected admissions and ideas and concepts which he had been subjected to this morning. He wanted to get out of there, get to work so he could think more clearly. "I… I don't think so, Ralph, I don't think so…" he managed, groping his way to the door, opening it, walking swiftly toward his own small cubicle.
He did not realize until he had entered it and seated himself at his desk that he held the photos Ralph had shown him in his right hand…
Howard left the Auto Circus at five that night, for his hour-and-a-half supper break. The lot stayed open until midnight seven days a week, and this was his week to close up five of the seven days.
He had not had a good day. He had bungled two sales, unable to keep his mind on the demanding task of promoting a customer's confidence in himself and the vehicle he was selling, and had fouled up a contract for a regular volume buyer. He hadn't been able to get his mind off Ralph's words of that morning and of the photos which seemed to be burning a hole in his jacket pocket.
At four-thirty, he had known that there was no use in kidding himself any longer; he was going to take Ralph's suggestion about leaving the photographs and a copy of that newspaper where Cindy would be sure to find them. He had gone in to see Ralph, taken a deep breath, and asked where he could buy a copy of the Polaroid Club News.
Ralph had winked boldly at him, saying, "I thought you'd change your mind, my boy. And you won't be sorry, either; no sir, you won't be sorry at all. Now the place you want to go is Winkler's Used Books, over on Shafer Avenue…"
Feeling a strange combination of guilt and mounting excitement at what he was about to do, Howard drove over to Shafer Avenue and found Winkler's Used Books, a small neighbor hood secondhand store set midway in the block. Somewhat self-consciously, for he had never so much as purchased a girlie magazine in the past – although he had managed to sneak a look at some of them from time to time – Howard went inside and asked the grizzled, bald-headed old man behind the counter for a copy of "a modern swinger's newspaper", as Ralph had instructed him.
The old man didn't even glance at him twice. He reached under the counter, produced a small, six-page, roughly printed news-sheet, and demanded a dollar. Howard gave it to him and, clutching the paper tightly under his arm, he hurried back to where he had parked his car.
He sat inside for a time, his heart beating rapidly in his chest, a curious fluttering sensation in his lower belly. He glanced over the paper, marveling at some of the ads there, growing excited by them; it was as if he couldn't get enough air in his chest. Jesus, but I'd like to send away for some of the photos mentioned in here. If they're half as good as they claim, they ought to really be something…
With trembling fingers, he took the manila envelope of pictures from his coat pocket and glanced through them again. His prick seemed to jerk spasmodically in his pants as he once again saw the lewd, tremendously stimulating acts being performed in the full-color splendor of the Polaroid snaps. The ones that really turned him on the most were those depicting oral love: soft feminine mouths closed eagerly, hungrily over the lust-hardened cocks of their husbands; masculine lips and tongues paying devoted homage to the warm, secret, tender cuntal valleys of their wives. These he would put on top, so that they would be the first ones Cindy would see when she opened the envelope; maybe they would convince her of the beauty, of the rightness, of oral love…
He started to fold the newspaper around the photos when a sudden frown creased his forehead and he stopped. Some of the other photos, besides those depicting oral by-play, were pretty raw for the uninitiated eyes of his naive young wife; instead of being turned on, being interested and excited by the newspaper and snaps as he intended, mightn't she become repulsed and sickened by viewing such blatantly carnal acts as sodomy and seance a trots and bestiality? Yes, yes, of course she would! He couldn't include those pictures, not now, not at this early date just the milder ones, the ones showing a man and his wife making love in all the possible ways…
Quickly, Howard sorted out the photos, putting those he deemed too blatant for Cindy's eyes into the glove compartment; the rest he inserted inside the folded Polaroid Club News and put into the manila envelope, sealing it. Then he started the car and, with hot blood pounding in his temples, he drove directly home.
Cindy met him at the door, wearing a thin hostess gown and holding a freshly made martini in her right hand; her hair was carefully combed, as it always was when he came home. Even after three years of marriage, she never failed to greet him with a drink and a kiss and an alluring outfit, as if they were still honeymooners. This was one of the reasons Howard loved his beautiful young wife so much, one of the reasons he had always felt himself to be very lucky…
Cindy kissed him warmly, handing him his martini. "You're late, Howie," she chided in a mock pout.
"I… had to stop off on an errand for Ralph," he told her.
"Well, dinner's in the oven. A casserole. Okay?"
"Fine, honey."
She kissed him again, and then her eyes fell on the manila envelope which he carried in his right hand. "What have you got there?" she asked. "Something for me?"
Howard was momentarily tongue-tied. Of all the stupid things! He had come into the house carrying the envelope out in the open, instead of under his coat where Cindy couldn't see it; what was the matter with him? He just wasn't used to this kind of thing, he supposed, not used to it at all…
He took a long swallow of his drink, and that seemed to oil his throat muscles so that they worked again. He said, "Well, uh, they're pictures, honey – pictures Ralph gave me. He says they, uh, are ones some friends of his took with their Polaroid and he wanted us to, uh, see what could be done with ours."
"Oh! Well, let's look at them, Howie. I'm kind of anxious to see them, after that buildup."
"Uh, I'd rather not, if you don't mind, honey," Howard said lamely. He was fouling things up, fouling them all up and he knew it and he kept getting himself in deeper; Christ, why couldn't he be as blase as Ralph was about these things? He laughed nervously. "They're not, uh, my kind of pictures – or yours."
Cindy frowned slightly. "What do you mean, Howie?"
"Well, they're sort of… sort of like the ones I took of you last night." Howard's face flushed. "You know, daring and… and like that."
"Have you seen them?"
"No, but Ralph explained them to me," he lied.
"Why in the world would Ralph give you photos like that, Howie? Dirty ones, I mean?"
"Oh, they're not dirty," Howard said quickly. "Just… just daring, that's all."
Cindy frowned again. She felt a small sense of foreboding, as if there were something Howard was not telling her, as if there was some motive behind his boss having given him these "daring" photographs. She thought back to the previous evening, and to the snapshots Howard had taken of her – with her skirt hiked up and her panties showing; thought back to how excited he had been, how obviously aroused by the sight of her posing so provocatively before the eye of the camera and in its sixty-second lasting capture of it. A small involuntary tremor coursed through her soft young body. She must never let Howard do that again, take pictures of her like that; it was wrong and it was wicked, and it had no place in a happy, fully consummated marriage such as theirs.
She said, "Well, if they're that kind of pictures, you take them right back to Ralph. You tell him we don't want anything like that. I don't understand him at all, giving them to you in the first place."
"He, uh, was just trying to be friendly, I guess," said Howard, wanting to end the discussion as quickly as possible. "But I'll take them back, don't worry."
"I won't honey," his young wife said. She put her arm around him, softening. "Come on. Let's eat before the casserole gets cold."
They ate a leisurely dinner, and Howard managed to steer the conversation to many things of little consequence, so that Cindy would forget about the manila envelope. He had slipped it into their bedroom as she was setting the table, putting it on the nightstand by their bed. Now, if only she wouldn't remember it and make him take it with him when he went back to Auto Circus tonight…
She didn't remember. Howard fixed them each another martini after dinner, gulped his down, and told her he had better get back to work – to relax and enjoy her drink. Then he kissed her, and she whispered, "Come home early and love me tonight, Howie darling." He said that he would, kissed her again, said good-bye, and left quickly, feeling once more that odd mixture of guilt and mounting excitement as he backed the car out of their driveway.
Cindy, smiling happily and with a warm glow spreading through her from the martinis, sat back on the divan in the living room and sipped the remaining liquid from her glass. She stretched languidly, thinking, I feel so good tonight, so warm and loved and happy. I'm a lucky woman, a very lucky woman, to have a wonderful husband like Howie, who has a very good job and is a good provider and is a very, very, very good lover.
She giggled softly, and a warm, pleasant ache began between her tender young thighs. She sighed then, squeezing her legs tightly together, wishing Howie hadn't had to go back to work tonight. They could have had another drink together, and then gone to bed, as they did sometimes, and made love for hours and hours, slow and sweet and good. That was the kind of mood she was in tonight, the mood to make love very, very slowly for a long, long time…
Well, Howard would be home at midnight or so and they could make love then. She would have to content herself with waiting, maybe watching a little television and, yes why not, having another drink. She was feeling a little audacious tonight, and even though she knew her absolute limit without getting drunk was two martinis in one evening, she decided that, by golly, she was going to make herself a third!
She mixed the drink in the kitchen, humming softly and a little intoxicatedly, and then decided that she would watch television in the bedroom. She carried the drink in there, switched on the old portable set on its coaster stand by the dresser (now that Howie had gotten a raise at Auto Circus, maybe they could afford the color set they'd wanted for so long), and lay down on the bed.
It was when she reached over to set down the martini glass on the nightstand that she noticed the manila envelope lying there.
She frowned mightily. Oh, damn! Now why hadn't Howie taken that back with him to give to Ralph like she'd asked him? Why had he brought it in here to the bedroom, for heaven's sake?
She propped herself up on one elbow and took another sip of her drink. She kept looking at the envelope, lying there sealed, and she began to wonder, disinterestedly at first and then with increasing attraction, what the pictures inside were like. Howard had said they were similar to the ones he had taken of her last night, daring and naughty probably, like those were. Some friends of Ralph's, he had said. Did other wives allow their husbands to take pictures of them, as she had allowed Howard last night? Did they – would they dare even go farther than she had, actually undressing to bra and panties or even to… well, to the buff?
Cindy sipped again of her martini. The liquor was beginning to affect her now, in several different ways. Her ardor of a few minutes earlier, instead of waning, seemed to have gained intensity, so that she felt a moistening down between her legs, flowing out to dampen her inner thighs; and she felt, toes a boldness that she had never experienced before, an irrational desire to do something she shouldn't do – something like opening that manila envelope and looking at the pictures inside.
I wonder just how naughty those photos are, she thought. I'll bet they're very naughty, and if they are, I should have Howie speak to Ralph about giving them to us. But I can't do that until I know for myself what they're like.
Impulsively, then, stifling another slightly tipsy giggle, Cindy reached out and grasped the manila envelope. Her fingers fumbled at the sealed flap, finally got it open; and then she was drawing out the newspaper wrapped photos and holding them on her lap. She let them lie there, on the warm silken mound of her lower abdomen, as she drained the last of the martini. Then she opened the newspaper, saw the photos, and held them up to her slightly blurred eyes, squinting at them very close.
Her first reaction was one of shocked horror. She blinked rapidly several times, her eyes seemingly held transfixed by the full-color carnality which she held in her hands. Her brain was spinning with the combined forces of startlement and undiluted gin.
My… my God! she thought. This is… it's filthy! It's pornography, that's what it is, plain and simple pornography!
She wanted to cast the offending photos from her, but a curious perversity made her grip them more tightly between her fingers, made her eyes remain fastened to their glossy detail. The top snapshot showed a sweet-looking brunette straddling a dark-haired man; both of them were nude, with their privates fully exposed to the camera, and his… his penis was pushed halfway up into her open vagina!
Cindy swallowed hard, looking at the expression on the young woman's face. It wax one of sheer, unadulterated ecstasy, lids drooped, mouth parted and moist, with the tip of her wet pink tongue showing; she seemed to be oblivious to the camera, caught up in the sexual frenzy of the moment, of the feeling of the man's hardened shaft imbedded deep within her cuntal passage. And she was manipulating her own breast, squeezing it passionately in her ardor…
Staring at the angelic young girl's obvious enjoyment, Cindy felt a quickening of her breath, a fluttering in her lower belly. The inside of her mouth was dry, and she ran her pink tongue over her lips several times, trying to dispel the arid, cottony taste.
Her now-trembling fingers pulled the first photo aside and the second came into view. She gasped, and a little spiral of unwanted heat wended its way upward through her warmly secreting loins, into her stomach and chest, hardening the firm, ruby crests of her snowy breasts. A man, distinguished and older, crouched between the widespread thighs of a small, well-proportioned blonde, his long wet, seemingly hard, tongue curled out to flick over the swollen naked pubic area and the erect clitoris of the passion-tensed girl!
A wave of Puritan revulsion took hold of Cindy, and again she wanted to cast the offending photos from her. But again, she did not; again, she stared at the photo, at the man, at his tongue touching the innermost secret of the blonde girl. Oral sex! Perversion! cried the half-intoxicated mind of the young wife. The very same terrible thing Howie wanted to do to me so many times! Oh, God, and I'll bet that if I flip over to another photo it win show the disgusting sight of some woman with her mouth around a man's penis…
A cascade of shame flowed through her, causing her to flush a violent crimson. She was no better than the… the lascivious people in the photos! Thinking filthy thoughts, working herself into an impossible froth… Suddenly, she wished again that her husband were home. She was aroused now, aroused by the gin and the thought of lovemaking and yes, aroused by the perversity of the Polaroid snapshots which she held in her quaking hands.
"No! No!" she moaned aloud, but even as the words left her lips she was pulling aside the top photo, revealing the one which lay beneath…
And there it was! Just as she had feared – a girl, a young-raven-haired teen-age girl, with her lips firmly ovaled around the lust-hardened penis of a thin muscular man! And she was enjoying it, yes reveling in the taste of the man's huge penis! She was actually groveling in the very thing Howard had for so long wanted her to do to him.
A low cry of despair tore from Cindy's throat, and she was finally able to push the photos away from her, to fan out in disarray on the bed beside her. She lay there, trembling, opening and closing her legs in a vain effort to dispel the tingling, flowing excitement which the lewd pictures had built to a fanning inferno between her soft, pulsating thighs.
Howie, she thought confusedly, Howie, I need you, I wish you were here right now! Howie, I want you, I want you to love me, Howie…
Her hands went out on either side of her to clutch the spread, and her fingers encountered the rough newsprint of the paper around which the photos had been wrapped. Something to take her mind off her mounting desire, her confusion and repulsion at the sight of the pictures which that… that lecher Ralph Taylor had given to Howard… Yes, she would read the paper, that was it; read the paper and calm herself that way…
She lifted the paper, unfolded it before her eyes. The masthead struck her with the force of a sharp blow: the Polaroid Club News. What was this? Her eyes traveled down the front page, over the four columns there. It wasn't an ordinary newspaper, it was… oh, God, it was some kind of newspaper of the same kind of people who were in those photos she had just looked at… advertisements for the exchange of lewd pictures, placed by people from all over the country, sick people like Ralph Taylor must be sick, oh, God…
Man and wife will exchange erotic poses with similarly motivated couple. Nothing conventional. Oralism preferred. Box --, Cleveland, Ohio…
Couple with German Shepherd would like to swap snaps with dog owners everywhere. These are the wildest ever! If you don't believe us, query Box --, Atlanta, Ga…
The tormented young wife crumpled the paper and flung it to the floor, rolling over onto her stomach. Her lower belly was on fire now, in spite of herself; it was almost as if… as if the sickness she was seeing here tonight had aroused her passions to the desperation point. Tears flowed from her eyes, and her body involuntarily squirmed on the bed. She wiped away the wetness which was obscuring her vision – and her gaze fell on one of the photos, the nearest one.
It showed a couple performing simultaneous oral love in the classic sixty-nine position.
Her hand swept it up as if with a will of its own, and her eyes grew glazed. Breath spewed raggedly from between her open, saliva moistened lips. She stared at the picture, at the auburn-haired woman in the process of running her wetly glistening tongue upward over the man's sperm-swollen testicles to the ridged underside of his hardened penis; as the man's lips pressed tightly to the gaping, pink-red softness of the girl's wide opened pussy, his nose gently tickling the tiny puckered ring of her anus.
Oh, God, I'm sorry, Cindy's mind cried, I'm sorry. But I don't care, I can't stand it I can't!
And in one swift motion, the beautiful young wife rolled onto her back, still holding the salacious, full-color photo close to her eyes, and with her free hand drew open the hostess gown. Beneath it she wore only a thin pair of flimsy panty briefs. As if a separate entity, ungoverned by her will, the hand drew the panties down, slowly, slowly, as she raised her quivering buttocks high off the bed.
Her liquor-fogged, passion-fogged brain blotted out all the evils she had been led to believe came from masturbation. There was only her urgency now, her need for release from the intense arousal of her body by the lustful activities in the photos.
She massaged the smooth flat whiteness of her stomach with the palm of her hand, around and around, raising up to pass over her breasts with their swollen nipples, causing whirlpools of passion to seethe within her. Then her hand with a will of its own moved lower and she arched her back, raising her hips high off the bed, her fingers passing through the downy-soft fleece of her golden pubic hair and intensifying further the rising crescendo of sexual frenzy.
A groan of desire and total abandonment escaped her lips, and the young helplessly impassioned wife moved her hand downward between her now-widespread thighs, wet with the secretion of her passion. She gentled her finger into the moist flesh, and the feeling generated by her own fevered fingers was so very, very good. She manipulated the soft hair-lined inner lips until she could feel them swelling with the rush of blood, and her clitoris was rigid and tingling. Her index finger came in contact with the trembling flesh, and she began to gasp with delight as she felt release imminent. Her hips thrashed the bed and the air, her eyes never once leaving the photo and the lewd oralism depicted there – lips on penis, lips on vulva, lips on penis, lips on vulva…
Faster, faster, faster her finger rubbed across the sensitive clit, blanking her mind of all thoughts, all sanity; nothing existed for her in that moment except the delirious coming of her impending climax.
And then she was there!
Oh, God, she was cumming!
Her hips flailed frantically at the bed as wave after wave of intense, bursting release seized her. It was pleasure so acute that it approximated pure pain. Then, as her orgasm began to ebb, her buttocks sank back to the spread and her hand stilled but did not leave her cunt. She lay there, not moving, her eyes squeezed tightly shut now and her chest rising and falling spasmodically.
And then sanity returned to her brain. With it came abject mortification, a feeling of self-loathing that was almost as great as the delight of her still ebbing orgasm. She moaned aloud in despair, sitting up, brushing the photos from the bed and flinging them to the floor around it as if they were vermin of the foulest type. Then she threw herself face down on the bed, crying out her torment, sick with the knowledge of the act of carnal self-abuse that she had just performed on herself.
Those damnable photos! They were the cause of it all, the cause of her rising excitement into the throes of lust, her loss of self-control. Those filthy photos! Oh, damn Ralph Taylor for giving them to Howard, damn him, damn him! Why did he have to interfere in hers and Howard's heretofore placid existence; why did he have to give them that Polaroid camera, anyway? What was the matter with him? Was he as sick as the people who subscribed to that Polaroid Club News?
The questions spun and rotated in Cindy's tortured, liquor fogged mind. She felt sick to her stomach, and… impure, as if her body were harboring disease-ridden microbes. She needed the cleansing release of sleep; she couldn't be this upset when Howard came home. He must never know what she'd done tonight; no, he must never know.
After a long moment, she stood from the bed and gathered the photos and the newspaper from the floor, holding them again as if they were excrement laden. She put them back in the manila envelope, returned the envelope to the nightstand. Then she took off her gown and lay back down on the bed, slipping between the sheets, praying for the respite of sleep to ease her tortured mind.
But restful sleep, for the confused young Cindy Jamison, was not forthcoming on this night.